Blogger defends Roman Polanski

A "Pro-Peace" blogger writes:

Legally, Roman Polanski admitted to consensual sex with a minor (statutory rape), he did not plead guilty to forcible rape. The reason given for the plea bargain by the family is that they did not want their daughter to go through the trauma of a trial. ...

One of the great evils of our age is the increasing ability of the State to pursue criminal charges without the consent of the victim which is the very antithesis of victims’ rights. It is evil. ...

Since she has forgiven him and most likely received a large sum of money it is now no longer the interest or concern of the State. ...

No, Polanski did not legally admit to consensual sex. He admitted to a crime. Consensual sex is not a crime.

I agree that the state should not pursue criminal charges against an adult
victim unless that adult victim complains. Many domestic violence advocates
have pushed for laws and processes that punish men even when the woman does
not complain. (A recent example of such punishment is here.) I disagree with that, but it has no resemblance to the Polanski case.

The Polanski victim complained, and Polanski was convicted. That ends the victim's obligation. Now it is the obligation of the state to make him serve the sentence corresponding to his conviction, and to prosecute him for being a fugitive.

Economist writes on global warming

There has been a lot of criticism of the new Levitt-Dubner Super-Freakonomics book. It seems like another case of experts giving opinions outside their expertise.

Levitt is an economist, but he is mostly famous for social science research
on abortion that turned out to be wrong, and for various things to make his
ideas more saleable to the public. I would not expect him to have anything useful to say about global warming anyway.

Levitt responds:

The statements being circulated create the false impression that our analysis of the global-warming crisis is ideological and unscientific. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I guess that means that he will post a substantive response.

Update: More criticism of Levitt here.

New spanking study

A new spanking study (abstract available only) claims that child fussiness at age 1 leads to aggression at age 2 and low IQ at age 3, and all are correlated to spanking. These anti-spanking studies have been criticized by the WSJ and the American College of Pediatricians.

I don't doubt that these correlations exist. If you looked at adults, you would probably find that low IQ and aggressive behavior was correlated with being jailed. But that is not a reason to get rid of jails. It clarifies why we have the jails.

Harvey Milk Day

California news:

Slain gay rights activist Harvey Milk will get a special day of recognition in California, making him only the second person in state history — in addition to conservationist John Muir — to gain such a designation.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signing of the bill establishing "Harvey Milk Day" each May 22, Milk's birthday, was announced Monday. ...

Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, said he was appalled by the governor's decision.

"Sadly, children in public schools will now have even more in-your-face, homosexual-bisexual-transsexual indoctrination," he said in a statement.

The schools are already indoctrinating students with false info, as you can see from today's Dear Abby letter:

DEAR ABBY: I am a 15-year-old girl who is losing the will to live. I am bisexual, but my parents are very anti-gay/lesbian, so I can't tell them about my sexual orientation. ...

DEAR HURTING: As you already know, your sexual orientation isn't something you chose. It is something you were born with, and your parents' disapproval -- as intimidating as it may be -- isn't going to change it. ...

No, there is no scientific proof that a bisexual orientation is ever determined in a 15-year-old girl, and certainly no proof that it was determined at birth. This is the sort of nonsense that California schools are going to teach on Harvey Milk Day.

I realize that there are people who claim to know such things to be true from personal experience. There are just as many who claim to know such things are false from personal experience. And a lot of smart academic scientists have done a lot of studies to try to prove that sexual orientation is determined at birth. All of those studies have failed.

Washing hands with warm water

The NY Times writes:

Soap and warm water have long been said to prevent the spread of infections, but is warm or hot water really more effective than cold? ...

“Temperature of water used for hand washing should not be guided by antibacterial effects but comfort,” they wrote, ...

Hot water for hand washing has not been proved to remove germs better than cold water.

There is something seriously wrong with this story. Removing germs is not the only purpose to washing hands.

I wash my hands to get rid of dirt, oils, and germs. I always thought that warm water was more effective at getting rid of dirt, not germs. This article does not even address whether the warm water is better for cleaning dirt, and yet it recommends cold water as being just as good.

This is a problem with a lot of science-based recommendations. Someone will quote a study, but the study may have only looked at one aspect of the matter.

Outage has been restored

I lose electric power whenever there is a storm, and a company (PG&E) robot just called after a 3-hour outage and said (to my answering machine robot):

The outage in your area has been restored to most locations in your area.

This sounds like a near miss, which one usage dictionary says is not an error, despite its apparent lack of logic.

How calorie info influences choices

WSJ blogger Carl Bialik writes:

I wrote last summer about menu labeling of calorie counts, and questioned whether they would influence diners to make healthier choices. This week, a widely reported study of a New York City law mandating menu labeling in chain restaurants revealed that low-income diners didn’t order lower-calorie meals when confronted by the calorie counts, when compared with New York diners before the law was passed and with diners in Newark, which doesn’t have mandatory labeling. The study undercuts a major notion behind menu labeling: that, when confronted with mammoth calorie counts, diners will choose healthier options.

The researchers and experts were baffled at the study results.

I think that all of these articles miss the point. The most immediate effect to posting calorie info is that it allows the customer to calculate the cost of the calories. He can figure how many calories per dollar he can buy. Or if he needs 500 calories to satisfy his appetite, then he can choose the dish that gets him those calories most cheaply.

The obvious consequence of this is that low-income customers would use the info to buy more calories for their dollar. The high-income customers would not care so much.
It is like supermarket unit pricing. The low-income customers use the unit price labels to buy cheaper generic foods, while the high-income customers are more likely to ignore the unit price and buy a brand name.

This is exactly what the study shows.

The experts make the mistake is that they assume that poor people will think that low calorie dishes are healthier, and therefore be willing to pay more money for them. That seems crazy to me. The low calorie dishes are not necessarily healthier, and the poor are the least likely to pay extra for them even if they were. If poor people want to cut calories, they just buy less and eat less.

Why Obama got the prize

Roissy has a theory. Pres. Obama was elected by bitter unmarried women, and Norwegian women gave him the prize. Sailor call it the The Affirmative Action Nobel. I think that Obama is becoming a caricature of himself.

Foreign born prize winners

San Jose Mercury News columnist Chris O'Brien writes:

If you're looking for reasons to puff out your chest and take pride in being American, then take note that the first six Nobel Prize winners announced this week are U.S. citizens.

Here's something else you should know: Four of those winners were born outside the U.S. ...

However you feel about the H-1B visas that our tech companies hunger for, or the swarms of bodies crossing our borders to pick our crops, these hot-button topics obscure the reality: We need these immigrants to renew our economy and to prosper. Our demonization of them is shameful.

And now the Nobel Peace Prize winner is a US citizen from Hawaii and Indonesia!

O'Brien's argument is debunked by VDARE.

The first thing you notice about Chris O'Brien is that you cannot tell whether he is a man or a woman from either his name or his picture. (His picture is always in the print edition, but not online on his blog.)

O'Brien's biggest story as a SJMN reporter was his page one story that the Microsoft takeover of Yahoo was a done deal. Not just an intention, but a certainty. No, the takeover never happened. He has been wrong on a lot of other issues also.

His argument is absurd. H-1B visas do not goto potential Nobel prize winners. They goto wage slaves doing grunt work in order to displace American workers.

Reading nonsense makes you smarter

The NY Timesreports:

In the most recent paper, published last month, Dr. Proulx and Dr. Heine described having 20 college students read an absurd short story based on “The Country Doctor,” by Franz Kafka. The doctor of the title has to make a house call on a boy with a terrible toothache. He makes the journey and finds that the boy has no teeth at all. The horses who have pulled his carriage begin to act up; the boy’s family becomes annoyed; then the doctor discovers the boy has teeth after all. And so on. The story is urgent, vivid and nonsensical — Kafkaesque.

After the story, the students studied a series of 45 strings of 6 to 9 letters, like “X, M, X, R, T, V.” They later took a test on the letter strings, choosing those they thought they had seen before from a list of 60 such strings. In fact the letters were related, in a very subtle way, with some more likely to appear before or after others.

The test is a standard measure of what researchers call implicit learning: knowledge gained without awareness. The students had no idea what patterns their brain was sensing or how well they were performing.

But perform they did. They chose about 30 percent more of the letter strings, and were almost twice as accurate in their choices, than a comparison group of 20 students who had read a different short story, a coherent one.

“The fact that the group who read the absurd story identified more letter strings suggests that they were more motivated to look for patterns than the others,” Dr. Heine said. “And the fact that they were more accurate means, we think, that they’re forming new patterns they wouldn’t be able to form otherwise.”

