Nicholsclan.com : a dimension of mind...

Shattered Illusions of Duct Tape

Duct Tape - one of the four fundamental attractive forces in the universe (the other three being gravity, electromagnitism, and blondes). The chemical antithesis of WD-40. The most sacred substance of man (or at least real men). Who knew that in it's unrefined state it was unstable?

A South Carolina Duct Tape factory exploded today, killing one man, and shattering illusions of countless others. The man's family should know he died a hero, doing what he loved.

Now the world waits on pins and needles to learn if the explosion will trigger any supply shortages. After all, existing stocks will be sorely depleted by taping the factory back together again.

New Extremes of Homophobia

Okay, this guy has issues. What's scarier still is that he's an elected official. Granted, he's only a county supervisor in Virginia, but still, people voted for this moron. And they send him money!! He may have actually reached the point where I'm tempted to restrict his right to free speech.

Key Quote:

"As homosexuals die off due to AIDS, the remaining AIDS carriers prey on children to replenish the 'Homosexual Community,'"

This reflects a level of paranoia usually reserved for Vampire movies.

I mean c'mon... just because the evangelical Christians are dedicated to recruiting new members, is the assumption that every group is engaged in that? We better watch out for the Disabled Veterans then. I bet they're bustin' knee caps every chance they get.

I Think It's Time for the Christians to Act

I think the right wing evangelical radical Christian movement has reached a dangerous tenor. Paul Krugman sums the case up nicely, so I won't belabor the obvious reasons why this is so. The question is, what to do?

As in Krugman's essay, I find myself, like many, on shaky ethical ground here. I firmly believe in the free exchange of ideas and would adamantly defend the rights of those who think differently than me to do so. So it is difficult for me to be intolerant - even of those who are intolerant. But I do think that Krugman is on to something. It is that tolerant nature that the intolerant are playing against us. But it can't be just that simple. After all, if they were doing this in the name of some ceramic dimestore idol, they would just be dismissed as crackpots. Their intolerance would be harmless.

However, they are doing this in the name of the Christian religion. The religion practiced by the majority of Americans. Further, they have asserted that to be Christian, you must believe as they do, and much of their ideology has roots in one biblical passage or another. I think this makes it very difficult for more well-adjusted Christians (which I believe are most of them) to take a hard stance against the radicals. Many are still having occasional crises of their own faith, and it's hard to be called anti-Christian when you are trying to be just the opposite. Still, I think they are the only ones who can do the job.

Krugman seems to think the Democrats need to step up. I don't think they can. I don't think the Jews can, or the Media, or the Veterans, or the Gays, or the Atheists. None of these groups are in a position to denounce the radicals' actions as being non-Christian. And without that denouncement, the radicals will always be able to fall back on the position that they doing the Christian God's work in His name.

In order to defeat the radicals and their not-so-hidden agenda to control our government, media, and nuances of our lives they have no business even addressing, it is necessary to rob them of their mighty Christian banner. That is the source of their power, and they are abusing it. They are giving real Christians a bad name, and they should be as much an embarrassment to them as the radical Islamics are to ordinary Muslims. But only the Christian groups can do that. Until mainstream ministers, bishops, etc. start to expose radicals for the frauds they are, they will continue unabated. Ultimately, the masses of good Christians out there need to rise up and label these radicals as something else. Something different. Something that exposes them as the minority they are. I think it's time for the Christians to act. If not in our defense, then in their own.

Freedom of Speech - Bush Style

If you find this AP newswire story to be disturbing, you might want to look at another blogger's entry which allegedly tells the story first hand.

And people say this guy lives in a bubble...

Erring on the Side of Life?

Apparently, on the same weekend that Bush flew back to Washington to stick his nose into the Schiavo family's business and attempt to run rough-shod over the judiciary branch of government which had the audacity to do something he didn't like, he also zeroed out the funding for the Federal TBI Act.

What's the TBI act? Just a small fund which provided for victims of traumatic brain injury. Over 60% of the wounded soldiers returning from Iraq suffer from TBI. But no money for them. After all, why pay for therapy for people who might actually recover to some or all of their previous quality of life? Let's put our energy into keeping one woman with a non-functional cerebral cortex alive so that her parents can continue deluding themselves into believing their daughter still exists.

Faith Based Science

One can only pray (pun intended) that the term Faith Based Science doesn't really catch on. As if it's not bad enough that the news media is trending toward only reporting what's popular and marketable, now science museums are adopting the same philosophy. How long can it be before schools only teach marketable topics?

Food for Thought as We Approach Easter

Just read this...

The Sun Also Rises... or not

Sun Hudson was a 6 month old baby who died last week in Texas after being removed from life support against her mother's wishes. How could this happen? Well, in Texas the state may legally order the removal of life support from a patient where a medical ethics board deems the treatment non-beneficial AND the patient is unable to pay.

Too bad Mr. Bush and Mr. DeLay didn't have the foresight to rally the troops against such an obviously anti-Life piece of legislation. Somehow, the existence of this trash must have slipped under the radar. However, you would think that given that Tom DeLay is a congressman from Texas and G.W. Bush signed the law as governor of the state, that they might have had some inkling that this rule was in place.

