cut on the bias

Way to go, Alabama!

It appears the Alabama delegation is not intimidated by the protestors in NYC:

"I can't believe how nice everybody is," said Bill Armistead, a legislator from Shelby County and Republican delegate. As if to prove his point, Armistead approached protesters outside the hotel who were chanting slogans against President Bush and the GOP in general.

Armistead asked where they were from, and they asked what he did for a living.

I'm a businessman," Armistead said. One responded, "Oh, so it's all about the money and not the people."

Their chit-chat ended soon after...

State Sen. Gerald Allen, also a delegate from Tuscaloosa, was less impressed.

"It would have been wonderful to see 250,000 protesters showing their support for our country and our president in this time of war," Allen said. "For them to get ugly and disrespectful, I have no regard for them."

Shelby County Commissioner and delegate Earl Cunningham also welcomed the protests but declared them relatively mild.

"After two tours in Vietnam, I've seen far worse than that. This Bronze Star winner can hold his own," Cunningham said.

Delegate Bobbie Lou Leigh, an alternate from Colbert County, was entertained by protesters.

"We just turned our backs on them and took our pictures," she said. "They all need to get a life."

Not a hand-wringer in the bunch. I love Alabama.

It's not about which side, but which butter?

My brother has three pear trees in his yard; earlier I posted a photo of pears all but dripping from it. This weekend he and his wife Traci made a lovely pear butter from fruit from the trees, so I naturally was inspired to do so myself. Operating on my life's guiding principle - There's nothing that can't be made harder if you put your mind to it - I decided I too would make pear butter, but I would make a double recipe so I could give some as gifts.

If I could embed one of the IM chat smiley icons here, I would. And not the smiling one, either - the one with exposed, gritted teeth where you can almost hear the "grrrrrrrrrrrrrr".

I don't know what kind of pear tree he has, but even when the pears are ripe they're hard as basalt. I wouldn't feel out of place showing up with an apron full at a reinactment of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery". But the pear butter they made was quite delicious, so I dutifully trotted out to their trees after church on Sunday and filled a plastic bag with 40+ rocks pears. They sat in the back seat of my car for 24 hours as I did other things, but even baking in the Alabama heat didn't soften them any. I finally got around to peeling them about 7 or 8 last night, and it. took. forever. By 9 or so I had a huge pot, a gift from a COTB reader, three quarters full sitting on my stove. In went the water, on went the heat. I thought to ask my brother online how long it took his to cook down to soft applesauce-y consistency. "A long time," he said.

Try "three hours".

I stirred periodically, washing dishes and installing dozens of books in my new bookshelves in the interim. It simmered with little pops of scented air until I came to stir, then it would begin boiling volcanically around my spoon. Hot pear butter popped everywhere, including on my hand, until I resorted to hiding behind a skillet splatter screen and using a hot mitt on my stirring hand. Finally about midnight I took a potato masher to them to see if that would speed things along. It seemed to help, and while it was a bit lumpy, everything was at least softened and susceptible to mashing. In went 8 cups of sugar, a teaspoon of nutmeg, an undetermined amount of cinnamon but probably twice that, and 2/3 cup of orange juice. Mmmmm. It smelled like the spiced tea I make during the holidays.

I continued to stir.

And stir.

And. stir.

I'm not one to follow a recipe that says "stir constantly" if I can't see a reason to, and I didn't here. So it was back and forth again, doing other things, as the time crept to 1 a.m... then 1:30... The recipe said to cook it "until thick enough to roundup on a spoon". What does that mean? I thought a "roundup" was what you do with cows before you sell them. I stirred some more, vaguely thinking I'd stop when the consistency appeared like apple butter. I never reached a point where I thought, "this is perfect". I reached a point where I thought, "One more stir and it's going to get poured on the rampaging tomato plants outside." That was when I turned off the heat.

But I wasn't done. Oh, no. This was canning, something I'd helped my mother with many years ago but had never done myself. I hadn't even watched my brother do it. I discussed it with my mom that afternoon, who said since I didn't have a rack for my pots to keep the jars off the bottom of the pan, to put folded dishtowels in before the jars. I said, "Put dishtowels in to boil?" Then I realized, um, Susanna? Boiling clothes used to be how they did laundry. Hello!

I had washed my new half-pint jars, lids and rings earlier, and they waited in neat regimented rows on top of the washer and dryer. Very carefully I filled each with dark brown pear butter, screwing on the lid with the ring and nestling it on the folded dishtowel in the pot. I filled the pot with water, as per instructions, to 1/2 inch over the top of the jars, and set it on the burner on high. I did the second pot - it took two to hold everything - and went back to mucking in my junk room (aka guest bedroom when it's cleaned) with periodic visits to make sure nothing exploded. It only had to boil 10 minutes, but I have a short attention span. I couldn't stand and watch that long. The pear butter had one last fun moment for me: The first time I came back to the kitchen, one of the pots was boiling rapidly and gouting sprays of water from around one side of the dishtowel. The floor, stove, and countertop were soaked with hot water. Hahaha! Just what you want at (checking clock) 2:30 a.m.! A quick shifting around of things took care of that.

Finally at 3 a.m. I had three neat rows of jars on the washing machine again, this time full of lovely pear butter. And it really does taste excellent. I went to bed exhausted, mindful that today I have a job interview at 11, lunch with a friend at 1, and a class to teach at 6:30. Why didn't I start the pear butter earlier? But at least this morning when I came into the kitchen to see my beautiful pear butter, every jar had sealed.

Maybe it was all good after all.

I might just call to your attention that the pear butter is sitting on the edge of my kitchen curtains, which I made last week.

UPDATE: It's a good thing I stayed past the time I meant to leave this morning, working on this post. I just got a call saying that my interview is canceled and will be rescheduled. Maybe I'll go back to bed.

After making some hot biscuits to eat with pear butter.

Mexico City - the place to do murder

When Patrick Belton linked this article from WaPo on Oxblog, he linked it with this phrase: "worst...job...in the...world". I'd say diving in human wastewater would be in the top 10 for most of us. It certainly has a very high "yuck" factor. But what caught my eye (unsurprisingly) was this graph:

Barrios, a happy-go-lucky father of three, said none of it bothers him -- not the smell, not the dangerous spinning pump blades, not even the two cadavers. He never found out who they were, because they were carried off in the flowing waters. The police were not called. The divers, who periodically encounter bodies because sewers are popular spots for dumping murder victims, only call police when they bring a body to the surface.

Emphasis mine. If I spoke Spanish and had the money, I'd be down there on the next plane researching that part of the story. They don't even bring the bodies to the surface usually! How many do they find? I'd say decomposition in that bacteria-rich environment is quite accelerated. It's also interesting to me because in one of Kathy Reich's books (and I can't remember which one), her protagonist, a forensic anthropologist, is called in to make identification when a cadaver is found in the sluge of a sewer being cleaned with heavy equipment. At the time I thought, how bizarre to put a body there. Now I realize it was equal to a killer in the US dumping a body beside of the road somewhere - just business as usual.

How people treat the dead says a lot about their general attitude toward the living. I'm intrigued by this glimpse into the collective psyche of Mexico.

I wish they wouldn't

The NYT is naturally spinning like a top in their coverage of the Republican convention, but I'm afraid the party execs are making their job quite easy:

Republican leaders said yesterday that they would repeatedly remind the nation of the Sept. 11 attacks as their convention opens in New York City today, beginning a week in which the party seeks to pivot to the center and seize on street demonstrations to portray Democrats as extremist.

