Diversity According To Fox News

Good Words

From a recent question on Quora (why are there so many shootings in the United States?)

Across the democratic developed world the vast majority of guns are hunting or sport firearms. Switzerland, often cited by gun advocates, is an anomaly since it's had a long history of required military service and the requirement a trained adult properly maintain and store their issued firearm - improper handling being an offense. Switzerland is an anomaly. 

American ownership is radically skewed towards the ownership of guns with an intent to use them against other people. The whole (inane in the light of facts) 2nd Amendment argument - blurred by the NRA to the point it's authors wouldn't be able to recognize (nor stomach) it. A lack of confidence in its democratic institutions, and in its people's respect for them, led American (white property-owning) men to entrench their right to bear arms against their democratically constituted elected authorities - which since has been stretched into blanket coverage of the right to arm themselves against their next-door neighbor.

Institutionalized paranoia.

Exactly right.

His conclusion is even better.

Simply having loaded guns lying about leads to 2 of every 3 gun-related deaths in the United States. Those are the unintentional homicides. Over 20,000 such deaths in 2013 alone. With a majority of gun homicides ruled not premeditated the rate attributable to ease of access alone is realistically higher. 

But it isn't a gun but the thought behind ownership that makes U.S. ownership so disproportionately destructive. The hunting rifle my grand-dad shouldered as he trudged through the backwoods of the Canadian hinterland nearly a century ago was carried with a vastly different intent than an assault rifle with 40 round magazine in the same rear window as a '2nd Amendment' decal which seldom leaves the suburbs. 

There is, in other words, a face-palm obvious statistical correlation between a gun being at hand and gun tragedy - but the violent intent behind possessing weapons of war primes the violence pump predisposing the entire culture to a greater likelihood of violence. A fact born out by 'cold. hard ...' fact.

So, can we change?

John Walsh Weighs in on Guns

Glenn Beck Continues To Walk The Walk

Something I didn't think I would EVER say...Glenn Beck continues to impress me. He has personally taking it upon himself to help the children that are illegally crossing our border. Throwing aside his anger, hate, and fear peddling, Beck is now doing exactly what conservatives should be doing if they want to be relevant in any future elections. And he is acting like a Christian. I hope that more conservatives take his lead. Ted Cruz is doing it.

Because if they continue to do stuff like this for the next few months, I think they might just take back the Senate.

Good Words

From a discussion on Quora about racism...

Lack of forthright censure is the equivalent of tacit approval.

And that would be why the people that howl about race baiting being a more prevalent problem than racism in this country end up being accused of being racist.

Because they ARE.

Don't Be So Smug: Or, We've Had Our Own Flight 17...

It's now clear that Russia provided the SA-11 antiaircraft missiles that Ukrainian rebels used to shoot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, and that Russian troops trained the rebels in the use of the weapons.

Immediately after the missile attack Ukrainian rebels bragged on social media about shooting down a plane. In this now-deleted post Igor Strelkov ("Igor the Gunman") said, "We warned you -- don't fly in 'our skies,'" and "Peaceful people were not injured." Yeah, right.

Rebels were also recorded talking on radios about shooting the plane down.

After the Russians realized their horrible mistake, they took down their gloating posts and brought the weapons back across the border into Russia. The separatists have also been covering up their mistake, taking the bodies of the wounded and and the flight and data recorders, apparently on orders from Moscow. They have been denying access to the crash site to rescue workers. It also appears that the crash site was looted by thieves who stole the victims' credit cards and personal belongings.

So what should happen now? There's actually a precedent for this: several countries have shot down civilian aircraft by mistake. Including the United States.

In 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655. The Vincennes was engaged with Iranian gunboats when a radar operator mistook the Airbus A300B2-203 for an F-14A Tomcat fighter jet.  This was during the Iran-Iraq war, and there was a lot of tension in the area: the Iraqis had recently killed 37 Americans aboard the USS Stark (by mistake), and another American frigate had been struck by an Iranian mine.

