Rational Kirk

Hmph, wut's goin on here?

2007-06-15T13:42:00.001-04:00

Where the hell have I been? Busy, busy, busy. I'm about to commit to a re-registering of my domain name, though, so hopefully that will encourage me to get back to posting. Tune in later!!!

Shadows Of Nixon

2005-12-30T12:55:00.000-05:00

Well, it seems that the Department of Justice is opening an investigation related to the president's secret domestic spying program. One big problem, though. The investigation isn't into the president's apparently illegal actions, but rather into the leak of those actions to the media.

Once again, the Bush Administration shows clearly that it expects to be able to operate with impunity and with no regard to the laws of the land, and is only concerned if it gets caught doing it. President Bush is once again trying to frighten the American people into passive acceptance of further limits on their liberties, invoking the specter of an attack worse than Sept. 11. Something worth reading to put this in some interesting context is Joe Keohane's recent piece in The Boston Globe recalling Sinclair Lewis' fictional portrayal of the rise of a fascist dictator in America. There are some disturbing parallels.

Another disturbing parallel comes from that master of all things disturbing, Vice President Dick Cheney. While traveling with reporters, Cheney mentioned that the president needs his authority to be "unimpaired" in terms of conducting national security. Cheney somewhat foolishly made comparisons to the Watergate era, saying that since then, the president's powers have been reigned in by Congress and the courts.

Of course, he doesn't mention that Congress was snapping the presidency back to its position before Nixon and others tried to vastly expand the powers of the office. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney seem to be taking a Nixon maxim to heart: "When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal."

But I don't think Nixon was right then, and I don't think Bush and Cheney are right now. Unfortunately, with Congress dominated by Republicans, they won't call in the president to answer whether he committed a crime. Instead, they seek to punish those who would expose such crimes to the American people.

Bush On The Defensive

2005-11-15T13:27:00.000-05:00

I've got to thank my friend, John, for sending along this New York Times editorial. The Times takes President Bush to task for his latest tactic of accusing his critics of "rewriting history." This is in relation to the pre-war intelligence that the administration interpreted -- or twisted -- into claims that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.

Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today.

It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true.

Bush's attack posture has been pretty laughable, especially since much of the facts are so clear. Gone are the days when he and his cohorts can simply make up things and expect the public to believe them. But that's exactly what he's trying to do to counter the growing criticism over how our country started the war in Iraq.

Bush also says that Democrats have no right to complain because they also voted to go to war based on the intelligence. But, as the Times editorial notes, this ignores the verified fact that Bush had better intelligence and that the administration deliberately had reports reworked to validate their preconceived ideas. And now Bush has the gall to blame Democrats for buying the bill of goods he was selling.

Just the latest step in the decline of the Bush presidency.

In a related note about the war in Iraq, I should note that I wasn't in favor of the Democratic proposal that was defeated earlier today that would have forced the administration to set a timeframe for withdrawal from Iraq. The Republican alternative is a bit toothless, however, calling for regular updates and saying next year should be "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty."

What is needed in this situation is for certain criteria to be established that, once met, would be the signal for us to leave. That's kind of what the Bush Administration has been saying, but only in vague, formless statements about leaving "when the job's done." By establishing tiers of well-defined criteria that must be met in Iraq, we can hopefully withdraw in an orderly way, leaving a stable Iraq behind.

Granted, that's very idealistic, and there may be no way in which this whole mess will ever be counted a success. But neither an arbitrary withdrawal date nor vague promises of leaving whenever we feel like it will help improve the situation there.

The Revolution Of Evolution

2005-11-15T13:14:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to point out a very interesting essay in Harvard Magazine regarding Darwin and his theory of evolution. The link actually goes to a series of essays the biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote to introduce each of Darwin's four major works. Wilson discusses much of the current debate over the attempts to insert religious teaching in place of scientific fact in the classroom and whether scientific humanism can finally triumph over the religious worldview that, while responsible for much of human culture, also leads to bigotry and, coupled with "toxic tribalism," brutal warfare.

Wilson also has a nifty definition of scientific humanism that sums up how I try to approach things:

Still held by only a tiny minority of the world's population, it considers humanity to be a biological species that evolved over millions of years in a biological world, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided by complex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning. Human nature exists, and it was self-assembled. It is the commonality of the hereditary responses and propensities that define our species. Having arisen by evolution during the far simpler conditions in which humanity lived during more than 99 percent of its existence, it forms the behavioral part of what, in The Descent of Man, Darwin called the indelible stamp of our lowly origin.

It's an enjoyable read, but if you can only skim, skip down past the sketches of the monkeys to find Wilson's critique of current events.

The Perfect Political Storm

2005-10-24T15:02:00.000-04:00

I've been away for a while, distracted by real-world events. Unexpected flooding in New Hampshire required a good deal of my focus, and you can read about the events here. Suffice it to say that the state of New Hampshire did a much better job dealing with the disaster than the government did with the hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast. Granted, the scale was dramatically different, but government officials approached the Northeast crisis with a determination to do what needed to be done, regardless of cost. There was no blame game because everyone essentially did their jobs.

If New Hampshire held gubernatorial elections today, Gov. John Lynch would keep his job in a landslide. If President Bush were up for re-election today, he would lose by a landslide. Polls show that he doesn't have the worst numbers of any president ever, just the lowest of his presidential career. The drop is also remarkably steep for a man who enjoyed historically high approval ratings immediately following Sept. 11, 2001.

The decline in approval was sparked by what was seen as an ineffective response to Hurricane Katrina, but it's being heightened by the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination. While apologists were eager to demonize local officials and even the residents of the hurricane-struck areas themselves for their untimely deaths following Katrina, many of these same people are resoundingly criticizing the president for his choice of Miers. The difference is that Katrina, even though it called to attention chronic weaknesses in the government's emergency readiness, could somewhat cynically be seen as a one-time event, something that can fade from the public consciousness. A Supreme Court nomination, however, has the potential to change the country for decades to come.

