cut on the bias

Isn't a pigskin something you buy in a bag in the South?

Kevin Holtsberry is poking fun, but I think this is a good idea. Don't miss my rambling contribution in comments on the post.

Bias on the fly

While driving to work this morning, I heard on the WABC 770 radio news that New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey has used state police helicopters 45 times to fly to events during his seven months in office. The news item was decidedly in the tone of an expose, with reference to a Bergen Record news story. I looked it up when I arrived, and here are the basics of the story:

Even before he took office, Governor McGreevey promised an "agonizing reappraisal" of the state budget, vowing to go through each department with a fine-toothed comb in search of savings.

But so far, McGreevey has failed to curb one expenditure: his use of the state police helicopters for travel.

In the first seven months of his term, McGreevey has taken 45 trips on state police helicopters, costing taxpayers more than $13,850 in fuel alone, according to The Record's review of flight logs through July 23.

Most of McGreevey's trips have been for government business - mainly photo opportunities around the state. But on Tuesday, he used the helicopter to fly to New York to make a speech before a group of national Democrats, his spokesman said.

McGreevey's trips through July 23 tied up the helicopters for 180 hours at an average fuel cost of $76.96 per hour. The cost of manpower and maintenance was not tallied on the flight logs.

By comparison, acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco used the helicopters 13 times during his 11 months in office, Feb. 1 to Dec. 31, 2001.

Former Gov. Christie Whitman, who vowed in her first gubernatorial campaign never to hopscotch around New Jersey on state-owned helicopters, took 19 trips during her last seven months in office, July 1, 2000, to Jan. 31, 2001, according to state police flight records.

McGreevey’s office defended the use, saying that it was reasonable and merely the governor meeting his responsibility to get out throughout the state to mingle with the people. Former Governor Thomas H. Kean, who was criticized during his term for buying a $4.3 million helicopter for his use as governor, supported McGreevey:

"To me the most valuable time we have is the governor's time and not a minute of it should be wasted," Kean said. "To say the governor ought to be sitting in traffic for an hour or two, when he should be running the state makes no sense. It's a savings to the state when you make good use of the chief executive's time."

My internal jury is still out on this – I agree that the governor should be out there, and that going by helicopter is a time-efficient way to do it. However, going for photo-ops and partisan events doesn’t seem particularly appropriate. I need to think on it a little more. But the thing that was most interesting to me about the whole situation was the reaction of the WABC show’s host, John Gambling, to the story.

Gambling, who I think is a bleeding heart centrist with occasional flashes of conservatism, challenged the news reporter’s choice of the story. Gambling said that because the news director chose to use the story, he was indicating that he agreed with it. The news director, George Weber, admitted it, and he and Gambling had a fairly acerbic discussion of both Weber’s story selection and the interpretation of the facts of the story. I thought it an excellent lesson in one way bias enters into the news stream, and fascinated that they debated it on air. Certainly the Bergen Record article was framed to bring readers to a certain conclusion, most obviously in this paragraph:

Although McGreevey used the helicopters to tend to a few state emergencies, such as the June fire in Double Trouble State Park in Ocean County, he mostly took flight for non-essential, feel-good events.[emphasis mine]

Certainly that highlighted phrase was flagrant editorializing, in a straight news article – in my judgment such phrases should appear off the editorial page only in quotes with an identified source (other than the famous NY Times “sources say”, which you pretty much assume means the other reporters at the water cooler) or in an article labeled “analysis”. Another oft-used ploy is the one I used above (did you catch it?) when I quoted former Gov. Kean – I referred to a part of his history that by its juxtaposition with his quote seemed to indicate a certain hypocrisy. If you read the Bergen Record, they mention his history – as they should – but structured differently so it doesn’t appear to be saying, all by itself, “Yeah, right”.

To continue ceaselessly beating the one note I know on my bias drum, every kind of news has an element of bias and usually by the time it reaches a consumer, several elements compounded – which story, which reporter, what words, what counter quotes, what internal structure and juxtaposition, what editor, whether photos, what placement, what follow up – and the list goes on. I thought the exchange on WABC 770 was exactly the kind of dialogue we should be having internally on a daily basis, whenever we encounter information.

Everybody needs a little Britney time...

...although many of us don't respond to the urge in the middle of a concert people paid to see. Oops! Give that girl a Pepsi.

I don't see the conflict

These people in Oklahoma - getting their shorts all in a wad over a little journalistic license:

Patrick B. McGuigan, editorial editor of the Oklahoman, announced his resignation Friday after nearly two decades with the newspaper.

The announcement came on the same day Tim Pope, a state representative and [state Labor Commissioner Brenda Reneau] Wynn’s Republican opponent in the state Labor Commission election, posted a letter on his Web site allegedly sent by McGuigan to some of Pope’s supporters criticizing the representative.

I'm sure it was a non-partisan assessment of the representative; an editorial writer for a major newspaper wouldn't take sides just because of politics. Their judgments are based on principle, I tell you, principle.

The Oklahoma Democratic Party released a statement Friday [saying]...that the letter sent by McGuigan to Pope’s supporters was printed on Oklahoman letterhead and was mailed with corporate postage permits registered to The Oklahoma Publishing Company.

Personally, I think that was just what was in the printer when he wrote the letter, I'm sure on his home computer where he had just been doing a little office work on his own time; pretty snarky of the Democrats to pile on too. Is there no loyalty here? After all, there's no proof he wrote it at the company, on company time, using company letterhead deliberately. No matter what that Pope guy says:

Pope also said he believes the letters were intended to directly affect his campaign by giving supporters the illusion Wynn had the backing of the newspaper.

Wynn properly scoffs:

When asked if she thought the letters overstepped any bounds, Wynn said McGuigan was doing what editorial writers do — give their opinions and ask others for theirs, the story reported.

That's right! It was a little private preview of a legitimate editorial opinion, released to a carefully selected audience like those movies that are shown to test audiences so the response can be gauged and adjustments made before full release if the audience doesn't "get" it. It was research. I commend McGuigan for his dedication to his profession. I just don't know what that Pope guy's problem is. Troublemaker.

In other news, reliable sources say McGuigan has applied for a position on the NY Times editorial staff, where initial response appears to be favorable. A highly-placed source, speaking on conditions of anonymity, said,

"He's our kind of guy. We've already sent him some NY Times stationery and a list of audiences we'd like to target with his next non-partisan opinions. If he performs well, we may let him write real editorials before moving him to straight news, the pinnacle of our non-partisan approach."

It's nice to know that dedication to the spirit and principles of journalism are recognized by the nation's Paper Of Record.

(And reports that the NY Times quote was a complete fabrication are completely unfounded.)

[Link via Romenesko, although he bears no responsibility for the NY Times alleged insider information]

Bad attitude, Big Brother and Democrats

Well, The Last Page is bucking to be The Last Novel in her most recent post. Fortunately, it's broken into chapters and actually has relevance, so I can recommend it with a clear conscience.

She ponders blogging and anti-blogging, points out corporate intractability about blogging at work and even pastes in an email where she talks about Democrats using a code name. I personally would find it difficult to work for a boss who was a Democrat.

(For my Democrat friends, can't you take a joke? Haha)

Now that she's raised our expectations, we're expecting more Pages of wisdom.

A pertinent question

Question: Why is a woman who owns 80 cookbooks eating an odd cobbled-together mixture of tuna fish, angel hair pasta and low-fat thousand island dressing at 10:20 p.m.?

Answer: I ran out of cereal.

It's academic

Tony Woodlief has an excellent post on how the Catholic church is tying itself in knots to be politically correct about the Current Scandal. Be sure to read the comments too - they're quite lively and worth your time.

However, this phrase stood out to me:

It's ironic, isn't it, that calling for academic research into something has become a proven way to insure that truth never emerges?

That's certainly the general feeling at times, and is reflected in a common saying:

Well... it's just academic anyway.

When do you use that? When the question is of no practical importance, just an interesting digression - and sometimes not even that valuable. A depressing thought for an academician.

But not without validity. While many important things - from ideas to planets - have been discovered by people focusing intently and deeply on a very small range of data, too often the cloak of academia is wrapped around charletans using big words for petty thoughts. I think it's important that the average citizen have as strong of a crapometer for academics as they do for politicians and NY Times reporters.

I just wish those poseurs would go cloak in someone else's profession.

I'm as innocent as a babe in arms

But some people persist in laying blame anyway. I managed to post three things. It's all about discipline, commitment and a plenteous supply of chocolate.

Some days are diamonds...

... some days are stones.

There's nothing that makes you feel professional like sobbing all over everyone in your office and threatening to go work at Burger King.

Kaus on the trail

Mickey Kaus skewers a biased NYT article on the supposed horrific results of welfare reform. The article in question is presented as a regular news article - no sign of the word "analysis" anywhere near it - but Kaus says about the article's author:

Nina Bernstein...seems pretty much a pure attack animal. Even liberal welfare mavens distrust her.

It's a great takedown. And he makes reference to a point I've made before about bias:

There are liberalish, fault-finding reporters I've learned to trust...

It's not that reporters or newspapers should try to completely eradicate bias; it can provide valuable insight from someone who's put in the time to make a reasoned judgment. It's that they should be up front that bias exists, and reporters should earn the trust of readers who have seen that their bias is grounded in fair analysis. I don't have to agree with an argument to respect it as fair and useful. And that applies to both sides - I'm more likely to appreciate a well-reasoned, fair presentation from an liberal than a hyperbolic, fact-starved conservative argument. Having the right ideology doesn't excuse someone from needing to make a fair case for their position.