The Vincennes issued radio challenges to the airliner, but since it was a civilian jet flying on its normal flight path, the pilots had no idea the Vincennes was trying to contact them: they just kept flying. Receiving no response, the Vincennes fired two surface-to-air missiles; one struck the airliner. Everyone aboard was killed.

The United States never admitted fault, but issued a statement of regret and paid $61.8 million in reparations. It was a standard non-apology apology.

Russia can (probably rightly) blame it all on incompetent separatists, but they created the conditions that caused this travesty, so Russia needs to dip into its vast oil profits and pay reparations to the victims. They must also remove their troops from the border, take back all the weapons they've provided the rebels and stop egging on the crazies in eastern Ukraine.

But John McCain has been his usual idiotic war-mongering self, calling the United States "cowardly" for not sending more weapons in the area. Suppose we had sent one of our missile batteries to the Ukrainian government and they were the ones who shot down Flight 17. If we send weapons into Ukraine it will only make the situation worse, creating opportunities for similar accidents that the Russians will proclaim as atrocities against them and theirs, which they'll use as ammunition against us. (We are just so lucky that McCain lost the 2008 election. We would have started 23 more wars by now.)

We should be ratcheting down the violence, not arming everyone to the teeth. If we learned anything from the cold war, it's that arms races only assure mutual destruction. If we want to hurt the Russians where it really hurts, we should treat them like the international pariah and menace to navigation they have become.

If Putin doesn't pull back his troops and stop supporting the terrorists who shot down Flight 17, Russia should be labeled a state sponsor of international terrorism, Russian assets in the United States, Europe and Asia should be seized and we should hit firms that cut oil deals with Russian oligarchs with gigantic fines.

Minimum Wage Increases Don't Hurt Job Growth

Data from the Department of Labor shows that states that increased the minimum wage have experienced job growth:

In a report on Friday, the 13 states that raised their minimum wages on January 1 have added jobs at a faster pace than those that did not. The data run counter to a Congressional Budget Office report in February that said raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, as the White House supports, would cost 500,000 jobs.

Nine states had minimum wage increases tied to inflation (Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont and Washington), while four more states (Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island) passed legislation for the increases.

Do I think that these increases alone caused greater job growth? No. But they didn't lose jobs as conservative ideology dictates. Why?

Probably because the minimum wage is way too low. It has fallen so far behind inflation, even though inflation hasn't been a real factor for decades, that wages on the low end are a real bargain in the United States.

It's also clear that giving poor people more money has a positive effect on the economy, because those workers spend every penny they get. If you give one million minimum-wage workers a thousand bucks each, that's one billion dollars that are plowed right back into the local economy: they spend it all, on the basic requirements of life. Food, shelter, clothing: that's what minimum-wage spend their money on.

These days, if you give a billionaire an extra billion dollars it doesn't improve the local economy whatsoever. He'll buy some T-bills, try to stage a hostile takeover or merger, or buy some high-yield bonds in Spain or Greece (yep, they're not dead yet). He'll do a joint venture with some Chinese company, or cut a deal with a Russian oil tycoon. He might spend a few million on an fancy apartment in New York, a villa in Majorca, or a yacht in Miami. If he's a sports fan, he might buy a basketball team, and make another billionaire a little bit richer.

What he's not going to do is build a factory in the United States that makes real products, because he doesn't want to pay people salaries that they can live on in the United States. But this is a false choice. Germany has showed that you can pay a decent wage, have unions on corporate boards, have a health care system that covers everyone, while being flooded with immigrants, and still have one of best export economies in the world.

Yes, increasing the minimum wage to some ridiculously high number would cause jobs to be lost. It's also true that rich states can support a higher minimum wage than poor states. But no one is proposing to jack up the minimum wage to 20 bucks across the country. The $10.10 that President Obama has proposed is still far below a living wage: any company that can't pay it has a business model that depends on passing on their labor costs to the federal government in the form of Medicaid, food stamps, welfare and the earned income tax credit.

