Race v sex preference

I found this in a same-sex discussion on a blog:

Okay, no one has stepped up (that i've noticed) to address the whole analogy of the current gay marriage movement to the civil rights movement and the bans on interracial movement.

The analogy doesn't work for one simple reason. Race is purely a social construct. Sexual preference (according to the establishment view) is innate to an individual, and consequently not socially constructed (granted it may be socially influenced, but that is society's imposition of its norms, not the realization of the individual's unimpeded desires). Therefore, the two situations are quite distinct. The laws on interracial marriage sought to establish bans that artificially limited marriage based upon a social construction. Not allowing gay marriage, explicitly or implicitly (depending on the laws), bans certain behaviors based upon a real inherent difference.

This is amazingly stupid. Race is innate, and not a social construct. Sexual preference is probably not innate. There is certainly no genetic or other objective test for identifying sexual preference. Some states once had marriage laws that discriminated based on race, but no state marriage laws discriminate based on sexual preference. (The restriction is that the couple have opposite sexes, but says nothing about their sexual preferences.)

Energy is conserved

A review of Dr. Atomic:

It sounded so good that at first I didn't even mind that the show opened with a colossal mistake. The chorus sings, "Energy can be neither created nor destroyed but only altered in form," the old law of the conservation of energy. Einstein's discovery that this statement is wrong, and that matter and energy can be transformed into each other, is what made the bomb possible.

The composers have said they will fix those lines.

I hope they don't "fix" it. The song is fine. Einstein said that matter is just a form of potential energy, so when energy is transformed into matter, it is just being altered in form, as the song says.

The review goes on:

It is nothing new to compare Oppenheimer to Faust. He was also the Christ figure of American physics, who was betrayed by Teller and lost his security clearance amid accusations of disloyalty.

Huhh? Oppenheimer lost his security clearance because he got lying about his various Communist connections. Teller played a minor role. It was remarkable that a pro-Soviet Communist held a high security clearance for as long as he did.

Expel illegal aliens at the border

AFP news:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department aims without exception to expel all those who enter the United States illegally.

"Our goal at DHS (Homeland Security) is to completely eliminate the 'catch and release' enforcement problem, and return every single illegal entrant, no exceptions.

"It should be possible to achieve significant and measurable progress to this end in less than a year," Chertoff told a Senate hearing.

This should not be such a radical idea.

Porn filtering

Lauren Weinstein complains about the new .xxx domain. His big fear is that govt agencies will induce a lot of the raunchy porn sites into moving to the .xxx domain, and then users will be able to more easily filter them out. Maybe even some school computers will be configured to block the .xxx sites.

What am I missing? Filtering is essential to use of the internet. I use spam blockers, firewalls, porn filters, and other filters. Most people do. Anything that makes filtering easier is a good thing, not a bad thing, because it gives users finer control over his experiences.

The filtering does affect my blogging a little bit. If I use a lot of vulgar or pornographic language, then the search engines will rate my blog as offensive, and it won't show up on some searches. To some bloggers, this might seem like censorship. But it seems fair to me to let users block sites that they consider offensive. If I want the widest audience for my blog, then I need to skip the offensive language.

Using Caller ID

I agree with this privacy advocate who admits that the campaign against telephone Caller ID was misguided.

My telephone number is listed, and my outgoing calls are unblocked so that they identify me and my phone number. I nearly always want to identify myself when I call someone. If for some reason I want to be anonymous, I can just dial *67 before the number.

I also block all calls from phone that do not provide Caller ID. I just have no reason to be taking anonymous calls. If someone has a blocked phone, then he can just dial *82 before the number to release the Caller ID info.

Another critic says:

I believe that automatic rejection of incoming ID-blocked calls is irresponsible to one's family and self. We can't possibly anticipate when a loved one will be in distress, calling us from a stranger's telephone. Automatic blocking disallows such a call from reaching us.

That is just not true. Use *82. Caller ID has been commonplace for about 15 years now, and there is no mystery to it.

Caller ID and voice mail also make the Call Waiting service worthwhile. I used to think that Call Waiting was very rude because it meant constanting interrupting a conversation for random and unknown callers. But with Caller ID on Call Waiting calls, I only interrupt if the call is important. Otherwise, I let the voice mail take it. That way, no one gets a busy signal, I get all my messages, and the important calls come straight in.

If you want to block Call Waiting for a call, such as for an outgoing fax, then just dial *70 before the number.

I hardly ever get telemarketer calls because the telemarketers don't like to identify themselves. They typically use some very deceptive practices, and they prefer to give their pitch to people without use of Caller ID.

Eliminating telemarketer calls is great, but the biggest advantage to requiring Caller ID is just to positively identify the calls that I want to take. If I get a call from a business, then I want some assurances that it is really is the business that it claims to be. I do sometimes get calls that claim to be from my bank or some other business that might have a legitimate need to talk to me, and the Caller ID does not match. I don't know if the caller is part of a scam or what, but the Caller ID allows me to efficiently terminate the call. Caller ID is also useful when friends call, as I can assess the usefulness of the call. I know people who use answering machines as calling screening devices, but Caller ID is much more polite, efficient, and useful. For me, anyway.

No broad cultural capital or jobs

Florence B. Schklowsky writes in a NY Times letter:

College grads with degrees like one in theoretical mathematics have slim chances to obtain broad cultural capital or jobs.

Ouch.

Sperm donor pays

Court news:

Stockholm - A Swedish man who donated his sperm to a lesbian couple must pay child support for the three boys he fathered, the Supreme Court has ruled.

It appears that lesbians get parental rights, but no responsibilities.

Grandparents Given Rights by Ohio Court

Ohio court news:

Ohio's highest court unanimously ruled yesterday that the grandparents of an 8-year-old girl must be allowed to visit her over the objections of her father, upholding the constitutionality of a state law granting nonparents visitation rights to children.

The decision by the Supreme Court of Ohio comes at a time when parents across the nation have been challenging the constitutionality of such laws. While courts in some states, like Florida and Washington, have struck down those laws, courts in others have upheld them.

This is another example of parental rights being undermined.

Blood test for anxiety

This company claims:

A new technique that can accurately diagnose anxiety disorders by performing a simple blood test, was developed at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The researchers hope that the anxiety blood test will soon make its way into hospitals and E.R. rooms and give doctors and psychiatrists a quick and precise tool for examining, and eventually treating, these disorders. The team has recently started work on another common illness ? depression. They hope to find a way to diagnose and finally treat the millions who suffer from this illness as well.

It is probably no worse than using ink blots, as some psychologists still use Rorschach tests.

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Economics prof. Carlo M. Cipolla wrote this in 1987:

Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

A stupid person is a person who caused losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be costly mistake.

A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

The Swedish Economics prize (sometimes called a Nobel prize) just went to a couple of game theorests, and this amusing article seems appropriate.

Water Bridge

See this Water Bridge in Germany. It is not what I expected. (I don't know why the page has ads for Alzheimer's info.)

Lying teachers unions

I am voting for Calif. Prop. 75 because I don't think that govt employees should be forced for to fund partisan political causes. I think that most of what the govt employee unions do is bad.

Here is an example. Phil Yost, a leftist editorial writer, says:

So why are they resorting to a hysterical -- and essentially false -- charge in their TV ads against Proposition 74, the governor's teacher-tenure initiative?

Two anti-74 ads released last week by the California Teachers Association are ``patently and demonstrably false,'' the governor's campaign complains.

There's good reason for the indignation.

Each ad claims that Schwarzenegger has broken his promise to restore full education funding this year. It's a disputable assertion, but a fair one. Then the ads say Proposition 74 ``allows one principal to fire a teacher without giving a reason -- or even a hearing.''

The teachers union offers a tortured defense of that statement, but its obvious intention is to leave the impression that teachers will be fired without recourse.

Not true. ... The teachers union could have made various telling points without stretching the truth.

California teachers should not have to pay for these lies. Vote Yes on Propositions 74 and 75.

Close to Home

I watched the first episode of the new CBS series Close to Home. It was sick. First, a mom and 2 kids are rescued from a burning house, and it appears that the mom was trying to kill herself and the kids. Then a woman DA is chosen to prosecute the mom, so she can explain to the jury that mothers should not kill their kids (and only a woman and mother can do that, I guess). But the DA drops the charges when she discovers that the mom might have been psychologically coerced by her husband (the dad). The DA gets a restraining order against the dad to bust up the family and prevent him from seeing his wife or kids. The mom is allowed to keep custody of their kids, even tho the DA is convinced that the mom tried to murder the kids. The DA sticks with the mom even after she lies under oath at a deposition. When the husband reconciles with the wife, the DA has him arrested, even tho no one complained. In the end, the DA goes to bed gloating about sending the dad to prison for 25 years.

