Fearing the Worst

It happens all the time on crime dramas.  A crime boss or drug lord controls the community by fear.  No one dares testify against them.  Those that try end up dead before they can appear in court.  And eventually someone realizes the justice system is ill-equipped to deal with this particular criminal...and murders him.  Or maybe it's someone committing a single horrible crime, but getting away with it on a technicality and through the benefit of a clever lawyer.  Whatever the details, it's the same story - we know he did it, and the courts fail, so someone else "solves the problem."

It's always wrong.  We know that - but we can't help but feel a little sympathy for the good man forced to resort to murder in a bid for justice.  Have you ever thought about what you'd do in such a situation?  Your child or spouse dead, the murderer celebrating the "not guilty" verdict at a press conference...I certainly have, and I suspect I might be tempted.  When the legal system fails you, you take the law into your own hands.

But we seem to have gotten into a situation now where the legal system appears to have categorically failed about 12% of our total population.  For the time being, I don't even want to consider the truth of the proposition - it doesn't really matter if black Americans are actually suffering significantly higher rates of arrest, conviction, longer sentences, and deaths at the hands of police, if enough of them believe it to be true.  And the evidence is certainly compelling enough for many of them - and for me - to believe it.  You've seen the shows - what comes next?  What would you do if people who look just like you seemed to be getting murdered by the very system that is supposed to protect them?

It's still wrong.  Vigilante justice is still murder.  I'm not trying to defend it here, or excuse it in any way - that's not the point.  The point is that when such a large portion of the populace has reason to believe that their government is an active, existential threat to their very lives, there are sure to be some that will respond with violence.  We even have a term for it, all too familiar in other contexts - "radicalization."

That's what we seem to be doing - radicalizing our own home-grown terrorists.  And that scares me.  A lot.  Because I'm not sure we can turn the process around.  And if we don't, we will most surely end up with ever-increasing violence - police will be justifiably afraid when a black person even looks at them - and the blacks equally (if not more) justified in fearing the police.  In such a situation, the rule of law can only crumble and fall - and with it, our society.

So I'm very depressed today, seeing the news out of Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas.  Especially Dallas,  The shooter - the vicious, cold-blooded murderer - was a Soldier, my brother-in-arms.  Sworn, just as I am, to protect and defend this country against all enemies.  My worst fear is that he thought he was doing exactly that.  If too many more follow that path...I am desperately afraid of where that could lead.

Bad Apples

There's been a lot happening on the Valdosta State campus in the past few days.  First a series of protests involving walking on a U.S. flag.  Then a publicity hound got in the mix, stealing the flag and giving the group publicity they never could have achieved on their own.  With the media now paying attention, we found that the protesters were affiliated with the New Black Panthers.  And then yesterday, the University police discovered a backpack apparently belonging to the leader of the protesters, Eric Sheppard, that contained handgun.  An arrest warrant has been issued, and Sheppard is now a fugitive, and presumed "armed and dangerous."

Now, the most probable case is that all this true, that Sheppard is an amateur would-be terrorist (or at least an angry young thug), and when the police eventually catch him, they'll be removing a dangerous animal from the streets.

But I can't help being a little suspicious.  Consider the number of stories of police planting evidence.  The many examples of institutional racism in law enforcement.  And of course, the inflamed passions on VSU lately, as the police were forced to defend someone desecrating a flag - a very unpopular decision locally.

Then consider how odd it would be for Sheppard to leave that backpack just lying around.  I mean, come on - who leaves their gun lying around like that?  Isn't it just a bit too convenient that the police not only found the backpack containing the gun, but that they also found "unmistakable evidence" that it belonged to Sheppard?

This is why "a few bad apples" really are a problem.  Most police officers are trying to do a difficult job honestly and properly.  But there's a few doing it wrong - and worse, those bad apples have been left in the barrel for _decades._  It's hard to trust any police officer at this point, because there's no way to tell which ones are bad, and no confidence that even the good cops will report them.

Last, consider that this is coming from a privileged, white, upper-middle-class male.  I've never been stopped by the police unreasonably (a couple of traffic stops, each one deserved); never been mistreated by a cop; never even been the subject of rude behavior from a cop.  And I still have trouble believing this convenient discovery.  How much harder is it going to be for people who get harassed on a regular basis?  Who are the same color as all those unarmed men that have been shot to death by cops in the last few years?  In a community where a black high schooler was found dead, rolled up in the middle of a wrestling mat, and the death was ruled accidental?

I don't expect this to end well.

Trivial Atheism

In my online arguments, the question often comes up - why are you atheists so petty? Why do you seem so obsessed about trivialities, like an invocation prayer before a city council meeting, or a Ten Commandments poster in a public school? Why, in God's name, do you want to yank "Under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" off the money?

The obvious answer is, of course, "If it is so trivial, why do YOU care?" But that really sidesteps the point, so let's look a little closer at it. Those two phrases, in particular - are they really so trivial?

From the beginning, they were intended as attacks upon atheists. Both phrases have a long history of people pushing for them – but those efforts got nowhere for decades. It wasn’t until 1954 when “Under God” was added to the Pledge, and 1956 that “In God We Trust” was approved as the official national motto. By no coincidence, those actions were passed during the McCarthy Era, as a direct “in your face” attack to the “Godless Communists.” We wanted to distinguish ourselves from the communists that were supposedly hiding behind every bush, so we declared – officially – that to be American meant believing in God. In doing so, we silently declared the obvious corollary – that atheism itself, even if not directly connected to communism, is un-American.

And how are these phrases used today? Well, for starters, hardly anyone says the Pledge itself. Scouts, of course, and I believe some – but not all – public schools still recite it to start the day. And of course, no one ever reads their money, reverently admiring the motto printed upon it. But those two phrases are still in everyday use. Look at the envelopes you get in the mail. I see a lot in my job – a small but noticeable percentage have either “In God We Trust” or (more often) “One Nation Under God” stamped or printed on them. Not “Jesus Loves You” or any other religious message – those two specifically. Look at bumper stickers while you’re on the road. You’ll see a lot of fish placards, church ads, and other religious slogans and greetings – but you’ll also frequently see those two phrases repeated over and over. For bonus points…when you see those two officially endorsed slogans, check to see if one of those other expressions of Christian faith are affixed alongside. More often than not, you can tell exactly which god they trust and are under.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t want to prevent these private expressions of faith. People can put whatever they want on their envelopes, car bumpers, yard signs, and billboards. But these particular expressions seem disproportionately popular. It appears to me that people want not merely to express their religious beliefs – they want to show that their government endorses those beliefs. It isn’t the private expression I oppose – it is the government endorsement.

While you’re checking bumpers, check the license plates. At least five states currently offer plate designs that include one of those two phrases. Indiana, in fact, tried to offer their version at no extra cost to better encourage people to display their faith on an official government-issued placard. Georgia offers a sticker to be added to the plate at a nominal fee of $1 – probably not enough to cover printing and administrative costs – to be affixed covering the county name on the plates – thus eliminating whatever benefit those county names provide that caused them to be added in the first place. In public schools, where other direct expressions of Christianity have been forbidden as government, those two phrases are often posted as substitutes. In case after case, those two phrases are used to slip religious expression – usually Christian expression – into government settings where it does not belong.

Check out this editorial by the mayor of Tifton, Georgia. Note how he uses “In God We Trust” to support his call to explicitly endorse Christianity. The Supreme Court says that those two phrases are mere “ceremonial deism” with no direct link to any specific faith. Does it look like Mayor Cater agrees with that?

