Bid, Bid, Bid!

This is such fun! The Center for New Words is hosting an auction on eBay. You can win wonderful things: Katha Pollitt to edit your manuscript, an original comic strip by Alison Bechdel or a meeting with Laura Flanders! The purpose is a good one and the bidding should be fun. Here are more details:

If you've ever wanted to get writing advice from KATHA POLLITT, have your fortune told by MICHELLE TEA, or boast DOROTHY ALLISON's voice on your outgoing voicemail message, the Center for New Words Online Celebrity Auction is for you! Bid on these items and more at eBay, starting December 1. These one-of-a-kind experiences are all up for bid in an online fundraiser benefiting the Center for New Words: Where Women's Words Matter. More than 40 items are on offer, including the chance to have coffee and and hear family stories from TIFFANY SEDARIS (sister of DAVID SEDARIS), dinner for 6 at UPSTAIRS ON THE SQUARE, including dessert and wine with co-owners Mary-Catherine Deibel and Deborah Hughes, an in-home cheese class for 10 with WHOLE FOODS cheese monger EDWARD HUMBLE, the chance to watch LAURA FLANDERS' Air America broadcast & meet her afterwards, original comic strip art by ALISON BECHDEL, two pieces of original Chinese calligraphy art by ANCHEE MIN, and many more. The charity auction features both national figures and local favorites such as poet RAQUEL SEIDEL, who is offering bellydancing lessons, and GRAND OPENING Sexuality Boutique founder and proprietix KIM AIRS, who will personally guide one lucky bidder through a $100 shopping spree. Bidding starts Wednesday, December 1st at 11AM EST on eBay, the World's Online Marketplace®. New items will go live throughout the day and evening. The auction will end on December 7th. Interested bidders should visit the Center for New Words homepage, which will link directly to the auction. Alternatively, bidders can go directly to the auction page hosted by eBay.

Being Judged on Merit Alone

This is probably very unfair, but the impetus for this post came from something on Kos, specifically his discussion about how he has selected his new guest bloggers:

I also refused to take sex, race, or creed into consideration. Each writer was chosen on their merits. I am sensitive to the lack of female voices on the front page, but given the surprising diversity of the front-page voices at this site over the past two+ years, I don't feel the need to apologize.

What Kos is saying is that the women posters weren't good enough to be on his front page in any large numbers. This may be true. But there are at least two problems with the "merit" argument in this context: First, how do we even know the sex, race or creed of posters on the internet? And second, how do we define merit so that it has absolutely nothing to do with such characteristics as sex or race?

The first of these arguments may not be valid if Kos has met all the guest bloggers he considered in person, but it is important otherwise. Now, I tell you that I'm a goddess, and that makes most people assume that I'm a woman. But you don't know whether that's true or not. I might be a teenage boy blogging in my mother's basement with my baseball hat backwards, chugging down a few beers while perusing porn sites. Or I might be a mouth-breather. Or I might be a real goddess, of course. There's no way of knowing for sure.

So in general when we talk about the possible sex or race of a poster we are relying on the cues the poster gives us, and then this information is combined with our preconceptions about gender or race in our minds. The result is not necessarily one which allows for some neutral judging of merit. I sort of regret that I didn't call this blog Brawny Bob for Christ. It would have been interesting to see how I would have fared under that moniker.

The second point about judging merit is more generally valid. Wingnuts always tell us that they go by pure merit when they exclude women and blacks from various high posts, and anything that wingnuts use should make us a little bit worried. For what is pure merit and how do we recognize it?

It's hard to do. That's why there are always books about long-forgotten geniuses and their work which is now forgotten or misattributed. Merit always needs self-promotion and advertizing, and it helps to know how the system works. The meek and the humble will not get pushed to the top, but often what gets pushed to the top is not very meritorious. In other words, our very devices for discerning merit are imperfect, and some of the imperfections tend to have biases against women. Women are traditionally expected not to blow their own horn and women are also less likely to know the tricks of self-promotion, because self-promotion is seen as ambitious and not womanly.

Some studies have shown that women publish less academic research partly because they put more quality into each publication. This is not good for self-promotion as the rules of the game are to swamp the market with little bits cut off from one bigger research project, not to actually tell all the results in one go. Women suffer from another of the measures that is being used to gauge quality: being referenced by ones colleagues, if men are less likely to reference women's work. Can you find parallels for these in the blogosphere?

Virginia Valian's book Why So Slow has a chapter on how we evaluate women and men, and many of the studies she quotes show how the gender of the person to be evaluated seems to be inextricably linked with the merit we award them, and this goes for both male and female evaluators. Of special interest is the 1975 study which sent ten fictitious resume summaries of potential job applicants to 147 heads of psychology departments who were then asked to rank the applicants. The researchers used four female and six male names for the applicants and the names were rotated so that the same resume was sometimes described as belonging to a woman, sometimes described as belonging to a man. The results of the study showed that a male applicant was ranked higher than a female applicant with the same qualifications.

Times may have changed in this respect, or maybe they have not. Just to be on the safe side, I'd be careful about how we use the term "merit". It's alluring to believe that each of us can use it safely; after all we are not bigots! But it's not that easy: Some time ago I used to spar with a guy who weighs about 340 pounds(and yes, we did look very funny sparring). This guy, whom we called Tiny Tim, could almost circle my waist with the fingers of one hand, and his general appearance was that of a steamroller.

I always knew that he was a painter by trade, so when I needed some work done at the Snakepit Inc. I asked him to come and give me a quote. He looked at me in an odd way and pointed out that he paints landscapes and portraits, not walls.

Nationwide Voting Errors

This from the Boston Globe:

More than 4,000 votes vanished without a trace into a computer's overloaded memory in one North Carolina county, and about a hundred paper ballots were thrown out by mistake in another. In Texas, a county needed help from a laboratory in Canada to unlock the memory of a touch-screen machine and unearth five dozen votes.
In other places, machine undercounting or overcounting of votes was a problem. Several thousand votes were mistakenly double-counted in North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska, and Washington state. Some votes in other areas were at first credited to the wrong candidates, with one Indiana county, by some quirk, misallocating several hundred votes for Democrats to Libertarians. In Florida, some machines temporarily indicated votes intended for challenger John F. Kerry were for President Bush, and vice versa.
In the month since the election, serious instances of voting machine problems or human errors in ballot counts have been documented in at least a dozen states, each involving from scores of ballots to as many as 12,000 votes, as in a North Carolina county. On Election Day, or in later reconciling tallies of ballots and voters, local officials discovered problems and corrected final counts. In some cases, the changes altered the outcomes of local races. But in North Carolina, the problems were so serious that the state may hold a rare second vote, redoing a contest for state agriculture commissioner decided by fewer votes than the number of ballots lost.

And so on, all stuff that people who read blogs have known about for some time. Still, this is a mainstream newspaper report, and the first one which gives a little credence to the worries that us tinfoilhatters have expressed for a while. Though just a little credence, there are serious warnings embedded in the story about why none of this matters at all. For example:

In addition, minor presidential candidates requested recounts in four states -- a partial one completed yesterday in New Hampshire, and statewide in Ohio, New Mexico, and Nevada.
None of the recounts or inquiries is expected to affect the results of the presidential election, which Bush won by more than 3.3 million votes.
Those who believe that either or both of the past two presidential elections were manipulated by a vague conspiracy to elect Bush have done statistical analyses of voting patterns in Florida and argued that the voting discrepancies were much larger and systemic, but their studies have not stood up to scrutiny from academics and other analysts.

How does the writer "know" that the results of recounts wouldn't overturn the election? What inner knowledge does he have that allows him to predict the outcome this clearly? I suspect that he has no such knowledge; he simply assumes that 3.3 million votes can't all be lemmings.

Also, it's interesting how academic studies are pitted against each other and a conclusion is drawn that some of them beat the others without anything like a link to prove this conclusion. I have followed those studies and their criticisms pretty carefully, and though some have been shown to have other explanations (such as the Dixiecrat phenomenom in Northern Florida), others have not been debunked. It's pretty easy to present some criticism of any study in a way which makes the criticism appear valid to someone who doesn't understand the techniques applied, and most of the criticisms of, say, the Berkeley study don't in fact debunk it at all, if by debunking we mean that the study can now be safely ignored.


