This is a continuation of a piece I did for the last Carnival of Cordite. I lied about getting to politics this time. I wanted to spend a little more time on what ‘gun culture’ is. Again, this ain’t for us, this is for people who don’t understand us. If yall like it enough, pass the links on to hoplophobes

I wanted to come back to what ‘gun people’ are. A lot of us people in metro areas have very little exposure to guns, beyond seeing them in news flashes when another gang shootout occurs.
Well, that’s your first problem right there. Gangbangers look at guns in a fundamentally different way than the ‘gun culture’ does. For gangbangers, a gun is nothing more than a tool used to instill fear in others and kill them. Now, I think no matter how warped peoples’ perception of gun owners is, we can all agree that most of them don’t see firearms in quite that light.

Yeah, I think we can concede that. And we’ve talked a bit about how guns are as much a hobby as they are a means of providing for the family or a means of self defense. I think the number one thing that mystifies people like me is the way you can be so casual about such devastating and powerful weapons.
You’re making the mistake of equating familiarity with lack of respect. As an animal handler, I’ve been around, worked with, and annoyed things that could easily kill or maim any one of us. But I’ve become comfortable enough with them that I don’t spend my entire time jumping and running like a scared little girl. I’m familiar with them, and even comfortable, but not for a moment do I lose my respect for them. Doing that is a bad idea with a 300lb pig, a protective cow, or a male Patas monkey with his 3-4″ canines. That’s the same attitude we have with guns. We understand how they work and what makes them go bang, so we’ll handle them just like we would any other dangerous tool like a chop saw or an arc welder.

I’m not denying that there’s a few yahoos out there with no respect for firearms who pay no heed for safety, just that they are few and far between. And that they are outright shunned from the actual ‘gun community’. I’ve actually got a story for you that fits right in with just how well drilled into us gun safety is. This came when I was very new to shooting. I’d only been twice, actually. 3 of us were sitting on the porch playing with one of those little CO2 powered BB pistols–a fairly realistic looking one based on a real modern pistol–shooting at beercans after class. One of our pledges came up and wanted to try it out, so of course one of us handed it to him, showing how to cock it and how to line up the sights. He turned around asking a question, pointing it at us (accidentally), at which point all of us jumped over the rail shouting almost simultaneously “NEVER point a firearm at something you don’t intend to shoot.” So ingrained in our heads are the rules of firearm safety that we readily generalize them to anything similar, even very early in our shooting career. In fact, I was taught the rules of gun safety, forced to commit them to memory, and made to repeat them several times before I was ever allowed to pull the trigger the first time. And this was out in the backwoods on a friend’s farm with a bunch of 20-something yahoos. Not the most mature group you can find.

I guess you guys always seemed so gung ho and bloodthirsty because we automatically equate guns with violence. I can see the role politics plays in causing yall to support an organization whose President once screamed “From My Cold Dead Hands” considering the extent some people go to demonize it. Beyond politics what makes the bond of your hobby seem so strong to outsiders?
The political aspect has nothing to do with the strength of our community. Our community would be like this even if The Kalifornia Krew and the New England Elite weren’t trying to destroy it every waking minute. Now, I’m about to make a sexist comment, but bear with me.

Women bond over emotions. They bond by talking about their relationships, their fears, their desires. Men bond over things. Both doing things and playing with things. It’s just how we are. Casual acquaintances develop in the gym, admiring each others’ rides, or getting some help from your neighbor on the latest home improvement project. Guns are a thing to do like any other. And they offer a broad range of ways to make conversation while being manly. We can talk about anything from the beautiful wood grain of the stock to how big a boom it makes to the role of aerodynamics in bullet stability. ‘Gun culture’ isn’t any different in this respect from hot rodders or sports enthusiasts. It’s just men bonding over a common interest.

Now, I’m not saying women aren’t a part of gun culture or aren’t welcome, not by a long shot. Besides, every female shooter I know is a better shot than I am, although they probably don’t enjoy going through 100 rounds of 12 gauge as fast as you can pull the trigger, like I do. And one or two female firearms enthusiasts I know are just as good friends as any male shooter. Just as no matter what we do, there will always be more male woodworkers than there are females, there will probably be more male firearm enthusiasts. I do have to say there is something inordinately sexy about a woman who knows how to shoot a rifle, use a drill, or even better, both, though.