The dad does turn out to be a creep, and the viewer is supposed to think that the DA is a big hero. I think that the message of the show is really insidious. It tries to say that the family next door in the suburbs might really be murderous crazies, and no matter what evil things the wife does, it will all be the husband's fault somehow. Women are too stupid to act in their own interests, and police should go busting up marriages where the wife appears to submit to a husband who is too domineering.

For another account of the episode, see this.

This is the type of thinking that drives VAWA. It just expired, but Congress is expected to renew it.

I have never even heard of people like the characters in the TV show. They seem as if they might be the intended beneficiaries of VAWA, but such people just don't exist.

Update: The US Senate just approved VAWA on a voice vote. The House has already passed, and after conference committee resolves the differences, Bush will sign it.

The Crime of Unauthorized Reproduction

Indiana news:

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse."

According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother throu gh assisted reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, and egg donation, must first file for a "petition for parentage" in their local county probate court.

Only women who are married will be considered for the "gestational certificate" that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the pregnancy. Further, the "gestational certificate" will only be given to married couples that successfully complete the same screening process currently required by law of adoptive parents.

As it the draft of the new law reads now, an intended parent "who knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction procedure" without court approval, "commits unauthorized reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor." The criminal charges will be the same for physicians who commit "unauthorized practice of artificial reproduction."

I don't know if this is serious or not, but I do think that it is irresponsible for fertility clinics to create babies without legal paternity. Kids need fathers.

Delaying teacher tenure

I am looking for any reasons why anyone would oppose Calif. Props. 73-77. Prop. 74 delays tenure decisions on new public school teachers. Here is a local teacher complaining:

I love teaching. I gave my stuffed animals homework when I was a kid. But when you are not permanent, you can be let go without being told the reason why or shown any proof that you did anything wrong. It's nerve-racking. The idea of having to wait five years is discouraging. [26-year-old Gwen Jones]

Wow. She thinks that because she gave homework to her stuffed animals, she is entitled to a job for life.

Most workers in the private sector can be fired at any time for any reason (except for a few prohibited reasons like racial discrimination). Most of the people I know have suffered the consequences of massive layoffs at one time or another.

The teachers' union has put ads on TV saying that if Prop. 74 passes, then teachers could be fired over the objections of the parents. This is a sneaky argument. Parents currently have no say about the hiring and firing of teachers, and Prop. 74 does not change that. Maybe we need another ballot proposition to give parents more say about how the schools are run.

James Q. Wilson on marriage

James Q. Wilson writes:

Since the Supreme Court struck down laws against homosexual conduct many people have been preoccupied with either encouraging or resisting homosexual marriage. Whatever your views about homosexual marriage, were it adopted nationally it would affect only about 2 or 3 percent of the population. Cohabitation, divorce, and single-parent families are problems that affect roughly half of the population. Still, we find it more interesting to discuss homosexual marriage than to discuss marriage itself.

But talking about marriage is essential to the future of our society.

There is a movement to destroy marriage as it has been known for centuries. Same-sex marriage is just a small part of it.

Girls rule, boys drool

Cathy Young discusses how schools favor girls, and gives these quotes:

Currently, 135 women receive bachelor's degrees for every 100 men. That gender imbalance will widen in the coming years, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Education.

"If you listen to 10- or 11-year-old boys, you will hear that school is not a very happy place for them. It's a place where they're consistently made to feel stupid, where girls can walk around in T-shirts that say 'Girls rule, boys drool,' but if a boy makes a negative comment about girls he'll have the book thrown at him."

Having 2 girls in school, yes, I think that the schools favor girls.

Forced attitude training

A memo from a UCLA dean:

In September of 2004, Governor Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 1825 requiring employers to train anyone with supervisory responsibilities in sexual harrassment prevention. The University's definition of "anyone with supervisory responsibilities" includes chairs, deans, principal investigators, and any faculty who have teaching assistants or research assistants, in addition to staff supervisors and managers. The new law specifically requires 2 hours of training and that the training be repeated every 2 years. It also requires employers to keep records of training attendees. The deadline for initial compliance with the law is January 1, 2006, thus everyone must have completed the training by this date.

It sounds like feminist indoctrination from the thought police.

Faking illness

Here is an odd story in my local paper:

Women, here's something that might leave you feeling a little sick.

Your male colleagues are more than twice as likely as you to fake a case of the sniffles just to get a day off work.

In fact, 29 percent of men surveyed for a new nationwide Harris Interactive poll 'fessed up they had done so within the past year. Only 14 percent of women had.

Which means? Even more men are habitually playing hooky -- some probably just didn't admit it.

``Men are just more aggressive about calling in sick . . . and are less truthful, apparently,'' said Frank Kenna, president of the Marlin Co., which commissioned the survey. ``Being one of them, I hate to say it.''

It seems to me that the poll is saying that the men are more truthful, not less truthful. It is the men who admit what they are doing to the pollsters.

VAWA and male privilege

This Wash. Times column says:

The resulting legislation was the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). While appearing to fight for a noble cause, the law does little to actually remedy domestic violence and does not address several original conference goals: It is not gender-inclusive, allocates funds under a flawed grant system, and ultimately promotes family breakup, not reconciliation. The legislation currently before both chambers of Congress purports to address the gender issue but offers ineffective or counterproductive language.

VAWA funds nonsense like this:

As long as we as a culture accept the principle and privilege of male dominance, men will continue to be abusive. As long as we as a culture accept and tolerate violence against women, men will continue to be abusive.

According to Barbara Hart in Safety for Women: Monitoring Batterers' Programs:
All men benefit from the violence of batterers. There is no man who has not enjoyed the male privilege resulting from male domination reinforced by the use of physical violence . . . All women suffer as a consequence of men's violence. Battering by individual men keeps all women in line. While not every woman has experienced violence, there is no woman in this society who has not feared it, restricting her activities and her freedom to avoid it. Women are always watchful knowing that they may be the arbitrary victims of male violence. Only the elimination of sexism, the end of cultural supports for violence, and the adoption of a system of beliefs and values embracing equality and mutuality in intimate relationships will end men's violence against women.
Domestic violence is about power and control. A feminist analysis of woman battering rejects theories that attribute the causes of violence to family dysfunction, inadequate communications skills, women's provocation, stress, chemical dependency, lack of spiritual relationship to a deity, economic hardship, class practices, racial/ethnic tolerance, or other factors. These issues may be associated with battering of women, but they do not cause it. Removing these factors will not end men's violence against women.

My tax money should not be funding this kooky drivel. It is destructive.

Cathy Young has just written a level-headed history of domestic violence in the USA. (Click on the pdf to get the full story.)

Change traffic lights at will

I stumbled across this:

The device the "mysterious hacker" is using to change all the RED lights to GREEN is a MIRT. It is nothing "secret" or extraordinary. A MIRT is a device that uses Infra Red technology to trigger Pre-Emptive sensor on a traffic light and causes the light to change to green. Yes, this device will give you the ability to ALWAYS HAVE A GREEN LIGHT. The shadowy hacker did at least give one good tid-bit of info, if you want to order one, you will need to do your share of Social Engineering, as they are only sold to "Authorized Users". Oh, and you will need to pony up the $300-$400 to get one.. Well, paying isn't the I-Hacked way, lets build one! Today I am going to show you how to build a DIY Mirt for less than $20.

Apparently all you need is a gadget that transmits infrared light at about 10 cycles per second (and to get legal authorization to zip thru traffic lights). Authorization info is here.

Muslims win toy pigs ban

UK news:

NOVELTY pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office ? in case they offend Muslim staff.

Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Bosses acted after a Muslim complained about pig-shaped stress relievers delivered to the council in the run-up to the Islamic festival of Ramadan.

Muslims are barred from eating pork in the Koran and consider pigs unclean.

Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: ?It?s a tolerance of people?s beliefs.?

I didn't think that a Winnie the Pooh tissue box violates any Mohammedan laws.

Yes on Calif. Prop. 73

I just got my California voter info pamphlet, and there are some pretty good initiatives on the ballot.

The first is Prop. 73, which requires parents to be notified when a minor gets an abortion. Under current law, a California parent can not even always get his child's medical records. I will vote for Prop. 73. This is a no-brainer. I cannot see any circumstances when a parent should be denied his child's medical records. None.