This sounds bogus to me, and the research report is not online. If it checks out, maybe I will post some nonsense for my readers' benefit.

The Sorry State Of Psychotherapy

The high-status psychologists badmouth their colleagues who got their degrees from second-rate colleges:

Where's The Science? The Sorry State Of Psychotherapy

ScienceDaily (Oct. 3, 2009) — The prevalence of mental health disorders in this country has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. Who is treating all of these patients? Clinical psychologists and therapists are charged with the task, but many are falling short by using methods that are out of date and lack scientific rigor. This is in part because many of the training programs—especially some Doctorate of Psychology (PsyD) programs and for-profit training centers—are not grounded in science. ...

For example, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be the most effective treatment for PTSD and has the fewest side-effects, yet many psychologists do not use this method. Baker and colleagues cite one study in which only 30 percent of psychologists were trained to perform CBT for PTSD and only half of those psychologists elected to use it. ... whereas medications such as Paxil have shown 25 to 50 percent relapse rates.

They also badmouth prescription drugs, as they don't have licenses to prescribe drugs.

Meanwhile, those quacks who can prescribe drugs tell a different story:

According to Nutt, few psychotherapy trials meet the requirements demanded of drug tests, and even those that do frequently show that psychotherapy performs no better -- and often worse -- than pharmacological interventions. What is more, he points out, many psychotherapy trials do not even consider the possibility that their treatment could harm. Yet all therapists should be aware that therapy can have adverse effects on some patients and a major part of psychotherapy training is how to deal with issues such as counter-transference that can mediate these negative effects.

I am not sure about the drugs, but I do agree that the psychologist study is not scientific if it does not even recognize the possibility of a treatment doing harm.

New childrearing book

A new book, NurtureShock, offers scientific evidence on child rearing, reviewed here:

Frequent and oft-undeserved rewards in the form of praise, the authors caution, deprive a child of motivation and discourage persistence. “It’s a neuro­biological fact,” they write, pointing to studies of M.R.I. scans and trained rodents. True, but far from new. Albeit without the sci-techy benefit of brain imaging, in 1964, “Children: The Challenge,” a popular manual of the day, warned, “Praise, as a means of encouragement, must be used very cautiously.” It can be “dangerous” if a child sees praise as a reward and “could easily lead to discouragement,” the author, Rudolf Dreikurs, noted.

People probably had more common sense in 1964. It is since then that there had been a big fad to overpraise kids for everything.

The review goes on:

One of the most valuable chapters looks at how white parents deal with race. For those who think it best to describe Caucasians as “pinkish white” and blacks as “brown skinned” (raise your hands, Upper West Siders), recent research delivers a strong rebuke. Pretending race doesn’t exist leaves young children to form their own — often racist — opinions.

This is funny. Brainwash your kids, or they might figure things out for themselves.

How soccer gets it wrong

Soccer fan David Post writes:

in a good healthy weekend’s dose of soccer-watching (say, 3 or 4 games), you will see, guaranteed, anywhere from a half-dozen to twenty incorrect offside calls. Not “possibly wrong” or “arguably wrong,” or “judgment-call wrong” — just wrong, plain and simple, as shown on the slow-motion replays. A study published in Nature several years ago confirmed what every soccer fan knows – the linesmen get a lot (around 20%) of the offside calls wrong. ...

And the really extraordinary thing is: it’s not going to get fixed anytime soon, or ever. Nobody is proposing video replay for offside calls, and soccer fans would revolt around the world if they did. Not that we like all these mistakes, exactly — we yell and scream and moan about lousy offside calls all the time. But in a very strange way that I only vaguely understand, that’s kind of the point, and it makes us love the game even more than we otherwise would. It’s just a part of the game, ...

This, I realize, is simply inconceivable to most American sports fans. The whole point of having referees is to “get it right” – it seems obvious — and so we’ll do whatever it takes ...

It is not just that the soccer referees are incompetent or crooked. The soccer rules are so silly that they invite bad calls. It is almost as if the game were designed to make it easy for a referee to throw a game.

My simple explanation is that soccer is a Third World sport with Third World rules. Non-Americans don't seem to have the concepts of fair play and victory to the better team.

Several months ago someone pointed me to a video of a recent championship soccer match that he said was one of the most excited games played in many years. But not only was the outcome of the game determined by a series of very bad referee calls, but the outcome was a 1-1 tie! According to the rules, the visiting team was to be declared the winner on a tie score.

Zero is even

Volokh has a poll on the evenness of zero. Over half his readers get it wrong. I am becoming convinced that most people do not understand that zero is a number. Situations requiring the most trivial understanding of zero seem very difficult for many people.

Free will is not an illusion after all

NewScientist mag reports:

Champions of free will, take heart. A landmark 1980s experiment that purported to show free will doesn't exist is being challenged.

In 1983, neuroscientist Benjamin Libet asked volunteers wearing scalp electrodes to flex a finger or wrist. When they did, the movements were preceded by a dip in the signals being recorded, called the "readiness potential". Libet interpreted this RP as the brain preparing for movement.

Crucially, the RP came a few tenths of a second before the volunteers said they had decided to move. Libet concluded that unconscious neural processesMovie Camera determine our actions before we are ever aware of making a decision.

Since then, others have quoted the experiment as evidence that free will is an illusion – a conclusion that was always controversial, particularly as there is no proof the RP represents a decision to move.

Long sceptical of Libet's interpretation, Jeff Miller and Judy Trevena of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, attempted to tease apart what prompts the RP using a similar experiment, with a key twist.

I have long been skeptical about that experiment also, because it does not seem to say anything about free will. Now these new experiments disprove the no-free-will interpretation.

Don't expect the determinists to give up easily, tho:

Marcel Brass of Ghent University in Belgium says it is wrong to use Miller and Trevena's results to reinterpret Libet's experiment, in which volunteers were not prompted to make a decision. The audio tone "changes the paradigm", so the two can't be compared, he says.

Be wary of the paradigm-shifting mindreaders.

The Man's Book

I am reading The Man's Book: The Essential Guide for the Modern Man. It is written by a European physicist. It is very retro and and most of it reads as if it could have been written a century ago. Much of it is archaic or trivial, but there is also some old-fashioned common sense.

Here is some of its best advice:

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. [P. G. Wodehouse in The Man Upstairs]

He has a point. The book also has this quote:

People who wish to analyze nature without using mathematics must settle for a reduced understanding. [Richard Feynman]

That is correct. Some things cannot be explained to an innumerate.

The evils of conditional parenting

The NY Times reports:

In effect, we’re given tips in conditional parenting, which comes in two flavors: turn up the affection when they’re good, withhold affection when they’re not.

Thus, the talk show host Phil McGraw tells us in his book “Family First” (Free Press, 2004) that what children need or enjoy should be offered contingently, turned into rewards to be doled out or withheld so they “behave according to your wishes.” And “one of the most powerful currencies for a child,” he adds, “is the parents’ acceptance and approval.”

Likewise, Jo Frost of “Supernanny,” in her book of the same name (Hyperion, 2005), says, “The best rewards are attention, praise and love,” and these should be held back “when the child behaves badly until she says she is sorry,” at which point the love is turned back on.

Dr. Phil and the Supernanny don't have any research to back them up. They just have their opinions, and they are sure dogmatic about them. It turns out that research by Avi Assor, Guy Roth, and Edward L. Deci proves them wrong:

This July, the same researchers, now joined by two of Dr. Deci’s colleagues at the University of Rochester, published two replications and extensions of the 2004 study. This time the subjects were ninth graders, and this time giving more approval when children did what parents wanted was carefully distinguished from giving less when they did not.

The studies found that both positive and negative conditional parenting were harmful, but in slightly different ways. The positive kind sometimes succeeded in getting children to work harder on academic tasks, but at the cost of unhealthy feelings of “internal compulsion.” Negative conditional parenting didn’t even work in the short run; it just increased the teenagers’ negative feelings about their parents.

What these and other studies tell us, if we’re able to hear the news, is that praising children for doing something right isn’t a meaningful alternative to pulling back or punishing when they do something wrong. Both are examples of conditional parenting, and both are counterproductive.

I don't expect this to change many opinions. People like Dr. Phil are especially impervious to the evidence.

White girl is racist for not dating blacks

A Sacramento women writes:

Q: Some friends had been talking up this guy they thought would be perfect for me, so I finally went on a blind date with him. It turns out he's black, and while I am NOT racist and have no problem with interracial dating in general, I just prefer to date white guys.

I told my friends why I wouldn't be seeing him again, and they were horrified. Did I miss something here? I know interracial dating is more prevalent than it used to be, but I didn't realize it was SO common that you get in trouble if you don't want to do it.