It's not a news analysis piece by name, but it is in practice with a distinctly negative tone. However, while my reasons are different, I do have to agree that a huge emphasis on 9/11 is not the best choice. For the Dems to say that the Republicans are unusually heavy in their focus on 9/11 is rank hypocrisy - the whole point of John Kerry's war hero theme is to indicate that he can lead our country through the world that followed 9/11. And it's no greater opportunism to invoke the 9/11 victims than it is to invoke the American military dead from the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. One of the complaints is that many of the 9/11 victims would not be for Bush themselves, yet he's essentially using their deaths for his gain. Yes, a lot of the 9/11 victims in New York City were probably liberal - they lived in New York. Some were likely quite conservative. I would say you'd have a similar split with the American military casualties, except with opposite political affiliations: more conservative than liberal. Why is it more risible to "use" the 9/11 victims than to "use" the American military war dead? I think, in fact, that the Dems inflict more harm - at least the Republicans don't say the 9/11 victims were mindless idiot lower class robots lured to their death with lies.

But, in my judgment, it's no compliment to say that the Republican convention planners are no worse and possibly better than the Dem convention planners. Exploitation is exploitation. It diminishes the harm to use it as a slogan. I wish the Republicans would talk about the future, about terrorism, that they would educate the nation on what it's like to fight for our freedom, and speak about strength, not victimization. They need to talk about why it's right to love this nation, and want to see it prosper free from outside attacks. It seems to me that the Dems are tearing down their own house as rapidly as they can get their hands on each brick in the wall. When the Republicans engage in exploitation themselves, they in essence are building back the house of resistance as quickly as the Dems pull it down. Why not build a house on the rock of reason instead?

It's amazing to see the demonstrations, and realize that the people demonstrating think they're going to sway voters toward their positions. Anyone susceptible to that is already on their side; the rest of the nation gets nauseated and just a little alarmed when they see it. They think, Is this what a Kerry administration would look like? The more I see it, the more I realize the truth of the insights in this article that I posted on before.

Someone needs to ask the Republican powerful this question: Why try to shoot someone who's committing suicide? You may wind up shooting yourself by accident.

What media bias - Part 1,748,201

The Scrapbook at The Weekly Standard has a great takedown of presidential "historian" (fictorian?) Douglas Brinkley. But the best is saved for last, in this little nugget at the end:

"Frigging" Reuters

Last Thursday a U.S. district court judge in New York ruled unconstitutional last year's Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, notwithstanding his finding that the surgical procedure at issue is "gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized." The Supreme Court, Judge Richard Casey explained, had left him little latitude to decide otherwise.

Whereupon Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, sent out an email press release highlighting the importance of this fall's presidential election to the future of the Supreme Court and the practice of abortion both.

Whereupon a man named Todd Eastham, who plainly lacks the necessary temperament to serve as North American news editor for the Reuters wire service--but holds that job anyway--emailed Johnson right back, as follows:

"What's your plan for parenting & educating all the unwanted children you people want to bring into the world? Who will pay for policing our streets & maintaining the prisons needed to contain them when you, their parents & the system fail them? Oh, sorry. All that money has been earmarked to pay off the Bush deficit. Give me a frigging break, will you?"

THE SCRAPBOOK recommends that Mr. Eastham quit his current job and become a presidential historian.

Beautiful.

Links make a difference

Today I've spent most of my time reading dissertation abstracts to determine which dissertations I need to review for the literature review of my dissertation prospectus. Despite how dreary sounding that is, it's actually been quite fascinating, if slow going at times. And just now I came across one of a dissertation by Stanley Ketterer that I thought all of you would find interesting - it says that the more links you have an online story, the more engaged the reader will be:

Specifically, the study looked at the effects of hypertext links, story type and personality variables on readers' perceptions of crime stories in online newspapers. Crime stories were used because readers are interested in them, the media covers them extensively, and critics have charged that they often lack context. Prototypes of an online publications were used that included four types of crime stories and zero, 2 or 4 links. Half the crime stories were episodic, i.e. about a specific incident, and half were thematic, i.e. about an issue. Participants' online behavior was tracked electronically and psychographic measures were derived from a questionnaire. The results show participants who had links spent more time reading and were better informed than those who did not have links. The more links that were provided, the more links were noticed and used. The kind of link was also important. Participants had more knowledge of and liked background, chart and human interest story. They read and clicked on more links with episodic stories, but had more knowledge of thematic stories and their links.

Some of that seems logical to the point of doh!, but Big Media hasn't gotten the point yet. You don't see heavily linked pieces on their sites like you do on blogs. I understand the point of keeping people on your site, but they don't even provide internal links. What they don't understand, and this research shows, is that readers learn more, absorb their information more, when they're pulled into the issue with multiple resources at their fingertips. It makes the whole experience more interesting. And, if you're engrossed, you're more likely to read the entire thing. You're also more likely to see that publication as engaging, which means you'll come back more. Additionally, the abstract points out that the more links there were, the more links people used. That means they came back to the original article and read more. It kept their interest. It kept them on the page, so they're seeing the advertising longer - if that's the point, which it seems to be for the online media, given that they'd have articles bristling with links (just like a blog!) if their true goal was imparting information and understanding.

The abstract database that this came from is restricted to registered Rutgers students, but I gave you the bulk of it. For further reference, the bibliographic cite is in MORE.

UPDATE: Found the full abstract here. Just do a "find" search on the page, it's about a 10th of the way down (very long page). Dr. Ketterer is apparently now on the faculty of the Mass Communications Department in the Graduate College of Oklahoma State University. One wonders what he thinks of blogs? Interestingly enough, one of his areas of specialty is media credibility. He has an extensive journalism background.

Ketterer, Stanley. (2000). "The effects of links, story type and personality variables on readers' perceptions and use of crime stories in online newspapers". Dissertation. University of Missouri - Columbia. 286 pages.

The left gets it right about protests

The Village Voice gets it right about the motives, intent and likely actual result of the protestors amassing in NYC to cause trouble for the Republican Convention:

Politics is about communication. If you leave questions of what you are communicating—to the cops, to the watching public—entirely up in the air, you are not really doing politics at all.

The willful denial of this fact does not infect only 19-year-olds. Ed Hedemann has been working for peace ever since he refused induction into the military in 1969. His group, the War Resisters League, has planned its action with exquisite care, and with a strategic dignity: Figures dressed in white to represent mourning will gather at the World Trade Center site; marching across the city as close to Madison Square Garden as practicable, they will hold a " 'die-in,' a way to graphically represent all those who have been killed by the government's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." But even an old hand like Hedemann simply turns off his brain when asked about a fundamental problem in political communications: that even the most passive protesters, when arrested, are often perceived by the public—as they were in Chicago in 1968—as bringers of anarchy, and end up hurting the causes they profess to help.

The article, using as a framing tool a comparison of the 1968 Democrat convention in Chicago that nominated Hubert Humphrey with the 2004 Republican convention starting next week, is unabashedly anti-Bush. But reporter Rick Perlstein does an excellent job analyzing the protest mentality in the midst of an obvious plea that they not do what they're threatening to do. He even says of the protestors' hero, Martin Luther King Jr., "It would have taken all of King's powers of Christian love, I think, not to laugh in these people's faces." The article is so full of references to actual protestors that it's difficult to excerpt specific points without having to include paragraphs explaining who people are. But I think it's worth your time to read to understand the situation from their perspective.