The opposition to Prop. 73 comes from pro-abortion radicals who want children to have sexual relations and get abortions with their parents' knowledge.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once advocated lowering the age of consent for girls to 12. Prof. Volokh has posted a theory for how Ginsburg could have pushed something so wacky. Under his theory, Ginsburg intended to lower the age of consent for girls to 12, but only when the girl is having sex with a boy who is age 17 or younger. Because of a possible drafting error, the condition on the boy's age was omitted, and her written recommendation was to lower the age of consent for girls to 12 in all cases.

At any rate, Ginsburg's recommendations were widely circulated and supported among radical feminists, and she has never retracted them or claimed that any mistake was made. There are feminists who believe that 12-year-old girls should have the freedom to have sexual relations, get pregnant, and get an abortion without their parents ever knowing.

Andy writes:

Volkoh is making a fool of himself. It's common knowledge that the ACLU mindset is to dramatically lower the age of consent. There are a variety of reasons for this. Planned Parenthood makes money and political mileage out of pregnant 12 and 13-year-olds. Homosexuals also want lower ages of consent for recruitment and more sex. The porno industry has made megabucks by featuring young teenagers. One of its biggest stars of ten years ago was underage, until prosecutors ruined the operation.

Ginsburg's 12-year-old consent proposal was and is mainstream for the Left. The only surprise is that Volkoh doesn't know this, or won't admit it.

For example, just one search on the internet will turn up many liberals who want dramatically lower age of consent laws. In the very first website I pulled up, it says:

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline told reporters, ?The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) states specifically in its brief that it is a constitutional right for any child age 13 and older to consent to have sex with anyone.?

Prop. 73 does not require parental approval for the abortion; it only requires that the parents be told. Actually, it doesn't even require that, because the minor child can still avoid it by getting a judge's approval.

Bogus domestic violence

Here is a good new article on false domestic violence allegations.

Black abortions

There is a lot of buzz about Bill Bennett's comments about black abortions, but those on both sides don't seem to address the real issue. Bennett's defenders argue that he was quoted out of context, but that's not it. Listen to the whole context, and it sounds like he is saying:

I am anti-abortion. The pro-abortion arguments do not persuade me. For example, even if abortion could be used to exterminate the entire black race and thereby slash the crime rate, I'd still be against it.

Bennett is not saying that black babies should be aborted, but he is suggesting that:

The crime rate is much higher among black Americans. The problem is genetic, and the obvious solution is to kill them before birth.

Many black people refuse to believe that the crime rate is any higher for blacks, and they are very offended by any suggestion that it is an inborn problem. Furthermore, they are suspicious that right-wingers are racists who want to get rid of them. They think that Bennett wants to get rid of the black race, but does not advocate it because he believes that the end does not justify the means.

On the other hand, I can see why Bennett thought that the subject was fair game for public comment. A popular book, Freakonomics, has promoted the idea that American abortions have drastically cut. The book does a careful dance around the racial implications (as explained here), and has been widely praised. The thesis has also been attacked as being wrong. I haven't been able to figure out who is correct.

Bill Bennett's brother Bob is in the news also. He is the lawyer representing NY Times reporter Judith Miller. Miller's main claim to fame is that she was the one who convinced the public that Iraq had WMD. Now this NY Times story says that she spent 3 months in jail because Bennett didn't explain to her that her source had waived confidentiality. So either Bob Bennett has messed up another case, or Miller just went to jail as a publicity stunt, or there is more going on than what we have been told.

Here is Bill Bennett's statement on the matter. I think that his defense of himself has just made the matter worse. The more he says, the worse it sounds.

Sen. Feinstein wants a man

Sen. Diane Feinstein questioned John Roberts like this:

FEINSTEIN: Let me ask you this question this way: If you were in that situation with someone you deeply love and ...

FEINSTEIN: I'm trying to see your feelings as a man.

FEINSTEIN: How would you feel if you were in that position?

I do expect to know a little bit more about how you feel and how you think as a man, ...

I thought that she was trying to get into his pants. Today, she voted against him.

Career women abandon sex

UK news:

Busy career women are abandoning sex and seeking inappropriate IVF treatment to have instant babies, doctors have claimed.

It is estimated that one in seven UK couples have difficulty conceiving. However, many women take up IVF treatment, before they discover this because they are simply too busy or tired to have sex.

Emma Cannon runs the fertility programme at Westover House clinic in London, which has seen a 20 per cent increase in the number of women seeking 'inappropriate' IVF.

She said: "People want everything now. If they can't have a baby now, they want IVF. They think it's no different from putting your name down for a handbag."

IVF is the test-tube baby procedure.

Arnold is consistent

The Bush-haters just love to argue that right-wingers are inconsistent somehow. They act like hypocrisy is the worst of all sins. Here is a typical opinion, from the San Jose paper:

Schwarzenegger and gay marriage

So Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Page 5B, Sept. 25) says he has ``never really felt that strong one way or another'' about gay marriage. But he is supposedly vetoing the bill legalizing such marriages because of a 2000 vote on a California ballot initiative.

In that same election, however, the people of California clearly also indicated that their ``will'' was not to have George W. Bush in the White House. So then what was the governor's rationale for campaigning for him in 2004 in Ohio?

Janice Hough
Palo Alto

This letter is foolish for several reasons. First, the governor is obligated to veto an unconstitutional law. The constitution says that only a referendum can repeal another referendum. Second, Schwarzenegger has bet his career that the popular vote of Californians can do better than the legislature, so he must support popular referenda of the past. Third, Schwarzenegger is a Republican, and so he is going to support other Republicans. Fourth, Bush's first term expired, and he could very well be the best candidate on the ballot in 2004 even if he was not the best in 2000. Fifth, Bush won Ohio, so Schwarnegger was supporting the will of the people there.

Same-sex marriage is likely to be on the ballot again in California next year. If Janice Hough and the other leftist Bush-hater really believed these silly consistency arguments, then they would vote against same-sex marriage so that opposite-sex marriage will be affirmed again.

Gay penguins not so gay

People often argue that homosexuality is natural because it occurs in the animal world. An example is the book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, which even goes so far as to deny Darwinian evolution in order to promote animal homosexuality.

One trouble with this argument is that animal analogies don't always deliver the politically correct message. This news story says:

Gay penguin goes straight

THE animal kingdom's most famous gay couple has split up. Silo and Roy, the cohabiting penguins of Central Park Zoo, are no longer an item. The pair rose to prominence six years ago when they came out with their same-sex relationship.

Since then, they have successfully hatched and raised an adoptive chick (after an uncertain start that involved trying to incubate a rock). ... But the affair ended when Scrappy, a new female penguin, moved into the neighbourhood and caught Silo's eye. ... Silo promptly moved in with Scrappy, building a new nest with her.

Zookeepers are at a loss to explain Silo's sudden conversion.

Yeah, the liberals and homosexuals making animal analogies will also be at a loss to explain it also. The alleged homosexuality in animals really doesn't resemble homosexual behavior in humans at all.

No free speech in Australia

This blog claims that there are Australian academic journals that refuse to publish papers discussing racial policies, because are worried about prosecution under an anti-discrimination law.

Silly sex prosecutions

News of the weird:

"Sex Offenders": Charbel Hamaty, of Lebanese descent, spent six months in jail in Raleigh, N.C., after being arrested last year for "molesting" his infant son, with the evidence consisting of family snapshots of Hamaty playfully kissing the nude tot's belly button. Only after a protest campaign did a judge finally dismiss the charge, according to a July report by WRAL-TV. Not so lucky was Fitzroy Barnaby of Evanston, Ill., who angrily grabbed the arm of a 14-year-old girl whom he almost ran into as she was playing dangerously in traffic. He was convicted under the state's "restraining a minor" statute, which requires that its violators be listed as sex offenders (even though the trial judge and, in June, the state Appellate Court, both discounted any sexual motive). [WRAL-TV (Raleigh, N.C.), 7-26-05] [Chicago Sun-Times, 7-1-05]

Not all accused sex offenders are guilty.

Correlating mortality

Here is a story about some silly research:

THURSDAY, Sept. 15 (HealthDay News) -- In a somewhat unexpected finding, societal male dominance over women -- patriarchy -- may help explain why men have a lower life expectancy than women worldwide.

British researchers analyzed rates of female murders and male death rates from all causes in 51 countries in Europe, Asia, Australasia, and North and South America. The prevalence of violence against women was used to indicate the extent of patriarchal control in each of the countries. Socioeconomic factors were also taken into consideration.

The study found that women lived longer than men in all 51 countries.

Here is the abstract and the full pdf. All it is really saying is that certain male death rates are correlated with female death rates. Nothing surprising there. The strange part is that it measures patriarchy by looking at female homicides. That is not what the term means at all and female homicide is an absurd measure.

