The advertising above is just a source of revenue. If the ads get offensive enough, I may drop them.
Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
|
|
Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
PayPal members: to make a contribution
Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through. |
Friday, August 08, 2003
Another One Bites The Dust! The Michigan Court of Appeals has thrown out a lawsuit against gun manufacturers: A lawsuit filed by Detroit and Wayne County government against what they claimed were irresponsible gun dealers and manufacturers has been thrown out by the Michigan Court of Appeals.I would have preferred that it was thrown out on the grounds that the lawsuit was without merit, but even a victory based on the state legislature barring such suits is better than losing. Thanks to packing.org for the link. Those Rich People, Trying To Buy Elections, Disgust Me Yup, another billionaire, who made his money in questionable high finance deals, out to make sure that people who look out for the interests of the wealthy end up in charge of the government. New York billionaire George Soros, an internationally prominent financier, has launched a Democratic get-out-the-vote effort in a bid to defeat President Bush. Slippery Slope? No, a Greased Chute A reader sent me a link to this interesting and disturbing article: Dante Voltaire Fleshman, 30, of 1436 Tenbury Drive in Lynchburg, faces two counts of carnal knowledge of a child. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison and a $200,000 fine.Okay, this sounds like a parody of Bill Clinton. If he didn't have sex with her, why does it matter what her true age was? If he didn't have sex with her, why does it matter if the law is unconstitutional? Defense attorney Joseph Sanzone said the law discriminates based on age and violates both state and federally protected rights to equal protection and due process.Yup. There's the entire rationale of the Lawrence decision in a nutshell. The law is irrational. It discriminates. It violates equal protection, and due process. And what I can say? The age limits of statutory rape are arbitrary. In some states, it's 18. It's some, it's 17. Just like red means stop and green means go, these age limits are simply conventions. Libertarians who think that Lawrence was clever might want to consider the world in which their children are going to be growing up--a world in which adult men are going to be engaging in manipulation, intimidation, and lies to destroy what little innocence children still have at 13 and 14. Labels: homosexuality This is the Life! I took the day off work to finish up my book Armed America: Firearms, Hunting, and Gun Culture in the Early United States. A lot of very helpful people have been making constructive criticisms of the book over the last few weeks, some microscale corrections, some macroscale. My wife, Queen of Transitions & Readability, has been going through as well, causing me to move chapters, improve chapter introductions and summary statements, and in general, demonstrating why she has an MA in English. In between rewriting chapters and checking footnotes, I am driving the cat crazy with a mechanical mouse. (No, not the kind that rolls around on your desk; the kind that drives itself around the floor.) I just wish I had a bit more money, so that I could do this full-time, instead of fitting it in between my days working as a software engineer. If you have a spare $200,000 or so lying around, gathering very little interest, feel free to contribute it to Clayton E. Cramer Home For Aspiring Historians! Thursday, August 07, 2003
Ayatollah Khomeini Expresses His Opinion About the United States From the Houston Chronicle--it makes your head spin: BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The name is the same, but the words from the younger Ayatollah Khomeini's mouth could hardly be more jolting for those who remember his grandfather's explosive revolution in Iran with the chants of "Death to America!" On Fascism John Derbyshire over at National Review Online has discovered something that I've known for some years: Make no mistake about it: there is a serious, strong current of thought out there that believes ANY objection to homosexuality is "hate speech" and ought to be criminalized--or, if it cannot be criminalized, shut down by any means that come to hand. I say again: there are many exceptions, and I thank those readers who, after identifying themselves as homosexual, went on to argue with me in a thoughtful and civilized way. But I now know something I did not know 48 hours ago, or knew only vaguely and imperfectly: gay fascism is real, and strong, and determined. If this Political Correctness cannot be stopped, we are going to lose our freedoms. Vatican Set Policy on Secrecy Concerning Sexual Abuse by Priests? This report from CBS News quotes from a 1962 document written in the Vatican, and claims that the document outlines a strategy for keeping sexual abuse by priests secret, under threat of excommunication from the Catholic Church. The document, once "stored in the secret archives" of the Vatican, focuses on crimes initiated as part of the confessional relationship and what it calls the "worst crime": sexual assault committed by a priest" or "attempted by him with youths of either sex or with brute animals."Regular readers of my blog will know that I am not impressed with the Catholic Church's behavior in this area; it is something of a toss-up as to which organization has done more damage to children: the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or