Anyway, the article gives a pretty good summary of many of the oddities in the recent U.S. elections, together with a map which shows the states with most errors. Not surprisingly, these tend to be the swing states that got the most attention. The reason is probably that people have been more alert in those states for anything that might be an error. Of course, it could also be the case that those states had more errors to begin with.

What Would Bush's Jesus Do?

This seems to be what the powers-that-be at CBS and NBC are musing over, at least if the information given by the United Church of Christ is correct. According to them:

A liberal church claims CBS and NBC have refused to run its ad promoting the acceptance of people regardless of sexual orientation, because the networks believe the ad is too controversial.
According to a United Church of Christ statement, the ad says that the church seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.
"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples...and the fact that the executive branch has recently proposed a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast," the church quoted CBS as saying.

You can view the ad at www.stillspeaking.com. It shows:

two muscle-bound bouncers standing outside a church, selecting people who could attend service and those who could not. Written text then appears saying, in part, "Jesus didn't turn people away, neither do we."

Chuck Currie alerted me about this new expression of possible self-censure in the media. You can read more about the events on his blog. But if the above description is correct, CBS and NBC have decided to consult only that image of Jesus which fits in Bush's brain. Never mind the message in the Gospels or the faith of many other Americans. With self-censure like this, who needs to worry about government-applied censure?

Woe is Al

Al the Pacifist Python has gone on a hunger strike. He's very upset about the rumors that napalm has been used in Fallujah, and he remembers the previous time that napalm was used in an American war.

He's curled up in a corner and he won't eat anything. All he does is keen, and I'm going crazy with worry and pain. He wants me to write about the napalm and what it does to the skin of the victims and how the surviving victims will go on suffering and suffering and suffering. But I can't write about that in any other way except by telling you about Al's self-torture; I don't have enough information to write about it. And it's all too horrible to contemplate, even if it turns out to be untrue in this specific instance.

Canadian Crowds Greeting George Bush

President Bush has to go abroad to get some appreciative crowds. The Canadians know how to do the nonviolent protest thing with some style. Thirteen thousand gathered to tell Bush off:

Well, actually hell broke loose in a very controlled, polite, Canadian kind of way, according to the Toronto Globe Mail, which reported the protest " was a mostly peaceful, almost festival-like day of bongo drumming and whistle blowing. It ended with a candlelight vigil that transformed Parliament Hill into a small sea of twinkling lights…The vast majority of marchers were upbeat in their disdain for Bush."

I like the idea of being upbeat in ones disdain for Bush. We should try to emulate that and, dare I even suggest, even the Canadian use of the streets for peaceful protests. Though it's true that a million on the streets of Washington D.C. goes almost unreported if that million doesn't consist of patriarchal Promise Keepers but of pro-choice women's right protesters. Maybe we should go to Canada to protest Bush's policies? That way there might be more coverage of the protests.

The Democratic Party as an Abused Spouse

Mathew Gross recently posted some thoughts by Mel Gilles, an advocate of domestic violence victims, on the similarities between a dysfunctional family and the current U.S. politics. For example:

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, "Why did they beat me?"
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.
They will tell you, every single day.
The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

The lefty blogosphere appears to agree that Gilles has a point, that something can be learned by viewing the Republican-Democrat interactions by using the framework of domestic violence. In particular, the wimpiness of establisment Democratic politicians fits neatly into the model, and the whole comparison presses some deeper emotional alarm buttons in many of us. How many of us have not complained about the way the Republicans compare our questions or protests to treason or terrorism? How many of us have not noticed how aggression from the Right is just but aggression from the Left is vitriolic? And it's hard not to notice that though the post-election speech of the wingnuts has been about cooperation their actual deeds have been deeply divisive.

But there are some very clear differences between the situation of an abused spouse and the political situation of the Democratic party, and perhaps taking the analogy too far is insulting to the real survivors of abuse. For one thing, many Democratic politicians are choosing their wimpy responses because they want to be re-elected, because they want to have their cut of the power and money; not because they have been brain-washed into compliance by years of violence. This sounds more like co-conspiring than victimhood. For another thing, liberals and other Democratic voters are not powerless in the same way as a truly oppressed abused spouse is: we have the option of largely ignoring the wingnut rantings and ravings, of turning off from politics altogether. - Still, there is something to the analogy that is helpful in understanding the odd slant of many of the political talk-shows and opinion columns, and I believe that it is the similarity between the utter selfishness of an abuser and the grim determination of the Republican party to remake the world in its own image.

I therefore decided to consult an expert in domestic abuse about what the liberals should do next, given that leaving is really not an option for most of us (though it's interesting that both leaving the country and seceding some parts of it have been semi-seriously discussed by many on the left). After chuckling over my explanation about who the victim of domestic abuse is in this case, she recommended one simple policy of resistance: "Call it as it is. Don't use the abuser's framework for discussing anything. Use your own terms and call everything by the true names. Don't back off." She said compromising and trying to build bridges would be pointless as all such attempts are interpreted as surrender by real abusers.

So Democratic politicians, now you know what to do. And she didn't even charge you for the advice.

How Did He Know?

Brian Williams, set to wear the big shoes of Dan Rather, has this to say about bloggers:

When a fellow panelist mentioned that bloggers had had a big impact on the reporting on Election Day, Williams waved that point away by quipping that the self-styled journalists are "on an equal footing with someone in a bathroom with a modem."

Now how did he know that I mostly blog in the bathtub? Do you think that he's the man on top of that ladder I keep seeing through my second-floor bathroom window whenever I disrobe? Here: have some soap bubbles!
---
Via Kos diaries.

My Anniversary

Warning! This is totally self-centered and can be safely skipped.

My anniversary slipped past me some time during November, the date when I had been blogging for one year exactly. I started the blog with very vague ideas about forcing myself to write something every day as a form of practice. A blog looked like a good compromise between trying to publish my ramblings and hoarding them in cardboard boxes in the basement. Then the blog took a life of its own and now it writes me more than the other way round. I'm not a goddess, of course, but the voice of Echidne is what comes out of my mouth when I blog. She's not really like me at all. I'm a lot glummer for one thing and also more modest. Some days I want to kick her out of the door for good, to be honest.

Blogging is very democratic and a wonderful way to get all kinds of voices out there. But it's also quite chaotic and the lack of rules which makes things exciting also makes them messy. Almost every day I wonder what direction I should take, if any, and when I go out and read other blogs I want to come and erase my own because it seems so silly. There's something quite frightening in letting others see your first drafts, and that's all that my blog is: first drafts.

The blog is no longer my writing practice, or only in a very minor sense. It's interesting because of the comments which are mostly much better than anything I say and which teach me a lot. But it also has a kind of personality which isn't mine or something I intended, and now I sometimes find that the blog doesn't want to talk about something that I find curious and talkworthy. I have no idea what this means or if it's just some sort of a mental aberration on my part.

I promised myself a year ago to decide after one year whether to quit the blog or to continue it, and I'm now going through the process of thinking about that. I love blogging and the community I have met on the many and various internets. But anything that doesn't change dies, so clearly something should be changing here, too. One thing I'd want to do is to spend more time on some bigger pieces so that I have more research and thinking under my belt before I post something. That aim conflicts with the desire to have interesting topics out quickly. And then I'd also want to add sound effects and more pictures and animation! And cartoons! This is crazy.

Anyway, happy anniversary to me. And thank you all for reading here.

Women's United States 2004

The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) has published its ranking of the states based on women's status in five areas (pdf file): political participation, employment and earnings, social and economic autonomy, reproductive rights and health and well-being.

The best overall state for women is Vermont, the worst is Mississippi. Other states that do well are Connecticut, Minnesota, Washington and Oregon. States that do poorly include South Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Florida. But Mississippi is really the hands-down winner of the state where it is pretty crummy to be a woman.

Is it a coincidence that the states that ranked high tended to vote for Kerry and that those which ranked low voted for Bush? Or maybe things like women's status are one of those elite issues that have nothing to do with moral values? Or maybe a low status for women indicates high moral values?

(Map from here)

More States to Be Recounted

The third party candidates David Cobb and Michael Badnarik are seeking recounts in Nevada and New Mexico, too. They are already involved in a recount effort in Ohio.

Why would these guys care about recounting the votes when neither one of them can win? The obvious answer is twofold: first, third party candidates will never thrive if elections are not transparent, given that they have no political power to affect the counting; and second, the free publicity is good for the third parties in general. They might pick up some disgruntled Democrats, for example.