Tell me a bit more about the way yall use guns.
Well personally, I bought my little .22 to develop my skill level as a shooter, to hone the fine motor control and the mental state require to put a bullet where you want to, when you want to. I also bought it because I could. It’s an expression of my 2nd Amendment right as an American citizen. It’s also a political statement about my distaste for overbearing government, for another. But one of the main reasons for the gun is because I see a lot of road ‘nearly-killed’ living on the outskirts of town as I do. I’m a Hindu, and an animal lover. Nothing tears me up worse than seeing an animal suffer. And if you’ve ever seen an animal suffer like some of these guys do, you’d pull the trigger yourself no matter how much of a pacifist and hoplophobe you are.

At the most casual end you have ‘plinking’. Taking a .22 (decent ones can be had for 150-300 dollars) and shooting at tin cans in the back 40. The most practical is hunting. While some shoot for trophy alone, the vast majority I talk to eat everything they shoot. Others go ‘varminting’, which is taking out full fledged pests like prairie dogs at hundreds of yards (so you don’t spook them). Varminting is some of the most skilled real-world hunting done, being as the targets are tiny and the distances are extreme (up to 500yds).

And then there are the competitions. There’s things like bowling pin and silhouette shooting, which are a lot like plinking in that it’s often a much more relaxed atmosphere and guns can be plenty competitive without spending thousands of dollars on a rig. And then there’s ‘practical’ shooting competitions, that take into account real-world good guy/bad guy situations. These include IDPA, IPSC, and other things like 3-gun (rifle, shotgun, and pistol) matches and many others that I’m too lazy to mention. And then there’s more formal target shooting competitions, these range from NRA High Power matches to 1000 yard big bore rifle matches (these guys got talent. Some of them have put 10 shots into under a foot. I can barely do that at 300 yds). At the most ridiculous end of the whole thing is benchrest competition. These rifles can weigh up to 30 lbs (which even a big strapping lad like me wouldn’t want to tote anywhere. They often have hair triggers and other completely impractical equipment. And, to top it off, the gun is then strapped to a table and adjusted in a vice. Kinda defeats the purpose of marksmanship if you ask me. But, it does have its benefits. These guys are kind of the NASCAR of our hobby in a way. What works in the racecar on Sunday, comes to the dealership showroom floor…10 years from now. A lot of the refinements on modern rifles were made in direct response to benchrest-driven developments.

And then there’s defense. Self explanatory. Someone threatens you or your family, you rack the pump, thumb the hammer, or click off the safety. If necessary you shoot.

Finally, there’s the curiosity aspect. Some guns are fun to own just because they’re a piece of history. There’s something about holding an ODCMP M1 Garand in your hand, knowing that this gun was once held by a WW2 soldier, possibly in Normandy, or maybe in Southeast Asia. Some guns are just mechanical oddities. Like the French-designed LeMat pistol, a civil war era revolver that in addition to firing ‘normal’ pistol rounds, had a shotgun chamber and barrel integrated into the gun, giving it that little extra oomph a cavalry soldier might need. Me? I prefer guns which are both historical and curious. I’m too poor to collect anything at the moment, though.

An interesting and hugely growing new segment is the Cowboy Action Shooting crew (see here , here , and here as well). This is what happens when the Society for Creative Anachronisms and ‘gun culture’ produce a bastard child after a night of heavy drinking. Cowboy Action are all about nostalgia and history, while still being a competitive group. They even dress in clothing from the same era as the guns they shoot. Many of the guns (and some of the clothing accessories) you’ll see on this circuit are the real deal. Honest-t0-god 19th century weapons and accoutrements that might actually have been used by cowboys. CAS is one of the best examples I can offer of just how much more there is to firearms than violence.

