Saturday January 13, 2007

Men and women can be equal without being treated identically. That point apparently eludes those in power and has resulted in a moronic policy. From the NY Times:

WHITNEY POINT, N.Y. — Thirty girls signed up for the cheerleading squad this winter at Whitney Point High School in upstate New York. But upon learning they would be waving their pompoms for the girls’ basketball team as well as the boys’, more than half of the aspiring cheerleaders dropped out.

The eight remaining cheerleaders now awkwardly adjust their routines for whichever team is playing here on the home court — “Hands Up You Guys” becomes “Hands Up You Girls” — to comply with a new ruling from federal education officials interpreting Title IX, the law intended to guarantee gender equality in student sports.

“It feels funny when we do it,” said Amanda Cummings, 15, the cheerleading co-captain, who forgot the name of a female basketball player mid-cheer last month.

Whitney Point is one of 14 high schools in the Binghamton area that began sending cheerleaders to girls’ games in late November, after the mother of a female basketball player in Johnson City, N.Y., filed a discrimination complaint with the United States Department of Education. She said the lack of official sideline support made the girls seem like second-string, and violated Title IX’s promise of equal playing fields for both sexes.

But the ruling has left many people here and across the New York region booing, as dozens of schools have chosen to stop sending cheerleaders to away games, as part of an effort to squeeze all the home girls’ games into the cheerleading schedule.

Boys’ basketball boosters say something is missing in the stands at away games, cheerleaders resent not being able to meet their rivals on the road, and even female basketball players being hurrahed are unhappy.

In Johnson City, students and parents say they have accepted the change even as they question the need for it. Several cheerleaders there recalled a game two years ago, long before the complaint, when the squad decided at the last minute to cheer for the girls’ team because a boys’ game was canceled. The cheers drowned out directions from the girls’ coach, frustrated the players, and created so much tension that the cheerleaders left before halftime.

“They asked, ‘Why are you here?’” recalled Joquina Spence, 18, a senior cheerleader. “We told them, ‘We’re here to support you,’ and it was a problem because they kept yelling at us.”

But, as the New York State Public High School Athletic Association warned in a letter to its 768 members in November, the education department determined that cheerleaders should be provided “regardless of whether the girls’ basketball teams wanted and/or asked for” them.

The ruling followed a similar one in September in the Philadelphia suburbs, and comes as high schools nationwide are redefining the role of cheerleaders in response to parental and legal pressures as well as growing sensitivity to sexism among athletic directors, especially as more women step into those roles.

Saturday January 13, 2007

From today’s Washington Post:

President Bush fought back at lawmakers opposing his new plan for Iraq today, charging that simply being against the strategy without suggesting alternatives was “irresponsible.” He challenged them to come up with a better plan.

Bush made his comments in his weekly radio address two days after top officials of his administration received a roasting on Capitol Hill about the plan, which calls for 21,500 additional soldiers and Marines to be sent to Iraq in an attempt to quell the increasing sectarian violence there between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, particularly in Baghdad.

Bush unveiled the plan in a prime-time television speech on Wednesday night and it has been drawing criticism from Democrats — and some Republicans — ever since. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel (Nebraska), a Vietnam War veteran, described it as “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.” Bush hosted an informal and primarily social gathering of Republican lawmakers at his Camp David retreat on Friday night and Saturday.

Democratic senator Joseph Biden (Delaware), new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the administration’s plan a “tragic mistake” and says it shows the president is ignoring the will of the American public, who gave Democrats control of the Congress in the country’s midterm elections in November largely because of displeasure over the course of the war in Iraq. More than 3,000 U.S. troops have died in the conflict since it began in March 2003 and public support for the war has been steadily waning as the violence shows no sign of abating.

“To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible,” Bush said in the radio address. “Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully,” he said, but added: “Those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success.”

Bush also lashed back at critics who have called the plan a repackaging of the same strategy, which the president and military officials have all said has failed to put an end to the violence there. Sen. Carl L. Levin (D-Mich), the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said yesterday on the Hill that the plan only reinforces a “flawed strategy.”

“We have a new strategy with a new mission: Helping secure the population, especially in Baghdad,” Bush said. “Our plan puts Iraqis in the lead.”