Kaus has several excellent entries in his Salon blog, including a look at how the NY Times is unashamedly after Bush:

...neither the NYT nor the WSJ seem to worry anymore whether their ed pages have "balance." (And the news pages of the NYT are now considerably more anti-Bush than the news pages of the WSJ were anti-Clinton -- the Clintophobes were on the WSJ editorial page.)

Further support for the argument. It doesn't matter to me if an editorial page has balance in the sense that it gives both sides - I can go to two sites to provide my own balance. What's important is fair argumentation on the editorial page. And keeping flagrant agendas masked as unbiased news off the news pages.

Kaus does go on a little attack himself - responding to Letter From Gotham's Diane E. who said Kaus sucked bigtime - saying:

P.S.: Same to you!

Nice to see even the Big Guys aren't above the occasional bloggish brawl.

All abuzz

Fred First has posted a wonderful photograph of a honeybee about its work. My Dad keeps honeybees, has as long as I can remember, despite the fact that he is allergic to their stings. As for me, well, a barefoot little girl and honeybees make for lots of summer stings, a fate Fred apparently suffered as well. I've spent many hours in the family kitchen helping Dad slice the wax caps off the frames of honey, extracting the honey using an old barrel-shaped extractor while waving stray sated bees out the open window. I still think hot homemade biscuits spread with homemade butter and topped with fresh sourwood honey is one of the best things in life.

Gun ownership doesn’t raise homicide rates

Not that you thought they did. But this excellent article by Don Kates, a retired constitutional law professor, gives a perspective covering several hundred years that’s just too meaty to summarize here. A few excerpts:

Though only 15% of Americans have criminal records, roughly 90 percent of adult murderers have adult records, with an average career of six or more adult years, including four major felonies. Juvenile crime records are generally unavailable, but to the extent they are, juvenile killers have crime careers as extensive or more than do adult killers -- and so do their victims. Typical findings of 19th and 20th Century homicide studies: "the great majority of both perpetrators and victims of [1970s Harlem] assaults and murders had previous [adult] arrests, probably over 80% or more" as also did Savannah murderers and victims in both the 1890s and the 1990s; exclusive of all other crimes they had committed, 80% of 1997 Atlanta murder arrestees had at least one prior drug offense with 70% having 3 or more prior drug offenses;5 1960s-'70s Philadelphia "victims as well as offenders, finally, tended to be people with prior police records, usually for violent crimes such as assault, and both had typically been drinking at the time of the fatal encounter."

…In sum, it cannot be true that possession of firearms causes ordinary people to murder -- for murderers are virtually never ordinary, but rather are extreme aberrants with life histories of crime, psychopathology and/or substance abuse...

Addressing later 20th Century trend data, an English analyst finds "'firearms homicide correlates closer with car ownership than with firearms ownership'" in England, Switzerland and the U.S.15 Commenting on the American evidence to this effect Kleck states:

The per capita accumulated stock of guns (the total of firearms manufactured or imported into the United States, less imports) has increased in recent decades, yet there has been no correspondingly consistent increase in either total or gun violence... About half of the time gun stock increases have been accompanied by violence decreases, and about half the time [they have been] accompanied by violence increases, just what one would expect if gun levels had no net impact on violence rates.16

Subsequent information as to the U.S. shows that over the 25-year period 1973-97 the number of handguns owned by Americans increased 163%, and the number of all firearms increased 103% -- yet homicide declined 27.7%. It continued to decline in 1998, 1999 and 2000 despite the American gunstock having increased by 2-3 million in each of those years...

But what about the well-known fact that nations with low gun ownership and highly restrictive gun laws have low murder rates while lax controls give the U.S. the highest rates of any modern industrialized nation? This "fact" is actually several unexamined assumptions, each being either unverifiable or verifiably false...

To determine whether severe gun controls reduce murder, the proper comparison is not to the high (apolitical)-homicide U.S., but to other European nations where firearms (especially handguns) are allowed and common. That comparison reveals that homicide rates in the latter (Austria - 1.0 per 100,000 population, Switzerland - 1.1) do not exceed those of the highly gun-restrictive surrounding nations (France and Germany, both 1.1; Hungary 3.5; Italy 1.7; Slovenia 2.4; Yugoslavia 2.0).

Thus it is not gun scarcity that keeps European homicide rates low. Indeed, analysis of data on 36 nations show "no significant (at the 5% level) association between gun ownership levels and the total homicide rate...."

Read the whole thing. You’ll be glad you did. Be sure to print out a few copies to hand to your gun-control advocate friends.

[Link from reader and friend Tamryn Etten-Bohm]

Watch the bloggers

This is a good article in U.S. News & World Report about how bloggers are fact-checking and slant-identifying the mainstream media. I think it identifies one of the ways bloggers will have a strong impact on mainstream media, and it's an important one. We won't replace traditional media, but we can collectively force the Big Guys to clean up their act - somewhat, at any rate. The article focuses too much on Sullivan, which is unfortunate, but the point is strongly made nonetheless.

It reminds me that I've not stuck to mission very well in the last few weeks; not a lot of media-bias sighting going on. But then, it's been a kind of stare-at-the-wall summer. Blank wall, blank mind, with occasional slashes of red.

I'll get back to business so I can help the blogosphere live up to its developing reputation.

[Link via Instapundit]

Thank God.

All nine miners are alive.

UPDATE: All nine miners have been rescued and are apparently fine. Awesome work by the rescuers.

Warning: Logic void ahead

Remember Brent Marsh, the Georgia crematorium operator who stacked dead bodies in the woods rather than cremating them? He thinks he would be in danger if he were released - because of racism:

``We live in the South and I'm a black man,'' Brent Marsh said Thursday, the day Cobb County Superior Court Judge James G. Bodiford set bond for him at $159,200. ``A lot of people don't like me because I am me.''

Now, I don't know if he's spouting this as a face-saving move (they want to kill me because I'm black, not because I'm evil foul-smelling lumpy no-account sludge scraped from the bottom of a rancid cesspool) or if he really believes this drivel. Maybe his lawyer told him to say it because they're setting the scene for an appeal when a jury slams his sorry butt in jail. But the proof of his misconception is right there in the same story:

In February, more than 340 human remains were found on the grounds of the Marsh family's Tri-State Crematory at Noble, a small, northern Georgia town near the Tennessee border. Bodies were found in the woods, stacked in storage buildings, stuffed in burial vaults and buried in pits. So far, 167 bodies have been identified, most of them white.

Did you see that, Brent? Most of them white. If they were going to be racist about it, they wouldn't have sent the bodies of the people they loved to you for this final physical rite of passage on earth. No, Brent, they would have sent the bodies to Jim Bob's May Blacks Burn In Hell White Supremicists Crematorium. Instead, they properly didn't care who did the cremation as long as it was done properly and respectfully. You not only let them down, but betrayed them in a breathtaking way.

It's not because you're black, Brent. It's because you're pathetic, lazy, self-absorbed disgusting scum.

Got that?

[Link via Country Store blog]

Well. That’s more like it.

I’m now a large mammal. And what you suspected is now confirmed: Never on the first date.

Drive-by tourism

Posting will be light today because I'm playing tour guide in Manhattan. This should be pretty easy though - no long hot waits for the subway - because we're just driving around the island for a while. Probably will wind up at a Portuguese restaurant in the Ironbound for dinner. Should be a good day, interesting without being rushed.

If you need reading material, remember that it's the Blogathon, and these people are posting every 30 minutes.

UPDATE: Well, we wound up not eating in the Ironbound, because the first restaurant we went to didn't open until 5 p.m. on Saturdays, and my charges decided they like simpler fare anyway. So we wound up at Topps Diner in East Newark, which is an excellent place. I had a patty melt, first time in forever, and it was yummy. Love fried onions. For more details of the drive-by tour you can check out my guest post over at Meryl's place.

Insider information

Wes Dabney of The Color of Thieves thinks Iraq is on our list and soon. Since he's a military man living on an Army base in Germany, he's got a little more information than most of us.

Also, his views on the killing of the Hamas leader this week has resulted in a debate with his twin brother in the comments section, which is disorienting but interesting.

Corruption and murder on Music Row

There was an arrest Wednesday in a 13-year-old Music Row murder. Crime's my thing, but music is Patio Pundit Martin Devon's, so I shipped him the link to see what he knew. With his usual flair he explains why a bulleted chart list led to a bullet to the body of an innocent young man.

Pretty interesting, if you follow music much, as an explanation of how technology overcame corruption to bring two major music genres into prominence in the 1990s.

Sharp

Something I like better than firearms.

I need to increase my collection.

UPDATE: Toren sent me to a great site to rummage in, which had some amazing pieces. I would just like to note that my birthday is next week, should anyone feel a deep need to buy me this or this. I like the prominent finger guards, which have a better feel when you’re holding it blade up. I’ve been dying for one of these for years – I almost bought one, but let myself be talked out of it and regretted it ever since.

A friend of mine who collected knives let me play with them sometimes; he had all kinds of weapons, including switchblades and butterfly knives, but I had never heard of a ballistic knife. Not surprising, since it's illegal. Well, the others are too in a lot of places, unless you've only got one arm.

But this is the very best knife I think I've ever seen. Not particularly practical, but likely serviceable if necessary, and definitely worth displaying. I'm sure the artist won't mind the extra advertising of having it pictured here. I give you - "Leaving Hobbiton", a Damascus steel art knife:

Don't miss the details here and here.