Bananas, in Pajamas...

What do you think of the term "Banana Republic" as a description of the United States? The reason I'm asking is that I came across it twice today in my mindless surfings of the internets. First, Salon argues that our economic policies qualify us for this honorary title:

We're not economists, but none of this sounds very good. Faced with growing deficits, ballooning costs of Social Security, and a fixation on reckless tax cuts, Republicans have apparently devised a new have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too scheme that sounds too smoke and mirrors to be sound fiscal policy. According to the , "Republican budget writers" think they've found a way to cut the deficit and also borrow billions more dollars to overhaul Social Security -- just don't count the billions of additional debt and move them "off-budget."
Democratic senator Kent Conrad calls it "the theater of the absurd, where you spend money, but it doesn't count, you borrow money, but you deny it. Republicans are becoming further and further detached from reality," he told the Post.
" ... Already, there are concerns that foreign creditors in particular are growing tired of the U.S. government's constant need for cash, Conrad said. If lenders are reluctant to finance the president's Social Security plan, interest rates may have to rise sharply to entice them to do so. That could harm the overall economy. 'This is more than political blather,' Conrad said. 'This gets to the markets, and people who are in the markets can add and subtract.'"

Even Paul Krugman, one of my favorite economists (in addition to myself, of course), argues that we have gone all bananas.

Second, the recent presidential elections have made many don their tinfoil helmets (ok, now you are warned) and shout (very quietly) about something not being quite wholesome about the U.S. electoral practises:

The 2004 election has now made it clear for the world to see that the last vestige of American democracy has been destroyed by the criminal cabal: they have put in place a system by which they control election results in all states that use electronic voting equipment. The 2004 election--just like the 2000 and 2002 elections--was STOLEN by the Bush junta! They have seized all power sectors: the executive, legislative, and judicial. America is now a full-fledged Banana Republic.

Seems like the term would fit, doesn't it? But then I realized that I don't actually know where the term "Banana Republic" comes from, except that I assumed it has something to do with bananas, a very benign fruit save for its habit of growing fruit flies in my kitchen.

The story of the "Banana Republic" is fascinating. It has a lot to do with the United Fruit Company and its rule over various Latin American countries:

The capital of the United Fruit Company empire was in Guatemala, in the town of Bananera, where it made its headquarters. From here it master-minded its empire and corrupted every level of government and politics in Guatemala. United Fruit also managed to exempt itself from virtually all taxes for 99 years. UFCO had its fingers in almost every pie in Guatemala. UFCO had the unconditional support of right-wing dictators who maintained their power by terrorizing the people and arresting prominent citizens who were either killed on the spot or tortured in prison to extract confessions. During one wave of repression under Jorge Ubico, hundreds were killed in just two days.

This all happened before 1944 when Guatemala overthrew its then-reigning wingnut dictator. But sadly, the Guatemalans then elected someone the UFCO didn't like at all, so the United States government had to get involved in some politicking on the firm's behalf. Guatemala became a Soviet "satellite" and was returned to the lap of the wingnuts in only ten years:

"It [United Fruit] began with enviable connections to the Eisenhower administration. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his former New York law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, had long represented the company. Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, had served on UFCO's board of trustees. Ed Whitman, the company's top public relations officer, was the husband of Ann Whitman, President Eisenhower's private secretary. (Ed Whitman produced a film, "Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas," that pictured UFCO fighting in the front trenches of the cold war.)

See how the banana motif is everywhere? Of course, it's not very surprising given that I googled for it, but if you were taken by astonishment even for one second I'm truly gleeful! Anyway, what do you think? Can we use the title of a "Banana Republic" here in the Land of the Free and the Brave (who, by the way, are two different groups of people)? Or does it suffice to just talk about the "Banana Republican" party so far?

Who's Doing the Dishes?

Some good news for those of use who would like to see a more equal division of household tasks:

In dual-earner couples--the dominant family form in the United States--men's handling of household chores and child care has increased steadily since 1977, according to the 2003 National Study of the Changing Workforce, published by the Families and Work Institute, based in New York City. This is true of men both on work days and on non-work days.
Moreover, the time women in these couples spend in such tasks has either decreased or stayed the same over this same period.
For example, in 1977 employed fathers in dual-earner couples with children spent, on average, 1.3 hours per workday on household chores compared to 3.7 for employed mothers. By 2002, the comparable figures were two hours per day for fathers and three for mothers. The "gender gap" in hours declined by more than 70 percent, from 2.4 hours per day in 1977 to one hour a day in 2002.
The researchers speculate that if these trends continue, the housework gap will close entirely.
The nurturing gap has also closed considerably.
In 1977, employed fathers in dual-earner couples allocated 1.9 hours per work day to their children compared to 3.3 hours for employed mothers. By 2003--when the comparable figures for dual-earner couples were 2.7 hours for fathers and 3.5 hours for mothers--the gap had narrowed by 57 percent. If these trends continue, the nurturing gap will shrink further.

There's still work to be reallocated, clearly. But hope is in the air! Not only will the children know their dads much better, but the dads can also enjoy their children! And the moms can set aside a little more money for retirement and a little more time for just relaxing.

My problem is that the snakes don't have hands and the dogs break the dishes, so I'm left with all the household chores. Not fair. Not fair at all.

Reading the Tea Leaves

This could be the future of women in the United States, too, though right now it is the current situation of many women in Latin America:

SANTIAGO (WOMENSENEWS)--Monica Maureira remembers how--as the nurses interrogated her and the doctors lectured her--she watched her hands going transparent from the blood loss.
She was 16 years old and was hemorrhaging after having
had a clandestine abortion in Chile, a country
where abortion is illegal and considered immoral.
"I remember the nurses telling me that if I didn't give them the name of the doctor who gave me the abortion, they would let me bleed to death," Maureira says.
She lived to tell her story, but many women don't.
Across Latin America, an estimated 5,000 women die every year as a result of clandestine abortions, according International Planned Parenthood Federation. An estimated 800,000 are hospitalized due to complications, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, based in New York and Washington.
Abortion is prohibited across most of Latin America. Cuba and Puerto Rico are the exceptions. While some countries allow abortion in cases of rape or danger to the mother's life, there are no exceptions in Chile, Colombia and El Salvador. These countries prosecute hundreds of women for having abortions.

Would abortions become rarer in the United States if all abortions were made illegal? There is a theoretical case for that, based on the idea that when something is made harder to obtain fewer people will get it. On the other hand, the statistics from Latin American countries are not reassuring on this count:

"It's mostly poor women who end up going to the hospitals for their complications of an illegal backstreet abortion and some of the doctors or the midwives working in the maternity wards used to report the women to the police right there," says Casas. The maximum penalty is five years in prison.
But despite such legal risks, Latin America continues to experience abortion rates that are much higher than most countries where it is legal.
There are an estimated 4 million abortions every year across the region. Up to 200,000 clandestine abortions take place in Chile every year--twice as many as in Canada, which has 100,000 a year--and Chile has half the population.

We don't know what the Chilean rate would be under legal abortions, of course, and Chile is not like Canada in education or income. But I suspect that an abortion is one of those things which desperate women will go for even when the "price" is made very high. And even when the alternative price is the very real possibility of death.

Read the whole article at Women's Enews. It has some interesting analysis about the role of men in this crisis (it does take two to tango, you know) and about what should be done in the future campaigns of sex education. Maybe the Latin American experts can move here when Roe is overturned and teach us these things, too?

All Is Clear Now

The Miami Herald has gone out and checked the votes in three North Florida counties where registered Democrats voted heavily for Bush. The recount proves that there were no real inaccuracies:

Reporters for the newspaper went over more than 17,000 optical scan ballots cast in three rural counties mentioned by doubters: Suwannee, Lafayette and Union. All three are overwhelmingly Democratic in registration, but chose President Bush.
The Herald said they found minor differences with the official results in each county, most involving a few ballots that had been discarded as unreadable by optical scan machines but which reporters felt made the voters' intent clear. Since there was no official recount, those ballots weren't counted for either candidate.
In Union County, where more than 75 percent of voters register as Democrats, The Herald counted 3,393 votes for Bush, 1,272 for Kerry and 15 that couldn't clearly be counted. The official Union County total: 3,396 for Bush, 1,251 for Kerry and a few dozen that couldn't be counted.
''People here are mostly fundamentalist Christians who work in the prisons," said Union County Election Supervisor Babs Montpetit. ''Do you think they're going to vote for the liberal senator from Massachusetts?"