You can call it whatever you want, Mr. President, but this is an escalation. You’re putting more troops on the ground to accomplish very familiar and nebulous goals. It constitutes putting our soldiers in the middle of a foreign country’s civil war to stand there and be shot at. There is no military objective that can be accomplished with this so-called “surge”. I’m now convinced that you are doing this largely because you don’t want to be the president that “lost Iraq.”

You want a plan, Bush? Here’s a plan. It’s called GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE. You let the various ethnic groups fight it out. Yeah, it might pull in surrounding countries. So what? At least our people won’t be getting killed. There’s gonna be a huge Middle East war at some point … it’s pretty damn inevitable, based on nothing more than ancient ethno-religious feuds and the boundaries drawn up at the Treaty of Versailles. There’s so many conflicts boiling just under the surface all over that region. Would you rather have the war before or after Iran has nukes? Before or after the other countries over there feel the need to stock up on WMDs themselves? Before or after some country’s government is overthrown by Islamic radicals (Lebanon, Egypt, and Pakistan seem like good candidates)?

Terrorists who actually want to attack the American mainland can be dealt with through air strikes, special ops missions, and similar mechanisms. You don’t need to occupy the entire country of Iraq to do that. Everyone else … let them kill each other. They all seem pretty intent on it. We messed this up really bad, but refusing to admit the mistake — or thinking that staying there indefinitely will correct it — is insane. There will be carnage, but it would be far less than if a regional war played out ten or twenty years down the road.

Saturday January 13, 2007

From Reason‘s blog:

A few months ago, Delaware state Rep. John C. Atkins was pulled over in Ocean City Maryland under suspicion of drunken driving. Immediately after getting pulled over, he flahsed his Delaware Legislature ID, after which the officer assured him that he wouldn’t be arrested. Problem is, Atkins took a roadside breath test which came back at .14, well over the legal limit.

Atkins wasn’t arrested. His car wasn’t impounded. He wasn’t even fined. Instead, he was allowed to call a friend, who came to pick him up and take him home. Atkins was arrested hours later after a domestic dispute with his wife. He pled guilty to one count of “offensive touching.”

All of that is bad enough. Stranger still is the fact that, months later, Mothers Against Drunk Driving has put out a press release expressing their full support for the Ocean City Police Department in declining to arrest Rep. Atkins. MADD says it entered the debate to express its full support for the arresting officer, who apparently has pleased the group by making hundreds of drunk driving arrests over the years (no word on how many of them were politicians).

Even worse, it appears that details of Atkins’ traffic stop were kept secret until after last November’s election. This article, dated October 29th, explains how Atkins went on a local radio talk show to explain the 911 call and arrest for the domestic dispute. Atkins apparently assured the listeners that “no alcohol” was invovled in the altercation with his wife.

I wonder how many other people who blow .14 in a roadside breath test, go home and “offensively touch” their wives, then publicly lie about it get such staunch public support from MADD?

I also wonder if it has anything to do with Atkins’ seat on the Delaware legislature’s public safety committee, or his past votes on MADD-favored DWI issues.

As for Atkins, after public pressure, he has finally asked the legislature’s ethics committee to look into his actions on the night of the 29th.

Wednesday January 10, 2007

Bush’s speech was a combination of ideas that were either thoroughly idiotic or so mind-numbingly obvious that it’s quite horrifying they weren’t employed before. Here, however, is perhaps the most worrisome paragraph (link to the full text of the speech is here):

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity — and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

Apparently to this end, our navy has a carrier group en route to the Persian Gulf. Does anyone else get the impression that Bush is acting like a drunk poker player? He doesn’t have a good hand, but not only has he raised by ordering this troop surge, he’s threatening to go all-in by pushing for a regional war. The reason that we’re adding 21,500 troops is because we don’t have a hell of a lot more than that. If we’re going to start launching operations against Syria and Iran, we’re going to need a draft sooner or later. (Unless this happens, of course.) If Bush tries to pull that, I’d like to think that impeachment proceedings would start the next day. Certainly our generation would start paying more than just cursory attention to what’s going on, I presume. The lack of a draft is — hopefully — the only reason that there aren’t huge demonstrations on every campus nationwide. While we’re at it, why not have the National Guard start gunning students down at Kent State again? Syria can be to Bush what Cambodia was for Nixon. It’s the Circle of Death™!