Wash. Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax also chews her out for being a racist. This dame has to date all races indiscriminately, or else she will be called a racist.

The real racists are her so-called friends who played this prank on her. They could have more fully described her date, but they chose not to, and chose instead to try to impose their values on her personal life. She does not need friends like that.

Brits fear boy might scare fish

A UK newspaper reports:

Security guards reduced a nine-year-old boy to tears after banning him from sailing his toy boat on a pond because it 'frightens the fish'.

Noah Bailey was distraught after staff at Chiswick Business Park, in west London, stopped him playing with his model of the German battleship Bismarck.

His grandfather Paul Fabricius, 57, said that when they went to complain about the draconian rule the guard refused to tell him the name of the manager for 'security reasons'.

The Brits seem to be a little ahead of us when it comes to advancing paranoia.

Meanwhile, the satirical site The Onion reports that Scientists Discover Portal To Outside World.

No sex tests in sports

Why do we have separate athletic competitions for women, but no standards to assure that only women compete?

When Caster Semenya won a big 800m race, everyone said that she was obviously a man. Now the tests confirm that. Not a hermaphroditism as some have reported, but a man with testes and no ovaries. He looks and talks like a man. See this blog for detailed info.

The Olympics have very strict drug tests and other eligibility tests, but no sex tests. Apparently it is politically incorrect to have rules that make transexuals and intersexuals feel awkward. I think that they are going to feel awkward anyway.

Now some people are saying that Semenya will be allowed to compete as a woman if he has his testes removed and enrolls in some sort of sex-change medical program.

This is crazy. The male hormones and steroids have already made him stronger and faster. The sports authorities should just allow geniune women in the women's events, and do some standardized test to prove it.

The news reports:

South Africa's sports minister says there will be a "third world war" if 800-metre world champion athlete Caster Semenya is barred from competing, after media reports that the gold medallist is a hermaphrodite.

No, a hermaphrodite would have male and female organs. Semenya only has male organs.

Here is a science site:

Experts say Semenya should be allowed to race as a woman and they cringe at how her case is exploding publicly in the news media. They worry about psychological scars. Two years ago, a star female track athlete who tested male attempted suicide.

Psychological scars? Since when does anyone care about anybody else's psychological scars?

Dr. Louis Elsas, chairman of biochemistry at the University of Miami and a member of the IAAF panel with Genel, said he had hoped the genetic gender testing issue was over after the 1996 Olympics, when most major sports abandoned regular testing.

No, abolishing testing did not solve the problem.

Scouts cannot have knives

And other news.

Newsweek mag says kids as young as 6 months judge others based on skin color.

British men cannot have guns, and now British boy scouts can
no longer bring penknives on camping trips.

Swedish taxpayers have to fund feminist porn.

Murder conviction overturned

The San Jose paper reports:

Rena Alspaw was only 16 when she pulled out a stolen pistol along an isolated wooded trail and shot her ex-boyfriend four times — three to the body and one to the back of the head.

After a brief trial in 1994, the San Jose teen was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 30 years to life.

Now, fifteen years later, a judge has taken the rare step of voiding that guilty verdict, opening up the possibility that the girlish-looking 31-year-old killer with long auburn hair could be retried — or even freed — on the grounds that she was a battered woman.

What makes this case so unusual is that Alspaw isn't a classic battered woman. She didn't live with the man she killed, and he didn't physically abuse her, except for handcuffing her once against her will. But there's evidence he harassed her, including calling the police on her for no reason and broadcasting insults about her over a loudspeaker. His violent past, and the threat of violence are what Alspaw contends made her a battered woman.

Her case is getting a second look thanks to a 2002 state law that allows certain convictions to be overturned because jurors didn't get a chance to take into account substantial evidence of the role of battering.

No, she was not physically abused. Her complaint is that the jury was not told that her victim had served time for killing cats!

But most compelling might be Swanson's substantial record of animal cruelty.

"All you need," said Kelly, Alspaw's lawyer, "are animal lovers on the jury."

This is crazy. She confessed to a cold-blooded premeditated murder of her boyfriend. Are cat lovers going to excuse this because he was a cat-killer? If so, I would favor keeping all the cat lovers off the jury.

Woman says women are the biggest cheats

A UK newspaper columnist cites studies that women cheat more than men, and writes:

Why do women lie? Because we must, and because we can. In spite of apparent equality and a more sexually open society, we are still more harshly judged for our sex lives than men. ...

But we also lie naturally and instinctively, as a way to manage and control our relationships, to protect our partners and our families, and to keep our options open.

In fact, we lie so much and for so many reasons that often we don't even think of it as lying at all, but as 'relationship management'.

Women are taught to lie from childhood. Those simple, altruistic lies such as saying we've had a lovely time when we haven't, that someone looks nice when she doesn't, or that we're delighted with a gift we don't really like, are just some of the small ways that lying oils the wheels of our social lives, keeps the peace, and makes other people happy.

Girls will lie to protect someone's feelings or to build a relationship. Honesty, in these circumstances, looks highly overrated, and we quickly learn the value and power of being economical with the truth in relationships.

A commenter there writes:

Plainly, someone doesn't understand statistics! Take it to the extreme, suppose all women in Britain are celibate except 13. All men in Britain have sex with each of these 13 women. Then the average for men would be 13 and the average for women would be almost zero.

Just beacause the reported averages differ doesn't necessarily indicate that men or women are lying.

No, the average for men and women will be exactly the same in that example. And those 13 sluts are likely to lie about it.

Being smart really is sexy

The UK Telegraph newspaper reports:

Psychologists have found that men with the highest IQ also have the healthiest sperm. ...

The research, by the evolutionary psychologist Professor Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico, centred around a study of 400 Vietnam War veterans who were put through extensive mental tests and were also asked to provide sperm samples. ...

Professor Miller, who is speaking at a conference of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour at Oxford University, believes that sperm quality was directly related to brain quality.

The two traits could have evolved together as a way to advertise good genes, he said.

He believes a number of human traits – including language, intelligence, humour and selflessness – may have evolved because they are attractive to the opposite sex.

Maybe they are all just correlated with good health.

Meanwhile, an Australian newspaper reports:

High school students allegedly filmed sex acts while believing that the Large Hadron Collider was about to end the world.

At least three teenagers from a Brisbane state high school are being investigated by police for allegedly filming sex acts on a mobile phone and distributing it to other students, the Courier-Mail reports. ...

It is understood the girl wanted to lose her virginity to the boy - believing that the world was about to end.

I am guessing that the boy has a high IQ. More than the girl's, anyway.

The new Philips ipod

I got a Philips GoGear Aria 16GB portable MP3 player. It has a 2-inch screen for pictures and videos, and is much nicer than the ipods made by Apple. Much cheaper also.

It is much easier to use than an Apple ipod because you can just plug it into a computer and it looks like a disc drive. You can just copy your music on, unplug it, and play it. No need to use Apple iTunes or anything like that. It can use MSC or MTP mode.

The one odd thing about it is the behavior of one of its buttons. The player has seven buttons in front, and the one in the middle is used for Select, Play, and Pause. It must be operated with a very brief tap. A slow press does nothing. I thought that the button was defective, so I called Philips tech support, and the guy advised me to return the product. He was not aware of the problem. So I got another one, and it works the same way.

Now that I know that the button works this way, it is not really a problem. I tested the player on two friends of mine, and one of them thought that the button was defective. I don't know whether the Philips engineers intended this behavior or not. I think that they should either change the firmware or put some warnings in the manual, or else they will get a lot of returns. On most devices with a Pause button, you can press Pause as slowly as you wish. And even on this Philips player, a slow Pause works just fine to pause watching a movie.

I am posting this to notify others that the Philips ipod is not really defective, but it just requires a quick tap on the Select/Play/Pause button. It might save someone else from returning it.

Railroading Barry Bonds

Yet another court has ruled that the feds have broken the legal rules in their attempts to prosecute baseball star Barry Bonds.

I have trouble seeing the point. Maybe Bonds took advantage of some ambiguity in the baseball rules to hit a few more home runs that he would have otherwise. The feds have harassed Bonds for five years with a weak case, blackmailed witnesses, and conducted illegal searches. Even if Bonds is somehow guilty of something, I don't see how his conduct could be any worse than that of the feds.

The great sex ratio reversal

Anthropologist Peter Frost writes:

Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a reversal took place in the ratio of single men to single women among people of reproductive age. This sex ratio slipped from male scarcity to parity and then to a relative excess of males, due to a decline in male mortality and an increase in divorce and remarriage by older men with younger women (Pedersen, 1991). The imbalance seems to have steadily worsened. In Germany, single men now outnumber single women up to the age of 60 (Glowsky, 2007). ...

