The Opinionated Bastard

I’ve been re-reading Camille Paglia:

Sexual Personae : Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

And I’ve been struck again by how great it is. She’s got a book of poetry out now (not hers, just pieces she’s selected with her commentary).

Break, Blow, Burn : Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World’s Best Poems

I hardly ever buy poetry, because as she says in her introduction, most of the “Modern Masters” suck. I didn’t know why until I read her introduction, but now I do. :-) Here’s an excerpt

Anyways, I Googled her today and found two great pieces:

Crisis in the American Universities is a speech she did at M.I.T. Here are some great excerpts:

The problem of the last twenty years is that people think that “liberal” and “conservative” mean something. The liberal and conservative dichotomy is dead. The last time it was authentic was in the Fifties,

The situation right now is that we have on one side people who consider themselves leftists but to me, as far as academe is concerned, are phonies, people who have absolutely no credentials for political thinking, have no training in history, whose basic claim to politics is simply that nothing has happened to them in their lives. A lot of these people have money. I’m sick and tired of these New Historicists with trust funds. I’m so sick and tired of it. And because they’re pampered, their whole lives have been comfortable, because they’ve kissed asses all the way to the top, they have to show they’re authentic by pretending sympathy for the poor lower classes, the poor victims.

Pre Iraq War Interview is an interview about the war she did. Remember she’s an art historian, but she’s also a realistic true thinker, and she gives criticisms of the Bush administration even I would agree with, while at the same time criticizing the critics as well. I’m glad that there are people out there who consider themselves leftists without being idiots. Here are some cool passages:

What do you think of the antiwar movement that is taking shape in the U.S.?

Well, I had great hopes for it but am discouraged. I turned on C-SPAN with great excitement to watch the big march in Washington last month. But talk about shooting yourself in the foot! Several speakers were good, but most of them tried to drag all sorts of extraneous issues into it — calling Bush a “moron,” accusing America of imperialistic ambitions, “No blood for oil” — all these clichés. When fringe, paleo-leftist voices take over the platform, it drives away the moderate, mainstream people in this country who have nagging doubts about this war.

Why aren’t more public figures speaking out about the war, both pro and con, outside of the usual circles? I mean, on the antiwar side, of course, we have some high-profile Hollywood liberals like Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon …

Yes, that’s one of the problems. Of course actors have a right and even obligation to speak out. But so many of them — not Sarandon, whom I respect — come across as witless or knee-jerk. They question Bush’s intelligence, or they sneer and snort. They don’t sound fully mature; they don’t sound like they’ve fully considered the complexity of the positions that any president and his administration have to take. The infestation of the issue by posturing celebrities and the usual suspects on the fruitcake far left make people think, “I don’t want to be one of them.”

And then there are the intellectuals like Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky who’ve made a career abroad out of anti-Americanism. Sontag’s made no secret of her lifelong adulation of all things European. My take is different: My immigrant family escaped poverty in Italy, and so I look at America in a very positive, celebratory way. So I’m reluctant to become part of this easy chorus of anti-Americanism.

I wonder what she thinks now? Some of what she worried about (and I worried about as well) hasn’t come to pass.

Anyways, I love Camille, as I love anyone who’s as opinionated as I am. Its the fuzzy headed people who annoy me. If you haven’t read Sexual Personae order it immediately and read it. It’s probably the best art history book I’ve ever read. Even though I didn’t agree with everything she says, Camille can think, dammit, and its apparent on every page.

I’ve been re-reading Camille Paglia:

Sexual Personae : Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson

And I’ve been struck again by how great it is. She’s got a book of poetry out now (not hers, just pieces she’s selected with her commentary).

Break, Blow, Burn : Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the World’s Best Poems

I hardly ever buy poetry, because as she says in her introduction, most of the “Modern Masters” suck. I didn’t know why until I read her introduction, but now I do. :-) Here’s an excerpt and an interview about the book.

Anyways, I Googled her today and found two great pieces:

Crisis in the American Universities is a speech she did at M.I.T. Here are some great excerpts:

The problem of the last twenty years is that people think that “liberal” and “conservative” mean something. The liberal and conservative dichotomy is dead. The last time it was authentic was in the Fifties,

The situation right now is that we have on one side people who consider themselves leftists but to me, as far as academe is concerned, are phonies, people who have absolutely no credentials for political thinking, have no training in history, whose basic claim to politics is simply that nothing has happened to them in their lives. A lot of these people have money. I’m sick and tired of these New Historicists with trust funds. I’m so sick and tired of it. And because they’re pampered, their whole lives have been comfortable, because they’ve kissed asses all the way to the top, they have to show they’re authentic by pretending sympathy for the poor lower classes, the poor victims.