Did I mention my birthday is next week?

UPDATE: Brent, why settle for this, which will only do this, when you could have this? Think big.

Something to think about

We’ve been reading for months about the killings in Israel, about the political situation and all the attempts to stop the deaths. It’s a polarizing issue for many people, and hot words have been blogged and exchanged. I know those of you who read here know where I stand on it. The governments and terrorist organizations behind the deadly actions in Israel, in the US, in the Middle East, on the African continent, are all oppressive, and show their belief in the “knowledge is power” saying by keeping knowledge from their citizens. One of the foundational ways to spread democracy through the world, to let people know they have the ability to fight for rights, to learn about ideas and ideologies in other places, is through a free and uncensored Internet.

Tomorrow is the Blogathon, where bloggers will post every 30 minutes for 24 hours. I’ve chosen to sponsor three blogs, because I believe what they are supporting is important. I ask you to check out their sites, check out their causes, and if it fits your own philosophy and way of contributing, pledge to help. Since I’m not National Public Radio, I won’t be interrupting this blogging to ask again.

Meryl Yourish, of www.yourish.com, blogging for Shaare Zedek Medical Center. This is one of the places that wounded Israelis will go for care when hurt in a terrorist attack. And if you’re into moral equivalence (why are you on my blog?) the Palestinians would not be turned away, but helped just the same. Not that they shouldn’t be, but I shouldn’t have to say it.

Laurence Simon, of File 13’s Amish Tech Support, blogging for Magen David Adom, the Red Cross equivalent in Israel. Their ambulances take the terrorist victims to the medical centers. And unlike Red Crescent ambulances, they do not come fully equipped with bombs.

kd of kd.blog and skarlet of The Punk Princess Weblog, blogging together on their blogathon blog for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to preserving freedom of speech over the Internet.

I know that you, like me, have a stack of bills grumbling at you and then there’s that really cool… fill in the blank, dress, gun, hubcap, book, that you want to buy. But this doesn’t have to be a piggy-bank breaking thing. The point is numbers – many giving a little is still a lot. For the cost of a decent pizza - $15 – you can donate $5 to each of these causes. No guilt trip from me – it’s your money. Just think about it.

Four more Israelis killed, including family driving to Sabbath gathering

I don’t know what else to say.

Speaking of babies...

Athena Runner of Leaning to the Right is a new mom - again. Welcome, Ty Robert! And congratulations, Athena.

Check your Hotmail

MSN continues to screw with your head. The latest is deleting everything in your "messages sent" folder that is more than a month old. Check it. I'll wait.

See? Mine's gone too. Not the stuff in personal folders, apparently, but I've not checked that. These people are going to drive me back to using my ISP email, which I don't want to do. Sigh.

Waiting to meet Molly Katherine

My sister in law Traci is pregnant, and the baby is due in early August. I'm chewing my nails. Everything's going great, it's only a matter of time. But it's so exciting, and I just can't wait. I want to meet Molly Katherine.

They named her as soon as they knew she was a girl, which makes her so much more real. I get regular updates from Traci, and even have a copy of the ultrasound on my office wall. Her sister Haydon was the first baby in the family for 16 years, and she's a delight. My biggest question is, will Molly Katherine have a personality like Haydon's? Or be totally different?

I love watching children grow up, start showing personality quirks, find their own paths. Of course every child is, to the people in his or her life, the best and smartest and cutest ever. It's just that, well, in Haydon's case, it's the truth. So how will Molly Katherine make her own way?

Haydon, just 2 1/2, is very neat, and careful. She loves to sing and likes to pick out her own clothes. Her favorite toys are books, and she can be quite the pest wanting book after book read. Of course Aunt Susanna helps keep her well supplied.

So will Molly Katherine be neat? Or a wild mess? Will she prefer to wear shoes outside (like Haydon), or like running through mud puddles barefoot? Will she be musical or prefer sports?

My sister and I are very different in both personality and appearance, although we do like a lot of the same things. My brother falls somewhere between the two of us, with some allowances for being a guy (always a dubious condition).

This August, the Saga of Molly Katherine takes off in earnest. Stay tuned. And, in the interim, here's a photo of her sister Haydon, being indoctrinated into bluegrass by her dad:

UPDATE: I've been informed by my brother that the instrument is a mandolin style known as Djangolin, a Gypsy jazz instrument, not a Bluegrass instrument, in the style of Django Reinhardt. It was custom made by Brit David Hodson.

Those Dem wits

Bryan Preston at Junkyard Blog has a couple of good posts dumping on the Dems. First up is a link to a Krugman debunking:

PAUL KRUGMAN, the NY Times' anti-Bush hatchet man, has been soundly refuted, fact-for-fact, by William H. Cunningham, former chancellor and former chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of Texas System. The story is that Bush et al gamed UT's endowment system, turning public funds for the state of Texas into private funds for Bush and a few friends. Cunningham, a key player in Utimco (a creation of the state to invest endowment funds), says Krugman got the entire story wrong...

And it goes on, skidding into Enron and other efforts to trash Bush. Then Bryan pastes in an email sent to the Dems at Democrats.com from a woman I'd like to meet:

This is a vile and ugly website. You guys are seriously psychotic and evil. You've made me see what Democrats are really all about. "Political terrorists" is the term that comes to mind here. You want to defeat "all Republicans"? Are you Dr. Evil? Holy cow! Are you guys 5 years old or something? You want to get rid of your parents so you can eat all the candy you want...

There's more. I agree with Bryan - this woman needs a blog.

Are we reviewing aid to China, et al?

Okay, this is annoying me:

The Bush administration has served notice on Israel that it is reviewing the use of American equipment in military operations that exact a heavy civilian toll.

It's Powell again. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to figure out what happened and if Shehadeh could have been taken out without killing the children. But to make some big production of it - especially since constant monitoring is apparently standard - opens Israel up to unfair criticism. We send aid all over the place to countries that do a lot more than kill 15 people to get one terrorist. Do we review their aid? Do we imply that if they don't do to suit us, we'll pull the aid? I've not seen it happen lately.

This feels like pandering to the Arab nations, to me. Powell strikes again.

What is an athlete?

Lance Armstrong, who will likely win the Tour de France for the fourth year in a row, is not a great athlete.

He may not be an athlete at all.

Or so says this MSNBC article:

CERTAINLY ARMSTRONG IS A HELL of a bike rider, but does that make him superior to Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, Jerry Rice or Marion Jones? Does it make him a better athlete than the Williams sisters? Does the ability to sit on a skinny bicycle seat for hours on end and pump your legs like a madman make you a great athlete or merely a guy who does better without training wheels than most people?

...Athletes, for my money, must do more with their bodies than pump their legs up and down. If that’s all it took, the Radio City Rockettes would have to be considered the greatest athletes of all time.

At first, I was quite annoyed - as you likely know, I'm a Lance Armstrong fan. And columnist Ron Borges is particularly obnoxious in his argumentation, especially given the fact that he covers boxing for the Boston Globe - would he call that a sport? How athletic is it to pummel someone into a bloody pulp, or bite off his ear? But I digress.

Certainly Armstrong is extremely good, obviously the best currently, in his field of endeavor (gratuitous doping swipe by Borges notwithstanding). But I've heard versions of this discussion over the years as more and more events are added to the Olympics - is gymnastics a sport? ice skating? curling? Recently over at Sand in the Gears, Tony Woodlief scoffed at soccer as a sport (well, he called it a "sissy" sport), to the dismay of people in his comment section. So how do we define "sport"?

The dictionary says:

Physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively.

Well, that narrows things down nicely, and differentiates between the Rockettes and Lance by the little "competitively" restriction. But, that would include ballroom dancing then, wouldn't it? And all those new Olympic sports. What qualifies as "physical activity"? Will we see pool as an Olympic sport? That requires physical movement. Or is sweat necessary?

As a woman who's last competitive sporting event as a player was an eighth grade softball game where I split out the seat of my pants playing catcher, I'll venture my definition: A sport is a physical activity with rules, played competitively, that requires a high level of physical conditioning and physical skill to be a contender. That sounds dictionary-ish, doesn't it? Basically, I want to include Lance Armstrong but leave out those guys in The Sting. I think that accomplishes it. And bicycle endurance racing, for those who care, which is basically me and Jeff Cross, does actually require a high level of conditioning, and skill, and strategy. It has rules. And, well...

It rules. That's all.

[Link via Jeffrey Cross]

Judging the judge's judge

Dodd at Ipse Dixit finds Edward Lazarus's argument in Findlaw against Bush federal judicial nominee Priscilla Owen less than compelling.

It's kinda fun to see a lawyer busting a lawyer about a judge. I hope Owen gets through - sounds like she's a good choice.

I smell a....

Bigwig at Silflay Hraka has come up with an interesting concept - the smell of blogs. It's a mighty fine link-love list too, but we'll ignore that. I tend to think more in sounds or images, rather than smells, but then a lot of his smells are tied to images. I especially like this one:

Fragments from Floyd - Coffee brewing on the fire, the morning after the first night's rain on the Trail.

That's image and smell. I go to Fragments a lot, because proprietor Fred First posts lots of photos that look uncannily like where I grew up. I like Bigwig's imagery, but I wouldn't go with coffee - I don't like coffee. Fred's site reminds me of picking green beans at 7 a.m. on a summer morning, when the dew makes the dirt stick to your sneakers and the sun comes through the mist down the holler, the beans faintly rough and sticky in your hands - everything lush and still.