Indeed, over the past thirty years the new marriage market has failed to deliver its presumed benefits. Divorce rates have gone up, not down—because more women are filing for divorce. Illegitimacy has gone up, not down—because more women are voluntarily having children out of wedlock. And more women are postponing marriage or rejecting it altogether. True, men are participating more in family life, but this has not offset the overall withdrawal from family life by women. And true, the birth rate has gone up in the last few years, but for the rest of the past thirty years it was trending downward. The current boomlet probably has other causes.

These negative outcomes could have been predicted. ...

So what is the optimal sex ratio? If we wish to have a society with no double standard, i.e., equal limitations on male and female sexual freedom, the optimum would be parity at all reproductive ages. This is something we have not had for thirty years now, and it would take an act of political will to bring it back. We would have to scrap no-fault divorce and make joint custody the norm. We would also have to lower the sex ratio at birth, probably through incentives for the birth of daughters.

It could be done and probably will be. The question is how bad things will get before action is finally taken.

The Boy Who Heard Too Much

I had no idea a blind kid with a telephone and an attitude could cause so much trouble. Read the Matthew Weigman story.

Why lawyers are hated

A lawyer wonders:

A recent Gallup poll on public opinion towards various professions has the legal field once again near the bottom: Only 25% of people polled had a positive view of lawyers.

His readers provide a long list of reasons, including:

A short list of reasons why lawyers are hated:

1) Layers are a symbol of inequity. O.J. gets away with murder because he can hire a team of $400/hr lawyers. Warren Buffet is in a lower tax bracket than me because people like him can hire legions of lawyers to convince the legislature and the courts that capital transactions should be taxed at a lower rate.

2) Aside from economists, lawyers are the most arrogant group of people. I hate being in meetings with lawyers. You can't get anything done.

3) You can't trust a lawyer, ever. They will screw you over if it suits them.

4) You have to hire a lawyer to protect yourself from other lawyers.

5) Lawyers claim to revere the law, and they do. Right up until it suits them not to revere the law. John Yoo and his defenders are a good example of this.

6) Lawyers will argue on behalf of anyone or on behalf of any cause as long as you pay them. If I had enough money I could change the law with a team of talented lawyers. This is not hyperbole.

A lot of other good reasons are posted as well. I am not sure that these reasons quite explain the contempt that many people have for lawyers. Some people regard lawyers as immoral and destructive in most of what they do.

Unamerican Hawaiians

AP reports:

HONOLULU — Protesters will march the streets and Hawaiian chants will echo from the sprawling lawn of Iolani Palace on Hawaii's 50th anniversary of statehood, as high-minded panelists ponder the islands' future at a daylong conference.

While lacking much in the way of public parties or parades, Hawaii's official statehood day festivities will feature entertainment by local musicians and panel discussions emphasizing tourism's future, alternative energy and Native Hawaiian rights.

About 1,000 demonstrators who would rather see Hawaii's independence restored are expected to rally outside the conference at the Hawaii Convention Center.

"We want to show how U.S. imperialism has spread across the Pacific and across the world," said Lynette Cruz, an organizer of the Hawaiian Independence Action Alliance. "It'll be fun."

Maybe it would be better if Pres. Obama were born in Kenya or Indonesia. The folks who immigrate here from Kenya are happy to become Americans. I don't know what is the matter with these Hawaiians.

Pres. Obama even supports the Akaka Bill, a truly insidious bill to reinstate the Kingdom of Hawai'i and create some sort of racist apartheid state.

Fewer male teachers are in K-12 classrooms

The Chicago Tribune reports:

For two years Chezare Warren taught math at a middle school on Chicago's South Side, weathering the kind of situations that keeps so many men from pursuing teaching careers at elementary and secondary schools.

There were the usual jokes from friends about his low pay and cushy workday. There were the awkward moments with women who sometimes belittled his profession. There was the occasional whisper or suspicious glance from parents who questioned why a young man would choose to spend so much time with children.

Soon, we will no longer have men teaching elementary school. The schools are being feminized.

AP distorts health care plan facts

AP claims to educate us:

FACT CHECK: Health overhaul myths taking root

WASHINGTON—The judgment is harsh in a new poll that finds Americans worried about the government taking over health insurance, cutting off treatment to the elderly and giving coverage to illegal immigrants. Harsh, but not based on facts. ...

THE POLL: 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly; 50 percent said it's not likely. ...

THE POLL: 55 percent expect the overhaul will give coverage to illegal immigrants; 34 percent don't. ...

THE POLL: 54 percent said the overhaul will lead to a government takeover of health care; 39 percent disagree. ...

THE POLL: 50 percent expect taxpayer dollars will be used to pay for abortions; 37 percent don't.

Here is a similar CNN article.

I am with the public on this. The vast majority of those promoting the Obama plan want to give free treatment to illegal aliens in emergency rooms, pay for abortions, ration medical care to the elderly, and they all regard this plan as just a step towards a govt takeover of health care.

If the plan proponents really want to dispel these myths, then they should add features that are directly counter to them. Eg, they could immediately pass a law saying that hospitals do not have to treat illegal aliens.

She Sues for Two Broken Fingers

Here is a NY lawsuit:

On July 12, 2003, Lisa Nutley sought to celebrate her birthday with the thrill of her life - a recreational parachute jump. ...

the main parachute failed to deploy ... Rohemo was able to free up the back-up chute, he and Lisa floated down to safety and no one died that day.

Whew, what a thrill. Maybe Lisa should've paid extra for the additional thrill. Instead, because her third and fourth fingers were fractured during the fall, she lawyered up and sued SkyDive claiming that Rohemo - her savior - had wrongfully told her to hold tight to a dangerous area of the parachute he was trying to cut away and then never told her to let go at an appropriate time. This, she and her lawyer claimed, presented Lisa with an enhanced risk not assumed or inherent in a tandem jump.

I like her name: Lisa Nutley. Most people would have been happy to survive with only two broken fingers.

Newspaper libels innocent banker

It would be nice if the newspapers were to treat citizens as being innocent until proven guilty. But they don't, even after acquittal. Consider today's Si Valley newspaper story:

Prosecutors could also try to cut a deal with Reyes, as they did in another high-profile Silicon Valley prosecution involving Frank Quattrone, the powerhouse investment banker who went through two trials and an appeal before the government abandoned its obstruction of justice case against him. The Quattrone case was unrelated to backdating.

This implies that Quattrone pled guilty to a lesser crime. But he never admitted wrongdoing, and he was never found guilty of anything. This newspaper knows this -- they probably published 200 stories about him during his trials, and nearly all suggested that he was some sort of criminal. I hope that he demands a correction.

Meanwhile, the same paper says:

Digital music sales catching up to CDs

With digital music sales increasing 15 percent to 20 percent a year — and CD sales dropping at an equal pace — purchasing tunes on discs is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Next year will be a tipping point, said Russ Crupnick, NPD vice president of entertainment industry analysis. "It will be a dead heat" between digital and CD sales, he said.

The speed with which digital sales have grown — they made up just 20 percent of music sales two years ago — have many people assuming CDs died long ago.

No, all music CDs contains digital music. Every CD sale is a digital music sale.

Framed predator gets life sentence

Wired mag reports:

It’s official. There’s nobody in the chat rooms but pedophiles and undercover police.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of an Indiana man whose online efforts to proposition underage girls led him to not one, not two, but three undercover cops, none of whom apparently knew about the others. ...

Despite the prosecutorial missteps, the panel upheld Daniel’s conviction, ruling that the additional chat logs still showed his intent to commit a crime. Daniel is serving a sentence of 17-and-a-half years in prison, followed by supervised release for life.

There’s no evidence in the record that he ever succeeded in talking with a real underage girl.

I am all for locking up child predators, but there was no child involved, and no child. The prosecutors argued in court that there were children in the online chats, but they were just just entrapping cops. I think that these long sentences should be reserved for those who cause real harm to real people.

Health food nuts for Obama

ABC News reports:

Joshua has been taking the bus to his local Whole Foods in New York City every five days for the past two years. This week, he said he'll go elsewhere to fulfill his fresh vegetable and organic produce needs.

"I will never shop there again," vowed Joshua, a 45-year-old blogger, who asked that his last name not be published.

Like many of his fellow health food fanatics, Joshua said he will no longer patronize the store after learning about Whole Foods Market Inc.'s CEO John Mackey's views on health care reform, which were made public this week in an op-ed piece he wrote for The Wall Street Journal.