Wednesday January 10, 2007

BBC News explains why I was uncontrollably sniffing at my money while I studied abroad …

One hundred percent of banknotes in the Republic of Ireland carry traces of cocaine, a new study has found.

Researchers used the latest forensic techniques that would detect even the tiniest fragments to study a batch of 45 used banknotes. The scientists at Dublin City University said they were “surprised by their findings”.

Some of the notes had such high levels of cocaine on them that it is thought they were used to snort the drug. Others had much lower traces and may have been cross-contaminated, perhaps in the wallets or pockets of users.

The results fit with scientific findings from other countries such as the UK and Spain where cocaine has also been found on a high proportion of notes. Particles of cocaine stick to the cotton that is contained within the notes.

Cocaine use is thought to be growing in Ireland. Professor Brett Paul, whose paper was published in a journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK, said it demonstrated how widespread the use of cocaine is.

The study also found that higher value banknotes, such as 20 and 50 euros, were more likely to contain greater traces of the drug.

In recent weeks there has been fresh focus in Ireland on the use of drugs in society. Dublin has seen a number of murders that have been linked to drugs gangs and Ireland’s justice minister has said that those who buy cocaine are helping to finance such groups.

One newspaper editorial said that the trend of cocaine use showed that there is something rotten at the heart of Ireland’s economic boom.

Wednesday January 10, 2007

The magic number is 21,500.

That’s the number of troops that Bush will say are on their way to Iraq later this month in his speech this evening. 4,000 of these will report to the Anbar province, forming the western portion of the infamous Sunni Triangle, with the remainder reporting to Baghdad. He will indicate that, unlike previous surges, this will be something completely different, because we really really really mean it when we tell Premier Maliki that he needs to get his damn army put together ASAP despite the fact that, to all observers, the army and police forces are fragmented along sectarian lines beyond repair. We are not staying there forever, Bush will say, but he provides no timetable for leaving nor specific objectives related to withdrawals. The current number of troops there is 140,000; the new total of 161,500 will be roughly the same level that existed in November 2005.

Bush has alienated even his own base. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) said, in today’s press release, “I do not believe that sending more troops to Iraq is the answer.” He happens to be running for president as the candidate of the religious right. That should tell you everything you need to know.

What a long strange trip it’s been, the endless series of foreign policy crises that have unraveled since the catastrophe that occurred in Lower Manhattan sixty-four long months ago. There’s only twenty-four left before someone else takes the reins, thank goodness, but many more disasters can take place between now and then. It would seem that people are starting to realize the peril that we find ourselves in at the hands of this president. It remains to be seen whether Congress takes action beyond some sort of non-binding resolution indicating disapproval. The message here is simple: When you get in a hole, stop digging.

If anyone had significant doubts over how history can change over small events, consider what might have occurred in the state of Florida on a single November day in 2000 if the ballot designs had been different, or if the weather had been different, or if traffic patterns had been different …

Wednesday January 10, 2007

From ABC News:

Most of us have struggled to understand how seemingly ordinary people can sometimes do morally questionable things.

Two years ago, the photos of young American soldiers smiling while torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib horrified the world and raised the question of who was to blame.

Some of the soldiers defended themselves by claiming they were just doing what their superiors had instructed. But the smiling faces in the photos seemed to imply that they followed the orders without protest.

Are those soldiers inherently bad people? Or is it more complex than that? Do you have to be an evil person to do evil things?

The Experiment

In 1961, social psychologist Stanley Milgram asked those same questions. That was the year Nazi Adolf Eichmann, on trial for his war crimes, denied responsibility for his actions by saying he was simply doing what his superiors told him to do.

Contemplating this rationalization, Milgram came up with a famous and controversial experiment to examine what happens when ordinary people are faced with morally questionable orders. What he learned shocked not only him but the entire world.

In the experiment, conducted at Yale University over a period of months in 1961, an authority figure — “the experimenter” — dressed in a white lab coat and instructed participants to administer what they believed were increasingly painful electric shocks to another person.