No Such Thing

We Are A Christian Nation

I'm most happy this morning to link this piece from Politico in which we see a return to compassionate conservatism. I've always held out quiet hope that people like Glenn Beck and Hugh Hewitt would come around and it looks like they have.

In an op-ed for POLITICO Magazine on Thursday, Hewitt argued that now isn’t the time to discuss the border fence he has long advocated. 

“Right now the country ought to act to end the humanitarian crisis of tens of thousands of what are, in effect, orphans and strangers in our land. The very young among them should find ‘forever families’ right here, right now. They should become Americans,” Hewitt wrote. 

Exactly what Jesus would do!

On his Tuesday evening broadcast on his cable channel TheBlaze, Beck directly addressed the parents of child immigrants, tears in his eyes as a scrolling marquee translated his monologue into Spanish, begging them to keep their children at home for their own safety. 

“Please would you consider doing the hard thing as well would you resist the temptation to flee or break up your family, please don’t hand your child off to a smuggler in the middle of the night,” Beck said. “I can’t sleep at night thinking about your son or daughter and so I and about 150 volunteers and multiple semi-trucks are going down to our border and we will see your child … and we will care for them.” 

Care for them...that's right. That's what we do in this country.

Because we are a Christian nation:)

Centuries of Denial

More Good Words

From a Quora question...

Look, when you adhere to this Real American Patriot mantra that sets up a straw man of "liberals" as: stupid, ignorant, anti-American, ominous, elitist, and generally a threat to the country and the very fabric of our nation....why wouldn't you call for "the Liberal president's" impeachment over your preception of his so-called failures? According to the article he is described as "abusive" and Americans are described as being like a battered wife that's "had enough." That sounds like a totally reasonable analogy - yeah, Domestic Violence scenario is exactly what liberal Obama represents. So apt! Why wouldn't you want to eliminate your sworn enemy, a direct threat to your nation?? 

If you drone on and on and convince yourself that your side represents Real America and you are on the side of righteousness and all things good and you constantly talk about having to "take your country back" this is absolutely the natural progression. 

Ideology is formed through a process of repetition of formalized language and ideation. 

You can find evidence of this assertion in my comments section.

Exiting Stage Right?

After years of Tea Party tomfoolery in Kansas, the chickens are coming home to roost. In 2012 Governor Sam Brownback cut taxes on the wealthy by 25% and eliminated all taxes for business profits reported on individual tax returns.

All this was supposed make the Kansas economy boom, but the state was one of only five in the country to lose employment this year, and employment has been below the national average for Brownback's entire term. Net growth in business registrations is down.

This year the state took in $335 million less in taxes than expected, and is now hacking away at its schools and colleges. Moody's cut the state's debt rating. In short, Brownback has been a disaster for Kansas.

It's so bad that hundreds of responsible Kansas Republicans have endorsed Brownback's Democratic opponent, Paul Davis.

In one poll, Davis is leading Brownback by six points statewide. A quarter of registered Republicans are turning to the Democrat, and independents favor Davis by 19 points.

This is how hyper-conservative shills for the oligarchs like Brownback will eventually lose, even in states like Kansas. They are being driven so far right by the cash dangled in front of them by the Koch brothers (they're headquartered in Wichita), that real Republicans and independents will eventually become disgusted and abandon them.

Their denial of science, their insistence on long-discredited trickle-down economic policies that benefit only the wealthy, their inherent racism -- expressed most vehemently these days in their screaming tirades against children fleeing social and economic chaos, and their insatiable desire to force their religious beliefs on everyone else are all alienating the young, the middle class, women and even many libertarians.

It's only a matter of time. The only question is how much damage they'll do to the economy, our physical and educational infrastructure, and the climate before they finally exit stage right.

Good Words

From a recent Quora question...

There are many arguably valid interpretations of the Constitution, and there are lengthy treatises available on the history, compromises, and application of each of the Amendments throughout the course of American history.