Michael Lent, another Whole Foods enthusiast in Long Beach, Calif., told ABCNews.com that he, too, will turn to other organic groceries for his weekly shopping list.

"I'm boycotting [Whole Foods] because all Americans need health care," said Lent, 33, who used to visit his local Whole Foods "several times a week."

This is funny. Pres. Obama appeals to socialists and Whole Foods appeals to folks who are paranoid about food. There appears to be a large overlap.

Update: The Wash Post reports on the boycott:

But that is part of what made Whole Foods the "primo hangout of liberal Democratic yuppies," as one call to action on MySpace put it -- and exactly the reason that many say they feel duped.

"Dear Store Manager," a member of the Boycott Whole Foods Facebook group wrote, "The 30 risotto cakes that I purchased from Jenkintown Whole Foods, last Friday, were scrumptious. But today they are giving me indigestion of the soul as I realize that my money may have funded the demise of the public option in the nation's health care reform legislative debate."

Something is going on here. It is as if some part of the brain is subject to food delusions, and that same brain part also has delusions about govt functions. This needs more research. We need to understand this mental illness.

Media lends credence to birthers

The leftist group Media Matters writes:

Glenn Beck recently told his version of President Barack Obama's life story. Obama's parents met "while taking a Russian language class ... at the height of the Cold War." His father figure was Frank Marshall Davis, a man who "happened to be a communist." In college, ...

It's all connected. The leaders of the conservative movement feeding those protests have a simple message, encapsulated by Beck's monologue: President Obama isn't one of us. He wasn't raised with American traditions or values, and he doesn't believe in the American principals of free market capitalism, respect for life and liberty, and love of country.

I think he means American principles.

Pres. Obama campaigned on the slogan of CHANGE. Much of the support for Obama came from people who were hoping that he would abandon some of our bedrock American principles.

The stories about Obama's past came from his own (probably ghostwritten) autobiography. That book was the biggest thing in favor of Obama, in the view of many of his supporters. It seems just as fair to oppose Obama for these things, as to support Obama for these things.

Hillary's insecurity

I would have thought that Hillary Clinton would have gotten over the fact that her husband got her where she is today. Apparently not. She continues to disrespect her husband.

Shrink is a monster

The National Enquirer reports:

"Dr. Phil is a monster!" Those are the angry words of a former patient of Dr. Phil McGraw, who is revealing the shocking story of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the TV shrink!

Sara Morrison is speaking out in a world-exclusive ENQUIRER interview - divulging sickening details ...

Sara was a college sophomore home for the summer when she sought treatment from Dr. Phil in Wichita Falls, Texas, in 1984.

"I suffered from low self-esteem, ..."

So she has just now figured out that she has had 25 years of low self-esteem? I would probably have low self-esteem if I ever took Dr. Phil's TV advice seriously.

It might be a good thing if Dr. Phil has to devote some energy explaining the ridiculousness of such charges.

Pedestrian helmets

News from Denmark:

Intense promotion of walking helmets for pedestrians has begun. This logic has been sorely missed. These two organisations have happily promoted bike helmets but pedestrians suffer just as many head injuries, if not more.

This Danish campaign poster reads:

"A walking helmet is a good helmet"
"Traffic safety isn't just for cyclists. The pedestrians of Denmark actually have a higher risk of head injury. The Danish Road Safety Council recommends walking helmets for pedestrians and other good folk in high risk groups."

The slogan is catchy in Danish since it kind of rhymes. All in all it's a brilliant project. Let's save some lives.

The new walking helmets will be available in the Danish Cyclists Union's [Dansk cyklist forbund] shop. Although, as the Danish Cyclists' Union, the Road Safety Council and Trygfonden have been quick to point out:

"A bike helmet is a fine substitute for walking helmets, so there's no need to take it off when you get off your bike. Keep it on throughout the day for maximum safety."

I don't think that this is a joke, but I am not sure. I would think that automobile drivers would benefit the most from helmets. Maybe they are next.

Whether gays are born that way

It is common for politicians and others to say that gays are born that way, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a bigot who does not accept the science. It is illuminating to read what the experts say.

The American Psychological Association (APA) writes:

What causes a person to have a particular sexual orientation?

There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.

It goes on to say that there is no known therapy for changing sexual orientation that has been proven safe and effective, but does not say that it is impossible or that there is evidence that it is impossible.

The APA has just endorsed a stronger statement, as the NY Times reports:

The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments. ...

No solid evidence exists that such change is likely, says the resolution, adopted by a 125-to-4 vote. ... Instead of seeking such change, the association urged therapists to consider multiple options, which could include celibacy and switching churches, for helping clients live spiritually rewarding lives in instances where their sexual orientation and religious faith conflict.

Switching churches? Some silly shrink is going to try to tell you what church to attend? The report does not explain how well that works.

The report does not go so far as to say that sexual orientation is immutable. It says that certain therapies are likely to fail, but most psychological therapies to change behavior fail anyway.

When someone expects me to have an answer to these questions, I point out that there are experts who have devoted their lives to them, and they do not have an answer, so how could I have answer? Any opinion you get from me or anyone else is just an opinion, as no one has proved that any answer is correct.

Do not use sunscreen

Millions of U.S. children have disturbingly low Vitamin D levels, possibly increasing their risk for bone problems, heart disease, diabetes and other ailments, according to two new studies that provide the first national assessment of the crucial nutrient in young Americans. ...

Low Vitamin D levels are especially common among girls, adolescents and people with darker skin, ...

The researchers and others blamed the low levels on a combination of factors, including children spending more time watching television and playing video games instead of going outside, covering up and using sunscreen when they do go outdoors, and drinking more soda and other beverages instead of consuming milk and other foods fortified with Vitamin D.

Sex without a condom is good for you

A Scottish newspapers reports on some politically correct research:

Mr Brody based his conclusions on a study of the sexual behaviour of 99 women and 111 men in Portugal. They filled in questionnaires about the pleasure they derived from their sex lives and contraception use.

Using a measure of psychological health developed in Canada, Mr Brody concluded that condom use was associated with members of the sample who exhibited problems dealing with stress.

Those that had unprotected sex appeared to be able to deal with stress in a more mature way by taking effective action. They also had better mental health.

I wouldn't necessary make any big decisions on what the Scots say about Canadian measures of Portuguese mental health, but I am glad someone is studying the matter.

In sickness and in health

The NY Times reports:

New research shows that when married people become single again, whether by divorce or a spouse’s death, they experience much more than an emotional loss. Often they suffer a decline in physical health from which they never fully recover, even if they remarry. ...

None of this suggests that spouses should stay in a bad marriage for the sake of health. Marital troubles can lead to physical ones, too.

Then what use is this report?

There are a lot of studies showing that marriage is correlated with good health. But does divorce cause bad health, or does bad health cause divorce?

If divorce causes bad health, as these researchers are claiming, then health is indeed a reason to stay married. But maybe this study is just a reflection of people dumping their sick spouses.

Women are also falsely accused

I posted below a fishy story about a man being charged with sex abuse. The accusation seemed improbable and unfounded to me. This is a big problem for men who volunteer for youth activities. Now here is a story about what seems to be a phony charge against a woman:

Nicole Howell, 26, was a first-year English teacher finishing up a lesson on Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," when she was pulled out of her Dayton High School classroom in December and told she was being suspended for having sex with a student.

"I thought it was preposterous," she said.

It got worse. Howell was arrested for first-degree sexual abuse less than a month later and faces a trial in the fall. Her teaching certificate is in jeopardy and she's had to move back home with her parents.

All for an affair that she says not only never happened, but one that there is no evidence of other than the ramblings of a high school kid who at first claimed the two were involved in a threesome with another male student. ...

Howell said the beginning of her first year as a teacher was going well until early December when she started hearing rumors in the hallway.

"There were a couple of students snickering about a teacher involved in a threesome," she said. ...

Howell said she was told that both boys denied any sexual contact with her to the principal. Other rumors that followed, including that the accuser's father drove his son to her apartment for sex, was also disproved, Howell said.

But on Dec. 15 when she was suspended, Howell said the principal told her that the accuser, who had been threatened with possible expulsion for lying about such a serious allegation, had recanted his denial and was accusing Howell of having sex with him.

She will have to prove her innocence, but in court in the press, against the flaky anonymous charges.

I don't have all the facts here, but I think that the principal, prosecutor, and newspaper should ignore such an implausible and unsubstantiated story unless there is some rock-solid evidence of something really harmful. And there is not.