Pre Iraq War Interview is an interview about the war she did. Remember she’s an art historian, but she’s also a realistic true thinker, and she gives criticisms of the Bush administration even I would agree with, while at the same time criticizing the critics as well. I’m glad that there are people out there who consider themselves leftists without being idiots. Here are some cool passages:

What do you think of the antiwar movement that is taking shape in the U.S.?

Well, I had great hopes for it but am discouraged. I turned on C-SPAN with great excitement to watch the big march in Washington last month. But talk about shooting yourself in the foot! Several speakers were good, but most of them tried to drag all sorts of extraneous issues into it — calling Bush a “moron,” accusing America of imperialistic ambitions, “No blood for oil” — all these clichés. When fringe, paleo-leftist voices take over the platform, it drives away the moderate, mainstream people in this country who have nagging doubts about this war.

Why aren’t more public figures speaking out about the war, both pro and con, outside of the usual circles? I mean, on the antiwar side, of course, we have some high-profile Hollywood liberals like Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon …

Yes, that’s one of the problems. Of course actors have a right and even obligation to speak out. But so many of them — not Sarandon, whom I respect — come across as witless or knee-jerk. They question Bush’s intelligence, or they sneer and snort. They don’t sound fully mature; they don’t sound like they’ve fully considered the complexity of the positions that any president and his administration have to take. The infestation of the issue by posturing celebrities and the usual suspects on the fruitcake far left make people think, “I don’t want to be one of them.”

And then there are the intellectuals like Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky who’ve made a career abroad out of anti-Americanism. Sontag’s made no secret of her lifelong adulation of all things European. My take is different: My immigrant family escaped poverty in Italy, and so I look at America in a very positive, celebratory way. So I’m reluctant to become part of this easy chorus of anti-Americanism.

I wonder what she thinks now? Some of what she worried about (and I worried about as well) hasn’t come to pass.

Anyways, I love Camille, as I love anyone who’s as opinionated as I am. Its the fuzzy headed people who annoy me. If you haven’t read Sexual Personae order it immediately and read it. It’s probably the best art history book I’ve ever read. Even though I didn’t agree with everything she says, Camille can think, dammit, and its apparent on every page.

This posting on BookSlut brought up a hoary old chestnut about the Patriot act:

Ken Wainstein, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, made the disclosure in testimony to the House subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security. He argued that Congress should renew provisions of the USA Patriot Act that allow seizure of library and bookstore records.

Get ready for a fight

Realize, that there is no provision in the USA Patriot Act that specifically allows seizure of library or bookstore records.

Rather, there is a provision in the Patriot Act that requires seizure of 3rd party records to be approved by a judge.

Previously, this required approval of a grand jury.

In other words:

A subpoena now requires judicial review.

That’s it.

While perhaps libraries or bookstores should be singled out for special treatment, this actually has nothing to do with the Patriot act. Libraries or bookstores could always be subpoenaed for records, its a pretty basic part of our judicial system that people can be subpoenaed for records. (Duh)

The Patriot Act changed this to require a judge to review it, which if you knew anything about grand juries (only the Prosecution testifies, etc.) you’d realize meant subpoenas were basically rubber stamps. Judges are often more skeptical, because of the “fruit of the poisoned tree” rule.

So while there are probably definite issues with parts of the Patriot Act, hearing stuff like this constantly repeated just annoys me.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

The hippies are going to love this book. Me? I want my money back. The book rambles, has few facts, and frankly reads like the paranoid ravings of someone whose smoked too much pot while watching Crossfire. Everything after 1981 is pure speculation on his part given that’s when he quit and that’s about 25% of the book. So 75% of the book is memoirs of a period before the Cold War was over, and 25% is just speculation after the fact.

This book purports to tell the story of John Perkins who claims he used to be the Chief Economist for Chas T. Main, some sort of consulting company. Which leads us to what bothers me most about this book. This book does not read like it was written by someone who was an econometrician. It reads like the paranoid ramblings of a Berkeley street person.

According to this book, basically, all of the USAID and World Bank aid programs were shams designed to bring countries into the US fold.