Sri Lankan girls

News:

Sept 17, Colombo: The Sri Lankan Cabinet has decided to reduce the age of consent for sexual encounters from 16 to 13 years.

Cabinet spokesperson Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said the action has been taken due to rising numbers of men arrested for sexual relations with girls below the age of 16.

I guess that is one way to solve the problem.

Missing child found

John sends this story:

Alfonso McGee, a 2-year-old who was the subject of a missing-child alert issued Friday afternoon, was safely handed over to Alton police Friday evening, the police reported.

The alerts had said the boy was last seen with his mother, Latasha Ewing, who does not have custody of the child. The alert was issued when Ewing did not return the boy after a scheduled visit, police said.

and writes:

Friday afternoon KMOX broadcast an all points bulletin for this missing child, last seen with his own mother - and giving a description of her car! Isn't that ridiculous?

Yes it is. The public should not be bothered with a petty custody dispute. Many (if not most) of the missing kids on milk cartons are in the loving care of a parent. Maybe the parent is in violation of a court order, but it is very unlikely that the court had a fair hearing in the first, and impossible to know whether the child is in good hands or not.

The public should only be alerted in the case of a stranger kidnapping.

Healthy, wholesome, and sound

A fashion firm says:

We are very anti-drugs and insist all our models are healthy, wholesome and sound.

And they don't want the tabloids showing photos of Kate Moss snorting cocaine.

Racist T-shirt

News from a Florida school:

The undershirt the white student wore had a confederate flag on the front with the words "Keep it flying." On the back, a cartoon depicted a group of hooded Klansmen standing outside a church, waving to two others who had just pulled away in a car reading "Just married."

Two black men in nooses were being dragged behind.

Upset by the shirt, a 17-year-old black student hit the white student in the head. A crowd of about 100 students gathered to watch the Aug. 29 fight before authorities intervened.

The white student said he left the school following a three-day suspension. He said he was supposed to go back on a Friday but school officials called and asked his family to keep him home until the following week because "the school's in an uproar." ...

"I'm not racist or anything," he said. "It's just, some people I hate, some people I don't get along with. And black people just happen to be the ones because they think they're better than everyone else."

The student said his parents were shocked at his decision, Mom dismayed and Dad disappointed.

"I just can't believe you'd wear a shirt like that to school," he said was their reaction. "My mom was kind of upset about it. My dad was like, whatever, it's your life." ...

"I'm a redneck," he said. "But no, I'm not racist."

Subtle distinction.

Falsely accusing boyfriend of rape

Boston AP story:

BOSTON --A woman who falsely accused her boyfriend of rape was sentenced to three years in prison Thursday for committing perjury.

Rebecca Harland, 33, was convicted on four counts of perjury for lying to a grand jury when she identified Scott Smith as the man who raped her in 1999.

Prosecutors said Harland identified Smith as her attacker to get back at him because he had left her for another woman.

Smith, 42, a limousine driver from Melrose, spent eight months in jail awaiting trial until prosecutors concluded that Harland was actually raped by an unidentified drug dealer, not Smith.

During Harland's trial, a longtime friend of hers testified that four days after the rape, Harland told her that her attacker was a drug dealer but that she had blamed Smith because he had broken off their relationship to be with another woman. Harland's friend did not tell authorities about the conversation until months later when she learned Smith had been jailed.

Prosecution witnesses testified that when authorities first questioned Harland about the rape, she said her attacker was a black man wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. She repeated that account later, but then changed her story and said Smith, who is white, was the rapist.

They should not have even needed the testimony of the woman's friend. If the victim changes her story because she was confused about whether the rapist was a black drug dealer or a white ex-boyfriend, then she is unreliable, at best. The ex-boyfriend should not have spent 8 months in jail.

Party aims to ban marriage

Euro feminist news:

A new political party in Sweden says it will abolish marriage if it gets into power.

The Feminist Initiative, which expects more than 20% of the vote in next year's election, claims marriage "is not about love, but about ownership".

FI founder Tiina Rosenberg, said: "Instead of marriage we want to promote a co-habitation law that ignores gender and allows more than two people in a partnership."

But she said in allowing relationships to involve more than two people, the FI did not want Sweden to fall back into a "patriarchal structure" with one man having a harem of women.

"A man who lives with eight women in a patriarchal structure, where the man decides and the women obey is not what we are aiming for," said Rosenberg.

And in order to encourage men to vote for them as well, the party's all-female board is also calling for the introduction of a six-hour working day.

This is so goofy that it sounds like a parody.

More damage caused by Freud

This legal article says:

The tender years doctrine (intended to apply to children under age 6) was originally invoked to determine temporary custody arrangements in English law, giving mothers custody of infants only until they were ready to be returned to the father. But by the 1920's, the maternal preference for custody in English and American law, regardless of the child's age, became as firmly fixed as the earlier paternal preference, and was encoded in statute in all 48 states. The assumption that mothers were better suited to nurture and raise children received an intellectual underpinning in the 1930's from Freudian psychoanalytic theory, which focused exclusively on the mother-child relationship, and ignored the role of the father in the child's development.

The experiment is over. The maternal preference for custody has proved to be a big mistake. Freudian psychoanalytic theory has also proved to be a big mistake.

UK child support

John sends this UK story, which says that mothers receive less than half of what fathers pay in "child support", when it is collected by the Child Support Agency. The rest is pocketed by govt bureaucrats. (None of it goes to the children.) This is why govt bureaucrats are usually in favor of keeping the payments high.

Playing mind games on a date

Online dating news:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Manhattan fertility specialist has been sued by two women who say he broke their hearts after meeting them through an online dating site on which he pretended to be single.

In their lawsuits the two women, Tiffany Wang and Jing Huang, accused Dr. Khaled Zeitoun, 46, of pretending to be single and using mind games to entice them into sexual relationships with tales of past lives.

According to court papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court and made public this week, Zeitoun is married with three children. Wang said she met him in March 2001 through a Web site on which he said he was single and had never married.

"Zeitoun claimed he and Wang had been married to each other in previous lives," Wang's lawsuit said, adding that the doctor told her he had mistreated her in that life and "searched for her in this lifetime to correct his past mistakes."

Wang says that in May 2002, he asked her to marry him but only proposed "to see the look of joy on her face."

In a separate suit filed earlier this year, Huang said she met the reproductive endocrinologist in October 2003 through an online dating service. He fed her a similar line about being single and having been married to her in a previous life.

I am all in favor of people telling the truth, but if New York passes a law against telling silly romantic lies or playing mind games on a date, then a lot of people could end up in court. I have never heard of a couple that did not play mind games.

Louisiana: wet and wild

The Louisiana Sierra Club starts its web page with this:

The Delta Chapter is the Sierra Club in the State of Louisiana. We advance the cause of protecting Louisiana's environment in a variety of ways, including lobbying the state legislature in Baton Rouge, sponsoring a Mercury Public Education Campaign, raising public awareness about climate change, and working to keep the Atchafalaya Basin, America's greatest river swamp, wet and wild.

A friend of mine went to Mardi Gras, and he came back grinning about how "wet and wild" it was. I got the link from this NRO column.

Katrina graphics

The NY Times has excellent Katrina graphics.

Egg Donor Has Parental Rights

John sends this Ohio story:

AKRON, Ohio (AP) - A woman who sold her eggs has parental rights to the resulting triplets, an Ohio appeals court said in the latest twist to a three-state custody battle.

The court ordered a new custody hearing in Ohio for the now-22-month-old boys, overturning a Summit County judge's decision against parental rights for Jennifer Michelle Rice of Arlington, Texas.

It also contradicted a Pennsylvania court, which in January awarded primary custody to the surrogate mother, a rarity in such cases, and weekend visitation to the father.

As John points out, 2 women got parental rights while the father just got weekend visitation!

Mothers responsible for child maltreatment

Here is a govt report on child maltreatment in 2001. The biggest problem, with 47% of households, is where there is a mother and no father.

Why we shouldn't aid Katrina's victims too much

A Slate column by economist Steven E. Landsburg:

First came the hurricane, then came the torrent. We're awash in accusations that the government has done too little to help Katrina's victims. Is it impertinent to ask how much would be enough? What's the right amount of federal assistance for disaster victims? ...

Let me offer myself as a case in point. I travel to San Francisco once or twice a year, and every single time I visit, I resolve someday to move there. I think my resolve has been substantially weakened in the past several days. Having seen how ineffective disaster relief can be, I am suddenly disinclined to live someplace where I might need to rely on it. And that's a good thing.

So those are two reasons we might want to rethink the policy of giving federal assistance to disaster victims. It encourages people to live in dangerous places, and it denies people the opportunity to accept higher risks in exchange for lower housing costs.