I'm not on Bigwig's list, so now I'm curious... how would my blog smell? What image would it create in readers' minds? It's a curious question, because really it's about the image you project, isn't it?

I was talking today to my friend Melody, who's known me very well for six years, about the impression someone would have of me from the blog, and how different would it be from the reality she knows. She finds the blog very New-Yorkish, in your face, pretty sharp and edgy at times - not that she thinks that's a bad thing. But in person, I'm very polite, southern, with a quirky sense of humor. She says she's never seen me give in person a dressing down like I'm prone to here - although I can be snippy, sometimes, too often I'm easygoing almost to a fault. But there's so much of a person you don't get online - that little smirk or sideways glance that lets you in on the joke. The inflection of voice. I've rarely been surprised by someone I've met in person that I've known for a while online, but the ones that have surprised me are usually ones I didn't talk to on the phone first. That little bit of additional information, the tone, the flow of conversation, makes a huge difference.

So the thought of what image a blog projects is a fascinating one, to me. Of course it reflects a facet of the blogger's personality. But wouldn't it be interesting to have a blogger party where first everyone wrote down what they thought the others were like, then checked their impressions of them afterward to see how accurate they are? When I met Meryl Yourish, she was very like her blog - funny, quick-minded. But also quieter than I expected, and not as sharp-tongued. As for me, Meryl pretty much echoed Melody - I lose all that in-your-face business in person.

Maybe I wouldn't go to that party after all. I need my edge. And a woman has to preserve some mystery.

He wants a baby

Doc (who you may have seen in comments) and his wife are looking to adopt. He's posted about the beginnings of the process , and if we're lucky he'll keep us up on the latest.

Doc's just pretty cool in general, not given to long rantings (unlike yours truly) but lots of pithiness in those insights. And his blog's name is among the best I've seen: I Am Right! Yes, he is, usually. If you want to know more about his blogging niche, go here.

Blog on, Doc. And get that bio done, k?

How not to get smashed flat by an 18-wheeler

Mike at Cold Fury gives some important Rules of the Road for you wild tin-can drivers out there, from a gen-u-ine 18-wheeler trucker. If Mike is as good a driver* as he is musician, then you'd do well to take his advice 'cause you're hearing it from among the best.

An excerpt:

If you pass me on the right you stand at least an even-money chance of being forced off the road when I try to get back over and don't see you hiding over there. Then you'll sit in the ditch, wondering what the hell just happened (assuming you're conscious) and cursing those damned truck drivers again. Or worse, you won't have any place to go and your lovely plastic eggmobile will end up a tangled, mangled mess permanently welded to my undercarriage. You yourself will end up as red goo ground deeply into your fine leather interior. Just don't do it, okay?

*He claims he is. I believe him.

A verse for the victims of themselves

Will Warren turns his unremitting poetic sights on the vicissitudes of the dieters duped by their own government, and by the medical researchers who promise to keep them alive. His inspiration is this article, which was in the NY Times on July 7. The article says that the latest research is clearly showing that far from being the culprit in creating fat people, a diet high in protein and, yes, fat, can actually work to provide a natural balance toward a healthy weight. It also says that the much vaunted high-carb, low-fat diet apparently works against the body’s natural balance to create a tendency toward fat storage, not against it.

And I hope someone sends the article to the defense attorneys in this lawsuit, where an obese man is suing several fast food companies for “addicting” him to unhealthy foods, and fraudulently portraying them as less harmful than they are. While I think the lawsuit has little chance of success, the mentality it shows is pretty sad. Excess weight is something I’ve struggled with myself over the years, and I truly know enough to write a decent book on it – not from formal training, but through years of reading about nutrition and exercise. Foods can be addictive, in the sense that you have a craving for certain ones, but I suspect that it is as much psychological as physiological. At the same time, food is not like nicotine, caffeine or cocaine – it is a necessary component of our lives, fuel for our bodies, and we can’t go “cold turkey” or even work slowly to a place where we no longer need it. The struggle comes from dealing with the habits and emotions that surround food, and the discipline to do in moderation something you must do daily and want to do to excess. And the information in the NY Times article makes it clear that if Americans were duped in some way, it was by the medical community, by researchers and by the government, not by a fast food company that provides all the nutrient information you could possibly want either online or for the asking at the counter.

Modifying eating habits is unlike any other problem because, as I noted before, you can’t just quit eating. And in our society, we’re bombarded with enticing food options along with images of thin physical ideals – an instance of a very tempting carrot and a very big stick. Give into temptation too much, and that stick goes to work vigorously on your health, your ego and the way you’re viewed by others. Sometimes it’s easy to give into the feeling that, since I’m going to get creamed by the stick anyway, may as well at least enjoy the carrot all I can (except, of course, in this case it’s most likely carrot cake). That’s the people who care; some people don’t even spend that much thought on it. The obese plaintiff is a good example:

"I trace it [his weight] all back to the high fat, grease and salt, all back to McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King – there was no fast food I didn't eat, and I ate it more often than not because I was single, it was quick and I’m not a very good cook," Barber said in an interview with Foxnews.com.

So basically he’s saying, I was lazy, no one was there to cook for me and I didn’t want to wait to eat, so I went to Wendy’s and no one threw themselves in front of me yelling, “No, wait, you’ll die if you eat that!”. This man is now looking for an easy buck, which seems to follow his general attitude about life – I’m not responsible for what I do. If something in my life is going wrong, then someone else must be at fault and they’re going to pay for it.

And that’s unfortunate. I do think we need in this society to view people’s appearance with a little less criticism, and have some sympathy for those who are quite a bit overweight. It’s not an easy thing to shed those pounds and keep them off, as anyone whose done it will tell you. But ultimately most people who are overweight have made choices that contributed to being there, and this kind of lawsuit will only support those who aren’t willing to take that responsibility. It needs to be said – most of us are victims of ourselves.

An Anglican corpse

The Church of England has a new Archbishop, and Chronicles is unimpressed:

As for the Church of England, it is dead and its corpse is in the hands of anti-Christians.

I fear that is the case for more so-called Christian groups than just the Anglicans.

Fitness report

Current status:
Computer-chair potato, in danger of merging with the upholstery

Assessment:
Pathetic

Comments:
This getting back in shape bites. I’m having to get back in shape to get in shape, if that makes sense. Back when I was well on my way to being Fitness Chick, I was going to the gym five days a week, lifting weights and putting in 30-60 minutes on the elliptical trainer with spurts on the rowing machine. Go, girl! As too often happens, when the boyfriend bailed, the motivation crashed too. Took about six months for all signs of fitness efforts to be extinguished, and another almost 12 months to get the mojo back. Does this have anything to do with the fact that he’s getting married next month? Maybe. I don’t think so. I think I just finally dug out.

Depressing realization:
Takes less to get the heart rate up to 80% of max, longer for it to settle down when I slow down, and the resting heart rate ain’t in the 48-52 range anymore. (POLAR addicts, don't get all excited. My gym manager assured me it wasn't because I was in such amazing shape; he said it is partly genetic. Trust me. He made me check it several times. He didn't believe it at first.)

Fashion alert:
None of that sleek little running tights thing going. This morning it’s lime green walking shorts with a lime green Vince Gill concert t-shirt, the sleeves ripped out. Heart on the CD player. That's more my mode. Go girl!

Happy thought:
At least I’m out there. And racewalking still rocks, even when your speed doesn’t.

And the beat goes on

I've read in the blogosphere that the fires in Arizona are partially fed by the underbrush normally cleared which hasn't been cleared in a while because of lawsuits from environmentalists. And now Craig Schamp points out that the venerable sequioas in California - some 3,000 years old - are in increased danger from nearby fires because of... brush not removed because of environmentalist lawsuits. Are we seeing a theme here?

I pointed out in a post yesterday that the animal rights activists are doing their best to hamstring medical research. When are we going to get the hint that these people, these eco-wingnuts, are not harmless little ranting puffballs?

A smoking gun

MSN chat evidence that I should have been asleep hours ago:

My brother: you ever read The Little Prince? Me: hmmmm Machiavelli, right? Me: I've read some, I think, not all My brother: lol My brother: yes, when he decided to write a children's book Me: oh the other Little Prince Me: then yes, I read it Me: be nice Me: Did Machiavelli write "The Prince"? My brother: yes My brother: but not "The Little Prince" Me: ok Me: well, maybe I thought that was the Reader's Digest Version

Good night.

UPDATE: It's all about caffeine. I gave it up, mostly, years ago. But sometimes, you know, you gotta have a Pepsi. So I did, yesterday, about 2 p.m. See results above.

Oily Bushes, Doctor torts and spinning for the children

Eric Lindholm handily deconstructs selections from the August Harper’s Index on his (what else) Smarter Harper’s Index. A good read.

Women, police, guns and self-defense

The authors of this article on the Independent Women's Forum says we can't rely on calling 911 for police protection, and therefore women should routinely arm themselves with handguns for self-protection.

I agree and disagree.

It's true that we as a society have become too dependent on 911 as almost a talisman against harm. Current policing theory leans toward de-emphasizing "speed of response to a call" as a measure of good policing, because the truth is that usually the crime is over by the time the police get there. Many things have an impact on police response time, and using that as a measure of success can actually make it more difficult to free up officers for priority calls. Calls to police dispatch are rated on a priority scale, and while there are relatively few top priority calls, there are also relatively few patrol officers to answer the calls at times (see the end of the post for a breakdown). But citizens, trained by television and often the image law enforcement itself projects, assume they have protection at the other end of the telephone and often do not take proper safety measures themselves.