Look at public school teacher Bradley Johnson. He posted huge banners displaying those phrases and others to “celebrate the religious heritage of America” – in his public school math classroom. Note that he claims that forcing him to remove the banners is discriminating against Christians – not deists, not believers in general, but Christians. Does he think those phrases are non-sectarian?

Look over the Congressional Record to see the debate on the recent House Resolution to reaffirm “In God We Trust” as the national motto. In example after example, the various representatives cite Christian quotes of how important God is to our heritage. Rep. Harper (R-MS) cited John 15:13. Rep. Franks (R-AZ) claimed “And I would submit to you…if man is God, then an atheist state is as brutal as the thesis that it rests upon and there is no longer any reason for us to gather here in this place. We should just let anarchy prevail because, after all, we are just worm food.” Rep. Aderholt (R-AL) hinted that while knew they could not legislate a Christian nation into being…that’s really what they intended. Rep. Pence (R-IN) thanked Rep. Forbes for introducing the resolution and his “defense of America’s Christian heritage.”

It is possible, from an objective and disconnected point of view, to interpret these two phrases as trivial, non-sectarian, ceremonial deism. But in the real world, that is not how they are used. In reality, they are used over and over again as expressions of specifically Christian faith, as proof of government endorsement of that faith – and as attacks against atheism and atheists. If you see our opposition as “petty” – then you prove only that you are not one of those being called un-American every time the phrases are used.

Just Making a Comparison...

A friend of a friend posted this picture a few days ago -
The picture itself is fairly offensive - showing our current sitting President, elected by a majority of the voters, alongside a list of some of the worst dictators of the last century. In fact, the poster got called out on that, but defended herself with the claim that this was only showing leaders in the two categories. It wasn't meant to imply that Obama himself is a murderous megalomaniac...it just happens that his opinions and policies regarding personal weapons place him in the same group as all those horrible people.

Yeah, right. Just a coincidence. Okay, let's look at this a bit.

First, of course, is the obvious - these names and faces were not chosen at random. If we're looking at world leaders associated with gun control...where's Tony Blair, who got the 1997 Firearms Act passed in the UK? Ronald Reagan, who endorsed the Brady Act? Angela Merkel, who signed a measure in Germany that even bans Tasers? I'm guessing that they weren't considered scary enough - especially Reagan. Including him on the list would have confused the target audience severely, I suspect. It is fairly obvious that this list was designed to provide a group of absolute villains specifically for the purpose of ranking Obama alongside them. Showing that some reasonable people support certain gun control measures would have been counter-productive to this Orwellian hatefest.

Second, to be a fair comparison, Obama's policies have to actually qualify him as a leader looking to strip citizens of their right to own guns. Does he have that sort of record? I haven't seen much on that from him. Back in June, he apparently put out some executive orders that would result in computerizing background checks, increased enforcement of existing laws, and improving interstate cooperation. None of which sounds quite like prying guns out of peoples' hands - and I haven't even found confirmation that the orders were issued. Even the NRA says he hasn't done anything on the issue - though of course that only means it's a conspiracy to do more later. But before you go lumping our President in with a bunch of dictators...shouldn't you be able to point to something he's actually done?

Third, the others in the group really ought to belong there, too. Some of them, sure. Stalin, yep. He instituted gun control in the Soviet Union. Amin, Castro? Couldn't find anything on them. Though Uganda seems to me to have been a failed state under his rule, so I wonder just how effective any gun laws really were...and I suspect that it isn't all that relevant in Cuba, where most of the populace can't afford food, let alone a handgun. But Lenin? Gun control in the Soviet Union appears to have started under Stalin, not Lenin. And Hitler? It turns out the 1938 German Weapons Act completely DEregulated long guns and ammunition, as well as liberalizing the rules on licensing. (In fairness, it also made it illegal for Jews to own any guns at all - but considering all the other antisemitic legislation of the time, it hardly seems fair to characterize that as gun control.)

So tell me again - is this really a picture showing the category that Obama's actions have placed him in, alongside all these historical villains? Or is this yet another attempt to demonize the President with lies, half-truths, and innuendo?

Of course, if you wanted to do it right, you could leave the picture exactly the same, and merely change the captions - the pictures in the bottom row are all leaders who believed that they had the right to murder their own citizens purely on their own word. But the people who put out this sort of thing seem to be just fine with that.

Making A String of Plug-in Jack-O-Lanterns

My family likes jack-o-lanterns. Been too busy to make new ones lately, but the last several we did were the artificial foam rubber sort, which means we get to reuse them every year. But with ten of them on the porch, getting them lit every night got to be a nuisance - not to mention costing us a fortune in batteries every October. What I needed, I decided, was a way to light them up that I could plug into a wall outlet.

There were a few restrictions, though. Those fake pumpkins are melty and flammable, so it had to be a cool light. And I really wanted to mimic the flickering light of a candle, which meant no colored compact fluorescents. Last Christmas, though, I decided that LED Christmas lights would be just the thing, and this year, I finally got it done.

First, though, please note that I'm not an electrician. I can't guarantee that I did any of this right, that it won't set your pumpkins on fire, fry your wiring, or destroy your house. It's working for me so far - but the month is young. Try this at your own risk. Here's what I did.

1. Figure out how many lights you need. Like I said, I have ten to light, and the light strings that looked like my best choice came 60 to a string. Just guessing, I thought six would be too few, but 12 would be enough - so I bought two strings. As it happened, that seemed to work pretty well - somewhere in the 10-15 bracket is probably good.

2. Select your light strings. Critical to my plan was a multi-function set - I needed lights that would flicker or shift. It is also important to decide what colors you want. Obviously, red, yellow, and orange are best for imitating candles. All I could find, though, were white and multi-color sets, so I grabbed two multi-color strings. I knew there wouldn't be enough warm colors, so I picked up a third regular string (no special functions) for the spare bulbs.

This was my first surprise - same brand, bought at the same place, but the bulbs from the spare string wouldn't fit the multi-function string. Very annoying, especially since the multi-function sets turned out to be only three colors - red, green, and blue - which meant I was stuck with two-thirds the wrong colors. I strongly suggest you buy a completely identical set for your spares...and maybe open the box to see exactly what you're getting before you make your selection.

3. Get your extras - wire, connectors, electrical tape, and a wire stripper if you don't already have one. How much wire you need depends on how far apart your pumpkins are, and how many wires your light string have - remember you'll need to splice each wire separately. Since my multi-function sets had four wires, that meant even my reasonably small porch took four 25-foot spools. I discovered that the light strings use 18-gauge wire, but the smallest spools I could find were 16-gauge - seems to work, though.

4. Re-arrange your bulbs. Mentally divide your string into whatever number of lights you decided to use - mark them with bread ties, or clothespins, or whatever. If any of your pumpkins can use your blue and green bulbs, great - swap 'em out to get the extra reds and yellows for the others. Otherwise, you'll just need to swap bulbs from your spare strings.

This was my second surprise - LED bulbs are NOT reversible. If you put it in the wrong way, it may be dim or not light up at all, and may also dim the entire rest of the string. So as you're swapping bulbs, check it with each swap, and if one doesn't light, rotate it 180° and try it again. I found it easier to just leave the string plugged in while I was switching them out - which is probably not the right thing to do, but it worked for me.

I also discovered that you can swap LED bulbs in the bases, just like the old-style lights, when the bases from different strings don't fit. It turns out that most of the "bulb" is just a plastic cap, though, and the caps from different bulbs probably won't fit. For this purpose, it doesn't really matter - the bulbs won't show, anyway. But it's something to keep in mind for the ones on your Christmas tree.