President Bush's support came from a variety of groups that were in large part united on moral issues. At least, that was the bill of goods sold to many Americans who would have been better served by not voting for Bush. In terms of economics and overall quality of life, a relatively small portion of Americans actually stood to benefit from a Bush presidency. That's not to say that a well informed, lower- to middle-class American could not have logically come to the decision that voting for Bush was the right choice to make. Based on the moral arguments being put forth, a person might think that a hit to the wallet was worth maintaining or restoring the moral fiber of America. The fact that those moral arguments did not have logical consistency and were put forth solely for the purpose of getting Bush elected means, to my mind, that it was not a rational choice for these people to make, but it's at least somewhat understandable.

With the Miers nomination, the tensions between the various groups that supported Bush are laid bare. The moral arguments that were made are now being shown (some say) to have been simply a cynical power ploy to elect the president. He apparently has no desire to shape the moral fabric of the country, and his administration is acting just like an extension of the classic Texas "Good Old Boy" network, rewarding cronies for their fawning service. That's what the critics say, at least. In truth, not enough is known about Miers to be able to determine whether this concern of the Right has merit. She could be to the far right of Scalia, and no one would know.

Nonetheless, it's an opening for criticism, and coming right after Katrina, it's another powerful wedge. And it's something Bush is having to face without another crony, Karl Rove, who has been marginalized in the Valerie Plame affair. Congressional support is somewhat lessened as well, with the indictment of Tom DeLay (though DeLay's progeny still holds the positions of power in the House). Traditional Republicans (remember those folks who called for smaller government and individual responsibility? Way back in the day? Yeah, those Republicans) are asserting themselves again, hoping to put the party back on a track that might be able to salvage the mess the neocons made. And all under a watchful, revitalized press.

It remains to be seen how this will all play out politically. It's still a long time before the next presidential election, so all eyes will be on the midterms to see if Americans' newfound disdain for the leadership translates to the polls.

How Far We've Come

2005-09-27T16:10:00.000-04:00

It was 100 years ago this month that the world changed forever. Actually, it didn't change, but our understanding of it did. It was 1905, and the German physics journal Annalen der Physik was about to publish its volume 17. This would become perhaps the most famous physics publication in history, containing three essays from the patent clerk, Albert Einstein, including one that spelled out his special theory of relativity. He later added an additional essay, a footnote basically, that described the equation, E=mc².

The astonishing implications of this weren't clear at the time, though a former student described how Einstein, in 1907, said that his realization that all mass was essentially untapped energy would probably be the most important consequence of his theory. It couldn't even be tested until 25 years later, but Einstein was proven right. In fact, his theory has been proven correct time and time again, though we still can grasp only some of the implications it has for the universe as a whole.

Einstein's theory came about like so many do. He saw a problem in our perception of the world as outlined by Newton. Nothing that was Newton's fault -- he just didn't have to deal with the concept of the speed of light being a universal constant. Einstein lived in a world with two basic concepts of physics -- Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's equations -- that were incompatible. There had to be a way to reconcile them. After a despondent conversation with his friend Michele Besso, in which Einstein admitted defeat, he had a sudden moment of brilliance on the streetcar trip home. He realized that time can flow at different rates throughout the universe, depending on how fast you move.

It solved the problem neatly, even though the basic concept (and many concepts it spawned) seemed irrational. Over the following decades, Einstein's theory has been tested, confirmed and refined through the scientific process. This process demands continual testing of our theories so that we can discover all their implications and, if the theory fails, throw it out completely.

Now let's turn to our time. Right now, a group of parents are in a Pennsylvania courtroom, fighting to protect their children from the forces of fear and irrationality. Their school district has decided to require that students be told about intelligent design, the idea that life on Earth could only have originated or developed without the assistance of some unidentified intelligent force. Proponents of this belief say that there are some things the theory of evolution doesn't explain, and so this must mean that that there is an "intelligent designer" at work there.

It's a debate that scientists don't enjoy having (but they do in some cases), not because they fear being proven wrong, but because intelligent design does not represent science. It is an attempt to point out perceived holes in the theory and proclaim, "Ha! That's where God is!" It does not offer a scientifically testable alternative. Proponents cringe from that, in fact.

There are certain aspects of intelligent design that a lot of people find attractive. The general public and ID proponents have an inaccurate understanding of the word "theory" in the scientific sense. They throw the word around in phrases like, "It's only a theory." But evolution is "only" a theory in the sense that gravity is "only" a theory. In science, a theory is an explanation of observed phenomena that can be tested and stands up to rigorous testing. That's what evolution has done. It has been experimentally proven both in the real world and the lab.

Now let's look at ID. It offers no explanation, only saying, "Well, if you can't explain some aspect of what we see, it must mean God's doing it!" That, frankly, is stupid. There's no other way to describe it. You don't even have to mention the fact that a lot of what the ID proponents use as "evidence" of things that can't be explained are actually explained quite nicely by evolution. They take advantage of a gullible public and pandering school boards to squeeze religion into science classes. It dumbs down our children by undermining the bedrock of the scientific method, the same method that has raised us up from medieval squalor and allows us to glimpse the basic structure of reality.

It is disheartening to compare the story of Einstein with what's going on in that Pennsylvania courtroom. One hundred years after his eureka moment, we're still fighting the battle between superstitious belief and reason. Anyone who has some understanding of Einstein's theories and the discoveries that have come after can stare up at the night sky and feel the wonder of knowing what lights those stars. You can have some grasp of the majesty of our world when you know something about what it consists of and how it developed. All of this has been given to us by science. But some want to extinguish as much of that light as possible, overturning the pillars of science and reason in the process. It's disgusting, and it must be stopped.

Another Test Blows In

2005-09-23T11:01:00.000-04:00

We're now getting another chance for our government officials to show whether they can protect people under the worst conditions. Of course, everything is a bit different this time.

On the news the other night they put up population totals of Texas cities in the possible path of Hurricane Rita. Before Katrina, that would have come off as crass and sensationalistic. Now, it's an important piece of the pre-hurricane planning. Katrina also has primed people to be extra cautious. The highways out of Houston have been jammed for over a day now as everyone tries to evacuate. There have been tragic side effects to this already. People are turning back from the crowded, gas-depleted roads and returning home in the hope of waiting it out.