An even more frightening disconnect between the police and citizen view of what police do is made clear in this quote:

More striking is the position of the law in nearly every state: The police have no legal obligation to protect citizens from crime.

Does that startle you? It’s true, and the article does a good job of giving court cases that show it. So, while we generally have capable, fair and hard-working local law enforcement in this country, the expectations of the public often don’t match the reality of modern policing. Thus, while in a genuine emergency calling the police is exactly the right thing to do, we shouldn’t assume it’s like calling Superman or Gandalf.

What about women owning guns? Generally, I think all law-abiding adults should both have a gun and be trained to use it. But some of the statements by the authors of this article are disturbing:

A woman with a firearm, however, can credibly threaten and deter an attacker of any size, shape, or strength. Even though weaker and unskilled in the use of firearms, she can sometimes protect herself with a sidearm without firing a shot. In more than 92 percent of defensive gun uses, the defender succeeds by firing only a warning shot or never firing the gun at all. [Emphasis mine]

Sometimes she can protect herself without firing a shot. That means it’s a dangerous assumption to make – it almost encourages a woman to own a gun without feeling the need to train with it. And notice that the defender is not identified as a woman – are women more likely to have to fire the gun than men? We don’t know because they don’t say. Owning a gun, like calling the police, is not a protective talisman.

The article continues to point out that a passive female stereotype in our country encourages women to avoid conflict, even when the result could be their physical harm. While I don’t deny that women too often are not encouraged to think defensively, I also don’t agree with all their conclusions.

“Crime prevention” programs that teach only nonviolent resistance actually reinforce the weak/passive female stereotyping. The Maryland Community Crime Prevention Institute, for example, reportedly has told women that martial arts training would not decrease the chances of injuries in an attack. Instead, the institute has advised women to struggle, cry hysterically, and pretend to faint, be sick, pregnant, or insane. Sexual stereotyping that discourages women from defending themselves can be deadly. Studies have shown that women who resist and fight back are less likely to be harmed than those women who submit passively.

Actually, what I’ve been told is to use whatever method works, and I have no quarrel with that. While telling women to only use those methods may be inappropriate, telling women those methods aren’t useful is just as damaging. I’m not aware of a study done on this (and there may well be), but I’ve read a number of anecdotal accounts of women escaping by feigning a seizure or vomiting on their attacker. Some settings aren’t conducive to whipping out a pistol and firing away. And puking on your attacker isn’t quite submitting passively. I’ll discuss below what the preferred middle ground is.

Then we have this beauty of a statement:

This apparently widespread fear of conflict makes women targets of rape and violence.

Talk about blaming the victim. No, fear of conflict doesn’t make women crime targets. Vicious and/or acquisitive people choose women as victims. Again, it’s true that people oblivious to their surroundings and who have the appearance of greater vulnerability are more often victims. But “fear of conflict” isn’t the cause. Men are victims at a much higher rate than women, and certainly “fear of conflict” doesn’t often enter the picture there. Sometimes a fear of conflict may cause a woman to allow an iffy situation to get worse, because she doesn’t want to precipitate something by resisting the initial approach. But that isn’t a cause, even when it may be a catalyst.

So what should women do? The same thing they should do in their lives in general. When you have small children in the house, you put the cleaning products up high and put plastic plugs into the electrical outlets. When you don’t want your new car scratched up, you park away from other cars. You avoid the bad consequences by preventing a situation from occurring. So the first thing to do is secure your home, secure your office, secure your car, and watch yourself going to and from. Not obsessively, just be conscious of your surroundings in much the same way that you’re conscious of what’s going on on the road when driving defensively. (For more on this, see Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear) Learn basic self-defensive moves – how to break a chokehold, how to break someone’s nose, how to take out a knee. This isn’t college wrestling – this is self-protection. You fight dirty. If at all possible, run. Scream. Vomit. Froth at the mouth. Whatever it takes. If someone comes into your home, get out and don’t go back unless the police are with you. And if you own a gun, make sure you know how to use it. Don’t point a gun at anyone unless you are willing to kill that person. End of story. Don’t ever depend on being able to get away without firing. Maybe you will. But maybe you won’t. Do you want to bet your life on it?

Owning a gun is a powerful thing for a woman, and given the likelihood that law enforcement often doesn’t arrive in time, it’s a valuable tool for safety just like good locks are. But a lock doesn’t work without a key, and a gun doesn’t work if you don’t know how to use it. I agree with this article that women should own guns. I disagree that passivity causes violence (although it may tempt someone already looking for vulnerability to attack) or that a non-aggressive response is usually the wrong choice. In trying to make its pro-gun case, I think this article goes too far.

NOTE ABOUT 911 RESPONSES: Using Cincinnati as a model, here’s the math about 911 responses. Cincinnati has 1,000 sworn police officers for a population of 330,000; in 2001, the police received 266,675 service calls and 26,143 Part 1 calls (Part 1 crimes are those collected by the FBI, such as homicide, robbery and rape). That’s 330 crimes per officer during the year – less than one per day. That doesn’t sound like much, does it?

But that’s not how police work. First, at least 250 officers are likely assigned to specific units such as juvenile, vice and homicide, as well as administration. We’re down to 750 officers. It takes five officers to cover one beat 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So at any one time, you’re going to have a maximum of 150 patrol officers working. Typically, officers work in two-person units, which reduces your call availability to 75 units per shift; that’s 7,500 people per unit for the officers to police.

In Cincinnati, there were, remember, 266,675 service calls in 2001. That’s 3.25 service calls per shift per unit, in addition to their regular patrol functions; that’s assuming that only one unit responded to a call, which isn’t always or even usually the case. An incident isn’t just the time on the scene, but the paperwork involved as well. Arresting a drunk, for example, can suck up to two hours of time. And that’s not counting the additional Part 1 crimes, which typically the patrol officers would be first responders to – those averaged about 71 a day in Cincinnati in 2001, or about one per three units a day. It would not be unusual for three units to respond to a Part 1 crime. While it doesn’t say so explicitly, the Cincinnati police statistics page seems to indicate that calls for service do not include police-initiated activities such as traffic citations, which also run into the tens of thousands per year.

This doesn’t mean that officers shouldn’t respond quickly to true emergencies. It just shows that police work isn’t about driving around for hours eating donuts waiting for someone to be attack. It’s just a shame that this kind of information isn’t generally known.

Animal activists, terrorism and taking a stand

This is unconscionable:

To study why drug abusers seem to succumb more quickly to AIDS, Dr. [Michael] Podell infected cats with the feline AIDS virus, gave them methamphetamines and put them to death, making a target of himself and Ohio State…

Protesters picketed the university, spray-painted the president's house and glued the locks on the administration building doors. Dr. Podell received nearly a dozen death threats.

So at 44, with a wife and two children, Dr. Podell is walking away from his academic career. Next month, he will join a private veterinary practice in a state he prefers not to name. He will leave behind his tenured job and the unfinished cat experiments, which were financed by a $1.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health…

If you had to ask which thing I found unconscionable, you’re on the wrong blog. This is precisely the kind of behavior that people like Peter Singer feed with their “we’re all animals” philosophy, and that the folks at PETA actively engage in. And we allow it by standing by without demanding that the people who do it are called exactly what they are: terrorists.

Mostly, Dr. Podell said, the letters and e-mail were a nuisance. But colleagues could see that the occasional threats, all anonymous and impossible to trace, rattled him and his wife. In one, he received a photograph of a British scientist whose car had been bombed, with the words "You're next," scrawled across the top…

I feel exactly as Mike at Cold Fury does when an animal is deliberately tortured for the sadistic pleasure of its tormentor. But there is a huge difference between frying a kitten on a barbeque and using a cat in a controlled clinical experiment for the purpose of finding out whether the use of methamphetamines accelerates the spread of AIDS. Animals are not people! And using animals responsibly in research is not just legitimate but imperative. The people who oppose it have gone beyond objecting to egregious infliction of pain to damaging whatever they can to stop the experiments. And the universities, by their silence, are complicit:

For years, most academic institutions have maintained a kind of uneasy silence about the work, fearful of attracting the attention of groups that have vandalized laboratories or harassed scientists…

[T]he Federal Bureau of Investigation says two groups — the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front — have caused $43 million in property damage in more than 600 criminal acts since 1996…

That’s just two groups, just property damage, and just the amount that can be officially attributed to specific groups. How much more have we lost in human lives not saved because of these animal rights wing nuts?

The fact that the NY Times could print this shows that the AIDS lobby, in all its political self-righteousness, isn’t going to touch this either – in part, I would say, because many AIDS activists are either also animal rights activists or in full sympathy with them:

…But the study had several strikes against it in the image department, people here agree.

First, Dr. Podell was experimenting with cats, a beloved household pet. Second, he is a veterinarian, someone from whom the public expects animal healing, not animal experiments. Finally, drug-abusing AIDS patients are not as sympathetic a constituency as, say, children with juvenile diabetes.