the Catholic Church's cover-up of child molesting priests. No, I'm not being flippant when I write this. NAMBLA is pure evil, but their numbers are small; the Catholic Church's perpetually pederastic priests seem to be legion (I picked that word "legion" for a reason), and they have been abusing children for at least decades in North America. Nonetheless, reading this news report, and what it quotes from the 1962 document, I don't see the smoking gun that the report suggests. I can imagine several other contexts for the quoted text that are far less damaging. The Catholic Church should release the entire document in question, immediately, for independent evaluation. UPDATE: As I said above, it doesn't sound the 1962 document says quite was CBS says it says. Here is an alternative explanation that suggests CBS's problem was a bit more serious than just careless reading. Labels: child sexual abuse Ahhhnold Is Running! Anything that embarrasses that sleazy manipulative jerk Gray Davis is good. Schwarzenegger is a bit too far left for my tastes, but realistically, in a state filled with leftist millionaires, it's probably the only realistic way for a Republican to get elected. What will be really entertaining, however, is how Gray Davis and the Democrats will have to work at stopping the Short-Term-inator. Arnold lived a few blocks from me in Santa Monica, long, long ago. There were all sorts of rumors that floated around about Arnold. I have no idea if these rumors were true or not, and it was a long time ago. (Lots of people would like to forget what they did in the 1970s, and with good reason.) I could easily see the Democrats in a real quandry about this. "Do we play this card, trying to irritate the 40% of Californians, largely Republican, who are going to be offended by it, and thus offend one of our most loyal constitutencies? If we don't play this card, can we rely on Schwarzenegger to self-destruct?" Gray Davis has done the sleazy campaign stuff before, and found that it worked against Riordan in the primary. Schwarzenegger has some real strengths: his smile, his self-deprecating humor, that he isn't a politician. I wish him well in destroying Gray Davis. Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Oh No! Another Blonde Joke! Forwarded by a friend: A plane is on its way to Houston when a blonde in Economy Class gets up and moves to the First Class section and sits down.Before you get upset with me--have you ever noticed that there aren't any redhead jokes? UPDATE: I have never heard redhead jokes, but some of you shared a few with me--most of which I am too polite to blog. Not to mention, my wife the redhead.... This Sounds Like a Body Armor And Major Caliber Neighborhood... And one of the decent people living in the 'hood has had enough of savages making the majority of decent people afraid. Everyone seems to have grabbed onto the news story. Rachel Lucas handles it well: Uhhh. Wha-? So let's review here. Gates lives in a neighborhood riddled with crime and stuffed chock-full of vermin-like thuggish druggies. Three of those sewer rats decide to play cowboys 'n' Indians on his front lawn, so he comes out firing and puts two of them down. And the police response is to...take all his guns away? Take all of HIS guns away? And to refuse to "publicly approve" of a law-abiding homeowner stopping a [expletive deleted] drug-addled shoot-out among criminals in his own [expletive deleted] front yard??? Ebola Vaccine Our government believes that they have developed a vaccine for the Ebola virus. Those of you who have read The Hot Zone realize how significant of an advance this is. Ebola Zaire or Ebola Marburg in one of the world's international airports, either by accident or as an act of biological warfare, has the potential to end civilization as we know it. This article from the Washington Post, however, has one interesting paragraph: So far the vaccine has been proven to work only in monkeys, which were completely protected against death from Ebola infection when they were exposed to the virus a month after being inoculated. But vaccine results in monkeys usually translate well to humans, and government scientists hope to launch human tests of the vaccine by sometime next year.How would you know if it worked, except by exposing a vaccinated human to Ebola? This is a disease so deadly, and so gruesome, that I can't imagine any ethical way to do this. Sure, you could ask for volunteers, but I can't imagine any sane person volunteering for this--and we certainly can't have anyone on Death Row do this. No matter how horrible the crime, I could not in good conscious expose anyone to Ebola--even with some high confidence that the vaccine would work. The Rise of Christianity in...Mongolia? This article from BBC tells of the sudden rise of evangelical Christianity in post-Communist Mongolia. Yes, Buddhism was the traditional religion before the Communists, and it has also come back to life, but: On the other side of Ulan Bator, I visited a very different religious ceremony. Michael Moore's Lies About "Secret Flights" of Bin Laden Family Members After 9/11 The website snopes.com has been doing a good job of debunking urban legends, some political, most not, for some time. In this case, they have done a good job of demonstrating that Michael Moore's claim that members of the extended bin Laden family were allowed to fly out of the U.S. whle all other civilian flights were grounded--and over the objections of the FBI--are simply false, and without any credible basis. Forward this link to your favorite