Somewhere, one of my old commenters, that went by the handle "Not My Name," is picking up the pieces of his exploded head.

In later comment from the same author...

I don't believe that there is a "right" or "wrong" interpretation (well, if you said that the 2nd Amendment gives you the right to keep elephants, that would be "wrong"). Keep in mind that even the Founders disagreed on what ultimately was placed in our Constitution -- the entire document is nothing but compromises that took many different viewpoints on government and rights and created what we now see as the Constitution.

Gee, that sounds pretty familiar...:)

Impeach!

It's Time...

Every year thousands of kids get the wrong dose of medicine in the United States. Some of them are made sicker, some of them don't get better or stay sick longer, and some of them die. Why?

The United States uses an arcane and outdated measurement system. The English system is used for some things, but the metric system for other things. Science and medicine use the metric system, the United States military uses the metric system, most manufactured products use the metric system, including cars, bicycles, computers, etc., but plumbing and carpentry supplies are still manufactured to English specifications. This means that Americans have to own two sets of tools, and are constantly wondering which set they need. Our speed limits and maps all still use English.

The same problem exists in medicine. The dosages for liquid medications are sometimes prescribed in milliliters, but most frequently in teaspoons or tablespoons. Pharmacists can mix up teaspoons and tablespoons because the abbreviations are so similar (tsp. and tbsp.) and physician's scribbles are often difficult to decipher. Even if it's written correctly, anyone who's ever done any baking knows how easy it is to mix up teaspoons and tablespoons, which can result in dangerously wrong dosages.

To make things worse, parents often use a regular teaspoon that you eat cereal with instead of an actual measuring teaspoon. They just eyeball half a teaspoon instead of finding an actual half-teaspoon measuring spoon. Because children have such low body mass, and some medicines are so powerful, an overdose can have serious consequences, resulting in injury and even death.

To fix this many professional associations are recommending all liquid medicines be administered in milliliters (mL). Whenever you get a prescription for liquid medicines you would get a small measurement cup with markings in mL. A study recently found that parents dosing in mL made far fewer mistakes.

Dealing with multiple measurement systems causes errors. The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost because one subcontractor provided data in pound force seconds instead of newton seconds. In the United States patient weights are recorded on scales that read in pounds, but dosages for medications are typically calculated in milliliters per kilogram of body weight, which means doctors have to convert your body weight into metric and then convert the calculated dose back into English.

None of this makes any sense. Nearly every product you buy in the store is marked in both English and metric, since manufacturers want to be able to export without having to repackage goods for different markets.

Even more idiotically, there are multiple English systems in common usage. Ships and aircraft still use "nautical miles," which are 800 feet longer than "statute miles." There are U.S. gallons and imperial gallons. There are regular feet and "survey feet." And then there's the profusion of different units: chains, rods, acres, fathoms, yards, fluid ounces, dry ounces, pints, quarts, cups, gallons, BTUs, blah, blah, blah.

We should just dump all that crap. Most everyone in the United States is already familiar with the metric system anyway: we buy cars with 2-liter engines, 9-millimeter pistols, and two-liter bottles of soda.

The metric system is so much easier to use. If you pick up a 16-millimeter wrench and it's just a little too big for the bolt you're tightening, the 15-millimeter wrench is the obvious choice. But if the 5/8" wrench is too big, do you pick up the 3/4", the 1/2", or the 9/16"?

If you want to increase a recipe by a quarter and you need 1 1/2 cups of sugar, and you can still remember how to multiply fractions from middle school, bully for you! But you wind up with 5/4 x 3/2 = 15/8 of a cup. What a pain to measure. You can convert to decimal to avoid fractions, but how do you measure 1.875 cups? With metric, 300 grams of sugar is easily converted: 300 x 1.25 = 375 grams. Things like flour are better measured by weight instead of volume anyway, because of settling. Adding linear measurements is just as much fun: how long is 12 3/4" plus 3 1/8" plus 2 5/16"? Wouldn't you rather add 12.75, 3.13 and 2.31?

