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Tuesday, August 31, 2004
farkleberries Links du Jour 9 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |



More Thoughts on Concealed-Carry Gun Laws 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Update to the lengthy post on California's proposed gun licensing laws: it occurred to me that the problem of street gangs is a good example why increasing the number of circulating concealed/unregistered guns would be ineffective in reducing crime rates (a la Lott). I haven't read Lott's book yet, but I am curious about the statistics he cites, and where they come from.

The "more guns, less crime" theory holds that criminals are deterred if it is assumed that any person could be carrying a gun (similar to the "air marshal" deterrent effect). However, gang members can be virtually certain that rivals are carrying concealed guns, yet this doesn't in itself reduce the likelihood of gang crime and gun violence - it just means gangmembers assume the "other guy" can and will shoot back.

It can be argued that gang members overall are more prone to initiating violence than the average citizen, but I still don't think that a widespread concealed-carry situation would prove much of a deterrent. If anything, it's possible the situation might prompt criminals to "shoot first, ask for the wallet later" - or carry a bigger gun than victims might have.

Which raises the question - if gun ownership were completely deregulated, what types of weapons would be permitted under a concealed-carry law? Small-caliber handguns only? How about semis or automatics? Would it be permissible to carry a concealed sawed-off shotgun, or an UZI in one's coat or car, for example?

That said, I still think lifting handgun (for home, business and some vehicular protection) and pepper-spray bans for private citizens in urban areas might be a good idea, provided the guns are properly registered and operators are trained and cognizant of lethal-force laws: carrying is one thing, and the old rule of "don't aim at anything you don't plan to shoot" still applies.

Not that bans eliminate concealed-carry in the first place: many people carry guns or pepper spray in ban jurisdictions anyway, but they risk punishment if discovered. They rationalize that the possibility of being prosecuted for carrying a banned weapon is far outweighed by the protection they feel it offers. Rural residents justify their need for protective guns because of their isolation, and the amount of time it takes for help to arrive if there's trouble "at the ranch." However, from personal experience, I can say it often takes just as long for police to arrive if you call 911 in the city.



Monday, August 30, 2004
Ultimate Hangover Cure 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
I know this qualifies as a gruesome tragedy, but there's something rather blackly comic about it as well.
MARIETTA, Georgia (AP) -- A drunken driver hit a telephone pole support wire that decapitated his passenger, police said. He then drove 12 miles home and slept in his bloody clothes, police said, leaving the headless body in his truck.

A neighbor walking with his young daughter Sunday morning discovered Daniel Brohm's headless corpse in the truck in John Kemper Hutcherson's driveway and called authorities, said Cpl. Dana Pierce, county police spokesman.

Officers said they found Hutcherson asleep inside his home, visibly drunk and his clothes bloody, and later found Brohm's severed head at the crash. Hutcherson, 21, was charged with vehicular homicide, driving under the influence and failure to stop at an accident with death or injury. He was jailed on a $100,000 bond; it was unclear Monday whether he had an attorney.

Police said Hutcherson and Brohm -- friends since high school -- were drinking at a bar Saturday night and left after Brohm said he felt sick.



Saturday, August 28, 2004
"From My Cold Dead Hands": Why California's Planned Gun Licensing Regulations Make Good Sense 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
The tradition of American gun ownership is so deeply entrenched, such a romanticized part of our history that most discussions of gun control rapidly disintegrate from logical arguments to partisan squabbling. There also seems to be an automatic assumption that one's view on guns falls neatly along party lines: all Republicans/conservatives oppose any gun regulations whatsoever, while Democrats/liberals would like to ban all private gun ownership.

It's not so simple. I'm a pro-gun Democrat/liberal. However, there are a growing number of people in our country of all political persuasions - many who have lost friends or family to gun accidents or violence - who would like to see the end of private gun ownership.

We've all seen these bumperstickers: "From My Cold, Dead Hands"..."Gun Control Means Using Both Hands"..."Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People"...and the classic: "If We Outlaw Guns, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns". While the first two come across as ornery old-fashioned Marlboro Man koans, the latter can't be discounted quite so out-of-hand. They actually have kernels of truth. Chuck Klein explains in his Guns & Ammo Online article, "Time for a 28th Amendment,"
The words "arms" and "people" mean different things to different persons. To some on the far left, the only "people" who should be allowed to "keep and bear arms" would be active-duty military personnel and police. On the other hand, the extreme right has touted that "people" means any and all persons. Militia extremists are convinced "arms" means anything in use by the military, including tanks, bombs and rockets. The opposite camp firmly believes it only refers to weapons in use at the time of the Constitution's ratification-- c.1790.

The word "People" certainly cannot refer, for pragmatic reasons, to everybody. If all "people" could "keep and bear arms," then we'd have to allow prison inmates to carry concealed and permit grade schoolers to swagger across the playground packing a .25 Baby Browning. That's not realistic or practical--any more than restricting "arms" exclusively to that class of "people" who have the power of arrest.
However, I don't think gun ownership should be as simple as walking into a gun shop, picking out a pretty piece of steel and plunking down your dough. California, I think, is on the right track with its new proposed licensing guidelines currently in bill before the state assembly:
Handgun Buyer Licensing and Proficiency Testing Bill

The bill most hotly opposed by gun owner's rights groups, AB35, would require Californians wanting to buy a handgun to:

* "perform a safe handling demonstration encompassing various types of handguns,"
* "perform a shooting proficiency demonstration,"
* "complete and pass a written test,"

The written test will cover:

* "Current law related to the private sale and transfer of firearms."
* "Current law as it relates to permissible use of lethal force."
* "What constitutes safe firearms storage."
* "Risks associated with bringing a handgun into the home."
* "Prevention strategies to risks associated with bringing a handgun into the home."

Buyers who pass both the gun handling and written test will then be required to purchase a "handgun owner's license," good for four years, at a cost of up to $32. The buyer's thumbprint will be applied to the license.

A highly controversial additional regulation that would have required licensing of all currently owned handguns was removed from the bill.
The California Attorney General's Office has a page of gun regulations available here. There are some who think California's proposed regulations are an unfair restriction of basic constitutional rights. John R. Lott, Jr., the author of More Guns, Less Crime writes:
The California legislation is...filled with pages detailing everything from when grandparents are allowed to temporarily loan a gun to their grandchildren, to the politically correct gun myths that licensees must regurgitate on the licensing exam, to requiring that mandatory testing be done in only English or Spanish. For a state with election ballots printed in over 80 languages, this last requirement appears racist. But with the new fees and hundreds of dollars required for training classes, in addition to recent California laws outlawing inexpensive guns, the Democratic legislators who support this bill appear anti-poor. After all, it is the poor who are most likely to be victims of crime and to benefit the most from being able to protect themselves.

Those who so automatically see licensing as the solution to crime face an obvious question. As police spend thousands of man-hours enforcing the licensing, what else might they do with their time? Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks stated his concerns simply: "It is my belief that this legislation significantly misses the mark because it diverts our attention from what really should be our common goal: holding the true criminals accountable for the crimes they commit and getting them off the street."
No, gun licensing is not the "answer to crime" - but neither is deregulation of weapon ownership.

Here's the sticky question. Do the poor need guns more than middle- or upper-income Californians, as Lott seems to suggest in the last sentence of this excerpt? The irony is, proportionately many more poor people are killed or injured by gun violence or accidents, and ironically I can see how someone else could argue that allowing the poor to own guns without any form of regulation, safety training or licensing is a form of "genocide" by facilitating more gun deaths below the poverty line. It all depends on how you slice the issue.

Most importantly, I disagree that there would be less crime if there were more (presumably unregulated) guns, using the logic that criminals might be less likely to attempt a crime if there were public knowledge that gun ownership was universal. Even today how can the criminal be certain that his "mark" isn't hiding a gun in their briefcase, bedside table or under the convenience store counter? After all, he or she has one, and they can't be 100% certain the other guy isn't.

What we can be sure of is that if there are more guns in untrained hands, there will be more accidental and ineffective firearm discharges. Pit a criminal who knows how to use a gun against a frightened, panicked civilian who's desperately trying to figure one out, and the criminal will win virtually every time.

Wouldn't criminals be more deterred by knowing that gun owners actually knew how to use their guns well? That their victims weren't merely "weekend Rambos" - who buy cheap pistols to be "safe" but don't know how their gun's safety works - and could actually put a robber six feet under? Untrained gun owners who misuse their weapons, or fail to store them properly or understand their correct operation are far more likely to accidentally kill an innocent person - thereby increasing the public outcry to ban guns.

I also disagree with Lott's contention that the laws are unfair because they discriminate against the poor and non-English or Spanish speakers. Take the example of California motor vehicle laws. California has some of the country's most stringent regulations on vehicle ownership and operation, and it's notoriously hard to get around without a car there. Yet, no one there seems to proposing we waive state auto insurance, safety inspection or emissions regulations for the poor because they need their cars.

California election ballots may come in over 80 languages, but voters still must jump the prior hurdles of citizenship and state residence to participate. On the other hand drivers need to pass written tests in one of a few select languages, because they must interact with other motorists who understand the same rules, and driving is a common undertaking, shared with hundreds or thousands of other individuals simultaneously. It's in all vehicle occupants best interest to want drivers to be on the same page, and I'd argue the same applies for the general public - and gun owners. After all, you can kill a lot more people with a gun you can with a Chevy...in a lot less time.

I'd like to draw a parallel between the requirements for owning and operating a motor vehicle and those for guns. Consider this. What if the only requirement for a driver's license was the fact you could get your hands on a car? Would you feel safe driving your car knowing that you shared the road with people who haven't verifiably demonstrated even basic understanding and competency of the "rules of the road" and motor vehicle laws? Okay, maybe these drivers had a parent teach them the basics. Would you want to gamble your life on someone's drunken Uncle Bob's drivers-ed teaching skills?

Even worse, what if there were no "Rules of the road"? Granted, there are countries where driving and car ownership are this unregulated, but these are ususally nations where life in considered pretty cheap, overall. Driving a motor vehicle is considered a privilege in all U.S. states, not an entirely unbounded right - and gun ownership is perhaps the most contentious example of "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose" in American law: when a gun onwer "swings their fist," they are very likely to do more damage than a broken nose.

California's New Gun regulations on About.com
California Department of Justice on Gun Laws
Canadian Gun Laws.com



Bad Taste in Toyland 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Recalled import toy depicts plane flying into WTC, photo courtesy AP
MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Small toys showing an airplane flying into the World Trade Center were packed inside more than 14,000 bags of candy and sent to small groceries around the country before being recalled. Lisy Corp., the wholesaler that distributed the candy, said Friday that the toys were purchased in bulk from a Miami-based import company.

The toys came in an assortment purchased sight unseen from L&M Import in Miami and included the toys depicting the attacks on the World Trade Center of September 11, 2001, along with whistles and other small toys, said Luis Pedron, Lisy's national sales manager. The invoice described the toy as a plastic swing set. "I hate to blame the importer. He probably did not know what he was getting. He brings them in 40-foot containers. But whoever made it knew exactly what they were making," Pedron said.

Pedron said Lisy did not notice the small plastic figurines until two people complained, but there is no mistaking what the toys represent: At the bottom of each is the product number 9011.
I would almost - almost - be willing to chalk up the toy's design to unfortunate coincidence, were it not for the product number ("9011") and fact that there is an "antenna" on only one of the towers. Was the manufacturer trying to be funny? "Rub in" the fact of tragedy, or something more sinister? Who knows. But I do know that many of the nations that manufacture these kinds of cheap import toys aren't on the America's political page, if you get my drift, and this sort of tastelessness would get through 'quality control' without a hitch.



Friday, August 27, 2004
This Ain't No Mardi Gras: Big Brother and the RNC Mask Ban 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Having posted late in the day about the reinstatement of New York City's ban on mask-wearing just in time for the Republican National Convention, I didn't have the opportunity to dig as deeply into the story as I'd have liked. So, here's some more on the no-mask zone.