So it’s ok to stop research that will help keep drug-abusing AIDS patients alive, because they aren’t as cute as cats and way less cuter than sick kids. Excuse me?! Not only is that the same kind of casual intolerance the AIDS lobby claims to abhor, it’s also very lacking in foresight. It seems to me that learning that a substance accelerates the advance of an illness is one way of getting closer to figuring out what would stop it. Are 120 cats more important to the AIDS lobby than the millions of people dying of AIDS worldwide that we always hear about? And for those who haven’t much sympathy for victims of AIDS, they too are short-sighted – advances in understanding the processes of one illness are always fertile ground for branching off into studies about other illnesses.

Some even advocate using humans instead:

…the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine… argue[d] that the work could have been done in people…

These people, these animal rights activists, are trying to halt the progress of medicine. Where is the outrage? Where are the cries for stiff prison penalties, for fines, for freezing the assets of those who support threats against this doctor, or others? Can you begin to imagine the hysteria that would follow if an abortion doctor were subjected to this kind of treatment? Wait, we don’t have to imagine it – it’s happened. And the hysteria is huge, again with a lot of overlap between those who support abortion-on-demand (and thus object to attacks on abortion clinics) and those who are against using animals in experiments.

I’m no more for attacks on abortion clinics than I am for attacks on medical experimentation labs. We rightly have laws against that kind of destructive behavior. And I definitely would defend the right of animal rights activists to speak their mind. But we need to stop this pandering to the lunatic fringe, this living in fear because some people are acting like vicious, petulant children, and bring some sense back into the situation. I admire the University of Minnesota and its research director, Dr. Richard Bianco, who are apparently doing just that:

Some institutions, like the University of Minnesota, have taken a very aggressive and public stance against animal protection protests, said Dr. Richard Bianco, the official in charge of laboratory animal care. When a psychiatric researcher experimenting with rhesus monkeys was picketed at home, Dr. Bianco said, the university provided police escorts and obtained a restraining order in court. When PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, set up shop at school fairs, the university countered by inviting students to tour laboratories.

"We should be proud of what we do and talk about it," Dr. Bianco said. "We're scared to death. That's our problem."

Exactly. Do a little something for the cause today - write Dr. Bianco at bianc001@umn.edu in support of his stance, and write C. Bradley Moore, vice president of research at Ohio State, at moore.1@osu.edu to let him know that his behavior in this is not appreciated.

Wierdness in referrals

I'm all the time getting weird referrals, especially from web searches. I've written them down, and I have the list somewhere. But this morning... well this just struck me as very funny:

photo vole sex

What topped it for me was that the search was in French. Is this what they're reduced to?

My old site on Blogspot was the 10th listing. Scary. And, um, sorry about your fruitless - er, voleless - search, dude.

Hugging, touching, kissing – cultural artifacts?

I’ve been a hugger since I was little bitty; my daddy used to haul me off his neck with a “get off me, you ole heatin’ stove!” (this was usually after I came in all sweaty and hot from playing outside all day) because I latched onto him all the time. I don’t hang on people – that’s quite annoying – but friends and family get the hug treatment fairly often. I also tend to touch people when I talk to them – just a touch on the arm, or back. It’s a touchy-feely thing I think is genetic with me, but I also think it’s a southern thing.

But New Jersey was a revelation. Here, people kiss in greeting. Back home, you kiss a child, you kiss your mom, or you kiss when you mean it. Maybe I just run in the wrong circles. But here, people lean in from the waist – no body touching, please – and kiss each other on the cheek. If you’re really good friends, you give a quick bend-from-the-waist hug too.

It’s quite disconcerting to have the Grand High Muckity Muck of your office kiss you on the cheek, especially when just the day before he was on your case over something or other. And sometimes you really want the distance that a handshake gives you, but they just use the hand to haul you in for kiss. So I got used to it. Church – kissing. Work – kissing. Man or woman - kissing. I did meet one New Jerseyan who was completely not into the kissing OR hugging OR handshaking thing, and let me tell you, there was an awkward minute there until I realized I had totally violated personal space. Oops.

So now I’m wondering – is this a cultural artifact? Have the New Jerseyans picked up that Latin thing from the Italians? Where did the southern hugging come from? Why is it one way here and another way there? How do you know which if any is the right one? Can we institute a hand signal to indicate kissing, hugging, touching, all of the above, none of the above? Person A may be quite offended at touching, while Person B may be quite offended at your stand-offish-ness because you won’t touch.

A quandary. I guess for now, I’ll just keep kissin’ and huggin’ and touchin’ and hope I get it right.

UPDATE: Fred First notes on Fragments from Floyd (is that enough fs?) that in his part of rural Virginia, when people drive past on the roads they give a little two-fingered wave - the index and thumb raising up to acknowledge the oncoming driver, even when they're a stranger. In Clay County, Kentucky, people either raised their hand and ducked their head, like tipping a hat, or threw their heads back slightly. Still, a greeting. Of course, those were the people who weren't driving 65 on a curvy road posted for 40 mph. There's something about accelerating G-forces that keeps those hands on the wheel.

And one to rule them all

Eugene Volokh has uncovered a corporate plot to rule the world. All I can say is, it's a good thing that Frodo Lives, or we'd all be in big trouble.

Now this is a view of France I like

Lance Armstrong on his way to winning another Tour de France, complete with American flags. Okay, he's not won yet but it's a matter of time.

That American flag looks really good there, doesn't it? Maybe we should invade France, give them a taste of a modern day Marshall Plan, turn our liberals loose on their landscapes while the conservatives set up a major free-market export of french bread and pastries. I like it.

Of course, one of our famous liberals is already there. Reckon we can arrange for him to stay? It's a start.

Quote of the Day

He speaks for me too:

I'm a fair-skinned blond. I get sunburn from my refrigerator light.

---Daniel Taylor, Dreaded Purple Master (happily posting again)

Uh oh – someone mistook me for a liberal

Not just any liberal. Not a good-guy liberal like Meryl Yourish or those other folks you read and disagree with sometimes but would sit down to dinner with and be very happy to be there. Excited to be there, actually, because they would make reasoned arguments and challenge you without spouting nonsense. Nope. Someone mistook me for a way liberal, a freaky liberal, a… no, no, I just can’t say it yet.

Not the way I like to be greeted on Monday mornings.

This morning in my email box I had a friendly note from someone named Matt Brown, a Brit, he said, who congratulated me on my “interesting site” and then asked if I’d seen his site – www.opendemocracy.com. No, I hadn’t. I get these emails right along, and usually I’ll check it out, so I didn’t just delete. I read the rest of the email. My first clue that things weren’t all well was the headline of this article:

Gaza and the West Bank: Israel’s present and future penal colonies

I tried to come up with some storyline behind an article with that headline that I would ever possibly agree with. Couldn’t do it. But I wanted to be fair (you know me, always fair) so I went to the article itself. And here, for your reading pleasure, are some excerpts:

The deep background of the recent conflict is Israel’s post-Oslo military plan for total control of the Palestinian majority areas. Its pretext might be a war on terror; its underlying logic is to reduce the population of the occupied territories to destitution. From the consequences of this nightmare prospect, there is no escape except full Israeli withdrawal.

Okay. Bad start. But maybe author Tanya Reinhardt, since she does have a PhD, just isn’t a very savvy writer.

The Gaza strip is a perfect realisation of the Israeli vision of ‘separation’. Surrounded by electric fences and army posts, completely sealed off from the outside world, Gaza has become a huge prison.

About one third of its land has been confiscated for the 7,000 Israeli settlers living there (and their defence array), while over a million Palestinians are crowded in the remaining areas of the prison…

Going downhill precipitously here.

Though Israel describes everything it does as a spontaneous reaction to terror, the plan was fully spelled out in the Israeli media back in March 2001, soon after Sharon entered office.

Ahhh…this is a part of a Big Master Plan.

In practice… the towns and villages of the West Bank have been completely sealed. Even exit by foot, which was possible up to that point, has become blocked, and movement between the “territorial cells” now requires formal permits from the Israeli military authorities. Soldiers and snipers prevent any “unauthorised” walking to agricultural fields, to places of work and study, or for medical treatment.

Israelis – stopping good Palestinians from earning a decent, honest living or even getting medical help. This section is illustrated by a photograph of what could be construed (if you’re inclined) as an Israeli soldier pointing an automatic weapon at a crying Palestinian child of about three. Charming.

On to the next quote:

As a ‘military source’ told Ha’aretz… Combined with the severe restrictions on movement, the Palestinian population is becoming, as the military source defined it, ‘poor, dependent, unemployed, rather hungry, and extreme’... In a future not far off, the majority of Palestinians will only be able to maintain a reasonable life through the help of international aid.

Which, naturally, the Israelis also seek to block:

At the same time as Israel deprives the Palestinians of their means of income, it also makes a substantial effort to diminish or block international aid, under the pretext that the aid is used to support terrorists or their families.

It gets worse:

the EU – the largest donor to the PA – is under constant pressure from Israel to cut its aid, which is used, inter alia, to pay the salaries of teachers and health workers. The tactics are always the same; Israel provides some documents presumably linking the PA to terror – any aid to the PA is, therefore, aid to terror.

Poor beleaguered Palestinian Authority, unfairly associated with terrorism! And those hapless humanitarians at the EU – so susceptible to Israeli pressure, so dependent for their sense of self-worth on what the Israelis think of them, so complimentary and supportive of Israel, duped by their own heroes!