Michael Moore worshipper. Someone Please Tell Me That Britain Isn't Going Bonkers From the Guardian: From Exmoor to the Yorkshire Dales and the Scottish borders, naked ramblers are being spotted up and down the country. What's going on? Have clothes become passé in the walking world? In order to explore this new craze for 'boots-only hiking', Stephen Moss dropped everything and struck out into Epping ForestYou know, I can somewhat understand why someone might want to get an all over tan. The wearing of bathing suits at the beach is something that we do to avoid offending others, or to avoid causing unnecessary sexual excitement. But hiking in the woods? As the excerpt above demonstrates, there are very practical reasons to have the more sensitive parts of the body covered. What Is "Champerty and Maintenance"? Heck, I didn't know, either, until today. This interesting decision by the Ohio Supreme Court (via Overlawyered.com) dealt with something that I didn't even know existed. Apparently, there are companies that will loan you money against a settlement that you expect to get as a result of a lawsuit that you have filed. They don't loan you money out of the goodness of their heart, of course. (Being lawyers, of course, it is at least a question to be settled in court whether any particular lawyer even has a heart.) They are expecting a certain fraction of the final judgment, assuming that you win. In this case, the plaintiff who received an advance on a settlement managed to resolve the dispute with the insurance, and decided that the amount the company was demanding was excessive, because it violated Ohio's usury law. Instead, she repaid the money advanced, plus 8% per annum interest. The company that had advanced the money instead sued her, and insisted that they hadn't made a loan, but an "investment." The Ohio Supreme Court decided that you can't invest in someone else's lawsuit, and that it was a loan--and demanding effectively 180% per year was illegal. To do so, they relied on the common law prohibitions on "champerty and maintenance." The Court quoted from a standard work on the subject that: The doctrines of champerty and maintenance were developed at common law to prevent officious intermeddlers from stirring up strife and contention by vexatious and speculative litigation which would disturb the peace of society, lead to corrupt practices, and prevent the remedial process of the law.Yes, the plaintiff who received an advance on her lawsuit had agreed to let this company receive a portion of the settlement, and I suppose that I should be sympathetic to them, not to her. But this is the sort of bloodsucking behavior that is why the legal profession is held in about the same high regard as car salesmen and child molesters. I'm sure that the lawyers in question would be horrified if any other corporation made a 180% annual return on their investment. Can Someone Explain To Me Why This Disease Is Spreading So Fast In Just One Group? From AIDS Treatment News: Antibiotic-Resistant Skin Infections Spreading among Gay Men, Also in PrisonsI thought homosexuals were just like the rest of us, except for the sex of who they love? Maybe I'm Just Dense... I thought the U.S. Supreme Court's duty was to interpret our Constitution, not someone else's? WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court is looking beyond America's borders for guidance in handling cases on issues like the death penalty and gay rights, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Saturday.The people of the United States ratified our Constitution, not the European Constitution, not any of the European high court treaties. Why is that Ginsburg has decided that the U.S. Constitution--the one that his legally binding--is less important than the constitutions of other countries? I could understand if these were ambiguous or uncertain situations, where our Constitution and the existing precedents provided no guidance whatsoever--but this is not the case. Ginsburg and many of her fellow justices simply don't like that the U.S. Constitution granted power to the states to pass laws in many areas, and are looking for some justification for overruling the majority. Let's see, the Supreme Court was established by the U.S. Constitution--not the European Constitution. Art. III, sec. 1: The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.In Art. III, sec. 2, the sort of cases that the Supreme Court is supposed to hear are listed: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;--to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public ministers and Consuls;--to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;--to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;--to Controversies between two or more States;--between a State and Citizens of another State;--between Citizens of different States;--between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.I'm hard pressed to see how Justice Ginsburg's notion of the U.S. Supreme Court fits this description--"arising under this Constitution"--doesn't say anything about the constitutions of other governments. Under Art. VI: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.It doesn't say, "shall be the supreme Law of the Land, until some Supreme Court justices decide that they prefer the constitutions of other lands." Why is this so hard for Justice Ginsburg to understand? Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Gives a Whole New Meaning to the Realtorese "Doll House" I found this while looking for a country retirement home: Property Features Are There Really Two Americas? Drudge Report is saying that Hilary Clinton claimed on the Jay Leno show that for many of those coming to buy her book at bookstores: "You know, they come to the line, they have stories, they tell me this is the first book they've ever bought or they bring their daughters to meet me."What? Books are so expensive that many adults have never bought a book because they can't afford them? A few days ago, I saw this amazing claim on one of the professional historian email lists, written by someone at Eastern Illinois University: No defense of slavery from me, although I have seen my share of countries where "free labor" provides only a bare subsistence, if that. I am writing from one right now. In American history, the golden age of labor was actually 1945-73, when the state did protect the right to strike and provided some minimum of social welfare, which was not the case before or since.I am still shaking my head at this. The number of Americans whose jobs provide "only a bare subsistence" has to be at most 10% of the population. For most Americans, their biggest economic problem is that their SUVs burn too much gasoline, and they are getting behind on the credit card payments because of all the consumer electronics they buy. The state stopped protecting the right to strike in 1973? They abandoned the social welfare state in 1973? They didn't even abandon it in 1995, when AFDC was replaced with TANF. The left seems to be delusional. Monday, August 04, 2003
AIDS Activists At Work An AP wire service story: SAN FRANCISCO - Two AIDS activists have pleaded no contest to making harassing phone calls to public health officials and newspaper reporters.It's a good thing reporters didn't say something nasty about AIDS activists trying to suppress unpleasant news! Jeff Sheehy, a press officer for UC San Francisco's AIDS Research Institute and one of those receiving the calls, said he was uncertain what to make of the plea deal.Yup. Just like the threats by "civil liberties" groups in Ireland and homosexual activists in Canada, threatening to shut down debate about homosexuality by threatening to sic the law on newspapers and the Catholic Church for saying mean things about homosexuals. There is a world-wide movement that is profoundly intolerant of criticism--and yet otherwise intelligent people think that disapproval of homosexuality is some sort of narrow-minded bigotry. But who is that makes use of harassment and government censorship to get its way? I Think This is a Hint to North Korea It's an article by R. James Woolsey (one of Clinton's CIA directors) and Thomas G. McInerney (retired Air Force lieutenant general) about how to win the war against North Korea, without putting the population of South Korean at massive risk. I think it's a pretty good bet that such a detailed description of how to fight such a war is appearing as a hint to North Korea's insane leader that they better talk seriously about abandoning nuclear weapons development, or risk having their experiment in mass starvation and cannibalism go down the tubes. Savages Don't Respond to Anything But Force The Palestinians have had some legitimate gripes with the Israelis, and these legitimate gripes go back decades. Whatever moral strength their arguments possessed evaporated in terrorist attacks on non-combatants, and suicide bombings. David Bernstein points to an article in the Forward that claims one of the jailed Palestinian militants is supporting cease fire because, since the September 11 attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other events, "have destroyed countries and movements." The Islamic militants risked the same fate, Barghouti warned.Unfortunately, until 9/11, the West was reluctant to pursue a serious fight against Islamic terrorists. The Forward article sees this unwillingness to seriously fight Islamic terrorism as Western appeasement. I think that's way too simple of an explanation. Yes, there are people in the West who saw--and still see--the appropriate response to terrorists is to give them a big hug. After all, anyone who is angry enough to shoot to death an old man in a wheelchair and throw his body over the side of a ship must be a serious victim of American oppression indeed. But that's not the only reason the West was reluctant to fight Islamic terrorism more seriously. Some of it was oil. The U.S. was interested in keeping various Arab oil producing countries on our side, because oil prices can seriously damage the West's economy. Bill Clinton's milquetoast approach to Islamic terrorism had a similar motivation: he didn't want to rock the boat, when the U.S. economy was going well, and Frat Boy was having a good time. Probably the single biggest factor, however, was the reluctance of the U.S. to drive any Arab nation into alliance with the Soviet Union, or Russia. As the Chechnyan rebels have demonstrated that they share bin Laden's careful respect for innocent lives, we no longer had to worry much about this possible alliance. When 9/11 happened, the old constraints that kept responsible leadership (i.e., not including the lunatic left that controls most of the mass media in the Western world) from dealing with this problem directly and correctly were no longer there. Another Reminder That It's Not About Freedom, But Control For those who like to believe that this battle about homosexuality is a battle of liberty vs. narrow-minded authoritarianism, there are these little reminders that disapproval of homosexuality will not be allowed by liberals. Eugene Volokh reports that in Ireland, the