The 'mask law' has always been enforced selectively since its inception in 1845, and was a means by which authorities could prosecute troublemakers ranging from costumed tenant-farmer insurrectionists in the Hudson Valley, to pre-Stonewall drag queens. It was ruled a violation of First Amendment rights in late 1999 following a suit by - of all groups - the Ku Klux Klan, who felt they were unjustly prevented from marching in a NY rally. Then, a January 2004 ruling overturned the lower court decision, saying the state's ban on the wearing of masks in public places is in fact constitutional. CNN reported in January,
"In the end, we all know what the (New York) statute is after -- the wearing of hoods, such as by the KKK. That may or may not be a bad thing," said Robert Destro, a professor of law and free-speech expert at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. "These laws need to clearly state the government's interest." The hoods include a mask.

The 3-0 ruling by the appeals court panel reversed a district judge's decision that found the state law violated the First Amendment rights of the Butler, Indiana-based Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan...[a]lso, he said, anti-mask laws theoretically could be extended to affect people at various public gatherings, such as annual Mardi Gras celebrations.
As I briefly mentioned in the comments of my previous post, I suspect that the mask ban reinstatement comes in part from planned use of digital facial-recognition technology [Viisage is the best-known maker of DFR systems, and reportedly 90% of their business comes from government and military contracts] with video camera surveillance of protest zones during the convention. It isn't that paranoid a suggestion, as there are numerous reports that these systems will be used in New York during the Republican National Convention, including this story from May that originally appeared on the NY1 newsfeed:
NYPD Planning To Install Its Own Surveillance Cameras
MAY 02ND, 2004

The NYPD is reportedly planning to install hundreds of cameras around the city that can automatically recognize the faces of suspected criminals or terrorists. There are already tens of thousands of private surveillance cameras trained on city streets and buildings. According to the New York Post, the NYPD wants to install its own centralized system.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner James Onalfo is working on a plan for up to $1 billion in new computer and camera equipment, according to the Post. Facial recognition technology would allow police to pick out and follow suspects in high-crime areas and near potential terrorist targets.

Police reportedly hope to install many of the cameras before this summer's Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden.
You may have very well have been face-scanned at some point without your knowledge, since venues utilizing these systems generally don't advertise the fact beyond cursory warnings - like small signs that tell you "these premises are under video surveillance." Baseline.com talks about Viisage's growing business:
Customers using Viisage's facial-recognition software, which can compare a photo against a database of millions and find the most likely matches in just a few seconds, include the U.S. Department of Defense, Berlin's airports and more than 100 casinos, such as the MGM Mirage, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts and the Stratosphere Casino Hotel & Tower.
RNCWatch, a newsblog spotlighting events leading up the convention, recently reported,
From Engadget: "In preparation for next week's Republican National Convention the Federal Protective Service is outfitting 200 police officers with special helmet-mounted surveillance cameras that can wirelessly beam a video feed back to a control room so that service commanders can see exactly what's going on in the streets and more effectively issue orders."
According to the American Civil Liberties Union,
[a]nyone who claims that facial recognition technology is an effective law enforcement tool is probably working for the one of the companies trying to sell it to the government. Facial recognition software is easily tripped up by changes in hairstyle or facial hair, by aging, weight gain or loss, and by simple disguises.

A study by the Department of Defense found very high error rates even under ideal conditions, where the subject is staring directly into the camera under bright lights. The study found very high rates of both "false positives" (wrongly matching people with photos of others) and "false negatives" (not catching people in the database). That suggests that if installed in airports, these systems would miss a high proportion of suspects included in the photo database, and flag huge numbers of innocent people - thereby lessening vigilance, wasting precious manpower resources, and creating a false sense of security.
In addition,
questions have been raised about how well the software works on dark-skinned people, whose features may not appear clearly on lenses optimized for light-skinned people...

While video surveillance by the police isn't as widespread in the U.S., an investigation by the Detroit Free Press (and followup) shows the kind of abuses that can happen. Looking at how a database available to Michigan law enforcement was used, the newspaper found that officers had used it to help their friends or themselves stalk women, threaten motorists, track estranged spouses - even to intimidate political opponents. The unavoidable truth is that the more people who have access to a database, the more likely that there will be abuse.

Facial recognition is especially subject to abuse because it can be used in a passive way that doesn't require the knowledge, consent, or participation of the subject. It's possible to put a camera up anywhere and train it on people; modern cameras can easily view faces from over 100 yards away. People act differently when they are being watched, and have the right to know if their movements and identities are being captured.
So, while officials are giving the line that the mask ban is for "the protesters' own safety," there appears to be a much more immediate, disturbing reason for the law's return.
"With a fingerprint, we get confirmation of someone's identity that is 100% accurate a great deal of the time," says Capt. Alecia Edgington of the Kentucky State Police. "With facial recognition, that threshold has not been reached yet."
What if protesters all showed up wearing Groucho Glasses?

ACLU's statements on facial recognition software [FAQ here] and video surveillance of public areas
ViiSAGE home page
EPIC [Electronic Privacy Information Center] on facial recognition software
The Detroit Free Press investigation of police abuses of facial recognition databases
"ViiSAGE Technology: Face Invaders" in Baseline - The Project Management Center
RNCWatch [NYC Indymedia Center]
CNN story on the NY Klan mask ban, January 23, 2004



This Advertisement is Not Approved By W. 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Begging to Differ takes a detailed look at the President's stunning [not in a good way] plan to stifle free speech in political advertising:
Just read this and tell me that this doesn't deserve a gold medal in the 100 meter stupid hypocrite freestyle:
President George W. Bush plans to seek a court order to force the U.S. Federal Election Commission to stop all political advertising by independent groups, said spokesman Scott McClellan.

Bush asked Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, to help end advertising by political organizations known as 527 groups, named for the section of the Internal Revenue Service code that grants them tax-exempt status. McCain told the New York Times he disapproves of ads attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, one of the 527 groups.

"The president said he wanted to work together to pursue court action to stop all activities by these shadowy 527 groups," McClellan told reporters on Air Force One en route to New Mexico."
The sheer audacity of the whole thing is positively breathtaking. Let us count all of the ways in which this is incredibly stupid and hypocritical:
[continue reading "Bush Seeks Judicial Activism to Overrule First Amendment"] Not good, friends and countrymen, when the Commander in Chief lassoes independent political dissenters into the "shadowy 527 group" hat, ready for a pre-emptive hogtie. Not good at all.



Thursday, August 26, 2004
farkleberries Links du Jour 8 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |



This Ain't No Mardi Gras: No Masks at the Republican National Convention 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Planning on protesting the Republican National Convention in New York? Protest organization RNC NOT WELCOME has some sage words of advice: don't wear a mask. Seriously. New York has a law against the wearing of masks - selectively enforced, of course. [No, not even gas masks.]
In 1845, the State of New York passed a law which forbade the wearing of masks. It authorized the pursuit and arrest of anyone who "having his face painted, discolored, covered or concealed, or being otherwise disguised, in a manner calculated to prevent him from being identified, shall appear in any road or public highway, or in any field, lot, wood, or enclosure."

It was originally adopted to thwart armed insurrections by Hudson Valley tenant farmers who dressed and painted themselves as Native Americans to attack law enforcement officers over rent issues. The law was then shelved for most of the 20th Century until 1965, when it was used to criminalize transvestites and drag queens who wore too much make-up for the authorities to bear.

More recently, the law has resurfaced in two contexts: At a KKK rally in 2001 and during the large-scale protests of the World Economic Forum (WEF) at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in January 2002. In the last year, through efforts of the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the New York Civil Liberties Union, the mask law was temporarily overturned as a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression. In January 2004, just 15 days after the RNC signed on to NYC, the mask law was reinstated.
You're duly warned, protesters...show some skin, as long as it's above the collar. With New York's anti-mask law reinstated just in time for the RNC, at least we know where the false faces will be.



Blue Monday All Over Again 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Kottke has a little post on what I consider my quintessential college radio song - New Order's Blue Monday.
Thanks to 24 Hour Party People, I'm discovering New Wave, albeit about 20 years late. From 1983, here's the original UK release version of New Order's Blue Monday (mp3, 10.2 MB), the best selling 12" single of all time.
Get it while it's hot, and there. The first 30 seconds of that song are all it takes to put me back into my days in the cramped, unventilated DJ booth at Plattsburgh State's WPLT "Pilot 94" in Yokum Hall. There I am, watching the turntable spin around and around, waiting for the cue to open my mic and say something witty to all 3 of my listeners. I had a noon-2pm shift called the "Sanity Assassin Lunch Hour." Don't ask...the show's name came from an obscure Bauhaus song.

Occasionally the neon indicator light on the phone would flash, signaling an incoming call. Adoring fans? No, usually it was my music director Bob Grimm, asking why I played four Love and Rockets songs that hour, or whichever band I was currently besotted with...yeah, I was a stone cold professional. Still, I'd rather associate the song with those memories than the fact it appeared in "The Wedding Singer" or was recently slaughtered rehashed by Orgy. Remember them? No, of course not.

On a related note, NewOrderOnline.com reports that Jude Law may star as late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis in a forthcoming biopic. Curtis committed suicide in 1980, giving immortal poignancy to signature tune "Love Will Tear Us Apart", while remaining members of the band including Peter Hook formed New Order.

Lesson? Some moments in life are better remembered than experienced.



Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Carpe Librem 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
One of the great perks of working near major universities is being able to collect lots of free books. Not just Reader's Digests, Harlequin bodice-rippers, and Danielle Steel, mind you - but interesting free books. Since books are attracted to the high osmotic tensions of gray matter commonly found at institutions of higher learning, at some point these schools experience Book Gluts. One finds all sorts of literary treasures dumped in cardboard boxes, left on tables with tags saying "free," and sadly, even thrown in Dumpsters alongside yellowing newspapers and empty pad thai cartons.

Personally, I think disposing of unwanted books in Dumpsters is tantamount to heresy, since surely someone somewhere would benefit from the discarded tomes; it's not like our globe has a net surplus of brainpower, you know. If the laws of conservation of energy hold true, then if there is a Book Glut in one location, there must be a corresponding Book Dearth somewhere else...probably in my neighborhood, the Armadillo's Pillow bookstore excepting.

At the end of the hall where I work, an old wooden table [which may have once literally propped up Milton Friedman's coffee, at some point in history] serves as a makeshift trading post/lost-and-found, where students and faculty alike can leave or take assorted scientific journals, books, flyers - even office supplies, winter hats and videotapes. It may be junk, but it's good junk. Recently I picked up a Turkish economic journal with two articles that caught my attention: "Consumer response and communication with fuzzy/focused logic: An Example From The Turkish Shampoo Industry" and "Blade Runner: Existential Theory of the Disaffected Future." Where else on earth would you find this stuff?

What if you don't have access to a trading table? Shh - don't tell anyone, but at the Powells Books location on 57th Street in Hyde Park, there are cardboard boxes left out every afternoon with overstock discards and books the management doesn't feel will sell. They're free for the taking - and while one has to sift through considerable chaff to find the wheat, I've scarfed up some great finds there.

Some goodies I've found lately? Bounded Choice: True Believers and Charismatic Cults by Janja Lalich, PhD (University of California Press, 2004), Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan by Alex Kerr, and alt.culture by Steven Daly and Nathaniel Wice, a perfunctory encyclopedic look at the 1990's from a pop culture perspective. Each entry in the book has corresponding URLs for further reference, but I'd be surprised if any of the links still work. Useful mainly for archival value, though, and perhaps some of the pages are saved at the Wayback Machine. Twenty years from now, will anyone remember half of this?



Russia's Bubble Baba Challenge a Rapid Rubbery Ride 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Russian racer in the Bubble Baba Challenge. Photo courtesy Mosnews.comWhat will those wild and crazy Russians think of next, and why didn't the producers of Jackass think of this first? The second annual Bubble Baba Challenge sends brave souls of both genders racing down roaring Russian rapids - not on rafts, but on inflatable sex dolls:
The second Bubble Baba Challenge (in Russian, baba* stands for “woman,” only unlike the other word for woman, zhenschina, conveys not a shred of respect) was held on the Vuoksa river that runs in northwestern Russia a year after the first contest. Dmitry Bulawinov, the mastermind and organizer behind the unusual sporting event, says the idea of floating down the river in the embraces of a rubber woman was conceived as a joke at a party where the men got drunk and the women didn’t show up. While considering the possible uses for a rubber woman on a camping trip, someone voiced the thought that a sex doll would make a handy flotation device.

