News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

Not to beat it into the ground, but as I pointed out last year, today is the real reason for the season.
So Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, Hannukah, New Year, etc., etc.

There are some interesting “Implicit Association Tests” you can take, at Harvard University’s website.

Although I like to think of myself as racially unbiased, one of the tests revealed that I find it easier to associate European Americans with good and African Americans with bad. (That’s the “Race IAT”.) Try it! I think you’ll be surprised at what you learn about yourself.

See the first comment below for some details about the race test.

Today the Senate failed to pass, by one vote, the “Flag Desecration” amendment.

Now I don’t like to see the flag burned, stepped on, or otherwise mistreated. It represents my country, and despite its faults I’ve traveled around the world enough to know that it’s not a bad place to live, and we should appreciate the freedoms we enjoy here.

But “Freedom” is just the issue. If this amendment had passed the Senage, and been ratified by the states, it would have served no real purpose except to reduce our freedom. Freedom to criticise the country; certainly in an unpopular manner, and not a technique likely to win many converts to your position. But I think it’s an extremely important freedom, none-the-less.

If we can’t criticise the government, or show our outrage at policies or actions of the country in the strongest possible way, we have lost one of our most basic rights. What’s next to be outlawed: Burning pictures of the President? Playing “The Star Spangled Banner” with a heavy-metal rock music accompanyment? Showing the White House devastated by aliens in a movie? Making jokes about the President on late-night TV, or showing him as a bumbling fool on Saturday Night Live?

In the East Valley Tribune a few days ago a Veteran who had recently returned from Iraq is quoted as saying that he didn’t go to Iraq to fight for freedom, just to have it reduced here at home. Bingo!

In 1797 the US Congress ratified, and President John Adams signed, the Treaty of Tripoli which proclaims, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion“. This, barely 10 years after the Constitution was ratified, by many of the same people. There was no debate or objection to the statement by Congress or the public. It was an obvious, accepted statement of fact.

Many people today claim that the US was founded as a Christian nation. From the mouths of the founders, it was not.

In the preferred pronunciation of “often”, the “t” is silent. I hear more and more people pronouncing the “t”, so I expect that through common usage it may gradually become acceptable.

Espresso doesn’t have an “x” in it, though you often hear people pronounce it as if it did.

Did you have a “real-a-tor” help you sell your house? It’s “realtor”.

Did you say “I could care less”? Then I guess you care, unless you mean that you “couldn’t care less”.

Have you heard people say they need to “orientate” themselves when they mean “orient”.

I’ve already talked about “nucular”. I’ve heard that Americans have more trouble with this than Australians or the British.

What frequently mispronounced words bug you?

I sat next to a Pro Football Hall of Famer, Joe Perry tonight at a wedding reception. Had a very interesting conversation with him.

He was the first black player for San Francisco in 1948, and he says it wasn’t easy. Many of the players didn’t want him around.

He also talked about serving on an all-white battleship in the Pacific during WW II. He said he had to fight every night at first until they learned to respect him, after which he made life-long friends.

He’s 80 years old, but when I met him I thought he was in his 60’s. He is still quite sharp and fit. You’ve got to respect someone who’s lived the life he has, and excelled despite the adversity.

I wish President Bush would learn to pronounce “nuclear” correctly.

To all you basketball fans:

CBS claims that they broadcasting all the games this year if you have digital television. Our local Channel 5 has 3 digital channels available and the schedule is full of games starting Thursday morning.

I understand that Cox and Cable America will also be carrying all the games.

Arizona tips off against Wisconsin on Friday at 10:30 am, MST.

Way back in February of 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report “SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY IN POLICY MAKING — An Investigation of the Bush Administration’s Misuse of Science”. The report has been signed by over 8000 scientists in the US, including 49 Nobel Laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients, and 169 members of the National Academies.

The basic complaint is that the Bush administration continually and systematically modifies, suppresses or invents scientific evidence so as to support their own agenda and political and religious beliefs. Much of the text of the examples that follow has been lifted directly from this report:

1) The Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine the public’s understanding of the view held by the vast majority of climate scientists that human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases are making a discernible contribution to global warming.

2) Senior Bush officials suppressed and sought to manipulate government information about mercury contained in an EPA report on children’s health and the environment, as part of an attempt to to avoid issuing new standards to regulate emissions by coal fired power plants.