Once you have all the lights set the way you want, it's time to start rewiring. Just snip each wire between the sets you've arranged, and splice in a length of wire to extend the set. I strongly suggest you do one wire at a time to make sure you don't get any of them confused. Accidentally splicing the wrong wires together would probably be a bad thing. I used wirenuts to do the splicing - just strip off a little insulation from both wires, twist them together, and twist on the wirenut. I then wrapped electrical tape around it all - partly to help hold it secure, but mostly to try to water-proof the connections a bit.

Repeat that for each wire...then again for each group of lights. Just like when you were swapping bulbs - plug the lights in and check your work frequently. (Obviously, this is NOT a good time to leave them plugged in while you work.) It would be very frustrating to get one bad connection and have to recheck or resplice half a dozen to find the bad one.

Eventually, you'll get all the wires done. It should look something like this:
And the hard part is done.

Now all you have to do is stick the lights in the pumpkins. Just lay them out, cut holes in the back of the pumpkins, and stuff the lights in.


Get them pushed down into the bottom of the pumpkin as best you can. Ideally, the bulbs won't show - the light will still glow just fine. (By the way, those are baggies full of aquarium rocks - fake pumpkins are very light, and tend to blow away if you don't weight them down. This lighting method has the added bonus of hooking them together. I'm hoping it will help hold them in place.)

Pick your light setting - something that will flicker and shift. Having several lights in there, preferably of slightly different colors, should give a nice candlelight effect. Or maybe you prefer a flashing set, or slow color change - whatever you like. Plug the string into a timer or dawn-to-dusk switch, and you should now be able to leave the whole thing alone for the rest of the month, and still have a nice display every night.

Magical Thinking

Stage magic is very cool. For me, though, it gets even more interesting when I find out how the tricks are done. I'm not the only one - Penn & Teller, among others, frequently include the secrets behind (some of) their tricks right in the act, which tells me that a lot of other people like knowing about the reality behind the magic.

But the secrets are only cool when the trick works. Learning how to force a card is just not that interesting when the person teaching you can't shuffle without sending cards flying around the room. And finding out the trick of sawing a woman in half is much less impressive when it involves burying the assistant later - in two coffins. There has to be something real to go with the explanation.

Scientific theories are much the same, doubled and redoubled. A good theory not only tells us how and why something happens in nature, it lets us use that knowledge to make predictions, develop technology, and make our lives better. In science, the term "theory" is the highest accolade a concept can achieve, and the value we gain from them is hard to overestimate.

But the basis for any scientific theory is careful observations. You have to know what is happening before you can even try to explain why and how. A detailed theory of how sheep fly could lead to new concepts in aerodynamics, improved aircraft, maybe even a step towards anti-gravity - except for the indisputable fact that sheep don't fly so much as they plummet. Once again, there has to be something real to go with the explanation.

For the last few decades, conservatives have been championing an economic "theory" - in essence, that low taxes improve the economy, raise tax revenues, and create jobs. It's an attractive idea, fairly simple, and easy to see how it should work. After all, the people who own businesses are the ones who create the jobs and fund the paychecks - so if they have more money, they can do more of that. Makes perfect sense. There's only one problem - it doesn't appear to work. Ever. I can't find any evidence that lowering taxes provides those benefits - in fact, what little evidence I've seen seems to point the other way. It appears to me that the conservatives have ignored step one in creating their theory - observing what actually happens.

I mean, let's look at our current situation.

• The top tax rates for both corporate and personal income are nearly the lowest they've been since World War II, and they've both been that way for several years - and there are no jobs.
• Exxon-Mobil set new records for annual earnings in four of their last six years, and are on track to beat their second-best this year - and there are no jobs.
• A company that makes expensive tech-toys for wealthy people now has more cash on hand than the U.S. government - and there are no jobs.
• The top 1% of the nation's wealthy hold about one third of the total wealth. The top 10% hold two thirds. The gap between rich and poor hasn't been this bad since just before the Great Depression - and there are still no damn jobs.

Please, conservatives, stop telling us how and why keeping low taxes for the rich is supposed to benefit all of us. I've heard it enough that I can sing along. Instead, show us that it actually works - show us something real to go with the explanation. Or shut up and get out of the way.

Revisiting Global Warming, Part 1

My dad posted a link to a local San Diego news show debunking the global warming myth. I’ve watched part 1…here’s my initial thoughts.

The first three minutes were spent telling us just how terrible – and expensive – it would be if we believe all this global warming nonsense and try to act on it, with an emphasis on new taxes and new spending. Well, that’s undeniably true – but says nothing about the truth or falsity of anthropogenic global warming. It appeared to be a classic argument from consequences fallacy – claiming that if something were true, it would lead to bad results, so it must not be true. More charitably, it might instead have been an attempt to show the importance of the issue by showing the consequences if we wrongly take action. Either way, it is completely useless for determining the truth or falsity of the proposition.

The show then presented six scientists who made various statements about the errors in the science that claims to show evidence of man-made global warming. Two of them didn’t actually make any researchable claims, simply stating that the other side’s science was faulty. The other four said things that can be examined, though. Let's look at just the first one.

Dr. Craig Idso noted that, in that famous graph of CO2 to temperature over the last 650,000 years, the level of CO2 actually lags the rise in temperature. That would seem to disprove the cause-and-effect relationship, as the purported cause, CO2, comes after the effect, the higher temperatures.

The problem is that things are more complicated than that. According to several other scientists, as noted here, historically warming trends have started from cyclic orbital variations that cause the Earth to receive more or less sunlight. When we get more, things warm up. This causes the oceans to release CO2, hence the lagging rise in that gas. However, that increased CO2 level then serves to amplify the warming trend, as well as spreading that trend planet-wide rather than concentrating it at the poles.

And obvious even to me, a non-scientist – that long-term graph didn’t show the effects of a man-made increase in CO2 because there hasn’t been one before. On a 650,000 year timescale, the ability of man to dramatically affect CO2 levels is pretty concentrated on the far right end of the timeline – the CO2 levels there looked significantly higher than anything seen before. So stating that the natural pattern has always been temperature first, then CO2, doesn’t do anything to disprove AGW, which has never before been possible.

So what does this prove? Not a durned thing. Dr. Idso demonstrated that the graph in An Inconvenient Truth oversimplified the situation, leading to the wrong conclusion. The several scientists referenced in the link above showed that Dr. Idso ALSO oversimplified the situation, leading to the wrong conclusion, and thus returning to Gore’s conclusion. It’s possible that there is yet another level of complexity that would invalidate that one. And another beyond that...

All this really shows is that this stuff is complicated. And for this reason, I'm not going through the other claims to try and counter them - I am pretty certain that such counters are out there on the web, and it wouldn't take any more time to find them than the two minutes it took me to find this one. But I’m not qualified to sort out all the conflicting claims. Neither is Arianna Huffington, nor Glenn Beck. Nor is John Coleman, the host of the video. And since I know pretty much everyone who reads this blog, I can state with fair assurance – neither are you. That’s why, as I discussed in an earlier post, I find it necessary to use other means to make my judgment on this issue.

I've got more to say on this, specifically regarding the financial factors on both sides. But it'll probably be several days before I get that one up. If you want to criticize Gore or the scientific establishment for their self-serving attempts to enrich themselves by promoting this, please wait for that post - but for anything else related to AGW, feel free to comment on this one.

Where Is the Honor?