So now we all know that the blogging tinfoil hats can be safely ignored. (Tinfoil hats protect your brain against aliens trying to influence your thoughts...)

The problem is that this stuff is really old news on the net. The countries that the Herald looked at are part of the Dixiecrat area where people register as Democrats but vote for wingnut presidents always. The real questions about Florida elections are not about the Dixiecrat phenomenom (though it was good to check those out, too), but about counties such as Palm Beach, Broward and Miami Dade and the accuracy of the votes there.

It is curious, though, how the so-called liberal media sees its task largely to consist of the debunking of anything that might question the legitimacy of the last elections.

From the Transcript of Meet the Press, November 28, 2004

It's not from the Handmaid's Tale, not quite yet anyway:

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back.
We can try to find common ground, but there are differences, and I want to see just how profound they are. The Southern Baptist Convention in 1998 passed this statement on the family: "...A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband... She...has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household..."
And, Reverend Land, you went on to explain it this way: "If a husband does not want his wife to work outside the home, then she should not work outside the home." Is that your vision of America?
DR. LAND: It's my vision for Christian families. I don't think that the law has anything to do with it. That was a statement about the theological belief of Southern Baptists. And, you know, George Will had a real great answer for that when somebody asked him, "Where'd they get this stuff?" And he pulled out the Bible and turned to Ephesians, chapter five: "He got--we got it from Ephesians, chapter five." We almost needed to footnote the Apostle Paul when he said that "Husbands should love their wives the way Christ loves the church," which means husbands will always put their wives' needs above their own. And they are to be the head of their home, which means that they're responsible. It's a servant leadership role.
And my wife, who you met, has a PhD in marriage and family therapy and has worked outside the home since our youngest child was in kindergarten. That was our mutual choice. We're not against women working outside the home unless the husband believes that it's not the right choice. Now, remember, this is a husband who loves his wife the way Christ loves the church and is going to always put his wife's needs above his own. But I would certainly not want to make that a matter of legislation when you-- that's about marriage. It's about what goes on in a marriage and about what we believe is the ideal for the family.

(Bolds mine.)

You know, I really don't want to write about fundamentalist wingnuts and their unpleasant ideas about women all the time, but they won't shut up for long enough so that I could find something else to blog about. And I'd like to point out, dear Dr. Land, that a cage is still a cage even when it's gilded.

Bipartisanship? Yeah, Right!

There will be no old rules in the new Republican dominated House and Senate. From now on, the institutions will be run to the benefit of the Republican party, not to the benefit of the United States. The aim is to make the Democrats permanently irrelevant, to create a one-party state along the lines of the old Soviet Union. Which just goes to show how all the extremists are really close to each other, whatever their soundbites might suggest. This is how Dennis Hastert plans to achieve this goal:

In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.
Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.
Senators from both parties, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and others have sharply criticized the policy. The long-debated intelligence bill would now be law, they say, if Hastert and his lieutenants had been humble enough to let a high-profile measure pass with most votes coming from the minority party.
That is what Democrats did in 1993, when most House Democrats opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton backed NAFTA, and leaders of the Democratic-controlled House allowed it to come to a vote. The trade pact passed because of heavy GOP support, with 102 Democrats voting for it and 156 voting against. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House GOP leader at the time, declared: "This is a vote for history, larger than politics . . . larger than personal ego."

I'm not sure if NAFTA has been good for the country, but clearly we are not even going to argue about such questions in the future. If it's not good for the "majority of the majority" then it's off the table. The good thing about this is naturally that every future mistake (and there will be many) can be laid on the laps of the majority wingnuts. It's they, and they alone, who will be responsible for the coming theocracy and wild-West market economy, the eternal wars and the death of the environment. But this is not much of a consolation for the rest of us, unless we can think of a way to get off the planet.

Alone!

Parties are fun, but it's very satisfying also to close the door after the last reveler and to collapse on the bed all alone! Though the Snakepit Inc. still looks like a pigsty (with apologies to pigs who are actually very clean animals) and there is absolutely no food left in the house and nary a bottle of nectar everybody had a wonderful time and I was the hostess with the mostest!

Even Athena let her shield down for an hour or two though I think I'd rather not have witnessed that one. And Ares! Ares is hot! And he's no longer into hot-headed rage and blood-letting! I'm not telling you what he might have taken up instead, but it's a lot more interesting.

Aphrodite was her usual self, of course, and Artful Asp tried to strangle her after the strip tease act with one of 'Dite's stockings. But that was really the only even slightly unpleasant moment in the whole party. We all said thanks for that and thanks for still existing and thanks for the few humans who are not bent on the wholesale destruction of the earth just so that they can park one more SUV or to build another temple or mosque on the spot where frogs used to chorus.

Cerberus came to see his poor old mom, and he showed us some glimpses of the future inhabitants of Hades. You'd be very pleased with the list of those who are going to end up in the eternally sizzling Crisco-pot! Cerberus is finally growing up and even his taste in music is improving. I must have done something right! And as every mother knows it's really hard to do something right, even when the child doesn't have a head cold in all the four heads at the same time.

Aphrodite took me shopping as usual (no, we didn't go to porn shops this time), and she gave me a pair of jeans as a thank-you present. She thinks that I should flaunt my butt more. Maybe she's right, but how does one sit in these tight jeans? Typing standing while being bent over like this is really uncomfortable.

On Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

The Southern Baptist church has this interesting website about gender, and I have been mining it recently for enlightening articles about the current state of gender relationships in the United States. It seems that if we only went back to the Biblical roles everything would be just find and dandy. And what exactly are these roles?

J. Lincoln Dugan can tell us. He's the chairman of the board of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. He's also the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi. Here's pastor Dugan's ideas about Biblical Manhood:

If one looks out at the church today and doesn't see that one of the top crying issues in the evangelical church, in America and the western world in general, is the desperate need for virile, manly, godly servant-leader males in the local congregation, they are missing one of the big issues of our times. You cannot cultivate that in a culture of effeminacy in a church, and the minute you cave in on gender issues whether it be female officers, whether it be refusing to address male-female role relationships in the context of marriage, when you refuse to address those issues, you are refusing to address one of the key issues relating to church issues in our time.

"Virile, manly, godly servant-leader males"! This is hot stuff.
And the effeminacy of the church is very disconcerting, too. No doubt the Western civilization is going down the drain because of the lack of attention to the importance of virile and manly servant-leaders.

Pastor Dugan feels very sorry for all those Christians who struggle with the idea of equality between the sexes. He will have none of that modern rubbish; all that is needed is the word of the holy Bible on this question, and everything becomes clear:

It is the ultimate head in the sand approach not to address the issue. . . . If the Bible is unclear on this, then there is nothing that the Bible is clear about. If you can skip over the Bible's clear teaching on this, then you have just undercut yourself in terms of the interpretation of Scripture. The Bible speaks more clearly to this than it does abortion. . . . It is vitally important for a man to face these issues.

What about the Biblical womanhood, then? Well, it's easy to guess that it doesn't involve equality or women in leadership positions, and some women might at first find this a little hard to take. But not to worry! According to pastor Dugan things are not so bad, really:

The first think[sic] is to remind men how many good women out there are just dying for this. If you came to visit me in Jackson, Miss. (which is not known for its cultural progressiveness), your guess would be, in terms of marital male-female issues, that I, as a pastor, would see more issues of male abuse or domination of women. That would have been my guess too and certainly would have been the presupposition of a New York egalitarian. Though I have seen that on rare occasion, nine-to-one the main complaint I get from women who show up in my office to talk about failing or struggling marriages, is that [they say] 'Dr. Duncan, I so desperately want my husband to lead me spiritually, to lead our family, I want a strong spiritual leader. He's not interested.' I tell my men that. They are dying for somebody to shepherd them spiritually. That is an instinct that God has built into every godly woman, even if she doesn't know what that looks like. I think there are women out there who want it even if they don't know what it looks like. But we have not had, for several generations, that kind of male husband/father spiritual leader in the homes, so first of all, I say to the men, 'don't think that every woman is going to reject this. Most women already know that they want this.

Oops! I never realized that I have always secretly pined for a virile, manly servant-leader in the Snakepit Inc.. I thought that having two dogs and twenty snakes boss me was enough for one goddess but I am obviously mistaken. Pastor Dugan tells me so.