Watching the chaos of a failed evacuation, it would be tempting to label this second test a failure. But that's not indicated right now. Even as the highways were completely impassable, officials were still calling for evacuations. It's just something that the roadways were not designed to handle. It's difficult to determine how it could have been better. Ideally, you could have a controlled evacuation, with residents of specific areas moved out at an orderly rate, followed by other areas. But that wouldn't have worked, would it? There's no way that you can evacuate that many people quickly and safely.

If anything, this shows, in part, the limits of what we can accomplish. It simply becomes impossible at some point to completely control the situation. But again, this is a wildly different situation, so far, than Katrina was. In that case, people prepared just the same as they always prepared for a disaster -- some left, others hunkered down. The government failed at various levels in its preparation. It didn't preposition crews and supplies in the area to the extent that it should have. It didn't have a plan to deal with its own worst-case scenario.

With Rita, we can likely expect all of that to be better. But the difference this time is that people are preparing differently. Instead of hunkering down, the vast majority are clearing out. And that's something that our infrastructure can't handle. The fear is that people will remain trapped out on the highways when the hurricane arrives -- no gas, little shelter.

Both Katrina and Rita show the need for two things -- emergency officials must plan for the worst and be prepared to deal with the worst when it arrives, and they must still be flexible enough to deal with situations when they change. The government will hopefully do better with the first part. We'll see if they do better with the second.

Warnings Ignored

2005-09-16T13:50:00.000-04:00

While President Bush may finally be accepting responsibility for the federal government's failings in the response to Hurricane Katrina (though both overt and subtle finger-pointing among all levels of government continues), we're still hearing more about how truly awful the planning was inside FEMA for this event.

As I commented earlier, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff either lied or was incredibly poorly informed when he claimed that no one could have predicted what would happen because, clearly, many people actually did predict it. Former FEMA chief Michael Brown seemed to be saying in all his public statements that Katrina magically blossomed into a Category 4 storm off the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi in mere moments, giving them no time to prepare.

Now comes a story from National Public Radio that shows some of the information that Chertoff, Brown and other officials were given by the people responsible for informing them of disaster potential. Leo Bosner is an emergency management specialist at FEMA in Washington, D.C. It's his job, along with his crew, to alert officials of impending disasters. As early as Friday, Aug. 26, Bosner was warning Chertoff and Brown of the potential devastation Katrina could cause. By Saturday, Bosner was specifically warning of "dire predictions" of what could happen to New Orleans.

In the NPR interview, Bosner said he and his crew were shocked that Saturday's note seemed to get no response from FEMA or Homeland Security. They expected to go into the office and see dozens of people scrambling to position food and water supplies, activate the National Guard and provide transportation to those in New Orleans who would be unable to evacuate. Instead, they found the same 12 or so people there.

By Sunday, Bosner's note had taken on a much more urgent tone, reminding officials of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, which put half of New Orleans under water and killed 74 people. It talked about the 100,000 people in the city with no transportation to evacuate. Still, Bosner said, that urgency did not seem to be felt at FEMA. It wasn't until Tuesday, when it was too late, that the level of mobilization reached what it should have been on Saturday.

Keep in mind that Bosner's job is not to suggest policy, but rather to inform those who do. His missives are the way in which the emergency management chiefs get the information and decide what to do. They're sent by e-mail to the important people, who get them on their Blackberrys. They had this information and they didn't act on it.

There's always enough blame to go around, of course, but it's becoming increasingly clear that if the federal government had simply acted as it should have based on the information it had, it could at least have been able to get more people evacuated and provide food and water to people in the affected area immediately. It would have done its job. Much earlier planning and money would have been needed to prevent the flooding of New Orleans, but at least more people would have been saved, and the government would not have to be ashamed of its failure.

A cynic might look at today's national day of prayer and point out Bush's past unwillingness to place science and information over religion and "gut feelings." That cynic might wonder if this irrational thought process has permeated throughout the administration and other federal agencies. It might, after all, explain the way the facts and warnings were ignored. Maybe officials weren't being lazy or irresponsible, but rather they were just convinced that "everything would be all right." Yes, something that a cynic might bring up...

Brown Out

2005-09-12T15:01:00.000-04:00

Mike Brown just resigned as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It looks like he's taking on the scapegoat role he said last week was being foisted on him by the media.

Just like my post below on Chertoff, I think Brown should have been fired before he had the chance to resign. But in a way, he kind of was. He was moved off of the Hurricane Katrina relief project last week after receiving near-universal criticism. Time magazine also reported on possible problems with his résumé, though much of that really seemed to be pretty minor points or legitimate matters of interpretation. Still, it was a fact that Brown had little if any experience dealing with a disaster or any special knowledge about how to deal with a disaster. He was simply the wrong person for the job.

Here's Brown's complete written statement:

Today I resigned as Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As I told the President, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA.

It has been an honor and a privilege to serve this President and to work shoulder to shoulder with the hard working men and women of FEMA. They carry out an unusually difficult task under the harshest of circumstances. My respect for these dedicated professionals and this organization is unyielding.

There is no other government agency that reaches people in a more direct way. It has been the best job in the world to help Americans in their darkest hours.

Unfortunately, when something like this happens, you don't really know if you have the right person for the job until it's too late. Some people can rise to the occasion, like President Bush did immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he talked to recovery workers with a bullhorn. Some people fail miserably under pressure, like President Bush did in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

In other Katrina news, it's also just been reported that 45 bodies were recovered from a New Orleans hospital that was abandoned more than a week ago. Health officials said that the bodies were patients, but there was no other immediate information. This brings the death toll to 279 in Louisiana, and officials are still hopeful that the final tally will be lower than they originally estimated.

Chertoff's CYA

2005-09-04T11:55:00.000-04:00

Politicians are excellent at trying to deflect blame. It's a necessary survival technique. If they screw something up, they need to be able to blame someone else or they run the risk of getting voted out of office by a public who only sees the mistake and won't take the time to figure out if there's a reasonable explanation. That's a pretty patronizing view of the American public, of course, but it might not be that far off base for the majority out there.

At any rate, I can understand when politicians reflexively try to deflect blame in light of the devastation of New Orleans. I don't agree with it, because especially in this situation, the American public is voraciously consuming anything they can get about the disaster. They're very well informed on this. Any cover-your-ass maneuvering will instantly stink to the vast majority of people out there. It doesn't work.