This is supposed to be news? It was called the Cold War, baby, and long time readers of this blog know that I don’t think the US should apologize for winning it. Communism was the worst idea in the history of bad ideas, and its responsible for 20 times the deaths of a pansy-ass lunatic like Adolf. To quote Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

We should apologize for getting rid of people who said stuff like that? I’m not exactly proud of the Cold War, but at least the right always seemed to realize that their evil dictators were evil, the left seems to have blinders.

Anyways, according to John, the “corpratocracy” that secretly runs the world arranges for Third World countries to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development, and then to make sure that the lucrative projects are contracted to U.S. Corporations. Saddled with uge debts, these countries come under the control of the US government, World Bank, and other US dominated aid agencies that act like loan sharks-dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission.

(That’s a paraphrase off the back of the book jacket.)

After reading the book this is what I think happened: When he went to work for MAIN, he was basically told to create overly optimistic economic forecasts so that various third world countries could get World Bank loans. Those loans would then be used to build various infrastructure projects, which would be overseen by MAIN. These sorts of giant infrastructure projects would end up being overseen by the sort of giant construction companies that specialize in that sort of thing: Bechtel, Schlumberger, Halliburton, etc.

In other words, he was a salesman. His job was basically to write up an overly optimistic economic forecast which could be used with the World Bank to justify the enormous loan. Said loan would then be administered by MAIN.

As a long time reader of the magazine run by the actual people who run the world, Foreign Affairs all the other stuff is just paranoid rambling.

Really, this is nothing different then what happens with home loans. You have to get your house appraised to get the loan approved. If the appraisal comes in too low, the loan gets turned down. However, appraisers who come in too low soon stop getting business. Soon enough, only appraisers who can come in at the right number end up with business, because both banks and real estate agents will stop using them.

Is that a conspiracy? No.

There’s another review of the book here on a Peace Corp related site which I found interesting, because like Perkins, he was in the Peace Corp and now works in banking:

But the implication that there is a grand cabal of construction and consulting firms, donor agencies and recipient country leaders with EHM’s wielding their ways through boardrooms and bedchambers, tests the reader’s credulity. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man might have worked as an investigative analysis of foreign aid/loan practices and their shortcomings, with recommendations on how to improve the system. It also might have worked as a piece of fiction, as was suggested by one publisher who saw an earlier draft of the work. “We could market you in the mold of John Le Carre …” the publisher states in Perkins’ preface. In the end, however, the book reads more like a screenplay, with Perkins as the bad-guy-turns-good-guy financial action hero.

That’s the high level view. If you want to know more about some of my specific issues with the book, you can follow the link below.

Just post an answer in the comments or send email to the-at-opinionatedbastard-dot-com where -at- and -dot- are @ and .

(The email address is weird because spammers search web pages, so if I just posted uce@fbi.gov, the spammers would send a lot of spam to that address. They’re more then welcome to send email to uce@fbi.gov. :-) )

In my review of EHM, I talked about how removing the locks wouldn’t work so that stuff Perkins was spouting about in Panama about having a lock-free canal was nonsense. Here’s the answer from the Straight Dope if anyone is interested.

Here’s the short answer:

Scientists studying the feasibility of a sea-level canal (not a mile deep, but deep enough) have found that the Pacific at Panama is about eight inches higher than the Atlantic on average due to currents and such. In addition, tidal variation on the Pacific side of Panama is much greater than on the Atlantic side—20 feet vs. 1 foot.

That means the Pacific would flow into the Atlantic through the sea-level canal, producing currents that could reach nearly 6 MPH. While that wouldn’t cause flooding, it would definitely complicate navigation.

But that’s the least of the problems a sea-level canal would present. It would also allow Pacific and Atlantic marine species to mingle, with unpredictable but probably bad consequences for the environment. Worse, constructing it would require either (1) tens of billions of dollars or (2) nuclear explosives. So don’t expect it any time soon.

If you want to watch ships go through the canal, here’s a webcam

Derek got me hooked on Megatokyo

First, to quote Laura Bush:

George didn’t know much about ranches when we bought the place. … But I’m proud of George. He’s learned a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What’s worse, it was a male horse.

Some too-tightly-wrapped-damn-yankee-pansy-ass conservatives have complained about Laura’s potty mouth. Link1Link2Link3

Let me tell you a story boys and girls. Its the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.