grossly misnamed Irish Council for Civil Liberties is warning that the Catholic Church's new campaign against homosexual marriage may be unlawful. Clergy and bishops who distribute the Vatican's latest publication describing homosexual activity as "evil" could face prosecution under incitement to hatred legislation.David Bernstein, also at Volokh Conspiracy, reports that the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ordered the Saskatoon Star Phoenix newspaper and Hugh Owens to each pay $1,500 (appoximately $1,000 U.S.) to each of three gay activists as damages for publication of an advertisement placed by Owens conveying the message that the Bible condemns homosexual acts. The ad conveyed this message by citing passages from the Bible, with an equal sign was placed between the verse references and a drawing of two males holding hands overlaid with the universal nullification symbol—a red circle with a diagonal bar.Bernstein tries to put the spin on this that Canada's censorship laws aimed at homosexual pornography have come full circle, now being used against Christians for expressing disapproval of homosexuality. I think a more accurate description is that homosexuals, by and large, are so desparate for approval that they are quite prepared to suppress free speech, so that they don't have to be reminded that there is something wrong with them. To show you how weird things have become, the argument advanced in the Alameda County Bar Association journal for why judges should not be allowed to have any association with the Boy Scouts compares the Scouts to the KKK: In favor of amending the Code of Judicial Ethics:I've noticed the similarity between Boy Scouts, KKK, and the American Nazi Party for years. Haven't you? A Beautiful Mind I just rented this movie this evening. My wife had never rented it, because she was afraid that it would be too painful to watch. (Regular readers know about my brother with schizophrenia.) It is certainly one of the most touching films that I've seen. Russell Crowe, unsurprisingly, does a stupendous job of playing a brilliant but eccentric mathematician slowly drifting into paranoid schizophrenia. Jennifer Connelly, who has always been easy on the eyes, but not a great actress, does a powerful portrayal of a clearly brilliant young woman who falls in love with a truly odd person, and sticks around as her husband moves back and forth between madness and relative rationality. The film seems to have done some modification to actual events for purposes of dramatic effect (at least, I make this assumption based on Dr. Nash's 1994 Nobel Prize autobiography). I will tell you, however, that whatever liberties the film may have taken with the details of his situation, it rang true to me, in the manner that it portrayed the confusion and pain of Dr. Nash's loved ones as they watched, helplessly, his descent into insanity. There is very little of what happened to my brother that matches what happened to Dr. Nash--but there are so many aspects that bring back painful memories. My brother was a somewhat introverted person as I was growing up--and sometimes, a bit eccentric. Some of my sisters remember my brother as being very weird. Nonetheless, while my brother wasn't anywhere near as odd a character as A Beautiful Mind portrays Dr. Nash, but like him, he was brilliant, but peculiar. The film's portrayal of Dr. Nash's final break with reality brought back painful memories of my brother's final break. It wasn't a clean, knife-edge sort of break; just like Dr. Nash's experience, it took place over time. For my brother, there was a period of perhaps six weeks in which he was aware that there was something wrong, with visual delusions that he knew weren't real--and then, like Dr. Nash, he completed the transition to a fully psychotic state. I have no idea what, exactly, my brother sees and hears as a result of schizophrenia. Is it as well-developed and logical of a paranoid fantasy as grips Dr. Nash in the film? I don't know. What I do know of schizophrenia comes from reading about it, and from talking to those with less severe schizophrenia. One young woman I dated for a while, long, long ago, checked herself into the California State Mental Hospital at Camarillo after a day and night of voices shouting at her, "Kill yourself!" She couldn't sleep; the voices wouldn't let her. She was not as ill as Dr. Nash, or my brother, because she knew that the voices weren't real. How long would her grasp on reality have lasted if the voices had kept it up for several weeks? Is this why my brother's grasp on reality collapsed over a period of several weeks? I have reason to believe, that along with some visual disturbances, that he was suffering from auditory disturbances. My brother would continually change the radio channel; this is a common schizophrenic behavior, because they are convinced that the radio program is talking about them. Like Dr. Nash in the film, my brother had good periods, and bad ones. After one violent incident that brought him to the attention of the police, my brother was hospitalized, and ended up under the care of Dr. Harvey Ross, a psychiatrist whose methods were then considered somewhat unorthodox. After several weeks of treatment that was primarily nutritional in nature, my brother came out of the hospital so close to normal that if I had not known of his history, I would have no reason to suspect mental illness. For a year or so, my brother could communicate about his condition, acknowledge and recognize that he had been mentally ill--and he started working again. First, Carl's