Perlstein uses a number of leftist tropes to make his point: cops as evil beasts slavering to beat on protestors or anyone who tramples their egos; the "ugliness of the Bush regime"; the cattle-like fear of the average citizenry that sees just protests against an injust world as "anarchy" just because those slavering cop-beasts have to get involved. And yet his point is a good one, if you can paw through the verbal slime to get to it: You have to send a clear message to your targeted audience in a way they will hear it, not engage in self-indulgent street-plays for your own sense of self-aggrandizement and piety. Fortunately, I doubt any of his targeted audience will hear his voice of reason, and his apt uncovering of the protestors as arrogant and self-absorbed rings true. Scary that even the more reasoned on the left see the nuttiness, isn't it? I thought this passage was amusing and illustrative:

The site displays the kind of language whose vagueness might get hapless souls like Valentine put on 24-hour surveillance. It sounds innocent to write, "We must defend ourselves against possible attack like family and keep our spirits high." To Valentine, that means "just looking out for each other and taking care for each other." I point out that it might be interpreted differently by police intelligence—and that the importance of protesters' intentions not being misconstrued by paranoid cops is one of the reasons, as morally compromising as it might seem, to consult with authorities before a demonstration. She responds with self-satisfied cleverness: "We should not have to ask permission from the very people we're trying to protest."

One of the most telling aspects of the piece, however, is the opening. I'll just let Perlstein tell it, with a little help from me in the form of bolding:

One of the most exhilarating moments in Lewis Koch's life came in the summer of 1968. He was a producer for NBC News, based in Chicago, specializing in the anti-war movement—of which he was a sympathizer. Now, at the Democratic National Convention, he was an actor in what he thought was one of its glorious episodes. Cops were beating kids without provocation, and with the footage he was putting on the air, Middle America might finally realize that justice rested more with those protesting the war than those so violently defending it.

"I remember my self-satisfaction," Koch recalls, "and saying to myself, 'Oh, did you do a terrific job!' "

Then came the most traumatic moment in Lewis Koch's life.

"The phones would ring off the hook. People were furious. . . . Nothing I had intended had gone through. Actually what they saw were clear pictures of these young kids rioting. Chaos in their city." Next thing he knew, Richard Nixon had swept to presidential victory on the wings of a commercial proclaiming—above those selfsame pictures—that "the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence."

Now, remind me again about journalistic objectivity, about "no agendas", about fairness, etc.? About how journalists operate in this bias-free zone where they transcend their humanness and bring no personal frames or intent to their coverage? Thank you.

UPDATE: Edited for accuracy, see comments for details.

It would be wise of protestors from the more conservative side of things to take note of this article as well. Are you listening, abortion protestors?

Just curious...

While clicking around the blogosphere, I came across this collection of drivel from Kurt Vonnegut. It's all good, at least for a laugh, but this little section caught my attention and made me think (shocking, I know):

In case you haven't noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

That's Vonnegut talking. The "we" he refers to is not, of course, him, but the United States. And yes, he's invoking Hitler, which immediately empties his argument of any validity. But on the other hand... it led me to a curious consideration.

Repeatedly the left screams about how the US is worse than Hitler, that the world hates us more than the Nazis, etc ad nauseum, with the apparent goal of waking us (the "us" here meaning "brain dead moderates or frothing right wingers in the US") up to the horror of our diminished position in certain segments of the world.

But... is a comparison to Hitler actually a negative in those parts of the world?

Just think about it. Typically the people who are supposed to hate the US more than they hate Nazis are Europeans and denizens of the Middle East. But what are the Nazis most known for? Killing Jews. And what are those certain segments of Europe and the Middle East known for? Hating Jews, especially in Israel. In this article where France is huffy about comments by Sharon, where Israel is seeking to placate, still you have this:

Roger Cukierman, president of the Jewish Community of France, said French Jews are experiencing an unprecedented level of hostility.

"I was a child of 4 when the war started -- the second World War. I have some 'souvenirs' of that period," he said. "I could have never imagined that being a Jew in France would be a problem 60 years later."

More than 300 anti-Semitic attacks have been reported in France so far this year, which is more than in all of 2003.

Almost all of those attacks, the government said, were carried out by young, North African men.

Interesting. And how about this from 2002:

DANIEL BERNARD, the French ambassador to Britain, recently uttered an ugly anti-Semitic remark at a party hosted by newspaper publisher Conrad Black. He called Israel a "shitty little country" and then asked, "Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?"

And then there's Germany, again in 2002:

The two piles of letters on the office floor are getting higher and higher; both are more than a meter tall. Stephan Kramer, the office manager of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has counted at least a thousand letters. He is piling them up because the stacks serve as a kind of yardstick, measuring a new social phenomenon that is gaining ground in Germany. Until recently, expressions of anti-Semitism had come from the far right, if at all. The bourgeois center of society never revealed its hostility and maintained an embarrassed silence...

There have always been letters like that, but most of them were anonymous pamphlets sent by the far right. But every single one of these letters piled two meters high is signed, with the senders’ full names, complete address, and many even provide telephone or fax numbers. They did not come from the rightist fringe—but rather from the center. And something else is new: These piles represent only two weeks’ worth of mail.

If you think it's gotten better in the past two years, think again.

And if you want to know what's up in the Middle East, go here. Just a little taste:

In reaction to the May 1, 2004 terrorist shooting in the offices of an oil contractor in Yunbu', Saudi Arabia, in which seven, among them two Americans, were killed, Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah ibn Abd Al-'Aziz stated at a gathering of Saudi dignitaries, including top Muslim clerics and preachers, that "the Zionists" were to blame.

And this:

Dr. Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad, director of the "Jaffa Research Center" in Cairo and columnist for Al-Liwaa Al-Islami, which is the Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party's paper, published a two-part article titled 'The Lie About The Burning of the Jews.' In his article, Ahmad stated, using the work of Western Holocaust deniers, that the burning of Jews in gas chambers during World War II was a tale made up by the Zionist movement in order to extort the West and make possible the establishment of the Zionist enterprise.

It would seem that given the level of anti-semitism in those countries, they wouldn't find Hitler to be all that risible. In some countries, it's possible that Hitler might even be thought of fondly. So to say that we'll be "hated more than Hitler!" by those countries is somewhat like saying, "you'll be hated more than chocolate!", which is to say, not much at all, really. Now, if you said, "You'll be hated more than Jews!", well, then, we should start being worried. And actually in the minds of those types, the US is often seen as a shill of Jews, so I suppose it's the same thing.

It just goes to show that the left doesn't think very hard about its arguments. Of course the "hated more than Hitler!" idea works when used against reasonable people, even those in the liberal camp, because they naturally and rightly think Hitler's actions were unmitigated evil. That's the reason it's used - not because the left cares so deeply about Jews that they too hate Hitler, but because they know that we hate Hitler. However, for them to say it is an exercise in hypocrisy and self-parody, given the left's rampant anti-semitism, adding to their already long list of risible characteristics.

As for me, I would never accuse the left of being "worse than Hitler" or "hated more than Hitler". I don't want to invoke any corollary of Godwin's Law.

So happy I'm gone

If you want to see more of NJ politics on the ground, don't just follow Jim McGreevey's dirty trail - check out Jersey City:

Tension around the November election for the unexpired term of the late Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham ratcheted up several notches yesterday when acting Mayor L. Harvey Smith, a candidate in the election, placed another candidate, city Police Chief Ronald Buonocore, on unpaid leave.

In response, Buonocore issued a statement through spokesman Dave Vermillion challenging Smith and another candidate, state Assemblyman Louis Manzo, to also leave office during the campaign.