3) Bush has made no secret of his view that sex education should teach teenagers “abstinence only” rather than including information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Despite the fact that this strategy has not been shown to be effective at curbing teen pregnancies or halting the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, the Bush administration refused to allow performance measures to test whether abstinence-only programs were proving effective, such as charting the birth rate of female program participants. In place of such established measures, the Bush administration has required the government to track only participants’ program attendance and attitudes, measures designed to obscure the lack of efficacy of abstinence-only programs.

4) Fact-based information on the CDC’s website has been altered to raise scientifically questionable doubt about the efficacy of condoms in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS.

5) Information suggesting a link between abortion and breast cancer was posted on the National Cancer Institute website despite objections from CDC staff, who noted that substantial scientific study has long refuted the connection. (Note: After public outcry on the matter, the information has since been revised and no longer implies a connection.)

6) The claim that the aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were intended for the manufacture of uranium for nuclear weapons was central to Secretary Powell’s case to the UN that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, despite disagreement from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the DOE. A set of technical experts from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Los Alamos National Laboratories stated that the tube dimensions were far from ideal for a nuclear weapons program. In fact, the dimensions and the aluminum alloy were identical to those of tubes acquired for rockets by Iraq in the 1980s.

7) The Bush administration created a “review team” made up of predominantly nonscientists who proceeded to overrule a $12 million science-based plan for managing old-growth forest habitat and reducing the risk of fire.

8) The current administration has repeatedly allowed political considerations to trump scientific qualifications in the appointment process. The administration has picked candidates with questionable credentials for advisory positions, used political litmus tests to vet candidates for even the least political of its government review panels, and favored the candidates put forward by industry lobbyists over those recommended by its own federal agencies.

9) According a former CDC staff member “The current administration has instituted an unheard-of level of micromanagement in the programmatic and scientific activities of CDC. We’re seeing a clear substitution of ideology for science and it is causing many committed scientists to leave the agency.”

10) In 2002, just as an expert advisory committee to the CDC appeared ready to consider a more stringent federal lead standard, the administration rejected highly qualified experts nominated by CDC staff scientists to serve on the committee, instead appointing two with financial ties to the lead industry— effectively blocking debate on the more stringent standard.

11) In an apparent attempt to block a pending report that would recommend changes in the flow of the Missouri River to comply with the Endangered Species Act, the administration removed scientists from a study years in the making.

12) An official at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) overruled the advice of the agency’s staff and two independent scientific advisory panels when he decided recently to deny women over-the-counter access to the emergency contraceptive levonorgestrel (sold under the brand name “Plan B”). Numerous FDA officials and medical advisers to FDA involved in and familiar with the approval process call the move an almost unprecedented repudiation of government scientific expertise. By law, the FDA is required to approve drugs that are found to be safe and effective. Former FDA officials stated that they could not remember a single instance when someone had overruled both an advisory committee and staff recommendations. The switch of the drug to nonprescription status in the United States was also endorsed by some 70 scientific organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The list goes on and on.

You can read the full report or an executive summary here, along with the Bush Administration’s rebuttal and the UCS’s followup response.

I have to side with John McCain and the majority of the Senate in supporting the anti-torture bill. As a civilized country, I don’t think we have any business torturing anyone.

However, I can think of situations where I might waver. What if we have incontestable evidence that there is a plan to detonate a nuclear weapon in Phoenix, and we have someone in custody who could tell us enough to stop the attack if we could only get the information out of him. Is it OK to torture this one person, in order to save tens or hundreds of thousands of lives?

Shade the situation a little grayer. We have evidence that there is a plan to detonate somewhere a conventional bomb (but we’re not sure), and we have somebody who might well know something about it, but maybe not. Maybe he is innocent. Can we torture him?

Then make it even grayer. We are in a “war with terrorists.” There are undoubtedly plans being developed to kill Americans. Some of the people in custody might know something about some plan somewhere. Can we torture them all on the chance that we will gain some useful information from one of them? This will undoubtedly result in many innocent people being tortured.

But is this really so much different from what we despised Sadam Hussein for, retaining and torturing large numbers of people, many of them innocent of any crime, because we might find a real enemy in this way?

These are some of the questions that make the whole situation complex.

I remember visiting the Tower of London, and hearing the guides discussing some of the tortures and punishments that were routinely carried out there. We think back on how barbaric they were, just a few hundred years ago, and how far we have risen above their level. There are still forces in the world and in our country trying to pull us back down into that barbaric pit. The United States as the only world superpower has to set an example, putting human rights and compassion above vengeance and perfect security.

Benjamin Franklin’s quote has been repeated so much lately that it is almost trite, but I think it still stands up. To paraphrase, “Those who would sacrifice freedom for security, will gain neither”.