Reason for private schools

The Half Sigma blog writes:

As I explained earlier in this chapter, one of the primary benefits of private school is that they pass on upper class values to their students. This is why it’s important that the teachers come from the right social background. Private schools attract teachers from upper class backgrounds, and job applicants from the wrong background are screened out during the hiring process. Public school teachers, on the other hand, may even come from working class backgrounds, and these teachers will definitely be teaching your children the wrong values!

I think that this explains most of the motivation for private schools. People like to say that they are paying for private school in order to get a better academic education. But I have seen people pay a lot of money when there is a much better and cheaper academic alternative.

Forced racial school bussing was never just for more equal academics. It was to impart upper and middle class white values on lower class black kids.

Dubious accusation of acting inappropriately

The San Jose paper reports:

A former South Bay youth soccer coach with a long and lauded history in the sport faces charges he molested an 11-year-old child while volunteering as a locker room attendant during a recent FC Gold Pride women's professional soccer game.

Thomas Anderson, 75, of San Jose, who is scheduled to enter a plea in the case Monday, is charged with eight felony counts of a lewd or lascivious act on a child younger than 14, police said.

While at a Gold Pride soccer game July 19 at Santa Clara University's Buck Shaw Stadium, two witnesses reported seeing Anderson acting inappropriately with a child, police said. ... Gold Pride officials ... said he brought the victim to the game with him. ...

His arrest is the latest in a string of high-profile cases in the local athletic scene. ...

"I am in disbelief," said Bob O'Connor, treasurer of the West Valley Youth Soccer League, which Anderson founded decades ago. O'Connor regularly saw Anderson at Gold Pride soccer and Earthquake soccer events, where O'Connor also volunteered. "He was a good friend, we shared a lot of soccer interests so I am in absolute shock over this." ...

O'Connor described Anderson as a friendly, outgoing sort, admired by both children and adults. O'Connor said he never saw any hint of inappropriate behavior toward children. "He was very nonthreatening, he was funny and quite a character, they liked him." ...

Anderson was arrested Friday and arraigned on Wednesday. If convicted, he faces 22 years in prison.

My guess is that a lot of men will refuse to volunteer for youth activities after reading a few stories like this. A false accusation is just too easy, too common, and too dangerous.

I am all in favor of jailing child molesters, but this story seems very improbable to me. The man is 75 years old. He has spent his whole life coaching and assisting youth sports, and everyone praised his work. He brought the kid to the game.

If he is really a child molester, how is it that no one ever suspected anything before? If he wanted to molest the kid, why wouldn't he do it before or after the game when no one was watching?

And what did he do? The accusation is that he was "acting inappropriately". People have widely different opinions about what is inappropriate. It appears that the man and the child were fully clothed. He may have just given the kid a hug, and some bystander disapproved.

The man's life is ruined whether he is innocent or guilty. The newspaper named him in a prominent page 1B story, and allows his accusers to remain anonymous. It does not even detail the accusations. It is impossible for him to defend himself.

I believe that the man should be considered innocent until proven guilty. The accusers in this case could have just notified the child's parents. This smells like a witch-hunt.

Domestic violence against women only

I had assumed that the domestic violence laws were formally sex-neutral, but here is Calif Health and Safety Code sect. 124250:

(1) "Domestic violence" means the infliction or threat of physical harm against past or present adult or adolescent female intimate partners, and shall include physical, sexual, and psychological abuse against the woman, and is a part of a pattern of assaultive, coercive, and controlling behaviors directed at achieving compliance from or control over, that woman. ...

(e) In implementing the grant program pursuant to this section, the State Department of Public Health shall consult with an advisory council ... The membership of the council shall consist of domestic violence advocates, battered women service providers, and representatives of women's organizations, law enforcement, and other groups involved with domestic violence, and at least one representative of service providers serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community for purposes of domestic violence.

Now I am wondering whether this council really has any "domestic violence advocates" on it. It seems to me that a domestic violence advocate is someone who advocates domestic violence. That might balance out some of the others on this council!

Organic food no healthier

A London UK paper reports:

Organic produce is no better for health than conventional food, the Government's Food Standards Agency announced today.

Their report, after a 12-month study based on 50 years of research, says the benefits of chemical-free vegetables, fruit and meat have been overstated.

No surprise here.

NPR hates making money

I often listen to NPR Science Friday for socialist science podcasts, but last week's show on a cell phone microscope was particularly offensive. The guest was a professor who was teaching students how to invent devices that are suitable for diagnosing infectious diseases in Third World countries. At one point (about half-way at 3:30) the host said:

It is amazing it is a student project. You are not worried that they are going to drop out of school and go get rich, are you?

This was such a bizarrely leftist thing to say. The university is training people to have money-making careers. If one of them successfully goes into business saving millions of people from tuberculosis, why would anyone worry that he might make some money in the process? That is not a worry, that is a good thing. The student would only make money by bring medical services to poor people who would not get help otherwise. The more money he makes, the more lives he will have saved.

Tom Wolfe on NASA

Author Tom Wolfe writes:

“Why not send robots?” is a common refrain. And once more it is the late Wernher von Braun who comes up with the rejoinder. One of the things he most enjoyed saying was that there is no computerized explorer in the world with more than a tiny fraction of the power of a chemical analog computer known as the human brain, which is easily reproduced by unskilled labor.

What a silly thing to say! Von Braun died 32 years ago, and robot technology has advanced a lot since then.

Wolfe goes on:

What NASA needs now is the power of the Word. On Darwin’s tongue, the Word created a revolutionary and now well-nigh universal conception of the nature of human beings, or, rather, human beasts. On Freud’s tongue, the Word means that at this very moment there are probably several million orgasms occurring that would not have occurred had Freud never lived. Even the fact that he is proved to be a quack has not diminished the power of his Word.

Now I am really lost. NASA needs to mimic a quack who somehow inspired female orgasms? Tell me that this article is some sort of joke.

HBO is the gay network

Hollywood reports:

Four nets were rated "good," led by HBO with 42% representation of LGBT characters, a 16% increase from last year. Virtually all non-sports original HBO series included LGBT content, with shows such as "True Blood" and "The No. 1 Lades Detective Agency" lauded for featuring "complex and authentic LGBT characters from diverse backgrounds."

Also singled out in the report is ABC's drama "Brothers & Sisters," which features three regular gay characters, as well as the network's "Grey's Anatomy," which has a bisexual woman among the leads.

Overall, "GLAAD analysts found that ABC consistently offers the most fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the five broadcast networks," the survey said.

The worst network, according to this gay lobby, had only 5% LGBT depiction. Only about 2% of the population is LGBT, or as some call it, LGBTQI.

Google wants court to give it all the old books

A Google lobbyist Jonathan Hillel writes in a Si Valley paper op-ed:

Furthermore, the claim that Google will have exclusive access to orphan works is unfounded. The settlement gives Google a nonexclusive license. New entrants can enter the market at will. Even if the only way to license these works is to settle another class-action lawsuit, the $45 million precedent makes litigation inevitable.

No, they cannot enter at will. A new entrant will get sued, and might have to pay a $45M settlement.

The court must consider whether the rights of orphan work authors will be fairly represented under the settlement. Consumer benefit, not pressure from the Justice Department, should guide the court's decision.

This guy does not even make any sense. Does he want the court to consider the rights of orphan work authors, or consumer benefit? They are directly at odds.

Copyright law is broken, but it won't be fixed by some judge granting Google a monopoly on orphan works.

The attack on good food

Ellen Goodman writes:

A more personal measure is David Kessler's bestseller, "The End of Overeating," which is both a thinking person's diet book and an investigation into an industry that wants us to eat more. The former head of the FDA had crusaded against smoking, but found himself helpless before a chocolate chip cookie. So this yo-yo dieter set out to discover what exactly we're up against.

Kessler is a scientist, not a conspiracy theorist. But he writes about how the food industry has learned to produce "hyperpalatable combinations of sugar, fat and salt" that not only appeal to us but "have the capacity to rewire our brains, driving us to seek out more and more of those products."

No, David Kessler is not a scientist. Physician, lawyer, and administrator, but not a scientist.

I am happy that food makers are selling food that tastes good. If it is hyperpalatable, so much the better.

Taller men earn more

A UK paper reports on an Australian study:

An extra couple of inches can add nearly £500 a year to a man's salary – a pay rise equivalent to an extra 12 months' experience.

A 6ft tall man can expect 1.5 per cent more than a workmate who is 5ft 10 ins. However, female workers would need an advantage of 4 ins to get a similar boost in earnings over colleagues. ...

He said that while size could be an advantage in some jobs like a taller shop assistant being able to reach a top shelf without a ladder, or a slimmer construction worker being able to move around the building site more rapidly.