Fascinating. As you know, I worked for JCPD for over three years, the last year with Buonocore as chief. I know the majority of these players, if not personally then by name and reputation. All I can say is... I'm so happy I'm gone.

If you're interested in my blathering about Jersey City politics, feel free to read on. If not, I won't inflict it on you.

The issue is loyalties, which I learned early. My goal was always to do the best I could to bring needed funds into the department through writing grants. But since my job was about money, it was always a hot political issue - not me personally, but what I was doing. On more than one occasion, I was suspected of favoring one political faction in the department over another, and even ordered not to speak to the other side. I did personally prefer one over the other, but that would not have led to my sabotaging the other side. I did my job, I wrote grants, I ran them the best I could under the circumstances, regardless of who sat in the chief's seat (or the director's). But it did give me a look at the underbelly of Jersey City politics.

Buonocore is a classic New Jersey political operative. He's been at it over 30 years, and has woven a strong support net throughout the region. I know that all politics involves keeping an ear to the ground for what gossip and innuendo is out there, what new tidbit of information might bolster or damage your position. But in Jersey City, it attained a level I'd never seen before; nearly everyone was suspicious of almost everyone else. It was rather like a bunch of Roman emperors, all with their spies and food tasters.

So now the factions are butting heads not just in Trenton but in Jersey City. Buonocore is not going to starve even if he's taken off the payroll - he retired from the police department to take a position as head of public works in the Cunningham administration, drawing his retirement pay as well his city pay while in that position. When he became police chief, one of the things he did early in his tenure was go before the state retirement board to make his case that he should continue to receive his police retirement pay while also being paid as police chief. I suppose the point was, he did not actually rejoin the force as a sworn officer, going back into their retirement system, etc. Whatever the argument was, he won.

Be that as it may, this is definitely political shenanigans on the part of L. Harvey Smith. I remember him as a tall, slender, handsome man in his 50s who carried himself with more than a touch of arrogance. His reputation for self-interest and political game-playing was similar to Buonocore's, and his air of arrogance was, according to office gossip, quite reflective of his actual behavior.

Many of you probably could care less about this race, but it's riveting to me, from the safe distance of Alabama - just as the mayoral race in Lexington, KY, was fascinating when Teresa Isaac ran. I worked for her when she was Vice-Mayor. And her term so far has turned out precisely as I envisioned. We won't go into detail about what that vision was. I'm so thankful I don't work for either city, anymore.

The downside to Buonocore is that he's not (to my knowledge) ever run an actual political campaign for office himself. He's not been the front man. Smith has won more than one term as councilmember, but that's only from a part of the city. Who has more pull? Buonocore is white, but has the endorsement of the widow of late mayor Glenn Cunningham, who was black. Smith is black. Will race play a role? A large percentage of Jersey City's population is minority of one type or another. It's unlikely that Buonocore's core support group is all white - it's not logistically probable, in that environment. So Smith may play the race card, but Buonocore will have the wherewithal to combat it.

If I had to call it, I'd call it for Buonocore. He's just been at it too long, and is too tough. Scarily tough (which is not in any way saying I think he's done anything illegal; I never heard that about him). I don't know much about Smith's governing style, but I suspect it's similar to Buonocore's - it's about playing games, and making connections, and coming out on top. I don't doubt Buonocore's intelligence - I think he's very smart, and sharp. But he's party politics all the way. In the year that I worked for him, I didn't get the idea that he was much interested in innovation, not even hearing about it. And he was very into formal chain of command. With the two chiefs prior, I met with them personally fairly often to discuss grants, or to light a fire when I needed information I wasn't getting. When Buonocore came in, he made it very clear - through the chain of command, of course - that he didn't want to talk to anyone in my unit. If something we worked on needed his attention, it was to go to our supervisor, then through his staff and on to him. A nice way to separate yourself from any new ideas. They rarely make it through such a layered filtering process.

I left on good terms with Buonocore; he actually offered me a raise in a private meeting that was the first I'd had with him. I already planned to leave at that point, although I'd not given notice, so I couldn't in good conscience take the raise without telling him of my plans and then walk out in two months. So I told him I would be leaving, the talks ended and here I am.

Local politics. It's enough to make you eschew civilization.

Lame, lame, lame

I've always liked the younger Bush set - the twins Jenna and Barbara. They seem like normal young ladies who want to get on with their life and aren't particularly interested in partaking of the glitz and glamor of "My Dad is President". Of course, when they learned to talk, they could have said, "My Granddad is Vice President", and when they were moving from child to adolescent, they could say, "My Granddad is President". And there wasn't much of a gap there before they could say, "My Dad is Governor" and then, well, you know. So I'm sure there's not much new and exciting about it all, and plenty annoying when it means your every teenage and college piccadillo is witnessed by grim security or Secret Service agents, and you're dogged by a media drooling after something to hurt your father with. So I'm sympathetic, and admiring of their independence.

I also thought it was classy of the President and Mrs. Bush to leave the extent of their daughters' participation in the campaign up to the girls, and likewise a loving gesture on the twins' part to put themselves in front of the runaway media train to support their dad. That's why I'm really really sorry the campaign has done them no favors in this, their first email for the campaign. I'll paste it here in just a second, but first I want to say this:

Either it was written by a particularly vacuous friend of the Bush girls, or it was written by a Republican marketing type who wouldn't know how to talk to the under 25s if his career depended on it. Which in this case, it may. Here we go (picture was embedded in the email too):

Dear Susanna,

We're sure that you have no doubt who we'll be voting for in November. But you should also know that we would be voting for our Dad in this election even if he had not raised us, loved us, tutored us, coached us, and even listened to a few excuses from us for late curfews. We have been privileged to know our President personally and we know he is the right person to lead our country - especially when there are so many important issues at stake.

Our Dad has qualities that are needed in a good President - loyalty, humor (embarrassing as it sometimes may be), compassion, and, most importantly, integrity. We're not the only ones who see it. In fact, our friends - from varying political backgrounds - are supporting our Dad in November. Not only because of his decisions to liberate the women of Afghanistan or bring freedom to the people of Iraq, but because during the last ten years they met a man whose title was Governor or President, but who was always happy to be known as "our Dad." He made everyone feel welcome and comfortable in our house (except for the occasional boyfriend) and our friends got to know him as a really good guy.

We know that when you get to know his record as President, you too will feel compelled to participate in this year's election - and hopefully get involved in the campaign, too. We know it can be hard to find time to think about politics. We just graduated from college and are perfectly aware that schoolwork, parties, and extra-curricular activities keep students busy, away from campaigns and voting booths. In the last election, less than half of 18- to 24-year-olds were registered to vote, and only 32% of them actually did vote. Sadly, many Americans our age did not take advantage of their right to vote.

We are asking you to get involved with this campaign not only because it is the most critical election of our lifetime, but also because we have the ability to positively change our future. Please encourage your friends to sign up on the campaign's web site (www.GeorgeWBush.com) and register to vote online. At the web site you'll also find a lot of information about how to get involved in our Dad's re-election campaign. It's an easy process, and it's the best way to have a say in this year's election.

Thanks for taking a few minutes to think about some big issues. This is a really important election, and we know that with your help our Dad will win in November.