He has a lot more to say about the evils of feminism in the second part of the interview. Read it if you'd like to have indigestion today.

Hank Wanted To Be Posted, Too

And Hank... 

Here's Henrietta Plotting and Scheming

Henrietta Asleep 

The Empress of All Dogs

Henrietta 

Happy Henrietta the Hound Day!

This is the anniversary of the day that Henrietta the Hound came to live in the Snakepit, Inc.. She was a rescued dog, and I have no idea how old she is exactly, but based on her teeth at the time I had her first checked at the veterinarian's, she was somewhere between three and four years old then. So she's been ruling the roost here for nearly a decade!

Don't believe those nice people who say that a rescued dog will be the best dog in your life as a rescued dog is eternally grateful for a second chance! Sure, Henrietta saw a second chance in me: a second chance to be the Empress of the whole world, and she ran with it. After fixing a few psychological problems first, like the fear of brooms, water hoses, hockey sticks and hammers, she continued with her master plan of starting a large-scale revolutionary movement against humans, and I can't really blame her for that. Now she's plotting the next stage under the dining table. She's snoring, replete with lots of turkey and stuffing, and looking oh-so-innocent. Don't be fooled by that: she is already scheming the next stage of the revolution. I suspect that this has something do with who is allowed to sleep in my bed, and I fear that I'm not going to be one of those people or dogs.

Progressive Shopping

This is the big consumer day in the United States, the Black Friday when everyone is supposed to go out after gorging yesterday, and to spend money for the good of the American corporations and labor markets. Well, I didn't do that, though I've continued the gorging today (did I mention the chocolate truffle cake yet?). Instead, I've researched the U.S. companies that sell all the stuff we are supposed to buy to be good patriots.

Did you know how many American corporations are wingnuts? An awfully large number. In fact, many of the largest firms donate only to the Republican party. It seems a little sick to support these firms if you are a card-carrying Democrat, especially if alternatives are available.

An interesting website on the political bent of firms is the freenortheast.com. You can go there and find which companies are especially Bush-loving in your state, and perhaps, just perhaps, they'd rather not have your money at all. Think about it. Why would a bleeding-heart liberal pay into the coffers of wingnuttery?

If you wish to know the worst of the worst wingnut firms, click here. Hmmm. It looks like I'll have to change some of my shopping habits from now on.

Added later:

The top-giving corporate political action committees didn't hedge their bets in the fall elections despite the narrow division between the GOP and Democrats in Congress. They favored Republican candidates 10-to-1.

Not the way the votes went, of course. Among the most Republican of these PACs are the following:

The five most Republican-leaning corporate PACs include:
_Cooper Industries PAC: All $208,000 to Republicans. Cooper Industries, based in Houston, makes hardware and electrical and automotive products.
_Flowers Industries PAC: All $131,500 to GOP candidates. Flowers Industries, a bakery company, is based in Thomasville, Ga.
_The PAC of Phillips International, a publishing company based in Potomac, Md.: All $113,500 to Republicans.
_Harris Corp. Federal PAC: $168,500 to Republicans, $4,000 to Democrats. Harris, based in Melbourne, Fla., is an international communications equipment company.
_Illinois Tool Works for Better Government Committee: $139,500 to Republicans, $5,000 to Democrats.

You can check the list for the five most Democratic PACs at the link.

Happy Thanksgiving!

There is still much to be thankful about. I have been blogging for a year now, and I'm very thankful for all the new friends I have gained, for the community of readers and commenters who are so intelligent, perspective and kind! I'm thankful for being alive and thankful for the hope about future which we are not giving up.
I'm thankful for the chocolate truffle cake I have just polished off!

The following is a repost from last year's Thanksgiving post. It is a satire about my house, the Snakepit Inc.

Designing the Absurd

Is life meant to be absurd and design to follow suit? My house is full of examples that suggest this: The door knobs, for example. They are round glass balls. If you wanted to design a door handle that looks as it would work but doesn't, you'd make it a round glass ball. This keeps people housebound if they have wet hands, carry anything bulky or heavy, or suffer from arthritis. The glass also makes the knob impossible to repair when turning it no longer turns the lock.

The sash windows of my house may have been designed by M. Guillotine during his lunch breaks. The upper pane normally doesn't move at all, but when the ropes that support it break, it comes down faster than a guillotine blade. Usually when I am stretching my neck out of the window in order to wash the upper glass from the outside.

These inventions are ancient, but more modern design works hardly better. The shower head in my bathroom is good for quick showers in the morning. It is worthless for anything else, being embedded in the wall. Shower heads should be detachable. Anyone disagreeing with this has never cleaned a bathtub or a large, nervous dog in it. Both jobs need rinsing which needs detachable shower heads. The lack of one forces me to use a large saucepan. As a consequence, I always have dogs with saucepan phobias.

Saucepans are no good for rinsing remote controls, microwave keypads or computer keyboards. Nothing is good for rinsing or cleaning these, although an extended leave of absence from work and a ton of tweezers and toothpicks might make a slight difference. As most people have better things to do with the rest of their lives, such equipment is often sold in colors and textures which look already grimy. That way cleaning doesn't seem necessary until it is far too late.

A case might be made in defense of each of these features I malign. There is no such defense for the American electric sockets, no reason whatsoever for making them look like Edward Munch's The Scream, a painting from hell. This is what stares back from baseboards all over the U.S., normally attached to the wall roughly diagonally. No wonder that mental health problems grow increasingly common. The only place where these sockets should be allowed is in dentists' waiting rooms. But that wouldn't satisfy the laws of absurdity.

Divine Irony?

Sometimes it looks like the supreme powers of this universe do have a sense of humor. Consider this:

The election commission said (Mr. X) won ...with a margin of almost three percentage points.
The commission had already indicated a win for (Mr.X), but exit poll results had put (Mr. Y) ahead.

And this:

The opposition says it has recorded thousands of voting irregularities in the poll, including a near 100% turnout in some pro-government strongholds.
Western election observers have reported mass violations, and world leaders have expressed concern.

It is funny in a very sad way that this is Ukraine, and that Mr. X is the Putin-favored candidate Viktor Yanukovych and not George Bush. The supporters of Mr. Y, Viktor Yushchenko, have gathered in tens of thousands to surround the election commission building in protest. In the United States, on the other hand, eighty percent of people believe that the U.S. elections were legitimate. Yet the situations can be described in almost identical terms. So I believe that we have been given an example of the Highest Divine Humor here.

And the funniest bit of the joke is here (bolded by me for emphasis):

The US and the European Commission had urged Ukraine not to announce the result before reviewing the contentious vote.

Heh.
----
A Post-Script: Here's Colin Powell:

"We cannot accept this result as legitimate, because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse," Powell said.

LOL.

Cute Dog Stories

How I hate the word 'cute'! I don't even know why I hate it, as I don't really mind the concept of cuteness. Well, cute dog stories are just the thing for the day before Thanksgiving. A cute turkey story might stick in your gullet...

This story is extremely cute. It is about a dog who is suckling two kittens, and the writer marvels over her maternity instinct. What I marvel over is why she wants to do this at her age: based on the story she's at least thirteen years old which is very old for dogs. Anyway, maybe you like it.

An even cuter story is one I read many years ago in a dog book. A man had a male Great Dane whom he walked along a riverbank every morning. One morning the river had four little puppies desperately trying to swim. Someone had thought of a quick way of reducing the excess dog population, I assume. The Great Dane jumped in and saved the puppies one by one. The man took them home and the Great Dane tended to them until they were old enough to be adopted.

Now, that is a cute story.

What You Do When You Make a Mistake

This seems to depend on who you are. If you are the Center for Disease Control and Prevention you can publish a study in March and come back in November with:"Oh, by the way, our figures in that March study were wrong because of some statistical glitches. And no, we won't tell you how wrong they were. Bye bye!" Nice work if you can get it.

The specific question was about the number of deaths in the year 2000 that could be attributed to obesity, and the March publication gave them as 4,000. Now it seems that the real number is something less, but how much less? Well, we will be told when the Center for Disease Control and Prevention is ready to do so. What did you think they were? Public servants?

I have noticed a lot of carelessness in some medical studies which analyze diseases where a kind of a societal condemnation plays a role. A 1990's study about the deaths caused by cigarette smoking overestimated such deaths quite wildly and illogically by assuming that every person who smoked and died from diseases such as stroke and heart disease would not have died from these causes if she or he had not smoked.