But he felt that the most likely explanation was down to feelings that taller people commanded more respect and discrimination against short people.

"Perhaps this has to do with status – having greater respect for taller people might be inadvertently leading to higher wages," he said.

"Or perhaps it is because of discrimination, with shorter people getting the same treatment in the labour market as women and minorities have experienced in the past."

The study also found fat people no longer earn less than their skinnier colleagues – possibly because so many people are now overweight.

There are other explanations besides discrimination.

He said that taller boys may be more confident as height affects things like participating in clubs and athletics, and those confidence-boosting activities as a youth lead to earning power as an adult.

Yes, that is a possibility. It is also possible that taller men are healthier and smarter.

Kids may not be getting fatter

The WSJ says Maybe Children Aren’t Getting Fatter.

I don't know, but the new US Surgeon General Regina Benjamin wears a size 18 dress, and "fat teenager" now has a whole new meaning:

Born and raised in South Carolina, Alexander Draper grew up to reach a dangerous 555 pounds by the age of 14. That's when law enforcement stepped in.

Why are we so fat?

Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic magazine, trying to explain why we are so fat:

Kolbert, reviewing The Fattening of America by Eric Finkelstein and Laurie Zuckerman, notes that food has gotten cheaper relative to the other goods and services. And fatty foods have gotten a lot cheaper. The price of soft drinks, for example, have dropped by more than 20 percent, and they now account for seven percent all calories in the US.

No. Soft drinks are not examples of fatty foods. Soda has no fat at all!

If you do want fattening food, you can now get ratings of fast food in calories per dollar. Seems sensible to me. I wish grocery stores would have that, along with the unit pricing.

Tom Watson saves golf

I think that Tom Watson deliberately muffed that last putt on the 18th hole. If he had sunk that putt, then he would have won the British Open at age 59, and it would forever be difficult for anyone to seriously claim that golf is a sport. How could it be a real sport when an over-the-hill 59-year-old could win a big championship?

Thanks, Tom. You are a hero to golfers everywhere. You proved that you could compete with the best of them, but you were too much of a gentleman to humiliate the whole golfing world. The rest of us can still pretend that golf is a sport.

Rationing health care

Animal rights guru and bioethics prof Peter Singer writes:

The way we regard rationing in health care seems to rest on a similar assumption, that it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives — but is that stance tenable?

He has a long article in the NY Times Magazine in favor of rationing health care, and spends most of it trying to justify applying monetary considerations.

His attitude is so bizarre. Everyone agrees that it is okay to apply monetary considerations to buying food, housing, transportation, or just about anything else, and yet we don't want those things to be rationed.

The presumption seems to be that if the govt subsidizes health insurance somehow, then there will be govt medical gatekeepers that will forbid certain medical procedures even if you pay for them yourself. That is how it works in Canada, and that is apparently in the Obama plan.

I just don't see why health insurance requires rationing. We have insurance for all sorts of other things -- cars, fire, etc. -- and nobody says those are rationed.

But a leftist jewish atheist academic bioethicist tends to have a really warped view of the world. I won't try to summarize his wacky views. Just look at his Wikipedia bio. Based on that, I would not be surprised if he thought that govts have a moral obligation to ration food, housing, cars, and everything else.

Couple loses kid for being uncooperative

A NJ appeals court just ruled:

Defendants V.M. and B.G. are the biological parents of J.M.G., born on April 16, 2006. During her hospitalization in anticipation of J.M.G.'s delivery, V.M. demonstrated combative and erratic behavior including a refusal to consent to a cesarean section (c-section). Despite the medical opinion that the fetus demonstrated signs of distress and that the procedure was necessary to avoid imminent danger to the fetus, the child was born by vaginal delivery without incident.

So the medical opinion turned out to be wrong, and the C-section turned out to be not necessary.

The hospital did not like the mom's attitude, and ordered two psychiatric exams. The authorities ultimately seized the baby and put it in foster care. The parents' rights were terminated.

The court grappled with the issue of whether the mom could be charged with abusing or neglecting the unborn fetus, because she had an absolute constitutional right to kill the fetus under the current abortion law.

There is no allegation that [the baby] was actually harmed by her parents. Rather, the judge's finding was based solely on the imminent danger of harm presented by [the mom's] actions and mental condition. The unique problem here is that much of [the mom's] erratic behavior occurred before [the baby's] birth, while [the mom] was still pregnant.

So the judges disagreed about whether refusing the C-section was child abuse and neglect.

Since the erratic behavior consisted mostly of refusing the C-section, the judges justified their decision on the mom's uncooperative behavior with authorities after the birth. For example, this was alleged:

Caseworker Heather Frommer immediately went to the hospital, interviewed staff and spoke to [the mom and dad]. [They] denied that [the mom] had ever received psychiatric treatment, had ever refused to consent to a c-section or had ever been evaluated by a hospital psychiatrist.

Of course there was no tape recording or any objective evidence that the parents lied to anyone. Nor is there any law requiring a citizen to reveal psychiatric treatment to a CPS caseworker.

Here is another example of the parents' uncooperativeness:

The judge expressed his frustration, observing that he "wanted desperately to reunify this family," but the parents were "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory." He also expressed concern that no psychiatrists would undertake the evaluation if they thought they would be sued, to which [the mom] responded, "[t]hat's your problem." When [the mom] was asked if she would waive her right to sue psychiatrists, she replied, "[n]o way." As a result, the judge ordered that a psychiatrist be appointed who would have the same immunity as the court.

It seems to me that the mom was entirely within her legal rights to reserve her right to sue. Nor does it appear that this imposed any hardship on the court, because the court has the power to immunize the psychiatrist.

The case against the dad is even stranger. He is not accused of erratic behavior, and he had no power to force the mom to consent to a C-section. So instead this contrived argument is given by the court:

Dr. Shnaidman stated that [the dad] was cognitively intact, but that he also suffers from psychosis. She described his diagnosis as "folie à deux," a rare condition in which one person subscribes to the psychoses and paranoid delusions of another. She explained that [the mom and dad] function in a very paranoid and secretive way, with each person's paranoia supporting the other's.

It is not paranoia if the authorities are really out to get them.

The bottom like is that the parents have lost their kid because the authorities did not like their attitude, even tho no one ever showed that they did anything harmful.

Woman fined for barking dogs

An Arizona newspaper reports:

Renee Maurer was sentenced to three years' probation and a $940 fine charge today in Phoenix Municipal Court for allowing her dogs to disturb the peace of her Northeast neighborhood.

Several neighbors filed a petition earlier this year to have Maurer prosecuted in court for her barking Pomeranian and miniature poodle.

Neighbors testified in court on Monday that the dogs have barked constantly for the last three years. ...

Maurer said she was disappointed about the sentencing and her neighbors.

"I feel ostracized in my own community," said Maurer, adding that neighborhood relations will now be "extremely awkward and uncomfortable."

She is just now feeling ostracized? It wasn't the sentencing that made the neighbor relations awkward, it was the barking dogs.

DNA tests are getting easier

A British newspaper reports:

DADS will soon be able to buy DNA paternity test kits over the counter - to prove kids are theirs.

The £30 packs let them take simple swabs which are flown to a lab for analysis.

But medical ethics experts warned that the tests - a regular item on Jeremy Kyle's ITV daytime talk show - could foster a "culture of suspicion" and cause marriages to break up.

Josephine Quintavalle, of campaign group Comment On Reproductive Ethics, added: "The people who might suffer most are children rejected by parents."

No. This test never causes children to be rejected by parents. It only causes rejection by non-parents. It never deters an actual parent.

The test does not foster suspicion, it eliminates suspicion. It is the wife's infidelity that causes the marriages to break up, not the test.

Cat lover claims cat can read human minds

NY Times evolutionary science reporter Nicolas Wade writes:

If scientists are to be challenged on the nature of cats, firmer ground might be the question of whether cats can read human minds.

People have an ability, called “theory of mind” by psychologists, to infer what is going on in the minds of other people. Psychologists doubt whether any other species possess this ability, at least to the same degree. Baboons, for instance, are very intelligent primates yet seem to have only a weak theory of mind. A mother baboon may ford a crocodile-infested river, leaving her infant crying on the other side and being apparently unable to infer the reason for the infant’s distress.

But a cat of my acquaintance seems to be very adept at reading minds, at least those belonging to people. When he needs to be let back into the house, he jumps up onto the ledge outside the kitchen window, waiting for people to notice him and open the door. If ignored, he will grab the mesh of the storm window in his claws and rattle it impatiently to gain attention, having clearly read people’s disinclination to get up and open the door for him yet again.