It’s far from the strangest idea that has ever come into the heads of imbibing camping aficionados, but unlike many other concepts of equal genius, this one was realized in life. Bulawinov set about advertising the sex doll rafting adventure opportunity online, and, ten months later, in August 2003, Bubble Baba Challenge 1 participants were eagerly hurling themselves through roaring rapids, buoyed by pneumatic breasts and hips.

“I went to the first race thinking it was going to be a celebration of idiocy,” says Victor Kuryashkin, a 31-year-old programmer and old-time camper who came in third in this year’s race and won last year’s sex doll design contest. “I think the potential sponsors had the same attitude toward the event. But Dmitry’s [Bulawinov] crew managed to create a good contest.” He used the same “flotation device” both times, which, he underscores, he doesn’t think of as a woman — he even painted “her” in camouflage colors and named her “The Nimble Missile Breast-Carrier.”

Alexander Korolyov, a 45-year-old owner of an active recreation tour company and a life-long swimmer, came in first last year, second this year, and plans to participate in future contests, as well as refer his clients for joining in, says that the event is essentially a swimming race. He doesn’t really think of it as much of a match, though — “It’s just fun, I don’t treat it as a contest. It’s just a reason to go out of town for a weekend, to fool around.” Still, this year he brought home an inflatable mattress as a trophy, while last year’s award “was very immodest” and “too awkward to talk about.”

Although vastly outnumbered by men excited about floating down the river atop a rubber chick, women did compete in the contest, finding nothing odd about using such unusual “lifesavers.” Bulawinov and other organizers try to be fair and leave open the option of floating down on rubber men dolls, but unfortunately, they can’t rent them out like they do the rubber women. “The men are too expensive, we can’t afford them,” he complains. [read full article on Mosnews]
And for dessert, bubble tea! If you're fluent in Rusky, check out the official Bubble Baba page at http://www.bubblebabachallenge.ru/.

* I don't know much Russian, but in Czech, the word baba translates as "old woman," and is related to the words babi?ka (an endearing form of "grandmother") and babushka. To me, those dolls don't look like babas at all.



farkleberries Links du Jour 7 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |



Tuesday, August 24, 2004
farkleberries Links du Jour 6 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |



Monday, August 23, 2004
Secret Vote? You Don't Know the Half of It 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
November's presidential election marks the advent of widespread use of electronic voting booths, but many believe the systems are flawed and inadequately regulated, and may be highly vulnerable to tampering. Founder of Verified Voting.org, Stanford computer science professor David Dill commented on CNN.com:
"Suppose you had a situation where ballots were handed to a private company that counted them behind a closed door and burned the results," said Dill, founder of VerifiedVoting.org. "Nobody but an idiot would accept a system like that. We've got something that is almost as bad with electronic voting."
VerifiedVoting.org's website contains some frightening accounts of election board indifference, electronic voting machine myths and miscounts in recent elections, and has a wealth of information on verified-voting legislation and regulation reform. Here is an excerpt their site, regarding electronic voting misconceptions:
Myth: E-voting machines cannot be hacked because they are not connected to the Internet.

Fact: Computer systems can be hacked in many ways without using the Internet. Making systems secure against outsiders, such as voters and poll workers, is very hard, and, as multiple studies have shown, the current e-voting systems fail miserably. However, making them secure against INSIDERS, possibly even the programmers themselves, is close to impossible. The way we make systems honest is to enable truly independent audits. Each voter should be able to check that his or her vote is recorded correctly, and it should be possible to count the paper ballots manually to double-check any machine counts. Some e-voting machines are believed to have wireless connectivity that might enable Internet access with or without the knowledge of poll workers and election officials.

Myth: Receipts will enable voters to prove how they voted to someone outside the polling place, enabling vote influencing or selling schemes.

Fact: This concern is based on a misunderstanding. Voter-verified paper ballots must be deposited in a secure ballot box in the polling place, even though some people call VVPBs "receipts." There is no more risk of vote selling with optical scan ballots or ballots printed on a touch-screen machine than with other kinds of ballots. There is much less risk of vote selling than with absentee ballots.

Myth: Voter-verified paper trails "would force voters with disabilities to go back to using ballots that provide neither privacy nor independence, thereby subverting a hallmark of the HAVA legislation."

Fact: So far as we know, no one is proposing to suspend or delay the HAVA requirement that there be at least one accessible voting system ineach polling place by 2006. Paper ballot systems can be made accessible in several ways: There is a touch-screen interface for optical scan ballots (described above); touch-screens that print paper ballots can also have equipment to read those ballots back to voters using an audio interface; "ballot on demand" systems that print blank optical scan ballots as needed in the polling places can also have accessible interfaces that allow voters to make their ions on the computer, then print out a ballot that is marked appropriately; and there are even low-tech ballot "tactile ballots" that have been used in Rhode Island and several countries to make optical scan systems accessible without computers.

Myth: "There has never been a documented case anywhere in the country where an electronic voting machine has produced an inaccurate tally of the votes."

Fact: This statement is misleading at best. There are many cases where e-voting machines appear to have RECORDED votes inaccurately, including the 2002 election in Wake County, North Carolina where 436 votes were lost because of a software bug. The use of the word "tally" is perhaps a semantic trick, meaning that incorrectly recorded votes were then totaled correctly. If so, it misses the point that the vote totals fail to represent how the voters voted.

Myth: E-voting machines are not computers, so they are not subject to problems of computer security.

Fact: Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood actually said this. It is a totally incorrect statement. The most widely used models machines have the same microprocessors that are used in PCs. By any reasonable definition, they are computers that execute computer programs, so they are subject to the same hardware and software bugs, and the same security issues, as all other computers. Just because they don't normally have a keyboard or mouse attached does not mean that they are not computers.
If you've ever had problems with an electronic bill or account - who hasn't? - or had your groceries "scan" with an incorrect price at the cash register, you can see how dangerous it can be to rely on untraceable electronic data for counting votes. Even with all the fuss about "hanging chads," Election Day is still a time we should prefer "paper" to "plastic."



This Is GRAND Radio! 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Just in from Jonathan Messinger at ThisIsGRAND.org:
**THISisGRAND to be featured on WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight Tuesday, Aug. 24 at 10:06 a.m.**

The broadcast begins at 9:30, and an interview conducted by Steve Edwards with TiG editor Jonathan Messinger (this guy) will be broadcast at some point between 9:30 and 11, though most likely around the time given above. Tune in to 91.5 FM [Chicago] on your dial, or for those of you in cubicles, head to www.wbez.org and crank the Realmedia player. If you can't make it, it will likely be archived here in the next few days:

http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/programs/848/848.asp

Thanks everyone for their support. I hope you enjoy the interview, especially those of you with whom I've only communicated via the Information Superhighway. My disembodied voice brings us one step closer.

Take care,
Jonathan



farkleberries Links du Jour 5 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |



A Blue Angels Flashback 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
When I was a kid my family lived near McGuire AFB and Fort Dix in New Jersey, so summertime frequently meant trips to base open houses and air shows. I used to loved those. My dad was a big military machinery buff [my folks have lots of photos and color slides of me posing next to Jeeps and tanks] and I remember the airshows circa 1976 being jaw-droppingly exciting. I'll never forget that viscera-thundering roaring in the body brought on by a fighter jet roaring overhead.

[I remember them being Blue Angels, but after checking their history I realize they never made appearances at McGuire AFB - what I saw were actually the USAF Thunderbirds]

However, for the past few years I haven't been able to attend military shows without an underlying tinge of sadness. Watching the fighter jets streak across the skyline has become simultaneously impressive and frightening, and it demonstrates just how traumatic the events of September 11th, 2001 were, even to those who only witnessed the events on television. Maybe there's a little too much harsh reality in seeing military might played out against a city skyscraper setting...I'm glad the technology exists, but part of me wishes it didn't have to.

Driving back home from the west suburbs this weekend, we arrived downtown just in time to catch the Chicago Air and Water Show's Blue Angels finale. The beaches, sidewalks and rooftops were crowded to capacity, multitudes of police patrols and vehicles standing guard.

Sitting in the car, I wasn't paying much attention to the show when suddenly I heard what sounded like an explosion directly overhead: it was the "sonic boom" of an F/A-18 Hornet fighter making a pass. My heart skipped a beat until I realized it was only part of the show.



Sunday, August 22, 2004
Armed Robbers Steal The Scream 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
A scene straight out of a Hollywood action thriller:
OSLO (Reuters) - Armed robbers have stolen "The Scream" and another masterpiece by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in a bold daytime raid on an Oslo museum in front of dozens of terrified tourists.

Two masked robbers ran into the Munch Museum, threatened staff with a handgun and forced people to lie down before grabbing "The Scream", an icon of existential angst showing a waif-like figure against a blood-red sky, and "Madonna".

Some stunned visitors said they feared they were victims of a terror attack. The men simply walked out the front door -- with one painting bumping on the ground -- and escaped in a stolen black Audi car driven by a third man, police said.

Worth millions of dollars, the pictures are among Munch's best-known, even though he produced several versions of both 1893 works. "Madonna" shows a mysterious bare-breasted woman with flowing black hair.

"We're following all possible leads ... but we don't know who did this," police detective chief inspector Kjell Pedersen told a news conference. One of the thieves spoke during the robbery -- in Norwegian.

The wooden frames of the paintings were found smashed and scattered along an Oslo street and the car was separately found abandoned a few km (miles) away with no trace of the paintings.
Another version of Edvard Munch's The Scream was stolen about 10 years ago, and was found months later, after authorities refused to pay the thieves' ransom.



Friday, August 20, 2004
farkleberries Links du Jour 4 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |



Thursday, August 19, 2004
Chicago City Sticker Shock 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Let me go on record as saying the Chicago City Sticker concept stinks. Okay...perhaps not the concept, but the execution.

If you've never seen them, they are rectangular self-adhesive plastic stickers that stick to the inside lower right corner of a car's windshield, providing the bearer permission to park in Chicago city limits - and a healthy source of revenue for the city. New city stickers are issued annually, and you don't want to forget to replace your old sticker by the June 30th mass expiry date. These days, an expired- or missing-sticker ticket will cost you $125.00, and I speak from personal experience (kick, kick, kick).

Here's the main problem. Since all city stickers are identical except for a small serial number area [which doesn't correspond to easily matched unique vehicle information, like the VIN or license plate number] these expensive stickers have become a form of liquid Chicago currency.

Thieves can break into your car to steal a City Sticker [a personal account of sticker theft on My Complex Simplicity] and display it as their own, or sell it on the street for a portion of a legitimate sticker's cost. They are a little tricky to peel off once they have been stuck to the windshield, but on a hot sunny summer day [what a coincidence...right around the time Chicago drivers all need new stickers!] the backing adhesive softens enough to allow easier removal.

But - isn't it risky to use someone else's city sticker? Realistically, sticker thieves generally get away scot-free, and stolen-sticker scofflaws are rarely detected unless a shoddily re-stuck sticker arouses a police officer's suspicion. No one will know the difference unless an effort is made to note the sticker ID number and track down the original purchaser's name and vehicle information in City Hall records.

Considering that the average sticker sells for $75* or more, it's almost as bad as if the city asked motorists to tape a bunch of bills inside their windshields.

What could the city do to improve the situation? Ideally, city stickers should be individualized for each vehicle, clearly showing the VIN or license plate number the same way other states use vehicle registration stickers. Even better, city stickers should be issued on a rotating basis with expiration date clearly marked, and printed on demand at the point of purchase.

When I lived in New York State, registration stickers were equally expensive, but there was no motive to steal or sell them because they plainly showed the plate number and VIN of the car they were issued to. They were also renewed on a rotating basis all year long, so there was no global date when all stickers expired; and they were printed on paper which tore easily if removal was attempted.

I think I'll write a letter to City Hall outlining my plan to improve our city stickers. It may not change anything, but at least I won't feel quite as...er, stuck.

* Chicago "sticks" it to SUV owners - "large passenger" vehicles currently pay $90 for a city sticker, which isn't too different from the idea of charging "wider" airline passengers for two seats. Interestingly, there is a cheaper "demonstration vehicle" sticker that only costs $30. If I put a PA system on the roof of my Escort and blare out Anti-Bush protest slogans, do I qualify for the discount?