I happened to pass by a fraternity house at Valdosta State University on Friday and saw what appeared to be the beginning of a formal ball. The young ladies were all dressed in lovely gowns, looking like a classic collection of Southern Belles. The young men wore matching outfits – costume replicas of Confederate Army uniforms.

Why is there such a tendency here in the South to venerate the Confederacy and the Civil War? I understand the desire to honor heritage, and maintain tradition, and all that – but the Confederacy? It was, after all, a would-be nation that existed for barely more than four years, almost 150 years ago. Surely no one can claim that their ancestors were born and raised in the CSA, simply because four years is far too short a time to raise a child. There was little time to develop Confederate traditions, to create a Confederate heritage – so what exactly are these people honoring? Many people decry the immigrants who fly the flags of their home nations, screaming that they're in THIS country now, they should be honoring their new home instead of their old. Doesn't the same logic apply even more strongly to those flying the flag of a nation that existed so briefly, so long ago?

The brief existence of the CSA is entirely entwined with the Civil War. To honor the Confederacy's heritage is to honor their side of the war – for there are few other lasting accomplishments to be honored. Not to put too fine a point on it...the CSA was a treasonous organization devoted to ripping the United States into two nations, seriously damaging both. Had they succeeded, I would see a point in honoring the founders of the CSA just as we now honor Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the other founders of the U.S. But they didn't. What is it about the losing side of this war that makes it so deserving of honor, especially honor by citizens of the nation that won?

These days you can find innumerable celebrations of the heritage of the Confederacy strewn throughout the South – replicas of the battle flag fly everywhere, monuments and events such as that formal ball pay honor to the fallen Confederate soldiers, and so forth. As a soldier myself, I can certainly understand the desire to honor the fallen. But why honor only one side, and the losing one, at that? Some of the displays include their own apologetics – the bumper stickers that show the battle flag and the slogan “Heritage, Not Hate,” for example. They ignore the reality – there is no heritage of the Confederacy besides the hate. The only reason for the war was to maintain slavery. Many people these days like to claim it was about “States' Rights,” and the loss of power to the Federal Government – they ignore the fact that the only right those states really cared about was the right to enslave other humans. The public statements and documents of the time make it clear – the overwhelming cause of the secessions and the war was the question of slavery. That is the heritage these people are now celebrating. That is the cause they are honoring. That is the tradition they are maintaining. When I saw those students gathering for their event, they appeared to all be white. All things considered, that's not really a surprise.

A Convincing Majority

Science does not depend on majority vote. Truth will out, no matter how many people speak lies. So why do I take guidance from the consensus in regards to global warming?

Well, really, I don't. It's more a starting point. Here's how I really came to my conclusions.

Ideally, of course, I would research it myself and draw my own conclusions from the data. Sadly, I have neither the expertise, the training, or the time to do that. So I have to turn to those who do - the experts in the related fields.

That's where the consensus comes in. Just as I don't have time or expertise to research ot myself, I am equally unfit to judge the relative arguments. Under the basic principles of science and peer review, the conclusions shared by an overwhelming majority of scientists are generally the best available explanations for the data. Not necessarily "right" - but most likely to be closer to the truth than any other explanation out there.

For this issue, though, even the consensus seems fuzzy. I'm pretty sure that it is intentionally obscured by one side, so I'm already leaning towards the other - but let's abstract the process one step further, as a check. Let me look at who I know is lying.

I can hear my right-leaning friends and relatives now - "Al Gore! He's lying! He's just in it for the money!" Well, maybe so. The problem is, his investments make just as much sense, maybe even more, if he truly believes man-made global warming is fact. Did he put his mouth where his money is, or vice versa? I don't know, and neither do you.

There's some lies in the arguments that are easier to spot and confirm, though. First are the frequent petitions, conferences, and so forth that claim to show the growing opposition to the scientific consensus. Every one I've looked into, however, shares some common flaws -
they include people with no relevant expertise. One of them accepted participation from anyone with a science degree...even just a Bachelors of Computer Science. None of them appear to limit their participants to just those who have actually studied relevant subjects.
They often include people who never agreed to participate. This includes using deceptive questions to claim that support for one concept (Should we continue to research man-made global warming?) is also support for a more extreme idea (Is the consensus on global warming overblown?). In extreme cases, people have been added to the lists based on out-of-context statements in their published works - and have been kept on the lists even after they specifically requested to be removed. In one really extreme case, some of the people added to the list were dead!

In any event, even if we were to blindly accept their lists of "experts" who claim global warming is a myth...they are an insignificant percentage of people worldwide with the same qualifications. We can use their standards - include anyone with a B.S. degree - and their claim of 31,000 signers gets drowned in the millions of people worldwide with such degrees. Or we can limit our consideration to only those with relevant training and experience - in which case the vast majority of their side drops out, leaving only a few well-publicized scientists bucking the conclusions of their peers.

Other common tactics include the use of misleading statistics. Often a report will note two data points - say, a recent average temperature, and an equivalent reading from some years or decades past. Lo and behold, the two temperatures are virtually the same - the more recent might even be colder! Obviously, the Earth is not warming at all. On further, deeper investigation, though, one often finds some missing elements. It may turn out that the data points listed were from one location, while other locations showed significant warming over the same period. Or a closer look at the entire series of data will show that the latest reading is an outlier, much lower than the trend, and the carefully selected earlier reading was a higher-than-normal outlier - a trend line considering only those two points shows no change or even slight cooling, but a trend line showing all the intermediate readings shows clear evidence of warming. Or the report may claim that an effect limited to one area can be generalized to a whole continent. Or they may simply be reporting the variations caused by methodology errors as solid data to confirm their views.

So there's where my conclusion really comes from. Not the mere existence of a consensus that humans are causing our climate to change - that consensus seems pretty well confirmed to me, but as I said, science isn't majority-rule. No, the real convincer for me is how often, and how badly the opposition has to lie to try to create doubts in public opinion. If they really had facts on their side, they'd use them. Apparently, they don't.

O'Same

I remember why I voted for Barack Obama. It was partly because I loved the idea of having a smart, well-educated person in the office of President, making decisions based on a rational appraisal of effectiveness rather than ideology, and with a thorough understanding of Constitutional limits. It was partly because I was truly frightened by that pathological liar and Christian Dominionist that McCain chose for a running mate. But it was mostly because I felt we needed a significant change from the failed policies of the previous Administration, and it seemed that "McSame" would not provide that.

Let's look at what he's actually done, though. Sure, the Republicans have attacked his every move, but that's purely reflex with no apparent cerebral involvement, so we should probably look a little closer. Shall we start with the economy?

• Continued the TARP bailouts. I'm not saying that was the wrong thing to do - a collapse of our banking system would have been a bad thing, though I do feel that direct assistance to those facing foreclosure would have been more effective for both the homeowners and the banks, and possibly cheaper. But as that was a Bush-initiated program, there's certainly not much change there.
• Massive stimulus package. New program, yes. Clearly, though, TARP was a stopgap to save the banks, and was never expected to totally solve the economic woes. No doubt McCain would have come up with a different focus, and different marketing tactics for his plan - but from what I've seen of the consensus from economists, pumping massive amounts of borrowed government cash into the economy was the only realistic answer to the short-term crisis. (It causes long-term harm, yes - but if the country is on the verge of economic collapse, long-term is not really the issue.)
• Transparency of the process. This is something Obama promised for TARP and the stimulus. I really haven't heard much about it since he took office, though. Anyone know if he actually provided such a change? Do we really know where that money is going?
• Nationalizing GM. Clearly not something the Republicans would have done, right? But I seem to recall a major public outcry about the lack of control we kept over AIG and the other financial institutions, who took the TARP money and used it to pay their executives, instead of actually, you know, benefiting the economy. When it came time to bail out the car companies, McCain would have been under heavy pressure to put some strings on that money, to maintain some control over how it was used. I believe that, again, it would have been spun a little differently. That would have been easy - the Republicans wouldn't have complained since it was their own plan, and decrying Socialism really isn't a normal Democratic position. But regardless of the change in spin, the effects would have been similar.
• Health care. Not that Obama has yet accomplished anything there, but he's trying. Here's a spot that I think I see a little difference...but mostly in timing. Health care reform has been put off for a long time, and public opinion was clearly pushing for action. McCain might have been able to delay working on that, but I think the economic problems - especially massive layoffs with the attendant loss of insurance - would have forced him to do something about it sooner or later.