Although no one was actually receiving shocks, the participants heard a man screaming in pain and protest, eventually pleading to be released from the experiment. When the subjects questioned the experimenter about what was happening, they were told they must continue.

And continue they did: Two-thirds of Milgram’s participants delivered shocks as they heard cries of pain, signs of heart trouble, and then finally — and most frightening — nothing at all.

The response to the experiment was enormous, and in 1975, strict guidelines about regarding psychological experiments on humans shelved any further potential replications. Since then, scientists have been stymied in efforts to replicate Milgram’s study.

“Primetime” wanted to know if ordinary people today would still follow orders, even if they believed their actions were causing someone else pain. Would as many follow the seemingly dangerous and painful orders as in the original experiment? After contacting respected psychologist Jerry Burger at Santa Clara University in California, ABC News was able to replicate Milgram’s study in a modified way.

The Re-Creation

Each shock after that triggered a similar audio cue of pain. At 105 volts, Troy became uncomfortable. At 150 volts, he heard Ken plead, “That’s all. Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart’s starting to bother me. … Let me out!” Troy looked questioningly at the experimenter, who told him he must continue. Though he was clearly uncomfortable, Troy continued with another word pair before the experiment was stopped.

After the American Psychological Association provided feedback on the testing protocol, this collaboration between “Primetime” and Santa Clara University marks the first time in decades that the famous study has been re-created.

Burger said, “People have often asked the question, ‘Would we find these kinds of results today?’ and some people try to dismiss the Milgram findings by saying, ‘That’s something that happened back in the ’60s. People aren’t like that anymore.’”

After placing an ad in the paper looking for participants for “a learning and memory study” and putting the respondents through psychological screening, “Primetime” found 70 people lined up for the experiment.

One of the first participants in the study was Troy, a 39-year-old electrician. Like all the participants, he was paid $50 and was told that the money would be his to keep, even if he quit the experiment early. Brian, in the role of the “experimenter,” informed Troy that he was taking part in a learning and memory study and would be teaching word pairs to Ken, who was really a plant in the experiment.

If Ken got a word pair wrong, Troy was instructed to punish him with an electric shock from another room. The more word pairs Ken answered incorrectly, the more intense the shocks seemed to become. After getting a few wrong, at 75 volts, Troy heard what he thought was Ken shouting in pain — but it was really an automatic audio cue that was set to go off at that voltage.

Each shock after that triggered a similar audio cue of pain. At 105 volts, Troy became uncomfortable. At 150 volts, he heard Ken plead, “That’s all. Get me out of here. I told you I had heart trouble. My heart’s starting to bother me. … Let me out!” Troy looked questioningly at the experimenter, who told him he must continue. Though he was clearly uncomfortable, Troy continued with another word pair before the experiment was stopped.

‘I Was Doing What I Was Supposed to Do’

After the experiment, Troy said, “I was not comfortable. I cannot tell you why I listened to him and kept going. I should have said no.”

When asked why he didn’t stop administering the shocks, Troy explained, “I was doing what I was supposed to do, and I’m there to help conduct an experiment, so I’m just doing my part.”

Troy’s response is easy to understand, according to Burger. “The typical response is to turn toward the experimenter and if not to say something, at least give a look that says, ‘What should I do?’ And of course, when an expert tells them, ‘Not a problem. This is nothing to worry about, continue.’ The rational thing to do in that situation is to continue.”

Milgram’s original experiment tested just a handful of women, but “Primetime’s” sampling was approximately half men and half women. Would the “gentler” sex be more reluctant to shock someone? And what about the people who refused to continue to shock the subject after hearing his demand to be released? What made them choose to stand up to authority?

‘The Results’

In ABC News’ version of the Milgram experiment, we tested 18 men, and found that 65 percent of them agreed to administer increasingly painful electric shocks when ordered by an authority figure.

22 women signed up for our experiment. Even though most people said that women would be less likely to inflict pain on the learner, a surprising 73 percent yielded to the orders of the experimenter.

Out of the 30 people we tested with an additional accomplice acting as a moral guide, 63 percent still inflicted electric shocks, even though the accomplice refused to go on.