My wife used to work in the office at the Flagstaff Riding Center. One day, the young vet and the old vet are checking out the horses. One of the stallions has these strange sores on his penis. The younger vet is mystified. The older vet looks at it and says. “Hmmm… Looks like Summer Sores. Did this horse come up from Phoenix?”

Turns out it had. So the old vet says, probably Summer Sores. So they slice open the Horses penis, and worms crawl out…the penis is honeycombed with holes…

Seems that there are these flies, and they land on the horse’s penis and lay their eggs. The maggots then eat through the horses penis.

So every day after that, the stallions penis had to have ointment applied.

There’s only one way to apply ointment to a stallion’s penis…

Naturally, it fell to the junior horse trainer to perform this job.

After a few days of this, whenever that stallion saw her, the stallion we get an erection…

Anyone who thinks Laura Bush was being naughty is a pansy-ass-city-slicker-yankee. Raising animals isn’t like it is on a nature show…

It’s inevitable for the wars of the 21st Century.

nikita demosthenes has P.J. O’Rourke as his hero.

Me? Oscar Wilde, Camille Paglia, Ann Coulter, and Cartman.

A gay man, a lesbian, a woman, and a cartoon character.

I’m not sure what that says about me. Maybe I just think the conservative writers write like pussies!

P.J. O’Rourke is pretty funny though. He’s just not vicious enough for me. This is the Opinionated Bastard blog, not the Opinionated Tea Drinking Surrender Monkey blog.

Must now go drink foofy hippie-ass chinese herbs for my health now.

(I never said I was consistent.)

How a light saber works

Ph33r my po\/\/3r!

From Airbornehogsociety:

I have worked in the civilian world in rural, suburban, and urban areas. I have gone to college in Alabama - in the buckle of the Bible belt - and in the heart of Boston, which is just about the exact opposite. I have lived in small towns, suburbs, and cities. There are no better people to live with, talk with, befriend or work with than infantrymen. It is difficult to explain why and I lack the eloquence, time, and a sufficiently well-rested brain to explain why. So, I will just sum it up by saying this. Here is a conversation that you will never hear in an infantry unit:

Sergeant: “Gee, I’m sorry for yelling at you. I got a little upset and said some things that I shouldn’t have.”

Soldier: “I understand. We all get stressed out sometimes.”

Sergeant: “Thanks for understanding. Hey, how about a hug?”

Instead, you are more likely to hear this:

Sergeant: “All right, I’m done yelling at you. Dust yourself off and get back to work. If you ever pull some stupid crap like that again, I will smoke you into a coma.”

Soldier: “Hooah, Sergeant.”

Sergeant: “Shut up.”

I get tired of being nice to my coworkers.

We were talking about people with low self-esteem, and I said that I have that sometimes.

She responded: “No you don’t. Thinking Hmmm…my plans for becoming Master of the Universe aren’t going so well today does not mean you’re having low self esteem”.

Here’s a review from Variety for those who didn’t like I and II. It looks like Revenge of the Sith will be really cool.

For me, I’ve always been willing to give Lucas a little more slack. While I was somewhat disappointed by I, unlike most of my friends, I just said “it feels like the first third of a movie”. After II I said, “it feels like I’ve now watched two-thirds of a movie”.

In other words, it seems to me that the reason I and II were so weak is because they’re really one 6-hour long movie. Traditional 3 active dramatic structure generally follows this structure:

To quote from here:

In the first act, get your hero up a tree. In the second act, throw progressively bigger rocks at him and force him further up the tree. Then in the third act, let him climb down or shake him out of the tree.

Act I Exposition: The first act has to establish the characters. So in the Phantom Menace, we meet Anakin as a little boy, we meet Padme as a young girl, and we hear about the prophecies about someone “restoring balance to the Force”. We also meet the Chancellor, and of course, the infamous Jar-Jar Binks. In this movie, though Anakin is still young, we see the character traits that make him great yet flawed. In Western literature drama is created when events overtake our hero, exposing his tragic flaw. This narrative structure has been common to theatre since the Ancient Greeks. Much like Oedipus ignored the Greek Chorus, we see Anakin ignoring again and again the advice of others. Typically, Act I is only 25% of the total length. I think one of the problems with Phantom Menace was that it felt padded, I think that Lucas had to pad this movie a bit. Cut down to an hour, I think this movie might have been better.