Some people would say hunting is barbaric. Especially that varminting stuff. I hear you can kill hundreds in a day doing that.
I used to think hunting was barbaric too, and then I matured a little. I eat meat, you probably eat meat, more than 90% of us in this country eat meat. An animal had to be killed to get us that meat. I still can’t hunt though. I’m a wuss and an animal lover. If I had to kill to eat meat, I’d probably become a vegetarian. Which is why in some ways hunters are superior to you and I. At least they’re honest and forthright (and strong) enough to actually see the process through from start to finish. And many people don’t realize how ethical hunters are. It’s drilled into them from the youngest age that you do not take the shot unless it’ll be a clean kill. You do not want an animal to die in pain hours after the shot. Kids who take bad shots are usually banned from hunting for the rest of the trip. A crippling shot was even the spur of one of the most famous revolver shots in history. Elmer Keith, father of the magnum pistol, once made a 6o0yd killing shot with a handgun (more or less unheard of) because a friend had made a merely crippling one on an animal. Keith’s goal was to dispatch this animal as fast and as painlessly as possible. If it had gotten away, it would’ve died hours later suffering with every breath.

It took me even longer to agree with the practice of varminting. And unlike hunting, I still do have some moral qualms about it. Practically though, varminting is a necessary part of agriculture. Prairie dogs, groundhogs, crows, and other animals can eat right through a field as easily as a visit from an NFL offensive line can bankrupt an all-you-can-eat buffet. If we want to be fed, and we want to be fed cheaply, pests need to be controlled. As a practical side of it, though, it’s pretty clear that varmints are so many in number that this practice has little effect on their total numbers.

In some cases, it’s morally right to hunt. Feral cat hunts are one of the most widely decried and most misunderstood practices in the Western world. As we all know, cats like to get loose. And cats, unlike dogs, have kept a lot of their hunting instincts. Also, unlike dogs, they evolved to be solitary hunters. A single feral cat can kill literally hundreds of native birds in a year. There is no natural predators that wasteful or effective. Feral cats have been tied to the endangerment of literally tens to hundreds of species of local birds and small mammals. They’ve even doubtless caused a few to go extinct. Feral cat hunts remain the only way to destroy this invasive species and protect the natural world. By protesting these hunts, PETA is attempting to condemn the natural inhabitants of this country to extinction.

Death is a part of life. Many animals live by killing. This is true of us humans. How many truly virile, strong, energetic vegetarians do you know of? We’re built to eat meat. Killing these animals, so long as its done ethically, is not a moral issue. In fact, as I mentioned, in some cases, hunting is the only way to prevent even more damage to the animal world than we’ve already done.

I see what you’re getting at. Firearms are a hobby, and they’re tools. But there are lots of hobbies and tools out there, most of which people don’t get up in arms over [excuse the pun] when someone tries to ban them.
Well a large part of this has to do with just how many of us there are. Most homes in the US have cars in the garage or on the driveway. But very few of those cars belong to actual automotive enthusiasts. Many, if not most, homes in the US have firearms in them. But because of the nature of the way we treat guns (with respect) and the way we use them, most gun owners are hobbyists. But we’re far from the only local hobbyist group. As the EPA and CARB try harder and harder to make hot rodders’ lives hell, SEMA has spent more and more time, effort, and money lobbying for us. The BATF recently tried to declare model rocketry illegal by claiming that model rocket engines are explosive (they’re not). The response was swift, with activists getting the courts to strike down the regulation within months.

We just happen to be the only hobby that gun control activists see as full of bloodthirsty, wanton individuals who live to kill. It’s quite upsetting to more or less be the victims of character assassination that people like the Million Mom March, Violence Policy Center, and Doctors For Sensible Gun Laws (read: political activist douchebags who don’t understand the realities of the world and need to stick to medicine) perpetrate against us everyday. To give you an analogy. I trained as a heavyweight boxer. I’m not as strong or as fast as I used to be, but I’m still a big bastard, and the training didn’t disappear. Would you declare that just because I’m trained in punching that I’m therefore a violent man? And if you did, how would I feel about it? And would I be justified in my virulent response?

Good point. Till next week. Time for politics. You’re excessively verbose and pompous by the way.
I know.