Too bad for Sun's mom that he was not as much of a political grandstanding opportunity as Terry Schiavo.

I find it also curious that the current administration is pushing for medical malpractice reform to restrict large damage awards. Terry Schiavo's family would be in financial ruins right now were it not for the large malpractice award which has funded her decade plus of medical care (and if her parents are successful, her next decade as well). Further, assuming the malpractice award was limited, the recent bankruptcy legislation would have made it very hard for the destitute Schiavo's to get out from under the mountain of medical bills they would owe.

The word "hypocrisy" doesn't really seem to adequately cover this situation.

Big Brother Knows Best

I don't know Terry Schiavo. Chances are, neither do you. And neither do the Bush brothers or any of the myriad members of Congress who are now trying to take control of her life.

I somehow doubt that Terry would have wanted to become the Pro-Choice poster child, but as I said, I don't know her. What surprises me though, is no one in the media seems to be pointing out that this is exactly what she has become. The argument over whether or not Terry Schiavo's life should be allowed to pass is exactly the Pro-Choice / Pro-Life debate which has engaged the same folks on both sides of this fence in the past.

After all, the debate is not over whether Terry would have wanted to live in her current vegetative state. She didn't leave a living will, so officially we don't know. Her husband claims he represents her wishes when he argues to have life support removed. Her parents disagree, although they are not making counter-claims based on what they think Terry would have wanted. Their claims that her life should be artificially sustained indefinitely are unabashedly rooted in their devout Catholic faith. And strict Catholic doctrine forbids suicide, assisted or otherwise. But no one is debating what Terry would have wanted. No one is even debating whether her legal guardianship should be stripped from the husband and awarded to the parents based on the husband's inability to act in her best interest. The debate is about whether or not she should be allowed to die. Period.

Assuming that the government orders that her life be sustained, how long will it be before living wills and DNRs become moot points. After all, if the assertion is that only God can take life and that humans must do everything in their power to sustain that life until God plays his trump card, then do any mortal's wishes really matter?

At the root of this matter is the right to choose. Whether that involves the right to choose what to eat, when and if to be pregnant, or when to die. Slightly removed from that, is the right to assign (implicitly or explicitly) that right to someone else whom you trust to act in your best interest. While legal living wills and medical proxies assign that trust explicitly, certain relationships assign that trust implicitly. Parental relationships and marriage are among those implicit trust bonds.

Government certainly has a right to, and in fact may exist entirely for the purpose to, protect each of us from exercising a right to choose actions which may injure or impinge upon another's right to the same. In this way, I can't choose to rob my neighbor, nor embezzle from my company, and as a group we can't raid the next town no matter how painful it is that we are out of beer.

The line gets a little grey when we ask if drugs should be illegal. By themselves, they arguably only hurt the user, and that should be their choice. But use typically results in behaviors and medical problems which are ultimately a problem to or a burden on the larger society. Therefore, we allow those decisions to come under the purview of the government as well.

But in the case of Terry Schiavo, does her dying impact anyone outside her immediate family and friends? Arguably, doesn't her living and the expense required to keep her artificially sustained, ultimately impose a greater burden on society? Why then, does this fall under the purview of government?

The government feels it is right to step in here because it knows best. It is acting, not in the best interest of Ms. Schiavo or her family, but for what it sees as a morally higher position. The government is asserting that it is the best judge of what's best for you. And assuming this is still a democracy of sorts, that is a very odd position indeed. It amounts to a precedent that a plurality of others should be able to decide things in your life based on the premise that they have a morally superior point of view.

This is a very slippery slope my friends. The precedents set in the Schiavo case are vitally important as they lay the groundwork for the future. Should the federal government succeed in keeping her alive, it is only a matter of time before they can insist you stay pregnant, insist you exercise regularly... and just why are Big Macs still legal anyway?

Happy Days (yeah, right)

Well, my company released its annual proxy statement this week. The CEO's salary is up 16% and the COO's salary is up 53% over the previous year. Plus they each got stock option packages totaling about a third of their annual salaries.

Employee raises are due out in a month or so, and obviously the executives realize that we are the reason they've had such a successful year. I have no doubt that our raises this year will be in double digits as well...

...and I'll win the lottery, Bush will admit he made a mistake, and my kids will shower voluntarily.

Democracy Is Not Pro-American By Definition

Democracy is being touted by red state pundits as the recipe for freedom, but what happens when people vote for or support leaders and policies which fly in the face of what very many Americans think is rational? After all, democracy does not always result in leadership which operates in what we self-proclaimed sane people might consider the best interest of their own country.

Hmmmm...

Are Women Essential to Survival?

Well sure, in the biological "men are just one uterus short of perfection" sense, of course they are. At least until we get that whole test tube and cloning thing perfected. But that's not really the question I intended. It's more like, how frelled up would your life be if we removed the women? Well fear not, the British have got you covered.