That's why it's stunning to see what Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff is saying. This guy actually has the gall to come out and blatantly lie about whether government officials had predicted whether such a disaster could occur:

That "perfect storm" of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight.

Unbelievable. As the CNN article goes on to report, this exact scenario had been brought up many times, by government officials, scientists and journalists. They had even war-gamed the situation back in 2004.

Chertoff also claims that they didn't have enough specific warning that this storm would hit the area with such force, saying they only had "a day, maybe a day and a half" of warning. But the National Hurricane Center was predicting as early as the Friday before that the storm could be Category 4, with New Orleans in its path. The prediction was almost perfect.

So it sounds like Chertoff is lying and hoping desperately to not get caught. Or maybe he actually believes what he's saying. In that case, he has been stunningly misinformed, especially for the director of Homeland Security. In either case, the president should do something right in all of this and not wait for Chertoff's inevitable resignation, but fire him as soon as there's some stability to the situation.

The Value Of A Single Person

2005-09-01T16:01:00.000-04:00

In an effort to address the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, Congress will meet for an emergency session either tonight or Friday morning. Needed is an immediate infusion of cash to keep up with the $500 million a day FEMA is pouring into efforts to stop the flooding and provide relief to the tens of thousands of homeless. More than $10 billion will likely be approved just for the immediate costs. Many billions more will be needed in the future.

It's quite noble for our legislators to interrupt their vacations to make sure this money is available. Not all of them need to be there, since the measure can be approved by unanimous consent, but still, just four or five days after the hurricane hit, Congress is swinging into action to help people out.

This reminds me of the last time Congress was called into emergency session. It wasn't for a hurricane or other disaster relief, though. It was Sunday, March 20, 2005. That Friday, the husband of Terri Schiavo won a court case allowing him to remove Terri's feeding tube. By Saturday, Schiavo's parents asked the federal government to intervene. Lawmakers flew back from their Easter vacation (again, not all of them, but enough to pass a bill), and on Sunday, passed a bill to transfer jurisdiction to the federal courts. Bush signed it Monday morning.

So, when distraught parents were desperately trying to keep nutrients flowing into a dead woman, Congress snapped into action in a day. When a major American city is close to being wiped off the map, when tens of thousands of people are suffocating together in the stench of shelters, when looters are ransacking businesses (some to get what they need to survive, others to get merely what they think they want), when we witness on television civilization for these people falling away -- it takes five days for Congress to respond.

I guess we all have our priorities.

Katrina

2005-08-31T16:15:00.000-04:00

I've been slammed with several things keeping me from the blog lately, but I wanted to make a quick post related to an e-mail that was read on CNN's "Situation Room" this afternoon. Basically, the writer mentioned how nice it would be to have National Guard help in the areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, but, of course, many of them are overseas, fighting to stay alive in Iraq.

It will be interesting to see if our overseas deployment has made us less able to respond to a crisis as dramatic as Katrina. The National Guard Bureau has asked all states to determine how many National Guard troops they could muster to send to the Gulf Coast. It will be a lot less than they could offer if many of them weren't off fighting a war, but it still isn't certain whether the discrepancy will be enough to make a difference. But I'm sure the police officers who are getting shot while trying to stop looters from stealing guns could have used the help.

In the meantime, members of the Louisiana National Guard had to watch in horror from their camps in Iraq as the water rose over New Orleans. They are scheduled to return home soon, if they still have homes. The days to come will determine whether we're witnessing a great American city getting wiped off the map.

Prescription Morality

2005-08-19T13:22:00.000-04:00

My friend John R. sent me his thoughts on an interesting trend seen in many parts of the country. Some pharmacists are refusing to give people their prescriptions if those prescriptions conflict with their arbitrary moral beliefs. Some might say it's tantamout to refusing medical care if you don't like something about the patient. It's a tactic that an enlightened society should find disgusting and dangerous. In his comments presented here in their entirety, John says that the Law -- so often the bulwark against the frightened bleatings of the irrational -- could set things right here:

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

This is a situation that has received a little attention in the news lately, but not nearly enough, in my humble opinion. Recently, in the Northeast, as well as other parts of the country, pharmacists have refused to fill prescriptions for routine contraceptives, such as birth-control pills, citing moral objections, forcing patients to return later or go store to store, and in some instances, missing doses because of the delay.

This is an unacceptable situation. These alarming cases highlight the need for a federal law to ensure patients get their prescriptions filled in a timely manner. It is unfortunate that such a law would be necessary, but apparently it is.

Of course, pharmacists, like other professionals, are human beings with opinions, values and religious beliefs. But a firefighter cannot refuse to douse a burning home because he or she objects to a family situation or lifestyle, such as a gay couple or an interracial couple. Nor can a pharmacist substitute his or her judgment for that of a physician or a customer -- and they should not be in the business of creating undue hardships for patients who have limited opportunities, because of the number of pharmacies or access to transportation in an area, to get their prescriptions filled.

Furthermore, customers should not have to go into a drugstore worrying about being subjected to another individual's moral judgment, no matter what they are purchasing, as long as that item is legal. Whether or not you approve of birth control in general, from condoms to the pill, or the morning-after pill specifically, the fact of the matter is: They are legal.

Certainly, pharmacists serve a valuable role in determining whether a patient's prescriptions conflict with or counteract each other, but they should not be in the position of determining whether medication is morally "right" -- or, to take this reasoning to the not-unforeseeable extreme, whether certain segments of society are worthy of receiving medication at all. It is up to a physician and a patient to determine the best course of action for that particular individual. Period.

The American Pharmacists Association says pharmacists should not be required to fill certain prescriptions if they have personal objections. However, the organization says, they should ensure that there are alternatives in place, such as referring the patient to another pharmacist on duty.

That is the goal of the federal Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act, which was introduced in the U.S. House and Senate in April. The legislation would recognize the right of pharmacists to hold personal religious beliefs, but would make sure that does not impede a patient's access to legal prescriptions, including contraception.