Jr. in Barstow took a chance on him--for which Carl's Jr. will always have a warm spot in my heart. Then, the Marine Corps base near Barstow hired him as an electronics technician--the work that he had done before his schizophrenic breakdown. Unlike Dr. Nash, who managed to work (if you can call being a research scientist, "work") in spite of his largely subterranean illness, my brother's first few years of schizophrenia had made work impossible. Indeed, my brother was too frightening for anyone to take him in, and too disorganized to keep a place of his own; he lived on the street, when he wasn't in jail, or a succession of mental hospitals for short periods of observation. Like Dr. Nash, my brother's break with reality led to violence, involuntary hospitalization, and more emotional pain to those around him than I can ever hope to convey. Like Dr. Nash, my brother's brief period of recovery was followed by a return to mental illness. Whatever good Dr. Ross's orthomolecular therapy had done (and I am convinced it did a lot of good), something happened to plunge my brother back down to a state where he could not work--and he has been unable to work since. My brother has been dependent on Social Security Disability checks for most of his life, and on my mother and two of my sisters who live near him in Portland, for direction and guidance. A Beautiful Mind is a hopeful film, because Dr. Nash eventually recovered enough of his sanity (but not all of it), to again be a productive member of society. There is nothing miraculous about this; from what I have read, about 1/3 of schizophrenics spontaneously recover. (I have read that the roughly 2/3 that do not recover are the largest single cause of hospital bed-days in the U.S., not because there are so many schizophrenics, but because the first attack usually occurs in their late teens or early 20s, when most people have decades of life ahead of them. In my experience, many homeless people in America are suffering from schizophrenia.) The years of Dr. Nash's life that were lost to himself, his family, and to the world of mathematics and economics, make that late in life recovery all the more bittersweet. My brother has not recovered. We pray for his recovery, both for his own sake, and because of the pain that it puts his family through (especially our mother), to watch a life with promise and hope ruined. My mother, and my two sisters that live close to him, have spent an enormous amount of time managing his affairs, and trying to get adequate psychiatric care and supervision for him. There is a good bit of evidence that suggests that schizophrenia is genetic. (And interestingly enough, Nash is the family name of not only Dr. John Nash, but of some of our earliest ancestors in America, such as Thomas Nash, colonial armorer of New Haven Colony. It's a common English name, but the coincidence is very interesting.) This is part of why I can have some hope that some day, the exact mechanism will be understood. If we can determine the DNA difference that causes it, we can figure out what protein is miscoded by that DNA. Knowing the protein coding error is potentially a way to understand the drug that will correct the problem more precisely and completely than the clumsy mediciines that seem only to alleviate symptoms, and do not even do that very well. I'm done venting. I do want you to know what schizophrenia is. Here's a discussion of the symptoms. When my brother became ill, in 1973, we didn't know what was wrong. Please, know the symptoms. Sunday, August 03, 2003
Flash Mobs Interesting article about the organization of "flash mobs," by which large crowds appear suddenly, and then disappear suddenly. It sounds like a weird form of performance art, but readers of Larry Niven's science fiction stories will recognize the concept. Niven's future had "teleportation disks" in which you could travel from almost any spot on Earth to almost any other where such a disk existed. (Rather like the Star Trek transporter, but it required a fixed receiver.) In Niven's future, worldwide news coverage of interesting events meant that huge crowds would teleport to the scene to watch, leading rapidly to all sorts of problems, so the first step of local public authorities when something newsworthy took place, was to shut down all local teleportation disks. We still don't the teleportation disks, but Niven did correctly identify at some of the interesting social events of a wired world. Prominent Political Leader Promotes Role of Religion in Government No, not President Bush. No, not an Iranian leader. This will surprise you, not because of the leader, but the country. From the Guardian: Tony Blair knows it is one of the most delicate of subjects. When asked about it he squirms and tries to change to a more comfortable line of inquiry. But quietly the Prime Minister is putting religion at the centre of the New Labour project, reflecting his own deeply felt beliefs that answers to most questions can be found in the Bible.Britain is one of the most secular, least religious countries in the English-speaking world today. I'm not sure how accurate the rest of the article is, because I think I recognize the sort of leftist bias that is the norm for American newspapers as well. Maybe I see why Blair decided that doing something about the Iraqi terrorocracy was worth sacrificing his political career. Isn't it amazingly sad that we have reached a point where you decide that ending torture, rape, mutiliation, and murder as a matter of government policy means that the left compares you to Hitler? |