UPDATE: Dragonflypurity has a good idea for thwarting sticker-peeling thieves:
Next time I put up a Chicago city sticker, I'm going to criss cross it a few times with a razor. That way, if they do try to break in and scrape it off, it won't come off as easy, but rather in small strips and pieces, making their efforts fruitless.



farkleberries Links du Jour 3 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |



Wednesday, August 18, 2004
A Closer Look at Alan Keyes' Slave Reparations "Plan" 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
I've got to hand it to GOP Senate candidate Alan Keyes. After blowing into the Midwest at the urging of the "people of Illinois" - to save us from Barack Obama's radical left-wing plans to turn our state into what Keyes characterizes as a Godless blend of Sodom and the former Soviet Union - he proposes this gem of cultural unification: reparations for descendants of Black slaves, by way of two generations' worth of Federal tax amnesty. The Chicago Tribune [reg. req.] ran a story yesterday detailing Keyes' proposal:
Keyes proposed that for a generation or two, African-Americans of slave heritage should be exempted from federal taxes--federal because slavery "was an egregious failure on the part of the federal establishment." In calling for the tax relief, Keyes appeared to be reaching out to capture the black vote, something that may prove difficult to do, particularly after his unwelcome reception at the Bud Billiken Day Parade [Chicago Tribune, reg. req.] Saturday.

The former ambassador said his plan would give African-Americans "a competitive edge in the labor market," because those exempted would be cheaper to hire than federal tax-paying employees and would "compensate for all those years when your labor was being exploited."

Under Keyes' plan, African-Americans would still have to pay the Social Security tax, because "it's not a tax in the strict sense," said Keyes, calling it instead a payment to support a social insurance program. Keyes has discussed reparations before with statements that seem to contradict Monday's comments.

In 2002 on his short-lived MSNBC show, "Alan Keyes is Making Sense," he argued with one of his guests, an advocate of reparations, asking, "You want to tell me that what they suffered can actually be repaired with money? You're going to do the same thing those slaveholders did, put a money price on something that can't possibly be quantified in that way."

And in a 2002 column titled "Paid in Blood," Keyes called lawsuits on behalf of slave descendants against large corporations an "effort to extort `reparations' for slavery from their fellow citizens" and said that "the truth of the Civil War is that the terrible price for American slavery has been paid, once for all," when Americans gave their lives on the battlefield to end slavery. "The price for the sin of slavery," Keyes wrote, "has already been paid, in blood."
[Note: somehow, the words "flip-flop" keep popping into my head. I wonder why.]

Slave reparations have been bandied about for many years, but most people would concede that their practical application would be a challenge, to say the least. First of all, who would be included in the set of people slated to receive reparation benefits? Perhaps too much time has passed for slave reparations to ever be effectively distributed, and their fair disbursement impossible.

To receive the reparations tax anmesty, would it be enough to look African-American, or to sign an affidavit stating one has slave ancestry? Since there are essentially no more children - and very few grandchildren - of former slaves still alive, the state at the very least would need to conduct extensive historical research into each applicant's claim to prove reparations eligibility. Complicating matters is the issue of mixed racial heritage: would the amount of reparation depend on how much "slave blood" a potential recipient had? Where should the threshold be set, and would it become some reversion of the infamous "One Drop" Rule?

What if an applicant had one great-grandparent who was a slave, and seven others who never were slaves? Would this person receive a prorated one-eighth reparation benefit of someone who could demonstrate 100% slave heritage? If an applicant had two, three, or more bonafide slave ancestors, would the payout be proportionately greater? Then there is the shameful problem of slave family records. Since the African men and women taken from their home countries were essentially treated like subhuman livestock, centuries of their genealogical records are spotty to nonexistent.

To be sure, America’s slave years were a disgraceful time in our history; as were the many years after emancipation when free Black Americans still bore the brunt of centuries of racism. In many ways, they still do. But I don’t think monetary payout or tax amnesties are an answer. At the risk of invoking an unnecessarily paternalistic analogy, to enact slave reparations now would be the equivalent of a horribly abusive, absent parent’s return into a child’s life after many years bearing armloads of gifts. "It’s okay now, right? We can forget about all those bad times. Look at this nice fur coat, this big-screen TV. Don’t you love me now? Or at least don’t hate me as much?"

Not so fast. Slave reparations in any form will neither eliminate the sting of racism, nor magically cleanse America’s karma of historical wrongdoing. We can never change the past, but we can change the present and future by providing Americans of all ethnicities opportunity and assistance. And yes - that includes Affirmative Action. It’s not perfect, but it’s still a better solution than Keyes’ misleading, empty promises of tax-based reparations.
Obama responded to Keyes' comments by saying that the "legacy and stain of slavery is immeasurable," but that he did not believe that the form of reparations backed by Keyes was the proper method to repair that damage.

"I generally think that the best strategies for moving forward involve vigorously enforcing our anti-discrimination laws in education and job training and other programs that can lift all people out of poverty," Democrat Obama said.
Much tension would result from one group's having freedom from the income tax burden on the basis of race...after all, Illinois is still a rather racially-divided state, and this plan wouldn't help matters one bit.

But there's another essential problem with income tax based reparations, because the U.S. income tax is progressive; in concept, those with higher incomes pay proportionately more in taxes, and those with the least are taxed at a lower rate. Black Americans at the lowest income levels - those who are unemployed or underemployed, who most need the financial help - would receive little or no benefit under Keyes' plan, while wealthier ones who have already succeeded in negotiating "the System" stand to receive to greatest financial benefit. This sounds like a plan "trickle-down" Republicans could really take to heart.

Freedom from paying income tax for two generations does absolutely nothing for the family whose breadwinners don't have jobs. In fact, it's no freedom at all.

S.F.A.P. ["Subject for nother post"]: I also find Alan Keyes' extreme views on abortion chilling - he apparently even wants to ban abortion in cases of rape and incest:
Keyes also talked about abortion Monday and specifically about his objection to abortion in the case of rape and incest, asking rhetorically, "We should kill a daughter because the father is a rapist? We should kill a child because its parents committed incest?"
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin's Reparations Calculator.



farkleberries Links du Jour 2 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |



Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Roasted Harshmellows 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Although I lived in the vicinity of Burlington, Vermont for almost twenty years, I unfortunately never "got" the Phish Phenomenon - and now it's over. When I worked at WPTZ-TV, we'd often go out with co-workers [yeah, it was that kind of place] to clubs downtown like Nectar's, where the band got its start...but isn't that the essence of the "hometown star"? They'll always be the boys from the 'Hood, not untouchable glitterati.

However, I have to hand it to my mom...she went to see Joan Jett and the Blackhearts live at the Franklin County Fairgrounds in Malone, New York last Saturday night. [I've been a big fan of hers for...well, longer than I care to admit. Since before I lived in the vicinity of Burlington] From what my mom tells me, she's still got the spirit and the chops.

Knowing me, I'll probably start to love Phish's music in a few years; I'm never the first to catch onto a trend, and I rarely take a fashion to heart until it's almost (or long) over. Sad, but that's just the way it is. And no, I didn't travel back to the NEK [North East Kingdom, for the uninitiated] to partake of the Farewell concert. Being an introvert, as a rule I hate crowds - especially muddy, unwashed crowds - as mellow and friendly as they might be. I don't hate the people - just the crowdiness of thousands of people without adequate shelter, food or hygiene. Muddy festivals make me think of Apocalyptic future scenarios, which I generally attempt to avoid in the pursuit of leisure. That, or Braveheart. Can you tell I've never been to Burning Man?

That's probably the main reason I could never live in the desert. Not enough water to draw a contemplative tub...and that's probably why I've lived near large bodies of water all my life, although I can't swim. [Long story, for another post. But I digress.]

I would have been dead meat at Woodstock...or the Crusades.



farkleberries Links du Jour 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |

You are Amiga OS. Ahead of your time. You keep a lot of balls in the air. If only your parents had given you more opportunities to suceed.
Which OS are You? [via Greengrl]



McGreevey, Redux in the San Francisco Chronicle 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
SFGate.com 's Steve Yuhas takes a biting look at the James McGreevey scandal five-days-after, "Political Lies and Personal Lives: The difference between courage and expediency":
Since McGreevey's announcement, we have learned much about what was going on behind the scenes. But if you listened only to his speech on Thursday, you would think that he was resigning because he is gay. If you listen to gay activists, you would think that he deserves to remain in office because he is gay.

What we witnessed with McGreevey was not a courageous, honest or an unfortunate man finally coming to terms with the demons of his closeted life. What we witnessed was a cowardly attempt to deflect attention from a scandal- laden administration that gay organizations have decided to ignore because they can now add a gay governor to their list of openly gay public officials.

...McGreevey is an opportunist who got caught living a lie; there is a big difference in having the courage and honesty to be an openly gay politician and being a cowardly cheat who is forced to admit his sexuality because the house of cards is crumbling.

...I'm baffled by gay organizations who describe coming out while staring down the barrel of a gun as a courageous act. There are closeted people serving in all walks of life, but to make heroes out of men and women who lie their way to the top and come out under pressure is akin to praising a thief who admits stealing after seeing that the deed has been caught on film.
Frankly, I agree with Yuhas. McGreevey's neatly choreographed "I Am A Gay American" presentation has been revealed to be nothing but a self-serving veneer for his emerging political scandal, and gay Americans everywhere should be cautious of blindly aligning themselves with this new "poster boy." He's not, all punning aside, someone who appears to be an upstanding kind of guy.

An example of what bugs me about the media's coverage of this? The Monday after this story broke, CNN.com's ubiquitous front page QuickPoll carried this loaded question under the headlines describing the corrupt McGreevey backstory: "Would you vote for a gay politician?" CNN's QuickPoll's can be notoriously backhanded, but this was a cheap a shot as it gets. Can you imagine the kerfuffle if some politician of a different minority association was involved in a similar scandal, and the question read: "Would you vote for a Black [female, Asian, Jewish, foreign-born, Catholic, what have you] politician?"

Yuhas concludes,
For all of the complaining about gays being refused the right to marry, it is shocking that the bonds of matrimony that McGreevey broke are of so little consequence to gay activists that they ignore them in their press releases and act as if the adulterous affair between McGreevey and Cipel is simply collateral damage in the coming-out process. More important than the vow a man makes to his wife or the promises made to constituents, the only thing that matters to gay activists is the final tally of out-of-the-closet politicians.

It will not take much time before McGreevey is on a speaking tour of college campuses or out signing copies of his autobiography. It is almost certain that he will be invited to be the grand marshal of a gay parade next year. But if gays and lesbians were truly concerned about marriage and truly desired the privilege of entering into the most important of unions, you would think they'd be less enamored by McGreevey. The pressure on McGreevey to leave office before Nov. 15 continues, and if gay activists were wise, they would join the chorus.
I concur. Provided the allegations are true - especially the ones regarding McGreevey's fraudulent political appointment of Golan Cipel to a crucial security post - McGreevey should do the truly honorable thing now, and resign immediately. Any politician in such dire straits would be compelled to do so, regardless of their sexual orientation.



The New Blogger™ NavBar 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
That gray-black horizontal bar at the top of this page is a new feature Blogger™ added yesterday afternoon without fanfare: I refreshed my page at one point, and bam, there it was. Huh?

Apparently, it replaces the dynamic advertising bar that used to appear at the top of many free Blogger™ pages, although it hasn't cropped up on any of my other sites yet. I didn't care for the original color it came in - Blogger Blue, to wit - so I changed the color scheme to Black, which blends in nicely with the current farkleberries design.

But, as they say, is it any good? Well, since I don't have a say in the matter, I'll confess the jury's still out. The NavBar offers (looking left to right) a link to the Blogger™ main page, a search box that lets you find locate pages within a blog by keyword (caveat: this only appears to work right now when "Post Pages" are enabled, i.e., when the keyword(s) appear in the post's permalink rather than the post body), a BlogThis! button that allows Blogger™ users to instantly post to their blogs a link to the page being viewed (caveat: as long as it's a Blogger™ page, as the BlogThis! Javascript link doesn't seem to function when dragged to your browser's links or bookmarks), and finally the "Get Your Own Blog!" and "Next Blog" buttons.