The bill, introduced by U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., would allow an individual pharmacist to refuse to dispense contraception, but require the pharmacy to ensure that someone else there fills the prescription in a timely manner. The bill would make sure that a patient's prescription is filled without delay or harassment, regardless of the religious or moral beliefs of a specific pharmacist. Since the proposed legislation does nothing to resolve the issue in a small pharmacy with only one pharmacist on duty, owners of those shops should be prepared to lose regular customers if their pharmacists are allowed to dictate morality in dispensing prescriptions.

Personally, I think this bill, while not ideal (in that it does not force pharmacists to provide medication regardless of their personal moral beliefs, which would be a similar standard under which physicians operate), is the best middle ground for which we can hope in the philopolitical atmosphere of our current national debate. While a compromise solution, it remains a solution nonetheless, and should be supported.

And as a final warning to pharmacists out there -- speaking in my capacity as an attorney, and in particular a tort litigator, I would be very cautious in counseling clients that they were free to refuse to dispense medication based on moral or religious grounds, merely because a professional association allows that behavior. In our current highly litigious culture, creative tort theory is ever evolving, and I would not want to be in a courtroom for a case of first impression where a woman brings suit against a pharmacist for monetary damages as the result of an unwanted pregnancy caused by that pharmacist's refusal to dispense the morning-after pill on a timely basis. Too far-fetched you say? You would be surprised...

Kansas Joins The 11th Century

2005-08-16T13:27:00.000-04:00

Just in case anyone missed it, the Kansas Board of Education voted to allow intelligent design to be taught in the schools there. The actual decision is left to local schools whether to pollute their science courses with rhetorical bull. No word on whether Flying Spaghetti Monsterism made the cut.

I want to make it clear that the varied attacks I make on intelligent design being taught in the schools on this blog are not attacks on people with religious views or even on the idea of having a religious viewpoint. Specific to the decision of a school board to include such teachings in a science class, my problem is that ID does not, in reality, represent science. Proponents find things about evolution that they can't grasp and package them together in what they believe is a critique of the theory. But that "critique" does not pass scientific muster. Their points are usually without merit (they often describe espects of evolution as unexplained, when, in fact, they are explained). And the whole mess is not based on scientific principles, even though its proponents would have you believe they are.

That's where the problem lies with scientists attacking intelligent design. There's nothing there to attack. It doesn't come from any rational basis, so rational argument doesn't work. ID proponents inevitably must fall back on faith and their own misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. When that happens, anyone trying to reason with them comes up against a brick wall. There's simply nothing more that can be done.

And that is why it is so imperative that this is not taught in the schools. It represents irrational, non-critical thinking. Rather than being simply "another point of view," as the president would have you believe, it is a set of half-truths, lies and faith. It allows for the dumbing-down of our schools and is a recipe for disaster.

Unlike Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, of course, which has pirate-related data to back itself up.

FSM In Our Schools

2005-08-08T16:24:00.000-04:00

One person who is upset about the pressure to include Intelligent Design in the schools is Phil Plait, the brains behind the wonderful Bad Astronomy Web site. He also picked up President Bush's call to teach magic alongside science (and yet call it science) in our nation's schools. And so I'm indebted to him for pointing out another, equally credible "school of thought" that deserves to be taught in the schools just as much as ID does.

It's called Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, or FSM. That link will take you to a letter to the Kansas School Board from Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen, exhorting them to apply the same critical thinking skills they've already focused on the ID issue and include FSM in any discussion of the possible origins of life on earth. The letter includes such scientific standbys as charts, numbers, graphics, etc., to prove that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. It also shows the frightening effects of the decline in pirates.

This scientifically sound theory does have detractors, of course. One letter to the site not only expresses the hope that Henderson's genitals are eaten by three-legged mice with squirrel tails, but also puts forth the idea that ninjas are cooler than pirates.

Two members of the school board did write back, assuring Henderson that they are compiling many alternative theories and think that the members in the majority of the board might just have the intellectual capacity to want to include the study of FSM in the schools.

So wear your pirate regalia and push for the inclusion of FSM! I'm also reminded of another school of thought regarding mankind's origins that was expressed in the movie, "A Mighty Wind," by the Bohners:

Laurie Bohner: Terry and I worship an unconventional deity. The power of another dimension. Now you are not going to read about this dimension in a book or a magazine because it exists nowhere -- but in my own mind. Through our ceremonies and rituals we have witnessed the awesome and vibratory power -- of color.

Terry Bohner: This is not an occult science. This is not one of those crazy systems of divination and astrology. That stuff's hooey, and you've got to have a screw loose to go in for that sort of thing. Our beliefs are fairly commonplace and simple to understand. Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store.

Sounds like another strong case...

Peter Jennings

2005-08-08T13:02:00.000-04:00

Longtime ABC anchorman Peter Jennings died last night after a short bout with lung cancer. Only 67, Jennings was the one "Big Three" anchorman who had not announced any plans for retirement before lung cancer forced his hand.

I never met Jennings, though I saw him a couple times at the Republican National Convention last summer. I work with several people who have dealt directly with him, and their comments seem to be consistent with everything I've read. He was driven and controlling at times. He was also known for legitimately caring for the people he worked with, tempering exhausting schedule demands with moments of making sure they and their families were comfortable and had what they needed.

A person I work with described Jennings taking part in a town hall-style political forum in New Mexico fairly recently. Jennings was taping a special edition of World News Tonight in the area, so he was splitting time between that broadcast and the forum. He didn't know any of the forum participants before getting to the station, but an hour before the show began, he had memorized all their names, bios and other relevant information and talked the state's nervous governor into not walking off the set. It was his preparation that made him such a valuable part of the media world.

His experience was with international news. He established a bureau in Beirut and became an expert on the Middle East. He was on the scene of the Israeli athlete hostage-taking by an Arab terrorist group at the 1972 Munich Olympics. He dominated the ratings when America cared about what was going on overseas.

By the mid-1990s, Jennings had slid to No. 2 behind Tom Brokaw, as Americans shifted to more insular concerns. But on Sept. 11, 2001, I and many others tuned into ABC and heard Jennings' informed, somewhat patrician tone describing the events and putting them into a perspective that few others could.

This morning on NPR, Jennings' colleague and friend, Cokie Roberts, described how thrilled he was, a transplanted Canadian, to finally get his American citizenship recently. Last election was the first presidential election in which he voted, and Roberts said he was excited to finally take direct part in the process he had covered for so long. He never thought that his first election would be his only one.