Act II Development: In the theatre, Act II is usually twice as long as Act I or Act III. Here, Lucas is again constrained by the fact that his vision was too long to fit into one movie. A lot happens in this movie, and I suspect that when I see the third movie I’ll fund a good chunk of Act II plot development ends up being part of the third movie. Anyways, in this movie, we start to see all the elements start to come together for Anakin. The Republic is corrupt and obviously a large collection of factions. Meanwhile, the Sith are behind the scenes actively working to bring down the Empire, and as everyone knows, the Chancellor is the head Sith. Having seen the other movies, we see the clones, the supposed saviors of the Empire for what they really are: Imperial Stormtroopers. We also see evidence of Anakin’s tragic flaw, but in this case, it leads to what should be a happy ending: Anakin marries Padme. Jar Jar Binks shows up again here, and it is he who proposes giving the Chancellor emergency powers, when Padme is busy elsewhere. Perhaps we are supposed to dislike Jar Jar, for he is the ignorance that leads to evil.

Act III Climax: Of course, I haven’t seen the movie yet, but we know what happens don’t we? Anakin is corrupted by the Emperor to the dark side, and becomes Darth Vader in the process. One doesn’t have to be a dark lord of the Sith to see how that can happen: Anakin’s vulnerabilities are his stubbornness and his love for Padme.

So in most plays, the first 75% of the play is just to setup the final 25%, Star Wars is no different, the first two movies were just to setup this one. So I’m looking forward to the third movie, and if its any good, I probably will get all 3 on DVD when they come out. Maybe if I edit all three movies into one really long movie (cutting about half of the first movie) others can see what I see.

This isn’t the first movie I’ve had this experience with, Back to the Future parts 2 and 3 were one long movie, the 2nd and 3rd of the original Star Wars movies also seem like one long movie, and the Matrix sequel was one long movie as well.

Back to the Future is really still 2 separate movies, it seems more like an old movie serial in that each movie seems like a TV episode. I think that’s why that movie hangs together so well.

The 2nd and 3rd (now 5th and 6th) of the original Star Wars movies leveraged off the 1st movie as Act I, allowing the Empire Strikes Back to function as the plot development movie. If you just watch Empire, its really not that good of a movie. If you watch all 3 at one sitting however, despite the fact that the first movie seems more self-contained, they can loosely function as one long movie.

The Matrix sequel splits 3 acts into two movies, so consequently it ends up being a much better movie viewed as one continuous piece then either piece separately. There’s no climax in the second movie, and no exposition in the third movie. Viewed together, the whole Matrix sequel as one long comes out as a better movie.

It’s important to remember though that we’re talking about the 3rd movie in a 6 part series. Taken as a whole, Star Wars is really the history of Darth Vader: prophesied to restore balance to the Force, it is really Darth Vader who destroys the Emperor, not Luke Skywalker. Perhaps I shouldn’t edit the first 3 movies into one, perhaps I should edit all 6 movies into one.

P.S. To my liberal friends: It took Bush 2 to get rid of Saddam…

In the introduction to one of his books, Noam Chomsky tells a story about himself. It seems that he went to the dentist because of some pain, and the dentist told him he was grinding his teeth, and to cut it out. After some investigation, he figured out that it was when he was reading the New York Times.

Me too.

Two Sundays ago, they had this article in the Sunday Magazine comparing action against the insurgents to death squads in El Salvador.

Now mind you, you could make a lot of interesting comparisons between Iraq and El Salvador. Did the NYT do that? NO! Instead, they made all these strained comparisons to El Salvador of the early 80’s, completely ignoring their history since then, like the elections in ‘89. A piece that could have been very interesting was made completely unreadable by their struggle to fit their flawed (and intentionally limited) metaphor.

Then Sunday, in the AZ Republic, I see an opinion piece by Paul Krugman reprinted from the NYT, somehow managing to argue that Bush’s proposal to cut benefits for the richest people still receiving Social Security was somehow designed to secretly benefit the wealthy because they don’t actually depend on Social Security. It was a pretty strained argument.

Jeesh. The New York Times wants to improve? How about adopting a “no strained metaphors” rule? Or perhaps adopt a rule that you don’t try to make Bush to be evil in every single opinion piece?

Everytime I read the NYT, I have to spend 75% of the time disentangling the reporters strained metaphors and obvious bias from the true facts of the piece. That’s why I grit my teeth.

About immigration. I mean, I love La Shawn normally, but stuff like this just irritates me.

I mean really, people in non-border states don’t know what they’re talking about.