He's right, as usual. I lived near the epicenter of the 1989 7.1 earthquake in Santa Cruz. We had a disaster, but more disaster relief would not have been beneficial.

Arnold to veto same-sex marriage

The San Diego paper says:

SACRAMENTO ? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced Wednesday he will veto a bill that would have made California the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage through legislative action. ...

"Clearly he's pandering to an extreme right wing, which was not how he got elected," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, one of the bill's sponsors. "He got elected with record numbers of lesbian and gay voters who had not previously voted for a Republican, and he sold us out."

No, he is not pandering. Signing the bill would have been political suicide. He has bet his political career on taking some issues directly to people, because the California legislative process is broken. The California voters just passed an initiative against same-sex marriage initiative just 5 years ago, and the current bill is unconstitutionally in conflict with it. If the governor were to so blatantly thwart the will of the people and the California constitution now, then he'd look pretty silly trying to sell his initiatives in November.

Broken courts

A Phyllis Schlafly column says:

Gallant Americans are risking life and limb in Iraq to defend Home and Country. But they never dreamed they might lose their children, too.

When Army National Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly of Grand Ledge, Michigan came home after 15 months in Iraq, he found that a family court "referee" had taken away his joint custody of his 10-year-old son and given full custody and control to the boy's mother.

For five years, McNeilly had had a 50-50 no-problem custody arrangement with his ex-girlfriend Holly Erb. When called up to go to Iraq, he gave her temporary full custody while he was overseas.

While he was gone, Erb persuaded a family court to make her full custody permanent. When McNeilly protested, he was told that his year-long absence constituted abandonment and produced custody "points" against him.

Another column honors William Rehnquist. He was too much of a judicial supremacist for my tastes, but now is not the time to complain about it.

California ballot propositions

The news media is constantly attacking the upcoming California ballot propositions, but the first 5 or 6 look pretty good to me.

Prop. 73 requires parental notification for a minor's abortion. Prop. 74 says teachers have to work more than 2 years to get tenure. Prop. 75 says govt employee unions need consent for political action. Prop. 76 limits govt spending.

John Russell has just filed for a Shared Parenting Ballot Initiative. It looks good to me, as all the studies show that shared parenting is best for the kids and the parents.

Equal pay for equal work

A Warren Farrell column says:

Nothing disturbs working women more than the statistics often mentioned on Labor Day showing that they are paid only 76 cents to men's dollar for the same work. If that were the whole story, it should disturb all of us; like many men, I have two daughters and a wife in the work force. ...

After years of research, I discovered 25 differences in the work-life choices of men and women. All 25 lead to men earning more money, but to women having better lives. ...

I want my daughters to know that people who work 44 hours a week make, on average, more than twice the pay of someone working 34 hours a week. And that pharmacists now earn almost as much as doctors. But only by abandoning our focus on discrimination against women can we discover these opportunities for women.

You can get info about his new excellent book on his web site.

I recently talked to a couple who were firmly convinced that men get favored treatment in the workplace. The man is a computer programmer and his wife is a nurse. Neither of them had ever observed a woman getting less pay or some other unfavorable treatment on the job just because she was a woman. And yet they still somehow thought that men have some big advantage.

I've never seen any job discrimination against women either. I've seen women who were hired or promoted above their level of competence, but none who suffered some unfair sex discrimination.

Intolerant Santa Cruz

Laughing Bobby writes:

I just came across your blog while surfing, and thought I'd drop you a quick line to let you know that I was not only grateful to find some reasonable reading amidst the crazed Internet seas, but that I must also commend you for your courage in upholding your decidely conservative values, seeing as you are from Santa Cruz. I have recently moved to the area from the East coast, and have never encountered such a bizarre community of radical left-wing know-it-alls.

It is generally not worth it in Santa Cruz to speak your mind if you are not toe-stepping to the liberal agenda. A Bush-Cheney sticker on your car will get it smashed, slashed, or keyed.

It is arguably, rather ironically, the singularly most intolerant place in the country. They preach values that are seriously inconsistent with their behavior. Nonetheless, keep up the good work!

Thanks. I agree that Santa Cruz is a singularly intolerant place. You are an outcast if you are not a dope-smoking vegan Bush-hater.

Emergency price-gouging

People complain about price-gouging in an emergency situation, and many states have laws against it, but such gouging does often serves a useful purpose.

Suppose that a gas station in Lousiana has a few thousand gallons of gasoline, and no hope of re-supply anytime soon. The owner has already paid for that gasoline, and some would argue that he should only sell it at the price he paid plus a standard markup.

If he sells the gasoline cheaply, then it will probably be bought by hoarders, and then police and emergency vehicles may not be able to get gasoline at all. If he charges a market rate, then he will ensure that the gasoline will be available to those who really need it.

This is the usual argument that price controls cause shortages. People accept the argument because they don't like shortages. The odd thing is that they are willing to have price-control induced shortages during emergencies. It seems to me that it is during emergencies that shortages are the most troublesome.

Duped dad's right to sue is upheld

New Jersey news:

A man who found out 30 years after his youngest child's birth that he was not the father had the right to sue the biological father for nearly $110,000, the cost of raising the child, an appeals court ruled yesterday. ...

In 1996, just before the son was to be wed, his mother, identified in the decision as B.E.C, told him who his real father was because she wanted him to know his biological father had two children with muscular dystrophy.

Three years later, she told her ex-husband, who has said he was dumfounded and shocked.

I think that paternity fraud should be a criminal offense. It is bad enough that the wife commits adultery, gets pregnant with another man's child, and deceives the husband and the child, but this woman went to court to force the man to pay child support for a child that was not his. No woman could do that by accident or with any positive motive. She should be in jail.

TeenScreen - The Law Suits Begin

Evelyn Pringle writes:

The scheme concocted by the pharmaceutical industry and pushed forward by the Bush administration to screen the entire nation's public school population for mental illness and treat them with controversial drugs was already setting off alarms among parents all across the country. But in the state of Indiana, the alarm just got louder.

Tax payers had better get out their check books because school taxes are about to go up as the law suits against school boards start mounting over the TeenScreen depression survey being administered to children in the school.

The first notice of intent to sue was filed this month in Indiana by Michael and Teresa Rhoades who were outraged when they learned their daughter had been given a psychological test at school without their consent.

In December 2004, their daughter came home from school and said she had been diagnosed with an obsessive compulsive and social anxiety disorder after taking the TeenScreen survey.

Teresa Rhoades always viewed her daughter as a happy normal teenager. ?I was absolutely outraged that my daughter was told she had these two conditions based off a computer test,? said Rhoades.

More evidence that the schools have too much money. They should not be doing stuff like this.

Physician father could do nothing

A reader forwards a message with a sad story about a teenaged boy who was put on ritalin and other drugs, became a juvenile delinquent, and is in a mess. His parents were divorced, and his mother had custody. His father was a physician, and the writer wonders why the father didn't do a better job of overseeing his son's medical prescriptions.

If the case was the typical mother custody divorce case, the father would have been stripped of all authority and decision-making. Even tho he was a physician, he would not have been permitted to make any medical decisions. That is the bias of the family court. It forces kids to be raised without fathers, and there is overwhelming evidence that many of our social ills result from single-mother-headed households.

Kids barred from college

UK college news:

"The admissions executive is in discussions around whether we should introduction a minimum age of 17 for undergraduates," confirmed Ruth Collier, a spokesperson for admissions to Oxford. "We have been pushed to consider it, not because of concerns about whether it is psychologically healthy for children to study here, but because of child protection laws which have come into play this year for the first time." ...

Children can no longer live in student accommodation, because the university could not carry out a criminal record check on every other undergraduate sharing the same premises.

These child protection laws have gone too far.

Picky college girls

College girls can be picky about the men they date. A Cornell senior named Heather Grantham writes:

Unfortunately, in my experience, when something seems too good to be true, it pretty much always is. On our first date, Jackpot didn't tip. At all. From there, the disappointments just kept coming. Not long after, I was appalled to learn that Jackpot had made it into his late 20s without ever going down on a woman. That's right; this grown-ass man had never performed oral sex. He even dug his hole a little deeper by pronouncing the act "something you resort to when you can't please your woman in other ways."

Now, I hate to use poor Jackpot as the example for today's lesson, but guys, this is just utterly unacceptable. ...
At this point, I had a nasty little dilemma. I could stop answering his calls, but then I'd be seeing no one. I mean, which is worse: bad sex or no sex at all?

The article is funny (and off-putting). She suggests that Jackpot was a black man by using an assortment of racial stereotypes, but does not explicitly say so.