So, not much change there. Okay, what about the War on Terror?

• Closing Gitmo. On his first day in office, if I recall. Yeah, McCain wouldn't have done that. But it turns out that's more of a pretty symbol than anything substantive. It's been six months of the promised year, and there's still 245 prisoners there. And now, it seems, Obama's own Justice Department is arguing that these prisoners can still be detained even if they are acquitted of any crimes.
  
• Iraq. It seems we are finally, slowly, getting out. I believe, however, that the timetable was set before the election - admittedly, partly because of pressure from Obama and the rest of the Democrats. I suppose President McCain might have changed it, slowed it down, but I don't believe public opinion would have encouraged him in that. While I'm glad Obama is moving the right way here, I still can't count it as a change.
• Afghanistan. Honestly, I haven't been following the news there like I probably should. I counted both Iraq and Afghanistan as long-term failures years ago - we may or may not be able to maintain peace there for as long as we stay, but it will fall apart when we leave. So I lost interest in the details. Anyone want to fill this one in for me?

Okay, how about civil liberties vs. executive privilege? This is where I was really hoping to see something significant.

• State Secrets Privilege - Bush's Department of Justice asserted that if the Executive Branch declares material related to a court case classified, then the court must dismiss the case entirely. This in effect removes any check on executive authority from the Judicial Branch - the courts are not even allowed to hear evidence of government wrongdoing, let alone rule against it. Obama's DoJ has repeatedly asserted the same privilege. In press conferences, he speaks of more limited means to protect classified information in court case - but when his spokesmen are actually in court, he continues to claim an expansion of executive authority that would completely nullify the checks and balances against him.
• Protection against false imprisonment - we've already discussed that one. Obama is willing to continue to hold a person found innocent of any crime, as long as he can claim a national security reason.
• Fourth Amendment protections - Obama reversed himself on the question of immunity for telecom companies for warrantless wiretapping even before the election. At best, he has promised not to use the authority to wiretap without a warrant - but he doesn't seem to agree that the authority doesn't exist.
• Torture - Bush, of course, enabled and approved it through the use of poorly reasoned legal justifications and renaming it "enhanced interrogation." Obama railed against it in the campaign, but since then he has threatened our closest ally, the United Kingdom, with the reduction of intelligence-sharing if they revealed memos detailing torture. He has retained and even promoted some of the Bush Administration officials that oversaw the torture and rendition programs. And he has called for investigation and prosecution of torture committed by other nations, while steadfastly refusing to take such actions here in our own. The net result is basically the same as his position on wiretaps - he's promising not to use the authority, but he is leaving the door open through a lack of legal action and precedent to change his mind, or for future Presidents to revisit it.

Very disappointing. How about other social issues?

• Supreme Court nominee - the more rabid conservatives have attacked Judge Sotomayor on her empathy, her race, and her gender, but frankly they were threatening to filibuster even before Obama picked her. Again, their objections are reflexes with no connection to objective reality. In the real world, Sotomayor appears to be a very moderate selection, with a tendency to support authoritarian claims of power from police, prosecutors, and presumably the President in his attempts to retain the excessive authority Bush claimed for himself. At best, we can hope that the Sotomayor pick might be better than an right-wing extremist the McCain might have (or Palin certainly would have) chosen.
  
• Gay marriage - Obama's DoJ has argued against overturning the clearly unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act. Many of the states have been moving forward on this, but apart from this one negative move, Obama hasn't done any more than McCain would have.
• Gays in the military - Obama hasn't done anything towards removing Don't Ask, Don't Tell - exactly as we might have expected from McCain.
• Medical Marijuana - Obama has made statements that his DoJ would stop harassing people who grow, distribute, or use marijuana in accordance with state law, even if that conflicts with Federal law. But the DoJ was still raiding medical marijuana dispensaries as late as March, and the Attorney General confirmed that the arrest and conviction of Charlie Lynch for operating such a dispensary is completely in accordance with the new Administration's policies.
• Legal Representation - Obama's DoJ even encouraged the Supreme Court to overturn the long-standing principle that a suspect should not be questioned by police without his attorney present, once he's asked for one.
  

Conservatives have spent the last several months crying about how that change we asked for is going to destroy the country. Maybe they're right. Before I can believe them, though, I think I'd have to see some of that change...and so far, I haven't.

The Big Lie

Imagine that you're the manager of the local Megalo-Mart. One day you begin to suspect that one of your employees is using customer credit card numbers. Of course, you can't arrest him yourself - but you do what you can. You save all the transaction histories, make sure your security cameras are watching him, and notify the police. Sure enough, you manage to confirm your suspicions. The police come in, take the evidence you provide, arrest the culprit, and thank you for your help. With a smile, you tape a termination notice to the criminal's chest as they take him out in cuffs.

The next day you open the paper to read the headline:

MEGALO-MART FRAUD RING CAUGHT!

The story continues, noting the efforts of the police in catching a Megalo-Mart employee stealing credit card numbers. Your efforts are ignored - the only mention of your name is that you were "unavailable for comment." In fact, the story mentions that further investigations are ongoing. Worse, the day's editorial is a vitriolic piece decrying the greed of large department store chains, unsatisfied with their massive profits from high prices and low wages, putting local stores out of business, now apparently turning to crime.

Soon the crusade against you escalates. Every step of the thief's path through the justice system is highlighted - and at each step, his association with your store is emphasized, while your efforts in stopping him are ignored. Even an unrelated crime provides a way to tarnish your name - a home burglary a mile away is reported as being "suspiciously close to the notorious Megalo-Mart, home to the recently-caught fraud ring."

Then Phase Two begins. Apparently now satisfied that your store's name stands for crime, the paper uses it against others. Suppliers are noted as being "associates of Megalo-Mart, home of an earlier criminal enterprise;" other criminals portrayed as having shopped at your store. Even your charitable efforts are smeared - "Megalo-Mart computer found in use at local school! Inspections for password-stealing software are not yet complete..."

Sounds pretty horrible, right? Maybe even unimaginable? Well, that's pretty much what has happened to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - better known as ACORN. Many years ago, they began efforts to register voters in the communities they serve. A few of the people they hired for this task decided it would be easier to copy names out of the phone book or simply make them up than to actually go out and knock on doors or stand in public places. ACORN had procedures in place to detect such fraud. They separated out the suspected forged registration cards and noted who provided them. As the law required, they still turned those cards in to election officials, but they included all that evidence with the cards - and when the officials determined them to truly be fraudulent, ACORN assisted with the prosecution of those individuals responsible.

For their pains, the organization has been branded part of a conspiracy to commit voting fraud, and to steal the last election from McCain. This despite every investigation of ACORN and fraud has turned up no evidence of conspiracy. Also despite the fact that registration fraud - where the person registered is unaware of the fact, and may not even exist - is a far cry from actual voting fraud. Registration fraud has no effect on the elections - unless, of course, Mickey Mouse shows up at the polls.