The former is a wisely placed ad-link that prompts viewers to sign up for their own Blogger™ accounts, while the latter functions as a "random site" webring button - with the ring being all recently updated Blogger™ sites. That's a pretty darned big ring. I've clicked through the "Next Blog" several times with mixed results - after about 8 to 10 clicks you land on a Blogger™ page that lacks the NavBar, and you're stuck, because there is no corresponding "Previous Blog" button.

Ah, well. It's led lots of unlikely visitors to my site...but let me tell you - there are some weird, weird blogs out there. *shudder*

UPDATE: Blogger™ Help has a page discussing the new NavBar features, and thanks to Talk About GMail for the link!



Monday, August 16, 2004
Headlines that caught my eye today 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Israel May Try to Tempt Hunger Strikers With Aromatic Cookouts [SfGate.com]
Google's Playboy Boob Does Not Upset IPO [Out-law.com]
Charlie Watts' Throat Cancer an Eye Opener [Healthtalk.ca]
Corporal Klinger Will Be Thrilled [ABC7 News NYC]
Floridians Who Lost Homes To Charley Frustrated [Reuters] (No, really? Do you think?)
Fidel's Happy Birthday [CBS News.com]



Khmelnitsky II: More Nuclear Troubles in the Ukraine  
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Khmelnitsky nuclear plant in Ukraine. Photo courtesy ITAR TASS news agencyAustralia's Herald Sun reports of serious problems last week at the new Khmelnitsky nuclear power plant at Neteshin:
The reactor at Khmelnitsky power station had to be shut down on Sunday, less than two hours after it went into operation, Interfax news agency reported on yesterday. Further technical failures prevented it operating on Monday and Tuesday.

"These incidents do not represent any threat to the public or to the environment," state nuclear energy company Energoatom said in a statement.

Ukraine was the scene of the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster in 1986, when a reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station exploded, contaminating large areas in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus and Russia. Energoatom confirmed incidents had occurred at Khmelnitsky but said it "saw no cause for concern".

"Certain media inflated the affair," it said.

The K2 Russian-designed VVER pressurised water reactor at Khmelnitsky, which has a capacity of 1000 megawatts, was brought on stream on Sunday at a ceremony attended by Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. But it ground to a halt almost immediately.

An official at Ukraine's governmental commission for atomic energy said that automatic security systems at the power plant had cut off the reactor from the electricity grid. The reactor was reconnected to the grid three hours later but had to be totally shut down later because of a failure in the cooling system caused by a power breakdown, the official added.

The reactor was restarted on Monday, only to be stopped again yesterday, officially to test its shut-down system and cooling units.
Not an auspicious beginning, I'm afraid, despite ITAR-TASS' rather glowing (if spoken-too-soon) praise. I truly hope plant officials don't do something silly...like deciding to bypass safety measures to "get the thing started" - we know where that can lead.

Frighteningly, for many regions of the world like Ukraine, nuclear energy is currently one of the most viable energy options. Having a cold climate with existing high pollution, more use of fuels like coal would cause further damage to air quality and likely increase rainfall pH levels. Additionally, research into developing workable technologies such as geothermal, solar and wind power requires large-scale financial investment that strapped nations like the Ukraine simply can't afford.

From "Non-traditional sources of energy may be key to Ukraine's future," by Roman Woronowycz of Kyiv [Kiev] Press Bureau, in the Ukraine Weekly, April 30, 2000:
Once looked at with keen interest, a Ukrainian government choked by money shortages has cast aside any serious work on the development of non-traditional renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, as an alternative to its primary reliance on atomic energy.

Ukraine has made much of the West's delays in providing financing to complete two traditional and controversial new reactors that Kyiv wants completed to offset the power that will be lost when Chornobyl shuts down at the end of this year. However, there are those here and in ecologically minded countries such as Germany who believe that Ukraine has no recourse but to reconsider non-traditional energy sources as well, which could do the work of the nuclear power plants as efficiently and with none of the risk.

One such person is the institute's director, Viktor Shulha, a gray-haired, 60-something scientist with a strong belief that Ukraine must turn to wind and solar power to meet its energy demands. Mr. Shulha said he has been frustrated in his attempts to turn the government's ear to his cause by the most familiar of laments in Ukraine: there simply is no money for it.

Mr. Shulha became the director of the Institute of Energy Engineering when it was formed 10 years ago by the Ministry of Energy, and at one time had an extensive group of advisors and experts. The team already had developed recommendations and a plan for developing wind energy when it came up against the insurmountable wall of Ukraine's current economic reality.

"We decided that for Ukraine the best potential would be to develop wind and biomass sources, and the government put the accent on wind energy. But, as it turned out, Ukraine had no finances and the experts moved on," said Mr. Shulha.
More than any other nation, the Ukraine should understand the risks of nuclear power and the awesome consequences of "inconsequential" mistakes - but with another bitter winter on the way, time can dulls the sting of fear more smoothly than reassuring official words. "If someone you know was killed in a car crash nearly twenty years ago, would you stop riding in cars for the rest of your life?" Maybe not, but that's hardly a fitting analogy.

Atomic technology has advanced since the 1986 disaster as wealthier nuclear-dependent nations, like France, Belgium and Italy, have invested considerable sums in developing safer meltdown-resistant reactor designs. Nonetheless, as history has shown, nothing is truly 100% foolproof - and make no mistake, EnergoAtom is a beleaguered interest, by any account [check out news stories linked below]. Let's keep our fingers crossed, and our orbiting Eyes In The Sky watchful.

For more on Chernobyl and assorted atomic musings, please check out my "nuclear blog," RadioActive!
EnergoAtom's website
EBDR Loan to EnergoAtom Agency of Ukraine [July 21, 2004]
September 13, 2002 Weekly Mirror ["Zerkalo Nedely"]: "COURT RULED: NEDASHKOVSKY MUST RETURN TO HEAD ENERGOATOM"
WISE/NIRS Nuclear Monitor, October 18, 2002, "Scandals and lawsuits face Ukraine's Energoatom"



1 Out of Every 2 Adults Prefers Fizzy Fruit 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Color me less than excited about this innovation in food technology - carbonated fruit and vegetables:
[From the National Association of Convenience Stores' news] Scientists have developed a technique for carbonating fruit that they hope will make taste buds tingle and encourage kids and adults to eat more fruit.

"We see great potential in this application and believe the technology can be used to elevate the food sensory experience for consumers," said Dr. Qingyue Ling, lead researcher of the technology at the Food Innovation Center at Oregon State University [Who, incidentally, are working on a project that is bound to go 'pear-shaped', in a good way]. "As such, we're currently working on applying the technology to vegetables--tomatoes, celery, cucumber--with the aim to enhance the flavors for salads and vegetable dishes.

"The carbon dioxide brings no extra flavor, but it can enhance flavor profiles in a variety of food products," added Ling. To carbonate the fruit, it is put into a pressurized chamber at a specific temperature determined by the type of fruit for a half hour to two hours. The fruit becomes carbonated via its contact with carbon dioxide, reports FoodNavigator.com.

"We carried out trials on several thousand people over the past three years, [and] almost 100 percent of children preferred the fizzy fruit and over 50 percent of adults," noted Ling. Researchers also are investigating the use of the fizzy technology on other foods, such as yogurt, canned foods and ice cream.
Fizzy Ice Cream?

I know of a cheap, old-fashioned natural way to put some fizz in your fruit: let it sit inside a sealed plastic bag in the bottom of your fridge for about a week or two. If you can ignore the occasional odd fermented smell, moldy spots, and the fruit or vegetables' disturbing tendency to collapse at first bite, this technique produces an acceptable "fizzy fruit" at a fraction of the price of the new technology.

Just kidding.



Friday, August 13, 2004
The Confusing Issues in Gov. McGreevey's Fall From Grace 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Ah, yes. [Now former] New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's surprise resignation and public coming-out have topped news headlines since yesterday afternoon, a bit puzzling considering the magnitude and gravity of other events around the world. Perhaps the concurrent news from San Francisco, where thousands of gay couples recently suffered a legal setback when their marriage licenses were declared invalid, had some synergistic effect in boosting the McGreevey affair to the front pages.

What's troubling is that on the surface, most of the media is portraying the scandal as nothing more than an old-fashioned fall from grace for adultery, exacerbated by McGreevey's (shhhhhh) ho-mo-sexuality. Who would ever have thought? The truth is, as the New York Times stated in an op-ed piece this morning, being gay is probably the least of McGreevey's problems at this point.

Something struck me as fishy the moment I heard the breaking story. In most instances, a simple extramarital affair - or even "coming out" - are hardly sufficient sole cause for a remorseful public resignation from office these days. There had to be more to it, and it appears there is. Not only is McGreevey reportedly the subject of a forthcoming sexual harassment suit, the plaintiff is allegedly none other than the man he'd been having an affair with - the same man he'd appointed as his state homeland security adviser. Topping it all off, not only is McGreevey accused of appointing to public office a person with whom he was having affair - but he is also reportedly embroiled in longstanding financial scandals. The Times says,
The governor's announcement was reportedly driven by the threat of a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former aide, Golan Cipel. Mr. McGreevey, who has two children from his two marriages and whose wife stood next to him during his press conference, acknowledged that he had committed adultery with another man. He did not say that the man in question had worked for his administration.

Gay or straight, that kind of relationship raises troubling questions, apart from the issue of whether it was consensual. Mr. Cipel was originally appointed as the governor's homeland security adviser, a job for which he had no discernable qualifications. If Mr. McGreevey put someone in that critical post because of a personal relationship, that would be an outrage, regardless of his sexual orientation.
Bad, bad move, Gov. McGreevey...that's probably one of the most unwise choices an employer or politician can make. Other media outlets are less cordial than the Times' measured take. The Times of India blares the headline "Gay Scandal Rocks U.S. Politics":
The scandal also brought sexual orientation issues to the political front burner on a day when the California Supreme Court voided a rash of same-sex marriages licensed by the San Francisco?s liberal mayor. Ironically, McGreevey had publicly opposed gay marriage, although he supported some of the nation's most liberal legislation, affording same-sex partners in New Jersey spousal benefits, including medical and legal rights.

McGreevey is not the first American politician to come out of the closet although he is the highest ranking. At least two serving US lawmakers are openly gay ? Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank and Arizona Republican Jim Kolbe. But McGreevey?s confession comes on the heels of several other scandals in a state known for its messy politics. One recent episode involved an Indian-American, Roger Chugh, a McGreevey fund-raiser who claimed the Governor had appointed him New Jersey's "Assistant Secretary of State" in 2002.

Chugh allegedly used the phony "appointment" to bully Indian-Americans into supporting McGreevey. But it was subsequently discovered that McGreevey had only appointed Chugh as an "assistant commissioner" and he had to give up even that post. McGreevey though took plenty of flak for even that appointment.

The Cipel appointment too stank from the beginning, according to local media accounts. There were rumours about McGreevey's affair with Cipel in local political circles and reporters who tried to find out what exactly Cipel did for the governor to draw a $ 110,000 salary often drew a blank.
"Rash," "bully," and "stank" don't generally come across as unbiased journalistic language - but this is India, after all, a country not generally known to look kindly upon gay and lesbian issues - and the paper completely misses the nuance that it's hardly sporting to lump openly gay politicians with those forced out of the closet in disgrace.

The overriding point I see here is that far too much is being made of McGreevey's being gay - but that's not the main issue here, despite the headlines. The Times details:
The cast of characters is long, and the details unsavory. They include a trash hauler and fund-raiser charged in a scheme to extort money from a farmer, and another fund-raiser who is accused of using a prostitute to try to silence a witness in a federal investigation. The governor, tape-recorded without his knowledge in a private meeting, was linked to one scandal when he uttered the word "Machiavelli," which prosecutors claimed was a code word. He has maintained that the use of the word was a coincidence.

In the murky politics surrounding him, being gay may be the least complicated issue Mr. McGreevey could address - and that may explain why he did not delve into the other troubles in his speech.
With LGBT issues at the forefront of American consciousness these days, too much is being made of McGreevey's sexuality and marital problems when what the media should be focusing on are his unethical actions in office.