Wait, there’s more. Israel’s oppression of Palestine is now worse than South African apartheid:

The new stage of Israel’s ‘separation’ can no longer be compared to the apartheid system in South Africa. As Ronnie Kasrils, South Africa’s Minister of Water Affairs, said in an interview with Al Ahram Weekly (28 March–3 April 2002): “the South African apartheid regime never engaged in the sort of repression Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians.” We are witnessing the daily invisible killing of the sick and wounded who are being deprived of medical care, the weak who cannot survive in the new conditions of poverty, and those who are bound to reach starvation.

We’re nearing the end of the article. Buckle your seatbelt.

Nevertheless, the public debate in Israel revolves around questions of efficiency. Is it possible to stop terror by such methods? Even if so, is it permitted? Is this what we (Israelis) want to be?

Yes, even if this method would “stop terror” (this is the first mention, incidentally, of any behavior on the part of the Palestinians that might, vaguely, be on the very outside edge of reprehensible) is it the right thing to do? Ostensibly, no. But it won’t even accomplish that goal:

On this small piece of land, three million people live – with hopes, needs and dreams just like anyone else. Since Oslo, they have been lured with promises that Israelis are about to evacuate the settlements and give them back their land, at the very same time that Israel has been imprisoning them in Gaza, stealing more of their land in the West Bank, and leaving them no hope whatsoever. The Palestinian people are fighting for their freedom. The crimes of Palestinian terror do not remove the culpability from Israel’s own crimes.

You just saw the second reference to Palestinian terror. Not very specific, is it? And certainly not actually condemning, except in a skid-by reference on the way to damning Israel again. Ms. Reinhardt, in closing, weeping (I'm sure) tears of frustration and righteous anger:

Before Oslo, also, there was a wave of horrible terror attacks. But at that time, after each such attack, the call was heard: get out of the territories! Then it was still understood that when people are left with no hope, there is no way to stop the madness of suicide bombing. It is not too late to get out of the territories.

So. No way to stop the madness as long as Israel continues to imprison Palestinians in “Israel’s Alcatraz”. Illuminating.
Somehow, I’m getting the very strong impression that Matt Brown never actually visited my website. But I want to know more. Just who is this Tanya Reinhardt, Israeli scholar? I link over to her bio page at her university. And this is what I find:

l972-l976: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D. program of the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics; Ph.D. degree awarded in August l976, Thesis Supervisor, Prof. N. Chomsky

Things are a little bit clearer now. They’ve mistaken me for a Chomsky liberal! How thoroughly awful. I’m nearly crushed under the weight of it. All I can say is – it’s probably good for them that they sent it to me, because Meryl would have been really nasty to them.

Somehow I don't think I'll be bookmarking Matt’s page.

Some people badly need a life

Or maybe just a break from their child-rearing duties. Here are two reviews from Amazon.com on a DVD about Thomas the Tank Engine, among my 2 1/2 year old niece's favorites:

So beautiful but SO cranky, January 21, 2002

Reviewer: A viewer from Boston, MA USA

My son - 3 yrs now - has enjoyed Thomas stories & videos for about 1.5 years. But I have to say I'm often torn ... these engines really are quite crabby & cranky & rude to each other. It all comes out in the wash, & everyone makes up in the end, but ... gee they're rude. And I spend a lot of time encouraging my little tyke NOT to be rude. To be kind & compassionate! So what's a mother to do?

It's interesting that now, he will not watch any of the story videos, prefering those with only songs. If a story comes on, he insists that we forward FAST to the next song. I guess he's also tired of the crabbing & back-biting! (Sounds awful, but they really do!)...

And the best one:

What the heck is this guy thinking?, June 9, 2001

Reviewer: A viewer from Las Vegas, NV USA

My 3 year old loves Thomas the Tank Engine, and until we got this video, I did too. And the more I read the books, the more nastiness I see in the storylines! This movie is full of sarcastic and teasing remarks made between the engines and freight cars, there's a DEFINITE pecking order based on size and cleanliness, and there are NO strong women in this film or any storyline at all in any Thomas the Tank Engine stories. Of course none of that occurred to me until I kept watching it as many times as my son did, but the sarcasm and nastiness between the engines started me thinking, I guess. I don't let my little boy watch this movie any more and he has just as much fun without it. He does better pretending with his Thomas Tank Engine toys and tracks, books, etc. Not recommended for sensitive/impressionable children/parents!

I personally am crushed that there are no strong women cars. Of course you know that if they did have a strong female train car, and it was a dining car, or a baggage car, this same woman would cry foul. It would have to be the first engine, or at minimum a presidential car. Apparently she doesn't like Annie and Clarabel, the two female cars in the stories. But maybe Annie and Clarabel like being what they are! And who is this woman to oppress them by judging them, and saying they aren't good role models? And I'm horrified by the thought that cleanliness or orderliness will take you further in this world. I'm sure her son is much better off, not watching those horrid sexist trains propagating cleanism!

It's enough to make you steamed.

Terrorism surveillance training for citizens

(I attended the program described below on Thursday, and wanted to write it up. But there were no articles to reference, and it didn't seem fair to present the information solely as a part of an opinion piece. So I wrote this post like a straight news article, to give the information as neutrally as possible. My commentary is below, in another post. This is not a real published news article. I wrote it all. [I think that was unclear in an earlier version of this note.])

While Operation TIPS has apparently gone by the way, a national non-profit organization based in New Jersey is moving forward with its goal of training citizens throughout the United States in how to spot terrorists.

The effort includes the development of a database for citizens to call with information, which the head of the organization hopes the FBI will analyze.

Mike Licata, a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel and current high school teacher in Jersey City, led a session of Community Anti-terrorism Training this past Thursday night in the Jersey City city hall, beginning his presentation with a video montage of the WTC attack. The program is a part of Licata’s C.A.T. Eyes program.

“We’re at war,” he said. “It’s going to be won by police officers, and they can win it only if private citizens help.”

Licata developed the program, which he feels is “a calling”, after 9/11 to train citizens in how to identify potential targets in their communities. The training curriculum includes tips on what forms terrorist organizations take (such as the “cell” structure), who may be a terrorist (not just Islamic Arabs), and what behavior could be termed “suspicious”. According to Licata, 300 instructors nationwide have been trained in presenting the curriculum, and the goal is to integrate it into the National Neighborhood Block Watch system, or develop something similar focused on tips on terrorism. The training is free.

Examples of the information presented in the program include the C.A.R.V.E.R. method for rating the likelihood that any one site will be a terrorism target:

C Criticality – is it important to social, commercial or political functioning?
A Accessibility – can terrorists get to it?
R Recouperability
V Vulnerability – how easy is it to hit?
E Effect – what effect will damaging/destroying this site have?
R Recognizability – is the site something of an icon in the region/nation?

Licata noted in the presentation that terrorists scouting a site could disguise themselves as clergy, police, utility workers, door-to-door salespeople or other commonly seen community figures. To determine whether someone is real or not, he said, look for clues that are out of place – for instance, uniform patches from non-existent or non-local companies or agencies (including law enforcement agencies), or noting whether a construction worker had clean, well-kept hands (which he said is unlikely while working).

He stressed the importance of practicing good observation skills, and when suspicious behavior is noted, give a description as complete as possible to law enforcement – including color/type of clothing, physical characteristics, make/model of vehicle, tag number and any other pertinent details. He said these were not details you could get with a quick drive-by – he suggested that if citizens saw something suspicious, they should drive around the block and come back to observe the site again, taking notes before calling law enforcement.

In describing terrorists themselves, Licata said they tend to be 22-25, intelligent and well-educated, and obsessed with making change. They will have strong political ideologies tied to a nationalism that leads to statements like “This nation would be much better if (another country/ideology) were in control here.” Often their religion will be strongly to the right, and their statements may also include comments that the country would be better if it was under their religion. Licata stressed that terrorists were not necessarily Muslim or Arab, showing the bio-terrorist attack in a Tokyo subway, and a photo of Eric Randolph, the abortion clinic bomber who remains at large. The C.A.T. Eyes program motto, he said, is “Watching American with Pride, not Prejudice.”

The program contained elaborations on these themes and a few additional areas. The organization's website includes a registration form to join the program, as well as its goals and a frequently-asked questions page. A New York Times article on November 3, 2001, included information about the program.

“We’re in a war of good against evil,” Licata said. “We need to keep our eyes open.”

So what do I think about the terrorism training?

I have to say first that I admire the time and effort Licata is putting in without any pay. Takes a lot of dedication. But I’m concerned about the approach this “terrorist watch” is taking – primarily the way it is being taught. Most people aren’t terrorists, but this method is encouraging people to look at everyone suspiciously. It’s a matter of tone, and approach – the point shouldn’t be, anyone you see could be a terrorist in disguise. It should be, don’t dismiss suspicious behavior just because the person showing it is dressed in a priest’s robes, or seems to be a construction worker. And that is not terrorist-specific – we should always understand that menace will mask itself, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. We should always be alert to uncommon things in our surroundings. That said, we should also be respectful of privacy, and this course did not address privacy concerns.

The bottom line for me, I suppose, is that the program doesn’t place the information in sufficient context for a layperson to gain enough knowledge to be an effective “terrorism spotter” – but does potentially give people a sense that they have a right to snoop around in other people’s business because they’ve been “trained” in what to look for. We don’t need a bunch of junior cops.

The database is another issue. If it is set up, and people call the information in, they assume that it is being analyzed, which is a whole other step. As we know, a lot of data coming into the federal intelligence agencies was already going unanalyzed pre-9/11. So what happens to that data? There’s a good chance it sits there, unsifted, while citizens are not calling their local law enforcement because they think they’ve handed it off to the FBI.