And why has ACORN been so frequently attacked? Well, it seems that the poor and minority people they tried to register tend to vote Democrat - and unsurprisingly, their attackers have been Republican. But it has now gone much farther than that. Just as in my opening analogy, we are now well into Phase Two - where the original false accusations are now being used to fuel new false accusations.

First, Boehner and Vitter, aided by Fox News, implied that $5 billion from the stimulus package would go to ACORN - when in fact, ACORN was merely one of hundreds of community groups eligible to apply to work for that money.

More recently, Rep. Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that ACORN would be paid to handle Census data, not only receiving Federal funds, but gaining access to that "mother lode" of private information. It turns out that ACORN's only connection to the Census would be to publicize the availability of the temporary jobs; that ACORN would receive no money or data for this service; and that they were one of 30,000 organizations performing the same partnership role.

And now, a conservative group is attacking Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor because she worked for a legal defense fund that did some work for ACORN.

It seems to me that any time any politician or pundit brings up ACORN in any context, rather than jumping to their intended implication that they're showing me a conspiracy, I'm probably pretty safe in assuming that they're lying. In fact, I suspect that I'd be fairly safe in dismissing anything else that comes out of their mouths. Nice of them to provide me with such a shortcut.

What Have We Been Drinking?

The use and abuse of alcohol causes incredible amounts of damage to individuals, families, and society itself. Everyone knows that, but few people really consider all the details. Let’s think about those.

Drinkers often suffer a loss of work productivity, either from drinking or from hangovers the next day. They may develop or exacerbate weight issues by consuming the empty calories in alcoholic drinks. Excessive drinking can cause medical problems through damaging the liver or other organs. The loss of judgment that comes from drinking can lead to any number of bad results from poor decisions – from bar fights to dangerous stunts to unwanted pregnancies.

Families, of course, suffer from all the problems of the individuals. In addition, they can be damaged by the drinker turning violent, spending too much money on drinking, and patterning poor behavior in front of impressionable children. Perhaps the most drastic damage comes from drunk drivers, who can devastate or destroy an entire family with one alcohol-induced accident.

Society has to deal with all those problems writ large. The medical issues increase medical and insurance costs – likewise the drunk driver accidents. Hangovers have a noticeable effect on our Gross National Product every Monday morning. Police have to deal with the aftermath of the bar fights, the stunts, the accidents. Even the raw materials for alcoholic beverages divert agricultural resources away from more nutritional products, thus raising food prices for us all.

And yet, very few people would suggest making this disastrously dangerous drug illegal. Why? Well, we tried it once. It didn’t work. It led to a massive increase in the size, wealth, and power of organized crime. It increased the levels of violence in the streets as those criminal mobs fought the police and each other. It led to horrible corruption in the police and government officials, who found it easier and more profitable to cooperate with criminals than to combat them. Most of all, it turned a large percentage of previously law-abiding citizens into criminals as they turned to illegal sources to get the alcohol they wanted. That had to lead to a lessened respect for the law in general – a small but significant step away from the rule of law, and into anarchy. All that…and we still had all the negative effects from alcohol consumption, since the law did little to actually stop people from drinking! In a few years, we discovered that the "cure" of Prohibition was worse than the disease it purported to treat - and we stopped.

It took fourteen years for our nation to realize that the Eighteenth Amendment was a mistake, and that prohibition of alcohol didn’t work. We’ve been fighting the “War of Drugs” for at least 40 years. How long will it take us to relearn the same lesson?

Politics and Anarchy

In the last several weeks, there have been a shocking number of what I can only call terrorist attacks here in the U.S. An anti-choice protester murdered a doctor in a church. A Muslim convert murdered two soldiers. A racist bigot murdered a guard in the Holocaust Museum. All in such a short time…I began to wonder if our nation was truly headed for disaster in the form of sectarian strife and war.

Then I heard about the election in Iran.

It’s truly an illuminating counter-example. The election may, indeed, have been stolen by Ahmadinejad – so I certainly understand the urge to protest, even riot about the results. But it shows how weak the respect for the rule of law is in Iran as compared to our own society. After all, when’s the last time you heard of such massive demonstrations and widespread violence here?

One might assume that the difference is the importance of the event – a Presidential election, after all, is fairly significant, so would seem to inspire greater anger when it goes awry. I don’t think that’s the real difference, though. We’ve, arguably, had our own Presidential elections stolen. I believe that there is ample evidence that Bush supporters used fraud and other illegal means to change the outcome of the vote in Ohio in 2000, shifting those electoral votes from Gore to Bush, and thus changing the overall results for the nation – and that’s not even considering the travesty of Florida’s election that same year, or the unquestioned fact that Gore won the popular vote. A great many others believe that our current President is constitutionally unqualified for the office under the “natural born citizen” restriction – though I personally feel you have to look at the evidence through a blindfold to believe that nonsense.

Disagree with me? Think that Bush won fair and square, and Obama is secretly a Kenyan atheist Muslim Indonesian socialist criminal? Fine, leave me a comment and we can discuss it – but it doesn’t matter for this. The real point is that significant numbers of our population have reason to believe that one or more Presidential elections were stolen…and their responses to that were overwhelmingly non-violent. They write letters, post on blogs, complain around the water cooler, file hopeless lawsuits, whatever. What they don’t do is go out and riot.

And that’s the right answer. Frankly, even if those elections were stolen, I think the damage to our society from such anarchism is worse even than having a criminal occupy our nation’s highest office. Al Gore showed a similar belief when he quietly accepted the Supreme Court’s decisions against him that gave Bush the Presidency, as did John McCain in failing to support or even acknowledge the birther controversy.

In Iran and many other countries, the result of political disagreement is rioting and destruction. That trickles down – I once heard a military intelligence officer bemoan the difficulty of tracking terrorist incidents in Kosovo, because it was too hard to separate someone throwing a grenade at their neighbor’s house because they were the wrong ethnicity or religion from those throwing a grenade because the neighbor’s dog barked too long at night. It is a credit to our nation that the violent political statements of lone lunatics are significant enough to be noticed.

Torturing the Facts

I don't normally consider myself to be a liberal. My views range all over the left/right spectrum, and sometimes simply don't fit on that nice, neat two-dimensional graph. But over the last few years, the conservatives and Republicans have become so consistently illogical and dishonest that I find myself almost forced into a liberal mindset in reaction.

Cal Thomas' most recent editorial on releasing evidence of detainee abuse is an excellent case in point. In the course of his article, he sets up a strawman caricature of the liberal view and, of course, completely destroys it - while totally avoiding addressing any of the real issues involved. And even with that seemingly overwhelming advantage in his argument, he still seems to need deceptive tactics to make his point. I'd like to point out a few of the more glaring fallacies and deceptions.

"In any game, much less a war, when one player plays by a set of rules and the other plays by no rules at all, it does not take a genius to conclude who will win."

Of course, that assumes that the players are relatively equal. Frankly, the terrorists with whom we are "at war" are enormously weaker than the U.S. Thomas' statement implies that the only way we can win is to descend to the same level as the terrorists - and I don't really believe that to be the case.

"America-haters...want us to believe our behavior is directly linked to theirs and that if we don’t use techniques to extract information from suspected terrorists — information that might save American lives — then they won’t torture Americans who might have information they need to help them kill more of us."