It seems to me that there are only two sides in this debate:

Non-Border states: Yeah, we should close the border with Mexico. Border States: The border is closed? Someone should tell the Mexicans…

Do the math people!

Look, the border is 2,000 miles long, or 11 million feet.

Let’s say decide to implement your own border closing. The government must be stupid right? We just need to put up a fence. Well, lets see how much that would cost. We’ll want a 12’ high fence at least, plus about a foot of razor wire on top.

Looking around the internet, that will run us about $140/foot or $1.5 billion.

That’s for the fencing. Now we’re going to need some guard towers every 500 feet. Let’s say its $10,000 for a simple guard tower. We’ll need 22,000 of those, so that’s another $220 million. We’re assuming that the guards don’t mind peeing in a bucket, otherwise we’ll need 11 million feet of plumbing…

Total so far: $1.7 billion.

We’ll need 22,000 guards, at $100,000/year, 3 shifts a day, so that’s $6.6 billion in salaries every year.

Total so far: $1.7 billion for a fence with guard towers, plus $6.6 billion/year for guard salaries.

Have you non-border-state people shut up yet? No? Ok, well these guards need some way to get to the guard tower, so now we need 2,000 miles of road along the border. Say $800,000 a mile, so that’s another $1.6 billion.

Total so far: $1.7 billion for a fence with guard towers, plus $1.6 billion for a road so the guards can get to the towers, plus $6.6 billion/year for guard salaries.

Now we’ll have to maintain the fence and the road, figure 10%/year in maintenance costs for the fence, since it will be getting actively attacked, and 5% for the road. So that’s $250 million/year in maintenance costs.

Total so far: $9.9 billion the first year, $6.9 billion/year after that.

So ignoring the fact that our guards don’t have uniforms, guns, bathrooms, helicopters, training or supervision, we’re spending $9.9 billion to keep out 3-5 million Mexican immigrants/year, or $2000 per possible immigrant.

Currently, the Border Patrol has 9,000 agents stationed on the Mexican border. The reality is that the border patrol only patrols about 50 miles out of the 2,000 miles of border with Mexico. To patrol those 50 miles, will cost us $6.7 billion in 2006. So my numbers are probably very very low, but even so, just put to up a fence and man it at a minimal level would more then double the cost of the border patrol.

On the other hand if the 5 million people who cross the Mexican border generated $2500 in taxes instead of having to pay $2500 criminals to cross the border that would be $12.5 billion dollars in additional revenue to the government.

Like I said, if you don’t live in a border state, kindly shut up.

I was watching the first Star Wars movie (1977) last night.

Ya know, Luke is a total whiny butt.

I never noticed this when I was a kid.

Now I’m watching the movie and thinking, “so he has some chores to do. Big Deal.”

Growing up sucks.

I really, really hate both sides of the abortion debate.

Both sides are too busy screaming at each other to really make any progress.

1.6 million abortions a year is too much, making it illegal won’t stop it.

Emergency Contraception would cut that by 75%, or it would prevent 1.2 million abortions a year:

PlanB

How It Works

The fact its, we could cut the number of abortions by 75%, and give women a another choice if PlanB was available without a prescription.

You’re Pro-Choice or Pro-Life and you don’t know what Emergency Contraception is? F* YOU! You are an idiot, and I’d rather smack you then talk to you.

Join the Mercutio Side today! Emergency Contraception should be next to the tampons in every supermarket in America!

Patrick Ruffini is reading the Pew Report

Which is basically a comprehensive survey of politics in America.

Now realize that Patrick worked for the Bush campaign, and you have some insight into how true political insiders think about things. Its more interesting reading his take on the Pew report then it would be to read the Pew report cold.

I’m adding him to the blog roll as an expert for that reason.

Quote, hat tip: La Shawn

I don’t think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be. I think you can draw parallels here with the computer — here, too, Apple was once extremely strong with its Macintosh and graphic user interface, like with the iPod today, and then lost its position.

If you’re thinking about getting an iPod, here’s my advice:

I have 4 iPods.

1 is my wife’s mini, which she is loving right now.

2 are the 40GB models

1 is the Shuffle.

I use the Shuffle the most. It’s the cheapest, lightest, etc. In practice, while it was nice to have my entire CD collection available, I was always selecting everything and shuffling anyways. So having 10+ hours of music in one tiny lightweight thing works out better then having to lug around even as something as small as the iPod. Every few hours of listening, I recharge it and swap out whatever was on there for a new 10 hours.