Nobody thinks it's very serious to err in the direction of 'right results', especially when everybody agrees on the issues to begin with. Well, I think that this is when the researchers should be especially careful with their work. Common bias is still a bias.

An Important Lesson I Learned Today

If you have had only ninety minutes of sleep during the previous night and if the next day is one full of work and meetings and errands and appointments and cleaning and building furniture and blogging, eating ten (very very) small chocolate bars in fast succession will not make you more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It will make you really nauseous.

I guess I got carried away by that finding of chocolate's health benefits.

More on Deliberate Childlessness

R. Albert Mohrer, Jr. is a Godly man of great earthly importance:

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., is one of the leading conservative evangelical figures of our day. His role as a strategic leader among Southern Baptists and in the wider evangelical world has been recognized by such influential periodicals as TIME magazine, Christianity Today and other leading publications. He is a noted author and speaker. In addition to being president of the Southern Baptist Convention's flagship seminary, Mohler has distinguished himself as a denominational statesman by his leading role in the massive restructuring of America's largest Protestant denomination. Dr. Mohler is a frequent guest on nationally televised news programs, including CNN's "Larry King Live", and is quoted frequently in The New York Times, The Washington Post and many other major newspapers. His commentaries appear regularly in Religion News Service and WORLD magazine.

One of the good ole boys, in other words. This radical cleric has recently written an article entitled "Deliberate Childlessness: Moral Rebellion With a New Face". He describes several childless couples, each apparently childless because they prefer to spend money on consumption or are too selfish and lazy to have children. For a taste of this, consider the following example of what drives couples to childlessness:

The Schums just don't want kids to get in the way of their lifestyle. They enjoy cruising to the Georgia mountains on their matching Harley-Davidson motorcycles. They love their gourmet kitchen, outfitted with the very latest stainless steel appliances and trendy countertops. Deb Schum explains, "if we had kids, we would need a table where the kids could do homework." Clearly, children aren't a part of their interior design plan.

Surprisingly, Mr. Mohrer's article doesn't have a single example of deliberately childless people who are childless for unselfish reasons, such as the knowledge that they would make terrible parents because of illness or a dysfunctional family setup or just the understanding that they are not made of the stuff that makes for good parenting. Neither do any of his examples choose to be childless for political reasons: the fear of environmental degradation with an increasing global population size, for example. Nope. Mr. Mohrer's childless people are Bad People.

Most of his article is aimed at Christians, and it includes arguments that the Bible wants everybody to have children:

Christians must recognize that this rebellion against parenthood represents nothing less than an absolute revolt against God's design. The Scripture points to barrenness as a great curse and children as a divine gift. The Psalmist declared: "Behold, children are a gift of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; they will not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate." [Psalm 127: 3-5]

Whatever. Having a "quiver full of children" may have been an excellent thing for a nomadic shepherd two thousand years ago, especially because children were extra hands for jobs and also old-age insurance, but I wonder if his wife (whose opinions are not mentioned in the Bible) was equally happy to fill that quiver.

Anyway, Mr. Mohrer argues that not having children on purpose is a revolt against God's will. If Christians want to accept his argument I'm quite happy to let them do so. But things get a little trickier later in the article when Mr. Mohrer elaborates on his thesis:

The church must help this society regain its sanity on the gift of children. Willful barrenness and chosen childlessness must be named as moral rebellion. To demand that marriage means sex--but not children--is to defraud the creator of His joy and pleasure in seeing the saints raising His children. That is just the way it is. No kidding.

It's not quite clear what "society" means in this context, but I assume that it is the American society, consisting not only of fundamentalist Southern Baptists but of people of many other religions or none. Mr. Mohrer wants all these people to turn into "saints" by taking on the task of bringing up children. His last sentence but one is especially telling: "That is just the way it is."

This is why it's not possible to debate a wingnut. Their minds are fixed and closed before anything has been said.
------
Thanks to Manfred Traven in my comments for the original link.

Waiting to Vote in Ohio

This is something I overlooked yesterday, but it's important enough to talk about even today. Yes, I know that Dan Rather is going to retire, and yes, I know that hunters have been hunted to death and a woman has cut off the arms of her baby daughter. I also know that approximately a billion mothers did not cut off the arms of their children today and that very few hunters were hunted to death. (I'm not downplaying the seriousness of these news; I'm just stressing their rarity.) But large amounts of voters, many of them minorities, had to wait in line to vote all over the country, and some of this waiting could have easily been avoided. This description is from Ohio:

In precinct 55-B on Columbus' near east side, there were 1,338 registered voters and, according to Franklin County Board of Elections estimates, 956 active voters who had voted in the last two federal elections. Despite voter registration being up 17%, and by the BOE's own guidelines the polling place requiring ten machines (one per 100 voters), the polling site had only three machines, one less than for the 2000 elections.
The Election Protection Coalition that visited the voting site between 7:30-8:30 a.m. documented a dozen people leaving the polls, six to go to work and six who were either elderly or handicapped. But things were worse in other areas of Columbus.
In precinct 1-B where there were 1,620 registered voters, a 27% increase in voter registration, the precinct had five voting machines in 2000 and only three in 2004. Where did they go? Out to Republican enclaves like Canal Winchester, where two machines were added since 2000, for a total of five to service 1,255 registered voters? Or were they re-routed to Dublin 2-G where 1,656 registered voters apparently needed six machines, twice the number of Columbus' 1-B?
Nearby in Dublin precinct 3-C, 910 registered voters were allocated four voting machines. No doubt machines were shifted from precincts like Columbus 44-G with 1,620 voters and registration up 25%, which lost one machine from the 2000 elections to 2004.

One would think that there has been ample opportunity to practise running elections in this country, given that we have been having them a while now. This raises the possibility that the cause for the long waits is not in your average bureaucratic incompetence. Whatever the case, this situation is not acceptable and remedies must be demanded.

Your Granny was a Monkey!

According to this CBS poll Americans don't believe in evolution. Fifty-five percent of the respondents believe that "God created humans in present form". Yet the majority (65%) advocate that schools should teach both creationism and evolution, though thirty-seven percent would like the schools to teach only creationism. Higher percentages of those who voted for Bush fancy creationism, although even quite a few Kerry voters (24%) would prefer just creationism taught at schools. Belief in evolution was higher among the more educated and among those who rarely attend religious services.

It's not clear how representative this poll is, but if it is representative of Americans in general, I'd say that those who advocate more science in education are going to be in real trouble. As will all members of the reality-based community.

Mmmm! Chocolate!

There is still some fairness and justice in this world. Not only does chocolate correlate with the enjoyment of other bodily pleasures but it's also good for your health. The most recent medical news suggest that chocolate is better for cough than the usual patent medicines:

Dark chocolate may have health benefits to weigh against fears of tooth decay or putting on weight.
A chemical compound, theobromine, which is found in cocoa, has proved more effective at stopping persistent coughing than codeine.
Tests have so far involved only 10 people and larger studies are needed, according to a team from Imperial College and the Royal Brompton and St Bartholomew's hospitals in London and a Hungarian company. They described their work in an online journal published by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

Usually I'd rave and rant about the legitimacy of a study with ten subjects, but in this case I don't feel any need to do so. Anything that promotes chocolate-eating is a very good thing in my books. Note that the experimental subjects took 50 grams of the medication, but that more might be better! Isn't this wonderful?

The Eternal Law?

I never went to law school, though I was accepted into one. I fell asleep the first day and that was that. This doesn't mean that I wouldn't think law is very important; it is, and I'm very glad that other people also find it great fun.

Now we have three new law schools which stress the religious application of law in the United States. Not the application of law to religion, but the application of religion to law. The idea is to groom a new generation of lawyers who can take on all the favorite issues of the Christian Right: the right to practise religion in public schools and in the public arena in general, the drive to ban abortions for good and so on.