Might want to turn down your volume…

There’s nothing wrong with a little superficiality. Heck, there’s nothing wrong with a lot of superficiality, so long as its balanced by an interest in the deeper parts of a person’s character as well. I’m one of the most superficial people I know. I’m also one of the most picky bastards when it comes to aspects of personality and character. Which, along with poor grooming habits and the disposition of a badger woken up early from hibernation, explains why I spend most of my time so incredibly single.

Between sports, rehab, and being too crippled to play sports anymore but not crippled enough I wouldn’t stupidly attempt it anyway, I’ve been something of a gym rat for a good chunk of my life. And I lived in a fraternity for a couple years. Between the two, I’ve seen a good spectrum of the depths (shallows?) we’ll go to in order to achieve the perfect ‘look’. And we inevitably and almost always go too far.

It’s distressing.

Makeup, clothing, body sculpting, all of it is soo argh.

I’ve often said that the best time to tell how attractive a girl is is right when she gets out of bed in the morning, wearing a baggy old sweatshirt and a pair of shorts, devoid of makeup and her hair all over the place. Only a girl who looks beautiful then is beautiful at all. Any other time, you’re not just looking at the girl, you’re looking at the makeup, you’re looking at the slimming effect of those pants, and the way that bra pushes her boobies together. You’re not really looking at her.

And of course some girls make it even worse in the gym. There’s not taking care of yourself, there’s looking fit, natural, and oh so sexy, and then there’s looking so sculpted you don’t even look real.

I’m not even talking about the Nicole Richies and the Lindsey Lohans of the world. Although that’s bad, they’re clearly so far removed from normal thought patterns that there’s clearly some psychological body image disorder at work (Anorexia, Bulimia, or weight-loss-crack).

I’m more talking about those girls that practically have six packs, and better muscle definition than many male athletes. Although they’re putting the time in to get their bodies like that, instead of relying on quick fixes like makeup and slimming clothing design, they’re still guilty of trying to change their appearance to an excessive level.

Which is why I’m so enthralled with Shakira (music video).

Shakira’s definitely fit, and she’s definitely petite. She’s also got enough body fat that she can menstruate. With some of those girls, I wonder if they can say the same. She’s got that little belly bulge and ain’t afraid of displaying it. She’s also–minus the dancing skills–the kind of girl you actually see in real life. In jeans and a t-shirt, day to day wear, she still exudes sexuality.

It all comes back to signalling honesty. It’s a term used in economics and behavioral ecology. Basically you want to know that what you’re looking at is an accurate reflection of the quality that it represents. An example that gym rats or people in physical professions might know is physical size versus actual strength. Beyond a certain point, they don’t correlate very well. At 190lbs, I could outlift many of the 230-250lb bodybuilders I saw in the gym. So could most 190lb athletes, come to think of it.

Point is, you want to know that what you’re looking at is the real girl. I want to know that the girl I ask out on a date is the same as the girl that woke up that morning. I want to know that the body I’m looking at is part of who she is, and not the 10 hours a week she spends in the gym. I want to know that when all the crap is stripped away it’s her I’m attracted to.

Part of this is signalling honesty, but part of it is that physical aspects really are important to the greater whole of a person. At the most basic level, it shows that a person is comfortable with who they are and don’t feel the need to hide anything. But it goes deeper than that. There is no mind-body dualism. The brain and the body are two intimately connected parts of a whole. My personality is certainly shaped by my physical attributes, as anyone who knows me will attest to. Except my confidence around women, which is far higher than it should be for a man with a face like mine.

Point is, there is nothing more sexy than a girl wearing little or no makeup, wearing something simple like a tanktop or a plain shirt and a pair of old jeans. Especially if it’s topped by a cowboy hat. And even more if she’s blonde and blue eyed. And if one of those girls is reading this blog right now, she needs to get ahold of me, I’ve got a ring for that finger.

So yes, yes I am a superficial bastard. But I’m not shallow.

Go. Now.

Lots of good stuff, including a piece by yours truly from a while back. Skeptic’s Circle is always a fun one cuz it covers so many aspects of life and learning.