Three lies for the price of one. First, it isn't the terrorists who are working the hardest to stop our use of torture. That would be counter-productive for them - as that use of torture is a huge boon to their PR and recruiting efforts. It is, instead, the liberals who want us to live up to our own principles. Second, their reason for trying to stop the torture is not to keep the terrorists from torturing our people - anyone with half a brain knows that won't happen, they're called "terrorists" for a reason. It is, instead, to turn that public relations bonanza around on them, restore us to our proper place as the morally superior side, and stop helping them recruit new fighters to kill our soldiers. And third, the idea that these techniques are necessary to extract information and save American lives is completely debunked. One of the interrogators has gone public, noting that traditional interrogation provided useful, actionable intelligence, while the "enhanced techniques" merely provided false answers, false leads, and wasted resources chasing them down.

Thomas quoted former CIA Director Peter Goss: "The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy dust."

No one is suggesting that releasing these memos and photos makes us safer. That's not the point. We should be using regular, legal interrogation techniques to make us safer - releasing these memos is to put a stop to the crimes committed by our own government.

He also quoted Mark Lowenthal, formerly with the CIA: "We ask people to do extremely dangerous things, things they’ve been ordered to do by legal authorities, with the understanding that they will get top cover if something goes wrong. They don’t believe they have that cover anymore."

Frankly, they never should have believed they had "top cover." The Nuremberg Defense has been considered flawed for decades - and all U.S. military personnel (and, presumably, CIA personnel) know that they have an obligation to refuse illegal orders. And these techniques are clearly illegal - waterboarding, for instance, is a technique borrowed from the North Koreans, who used it to elicit false confessions from captured American prisoners. We have prosecuted enemy soldiers in the past, for using waterboarding on our troops. Should we now assume that it is legal simply because it has become convenient for us?

The facts are that these techniques are torture. They violate our own laws, they violate our international treaties, they make us appear as bad as our enemies, and in so doing, provide some level of justification for their further attacks on us. While Cal Thomas and other conservative columnists want us to believe that "the ends justify the means," it turns out that even if we accept that horrible ethical standard, it still isn't justified - because the means of torture produce huge amounts of false information...which keeps us from recognize any truth that might accidentally slip out.

Cal Thomas knows all this. Why is he defending the indefensible?

Unintended Consequences?

My adopted state of Georgia is considering an amendment to the state constitution. I quote from the Georgia General Assembly website:

Paragraph XXIX. Paramount right to life. (a) The rights of every person shall be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life. The right to life is the paramount and most fundamental right of a person.

(b) With respect to the fundamental and inalienable rights of all persons guaranteed in this Constitution, the word 'person' applies to all human beings, irrespective of age, race, sex, health, function, or condition of dependency, including unborn children at every state of their biological development, including fertilization.

Now, the obvious intent of this amendment is to make abortion illegal – in fact, it would immediately include abortion under the definition of premeditated murder. I have to wonder, however, if the proponents of this amendment have fully considered the other consequences of the wording. I’m not a lawyer, of course, but it seems to me that under this amendment:

• Engaging in some action that causes a miscarriage could be charged as involuntary manslaughter, even if the woman didn’t previously know she was pregnant. That could apply to any number of women in highly physical professions – notably including members of the military, police forces, and fire departments.
• Any pregnant woman who has an alcoholic drink is guilty of child endangerment, providing alcohol to a minor, and child abuse. This could also be charged retroactively – a woman who drinks every weekend could be charged with eight separate counts of those crimes when she discovers she is two months pregnant.
• Likewise, a pregnant woman who smokes is guilty of child endangerment and child abuse – again, potentially retroactively.
• Intra-uterine devices, which are designed to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall, would be illegal. Putting one in and then having sex might be chargeable as murder. It goes without saying that the “morning after pill” would be equally restricted.
• The wording also seems a little unclear – it could be argued that this amendment protects the unborn child even during the act of fertilization itself. This would make ANY form of birth control equivalent to murder.

This amendment would also have interesting effects on Living Wills and other “right to death” issues – if the “inviolable,” “paramount,” and “most fundamental” right is life, then it seems unlikely that anyone could choose to take actions to end a life, no matter how heroic the measures required to continue it. But the consequences I find most interesting are the ones surrounding embryos – it seems that they would serve to sharply curtail various rights that women have taken for granted for decades, while affecting men slightly, if at all. Remember that this was written by professional lawmakers, with staff available to analyze these issues. I suppose it is possible that all these consequences to women are unintended…but I don’t really believe it.

Heroes

I found out about four heroes yesterday.

Three of them were wounded in Iraq. One was hit by an IED, and lost one leg below the knee. Another was hit by shrapnel, receiving damage to his arm and torso, with one piece penetrating his liver. The third was blown from his position in his HMMWV’s gun turret when a car bomb went off next to it. He flew 50 feet through the air and came down, impaled on a fence post. He was, fortunately, not hit in the ensuing firefight that delayed his treatment.

None of those horrific incidents make them heroes – at least, no more than any other volunteer Soldier who is over there right now, bearing the same risks. They merely had the bad luck to be one of those for whom the risks became reality. No, their heroic acts came later – which is how I met them. All three have declined medical discharge or retirement, and are currently performing duties at a major Army command near Washington D.C. Their willingness to stay in uniform to accomplish necessary duties here frees up three other Soldiers to perform necessary duties elsewhere.

The fourth hero’s acts have little to do with combat. SPC Jeremy Hall is a Soldier. He is also an atheist. While in Iraq last Thanksgiving, he declined to join hands and pray when others around him formed a prayer circle to say grace. Challenged by the ranking NCO, he explained his beliefs, and was ordered to find somewhere else to sit. Bravely, SPC Hall refused the illegal order and stayed put.

Last month, SPC Hall asked for permission from his chaplain to hold a meeting for fellow atheists and other free-thinkers. The chaplain, realizing his duties towards ALL Soldiers, including atheists, granted his request. However, his supervisor, MAJ Paul Welborne, intruded on the meeting, disrupted the discussion, and verbally attacked the attendees. In particular, he threatened SPC Hall with criminal charges and a bar to reenlistment, simply because SPC Hall had organized a meeting that offended the Major’s religious beliefs.

SPC Hall, with the assistance of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has filed suit against MAJ Welborne, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and the Department of Defense. He isn’t asking for money – instead, he’s only asking for an injunction on those parties to prevent them from interfering with other’s religious beliefs. Or lack thereof.

I don’t know if his suit has any chance of success. I do know that, no matter what the outcome, he is likely to receive retribution in any number of ways, from any number of people. There will be Soldiers angry at him for challenging the military structure, and causing damaging news stories. They will be Soldiers angry at him for challenging their fundamentalist religious beliefs, and their intent to evangelize. There will most certainly be Soldiers angry with him for BOTH reasons, and sooner or later, some of them will be his immediate supervisor, or his first sergeant, or his commander. If he chooses to stay in, he’s likely to have a rough career. If he chooses to get out, any potential civilian employer who Googles his name will find it – and may illegally choose not to hire him for his beliefs. In fact, the threat may be both more severe, and more immediate. In a response to my e-mail of support, SPC Hall told me he has already received threats of violence.

With all these reasons to swallow his anger and his principles, he has instead chosen to stand up for them. In this, he has been true to his oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and amply demonstrated three of the Army Values: Selfless Service, Integrity, and Personal Courage. He won’t get a medal for it…but he’s a hero, nonetheless.

Nutball Bait (Kevin, are you there?)