The New York Times describes the newest religion-and-law school in the country:

The class in civil procedure, at the new Liberty School of Law here, began with a prayer.
"The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul," said Prof. Jeffrey C. Tuomala, quoting Psalm 19. "The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple."
But decisions of the United States Supreme Court, Professor Tuomala went on, are not always trustworthy. "Something that is contrary to the law of nature," he said, "cannot be law."
The school, part of Liberty University, whose chancellor is the Rev. Jerry Falwell, is for now a makeshift affair in a vast industrial building that used to be a cellular phone factory. Its students compensate for the surroundings by dressing well - many of the men wore jackets and ties - and by showing attentive enthusiasm, even for a heavy dose of civil procedure at 8 a.m.
The school, which says its mission is to train "ministers of justice," is part of a movement around the nation that means to bring a religious perspective to the law and a moral component to legal practice.
"People are realizing that some of the biggest issues of the day are being decided in the courts - the 2000 presidential election, the question of what is marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, cloning,'' said Jeffrey A. Brauch, the dean of Regent Law School, which was founded in 1986 in Virginia Beach by Pat Robertson, the television evangelist. "And maybe there are eternal principles of justice that will tell us how to approach these questions."

Talk about creating activist lawyers! I find it hard to see how these future lawyers could interpret the law based on the Constitution and so on, if they regard the Biblical messages more central. There's also the additional problem that not all their future clients might be Christians.

Still, the same article also points out why such schools are needed:

The claim that professors at the leading law schools tilt to the left is supported by statistics. According to a forthcoming study of 21 top law schools from 1991 to 2002 by John McGinnis, a law professor at Northwestern University, approximately 80 percent of the professors at those schools who made campaign contributions primarily supported Democrats, while 15 percent primarily supported Republicans.
Peter H. Schuck, a law professor at Yale, where 92 percent of faculty political contributions went to Democrats, said Dean Green was right to question whether religious perspectives are welcomed at mainstream law schools.
"There is a sort of soft tolerance of competing views," Professor Schuck, who described himself as a political moderate, said, "but no real interest in exposing students to seriously developed contrary points of view that proceed from a strong faith-based perspective. Fundamentalism is derided."

This assumes that the professors teach their own political beliefs, of course, which I doubt is the practice in most law schools. They are not known for being bastions of radical lefty values.

I admit that having more ethical people in law would be good as it would be good in most other professions. But there is something madrassa-like in this approach of segregated religion-based education in law. And as a female divinity, I always worry about why the eternal laws are only those that were written up by nomadic patriarchal tribes two thousand years ago.

How to Report Gender Science Results

This is an interesting article. It refers to a 2004 study about how newspapers report on research in gender sciences, in particular, whether the newspapers stress a biological or a cultural/environmental explanation to any findings of behavioral differences:

Two Yale University researchers--Victoria Brescoll and Marianne LaFrance--analyzed articles on sex differences that appeared in 29 large-circulation U. S. newspapers published between January 1994 and February 2001.
After going through all that, they found that the political leanings of newspaper publishers and managers color reporting on sex differences. While conservative newspapers tend to use biology to explain those differences, more liberal newspapers explaining them in terms of socio-cultural effects.
...

The study, published in Psychological Science (Vol. 15, No. 8, August 2004), raises serious questions about how well science journalism serves newspaper readers.
The articles were coded for the type of explanation provided for sex differences and also for the degree to which the newspaper was conservative or liberal and the degree to which the newspaper articulated traditional sex role beliefs throughout its pages.
Brescoll and LaFrance also ran experiments to see if articles proposing biological explanations for sex differences would help foster gender stereotypes. Not surprisingly, the answer was yes. When faced with press coverage that favors biological explanations, guess what, readers' gender stereotypes are indeed reinforced.

This is one my fields of interest, and I have been following the reporting of studies, as well as the studies themselves, for quite a long time. The authors of the study are correct in their findings: most popularizations of scientific findings are terrible and appeal to our stereotypes and prejudices, whatever they happen to be. But mostly they actually appeal to those views that would maintain the status quo. There is a pretty strong bias towards explaining all results about gender differences as inborn. I would be a rich goddess if I had been given a dollar every time I read a headline stating that :"Girls are different! And it's in our genes!" Or one about why women can't read maps (it has something do with the map reading brave prehistoric warriors had to engage in while the women were watching the prehistoric equivalent of today's daytime soaps in some cosy cave).

There are the opposite popularizations, too, of course. But they are nowhere near as common. I can only remember two items in the last ten years which actually argued for a hundred percent cultural explanations to all behavioral sex differences.

But the actual studies are far too often not much better. Spend some time googling "evolutionary psychology sexual selection" and I bet that your hair will stand up. There are quite a few researchers in that field who have an axe to grind, and the point of the grinding is to prepare the axe to chop off some uppity female heads. Never mind if there is no fossil evidence or evidence about the psychology of our prehistoric ancestors: the results always conveniently support the researchers' own biases.

This is probably unavoidable, but a field of this type tends not to attract people with the opposite bias in adequate numbers. Thus we are left with an ideologically non-neutral science. Maybe more feminists will become evolutionary psychologists in the future, even though this is supposed to be a contradiction in terms right now.

The truth about most of the studies which compare men's and women's brains and so on is that the research is taking its very first infant steps, and any sort of conclusions are very premature. For example, differences in the PET scans between the sexes doesn't necessarily mean that these differences are inborn. It is known that how the brain is used affects its structure. (See, for example, the study of London taxi drivers who have unusually large areas reserved to long-term memory because of the intensive memorization of street addresses that is required for getting the London taxi license. Also, studies about the effects of depression on brain show long-term changes caused by the condition.)

The immaturity of the field doesn't stop the popular interpretation of every new research as the major breakthrough which explains why women do what they do and so on. These stories hardly ever give any statistical results, because to do so would reveal the great variability of the characteristics within each sex, as well as the large amount of overlap in the distributions of results for the two sexes. Neither do most of these popular reports even mention that whatever behaviors we observe today may also have cultural explanations, or that the nature-nurture debate is actually a lot more complicated than the simple idea of "one or the other" suggests.

I don't know if it is really possible to report gender science neutrally, but it certainly isn't happening right now. Most reports are intended to prop up a traditional view of the sexual division of labor by explaining that it is biologically decreed. This feeds right into the wingnut ideology for those wingnuts who don't have the fundamentalist interpretation for women's inferiority. Even the studies themselves have a certain type of bias in this sense: How often do you hear about studies that found no sex differences in behavior? Yet clearly men and women do an enormous number of things exactly the same.

I'm not neutral in this field, either, of course. When someone tries to sit on me and tell me that I am coy and timid and uninterested in sex and really bad at map-reading and unable to fix my car and that all this has been proven by Science, well, the correct response is to take the other side and to fight back. But I don't presume to know the exact amounts by which our behaviors are predetermined. I wish more people adopted the same quasi-humble attitude.

Eyes on the Prize?

That is a reference to the title of a PBS series and a book about the Civil Rights Movement. The eyes that today appear to be glued on the prize are not those of black Americans but those of our faith-based administration. As a consequence, the enforcement of civil rights has been asked to take a seat at the back of the bus. (Isn't this about the worst mess of writing you have ever come across?)

Federal enforcement of civil rights laws has declined sharply since 1999 although the number of complaints received by the Justice Department has remained relatively constant, according a study released yesterday.
Criminal charges alleging civil rights violations were brought last year against 84 defendants, down from 159 in 1999, according to Justice Department data analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
In addition, the study found that the number of times the FBI or other federal investigative agencies recommended prosecution in civil rights cases has fallen by more than a third, from more than 3,000 in 1999 to more than 1,900 last year. Federal court data also suggest that the government has sought fewer sanctions against civil rights violators.
The study's coauthor, David Burnham of TRAC, said the results indicate that civil rights enforcement declined across the board during President Bush's first term in office. The Justice Department enforces a range of civil rights laws, from guaranteeing fair housing access to prosecuting hate crimes.
''Collectively, some violators of the civil rights laws are not being dealt with by the government," Burnham said. ''They've declined by a huge number of cases. This trend, we think, is significant."

According to Burnham, the reason for the drop in cases is not fewer claims as claims have remained constant for the last five years. What could be behind this trend, then? One possible answer is hidden in this quote:

Civil rights cases made up a tiny fraction of the Justice Department's total of 99,341 criminal prosecutions in 2003. But the study found that only civil rights and environmental prosecutions were down from 1999 to 2003 as the caseload rose by about 10 percent.

I guess the government doesn't care for civil rights. They are not like, you know, moral values and stuff.

My Nightmare

I had a nap this afternoon. It wasn't exactly refreshing. Here's what happened:

First, imagine sinking into your backbrain, a lovely fatigue caressing your whole body, the god of sleep gently licking your eyelids.