In general, this idea is a much less intrusive one than the Operation TIPS program deep sixed in Congress last week. And likely most people involved – as with most programs – will be too busy to spend a lot of time snooping around their neighbors’ business. But the idea is hard for me, I suppose, because it generally lessens the respect for privacy rights and individual freedom to live as you choose without someone watching everything you do.

What do you think?

Framing bias alert

I've mentioned before that one way bias in the media occurs is through framing bias - presenting facts, but couched in a way that gives an inaccurate impression, or one skewed toward a certain viewpoint. Bigwig at Silflay Hraka nails a good example of it in this post on the supposedly high numbers of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

I like this woman

This is the funniest thing I've read lately. I sympathize with our hero but... his wife rocks. Totally.

And yes, it's apparently a Silflay Hraka morning, so you may just want to go there and stay, since my brain is apparently locked in a creativity void.

He's The Man

I love Lance Armstrong. Not, you understand, in any kind of romantic way. He's a married man! But this time of year I get all tingly about the Tour de France, and it's Lance's fault.

Last year I read his book just before the Tour, so I followed it obsessively. I found out what all the biking lingo was, and how it was actually strategy in this long road race to not be first, at least all the time - sometimes you hang on at the back of your team pack so your compadres take the wind, using up their energy fighting it so you (Lance, the man) are sheltered from it and save your energy for those awesome solo rides. So, you see, I learned that biking can be a team sport.

This year I have not followed it as closely for a variety of reasons. But now Kehaar at Siflay Hraka has rekindled my obsession by talking about his own, not insignificantly just as I am getting digital cable tomorrow. This could be bad.

OTOH, how could watching Lance Armstrong ever be bad? He is, after all, The Man.

NOTE: Kehaar is apparently a man after my own heart in other ways too. Although I don't always remember the towel.

Just so you know

One thing changing around here is that most of my short "go see this" links are not going to be here, but on Blogfodder, which is a compilation blog with, so far, four of us authorized to post. I don't really want this to be an index blog, so most shorter posts will be blog-to-blog links, not news articles. The good part about that is, you'll get the benefit of all of our websurfing neatly in one place.

How cool is that?

UPDATE: As I suspected, Meryl Yourish does not like the reverse type on Blogfodder. I almost said, "Sorry, Meryl, you'll hate it" in my original post, but didn't. Shoulda. 'Cause I was right.

And a good time was had by all…

You just can’t help but have a good time on a date that includes the Statue of Liberty, Wal-Mart and Cracker Barrel. And it’s nice to be able to point at things and have someone else put them in your cart. “I’ll take this… and that… and this looks cool too.”

Of course, I’m sure there are those of you who would question the sanity of buying a new DVD player when I own no DVDs, then buying four video tapes and still no DVDs, because while I liked the movies I wasn’t going to spend $20 for any of them. They didn’t have the new Dune mini series, or the Sound of Music, on DVD. I’ll have to think about what others I want – Anne of Green Gables, probably. Silver Bullet, if it’s on DVD, but it probably isn’t. We shall see.

The four movies I did get were Stephen King’s IT, Independence Day, Men In Black and Man from Snowy River. Just $6.44 each. I love Wal-Mart.

Yes, I know they treat their employees badly sometimes and they’re pushing out mom and pop stores all over the nation. But… I love Wal-Mart. Live with it.

Another WTC design - with wings

This is pretty cool, especially for those of you who (like me) grew up reading action comics. Very Justice League-y.

Not sure how practical, but the buildings are more inspiring than any of the six options suggested recently. [Link via Starhawk]

UPDATE: Apparently the proffered six designs were greeted with more raspberries than joy. Rightfully so, I think. The article is amusing, however, for this little editorialization:

Nikki Stern, a voluble woman whose husband died in the collapse of the North Tower Sept. 11, nodded. "There's something missing," she said. "This has to be about more than just office buildings."

Voluble, of course, means she talks a lot, very fast. Sounds like she bent somebody's ear at that meeting, to the reporter's frustration. Reminds me of the time my English professor gave a classmate of mine credit when he put "Susanna Cornett" as the definition of the word "loquacious" on an exam. When I complained, the professor said, "Well, obviously he doesn't just know the definition, but how to use it." Ha ha ha.

I'm back

In case you didn't notice, I'm back. Sort of. I was able to accomplish a lot of what I needed to this week, but that means my focus is now more on non-bloggish things. I'll be posting most days, but not as much as before. You're likely to see less linking around and more commentary. However, I'm sure the same unerring wit, keen intelligence and top-notch writing will be much in evidence.

Will you get off the floor? You'll rupture something, laughing that hard!

I turn around for just a few days and look what an attitude you get...

I do appreciate that so many of you continued to visit this week. Thank you. You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.

Tucked away in the holler

Fred First's garden looks like home; as for this... I can only wish it were nearby.

Down another dirt road

Quana Jones has made the move off Blogger, packing up the whole Eristic kit and caboodle and landing it here. Check it out, change your links or, if you don't have a link, add one already!

A goodbye

She is a petite woman, slender and just barely topping 5’2”, and she looked small as she squared her shoulders and walked through the doorway back toward her old life. She asked me earlier if her black slacks, cream linen jacket and sling-back wedge-heeled shoes were nice for travel. I told her she looked very nice, and she did. At 4 a.m. on a Monday, I was not quite up to high heels. But then, my friend Alice* is always one to choose her own way.

A way that, for three years, meant she was an illegal alien.

She came to the United States from her home in the Caribbean because her daughter and family were here; her son-in-law attended school on a student visa in a southern state. She wanted to be close, but not too close, and another friend of hers lived in the northeast so she had contacts. She came on a five-year visitor’s visa, but soon took a job as a nanny – illegally, because she had no working visa. She lived in her employer’s home, with only what benefits – precious few – that her employer saw fit to give. She loved the children, and was conscientious in her work. Although in her mid50s, she was active and enjoyed playing with the younger ones.

The family she worked for until recently is wealthier than anyone amongst my acquaintances – the husband made his money on Wall Street and retired in his early 40s, and now he and his wife live a life of parties, hobbies, occasional business dabbling and summers on Long Island. Alice’s weekly salary was about what the wife typically paid for a pair of shoes. In some ways they were friendly to her, and kind – occasionally taking her to church on Sundays, for instance, if they were already going that way – but they definitely saw her as a servant.

A couple of months ago, Alice began having headaches and dizzy spells, sometimes having difficulty maintaining her balance. She went to the doctor, where she had to pay cash because she had no insurance and no recourse to whatever government aide is available to legal residents. Eventually she would go to several doctors, and have a number of tests, all paid for by her dwindling savings, in cash. They couldn’t seem to find out what was wrong, until she went to a chiropractor who identified it as a slight compression between two vertebrae. Her visits there brought relief, but her employment with the family was nearing an end and she didn’t feel comfortable moving to another position with her health uncertain. Her daughter's family had left months before. So she decided to go home too.

Alice was my friend for most of her stay here, and while we didn’t visit together a lot we saw each other frequently at church, and sometimes went to the mall or out to eat together. I learned from her about the still-prevalent preference for whiteness amongst the community of immigrants from India where she grew up, the daughter of a factory worker; she informed me that my unrelentingly pale skin would bring her a certain cachet if I were to visit with her in her island nation. Very dark herself, she had married a black man, to her father’s dismay, and then her daughter had as well. She laughed at how her grandchildren couldn’t get over the smoothness of grandma’s hair, so unlike their own. She laughed a lot, always smiling and friendly; not long before she left for home, she told me that people didn’t want to hear your troubles, they wanted to hear that things were good so they would feel good. So that is what she said, even when she was so dizzy she had to hold her hand against the wall for balance.

Alice didn’t tell her employers the extent of her illness, because she was afraid to lose her job. But they knew she was going to the doctor, and needed tests, and they did not offer to take her to the doctor unless it was on their way to somewhere else, nor did they give her any money for medical bills, despite what they saved by not paying Social Security or other things for her during her time with them. One day I left work early and drove 20 miles to take her to have an MRI; I didn’t mind, but her employers were home and the doctor’s office only a few miles from them. I was glad to be there, because Alice was frightened and liked for me to talk to the doctors about what they found. But I did not like her employers, because they didn’t even offer.

Finally they left for their summer home, allowing Alice to stay in the house alone until she too left, for her island. They gave her no card, no thank you bonus, no gift from the children, nothing more for two years of work than a “have a nice trip” and they were off. It was, in my mind, the height of self-absorption. I said, Alice. Please. Tell me these people aren’t Republicans. She smiled, and laughed, and said, “Oh, but yes! They were so thrilled when George W. Bush won! They go to all the parties in New York.” It was not my favorite thing to hear.

Alice’s situation raised a peculiar quandary for me. I think our country should be tougher on illegal immigration; I think those who overstay their visas, or work in violation of it, should be sent home. But I wanted her to stay. I wanted to find some way that she could be the exception. I hadn’t the money or connections, and so she left, with only my words, “I wish you could stay.” She is precisely the kind of person our country would be blessed to welcome more often.

But it’s not just an emotional thing, and that is why I did not try to talk her out of her decision to go. The treatment of her employers was callous but not cruel – unless you count as cruel the story she told me of her employer, who learned that not only could he not heat her top floor bedroom beyond a very cool level in the winter, but that her electric heater might be overloading the house electrical system. He unplugged her heater – leaving similar ones running in his bedroom and those of his children – and told her that if it w