One of the reasons I've been blogging even less than normal lately is that I've been frequenting someone else's blog, instead. Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars presents five or so entries daily, usually about the conflicts between science and religion, civil rights and religion, civil rights and security measures, and so on. Not only are the posts interesting, but the regular readers and commenters are mostly a remarkably civil and literate bunch. I've been having a fine time adding my own opinions to theirs - and it's a lot more fun to argue with people who argue back.
Mind you, sometimes a less desirable debater comes along. In a recent post, I foolishly offered to provide a spot for a nutball named Kevin to spew his brand of vitriol, and for myself and others to point out his errors, or at least improve his grammar. I did this to keep a long, rambling argument thread out of Ed's blog, since he tries to keep the comment threads at least vaguely related to the entry to which they're linked. That's what this post is for - a starting point for the argument. I don't really expect him to show up, because he got rather soundly trounced on what little content his initial comments contained, and he hasn't been back. But just in case - here it is, Kevin, go nuts. Anyone who shows up here that isn't a Culture Wars regular is encouraged to go back and check out that post - and for that matter, the rest of Ed's blog.

Our Days Are Numbered

There will come a time when every human on Earth is dead.

The only questions are when and how.

Nuclear holocaust. If a global thermonuclear war happens, then the resulting clouds of fallout could kill most of those who lived through the blasts. Anyone who manages to avoid that might starve trying to find uncontaminated food supplies. Even if that problem is solved, they might find themselves with no healthy mate, thus preventing the next generation. And if they pass all those hurdles, then their reproductive organs might be damaged enough to prevent viable offspring.

That could happen tomorrow. On the other hand, it could have happened yesterday, or thirty years ago, and it hasn’t yet. There is at least some hope that it won’t happen at all. In any event, there may yet be time for other options.

Global Warming. A few degrees one way or the other won’t kill off humanity, but there’s no real reason it has to stop there. It is at least vaguely possible that the greenhouse effect could feed on itself and become a runaway. For the end result of that, take a look at Venus – surface temperatures averaging over 860° F. It’s going to be hard for anyone to stay alive in temperatures too hot for baking.

This one isn’t real likely – the theory of global warming is fairly well-established, and there’s not much room in it for a runaway greenhouse effect. On the other hand, theory is not a substitute for testing – and this test could have a very high learning curve.

Ice Age Maximus. Current theories in physics indicate that nuclear fusion produces neutrinos. These faster-than-light particles are hard to spot – they’ve got a 50% chance of getting through a light-year thickness of lead. Nonetheless, there are theoretical means of capturing them, and sites constructed to do just that – capture the neutrino’s produced by the Sun’s fusion. Unfortunately, they haven’t found any. This leads to a few possible conclusions, but one is that the nuclear furnace of our nearest star has gone out.

That would mean that all that light and heat we currently enjoy is just the remnants of earlier fusion percolating up through those thousands of miles of compressed gas – and that at any time now, it could stop. If that happens, it’s gonna get chilly. Not just the ice caps expanding and glaciers forming. Not just the oceans freezing over. I’m talking about the atmosphere freezing out, one gas at a time – a layer of dry ice, buried under a blanket of frozen nitrogen, with drifts of oxygen settling out on top. I’m talking about trying to choose between breathing frozen air or breathing vacuum – not that your choice will make a lot of difference.

This is another one that could happen at any time. But again, it hasn’t happened yet.

Various other methods – a massive comet strike could crack the Earth like a coconut. The Sun’s fusion might restart, igniting a massive solar flare that would blast our atmosphere off the surface, frying half the planet instantly while the other half struggled – briefly – with storms that would make a hurricane look like a summer breeze. A bioweapon gone wrong that wipes out such a high percentage of humanity that the few survivors die of other diseases, infrastructure collapses, or simply can’t find each other to reproduce and keep us going. If nothing else, the Sun will eventually expand to a red giant, turning the Earth to a charred cinder similar to Mercury.

There will come a time when every human on Earth is dead.

It would be nice if my descendents lived somewhere else when that happens.

Hobson's Choice

The recent attacks in Great Britain got me thinking about terrorism, specifically foreign terrorism. Here’s what I’m coming up with – I’d really like someone to point out my errors.

Assumption #1: In our society, constructing an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) with sufficient power to kill or maim large numbers of people is a trivially simple exercise.

Analysis: High-powered explosives are somewhat controlled. However, ammonia-based explosives are simple to make from easily-available materials. Gasoline, propane, and other fuels can also be used to develop explosive devices. Ample material to provide fragmentation effects can be found in any hardware store or junkyard. While mass purchases of some of these materials (e.g. ammonia-based fertilizer) might be controlled, a series of smaller purchases over a longer period of time could provide raw materials for an IED of any desired size.

Assumption #2: Emplacing such an IED is also a trivially simple exercise.

Analysis: So-called “important” targets are increasingly protected. Government buildings, large office buildings, airports, power plants, chemical facilities…the list of protected sites is seemingly endless, but the key word is “seemingly.” Schools, shopping centers, fairgrounds, parade routes, smaller office buildings, restaurants, bars – even just an area on the road that frequently suffers traffic jams – are all possible targets for a terrorist attack. There’s just no way to protect all of them.

Assumption #3: Foreign terrorists bear sufficient enmity against the United States that any form of engagement between our country and theirs is sufficient to encourage terrorist acts against us.

Analysis: This one is purely my opinion – but I think it is nonetheless correct. Our support for Israel, our financial and political involvement with several Middle Eastern countries, and the immense popularity and availability of our entertainment media all provide ample sources of outrage for Islamic fundamentalists. While other sources of foreign terrorism in the U.S. may exist, they are so much rarer that I don’t see a need to analyze the roots of their hatred for us.

Conclusion: Foreign terrorists will continue to attack our nation and our allies as long as any significant contact remains between our culture and theirs. While some attacks may be stopped through luck, good police work, or incompetent terrorists, others will inevitably succeed. This may someday be stopped by the foreign culture adopting more democratic and liberal principles – but that will not be soon, and is unlikely to come from our direct intervention.

Responses:

1. Status Quo. We can accept some level of innocent casualties as a cost of doing business in the regions from which the terrorists come. While our intelligence and police forces will improve their capabilities, so will the terrorists. As long as our basic political structure is unchanged, our open society is vulnerable to attack. The question becomes – how many dead citizens are a fair price for supporting Israel, exporting TV shows, and importing oil? And how long are we willing to pay that price while we wait for them to turn away from violence?

2. Disengage. That entails cutting down our crude oil usage by about two thirds, to live off our own domestic production – if we continue to import any oil at all, the fungible nature of the product means that some of it will come from the Middle East. It means cutting off Israel from our support – and thus likely leading to the use of one or more nuclear bombs when Israel is forced to defend itself without the threat of allies coming to assist. It means cutting off all immigration, student visas, and even tourist visas from the area, lest some of them become contaminated by our culture and then return to spread that contamination. I suppose we can ask the countries involved to handle censoring TV, books, and movies, and provide our assistance in censoring the Internet. Politically and economically, I think this one is beyond any realistic expectation.

3. Retaliate. Announce to the world that any country or culture that attacks us with acts of terrorism will in turn be attacked. Violently, and without too much regard for the nature of the targets. I’m pretty sure that we could strike fear into the heart of the most rabid terrorist – if a ten to one casualty ratio isn’t enough, how about a hundred to one? Thousand to one? An air raid over Mecca and Medina? We have the physical means to do whatever it takes to get their attention. Only political will and morality prevent it.

Of course, such violence breeds anger and resentment, which breeds more terrorists. That could end up as a genocidal war.

Is there a flaw in my assumptions? My conclusion? A fourth response? I don’t like any of the answers I’ve come up with – I could really use another one. Anyone?