This email manages to competely insult the 25 and under crowd. First, it's written in a I'm-pretending-to-be-a-young-thing! (giggle) tone. You sense that it fully expected the response to be, "Um, like, yeah! Cool! Like, rad! I'll vote for their dad! Heh! Did you hear? I rhymed!" Any marginally news-conscious 25-and-under is going to know enough about politics to be put off by that tone. And was it just the women in Afghanistan that were "liberated", or was it maybe the whole population excepting terrorists? It's bad enough that the girls are pictured like two little sweet things - eye candy - and not as even marginally serious young women. Why add insult to injury?

This is a failed opportunity. There are a lot of things that the Bush campaign could address that would be legitimate concerns for the Jenna-Barb age group. Students are always interested in student loans, in college tuition costs, in crime on campus. Students and graduates are extremely concerned about the job market, what they can expect to earn and whether they can even find a job on finishing school. And whether or not they actually spend much time learning the reality of the situation in Iraq, you can bet they've heard plenty and it's not been favorable to Bush. To dismiss the entire war as it has been in this email is, not to put it lightly, stupid. Breathtakingly so, actually, since it's only addressed as an opening phrase in a sentence mainly about how the President is "also 'our Dad'"! How vacuous is that? Hey, he may be out freeing countries when he's at work, but what should be most important to you is that he's our Dad! I know they're proud of him, with good reason. But their pride in him is no reason for anyone else to vote for him. Why not give the young voters something to really think about? Maybe inane campaign approaches like this is one reason so many young people don't vote. You don't make the time to vote unless you feel there's an issue important enough to make the effort, even if that issue is that you feel responsible to participate in our democratic process. No one will vote for President Bush because he's Jenna and Barbara's cool Dad!

If this is an example of the finest Republican minds reaching out to the youth of America, they'd be better off to shoot their computers now before they shoot themselves in the foot again. They'll get more votes just keeping their condescension to themselves.

UPDATE: The Associated Press has a brief article about the Bush twins' email, but it gives none of the interesting detail you see right here!

Question to self:

You made and ate Cajun 15-Bean Soup just before going to teach your class tonight.

What were you thinking??

Tasty, though.

NJ politics as usual, with a little headline spin

If you want to see the guts of politics at work, just read this article. Anyone who harbors the tiniest thought that McGreevey isn't doing everything he can to hold on to his political future, that should deep-six it. There's no logical reason for McGreevey to hang on to November except to keep some measure of his power on the NJ Dem playing field. And I'm not saying that the other Dems - or the Republicans either - are all saintly in this. But McGreevey is not even the cleanest in a pile of dirty politics.

As a side note, it's interesting that the entire article is about the machinations in the NJ Dem party, with the Republicans mentioned only twice, in passing, half-way through the article. They're not the focus, not in the least. And yet here is the headline:

Political infighting between N.J. Dems, GOP gets nasty

If you left out the "GOP" part of that, it would be an accurate headline. One wonders what precisely, if anything, was on the mind of the headline writer. Or was (s)he just following his inner bias?

Novel blogs

The novel Lady Killer by Meryl Sawyer focuses on yet another serial killer prowling for victims, this one in San Francisco. Sawyer, a veteran author, builds a good romantic suspense novel with mostly believable characters; it's certainly worth a few hours with the paperback version. But the best thing about the book? Its mention of bloggers.

Jessica Crawford is a trends columnist for an independently owned newspaper in San Francisco, the San Francisco Herald. She and her two friends Zoe and Stacy, also columnists at the newspaper, are in their early 30s and of the "Sex in the City" generation. They get together and talk about men and work; they bond by going together to get Brazilian wax jobs. When the paper's crime reporter goes into rehab, Jessica gets pulled into covering the serial killer because her father, Richard Crawford, was the newspaper's Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter before his retirement. He's now nearly confined to his home with Parkinson's, but that doesn't stop him from participating in the chase of the killer.

Early in the book, Jessica goes to Hawaii to research a column; she has a close encounter that results in a surprising twist when she returns to San Francisco. Teamed with Cole, the new crime reporter, and her friends, she closes down on the serial killer only to realize that she is now also a target.

The characters are likeable if, at times, stereotypically sketched and of unclear value to the storyline - social columnist Marci with an "i" and Duff-the-misfit-medical-columnist come immediately to mind. And some parts of the storyline emerge ominously only to eventually mean little. The detective work is mostly done by the journalists, current and retired, and the police are not much in evidence. But, again, it's a good light read, and I wasn't in the end disappointed. I intend to read more of her work.

The best part of the whole book for me as a blogger was Sawyer's discussion of blogs when one of her characters used them as a potential source of information. The book was published in 2003, which means it was likely completed more than a year ago, so she is quite ahead on the trend - much like her protagonist, Jessica Crawford. If you're interested, the section on blogs is on pages 345-346. Unfortunately, like some other aspects of the story, she spends a lot of time (relatively speaking) on blogs, building them up, then really not using them as a plot device - only mentioning them in passing, albeit a looonggg passing.

And for my readers, I am reproducing it in "MORE". Because you're worth it.

Lady Killer, pg. 345-346

----------

Cole needed to write another column about the killer, but he was out of angles. Until something came through on the fabric sample or the orthopedic shoe, he didn't have a damn thing to write about. He went online to see if someone in the blog-o-sphere could give him a spark of inspiration.

Web logs known as blogs were interactive newsletters that were updated daily by individuals across the country. The best blogs had distinctive voices that leaped off the page and provided an alternative to the establishment tone of newspaper journalism, known in the quirky blog world as dead-tree pieces. They were the on line equivalent of talk shows.

The traditional media had their own blogs and had staff journalists whose sole job was to update the blog several times a day. Cole thought MSNBC was the best. Naturally, Mort was too cheap to have even a simple blog.

On 9/11 media Web sites either crashed or failed to provide timely updates. Bloggers posted minute by minute first person accounts that were surprisingly accurate. In the following days, these sites received hundreds of thousands of hits. The blog phenomenon had taken off.

Now, they were an accepted part of the alternative media. Journalism schools across the country began teaching about Web logs. The graduate school of journalism across the bay at Berkley had a course. Cole intended to take it once the serial killer was caught.

Cole surfed to www.crimezRus.com. He was fairly sure this guy had law enforcement experience. His posts were too professional for a lay person, and the way he answered incoming posts - squashing outrageous rumors that gave many blogs a bad name - indicated he was very intelligent. From his posts, Cole knew this blogger lived in the Bay Area.

The interactive site was full of rehashed theories about the serial killer. Nothing new. Even the bloggers were stumped.

"Got a minute?"

Cole expelled a long breath, logged off, and slowly turned to face Duff.

--------------

Justice more criminal than just

Here's one reason why I think more education and criminal justice professionals need to be educated about criminal justice research:

Hundreds of Jefferson County children were shackled and forced against their will into a state lockup for juvenile delinquents by a DYS psychologist who was running a private business on the side...

[Psychologist Leroy Richardson's] "Scared Straight" program existed from 1997 until his dismissal in 2003. At least 400 children who had not been charged or convicted of any crime were shackled and locked up at the Department of Youth Services Vacca campus for up to eight hours. Some of them were locked up more than once, according to state Personnel Board records.

Vacca is the equivalent of a prison for juveniles. By state law, it's supposed to take a judge's order for a child to be sent there.