So for weight and simplicity, I like the Shuffle the best.

On the other hand, the mini works better for my wife, because she likes to listen to books on tape, and she’s more selective then I am about music. So with the mini, she can have one book on tape, and several hours of music, and she’s good to go.

Quote, hat tip: La Shawn

I don’t think the success of the iPod can continue in the long term, however good Apple may be. I think you can draw parallels here with the computer — here, too, Apple was once extremely strong with its Macintosh and graphic user interface, like with the iPod today, and then lost its position.

If you’re thinking about getting an iPod, here’s my advice:

I have 4 iPods.

1 is my wife’s mini, which she is loving right now.

2 are the 40GB models

1 is the Shuffle.

I use the Shuffle the most. It’s the cheapest, lightest, etc. In practice, while it was nice to have my entire CD collection available, I was always selecting everything and shuffling anyways. So having 10+ hours of music in one tiny lightweight thing works out better then having to lug around even as something as small as the iPod. Every few hours of listening, I recharge it and swap out whatever was on there for a new 10 hours.

So for weight and simplicity, I like the Shuffle the best.

On the other hand, the mini works better for my wife, because she likes to listen to books on tape, and she’s more selective then I am about music. So with the mini, she can have one book on tape, and several hours of music, and she’s good to go.

Why? Because they've earned it.

The wars of the 21st century will need women soldiers.

Which makes John McHugh a threat to our national security...

Patrick has another interesting analysis of the Pew Report.

This paints a clear picture of:

• Why Clinton Won and Bush Lost
• Why Gore Lost (yes, he really did), and Bush Won
• Why Kerry Lost and Bush Won
• Who the best choice may be for 2008

I won't bother excerpting it, it's short, and worth the trip.

From BookSlut

Some Phoenix parents might be “startled” to learn the public library's new teen reading program is called “Shut Up and Read,” reports The Arizona Republic. They should just be grateful the library didn't go with their first choice, “Read a Book, You Fucking Pussy.”

You people who don't live in Arizona are wusses. Cowboys rule!

Kindly pull your head out of your ass please.

You guys have had it too easy for too long.

Unlike our parents, Generation X knows how to add. You dumped us in front of those video games, and you're surprised now that we know how to calculate our optimum economic strategies down to the gnat's ass? Legend of Zelda dude!

You self indulgent baby boomers are roadkill on the highway of history, you just don't know it yet. We're younger then you, smarter then you, and 300,000 hours of video games have honed our reflexes to a fever pitch. The only reason we haven't killed you all and taken over is there's just too damn many of you baby boomers. But you're getting older...

Stop lying to us. We know that its 15% of our paycheck, not 7.5% that's getting sucked into the cavernous maw of the government, we can count, and many of us have had to work as “independent contractors” for one of you greedy-ass boomers. Anyone who's ever paid “Self-Employment” tax knows isn't fooled anymore that government is a good thing.

Don't feed us this line about that really being our money either. We never believed you when you told us that you were holding our Social Security in “trust”. It was obvious at the time that the government was taking our money, giving some small fraction to seniors, and blowing the rest on hookers and crack. So now the bill is coming due, and you tell us nothing needs to be done?

As a member of the video game generation, I've spent more time managing artificial economies then the current board of the Federal Reserve. I know what works, and what doesn't. Stop lying to me, and fix Social Security, because I'm getting older and I need to start saving more for retirement.

If you don't, by the time you retire, we'll just drop the whole Social Security fiasco, and to hell with the Me generation, you can eat cat food.

Don't think numbers will help you. We're the video game generation, and all we have to do to keep you from voting is computerize the whole thing, and you dumbasses will never be able to vote again. Think you'll be able to vote? Let me ask you. Is your VCR blinking 12:00?

You have been warned.

In this book I just finished, Freakonomics, the author figured out why crime rates suddenly dropped in 1995 and kept going.

Roe v. Wade lowered crime.

Unwanted children are more likely to become criminals.

Think I'm pro-choice? Think again. As the author points out, 1.6 million abortions/year isn't exactly an efficient way to stop crime. Ask yourself if you're pro-choice, “How sure are you that abortion up until the moment of birth is a good thing?”

99% sure? ok, that's 16,000 preventable deaths a year.

When was the last time you were 99% sure about anything?

Like I said, before making it illegal isn't the answer, but neither is the status quo.