The national nightly news has become a stagnant product across the networks. With Brokaw and Dan Rather retiring, and now with Jennings' untimely death, it will be interesting to see if the networks do anything to revive the format.

But Jennings was one of the voices I grew up with. It's unfortunate that in his last appearance on World News Tonight, the cancer had ravaged his voice, although his hoarse tone did not affect his usual smooth delivery.

"I have never spent a day in my adult life where I didn't learn something," Jennings told the Saturday Evening Post. "And if there is a born-again quality to me, that's it."

The appeal for journalism to me is that it's given me the chance to always learn something new, every day. I'm glad it did the same for Jennings, and it's too bad that his education ended sooner than he would have liked.

For ABC News' coverage of Jennings, go here, where you can also find video retrospectives and a message board.

Every Child Left Behind

2005-08-02T15:46:00.000-04:00

It's no secret that President Bush is a firm believer in everything said in the Bible. He has used the support of evangelical Christian groups to get elected twice and rewarded them with government gifts. He has helped shape a culture that is increasingly subjected to pressure from these specific religious groups to impose on the country what they are convinced is the truth -- or rather, Truth. Now, he's given his approval to extend one particularly pernicious example of this into the schools.

In an interview with Texas newspapers, Bush said that he believes intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution in schools. He uses the language many ID proponents use, saying that
"part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." This language mistakenly puts evolution and ID on the same level, granting equal value to each.

I've brought up Slate writer William Saletan before, and I'll point to another column of his in which he tries to make the point that ID represents an evolution of creationist thought. The idea is that creationists are moving more and more toward evolution with each step away from the "young Earth" believers of the past centuries. His point seems to be that since ID pays service to certain scientific concepts, it's only a matter of time before it adopts all scientific concepts and becomes indistinguishable from evolution. I think. Saletan doesn't always hit you over the head with his points. He could also just be saying that scientists are ignoring the strengths of ID at their peril.

At any rate, here's my problem with Saletan's point of view (either one) and why it's so incredibly stupid to teach intelligent design in schools alongside evolution. First, as mentioned, creating a curriculum around these two ideas puts them on the same level. But evolution is science. It is based on the testing of hypotheses. Experiments will disprove weak hypotheses, and the overall theory is modified to fit new experimental results. The refined theory is tested, and so on. That is called science.

Intelligent design is about finding holes, and instead of creating a hypothesis that is experimentally tested, it concludes that wherever there is a hole, there's God. If you can't yet explain, that's where God's acting. And Bush considers this to be a mode of thought equal to science? A way of thinking that our children should learn to prepare them to compete in the world? It doesn't belong in our schools, which should be teaching our children critical thinking. Instead, it tries to show our children a way to stop thinking.

As a side point, I think most theologians would have a problem with the ID approach, if they think about it. And this seems to go along with what Saletan was, at least, hinting about. If you keep applying this reductionist reasoning to try to prove the existence of God, or even just simply that God created life, you run into an increasing problem. As science explains more and more, God diminishes until there's nothing left or so little that God is no longer consequential. If God isn't anywhere (or almost nowhere) at some easily conceivable point in the future, then how was he anywhere in the past? This school of thought that's mostly pushed by certain evangelical Christians in our society is a dangerously slippery slope for them, because it shows the path away from their God.

Plame The Messenger?

2005-07-29T14:15:00.000-04:00

I saw these links over on Boston Phoenix media critic Mark Jurkowitz's Media Log blog, and also based the title of this post on his. Jurkowitz brings up the continuing questions surrounding the Valerie Plame affair as prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, ostensibly, continues to investigate who leaked her name to columnist Robert Novak. The question I always had was why, if Novak spoke to the grand jury and offered them enough information that he doesn't face contempt charges, are other journalists going to jail? Wouldn't they only be able to give the same information as Novak apparently did?

Finally hearing what Karl Rove told Time magazine's Matthew Cooper didn't really resolve anything. Plenty of wiggle room for Rove in his statements to Cooper. Rove claims that he heard about Plame's CIA identity from some other media source, but he's not sure who it was. But the big questions revolve around Judith Miller, of The New York Times, who remains in jail for refusing to divulge her source. Apparently, it's a different source than Cooper's. Novak has said he first heard about Plame from some non-Rove source, but he hasn't publically stated who it was.

Many journalists have taken up Miller's cause, saying that the prosecutor is unjustly applying pressure to a journalist who is nobly trying to protect her source. But there are some contrary theories out there, notably from Arianna Huffington, who says that Miller is in jail because the source she is trying to protect is herself.

Huffington outlines a theory that Miller was trying to maintain the last shreds of credibility related to her Iraq stories. Like many other reporters, Miler trumpeted the Bush Administration call to war, complete with credibly reporting the now-discredited links between Iraq and the infamous Niger uranium. Joe Wilson puts out an op-ed piece blasting the White House for repeating these claims that he knew, from personal investigation, to be false. That calls into question her reporting. Huffington lays out the rest of the theory:

So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

All very interesting and compelling, in a conspiracy-theory sort of way. But as Jurkowitz points out, the simpler explanation is usually the correct one. There's no actual evidence at this point to say that Miller leaked the information to the White House or even had the information to give.

For a polar opposite view of Miller, look to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The committee organized a visit to her jail cell with media celebrities, including Tom Brokaw. Miller is perceived as sacrificing herself for the principles of good journalism in this statement. That will remain the accepted view of her situation until and unless any evidence to the contrary surfaces.

A Corny Strategy

2005-07-28T15:27:00.000-04:00

The House just passed a $14.5 billion energy bill, the main goal of which is apparently to send billions of dollars in tax breaks to energy companies but not really do anything to solve our nation's growing energy problems.

The insanely poor thinking in this bill would take too long to go over in detail. It doesn't reduce our oil dependence and it doesn't look for ways to reduce demand. Here's an overview from the Globe story:

Of the bill's $14.5 billion in tax breaks and incentives over 10 years, nearly $9 billion is earmarked for oil and gas, electricity and coal companies. Less than $5 billion will be spent on energy efficiency and renewable energy programs.