Our subjects had an unusually high level of education. 22.9 percent had some college, 40 percent had bachelor’s degrees and 20 percent had master’s degrees.

The group was also ethnically diverse with 54.3 percent (white), 18.6 percent (Asian), 12.9 percent (Latin/Hispanic), 8.6 percent (Indian-Asian) and 4.3 percent (African-American).

Tuesday January 9, 2007

Headline from The Canadian: “Over 4.5 billion people could die from global warming-related causes by 2012″

Two-thirds of the population of the entire globe? In five years? Idiotic studies like this make anti-science fruit loops on the far right sound reasonable. Good job.

Tuesday January 9, 2007

Well then. That was … damn. What the hell was that?

That was the worst effort I think I’ve ever seen from a sports team (at least for the last 59 minutes and 44 seconds of the game). The defense looked baffled by a glitzy but relatively straight-forward Florida attack, while the offense was thoroughly incompetent despite having NFL talent at every skill position. (82 total yards? Are you kidding me? And almost all of that was on one drive …) The offensive line was Swiss cheese and there was never any significant pass rush on Chris Leak. Who thought Jim Tressel would get so thoroughly outcoached? I’m just … speechless.

If the result had been closer, I’d be using this space to argue for Boise State being chosen as the national champion, but that’s hard to say after this beatdown.

As said on the comment board of a sports blog I peruse: “Eventually growing up a sports fan in Cleveland will be admissable as a defense in capital murder cases.”

Monday January 8, 2007

Alton Verm of Conroe, Texas, must be publicly shamed at every possible opportunity.

From the ABC station in Houston:

A book about banning books is under fire. A Montgomery County family wants the classic novel “Fahrenheit 451″ pulled from the high school reading list. But some students are working to show support for the book.

Harry Potter books have been the basis of complaints in recent years. But now a book that’s been on literary lists for years is suddenly being thrust into a debate over what’s appropriate reading material for students at one Conroe school.

“Fahrenheit 451″ was first published 53 years ago. It’s said to be named for the temperature at which paper burns. In this world no free thought was allowed and books were destroyed by fire.

Two weeks ago at Caney Creek High School, a tenth grade English class was given “Fahrenheit 451″ as a reading assignment. But Diana Verm stopped after just a few pages. She said she was offended by “the cussing in it and the burning of the Bible.” (Is the girl really dumb enough to not pick up on the fact that this is being CRITICIZED BY THE BOOK?! Wouldn’t this be a good thing? Maybe the teacher needed to explain what a dystopian novel actually is before the kids started reading it?)

Diana complained to her father. She was given an alternate reading assignment, but her dad is pushing the issue. It is ironic in the truest sense that a fictional book on book banning is now the target of a request to remove it from school curriculum. (If it’s obvious enough for local news to pick up on it, that should tell you something.)

“With God’s name in vain being in there, that’s the number one reason,” said Diana’s father Alton Verm. “There’s no reason for it being read.” (Well if that’s the standard now, then I don’t think there’s any literature that can be read in school.)

The school has appointed a committee to review Verm’s objections. But students are now circulating a petition in support of the book. They plan to wear t-shirts on Friday voicing their opinions.

“This was probably one of the greatest eye openers that we’ve had in our school curriculum,” said student rally organizer Darrell Lee. “A lot of the people who did sign said that of all the books they had to read, this was the one they enjoyed. It really makes you think about the situation.” (Saints be praised, there’s at least one sane person left.)

Coincidentally, this book was assigned during National Banned Book Week. (Hold on … I need to take a breather. I can only take in so much dark humor at once.)

In the complaint filed against the school by Alton Verm, he listed each objected item line by line, complete with individual page numbers. Besides bad language and violence, Verm lists “downgrading Christians” and “talking about our firemen” as reasons the book should be banned. (Okay, that line doesn’t even make any sense.) The school committee is expected to meet about the book.

At least there’s reason to be encouraged here, because the students figured out how insane this is.

Incidentally, IMDb says there is apparently a film version of Fahrenheit 451 coming on February 9.

Last, I feel obliged here to link to one of the best articles ever written by the scribes of The Onion.