If McGreevey's lover and accuser was a woman, you can be certain this story wouldn't have gathered a fraction of the attention it has to this point, in spite of the other juicy details. Sadly, this case feels like a unfortunate throwback to the bad old days in the closet, when gay people feared for their lives and reputations if their "secret" ever came out. However, it isn't the gayness that was the problem - it was the undeserved power held by those who knew the gay people's "secret" - the power to blackmail, extort, manipulate and coerce them under threat of being "outed". Remove the grasp of the secret, and that power vanishes.

It's far too late and irremediable now, but if James McGreevey had come to terms with his sexuality years ago, none of this might have happened. Too often the innermost lie to oneself seeds a complicated, insurmountable series of future deceptions. He might have still been involved in some messy, Machiavellian scandal, but he needn't have broken two families' hearts - and his own career aspirations in the process - by pretending to be someone he wasn't. That's the real tragedy here.

UPDATE: Traveling in Style gives a local take on the messiness, "It's a 7.5 On The Stink-O-Meter":
I'm having a hard time believing that he is resigning because he is gay. It's Jersey, fer cryin' out loud - we don't care. Perhaps he hasn't heard that Asbury Park is the new gay mecca? Say what you will about Jerseyites, we are not unsophisticated and gaydom - recent or not - is not a big deal. Something about this smells.

And by the way, I do not appreciate knowing that the only qualification necessary to be NJ's homeland security advisor after 9/11 was that you were the love of the gov and otherwise eminently unqualified, especially since I was toiling a mere 1/4 mile away from the post office distribution center that was heaviest hit with anthrax fatalities. I assumed at the time that the government was acting in my best interest to protect me, not to provide a high-paying postion and provide proximity for a love interest.

So why now? And if it was so vital that a full disclosure happen now for the sake of the state, then why is he hogging the office until November 15th? If you're going, then go now. Oh, but then, there's have to be a special election and NJ voters might actually choose a Republican for govenor. The magic words: Brent Schundler. [read full post]
I hear ya'. I'm an old Jersey gal myself...and I grew up about a mile away from the anthrax-stricken post office distribution center in Hamilton Township. It's all sad and stinky, I tell you, and it's not over yet.



Friday the 13th and the Season of the Ass 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Depressing, depressing...shall I count the ways? Chicago is colder than Anchorage, Alaska has been for the past week, I'm fighting off the rat-tail-end of a summer head cold, San Francisco's gay and lesbian couples got their marriage licenses annulled, New Jersey's McGreevey throws "coming out of the closet" back into the McCarthy era - and to put a cherry on top, Julia Child died and it's Friday the 13th, again. That would probably explain why my main academic server account (which housed all my web images) got hosed without notice; fortunately I was able to set up another, but for the time being please excuse the inordinate number of image placeholders in the archived pages.

You know, Julia Child had the right idea: dine on red meat and a bottle of gin, live to be 91 and die peacefully in your sleep in California.

As a couple of friends from my Nottingham Middle School (Trenton, NJ) wood shop class - André and Charles were their names - used to say, Daaaaamn. That takes the Tate.

I don't know about you, but I need to spray a little mood-freshener into the funk right about now. Here it is: The Village Voice bears good tidings...rejoice, for this is the Season of The Ass.

I feel better already.



Thursday, August 12, 2004
Stormy Weather, Missed Opportunities 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Not to make light of Florida's misfortune, but wouldn't it have been funny if the National Hurricane Center had instead named the "twin storms" Bonnie and Clyde? I will reserve comment on speculation the storms are connected to Porter Goss' being named new CIA head.

On a side note, there are temporarily no locally-hosted images on farkleberries because the server they are on is undergoing maintenance. They'll be back soon.



Blog Spotlight: EclecticEveryday 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
One of the things I love most about blogging is its unexpected side benefit: reconnecting with old friends once thought lost to the wind! Cynthia Potts from my old hometown of Plattsburgh, NY is one of those old friends - who has a great blog of her own, EclecticEveryday. An exceptionally well-named blog, EclecticEveryday contains accounts of life in the Northernmost city of New York, parenthood, fascinating trivia (have you ever "plucked yew"?) and the pleasures and pains of being a writer in the 'Boonies'.

I'm really proud of Cindy - her writing career is taking off in bounds and strides. She's been published in a number of regional papers and magazines, as well as portions of some very interesting-sounding books. Check out her site for links to some of her published articles available online, like one on chimney maintenance and safety published in the Plattsburgh Press-Republican's Building and Remodeling special issue. Way to go, Cindy! Hope to see you at a Borders® signing on the Magnificent Mile one of these days?



"The Subject of Another Post" at Positive Liberty 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
May I direct you to a superb post today at Positive Liberty, where Jason Kuznicki discusses his reactions and thoughts on Martha Nussbaum's essay on the ethics of disgust, expanding it to the "Jewish Question" and reparative therapy:
Nussbaum's comparison of the modern-day male homosexual with the Jew of anti-Semitic propaganda strikes me as particularly apt. The parallels go far beyond the evidence she offers in her essay: Like Jews, gay men are very often capable of blending in with the surrounding population, of "passing" as members of the dominant group. Among those who find disgust a proper tool in understanding the moral universe, the very act of "passing" suggests a breakdown of ethics itself, even a failure of cognition. Epistemologically, Jews and homosexuals both represent a threat to someone who relies on disgust to evaluate moral claims.

They're both politically threatening as well, and for reasons that are equally unjustified. Jews and homosexuals alike have been associated--unfairly--with communism. Never mind that communism hasn't been particularly kind to either group: The Soviet Union tried to exile the Jews to central Asia, while it harshly penalized homosexuality. Still, many conservatives seem to have viewed communism as a dissolution of the social order, itself envisioned as a body and strongly identified with the Christian notion of the spiritually clean, whose reflection lies in the ritually pure and non-disgusting bodies of the faithful.

I would argue that communism is wrong not because it threatens to dissolve the social order, but because it posits a social order that is not compatible with man's fundamental nature. I would also argue that Christianity and communism are a great deal closer to one another than either would like to admit. But again, these are the subjects of another post.

There is another, even more significant way in which the prejudices against gays and Jews have come to align with one another in recent years: I refer to the drive by Christians to "convert" gays and lesbians out of homosexuality. During the nineteenth century, a similar phenomenon existed among many apparently well-intentioned people in Europe; their aim was to convert Jews out of Judaism. In these phenomena, we can see the disastrous results when disgust-as-morality turns inward, upon the self, for many of the most outspoken advocates of both movements have been converts.
[continue reading "The Subject of Another Post"] Excellent work, Jason.



Wednesday, August 11, 2004
America's Most Literate Cities 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater recently ranked "America's Most Literate Cities 2004," and the results are quite interesting. According to the study, which took into consideration factors such as U.S. census data, newspaper circulation rates, magazine publishing, educational attainment levels and the number of libraries and booksellers in the cities (over 200,000 population), the Top 10 (of 79 measured) are:
1) Minneapolis, MN
2) Seattle, WA
3) Pittsburgh, PA
4) Madison, WI
5) Cincinnati, OH
6) Washington, DC
7) Denver, CO
8) Boston, MA
9) Portland, OR
10) San Francisco, CA
What's curious is that none of the high-ranked cities has a population even close to 1 million (according to the study's measurements). If you're looking for a smart city, it appears you want to look for one that's not too big - and preferably one in a dreary, cold climate. In a way, that makes sense. If the weather's terrible most of the year, it's far more tempting to stay indoors and read a book. An exception seems to be Washington, DC; but all sarcasm aside, I suspect its high ranking derives from its artificially concentrated pundit infusion.

Chicago ranks at #58 overall with our population of 2,896,016 - lower than New York, ranked at #49 with a population of 8,008,278 (so there are more than 8 million stories in that town) - and higher than a few other over-one-million-population cities, such as Phoenix, Houston, Los Angeles and San Antonio. The highest-ranked over-one-million city is San Diego, ranked at #44 overall. Intriguingly, the "Bottom 10" cities are all in Texas or California (with the exception of Hialeah, FL):
70) Garland, TX
71) Fresno, CA
72) Arlington, TX
73) Long Beach, CA
74) Anaheim, CA
75) San Antonio, TX
76) Santa Ana, CA
77) Corpus Christi, TX
78) Hialeah, FL
79) El Paso, TX
Poor El Paso. It recently received another dubious distinction, having been named "America's Sweatiest City." When the rankings are separated in categories - "Education," "Publications," "Libraries" and "Booksellers," for example, the differences are even more striking. The Top 10 cities with respect to education include Plano, TX at #1 (rallying the state from its dismal showing in the overall rankings), Scottsdale, AZ at #2, Madison, WI at #3 and Colorado Springs, CO at #4.

Chicago comes in at a respectable #10 in Publishing nationwide, while Ohio seems to be a haven for public libraries, with four cities making the Library Top 10. Thanks to Chicago's own Gaper's Block for the tip.



Search for the Mysterious Whistling Old Fart Ghost 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Some are logical and topical, others range from bizarre to pornographic. But this has to be one of the strangest search strings leading someone to farkleberries...ever: "mysterious whistling old fart ghost." Does anyone out there know what this person was looking for? No search engine I've tried produces anything close to an answer, so why farkleberries appears as a high-ranked result on Yahoo!® is beyond me.

UPDATE: The closest I've come to an answer is this slightly higher-ranked Yahoo! link on Slashdot, "Sen. [Orrin] Hatch Would Like To Destroy Filetraders' PC's."

Old Fart? Whistling "Dixie", perhaps? Oh, and this fanfic X-Files episode, called "Vicious Aloysius," by Allison J. Enjoy.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to the "recursive search engine effect," because this particular post has been indexed, farkleberries is now the #1 ranked Yahoo! result for "mysterious whistling old fart ghost." *sigh*



Cannibal Wedding Party 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Good heavens...you can't make stuff like this up:
MANILA, Philippines (AP) Four members of a family have been arrested and charged with murder for allegedly killing and eating a relative during a wedding reception, and serving his flesh to unwitting party guests, police have said.

At the July 17 wedding of his daughter, Eladio Baule got angry with his cousin Benjie Ganay who tripped and accidentally touched the bride's bottom, said Senior Police Inspector Perla Bacuel, at Narra town in Palawan province, southwest of Manila.

A few hours later, Baule, his son Gerald, another cousin Junnie Buyot and a nephew, Sabtuari Pique, allegedly confronted Ganay, then drove him to a secluded place where they stabbed him to death, Bacuel said. Buyot, who surrendered to police and is acting as a witness, told police they then roasted Ganay's body using coconut leaves and kerosene, Bacuel said.

Baule senior later forced Buyot to take a bite of Ganay's flesh, which he claims he threw up but was then forced at knifepoint to swallow, Bacuel said. Buyot told police that the group returned to the party and served some of Ganay's cooked remains to guests who were still celebrating the wedding, Bacuel said.

"It was perhaps due to their drunkenness. They probably didn't know what they were eating," he said.
Wedding guests, repeat after me: do not touch the bride's tush. Do not touch the bride's tush...

Here's another account from the UK Daily Record.



SMEAT: The Un-SPAM 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Let's say you're producing a film or television show, and you'd like to show a can of brand-name pork-based luncheon meat, but you don't want to worry about product placement issues. What do you do, what do you do? You get a can of SMEAT instead.

Last night I watched the "Thin White Line" Episode of Millennium (which I think may become a bigger cult hit as a DVD box set release than its initial television run. Primo show, by the way). Lo and behold, as Frank Black tracks a vicious killer inside a rundown tenement, he stumbles upon an important clue: a decaying can of SMEAT. Certainly only depraved criminals on the run would eat such a sodium-and-sat-fat laden substance.

SMEAT.net - the website! - has a compilation of other SMEAT sightings, as well. I seem to remember seeing a can years ago on some cable show; possibly The Kids in the Hall?



Martha C. Nussbaum on the Ethics of Disgust 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
University of Chicago Professor Martha C. Nussbaum has an utterly fascinating essay in the August 6th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Danger to Human Dignity: the Revival of Disgust and Shame in the Law." She analyzes many of the hidden roots and meanings of human shame and disgust, and their complex relationship with ethics, the law and social norms:
Thus throughout history certain disgust properties -- sliminess, bad smell, stickiness, decay, foulness -- have repeatedly and monotonously been associated with, indeed projected onto, people by reference to whom privileged groups seek to define their superior human status. The stock image of the Jew, in anti-Semitic propaganda, was that of a being with a disgustingly soft and porous body, womanlike in its oozy sliminess, a foul parasite inside the clean German male self. Hitler described the Jew as a maggot in a festering abscess, hidden away inside the apparently clean and healthy body of the nation.