God, sometimes ‘educators’ and ‘mental health professionals’ can be so blind I’m not sure how they function. One of my criticisms of the validity of ADHD has long been that a human child and a traditional classroom environment couldn’t be stranger bedfellows. Can you really think of any place more ill-suited to a child’s temperament? Hell, even now in medical school, us twenty-somethings can barely stand to sit still for an hour, listening to a droning and boring lecturer. And yet we medicate children for that very inability.

Putting an animal in an environment it wasn’t really meant for tends to result in some strange behavior. If you’ve ever been around caged monkeys, or an inside dog its first time in a national park, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I’ve long held that ADHD behaviors are a combination of 1) A defect of the classroom and 2) A lack of discipline. Because that’s how ADHD tends to be diagnosed. In the classroom. Indeed, in ‘gifted’ kids, who act almost identical to ADHD kids (but have a high IQ), this is exactly the rationale given; the classroom is ill-suited to a ‘gifted’ child’s learning style and temperament. Personally I don’t see how learning style and temperament correlate to IQ so solidly that we can say that ADHD kids don’t simply share these atributes with gifted kids.

Anyway, on to the article.

The fidgety boys and girls in Phil Rynearson’s classroom get up and move around whenever they want, and that’s just fine with him. In fact, stretching, swaying and even balancing on big wobbly exercise balls are the point of this experimental classroom.

One of the reasons they’re trying this out is to actually curb obesity. Which would probably help, honestly. General activity level is a good correlate of Basal Metabolic Rate. While these kids’ fidgeting, swaying, and hopping probably burns minimal calories as a form of exercise it will probably go a long way to helping them operate at a higher burn rate even at rest.

But the interesting thing here is just how similar this is to the Montessori system. Some call that system ‘anarchy’, and a ’structure-less free for all’. Far from it, it allows the child to work in a way that suits them. It’s one of the most effective schooling programs in the world, in my opinion. And if it is at all possible, it’s the route my kids’ll go.

The data aren’t in yet. But anecdotally, Rynearson and Superintendent Jerry Williams say the fourth- and fifth-graders are more focused on the curriculum than their peers in a comparison group in an ordinary classroom. And there are fewer distractions than in the traditional setup — where a lot of time is spent trying to get children to sit still.
“Sitting isn’t bad,” Rynearson said. “But I think kids need to move.”

Funny, for all the crap that more traditional-minded ‘educators’ spew about Montessori, this is exactly what one would predict if they opened their eyes. It’s exactly what you see in pre-schoolers and early grade schoolers in Montessori. So why not later on?

The students had mixed views of the experiment. Stephanie Mueller said she liked working on the computers, especially being able to repeat parts of lessons. And the freedom to move is “better than sitting down all day,” she said.

Heh. Expected by anyone with a brain.

Williams, the superintendent, has already been converted to the new concept and thinks it could be expanded, with or without the computers and iPods. “I would love to have this move from a single classroom to the whole school,” he said.

Superintendent Williams. Mr. Rynearson. I could kiss you. And no, not in a Brokeback way (the name Cowboy is in my Blog title, and I haven’t made one Brokeback joke yet, so deal). It’s people like you that can save our kids.

Until learning environments actually suited to humans are more universally instituted, we have no business talking about ADHD, whatsoever. Humans were designed to operate in a much more fluid, much more dynamic environment than the classroom. We evolved from monkeys, hyper, intelligent, curious, monkeys. Could you imagine a monkey in a classroom doing well? Nope, neither can I. If we’d evolved from cows, stupid, slow, stationary, cows, we might not be having this ‘ADHD epidemic’.

As time goes on, the medical profession advises people on their lifestyles more and more everyday. Pets relieve stress and extend your lifespan. Just 20 minutes of walking a day can make you healthier. Reduce your cholesterol. And my favorite; if you’re a trucker, take out your wallet so your spine doesn’t get crooked. We still have anti-anxiety medication, and we still have LDL-lowering drugs, and we can treat that arthritis, but we certainly don’t ignore the environmental component.

We understand that the human body isn’t necessarily designed to take the environment and influences we put it through. We need to extend that perspective to the human mind.