"But what about football?" someone in the crowd yells. "We can't change yards to meters and ruin our glorious tradition! You can't have a first down at the 45.72 meter line!"

Amazingly, soccer has solved this problem: the field (or pitch, as the Brits are wont to say) is still measured in yards. For example, the centre circle is 10 yards from the centre spot and the rules provide a metric equivalent (9.15 meters). So, even if you drive 20 kilometers to a football game, you can still sit in your reserved seats on the 50-yard-line.

Sports like basketball and volleyball have updated some of the measurements. Internationally the basketball court is 28 x15 meters, but the rim is still 10 feet (3.05 m). The volleyball court is 10 m on a side (29' 6"), but the net is still 7' 11 5/8". That's 2.43 meters, in case you're wondering.

Because fractions are used in English measurements, it can be confusing to notate and interpret measurements on computers (like, for example, 7' 11 5/8"), making it easy for errors and misunderstandings to creep in. Plus, I've never had a calculator that adds fractions, but they all add metric just fine.

We should just bite the 9-mm bullet and switch to metric.

Who Knows More About The Constitution?

The Rats That Coulda-Woulda-Shoulda

Have you ever come home to find your dog with his head hung low, looking guilty, only to find that he chewed up your slippers? Or heard about a cat that adopted a baby squirrel? Or a dog that saved a kitten in a ravine and nursed it? Or the rabbit that pined away after her sister died?

Many people dismiss outright the idea that animals can have emotions at all, much less display altruism: it's a dog-eat-dog world, after all. Animals are slaves to instinct, and attempts to anthropomorphize their behavior is misguided. These folks admit that animals can feel fear and rage, but more complex emotions, such guilt, jealousy, envy, love and regret are beyond their ken.

But evidence is building that animals do in fact have emotions, very similar to humans. A study conducted at the University of Minnesota has tested this. The experiment was structured to determine whether rats could feel regret:

“What we found is that when a rat makes a mistake of its own agency, then the rat is able to recognize that mistake, and it thinks about the thing it should have done,” said A. David Redish, a neuroscience professor at the University of Minnesota.

Researchers thought that rats looked like they were feeling regret during another experiment, so they constructed a study to test it. They discovered that not only do rats look like they have regrets, the rats are actually thinking about what they should have done.

The experiment involved making rats decide whether to wait for their favorite food, or eschew the wait for instant gratification.  The researchers measured brain activity in the rat that indicated memory of the preferred food.

Of course, it has to be this way. In order to learn, animals have to be able to make mental associations like this.

When a pet bounces up and down excitedly to see you come home, or sulks after getting yelled at, it's clear the animal is experiencing genuine emotions that are no different from human ones. You don't see that kind of behavior in insects or lower animals, though even lizards and turtles can recognize individual humans and prefer their company: it might not be love, but what can you expect from a cold-blooded animal?

It's a fair question to ask whether these are "real" emotions, or just brain chemistry associated with the learning process. Mammalian brains release endorphins that result in pleasure, and adrenalin is involved with the fear response. Oxytocin (the "love" hormone) is present in mammals and works the same way as it does in humans.

But it's also a fair question to ask whether that same mechanistic biology that operates in human really makes us substantially different from other mammals. Psychopaths lack basic human emotions such as empathy, regret and remorse. They're often described as animals who have no souls.

Our legal system concurs with this judgment: people who express no remorse for their crimes are often given longer sentences, or even sentenced to death for their lack of empathy.

Which makes you wonder: is the cat who saved a little boy from a dog attack more human than Ted Bundy?

No Thanks, Gun Humpers

Not only that but I think I speak for many Americans when I say that these idiots are the last fucking people I want "defending my rights." I'd rather have them defend against early onset diabetes and seriously consider salads.

Well Said, Bernie!