Richardson's list of misbehaviors is long, bizarre and venal, including hiring his day boss as a consultant for his private consulting firm (and apparently his day boss returned the favor by giving him glowing evaluations at work). You really need to read the whole article to understand. Even then, you'll wonder what the people who allowed this to happen were thinking. But the problem I want to focus on here is this: Richardson's "Scared Straight" type program is based on a concept that was shown to be ineffective more than 25 years ago! Again, you should read this entire article about "Scared Straight", but this will give you a flavor of it:

In 1977, Dr. James 0. Finckenauer, an associate professor in the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice submitted a proposal to the State Law Enforcement Planning Agency of New Jersey for a grant to evaluate the Juvenile Awareness Project Help [aka Scared Straight] with a team of researchers. The idea was to submit the results of the program to more intense analysis...

Quickly, during the first round [of the evaluation], the researchers noticed something odd. There is a "test" for predicting juvenile delinquency called the Glueck Social Prediction Table, developed by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck in 1950, which classifies subjects into low, medium, and high probability of delinquent behavior. The Rutgers researchers discovered that over 70% of the 81 juveniles designated for the Rahway program had a low probability of delinquency according to the Glueck Table. About 20% had a medium probability, and only 8% had a high probability "If this is so," they wrote, "it raises several issues: Why do these particular kids need to attend the Project? Why are referring agencies not sending more high probability juveniles who might be more in need of deterrence? If the low probability of delinquency juveniles in fact do not become delinquent, can the JAPH claim credit?"

Training schools are for the worst and most persistent juvenile offenders, but another curiosity: not one of the 81 had ever been in a training school...

"The authors find no overriding reason at this point," they concluded, "to reject our hypothesis that the Juvenile Awareness Project has no effect on the attitudes of the juveniles attending... we maintain, until there is further evidence to the contrary, that it is probably simplistic and unrealistic to expect that a two or three hour visit to Rahway can counteract the long-term effects of all these other factors."

The article is much more detailed about the experiment conducted to evaluate the program, and its specific results. The final conclusion, though, is clear: There's no reason to think it works. And now, more than 25 years later, taxpayers are dropping piles of money in the pockets of a psychologist conducting a program proven ineffective. A lot of people in the Birmingham area were involved in getting the kids there:

Parents signed their children up for the one-day program to address misbehavior and were aware Richardson locked them up at Vacca, according to board records. The children and their parents were referred to the program by the Birmingham and Bessemer school systems, workers from the Alabama Department of Human Resources, doctors and other agencies.

Didn't they ask questions about effectiveness? Ask to see data? Something?

The lack of knowledge in the general public about the efficacy of various criminal justice programs is, well, criminal. We spend so much money on them, politicians get elected on the basis of them, all of us have opinions about them. But so few truly know much truth about them.

As another example, consider the widespread DARE program - some departments have fulltime dedicated DARE officers. What do evaluators say?

This paper examines the effectiveness of the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program in Charleston County, South Carolina by comparing 341 fifth grade DARE students to 367 nonDARE students. Significant differences were found in the predicted direction for alcohol use in the last year, belief in prosocial norms, association with drug using peers, positive peer association, attitudes against substance use, and assertiveness. No differences were found on cigarette, tobacco, or marijuana use in the last year, frequency of any drug use in the past month, attitudes about police, coping strategies, attachment and commitment to school, rebellious behavior, and self-esteem.

If you'll notice, the areas with "no difference" are the ones where the community is expecting it to make a difference. Here's a discussion of a review looking at evaluations of DARE from the late 1980s to 1993 (that's the year the first study above was done):

The early DARE evaluations (1987-1989) were generally favorable - showing decreased alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use, increased resistance to drug use, increased self-esteem, and other positive results.

The majority of the recent evaluations of DARE (late 1989 to
present) have shown decidedly mixed results. The majority of these
recent studies attempt to measure the longer-term effects of DARE
(one or more years after the completion of the DARE curriculum).
The current consensus is that DARE does significantly and
positively affect student attitudes toward alcohol, tobacco, and
other drugs (ATOD), but the findings generally indicate that
exposure to DARE does not significantly reduce the actual use of
these drugs.

In general, the better controlled studies tend to show the least
effect of DARE. In addition, follow-up studies, which track
students for several years following DARE exposure, tend to show
little or no lasting effects of DARE.

Emphasis mine. When you scroll through the results of the various evaluations, you'll find a lot of improved self-esteem, improved police/student relations, improved consciousness of media influences. But by the end of evaluations - the newer ones - you aren't seeing much in the way of reduction in drug use.

And what do we have? Look here, and here, and here, and here.

There is some evidence that DARE programs help; I'd be interested to see more details about the studies that showed positive effects. But again, most of the effects reported were stated as "students, teachers and parents think it works".

I think it's clear that there's a huge breakdown between criminal justice researchers and both practitioners and end users of criminal justice products (policing, courts, corrections). Think about that the next time you hear a law 'n order politician running for office.

Another Marine's story

Here's a good letter from an American on the ground in Iraq.

Framing - and I don't mean photographs

I've mentioned several times that I think bias in the media evidences itself mostly in framing - how raw data is interpreted and presented by the journalist and/or medium. Theosebes has a great example of what I'm talking about.

Full Metal Jacket Malkin

This column by Michelle Malkin is a great inside look at television "journalism" in action.

Although it's a very minor point in her column, I was amused by the exchange about her age. She does look very young, but I must say I never really thought about it in regards to her work. She quotes Chris Matthews as saying, '"Are you sure you are old enough to be on the show? What are you? 28?"' It seems to me that 28 is plenty old enough to be on the show and know a lot. Many journalists working for big newspapers are between 25-30 when they're handling major stories. Military men and women much younger than that are making life and death decisions daily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, if he'd sneered that he thought she looked 18 and that was too young, I'd find it a little more reasonable, even as a joke.

That aside, while I don't know Malkin's age, I would have guessed her as early 30s, just from seeing her confidence and ability to handle herself in rough interviews like Matthews saw fit to instigate. But I don't know. I don't care. She's tough, smart and does her homework. Does it matter how old she is?

Yes, yes, he did it as a smear, and that's funny because he'd probably say he doesn't participate in agism and sexism, PC journalist that he is. And like I said, it's vanishingly unimportant in the greater scope of the whole incident. But it just goes to show that he doesn't even try to be logical in his insults, much less his "journalism".

I don't watch the political pundits much, and that's one of the reasons why. I think a lot of them are just that way, and more than a few on the right too. One reason I like the blogosphere is because you get to know the person behind the blog in a more well-rounded way. For an example, Glenn Reynolds. I don't know him, have never met him, but just from reading his writing on a nearly daily basis for over two years, I think I have an accurate sense of his character. I think he's capable of being snide (aren't we all?), and probably has a sharp tongue when he wants to, but even in circumstances where he was angry and both disliked and disagreed with someone, I don't think he'd take that kind of pathetic potshot. In fact, he has been snide and sharp-tongued on his blog. But never pathetic or, I think, small-minded. Matthews was both, and a lot of the pundits are. And I don't trust them as far as I could throw, well, Glenn Reynolds.

And the same is true of other bloggish types. I read them enough, and they write on a broad enough range of things frequently enough, to where I know how much I can trust what they say. I'm getting to where I go to the mainstream news for raw data, and go to bloggers for context. The pundits who have blogs are more likely to get my vote of confidence too - which is why I like The Corner on NRO, and I'm glad that some writers from Weekly Standard have their own blog now.

It's starting to storm now, and I'm starting to ramble, so I'll shut my mouth and shut down the computer. My arm and back are hurting anyway - I fell, again, yesterday, I apparently have permanently claimed the title of "grace". This time I grabbed a rough wooden post to break my fall and managed to abrade about 5 inches of skin along the inside of my left forearm. Almost 24 hours later, part of it is still red and swollen around the areas that actually bled. Charming. So. Have a good evening, I'm going to go find my tube of neosporin.