Reality TV in the UK has taken a new twist. They are conducting a non-scientific "experiment" to see if a village can survive without its women for one week. An experiment which hopefully will sell lots of advertising. On the one hand, this is just good fun, and I'm sure many of the uterus-laden population will tune in to watch the men blunder about. Especially since it is the blunderers who will get all the air time. But no harm done there. Our hairy skin is thicker than that.

But if you think into this scenario a bit, the question really begins to examine the typical role that women play. If the women's lib agenda were in full swing, women would be indistinguishable from men with regard to the roles they play in society. Therefore, removing the women would be equivalent to removing 50% of all the people at random. And that scenario is pretty survivable. It is unlikely that a random sampling would remove all the grade school teachers, all the plumbers, or all the farmers. A reasonably uniform sampling of people with all skills would remain. But we all know that this is not what's going to happen in this sleepy little village when all the women go on holiday.

Women typically play a disproportionate share of "short cycle" roles. That is, things that need to occur frequently. These include everything from laundry, cooking, and child wrangling to roles like nurses, grade school teachers, supermarket checkers and bank tellers. These are all roles that don't cope well with being gone for a few days. The work stacks up quickly and noticeably. Of course, that's what makes for good TV.

On the flip, men tend to take on more of the "long cycle" roles. These are jobs which require more time to finish, and must be started less often. These include lawn care and home maintenance through to construction, defense, engineering, surgery, and even management. Think about it. Does anyone believe that if they took all the men out for a week that the women would have a problem?

However, the difference is not that one sex is more vital than the other. The difference is the cycle time. Remove the men for a month or a year, then see how the women do. I expect there will be just as many blunderers in that scenario.

Of course, in either scenario, should the one sex be removed long enough, adaptation occurs and the other fills in the gap. At least in the case of missing men, this has occurred many times during a protracted war where most of the men are removed. The women compensate and fill the void. I'm sure the same would occur if the women were gone. People in general are resilient and adaptive.

But all this just begs a deeper question. Why do women gravitate to short cycle tasks and men to long cycle ones? I suspect it's the whole uterus thing. Women, by virtue of their biology, have and care for infants. By definition, infants are short cycle tasks. If you are doing one short cycle task, it's easier to interleave other short cycle tasks than to tackle a long cycle task. After all, when you are up to your arse (keeping with the British theme) in alligators, it's hard to remember that you came to drain the swamp. But one more alligator is hardly an issue (it might even be shoes!). Using the adaptive "nature abhors a vacuum" reasoning above, men filled in the voids - the long cycle tasks.

So for you women who want to know why men can't do 65 things at once or seem to remember to feed the kids... it's because we don't have a uterus.

The Danger of Neo-Con Self Delusion

There's a lot of back-slapping and high-fiving going on right now in the Neo-Con Command Bunker. After all, it appears that democracy is taking hold in the Middle East just as G.W. is now rewriting history to say he said it would. Elections happened (sort of) in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine. Syria is being "driven" from Lebanon. It all looks pretty promising. But there is great care which must be taken when you are hearing what you want to hear. That is, if you really want that new plasma TV, the salesman has no trouble providing the rationale to get you to whip out the Visa. Is democracy really taking hold, or are we getting sold what we so desperately want to buy?

Perhaps a Scottish perspective is in order.

Taxes, Bloody Taxes

It's the time of year to whine about taxes, so it seems appropriate that Alan Greenspan is having his say on the topic as well. It's hard to argue with calls for a simpler tax code.

I read with envy, the articles each year which talk about how the alternative minimum tax had to be enforced because people making 6-figure and 7-figure incomes were paying almost no tax at all. I have never even remotely figured out how to play in that league. When my tax software gets to the alternative minimum tax section, it laughs at me. Apparently, I am deduction challenged.

Perhaps this is part of why I personally favor a simpler tax code. Most of the existing loopholes don't benefit me anyway. Nor do they benefit the vast majority of Americans. I have to believe our taxes would go down if everybody paid their fair share. There might even be enough left over to patch up social security.

I'd like to see a proposal for a consumption tax similar to VATs used in Canada and most of Europe. The VATs should be waived for food, clothing, the first $150k of a primary residence, the first $20k of a primary vehicle, and other things which would keep it from becoming a regressive tax. The VAT should be combined with a flat tax on earned income (mostly implemented as a payroll deduction). This would encourage personal savings and investment. It would eliminate all the 401k, IRA, can't touch my money 'til I'm 60-something without losing big chunks of it PITA. It would eliminate filing annual tax returns for individuals. And this would have to simplify the government overhead (federal and state) required to implement the current system. Sure, this obviously requires some refinement and tweaking. But the end result should be that the tax code for either the VAT or the flat tax should be explainable on a single sheet of paper. If it takes more than that, there are too damn many loopholes.

Salad Is Healthy? -- We report, you decide

This is why salad should be eaten with care. This sort of thing just doesn't occur with double bacon burgers.

And apparently cheese is not so safe either, but at least it's worth going to jail for.

Backyard Artillery

I'm thinking my dad needs one of these to keep the squirrels out of his feeders.