Well, you might say, at least some money is going to "energy efficiency and renewable energy programs." But one of the provisions that's been touted with extreme irrationality by some environmentalists is the bill's requirement to nearly double U.S. ethanol use by 2012. The Globe says that ethanol is mixed with gasoline to make it burn more cleanly, but environmental groups and the corn lobby say that increased ethanol use will actually decrease our dependence on oil, effectively replacing some of it with the corn product.

A couple problems here. First, 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year (as the bill requires by 2012) would hardly put a dent in our oil imports (we used 134 billion gallons last year). Also, when ethanol is mixed with gasoline, the mixture evaporates more quickly, which will force refiners to alter their product. This, according to a GAO report, will increase the cost of refining. Ethanol also contains only two-thirds the energy as gasoline. So blending it with gas reduces the heat content of the fuel, forcing you to buy more to do the same amount of work.

But here's the really troubling feature of ethanol. According to a recent report (PDF) by David Pimental of Cornell University and Tad Patzek of the University of California - Berkeley, it actually takes more energy to produce ethanol than the amount of energy you get back. Basically, they determined that it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to make ethanol from corn than it actually contains. So, increasing ethanol production will actually take more fossil fuel use than just using fossil fuels to make gasoline. Committing to more ethanol production will have the likely effect of increasing our need and use of fossil fuels. This makes no sense. (Note: The study was done with no money from the oil companies, and Pimental has no ties to oil companies. Patzek, however, runs the UC Oil Consortium, which is funded by oil companies. His ethanol research isn't funded by oil companies. The UC Oil Consortium seems to be mostly concerned with the geology behind oil drilling.)

At any rate, this so-called "energy bill" is mainly a handout to energy companies (though it does contain some subsidies and tax breaks for wind, geothermal and solar industries). It does little to put us on track to address our long-term energy needs. It's mostly just a tremendous gift to Bush's and DeLay's oil-industry friends.

I should also note that it does try to encourage more nuclear plants, which could help meet the country's energy needs. A lot of people are worried about nuclear power, of course, but we are a lot more knowledgeable about nuclear power than the Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl days. But regardless, there is also an argument to be made that we're a nation (and, increasingly, world) addicted to energy. It might be better to try to become more efficient rather than struggle to find more and more sources of energy.

More On Stem Cells

2005-07-28T13:23:00.000-04:00

William Saletan continues his series, "The Organ Factory," in Slate. Yesterday, he examined the basis for setting 14 days as the cutoff point for harvesting stem cells from embryos. His argument is that the timeframe is arbitrary, not based on the actual development of the embryo, but rather arrived at backwards by determining when scientists thought was a good timeframe and then crafting an argument to show there are no ethical problems with that timeframe. Saletan's earlier entries showed that differentiated stem cells hold much more promise to treat illness, so a lengthier timeframe, in the seven-week range, would be more useful. So, can we do the same sort of backwards rationale to develop an ethics that allows harvesting at seven weeks?

That's exactly what Saletan does in today's piece. He examines each ethical criterion and shows how it can be extended to reach the pragmatic goal of allowing harvesting of differentiated stem cells. Of course, the argument starts reaching into weighty issues, such as, when does an embryo become a sentient human life?

It will be interesting to see exactly where Saletan takes the discussion. Adopt a cynical tone of voice, and you can imagine Saletan laying out a logical trap that leaves the reader bereft of morals in a world in which anything goes and the most precious life is the one that can pay to manufacture beings deemed less worthy of living. But Saletan is intensely analytical in his previous writings (including a well-received book on the abortion debate). He seems to look at this issue and similar ones as existing on a continuum, where we must balance legitimate needs with moral considerations. And so we get ethics, something that we can change to meet social needs and the truths revealed by science.

Manufacturing Organs

2005-07-26T12:56:00.000-04:00

One of the big ethical questions of our time is focused on the debate over stem-cell research. Few lines of medical research have shown such promise to treat or cure a variety of chronic illnesses as stem-cell research. Some proponents have overblown its potential, but nonetheless, it's easy to reasonably draw the conclusion that stem-cell research could lead to treatments for Type I diabetes, paralysis and many degenerative diseases.

But ethics remains the big roadblock to research. And many of the ethical concerns are actually moral issues based on a poor understanding of the science involved. Many raise religious objections when an embryo is destroyed to harvest stem cells. Folks with these objections typically don't have a problem with using adult stem cells, but adult stem cells have not been found to be as adaptable as embryonic stem cells.

This week in Slate, William Saletan tackles a very interesting line of research that promises to really slap people in the face with ethical questions. In his series, The Organ Factory, Saletan examines how stem cells differentiate into the various organs of the body. If you can coax stem cells into forming, say, pancreatic islet cells, you can maybe transplant those into a diabetic, potentially curing their disease. But researchers have found that it is exceedingly difficult to successfully cause this differentiation in vitro, or, basically, in the lab. You can easily do it, however, in vivo -- when the cells are still in an embryo. In animal experiments, researchers have successfully grown differentiated stem cells and transplanted those cells when they've been grown in the embryo. Much less success for test tube differentiation.

Part one of the series describes the process while hinting at some of the ethical problems to come. Part two further explores the differences between in vitro and in vivo cell growth. The ethical problem still looms, and Saletan promises to get to it. In short, to cure someone of a chronic disease, would it be OK to create an embryo using their cells (a clone), let it grow for six or seven weeks, and then destroy it to harvest the tissues needed for the cure? As Saletan states, we already permit this, from an ethics standpoint, for the first two weeks. Why stop there?

Kowtowing To The Right

2005-07-25T15:11:00.000-04:00

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has said that he hasn't decided whether he'll run for president in 2008. He's always said that he plans to remain committed to the people of Massachusetts. His actions speak louder than his words.

Today, Romney vetoed a law passed by the state Legislature that would require hospitals to offer the so-called "morning-after pill" to rape victims and specially trained pharmacists to do the same for patients without a prescription. The pill is a hormone that prevents ovulation, stops the egg from being fertilized by sperm or stops the fertilized egg from attaching itself to the uterine wall.

With the veto, Romney exposes his hypocrisy by putting the lie to his campaign statement that he supported wider access to the pill. He seems to have fallen into the social conservative trap of equating this pill with abortion, or more specifically, with RU-486, the pill that will induce an abortion. This actually prevents conception and essentially acts like a birth-control pill.