Oops!

Maybe it wasn't a mistake:

The Senate Judiciary Committee has heard this morning from one of its own about some of the problems with airline "no fly" watch lists.

Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy says he had a close encounter with the lists when trying to take the U-S Airways shuttle out of Washington to Boston.

The ticket agent wouldnt let him on the plane. His name was on the list -- in error. After a flurry of phone calls, Kennedy was able to fly home, but then the same thing happened coming back to Washington.

Heh.

Charley in full wrath

Can't get enough of Hurricane Charley? Think hurricanes are pretty cool - as long as you don't live in the path of one?

Here is a satellite image of Hurricane Charley , being sold in poster form for funds for disaster relief in Florida (for now). It's quite impressive.

Deep and deeper

I'm buried in research right now, working on my dissertation prospectus proposal, so posting will be light for a while - although likely something will go up daily. I am planning to get the proposal to my professor by the end of next week, and hopefully get a green light from him about my research plan. If he does give the go-ahead, then I'll plunge into writing the prospectus itself with the plan of defending it sometime in mid-November. If I make that hurdle (and I plan to), then I'll do the actual research in the spring and write it up over the summer. The ultimate goal: graduating in December 2005. I think it's doable.

Right now I'm going through abstracts of dissertations from the past 20 years or so that seem to have some relevance to my own area. Very interesting. Some of the research definitely shows how the term "it's academic" came to mean, "it's overly picky and of little if any practical value". On the other hand, some are quite good and I'm looking forward to reading them.

It's increasingly obvious that news selection and issue framing are the most potent tools of the media, and that some of that emerges from institutional bias rather than ideology - although ideology is not unimportant. By "institutional bias" I mean that the media has an overarching entertainment imperative that requires that they produce not just useful information about our society for the citizens' education and use, but that they produce interesting stories. Media is a business, and a very competitive one. If you doubt that, just see whether a journalist cares about the circulation or viewer numbers of the medium he or she works for. It's a point of pride to work for a medium with a large following, and producing stories that draw and keep viewer attention is paramount to a successful career. It's about "scooping" the others, and not just with any information, but with information on an issue with inherent "story" possibilities, and public interest.

What I'm interested in looking at is how the media moves from raw material to finished product, focusing on their coverage of crimes reported to police. I'll do that by analyzing what they could have reported on vs what they did report on, and then analyzing how they presented what they did report on. Of the pool of possible, what was chosen? Of the pool of chosen, what stories were constructed? By "story" here, I don't mean specific articles. I mean what beginning, middle and end were constructed by the journalist to give the information a context; what "story" vehicle was used to convey not just the information but a social meaning to the reader.

One of the earliest researchers to do this type of investigation was Mark Fishman, in his seminal "Crime Waves as Ideology", which I've mentioned before. He looked at a "crime wave" of assaults on the elderly that developed one fall in the late 1970s. What he learned was that although the crimes against the elderly did not actually go up during that time period in NYC (where the research was done), the local media filled up a slow news time by focusing on crimes against the elderly. One paper started it and other media in the market followed suit, resulting in greater fear amongst the elderly in the area and also, not incidentally, in the formation of a police unit specifically targeted at crimes against the elderly. The reports followed a trajectory, tracked by Fishman based on number of articles.

I want to do something somewhat similar, but more comprehensive in both data collection and analysis. We'll see where it goes. I'll post my proposal when it's done.

It's not only Britain

The US is on the same track.

McGreevey: The Newsweek version

Newsweek gives McGreevey the once-over in this lenghy piece. It seems to me to be that marvelous thing, fair and balanced coverage. There's still a lot we don't know about the whole situation, so some caution in making extrapolations is warranted. Isikoff and Thomas cover both the corruption and gay angles without ever coming down on one side or the other as the most likely tipping factor, and while the immorality of his adultery is downplayed (unsurprising in today's society), the supremacy of Jersey politics in all things corrupt is given due attention.

Support an entrepreneur

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I've signed up with Blogads. This week an ad for Carlo Franco ties and dress shirts starts. Before you think I'm doing an editorial plug for a paying advertiser, I've donated the ad space to the company because I think it's cool.

My brother discovered Carlo Franco on his sartorial ramblings online. My understanding from him is that Charles and his business partner, designer Jill Speck, run the company themselves out out of a small space, choosing the fabrics, designing and making the ties in a very hands-on manner. According to Alan, who knows these things, the result is very high-end ties in terms of quality at very low prices for that kind of thing. (Not cheap, but inexpensive for the quality.) Certainly the ties - and shirts - are quite lovely. It almost makes me want to be a guy so I can wear them.

Almost. Not quite. Well, not close, but a little.

So if you're in the market for ties, I encourage you to check out Carlos Franco. It epitomizes the ideal of hard work, high quality and a respect for family, things we ought to support with our dollars. And should save you a little in the long run, too.

UPDATE: Edited for length, 7 p.m.

Think on this things

Alan at theosebes has several excellent posts. Just start at the top and scroll down.

He talks about the Canadian government strangling religious speech about issues political; about the University of North Carolina trying to force political correctness on a religious group on campus; about people choosing churches for political rather than theological reasons; about a recent find that could (or not) be associated with John the Baptist; and about a new "biography" of Mary the mother of Jesus that isn't anything I recognize as Scriptural. But then it's so... unsophisticated to be limited to the Bible! I mean, please...! We're educated adults here.

I was interested in all of that, but found myself a combination of horrified and amused at the post on people choosing churches for political reasons, because of this:

...there is a cultural divide in this country between believers and nonbelievers. The other night at a dinner, my jaw dropped when a man I had just met said of the religious right, “Those people scare me more than the terrorists do.” (Not me; I’ll take the roomful of Biblical literalists every single time.)

Clearly the people she was having dinner with haven't known many if any "Biblical literalists", but then in the circles they likely move in, there aren't any Biblical, Constitutional or even moral literalists anyway. To be a "literalist" is to set something up as wisdom outside your own preferences, and we can't have that, now, can we?

I find the intellectual elite in this country - and elsewhere, from what I've read - to be sickeningly arrogant and reprehensible. But at least I read what they write, and consider their positions, and don't think they are actively as bad as the terrorists (although I do think I wouldn't be able to eat much if I was at dinner with them - I'd be too afraid of tossing it all back up pretty quickly). And the hypocrisy...!

Some day I'll rail about the anti-literalists. But not today. Well, not any more today. Instead, I'll go to the gym and then work on my prospectus, setting aside the fact that there are pea-brained people in this world who are intent on getting us all killed as a result of their insensate stupidity.

Oh, really?

What's wrong with this picture?

Movie led man to strangle lover

A MAN who said the movie, The Passion of the Christ, led him to confess to strangling his girlfriend was sentenced to 75 years in prison.

I won't tell you just yet. You tell me.

Thanks to Alan for the tip.

New Jersey's political death wish

I posted recently about the utter and total mess New Jersey politics is, and now here's the Wall Street Journal giving excellent detail on precisely why that's so:

New Jersey's political corruption has been legendary since the days of the late Mayor Frank Hague, who ran Jersey City for 30 years with such an iron fist that he told federal officials "I am the law." Just two years ago, Sen. Bob Torricelli had to drop his re-election bid after the Senate Ethics Committee detailed his improper relationship with a donor. A spineless state Supreme Court allowed Democrats to replace him on the ballot even though a firm deadline for doing so had passed. The state's politics are awash in allegations of conflicts of interest, raids on public treasuries and corrupt alliances between favored business interests and local officials.