Similar disgusting properties are traditionally associated with women. In more or less all societies, women have been vehicles for the expression of male loathing of the physical and the potentially decaying. Taboos surrounding sex, birth, menstruation -- all express the desire to ward off something that is too physical, that partakes too much of the secretions of the body.

Consider, finally, the central locus of disgust in today's United States, male loathing of the male homosexual. Female homosexuals may be objects of fear, or moral indignation, or generalized anxiety, but they are less often objects of disgust. Similarly, heterosexual females may feel negative emotions toward the male homosexual -- fear, mor-al indignation, anxiety -- but again, they rarely feel emotions of disgust. What inspires disgust is male fear of anal penetration: of breaking down the sacred boundary against stickiness, ooze, and death. The presence of a homosexual male in the neighborhood inspires the thought that a man might himself be contaminated. The very look of such a male is itself contaminating -- as we see in the extraordinary debates about showers in the military.

Does disgust, then, contain a wisdom that steers law in the right direction? Surely the moral progress of society can be measured by the degree to which it separates disgust from danger and indignation, basing laws and social rules on substantive harm, rather than on the symbolic relationship an object bears to our anxieties.
[continue reading "Danger..."]
Thanks to Jason at Positive Liberty for the tip on this enlightening piece.



Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Big Brother Gets Behind The Wheel 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Marginal Revolution tells us about a not-so exciting new trend in auto insurance: discounts on premiums based on 'voluntary' electronic monitoring of your driving habits.
In two new tests, car owners will be able to let insurance companies monitor their driving via new technology in exchange for lower rates. The technology will track some combination of when, where, how far and how fast they drive, giving insurers a way to reward low-risk driving. Now just experiments, the technology might be a glimpse of the future of car insurance.

How about this? In Minnesota, where the highway speed limit is 70 mph, drivers who go over 75 less than 0.1% of the time get an extra 5% discount. Drivers who avoid the most dangerous times — midnight to 4 a.m. on weekends — get bigger discounts than those who don't.

Not surprisingly, one of the experiments is in Great Britain, the land of near-universal surveillance (I'm still waiting for those camera-based speeding tickets to arrive from Scotland). Insurers on both sides of the Atlantic are watching the experiment closely. [continue reading "What Price Lower Insurance Rates?"]
How about life or health insurance discounts based on electronic monitoring of a customer's vital signs and their eating, sleeping and exercise habits?

Wouldn't this be a lovely scenario? "Mr. Smith, this is BigBro Insurance Company calling. Our remote monitoring system has informed us that last Friday evening, you ingested what appears to be a 16-ounce porterhouse, an 8-ounce baked potato with sour cream, and three glasses of rather cheap red wine. We recorded a similar bodily intake contract violation two weeks ago, and our records show this month you haven't had the required amount of aerobic exercise specified in your policy. Do you understand your premiums will now increase by 20% next month?"

I'm with Tyler: "Nein, danke." What's most disturbing about this story is that it's yet another example of how consumers seem incredibly willing to concede privacy rights to corporate interests - yet these same people would scream bloody murder if the government took steps to enact similar surveillance methods.



Obama vs. Keyes: A Race Race? 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Frankly, I hate posting for the sole purpose of bashing a political candidate, but after hearing an interview with Illinois GOP Senate candidate Alan Keyes on Chicago Public Radio last night, I really must vent. But with all due respect, I think Keyes did a fine job digging his own hole and calling it dancing. NPR's Michele Norris spoke with Keyes, and here's a portion of the broadcast I transcribed:
Michele Norris: In 2000, you said something about Hillary Clinton, and her move to New York to represent the people there...you said, and this is a quotation, "I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton's willingness to go into a state she doesn't even live in a pretend to represent people there. So I certainly wouldn't imitate it."

Alan Keyes: That's right. I don't, and I haven't imitated it.

MN: What's the difference?

AK: She made use of the state of New York, and as a matter of it was a...if I understand it, a quite calculated move. She looked at other states, she worked on this, and others did for months - they then planned what they were going to do to get enough support in New York to serve her personal ambition and agenda. I'm serving no personal ambition or agenda in this...it hasn't even occurred to me. Until people in Illinois approached me and said they had a need.

MN: Barack Obama is an African-American, as are you, Sir. Do you think race had something with the GOP calling you to come into the state to face Barack Obama in the Senate race?

AK: Uh, I'm sure it did. Uh, I think in fact they have acknowleged that, uh, this was an effort to make sure that race would not be a faction in the election. They have stated this. It took race off the table, and I actually think that that's true.

MN: How did it take race off the table if that was a factor in actually calling you in?

AK: [interrupts] Excuse me, Ma'am. It's quite clear how it take race off the table. If what you've got is a choice between to Americans of color, uh, then it's quite clear that if you're a racist, you don't have a choice in this election. So race isn't going to be a question here. The question is going to be, 'What do we stand for? What do we offer the people of Illinois?' The whole consideration of race is gone!

MN: Mr. Keyes, you have on the record spoken quite a bit about affirmative action, preferential affirmative action programs, and you have said that it patronizes American Blacks and women and others by presuming that they can not succeed on their own, and you prefer programs that are based strictly on merit. If race was a factor in calling you in to Illinois, how do you square that - are you are all uncomfortable...

AK: [interrupts again] ...race is not the factor that resulted in -my- being called in, but the fact that resulted in my being called in was ability and the fact that I am someone of national stature and reputation who can go toe to toe with Barack Obama in spite of the effort made by the Democrats to build him up into some national figure whose waltzing in to the Senate was inevitable. It's not going to happen. So in point of fact the choice of Alan Keyes was not based upon race, it was based upon assessment of the unique capabilities that I bring to this race.
Seeing the words dryly laid out on the screen doesn't quite convey the sarcasm and arrogant doublespeak I heard in Keyes' tone, but you can hear it for yourself [Realplayer or Windows Media Player required]. Of course Obama shouldn't have to run unopposed, but despite Keyes' protestations ("Personal ambition? Moi?") I don't see what's so substantially different between Keyes' move from Maryland and Hillary Clinton's move to New York.

Perhaps her choice was more self-motivated, but puh-lease, don't try to tell me Keyes' decision was driven purely by selfless devotion to the GOP and the people of Illinois: like any pol worth their salt, he saw an opportunity and took it. Daily Kos has a good comment thread going on the topic. Hmmm...doesn't it strike you that if the Illinois GOP had to reach as far as the East Coast for a suitable Senate candidate, they must be a little...how shall I put this...desperate? Is there not another Republican soul from the Land O' Lincoln that could go "toe to toe" with Obama?

I won't even start on Keyes' pretzel logic on whether his race was indeed an issue...er, non-issue in his selection by the GOP. Can he please make up his mind? Pretending that race magically becomes a non-issue if both candidates are African-American is simplistic and disingenuous. Note to self: beware of a political candidate - or anyone - who likes to refer to themselves in the third person.

More: The Chicago Tribune's Dawn Turner Trice on the Keyes GOP nod, and today's reader reactions [registration required].



"When I turn my hearing aid up to ten, I can hear a canary break wind in Lauderdale!" 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Sophia Petrillo
Which Golden Girl Are You?
You are savvy, sassy and always on the go!
Even if it means borrowing someone else's
car without asking! Sometimes you say
the wrong thing at the wrong time, but
that's why we all love you!

[via Anil Dash]



Catster, for the Love of Cat! 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
What's that? Can't read enough about cats on the Internet? You want more pictures of cats? Personal profiles? Well, have we got a website for you!
Welcome to Catster, where every cat has a webpage!

Catster lets you view and save photos of cats, search by breed, size, name, hometown and more! Why not? Got a digital cat photo? Upload it to instantly create your own cat's page and connect with Feline Friends, the cats you know.

Got no cat? No problem! Register to Corral your favorite catsters so you can always find them. Stay current with the Cat Newswire. Catster, for the love of cat!

PS: Congratulations, Trouble, you're Cat of the Week.
Thanks, Greengrl!



Monday, August 09, 2004
'Super Freak' Rick James, 1948-2004 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Having been away from civilization for the past couple of days, I hadn't heard news of Rick James' passing until this morning. Funk classics like "Dance With Me," "Give It To Me Baby," "Mary Jane" and "Super Freak" - and of course, the seminal Street Songs album - were an integral part of my 80's experience, but I hadn't really paid attention to his more recent work. Now, listening to the old songs' glittery hedonistic vibe reminds me how times have changed - and how much he influenced those who came after him...how his fluid hipswaaaang bass groove and plaintive-but-self-assured lechery spiced up many a hit over the years. The man had the funky pimpin' paradigm down cold long before Snoop Dogg was out of diapers.

If you want to get into the groove, check out the official Rick James website, featuring a memorial to the late funkmaster and multi-bandwidth links to Rick James Radio on Live365 - "all Rick, all the time."



Thursday, August 05, 2004
The Rogue Judiciary, Revisited 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Yesterday I posted a rather lengthy piece on the issue of whether a "rogue judiciary" was forcing same-sex marriage on America (as Sen. Orrin Hatch contends, see below). Freespace responds with the good point that
"The place for...'visionaries' is in the legislature. The place for their victims is the courtroom."
I agree that in many cases this is true. I used the example of slavery as a status quo that was (thankfully) eventually changed. However, the case of anti-SSM laws is rather different from that of slavery, and in retrospect probably was not the best example to illustrate the issue of "judicial activism". But while I agree the once-entrenched social institution of slavery required the intervention of progressive legislators (rather than the courts), U.S. anti-gay-rights and emerging anti-SSM laws have indeed already produced "victims" that now do require the intervention of the courts for recourse, rather than waiting upon the ponderous pace of legislated social change.

Tim at Freespace says (and I'd like to thank him for taking the time to write a detailed response on his blog):
What I mean is, if you're advocating a major social change, you should not do so in the courts. The conservatives are correct about that. But if your rights are being violated by too much government - as was the case in Lawrence and countless other cases, then you should make that argument in the court.
Tim's point made me realize there is indeed a very important difference between challenging anti-gay laws and challenging the institutions that restrict marriage to heterosexuals: anti-gay laws can be effectively challenged in the courts because they are discrete legal codes, while taking the steps to enact same-sex marriage is actually a much different, more diffuse process. It's a cycle, or perhaps more accurately, a dance.

Oversimplifying, first there are individual level challenges. For instance, a gay couple goes to City Hall and asks for a marriage license. The next step depends on the local response, which might be, "No, of course not. Marriage licenses are only for straight couples." - or, "Well, no gay couple has asked me that before...I don't see why not. Let's try it." Either course of action will spark a reaction.

Depending on the determination of the couple(s) to pursue their desire to marry, the support they can gather, and the sociopolitical climate in which they reside, over the course of many steps in this "dance" their actions may eventually result in change, as in Vermont, or more recently, Massachusetts. On the other hand, their actions may also result in enactment - or further entrenchment - of definition-of-marriage laws at the state and/or federal level. So, even if there weren't specific victim-producing anti-SSM laws in a jurisdiction, they often appear as a backlash, to quash attempts at social change. Where courts initially would not have been the most appropriate venue to challenge existing social mores, they become necessary to respond to new discriminatory laws.

Unfortunately, precious few legislators will risk their careers on being 'visionary' enough to propose what are today still considered radical changes, at the risk of being branded "hopelessly liberal" or "out of touch with the majority of the American people." Passing legislation still requires getting a majority of votes - i.e., the "counting noses" that Milton Friedman refers to.

Gays and lesbians and their supporters might be able to reverse decisions like Bowers v. Hardwick [link to the Lawrence v. Texas decision on the Cornell law resource site], but would have to wait a long, long time indeed for legislators to propose and enact broader reforms such as same-sex marriage. We need the actions and support of both the courts and lawmakers to make these changes, but I believe the courts will remain a crucial element, at least in some stages of "the dance".



Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Is A 'Rogue Judiciary' Imposing SSM on America? 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Today Alas, A Blog tips us to a great essay on Freespace discussing Senator Orrin Hatch's recent National Review Online article, "Like It Or Not: The Marriage Amendment Is The Democratic Way." The gist of Hatch's argument is that allowing same-sex marriage in the U.S. is an undemocratic action imposed upon Americans by a tyrannical activist judiciary. Why undemocratic? Hatch contends:
Some say the Constitution, which has seen only 27 amendments in 217 years, should not be tinkered with...[but a]ctivist lawyers and judges have forced this issue onto the national agenda. It isn't "playing politics" with the Constitution when an amendment has become the only available means of addressing this crisis.

...Democrats, who rarely meet an expansion of national power they don't like, must know that by opposing a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, judges will continue imposing same-sex marriage over the will of the people...the choice is no longer between amending the Constitution or leaving this issue to the states. The only choice is between popular resolution of the effort to protect traditional marriage or judicial resolution of this question in favor of same-sex marriage. In the face of this threat, it is flatly irresponsible for elected officials, sworn to uphold the Constitution, to sit idly by as courts corrupt our national charter and advance a social experiment explicitly rejected in state after state, and in every region of the country.
Granted, this essay was written before the FMA failed to get off the ground with the needed number of votes; but seeing that yesterday an anti-SSM state constitutional amendment passed in Missouri, the point is hardly moot. Tim Sandefur at Freespace counters,
It's pure demagoguery for Hatch to say that the courts are "undemocratic." For instance, he says that
...in most cases, [same-sex marriage] advocates turn to the courts to impose their preferred policies on their fellow citizens.... In California, even though 60 percent of voters recently approved a statewide ballot initiative to maintain traditional marriage, the California supreme court is now considering the constitutionality of that democratic action....
But the people created the judiciary, and they have it in their power (though not their rights) to destroy the judiciary power entirely. Given that choice, they have chosen, in their Constitutions, to create a judicial branch and to give to it their authority to strike down laws, even "democratic" ones, which violate the Constitution. To shout "undemocratic" at the courts when they do so is intentionally misleading and emotionalistic. When Hatch calls litigation a "legal assault...poised to strip away th[e] right to self-government," he is engaging in the sort of rhetoric utterly unworthy of a United States Senator.

The courts exist to put a check on the extremely dangerous power of the majority. Whenever anyone attacks the courts for violating the "right of self government," what he is really saying is that the majority should have unstoppable power to do whatever it wants regardless of the Constitution. Such claims should be viewed with the severest skepticism, because it is only the Constitution's limits that prevent us from becoming a government of the mob. As Madison said, if the majority is the sole judge of whether its acts are right or wrong, then "anarchy may as truly be said to reign, as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger."

[continue reading Freespace's "Hatch and Mobocracy", via Positive Liberty]
Let's not forget that almost any major social change that requires the intervention of courts to be enacted is likely to gather accusations of "judicial activism." The truth is that the courts are still one of the most direct - if slow - means for people of any political stripe to make their voice heard. The courts are, however, effective: David-level precedent-setting cases can and do eventually topple Goliath-size status quos.

Change always tends to start at a small scale, gaining momentum slowly while suffering periodic setbacks and backlash: if fighting for freedom was easy, so many would never have been willing to shed blood for myriad causes over the years. I hesitate to pull this hoary parallel out of the sack once again, but the mere fact that a status quo has been status quo for eons doesn't make it right, or good. Take the example of slavery.

Slavery is today almost universally condemned as a violation of any human being's basic rights - but for millennia, slavery was an accepted social norm. It was an unquestioned fact that some people were simply born to be chattel, or became slaves as punishment for some crime - that's just the "way it was." Certainly slavery was bad for slaves, but good for the ruling classes. When slavery was abolished in various cultures, slaveowners suddenly found themselves frightfully short of free labor.

Now, while slavery is an obvious "wrong" whose passing no-one should mourn - and marriage is a fairly obvious "good," else why would more people ask for it - the same arguments of status quo are repeatedly trotted out as justification to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples. "That's the way it's been for XXXX years, and that's good enough for me why it should stay the way it is." That may give the impression that what we perceive as the eternal definition of marriage is written in stone, but let's be blunt: our current American definition of marriage is not what marriage always was.

Marriage once could have meant as many wives as a man could afford. Marriage once meant that a husband had life-and-death power over his wife or wives, and no wife had power of inheritance or joint ownership. Marriage once meant only marrying within your race, your ethnic group, religion, caste or tribe - and even today, in some cultures, marriage is forever under pain of death - especially if you're a woman.

The above were all forms of "traditional marriage" - forms we no longer subscribe to, and ample evidence that what some call the "definition of marriage" is neither absolute nor unchanging given the passage of time and evolution of the world's societies. A few decades ago the U.S. courts took away the exclusivity of marriage to couples of the same race, but we often forget how much heartache those antiquated miscegenation laws caused before their dissolution - as well as the discriminatory suffering anti-SSM laws cause today and will cause tomorrow to thousands of families in our country.

Remember that one person's "rogue" is another's visionary, and Orrin Hatch's "American Way" logic has historically been used to legitimize a host of injustices. Democracy is not purely a monolithic "will of the people" that arises spontaneously or unanimously from the majority. Bestowing or taking a away a right from a minority in the name of the "majority will" requires a greater standard, else how would have women and Black persons have ever gained the right to vote in our country? Certainly not through sheer numbers or previous enfranchisement. Milton Friedman once said in his classic work Capitalism and Freedom that no true lover of liberty ever resorted to counting noses.

"But even if marriage has changed over the years, it has always involved men and women." Seeing humans as people having humanity in common - rather than dichotomous organisms processed by the ubiquitous "sorting hat" at the moment of birth - still raises eyebrows and righteous indignation. This point that "marriage has always involved men and women" ignores our modern understanding of individual rights and liberties and whether gender as 'the accident of one's birth' (like race, class, ethnicity among other divisions) can, in the 21st Century, still be sufficent cause to legislate discrimination. Repeatedly, history is showing that it is not.

Permitting same-sex couples to marry is not about eliminating the distinctions between men and women: it's about not allowing those distinctions to rule and restrict the course of people's lives. What all stepwise social changes have in common is that at some point in history, people had to be brave enough to take a stand for what they believed in and make their voices heard with placards, ballots, and yes - with gavels.

Positive Liberty ponders the Missouri Anti-SSM Amendment, the meaning of 'family', and asks why social conservatives sidestep the thorny issue of single parenthood when discussing "what's best for children" Very enlightening.: "You Can Never Be Too Careful."



Tuesday, August 03, 2004
What's In Your Workplace Restroom? 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
Suzette at Traveling in Style has a humorous musing today on the workplace restroom "candy machine" - ladies, you know what I'm talking about. Go visit Su and be prepared to leave your quarter in the dispenser comments! Anyhow, she inspired me to check out my own workplace restroom. Mine has a "candy machine" that is rarely empty, too; but that's probably because the majority of those who use this particular location are post-menopausal. Not a value judgement, ladies, just an observation.

Our "candy" comes in those clunky cardboard boxes that hearken back to the 1970's. You know - Peter Max® pinks, purples, and oranges, O'Keefe-ish flowers and winsome young women with Mary Tyler Moore hair, swooning in menstrual bliss...maybe that's what they used to call the "vapors."

Speaking of vapors, we do have a Candyland of air freshener sprays - no less than four at any given time. No one seems to know who brings them in: is it a version of the "Hint Mint"? Someone in my department apparently has bathroomodorphobia. What's odd is that despite the array of covering scents we're mysteriously provided which, someone always manages to latch the windows shut so that no actual fresh air gets into the bathroom. Now, I know this is Chicago, but still, I'd rather breathe the exhalations of a hundred CTA buses than the miasma lingering in the loo on most days (especially after doing a little research on particulate dispersion dynamics). The logic escapes me.

This week's menu is:Actually, it makes me think of a luau, but that's just wrong.



Monday, August 02, 2004
Shameless Plug for One of My Other Websites: The Exorcist Revisited 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
The fourth installment of The Exorcist franchise, Exorcist IV: The Beginning, hits theaters August 20. Considering it can't be any worse that Exorcist II, I though I'd show you the way to my Exorcist-themed site, The Exorcist Revisited.

It's been in online in some form for about three years, starting out as a static page with photos from one of my trips to Georgetown, showing what the shooting locations for the 1973 film look like today - Dahlgren Chapel, Healey Hall, Prospect Street, and Hitchcock Stairs, and more - transforming gradually into a "bloggish" site that I can update as needed.



Yes! I Am Easily Amused 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |


[seen on Anil Dash]



Sunday, August 01, 2004
I'll Drink to That: PA Circuit Court Rules College Alcohol Ad Ban Unconstitutional 
 
by Lenka [permalink] | |
[AP] In Pennsylvania, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday ruled that a 1996 state law that prohibits college newspapers from accepting paid advertising for alcohol is unconstitutional:
The law was challenged by The Pitt News, a student-run paper at the University of Pittsburgh. In a 17-page opinion, Judge Samuel Alito said the state faces a heavy burden anytime it tries to restrict speech, but had offered only "speculation" and "conjecture" to support its contention that the ad ban would slacken the demand for alcohol by underage Pitt students.

"Even if Pitt students do not see alcoholic beverage ads in The Pitt News, they will still be exposed to a torrent of beer ads on television and the radio, and they will still see alcoholic beverage ads in other publications, including the other free weekly Pittsburgh papers that are displayed on campus together with The Pitt News," he wrote.

The law's crafters had tried to avoid a free speech challenge through a technicality: Instead of barring student publications from promoting alcohol, the state made it illegal for them to be paid for doing so. Alito rejected that strategy.

"If government were free to suppress disfavored speech by preventing potential speakers from being paid, there would not be much left of the First Amendment," [Judge Samuel Alito] wrote.
The law had been challenged a number of times previously, but this marks the first time the court ruled against law.
Pitt News business manager, Pittsburgh senior Bethany Litzinger, praised the court's ruling and said the advertising ban was well-intentioned, but misguided. "We did understand the concerns of the legislators. They felt the ads promoted underage drinking. But 70 percent of our readers are over 21," Litzinger said.
In addition, early rulings against the paper backfired:
After a federal judge initially upheld the law, the newspaper had defiantly begun a feature called "Drink Specials," in which it published [at no cost to the advertisers] beer and mixed-drink prices at local bars...
Personally, I'm of the opinion that a drinking age of 21 (instead of 18, the generally accepted legal age of majority) does nothing to prevent underage drinking, but actually promotes it. Making consumption of alcohol illegal for individuals whom the law considers otherwise old enough to operate motor vehicles, sign contracts, own firearms, enlist in the military, get married, etc. sets up drinking as an inappropriately high 'standard of maturity' for young adults, and enhances its "forbidden fruit" allure to teens and children.

Some might argue it is a good idea to set different age standards for "undesirable" adult activities than for more socially-desirable ones; i.e., in the U.S. one needs to be 21 to legally access alcohol or sexually explicit materials. But in that case, why not raise the buying age for tobacco products to 21 as well?

When a formal age limit was placed on tobacco, lawmakers oddly chose to set the age at the low end of the adulthood standard, although one could contend that more people will suffer harm from three additional "legal" years of tobacco use than from three years of exposure to alcohol or pornography. However, the age limit of 18 is more a symbolic formality than any practical barrier to tobacco use. Most smokers begin their habits several years before they can legally purchase their drug of choice, obtaining it casually from relatives and friends rather than retail establishments.

Also, it strikes me as counterproductive to make alcohol illegal for 18-year old freshmen if 21-year old juniors and seniors at the same institution can legally purchase it. Not only does this create a useless double standard of "adult"/"non-adult" status within the college setting, it artificially fosters underage consumption by encouraging many 18-to-20-year-olds to drink at parties and gatherings to prove their "adulthood." There is ample evidence that other nations - where the drinking age is 18 or lower - actually have fewer problems with excessive student drinking than we do here in the United States.

However, this ruling was more about free speech than legal ages of purchase, and I think the Pennsylvania court did the right thing by ruling the law unconstitutional. There was a clear discriminatory intent by singling out alcohol advertising, but not other products that some college students may not legally purchase. It also did not include an all-out ban on alcohol advertising, but only on paid ads - making the law more of a financial burden on student papers display of "objectionable speech" than any genuine attempt to reduce underage drinking.







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