With the veto, Romney sides with the extreme fringe of the right wing. The vast majority of Americans support the right to contraception, which is all this pill does. It seems that the Massachusetts governor is simply providing some padding to his Republican resume for a national run, especially since the actual effect of his veto is meaningless. Both the Senate and House passed the legislation by veto-proof margins.

A Gripe About Blogger

2005-07-25T12:19:00.000-04:00

Just a point I wanted to make about my profile listed in the right-hand column. When you make your profile on Blogger, it has a place for you to enter your birthday. I just put in the date itself, not the year, in part because it's never really that good of an idea to enter too much personal information in online profiles. But Blogger then takes that information and presents it to the world as an astrological sign, rather than the actual birthday. So here I am, pitching a site dedicated to rationality, and I've got my astrological sign on it. Seems like a bit of a disconnect.

This does, however, bring to mind a story from a couple weeks ago related to NASA's Deep Impact mission. This was the one where they smashed a probe into the comet Tempel 1 in the hopes of learning more about what comets are made of, how they form, etc. But a Russian astrologist is now suing the agency for $300 million in damages because, she claims, the impact has changed the trajectory of the comet, thus altering her horoscope and future (and apparently everyone else's, too).

The astrologer, Marina Bai, must have an extremely complex chart if it includes such objects as comets in its calculations. It makes you wonder what the hapless medieval astrologers did back in the day, when they didn't even know of the existence of all of the planets (not to mention the recently discovered Sedna)!

File this as another example of ignorance and superstition costing people real money and time, as the Russian courts are obligated to take the time to dismiss the case, if nothing else.

In case you were wondering, as a Cancer, I'm supposedly very emotional and intuitive. Shrewd, imaginative and good at problem-solving. I also worry a lot, cling to others, have an inability to let go when something's over, and get moody. Relatives and friends take heart! I apparently give very inventive presents. Of course, "inventive" can have multiple meanings, not all good. I should apparently become a teacher, or possibly a psychic healer. I could be a doctor, or maybe work from home. I'm not supposed to be able to work well under pressure, so I guess I shouldn't have become a journalist.

Oh, and I'm drawn to organized religion.

Just like everyone, I see some hits and some MAJOR misses. With this rate of inaccuracy, I think Ms. Bai should have other concerns about her prognostication tool of choice.

Chips That Heal

2005-07-22T15:20:00.000-04:00

There was a recent news story that was picked up by several stations across the country resurrecting the idea of a link between cell phones and cancer. As before, there is no proof of any link between cancer and whatever emanations come out of cell phones. The story was focused on some neurosurgeons who believe there is a link between cell phones and brain cancer. This is not based on actual evidence, of course, just some anecdotal evidence. Doctors quoted in the piece said that people who use cell phones a lot complain of headaches and have difficulty concentrating and memory problems.

Again, no actual evidence provided. The hypothesis, though, is that microwaves coming out of cell phones basically cooks your brain. Never mind that the amount of radiation coming out of phones is much lower than it used to be. Just a bit of fear-mongering, I suppose.

But that fear-mongering does allow some people to line their pockets. I turn your attention to this nifty Web site, which promises to protect you from the vile energies escaping from your cell phone (and any other electronic device). BIOPRO offers, among other products, a Unversal EMF Harmonization Chip, which seems to:

function as a harmonizer, a mediator between potentially damaging electronics and human life.

The chip supposedly changes the energy vibrations coming out of electronic devices into vibrations that match the vibrations in our own bodies. They really like vibrations over at BIOPRO. The way the chip does this is by taking advantage of the quantum phenomenon of "entaglement," in which two particles will exhibit the same quantum characteristics even if they are separated by a great distance. The creator of this product obviously does not know how entanglement works. The chip somehow just magically entangles passing particles of energy, causing them to "vibrate" in a new way.

Of course, the site is also filled with a slavish devotion to the junk science of homeopathy, a cure-all similarly based on magic and wishful thinking. The idea behind that is that water can be "energized" and take on properties of certain substances. A homeopathic remedy is created by diluting a substance in water so much that none of the original substance remains. The water, good old H2O, has somehow been changed to contain the "energies" of the substance. Bizarre.

BIOPRO adopts the teachings of a certain Dr. Masaru Emoto, who claimed that liquid water has a crystalline structure that's, essentially, prettier when subjected to -- once again -- good vibrations. Water seems to like Mozart and Beethoven, but doesn't particularly enjoy heavy metal. It also will magically respond when words written on paper are taped to its container. You read that right. He actually claims that by taping the words "thank you" (or even the Japanese "arigato") to a glass of water, it will assume a crystalline structure.

So these people have no idea how liquids, especially water, actually behave. They make magic products that mystically synch energy to your own body's "vibrations." And they use, of course, tortured quantum mechanics to try to give some semblance of science to the whole thing.

The cost? A single chip for your cell phone costs $27.95. But a cordless phone needs two chips, a car needs three, and a microwave needs a whopping four chips to be safe! Based on BIOPRO's handy chart, I would need 44 chips to protect my household, which would cost me $1,229.80, plus shipping. Family packs are available that could cut that price.

But that's not all! The chips can only protect me from my own devices! What about when I'm out in the rest of the world, filled with all those harmful EM fields? Not to worry, BIOPRO has the QLink Pendant, which zaps those nasty fields. Only costs $269 each. Only $807 to protect my household. Of course, I wonder if I would still need the chips...

And then you need to buy the BIONutratonic Drink to undo any damage. A four-bottle case seems like quite the bargain for just $215.

It's amazing that a company can get away with selling junk like this. It's even more amazing that people buy them. But you see celebrities and athletes wearing magnets and titanium collars all the time. They claim that the devices give them amazing energy. Like they've never heard of a placebo effect before.

So even in a case like this, when all the pseudoscience can be shown to be completely wrong, people still believe it. The modern-day snake oil salesmen take advantage of the pervasive lack of critical thinking skills...

First Post

2005-07-22T14:23:00.000-04:00

This is my first post on Blogger. The intention is to get this up and running, and then possibly move it offsite once I have a design ready and hosting set up. And then it's on to podcasts!