I'll say it again: Plan B

Oh, and by the way, I recommend the book. Did you know most drug dealers make under minimum wage? It's pretty interesting.

Just a few posts, but scary ones.

Awhile back I posted about how we get ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder) kids in the clinic occasionally.

Someone followed up with some questions because of an ADHD kid they were trying to help, so I thought I'd share the answers.

Anyhow, what do you know about getting this cool little 8 year kid fixed via QiGong? I've been looking at some TCM stuff too. Do you know which organs are the root of the ADHD?

ADHD is one of those diagnoses that for an Eastern practitioner could really mean anything. Every patient I've seen diagnosed with ADHD has had a different problem from a Eastern perspective and had different symptoms from anyones perspective: if I lined up all my ADHD patients together, it would be obvious to you just looking at them that they had different complaints. That is, I've seen ADHD cover everything from kids who look totally listless to kids who are vibrating where they stand.

So when I treat a kid with ADHD, I generally ask:

1. How do the parents see the ADHD manifesting itself?

2. What led to the diagnosis of ADHD?

3. How does the child respond to heavy physical exercise? If you have the child run around the building for 5-10 minutes are their particular symptoms better or worse?

4. Does the child prefer to concentrate on a single task for a long period of time, or flit from thing to thing? That is, would the kid spend 4 hours playing with legos, or 15 minutes each playing with 16 different toys?

Based on the answer to those questions, the treatment will vary widely. So while we have a lot of success with ADHD, its hard for me to treat remotely.

Since you don't have me available unless you live in Flagstaff, I'll make the following suggestions for the rest of you:

Find a good kung-fu/tai chi class to enroll the kid into. The old softer styles of Kung Fu didn't separate health from martial arts the way the more derivative successors like Karate do. So its quite possible that by enrolling the kid in a kid kung fu class that their system will gradually rebalance itself as they learn. Most instructors have some sort of trial lesson thing so that they can scope out the kid and the parents. In that introductory visit, if the parents talk to the instructor about the ADHD diagnosis, the instructor may very well be able to figure out how to get the kid to focus, especially if the instructor is pretty experienced with kids. People were coaching kids for a long time before there was ADHD

Now, finding what I would consider a “good” kid program is hard to explain because the martial arts you teach kids has to be customized for their age anyways. I'd probably examine the adult side in some detail, looking for tai chi or qi gong classes on the adult side.

The ideal would be something like we have locally where the kids program is separate but the adult program includes both qi gong, qi gong healing, and a healing clinic so you know there will be crossover to the kids program. That would be the ideal, but that's hard to find. If you find some websites for programs in your area I can look at them, but the parents should also follow their instincts when they meet the instructors: better a good coach in a bad program then a good program with a bad coach, and better a program that they can commit to driving the kid to twice a week then one across down they'll never go to.

Here's a study about Tai Chi and ADHD if you're interested.

So the last couple of years, especially since the beginning of this year, my wife has been in the throes of peri-menopause.

That is, the changes women go through before menopause. You would think that early on, the doctors would have correctly diagnosed her.

No such luck. These days, because of birth control pills, most women have the effects of peri-menopause much reduced. They're still present though, they just don't realize it, because all that knowledge has been lost by the general population because it basically skipped a generation. We've forgotten that the “change of life” happens before your periods stop, not after.

In my wife's case, because of fertility issues, she's never taken birth control pills. So she had a wide range of weird unexplained symptoms: lack of energy, GERD, GERD-related asthma. Even with an Eastern approach, I couldn't find much of anything wrong.

Luckily, a friend of the family had recommended a book:

The Change Before the Change: Everything You Need to Know to Stay Healthy in the Decade Before Menopause

My wife started reading it...pretty much every symptom she had was related to perimenopause. Not only that, but reading the book, she realized that while cancer didn't run in her family, depression and divorce around age 44 did...

So now she's on low-dose birth control pills, and its made a world of difference. As we say around here now, We Love Estrogen.

Thought I'd pass that along to any women in their 40's or men married to them. Buy that book.

Please Lord, save me from the self-righteous.

So my wife and I went to the local health food store for some sandwiches, and plastered all over the parking lot I see these signs that say No Bookstore Parking.

So let me get this straight. Four days out of the entire year, college students come to that bookstore to trade in the useless ravings of college professors they were forced to purchase for some badly needed cash. Yet the health food store, which is often so busy the other 361 days that their parking spills over into the bookstore parking, they're offended? So much for living in peace an