I’ve been pretty upset about the emphasis on embryonic stem cells as the wave of the future for quite a while. And about a week ago I mentioned some work in adult mice demonstrating a new location of Adult Stem Cells.

This new article demonstrates their therapeutic potential in fixing damage to the insulating myelin sheaths that surround nerves and allow them to fire properly (just like the plastic insulation on the copper wiring in your house). These are some of the toughest and rarest types of injuries to recover from. Even in those who do heal, the process occurs as slowly as 1cm a year if the body is left to its own devices.

Not much to say, except for two quotes I want to point out.

Previous studies also have reported improvement in paralyzed lab animals with transplanted cells. But experts said the new work was notable because the cells were taken from adult animals rather than fetuses or embryos, and they produced an effect even when implanted two weeks after the injury.

It’s good to see they’re finally going after a viable treatment method which we’ve known could work theoretically since the early 1990’s. Embryonics (which aren’t as practical or as viable), have been pursued in the area of nerve regrowth for nigh on a decade. For no good reason.

But this next bit gives me hope:

The transplanted cells, called neural precursor cells, are not as versatile as embryonic stem cells because they can give rise only to cells of the nervous system, Fehlings said.

I can count the number of times that adult stem cells have been touted as more viable than embryonics in the popular (and scientific) press on the fingers of one hand. It’s good to see that it’s becoming something of a trend.

As a final comment, I’ll add that this study is an important step forward in undoing the embryonic propaganda and understanding how to work with cells that aren’t likely to turn into ersatz Cancer on you. For their next move, I’d like to see these guys try to use self-harvested neuronal precursors (taking cells from the same animal you reintroduce them to). Because of various things I don’t feel like getting into, transplants from a donor to a recipient for nerves is a lot less of an issue–and a lot more viable–than it is for other tissues. Since this is a more or less proven application of stem cell therapy, it’d be a great starting point to try self-harveste stem/precursor cells out.

Carnivals are good. I’ve participated in one or two, and intend to ramp that up as time goes on. The three carnivals I habitually read are Carnival of Cordite, Carnival of Liberty, and Tangled Bank. But I particularly love Carnival of Liberty because of just how well thought out so many of the posts are.

The 38th edition of the Carnival of Liberty brings an interesting post about psychiatric medication and children from Homeland Stupidity.

Much as I’d like to politicize the prescriptionists vs. the therapists (yes I just coined the term ‘prescriptionist’), I’ll refrain from it for now. But I’ll say that there is a party that overwhelmingly and unendingly attempts to dispel the notion that one’s destiny is under their own control. Does this correlate to a school of psychiatry that medicates for everything and everything? I dunno. I might be reading too deep into it. Ok, done. Moving on.

The federal government wants to perform mental health screening on infants and get them started on drugs which they will take for their entire lives, if the drugs don’t kill them first.
[snip]
…with over 60% of foster children in Texas, nearly two-thirds in Massachusetts, and 55% of foster children in Florida on as many as 16 different psychiatric drugs.

I ask myself every day where this trend started. It’s the reason I’m in med school instead of playing with monkeys fulltime (yes, I’m bitter). He traces it to Texas Medication Algorithm Project. While it’s true that this is where psychotropic controls started as a public policy initative, the roots are far far deeper. Without getting too deeply into it (since I want to do that for next week, or maybe the week after…whenever these damn mid-terms are done), it’s due to a combination of the influence of Big Pharma, a lack of cognitive neuroscience education in psychiatrists (and psychologists), what may be a politically motivated push to make people feel helpless, and last of all, to ensure that patients have to keep coming back (repeat business and all). Dr. Helen talks a lot about this kind of stuff, so head there to read more. Also, google Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who talks at length about the medicalization of behavioral issues as a politcal move.

He mentions the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. This is an alternative organization to the AMA. And unlike the AMA, it doesn’t support blatant pseudo-science or leftist policy making under the guise of ‘professional interest’ in everything from handguns to education. There’s a reason AMA membership is declining. And there’s a reason I refused to join. The AAPS, however, has continued to impress me with their unbiased and apolitical nature.