School kids can use F-word 5 times

Here is a new UK school policy:

"Within each lesson the teacher will initially tolerate (although not condone) the use of the f-word (or derivatives) five times and these will be tallied on the board so all students can see the running score," he wrote in the letter

"Over this number the class will be spoken to by the teacher at the end of the lesson."
Parents called the rule 'wholly irresponsible and ludicrous'. ...

The 1,130-pupil school, which was criticised as 'not effective' by Ofsted inspectors last November, also plans to send 'praise postcards' to the parents of children who do not swear and who turn up on time for lessons.

Headmaster Alan Large said he had received no complaints about the policy. "The reality is that the fword is part of these young adults' everyday language," he said.

"As a temporary policy we are giving them a bit of leeway, but want them to think about the way they talk and how they might do better."

I wonder what else they are tolerating, but not condoning.

This Michigan story has more on the soldier who lost his son while fighting in Iraq:

In a recommendation, court referee Louis Belzer expressed concern over e-mail correspondences between the McNeilly and his son during his time in Iraq.

Belzer said the e-mails display a much different relationship than a typical parent-child relationship, and more as a "counterpart to share his military adventure."

Belzer wrote, "I also question the nature of some of the correspondence relating to how to kill people in multiple ways and then indicating that 'next time someone touches you and leaves bruises on you, I'll be ready.' "

Belzer said McNeilly seemed more of the disposition to be a friend and buddy rather than a parent.

These are absurd reasons for taking a son away from his dad and denying the dad his fundamental rights. Louis Belzer should never be allowed to testify in family court again.

Coffee has benefits

UK science news:

A study has found that coffee contributes more antioxidants - which have been linked with fighting heart disease and cancer - to the diet than cranberries, apples or tomatoes.

"Americans get more of their antioxidants from coffee than any other dietary source. Nothing else comes close," said Professor Vinson, whose study was described at the weekend to the American Chemical Society in Washington. ...

The pros and cons of coffee

BENEFITS
Can increase alertness and improve short-term recall.
May reduce the risk of cirrhosis of the liver among heavy drinkers.
May postpone muscle fatigue.
Contains caffeine-related compounds (theophylline) that can alleviate the symptoms of asthma in some cases.

RISKS
Increases blood pressure among people who already suffer from high blood pressure.
Causes insomnia, anxiety, and irritability.
May worsen symptoms of PMS in some women.
Can reduce fertility in women trying to conceive.
Can cause heartburn and indigestion.

Another risk is that coffee is very addicting.

Horrible zombies

The movie The Ghost Breakers (1940) has this scene:

Larry (Bob Hope): You live here?
Geoff: Yes.
Larry: Maybe you know what a zombie is.
Geoff: When a person dies and is buried, it seems there's certain voodoo priests who have the power to bring him back to life.
Mary: That's horrible.
Geoff: It's worse than horrible because a zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes, walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring.
Larry: You mean like Democrats?

Watch the movie clip here.

Man forced to have sex

South African news:

Johannesburg: The hunt is on for three women who ambushed a 30-year-old man and forced him to have sex with them at gunpoint. ...

Nothnagel said that on Saturday night the man was walking through Roodepoort when the women pulled up next to him in their maroon BMW.

They asked him for directions to the Savoy Hotel and he got into the car to show them the way.

At the hotel the women persuaded him to join them for a drink, before asking him for directions to yet another hotel.

While on the road to the Station Hotel the women suddenly changed direction and drove to a dark and empty field near the Durban Deep mine.

"One woman produced a firearm and held the man at gunpoint," Nothnagel said.

"The women got undressed and all three took turns to have intercourse with him."

Africa. 3 women. Gun. Maroon BMW. Dangerous combination.

Straw man has a gun

I was just watching The Wizard of Oz (1939), and I just noticed that the Straw Man is carrying a pistol when they are looking to steal the wicked witch's broomstick. I guess he got it at the land of Oz somehow.

Inequality Taboo

Joe sends this Charles Murray article:

The women with careers were four-and-a-half times more likely than men to say they preferred to work fewer than 40 hours per week. The men placed greater importance on ?being successful in my line of work? and ?inventing or creating something that will have an impact,? while the women found greater value in ?having strong friendships,? ?living close to parents and relatives,? and ?having a meaningful spiritual life.? ...

I have omitted perhaps the most obvious reason why men and women differ at the highest levels of accomplishment: men take more risks, are more competitive, and are more aggressive than women.

He calls it the Inequality Taboo.

Update: Steve Sailer comments. He has other articles here.

Egg donors and surrogate moms

Virginia Postrel says:

When a woman of my advanced age, or, say, Elizabeth Edwards', has a baby, chances are very, very high that she used another woman's egg--especially if the baby is her first. Unlike adopting a child or using a surrogate, however, using an egg donor means you get pregnant and bear the child yourself. And that means you can pretend no donor was involved, which is exactly what a lot of people do.

There are probably a million moms in the USA who are lying to their kid about who the dad is. Now it seems that there are maybe 200,000 who are lying about who the genetic mother is!

When you hear about a 40-year-old woman going to a fertility clinics, she is probably buying eggs from another woman. Most people don't even know that it is legal to pay big bucks for a human egg.

Breastapo strikes

Sally Satel writes:

he Breastapo are at it again, trying to dictate what American women should and shouldn't do with their breasts. ...
"They're making women sick," Kim Gandy of NOW weighed in. "Women will risk a lifetime of grave complications from faulty breast implants because the Bush administration and their appointees value short-term profits over women's long-term health." ...

Study after study confirms silicone implants do not cause disease. It is now 13 years since FDA Commissioner David Kessler imposed a voluntary moratorium on silicone implants, motivated by case reports that they caused connective tissue diseases (e.g., lupus, scleroderma). ...

Throughout the 1990s, litigation against the silicone-implant industry flourished in the absence of any scientific proof that women were made ill by implants. Dow Corning Corporation, once the biggest implant maker, filed for bankruptcy in 1995 to pay $3.2 billion to settle about 440,000 women's claims. ... No rigorously designed study showed any evidence of disease.

Still, the feminist health groups keep pumping out misinformation.

I guess some anti-science feminists don't want women to control their own bodies.

Actress Tara Reid says, "I mean, everyone does it. I don't know why I'm the one who gets so much attention?" She says that she is looking for Mr. Right.

Men cleverer than women

UK research news:

Academics in the UK claim their research shows that men are more intelligent than women.

A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.

Paul Irwing and Professor Richard Lynn claim the difference grows when the highest IQ levels are considered.

Their research was based on IQ tests given to 80,000 people and a further study of 20,000 students.

'Widening gap'

Dr Irwing, a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Manchester University, told the Today programme on BBC Radio Four the study showed that, up to the age of 14, there was no difference between the IQs of boys and girls.

"But beyond that age and into adulthood there is a difference of five points, which is small but it can have important implications," he said.

"This is against a background of women dramatically overtaking men in educational attainment and making very rapid advances in terms of occupational achievement."

The academics used a test which is said to measure "general cognitive ability" - spatial and verbal ability.

As intelligence scores among the study group rose, the academics say they found a widening gap between the sexes.

There were twice as many men with IQ scores of 125, for example, a level said to correspond with people getting first-class degrees.

At scores of 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.

Hmmm, this will offend some folks. In the USA, we have more girls in college than boys, but maybe they're majoring in easier subjects.

Physician discipline for fat lecture

NH news:

ROCHESTER, N.H. -- The New Hampshire attorney general is investigating a Rochester doctor because a patient complained that he bluntly told her she needed to lose weight.

Dr. Terry Bennett said that he's outraged by what he calls a baseless complaint. A patient was apparently insulted when Bennett told her that she was obese and could only get healthier by losing weight.

"It's an epidemic in the United States, and it's croaking us," Bennett said.

Bennett said that it's a lecture he gives to many of his overweight patients. ...

Bennett said that the Attorney General's Office tried to get him to settle the matter by agreeing to attend a medical education course, which he refused.

Ever been annoyed by a physician who lectures you about diet or exercise or smoking or whatever? I had no idea that you could just file a written complaint, and the state attorney general would try to send the physician to a re-education camp!

Another article says:

Dr. Terry Bennett, who practices in Rochester, said he has "an obesity lecture for women" that is a stark litany designed to get the attention of obese female patients.

He said he tells obese women they most likely will outlive an obese spouse and will have a difficult time establishing a new relationship because studies show most males are completely negative to obese women.

Maybe there should be separate listings for physicians with attitude, and physicians without.