Second:


The scene: A large mental hospital in an ancient manor house surrounded by a beautiful park. But the rooms and corridors are gloomy and the furniture sparse, filthy and institutional. I wake up in a small room tied to an iron bed. A cheerful nurse with Phyllis Schafly's face bends over me and asks:"Are we feeling any better yet?" I can't answer, they've done something to my vocal cords.

Then I'm released and I wonder around the hospital. I meet a young male doctor with a crackerjaw and a white coat, and he reassures me that everybody in the hospital are completely free to come and go, free to do whatever they want. I try to leave the building, but every time I reach the door it turns into a crackerjaw.

Then we are having lunch. The other patients are screaming and some stare into the corners with empty eyes, a mouth dribbling a continuous stream of blood. The food is horrible: all little pink eyeballs, and they all sing a psalm in praise of god. I refuse to eat and a long tube (like a gas station one) is attached to my ear and someone presses the switch.

Then I'm floating in midair and see a vast, enormous fat man walk towards me, smiling and nodding. As he passes, he says:"So another one with the east coast elite disease!"

I have to stop following the U.S. politics so closely.

More on the Appropriatons Bill

This document, a fourteen inch tall pile of papers, was handed to the politicians on the same morning as the supposed vote. An excellent place to hide lots of juicy surprises for those damn east coast elitists and others who forgot to kiss the boot of George Bush. Still, some examples of these surprises are leaking out (possibly because of their juiciness). Here's Senator McCain on the topic:

Mr. President, there is over $11 billion in unrequested, unauthorized, run-of-the-mill pork projects contained in the 1,182 pages of this conference report. Let's go through some of the more interesting provisions:

• $200,000 to the West Oahu campus of the University of Hawaii to produce the "Primal Quest" film documentary.

• $225,000 to the Wheels Museum in New Mexico.

• $7.3 million for Hawaiian Sea Turtles.

• $6 million for Sea Lions in Alaska.

• $450,000 for the Johnny Appleseed Heritage Center in Ohio.

• $100,000 to the State Historical Society of Iowa in Des Moines for the development of the World Food Prize.

• $200,000 to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, for the Rockin' the Schools education program.

• $1 million for Mormon cricket suppression in Utah.

• $450,000 for an Alaska Statehood celebration.

• $225,000 for an Hawaii statehood celebration.

• $175,000 to a city in Missouri for the painting of a mural on a flood wall.

• $90,000 for fruit fly research in Montpellier, France.

• $225,000 to Traverse City, Michigan, for the restoration of an Opera House.

• $250,000 for the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum.

• $200,000 to the Town of Guadalupe, Arizona, for the construction and renovation of a shopping center.

• $325,000 to the City of Salinas, California, for construction of a swimming pool.

• $100,000 to the city of Macon, Georgia, for the renovation of the Coca-Cola building.

• $100,000 to the City of Atlanta for the renovation of Paschal's restaurant and motel.

• $900,000 to an economic development association in Idaho to continue the implementation of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial commemoration plan.

• $175,000 to the City of Detroit for the design and construction of a zoo.

• $238,000 to the National Wild Turkey Federation. Speaking of Wild Turkey - you almost need a bottle of it in order to swallow the lack of fiscal discipline in this bill.

• $200,000 for the City of North Pole, Alaska, for recreation improvements. I guess Santa had a tough year and the elves need a little help from the American taxpayer.

• $100,000 for restoration of the Jefferson County Courthouse Clock Tower in Washington State. I'm sure that this is a beautiful clock tower, but probably not what most taxpayers have in mind when they think of economic development, as this project is characterized.

• $220,000 to the Blueberry Hill Farm in Maine for renovations. For $220,000, I can only presume that somebody will be getting their thrill on Blueberry Hill!

Oops! There's also pressies for the Fox News Network and the other big media boys. So what is not covered? Well, the excellent Head Start program, the only government funded program that has continuously been found to provide excellent value for money and long-term benefits to the tune of seventeen dollars saved for each dollar spent; that one will be cut! Also, Pell grants will be made more difficult to get so that fewer students can go to college:

The government moved to change its formula for college aid last year, but was blocked by Congress. Now, however, no such language appears in the appropriations bill lawmakers are considering, clearing the way for the government to scale back college grants for hundreds of thousands of low-income students.
Nearly 100,000 more students may lose their federal grants entirely, as Congress considers legislation that could place more of the financial burden for college on students and their families.

Aren't we lucky to have this great bunch of politicians supporting every move that George manages to think out, while at the same time busily portioning out pork to their funders while the poor children are told to educate themselves by tying their bootstraps around their necks?

The Sanctity of Marriage, Again

The same-sex marriage bans that eleven states passed in the last elections have brought a new excitement and hope in the Sanctity of Marriage crowd. Of course, victories always leave one with that slightly depressed feeling afterwards: what is there left to work for? Don't worry about the emotional health of the wingnuts; they have their plans for the next stage of the campaign:

NEW YORK (AP) -- "Protection of marriage" is now the watchword for many activists fighting to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying. Some conservatives, however, say marriage in America began unraveling long before the latest gay-rights push and are pleading for a fresh, soul-searching look at the institution.
"When you talk about protecting marriage, you need to talk about divorce," said Bryce Christensen, a Southern Utah University professor who writes frequently about family issues.
While Christensen doesn't oppose the campaign to enact state and federal bans on gay marriage, he worries it's distracting from immediate threats to marriage's place in society.
"If those initiatives are part of a broader effort to reaffirm lifetime fidelity in marriage, they're worthwhile," he said. "If they're isolated - if we don't address cohabitation and casual divorce and deliberate childlessness - then I think they're futile and will be brushed aside."

I hope that you are prepared for this. I especially like the idea that they are going to address deliberate childlessness in marriage. What would addressing that entail? Requiring fertility checks of couples who have not reproduced within some reasonable period of time? Or banning all contraception? The latter is more likely. The plan would also have to address women's economic independence as that makes divorce easier, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was emphasis on the need to reinstall a male-dominated family structure even among nonbelievers. After all, it is the institution of traditional marriage that is to be saved here.

Isn't it interesting how the wingnuts don't fight for people. They always fight for institutions that are not living, feeling, hurting entities but just ideas. Marriage must be preserved and the way to do that is to force people to fit into the mold they have for marriage. Nothing else will do! This sounds very much like the extremist Stalinist form of communism and shows how the view of politics as a long line with extreme righties at one end and extreme lefties at the other end is wrong: the true diagram would be a circle where the extremists are sitting quite close to each other. That's why they often jump from one end to the other so easily.

They Don't Get It #1

This is a new weekly series I'm planning to begin right now. The idea is to pick something I come across in my surfing on the net that shows why feminists are still very much needed. Not something big and obviously relevant, but something that might not even seem sexist, something that will make people tell me that I have no sense of humor or something more important to do. Something to put a little thorn under our collective fingernails. Why not?

In return, I promise to do lots of sunny blogs in the future. Maybe a distant future, but a future nevertheless.

Ok. Here's number one. It comes from one of Saturday's Eschaton threads:

Democrats: always on the defensive. Always worried about what other people will think, or how something will "look". Grow some balls and fight like a man.

On Darfur and the U.S. Administration

Darfur is undergoing genocide right now. The government of Sudan is participating in it. The U.S. government has accepted the term "genocide" for the Darfur events, but this is how it interprets what should be done:

THE BUSH administration shrugged its shoulders last week at the genocide in Sudan's western province of Darfur. At an extraordinary meeting of the U.N. Security Council in Kenya, it sponsored a resolution that not only failed to advance those that passed in July and September but actually stepped back. The veiled threat of sanctions on Sudan's government was dropped. So was the demand that Sudan's government disarm and prosecute its allies in the Janjaweed death squads, which have burned villages, raped and murdered their inhabitants, and left nearly 2 million people homeless and at risk of starvation.
The Bush administration presents this abdication as a triumph. It argues that, by tolerating a weak U.N. resolution on Darfur, it was able to secure a unanimous 15-0 Security Council vote and that this may bring about peace in the separate conflict between Sudan's Muslim-led northern government and the Christian and animist southern rebels.

The people of Darfur can't wait. They're dying and seeing their children hacked to death before their own deaths. The U.S. is not the only guilty party in this lukewarm condemnation of the horrors, of course. It seems there is something in the air right now that makes all sorts of people show their very worst aspects. But remember, the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who were lukewarm in their help of those who suffer.