It gets better. You must read that, if only to shake your head and give thanks that you don't live there. Unless you do, in which case, well, sorry. What are you going to do to change it?!

The article highlights one of my pet peeves, the NJ law that allows people to hold local and state political positions at the same time. They double-dip in the taxpayers' coin chest, and set up little fiefdoms forever. It's not surprising that Jersey City is used as an example of how bad it can get. Just before I left NJ, then-Mayor Glenn Cunningham had just won a seat in the state House of Representatives, a similar situation to the gravy train Jim McGreevey road into the statehouse. Cunningham's untimely death ended his influence, but around the time he won the state seat I heard comments from various folk about how that had secured his position as Jersey City mayor for the duration. They weren't using hyperbole.

And the Republicans are as much a problem as the Dems, although I hate to say it. I did try to volunteer to work with the Republican party when I was there, because I wanted Bret Schundler to win as governor (not because I liked him as a person; to be honest, I thought he was not a particularly good candidate. But even then I saw he was much much better than McGreevey, which apparently has borne out). I learned during that process that there were two Republican parties in Hudson County, where Jersey City, Hoboken, Bayonne, Union City and other towns are, and they had an intense rivalry. You had to identifiy which one you were with. I worked for city government in Jersey City, and politics was a daily factor to a level way beyond what it was in Lexington, KY, when I worked for the city council there.

So read the WSJ piece, and be enlightened. It's a frightening thing.

Inside Japan

If you're not reading Sean Kinsell's blog, The White Peril, on a regular basis, you should be.

And yes, I know I linked him in the post below, but reading through his blog preparing for that post is what made me decide to post this one.

Sean and I have some fundamental philosophical and theological differences, and I don't know that we'll ever resolve those. But what I appreciate about Sean is that we can talk about them sanely, and talk about other things without our differences getting in the way. Even when he posts on things on which I disagree with him, his thoughtful and interesting style help me to understand - although still not agree with - his position. And his posts on Japan are always fascinating, his love for and knowledge of that country and its citizens very apparent.

He's recently posted a series of commentary on NJ Gov. Jim McGreevey's resignation, reviewing the opinions floating around in the world of gay men and adding his own. One of my own contentions is that McGreevey's making his "outing" so prominent is to serve as a smoke screen for all the bad bidness he's been up to otherwise. He knows how to hide behind a hot social issue. Sean has a lot more insight into that than I do, and agrees with me to a point (although not directly). If you're interested in the whole McGreevey thing, I highly recommend that you read his posts. Start here, then go here and here.

And finally, for a very moving tribute to the Japanese, read his post on the anniversary of the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima. You may be surprised at his conclusion.

Oh, what a little knowledge will do!

Hysteria over nuclear power seems almost axiomatic these days; the thought that we might build new such plants doesn't seem to be in the national psyche. And situations like this one reported at a Japanese nuclear plant seem to support the wisdom of that:

...a steam leak developed in a turbine in Reactor 3 of Kansai Electric's Mihama Power Station. According to the Commission, 11 people have been wounded. According to the local Fire Department, of those, the heart and lungs of five have stopped functioning.

Many people would say, "Aha! See?", but wouldn't look closer. Sean Kinsell being the analytical type he is, did look closer and made the point that the company said no radiation was involved and there was no danger to the community - and he said it without any ominous overtones of "yeah, right". Good on Sean. Then Jim Bowen of NoWatermelons, a trained and experienced nuclear engineer himself, took up the discussion and explained in his usual great detail about precisely how the system works, what most likely happened, and why it wasn't a big nuclear risk to the community. I suggest you read through it - or skim (sorry, Jim!) if you're like me and can't take a whole lot of engineering description at one sitting - because there's a lot of interest and value in it. He also makes clear what happened to the lungs of the injured in Japan:

You might think you know a little about steam. Not under those conditions you don't. The amount of concentrated power is unlike anything you see elsewhere, and if it hits you directly it doesn't just scald you, it more or less eats you. If you inhale it live, bye-bye lungs.

"It...eats you." Now, if that isn't the stuff of nightmares...! But that's not a nuclear plant per se, but any plant that uses steam, and Jim points out that coal plants producing steam have even more dangerous conditions.

And speaking of coal, Jim takes on in another post a report that the shut down of electric-generating plants using coal during the blackout last year resulted in a sharp reduction of pollutants in the air during that period. He's skeptical, and explains why you should be too. It's a good post, and something to think about.

Jim talks over my head sometimes, but he's always got good things to say. Um, those things I can understand, that is.

Run that by me again?

According to your average liberal, their whole reason for being is to protect the downtrodden, especially minorities. Two of their favorite tools currently are their ever increasing multiculturalism and insistence on gun control.

I guess that just proves the old adage that you only hurt the ones you love.

Factions and fussing

This article in the NY Times says that some Dems in Jersey want McGreevey out in time for a special election, others don't. That's not surprising. I know that the Republican party in Jersey, at least in the Jersey City area, falls into two distinct camps that really dislike each other. Sounds like the Dems have a similar dynamic. I'd say the problem is that one group wants McGreevey to stay so they can get their Dem candidate in as a placeholder before elections next year, and the other wants to win the advantage. Neither side, of course, is a) interested in a Republican getting in or b) interested on even the most minute molecular level what the average Jersey voter wants. They can yammer about "the people" all they want, but they honestly don't care as long as they keep their power base. And quite apparently the average Jersey citizen checks their brain (and morality) at the door when they vote. I say, good enough for them.

And I'm sure glad to be in Alabama.

Now that's pretty funny

I promise it's not me, but here is a Yahoo! profile someone set up for "john_heinz_kerry". And what is given as the home page? Why, COTB. ?!? What's up with that? Funny, nonetheless. One wonders if the other three listed as "Cool Links" are aware of their being honored too?

· Home Page: http://bias.blogfodder.net/
· Cool Link 1: http://www.littletinylies.com/
· Cool Link 2: http://www.zilberhere.com/blog/
· Cool Link 3: http://www.thefatguy.com/

Of all the blogs out there whacking away at JF "Wish I was a Kennedy" Kerry, how odd that someone chose mine for this spoof. Hmmm. Must be one of you, gentle readers.

Love in India

Maybe arranged marriages aren't such a bad idea after all.

CNN is reporting that Lance Armstrong may be stripped of his 6th Tour de France title

In a random check for banned substances, 3 were found in Armstrong's hotel room.

The 3 substances banned by the French were:

(1) Toothpaste

(2) Deodorant

(3) Soap

The French officials also found several other items during a body cavity search which they had never seen before including a testicle and a backbone...

(Yes, yes, I know. Sent to me by someone who shall remain nameless. Pretty funny.)

You Otta know

It's everything you meant to know but forgot to ask about your favorite humorist, Dave Barry Howard Stern Dave Letterman Scott Ott!

Go read - now!

Or have your Aunt Mabel read it to you if you skipped that in school...

Gotta love modern technology

It's a beautiful day in Alabama, the sun is shining and for the first time in more than two months it's cool enough (70s) to leave the windows open all day. A fan is gently blowing the crisp sunny scent of the day into my face while I sit at my computer, searching the communications and criminal justice databases at the Rutgers libraries in New Jersey. I've got the Weather Channel on, watching Hurricane Charley moving in on the west coast of Florida. For a little more personal perspective, I can go read Hatcher's account from his apartment