California judges perceive no reason

The California supreme court has issued some new supremacist opinions promoting the gay agenda. The legislature has passed some radical new domestic partnership laws, but the new rulings go beyond them.

In one ruling, the court says (pdf opinion):

We perceive no reason why both parents of a child cannot be women. ...

The circumstance that Elisa has no genetic connection to the twins does not necessarily mean that she did not hold out the twins as her "natural" children under section 7611.

This is just being stubbornly closed-minded. There are reasons based on biology, law, culture, social science, and religion, and there are 1000s of years of history in which all civilized societies reached the opposite conclusion. For some judges to say that they "perceive no reason" is only to display willful ignorance.

I also think that it is a little strange that the court and the news media are concealing the last names of the lesbians. If they are really just regular parents, then why not disclose the names as they do in regular divorce cases? And if the kids are being harmed by having such kooky lesbian pseudo-parents, then shouldn't the court consider that when it gives its blessing to the arrangement?

Feminists are very confused

Wash. Times article:

Combine that with assorted readings and film clips shining a positive light on self-centered, lesbian, anti-male existence, and you might see the feminist movement for what it really is: Anything but harmless.
Most despicable in my view is the movement claim to represent all women equally. My professor could not get her mind around anyone disagreeing with her. Her open-mindedness simply did not extend to someone with pro-family convictions.
The Women's Awareness Coalition at my school certainly does raise awareness -- the question is: of what? Trying to explain to a feminist that feminism furthers a leftist agenda, not the rights of all women, is something I think I'll have earned a minor in if I survive the second half of my college career.
After the mentoring lunch, a ninth-grader wrote to me, "I learned that most feminists are very confused." I couldn't have put it better myself.

A college girl named Miss Danielle Sturgis has discovered academic feminism.

Best interests of the child

I've been looking into the so-called "best interests of the child" standard for making family court decisions. It is commonly used in statutes and court opinions. Sometimes the phrase uses "interests" in the singular and sometimes in the plural. Technically, these would mean different things, but no one distinguishes them, so I won't either. I'll just call it BIOTC.

John writes:

BIOTC did not come out of the blue. It was a legal "term of art" that dated back at least 200 years to Blackstone, who said parents are presumed to act in their child's best interest.

IOW, BIOTC is just another way of expressing the principle (which also dates to Blackstone) that parents have a fundamental right to the care, custody, and companionship of their children, and to direct their child's upbringing, education and religious training.

BIOTC is not a separate principle, it is part and parcel of parental rights (a natural right or substantive due process concept) recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in a string of cases from Meyer (1923) and Pierce (1925) through Parham (1979), Santosky (1982) and Troxel (2000).

IOW, the BIOTC is whatever the parents say it is.

Of course, a presumption can be overcome with a proper showing. Even a fundamental right can be overcome in extreme cases where a parent is found to be unfit. But unless and until a parent is found (after due process) to be unfit, a parent has the right to determine the best interest of his or her child.

But family courts today seem to mean something different. They use BIOTC to mean the opinion of putative experts who may know nothing about the wishes of the parents. But the phrase is just a smokescreen. The interests of the child are never defined, and there is certainly no analysis of what would be best. I cannot find any example of where any court actually ruled based on some legitimate BIOTC analysis. Either it assumes that the parents will act in the BIOTC, or it relies on some putative expert who is not really an expert at all.

I have come to the conclusion that BIOTC is one of the worst ideas in the history of human civilization. Never have I seen an idea that was so uncritically accepted among the public, and yet so utterly bogus. It is just a license for some authority figure to do whatever he wants. No good has ever come from the concept.

Iraq duty cost him custody of son

Michigan news:

Army National Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly hasn't been the same since he returned from Iraq in March.

But it's not flashbacks to explosions and injured soldiers that haunt him most. It's that he lost shared custody of his 10-year-old son while he was serving his country.

"You want to make a soldier cry, you take his son away," McNeilly, 33, of Grand Ledge, said last week as he blinked back tears. "It's devastating."

McNeilly believes he lost custody of Joey because he was in Iraq for 15 months.

... a report from the May hearing says the court favors Joey's mother, Holly Erb of Mason, because she was the "day to day caretaker and decision maker in the child's life" while McNeilly was deployed. ...

The report says that McNeilly treats his son more like a friend than a son, and "sees the child as a counterpart in his military adventures."

It also questions some of McNeilly's correspondence to his son while on active duty.

McNeilly said one postcard showed a soldier holding a gun. Another showed a soldier spearing a tire as if it was an enemy.

The court report says McNeilly also told his son how to kill people in multiple ways, and that he wrote his son "the next time someone touches you and leaves bruises on you - I'll be ready."

Yes, it does sound like the soldier is losing his son, and the son is losing his father, just because he is a soldier. It is entirely appropriate for a soldier at war to send his son a postcard showing a soldier holding a gun. The anti-male bias of the courts is frightening.

The core of the problem is that the mom took advantage of the soldier's absence to get a court-ordered $525 per month. If she allowed the son to be re-united with his father, then she would lose that $525 per month. The "best interests of the child" is just a smokescreen to allow the greedy mom to keep cheating her ex-husband, even if it also punishes her own son. A man should not be punished for serving his country.

Update: I just got a nice note from Spc. Joe McNeilly himself, along with some pictures of him with his son. He is trying to get a change to the Michigan law so other soldiers are not similarly punished for serving their country.

Falsely accused fathers

KGO radio just broadcast a segment on men who are forced to pay child support, even tho DNA tests prove that they are not fathers. In most cases, the fathers are not even served properly and have no opportunity to contest the court order.

A couple of women called in at the end of the show, and argued that the men should have to pay anyway. One strenuously argued that even tho a man might be proved to be not the father, he could have been the father. She said that most men can avoid these problems by refusing to have sex with unfaithful women.

Apparently the most common situation is when a women is secretly having sex with several boyfriends, gets pregnant, goes on welfare, and names the man with the fattest wallet. In some cases the man gets tricked into believing that he is the father until the statute of limitations has expired. In others, his wages are garnished or his licenses are suspended without him ever even receiving notice.

Sometimes the alleged father has never even met the woman. Sometimes he is the husband, and the wife is secretly committing adultery. The wife eventually runs off with the true father or some other man, and punishes her ex-husband by making him pay child support. (I shouldn't really call it child support, because the money does not goto the child.)

In no case is any woman punished for falsely and vindictively naming the wrong father. In my opinion, a woman who names the wrong father should be jailed, and she should permanently lose custody of the child. It is just not possible for a woman to make an innocent mistake.

Illegal aliens seize Arizona border ranch

PHOENIX - An Arizona ranch once owned by a member of an armed group accused of terrorizing illegal immigrants has been turned over to two of the very people the owner had tried keep out of the country.

The land transfer is being done to satisfy a judgment against Casey Nethercott, a member of a self-styled border-watch group who is serving a five-year prison term for firearms possession.

Morris Dees Jr., chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented the immigrants, said he hoped the ruling would be a cautionary tale to anyone considering hostile measures against border crossers. ...

A jury deadlocked on the assault charge but convicted him of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Morris Dees is famous for causing racist mischief. People should be rewarded for keeping illegal alien trespassers out of the country, not punished.

46 percent are crazy at some time

Fox reports:

LOS ANGELES ? A new study by Harvard University and the National Institute of Mental Health claims that 46 percent of all Americans will, at some point in their lives, develop a mental disorder.

But this new statistic has experts arguing over exactly what constitutes a true mental illness.

According to experts, severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia, dementia and manic depression are relatively uncommon. But the updated Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM ? the standard survey for mental illness ? lists conditions like adjustment disorder, passive-aggressive disorder and female sexual arousal disorder as mental illness, reflecting what are claimed to be advances in the mental health profession.

Critics say that's crazy, and that it won't be long before all human quirks and flaws are classified as mental disorders.

Not all quirks. They refuse to classify certain deviant sexual practices as disorders.

Homemakers better than lawyers

Here is the latest attack on judicial nominee John Roberts:

CNN's Bill Mears, Joe Johns, Robert Yoon, Melissa McNamara, David DeSola, and Xuan Thai reviewed the latest dump of documents, which covered Roberts' work as a White House lawyer in the Reagan administration from '82 to '86. Here are some findings:

Most notably, Roberts dismissed a corporate award for women over age 30, saying, "some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

The young lawyer made the comment as a personal aside after being asked to examine whether Linda Chavez, then the White House director of public liaison, could nominate one her aides to a "rising star" award sponsored by the Clairol beauty care company. The $1,000 grant was designed to honor women who "made a significant change in their field" after turning 30.