This is so ridiculous that I cannot tell whether he is joking or not. Nevertheless, cat lovers and others say stuff like this all the time, so I am responding to it.

This is no evidence of mindreading at all. There is a much simpler explanation. The lean theory is that the cat has simply learned, by trial and error, that rattling the storm window opens the door. The cat may not be aware that humans even have anything to do with it.

We need some research on why humans subscribe to such mindreading theories.

Superman and Batman arrested in NY

The New York Post newspaper reports:

Their comic-book adventure went awry when cops approached the dynamic duo on 43rd Street to see whether they had the required license to perform in costume in public, Frisoli said.

When they said no, cops asked for IDs. Again, they answered no, which prompted cops to handcuff Batman.

That's when Superman took off, screaming, "I'm not getting arrested."

But a crowd of police took him down and brought him to a special Fortress of Solitude -- the Midtown South station house.

I had no idea that NY now requires a license to be Batman.

No free speech for divorced dads

Law prof Volokh writes:

"Father Shall Not Use Profanity or Racial Epithets in the Boys' Presence or Within Their Earshot"

That's from a Delaware Family Court order that came out in 2002, JJ.W. B. v. K.A. B., 2002 WL 31454072 (Del. Fam. Ct.), but that I just came across. If the father used such words in violation of the court order, he would be subject to criminal prosecution for contempt (though practically speaking it seems likelier that the court would further reduce his visitation time with the children).

I am appalled that some lawyers there argue that married parents and single parents have free speech rights, but divorced parents with joint custody have no such rights.

There is no good cause for any judge to tell a parent what opinions he can express to his own kids. Period. Unless the parent is objectively causing some serious harm to the kids, the court should butt out.

One commenter suggests requiring that "a prenup in which all the terms are hashed out and agreed in advance.

At one time, the marriage contract was a way of publicly and legally acknowledging the rights and responsibilities of parenthood. But no more. Family courts now decide custody citing only the Best Interest Of The Child (BIOTCH), regardless of any marriage or prenup. About 40% of American births today are to single moms. It is about 25% for whites, 50% for Mexicans, and 75% for blacks.

There is just no possibility that anyone is going to sign a prenup restricting free speech rights years into the future, and no possibility that any court would pay attention to it, and no possibility that any such rule or practice would have any impact on American child-rearing.

Marriage and marriage law in the USA is not what it was just a few years ago. Most people do not seem to realize or accept this. Even most lawyers don't.

Work of the Devil

Florida news:

The sign reads “Islam is of the Devil” and was placed Sunday in the church’s front lawn. It was vandalized and torn down that evening but was re-erected on Monday, said Terry Jones, the pastor at the church. ...

Jones said Islam’s growing popularity in the United States needs to be addressed because Christians are not standing up for what they believe in.

“To be a Christian, you would have to agree with that sign,” Jones said.

He said the sign is not meant to attack individuals but to attack the religion of Islam because it is oppressive and violent. ...

Ismail ibn Ali, president of Islam on Campus at UF, said in an e-mail that he hopes non-Muslims who read the sign will Google “Islam” and see what the religion is about before making judgments.

I hope they do. They will find that some religions are better than others.

Fat in the South

Time magazine reports:

People from Mississippi are fat. With an adult obesity rate of 33%, Mississippi has gobbled its way to the "chubbiest state" crown for the fifth year in a row, according to a new joint report by Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Alabama, West Virginia and Tennessee aren't far behind, with obesity rates over 30%. In fact, eight of the 10 fattest states are in the South. The region famous for its biscuits, barbecue and pecan pies has been struggling with its weight for years - but then again, so has the rest of the country. ...

Maybe it's the culture. Southerners definitely enjoy their fried chicken (not to mention fried steak, fried onions, fried green tomatoes, fried pickles and fried corn bread). Even when their food isn't fried, they like to smother it in gravy. But while nutritionists frequently blame Southerners' large guts on their regional food choices, the accusation is a little unfair. Just as Californians don't actually live on wheat grass and tofu, Southerners don't really sit around eating fried chicken every day.

News to me. I eat fried chicken in California myself. It is not any more fattening than anything else. The article goes on:

To combat this affliction, some Southern states have adopted programs to fight rising obesity. In 2003, Arkansas passed a school body mass index–screening program that assesses weight and sends the results home to parents. Tennessee encourages its schools to buy fresh ingredients from local growers. And in 2007, Mississippi adopted nutritional standards for school lunches. Most of these programs are relatively new, so it will be a few years before experts can determine their efficacy.

Those measures will not cause anyone to lose weight.

Lawsuit over definition

AP reports:

BOSTON (AP) — Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage, sued the U.S. government Wednesday over a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The federal Defense of Marriage Act interferes with the right of Massachusetts to define and regulate marriage as it sees fit, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said. ...

Besides Massachusetts, five other states — Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Iowa — have legalized gay marriage. ... The lawsuit focuses on the section of the law that creates a federal definition of marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife."

This story is one big contradiction. If Massachusetts had really legalized gay marriage, then it would not be suing. It is suing because it failed to legalize gay marriage.

Those other states did not really legalize gay marriage either, because federal law supersedes state law.

New stem cell policy

The NY Times reports:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration released final rules governing stem cell research on Monday that will allow many older stem cell lines to be eligible for federally financed research. ...

The rules still forbid financing of research using stem cell lines from embryos created solely for research.

This differs from Pres. Bush's 2001 policy in that Bush allowed federal funding of research using all existing stem cell lines at the time.

There is a difference. Apparently some of the Bush-approved stem cell lines were made from embryos that were created for the purpose, and they will not be allowed under the Obama policy. Obama will allow many others.

I don't have any opinion about which policy is better, I just don't think that one policy is any more pro-science than the other. The two policies just draw an ethical line slightly differently. The practical consequences may be negligible.

In case you are waiting for medical labs to regenerate organs from stem cells for you, that is a long way off. Just look at how many bald people are around. We will have regenerated hair implants long before we get more complicated organs.

Remembering Michael Jackson

Dean Tong writes:

Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, is dead. The multiple child sexual abuse allegations Jacko endured over a decade from 1993 – 2003 are dead, forever. His music lives, forever. This column hones in on the abuse allegations Jackson faced; allegations that sullied his reputation and character, and allegations he both settled out of court and defeated in front of a jury of his peers at trial. ... Unfortunately, for most or all men who are unjustly accused of child molestation, twice, the maxim “where there’s smoke there’s fire wins out.” You are guilty by mere association and someone out there still thinks you did it even after being exonerated.

Jacko was a weirdo, but not a child molester. I followed his trial, and I was convinced that he was completely innocent of the charges against him. So was the jury. In America, we believe citizens are innocent until proven guilty.

So enjoy his music and dancing, and remember him for the good things that he did.

Two Cops Make Out in Patrol Car

Glenn Sacks writes:

Police Chief Tim Escola and Officer Janine England of Perry Township, Ohio took a trip in a police cruiser to pick up a prisoner in Cincinnati. ... The car had a video camera mounted on the dashboard that recorded them kissing and caressing each other. That's a violation of department policy and when an anonymous report was made about the pair, Escola abruptly retired in lieu of departmental discipline. Pursuant to the investigation into the tip, the video was made public.

The department announced that England would not face any form of discipline for her part in the incident which appears on the video to have been entirely consensual. Strangely enough, Law Director Charles Hall said, in explaining why England would not be disciplined, "I don't think I can reprimand her for a department violation, when he's there and engaging in the same activity."

To which some of us respond, "Huh?" If they're engaging in "the same activity," and that activity violates departmental policy, it would seem they should both be disciplined. What am I not getting?

Maybe it's this: Prior to her job at Perry, England was a peace officer with Montville Township. She resigned that job and sued Montville for sexual harrassment and racial discrimination, a suit she later dropped. Hmm. I wonder what events led up to her resignation and claim of harrassment. Could it have been sexual activity with another officer? Just a wild guess. Could it be that Perry Township is just trying to avoid a similar lawsuit? Again, just a wild guess on my part.

I think that I get the pattern. The woman seduces a co-worker, and then sues for sexual harassment. I wonder how many times she has gotten away with it.

Ruling good for cable companies, not viewers

Forbes reports:

The ruling looks like a clear victory for subscribers of cable services, long frustrated by awkward set-top box technology and perpetually rising subscription fees.

No, it is only a clear victory for the cable TV companies. This decision allows the cable companies to sell extra services, and charge more money. I would rather have a set-top box with a hard disc, and save programs there. I shouldn't have to pay monthly fees to view what I have already recorded.