The aide, Linda Arey had left teaching to enter law school. She had encouraged many former homemakers to enter law, while working as a dean at Richmond Law School. Roberts, whose job in part was to decide conflict of interest and ethics issues, concluded that the award was proper.

The comment, one of many flip remarks Roberts made in official documents being reviewed this summer, annoyed women across the ideological divide yesterday. "It kind of sounds like a smart alecky comment," Phyllis Schlafly, the president of the conservative Eagle Forum, who entered law school when she was 51, told the Washington Post. Schlafly noted that Roberts was "a young bachelor and hadn't seen a whole lot of life at that point."

Roberts is right. Homemakers are trying to make the world better, and lawyers are trying to make it worse.

Research promising for chocolate lovers

Chocolate news:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not exactly a guilt-free pleasure, but food researchers say cocoa beans could be good for you. ...

The health potential is real. Cocoa beans have natural compounds called flavanols, and a growing pile of scientific research suggests they do good things to blood vessels.

Customers at Neuhaus, a Belgian chocolate shop in Washington's Union Station, like thinking the dark stuff might be healthy, said manager Clementine Loeman.

"That way, they don't feel guilty," Loeman said, adding that chocolate was sometimes considered medicinal when the company began as a pharmacy 148 years ago.

Women often feel guilty when they eat food. Chocolate makers have discovered that they can sell more chocolate if they can alleviate guilt in women.

Climate change sceptics bet $10,000 on cooler world

UK news:

Two climate change sceptics, who believe the dangers of global warming are overstated, have put their money where their mouth is and bet $10,000 that the planet will cool over the next decade.
The Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev have agreed the wager with a British climate expert, James Annan.

The pair, based in Irkutsk, at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, believe that global temperatures are driven more by changes in the sun's activity than by the emission of greenhouse gases. They say the Earth warms and cools in response to changes in the number and size of sunspots. Most mainstream scientists dismiss the idea, but as the sun is expected to enter a less active phase over the next few decades the Russian duo are confident they will see a drop in global temperatures.

I am still trying to figure this one out. John McCain and Hillary Clinton are jumping on the global warming bandwagon.

African wives get beaten

The NY Times has a page one story with domestic violence propaganda:

Nigeria, Africa's largest nation with nearly 130 million people, has only two shelters for battered women, both opened in the last four years. The United States, by contrast, has about 1,200 such havens. Moreover, many women say wifely transgression justify beatings. About half of women interviewed in Zambia in 2001 and 2002 said husbands had a right to beat wives who argue with them, burn the dinner, go out without the husband's permission, neglect the children or refuse sex.

To Kenny Adebayo, a 30-year-old driver in Lagos, the issue is clear-cut. "If you tell your wife she puts too much salt in the dinner, and every day, every day, every day there is too much salt, one day you will get emotional and hurt her," he said. "We men in Africa hate disrespect."

American women have it better than those in any other country. They can disrespect their husbands and get away with it.

Liza writes that this article shows what life is life for women in societies without strong enforcement of criminal laws against domestic violence and other legal protections for battered women. No, that is not the significant difference between USA and Africa.

Emily Read, a domestic violence lobbyist, writes to the NY Times:

"Entrenched Epidemic: Wife-Beatings in Africa" (front page, Aug. 11) reports that domestic violence is more entrenched and accepted in sub-Saharan Africa than in most other countries, and that "one in three Nigerian women reported having been physically abused by a male partner."

Sadly, the same statistic holds true for the United States. According to the American Bar Association Commission on Domestic Violence, reporting on a 1996 study by the American Psychological Association, "nearly 1 in 3 adult women experience at least one physical assault by a partner during adulthood."

There you have it. The DV lobby thinks that American women are just like sub-Saharan Africans.

Paternal discrepancy

UK news:

LONDON (Reuters) - One in 25 fathers could unknowingly be raising another man's child, British scientists said on Thursday.

Researchers at Liverpool's John Moores University examined the findings of dozens of studies, published over the past 54 years, on cases of paternal discrepancy -- where a man is proved not to be the biological father of his child.

This is old news, of course. Many wives are unfaithful.

12 best foods

Here are the Forbes 12 best (worst) foods. I'm not sure what the point is; there is no scientific evidence that any of those foods are unhealthy.

Trouble hearing women

UK science news:

Men do have trouble hearing women, scientists find

LONDON (AFP) - Men who are accused of never listening by women now have an excuse -- women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to than other men's, a report said.

The Daily Mail, quoting findings published in the specialist magazine NeuroImage, said researchers at Sheffield university in northern England discovered startling differences in the way the brain responds to male and female sounds.

Men deciphered female voices using the auditory part of the brain that processes music, while male voices engaged a simpler mechanism, it said.

The Mail quoted researcher Michael Hunter as saying, "The female voice is actually more complex than the male voice, due to differences in the size and shape of the vocal cords and larynx between men and women, and also due to women having greater natural 'melody' in their voices.

Broadcasters should go back to just using men to read the news.

Women initiate minor aggression

From the Pittsburgh newspaper:

Women may be the primary victims of serious domestic violence, according to most experts, but they are just as likely -- if not slightly more inclined -- as men to engage in "minor aggression" such as hitting and slapping in relationships, according to a new study.

In lengthy interviews with more than two dozen women, those surveyed reported initiating aggression in more than half of the conflicts with their partners. And one of the main reasons, says University of Missouri-Columbia researcher Loreen Olson, was frustration about their inability to gain their partner's attention.

"They told us they would try and try and try to get their partner to listen to them, and that the men had withdrawn and were avoiding dealing with the issue or confronting the conflict," said Olson, who co-authored the study with Sally Lloyd, professor of family studies at Miami University in Ohio. The study will be published in the October edition of the academic journal Sex Roles.

"So they resorted to verbal aggression or even physical action, like slapping their partners on the upper torso, or throwing things at them, in an effort to get them to engage in discussion." ...

"What's typical is that I want to talk about something and he doesn't want to talk about something, and then I'm like, I just [verbally] push and push and push and then he starts where he backs off and ... he wants to leave. And I'm like, 'No, you cannot leave.' "

There are many studies finding that women initiate domestic violence as much as men.

I think we'd look like idiots

News from Congress:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Even after failing a drug test, Rafael Palmeiro insists he was being truthful when he told Congress that he never used steroids. ...

As a practical matter, perjury referrals are uncommon. Prosecutions are rare," House Government Reform Committee chairman Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., said Wednesday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. ...

And then Davis added: "If we did nothing, I think we'd look like idiots. Don't you?"

No danger. They already look like idiots, and that won't change.

Women having strippers is fun

I found this online:

I remember back in college when a female friend told me she was shocked and dismayed that a men's dorm (no greek system at this school) had hired strippers for a party (OFF campus). She told me it was demeaning and horrible, and she planned to go to the dean of students and demand an investigation, major punishment, expulsion, etc.

I reminded her of the fact that her own dorm had been entertained by a male stripper just a few months before (ON campus, in the dorm itself). She quickly shrugged that off, though. She told me this:

"It's different, though. Women having strippers is fun, like funny. For men it's all about power and rape."

Yeah, I know the type. Some women are fanatical consumers of pornography, but they get all offended if a man looks at porn.

Female badgers prefer the dark

This UK news story says that female badgers and humans have something in common:

During a new moon, female badgers are "tolerant or indifferent" to the advances of males and, when the moon is full, they become actively hostile. ...

Last year, a survey revealed that one in five women feels uncomfortable undressing within sight of her husband or boyfriend and a similar proportion also refuses to have sex when the lights are left on.

There are also a lot of women who like to show off their bodies.

Divorce disallowed

Shawnna Hughes put her husband in jail on bogus domestic violence charges, took their 2 kids, got pregnant with another man, sued for divorce (that her husband did not contest), and obtained a judgment for child support for the 2 kids.

Spokane County (Wash.) Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine said that she didn't quite do it right. She failed to demand child support for the unborn child! He threw out the divorce decree, and an appellate court just agreed.

Family courts usually do whatever they can to bust up marriages and extract onerous support payments. I guess the judges get confused when they see a conflict between those 2 goals.

Man tells wife phony hitchhiker story

Florida news:

A man made up a story about killing a hitchhiker and burying the body in the woods in an effort to persuade his wife to leave him, authorities said.

Teddy Claire Akin, 28, of Ocala, was charged Tuesday with making a false report and petit theft. He was being held without bail.

Akin's wife, Felicia, called the Marion County Sheriff's Office Monday to report that her husband had told her that he killed a hitchhiker, authorities said. ...

Akin eventually told investigators that he was going through a divorce and had hoped the murder story would make his wife leave him...

I think I see the problem. He is nuts, and she is a backstabber.