The main message here is accurately made in the following paragraph:

“The criteria for diagnosing mental disorders are very vague in general, but are extremely vague and inaccurate for children,” Effrem wrote. “These grants will further subsidize the labeling and drugging of an alarmingly large population of young children with potent medications that have not been studied in that age group.”

Oh, and there’s one other little point. “The federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in mental health and early childhood issues and the record of success of these types of programs is abysmal.”

One thing Effrem didn’t mention is that many of these drugs and their effects are measured from the point of view of an external observer: is the child easier to control? Is my life a bit easier? A staggering example of this is that ADHD meds haven’t actually been proven to improve school performance. They control impulsive behavior. But then again, being on a crash after a speed binge would do that to anyone.

Michael Ostrolenk, a licensed psychotherapist and public policy consultant who founded the Medical Privacy Coalition, wrote, “Their influence [of the mental health establishment over government] causes our children to be labeled in infancy, and it creates a never-ending market for psychiatric drugs. The long term effects of these drugs on the brains of our children are unknown. They also create a market for other drugs used to treat the chronic side effects like obesity and diabetes, and they will be needed throughout the lives of those affected, enhancing drug company profits while bankrupting taxpayer funded programs. As these programs multiply, the use of politically motivated labeling and drugging for children who do not comply with the indoctrination of the federal curriculum will increase. Brave New World will appear less and less like fiction unless these programs are stopped.”

That really does say it all, doesn’t it. Considering how poor the science is behind many of these claims, it’s astonishing just how far they’re willing to push the medications on us.

This is a new group I’m trying to get off the ground. The reason for the ‘conservatives’ part is simple. Like it or not–and for reasons that kind of upset me–the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design debate has become a right vs. left thing. As the Republican Party become more and more theocratic everyday, it’s easy to understand why Intelligent Design has suddenly become a rallying point for many conservative state legislators and officials out here in flyover country. The Left hasn’t helped anything by pointing fingers and both consciously and unconsciously implying a correlation between ‘progressivism’ and evolution. A correlation that’s rationally false but one that’s been pushed ever since Karl Marx attempted to get Charles Darwin to endorse his book, continuing on through Alfred Russell Wallace’s avowed socialism, Robert Trivers’ membership in the Black Panthers, and, near as I can tell everyone on scienceblogs.com.

But, as bitter as I am, I don’t want to point fingers. For while those guys imply that evolution and leftism go hand in hand, I’m no better since I say the same thing about evolution and libertarianism/classical liberalism. And wow am I off track. Where I was going with this was that it was typically Republicans sponsoring these ID bills. So liberal evolutionists would lump in ID with the rest of their complaints about Republicans. Republicans would go on the defensive, and equate evolution-support with liberalism. Now, we have people like Sally Kern (state rep in Oklahoma) supporting these bills with perceived immunity, confident that the people who actually vote for them are creationists, like themselves.

From personal experience, that isn’t necessarily the case. I know plenty of conservatives and Republicans that are vehemently against Intelligent Design in all its forms being taught in the classroom. I’m one of them. I know far fewer who are creationists. My hope is that by organizing, collecting names (and credentials) of bonafide conservatives against ID, we can show the Republicans that this is not by any stretch a partisan issue.

It’s to that end I’m attempting to do this. I live in Oklahoma, and we have a creationist bill in legislation right now, HB 2107. I’d love to see this quashed, I’d love to see similar stuff killed in Kansas as well. It’s in these areas particularly we need to make our voices heard. Anyway, comments, feedback, ideas on how best to do this would be appreciated. I’m just throwing the idea out there for now, seeing what sticks.

Petitions like those many of us filled out on the Union of Concerned Scientists webpage for endangered species are the most likely possibility. This isn’t intended to be a special interest group or anything, but a very specific tool that can be added to our arsenal as we fight the perversion of science by a party that’s lost touch with reality.

Conservatives and Leftists alike can email me with suggestions at:

nikhil-rao - at - ouhsc.edu

In the next month or so I hope to have a webpage up for Conservatives Against Intelligent Design and a petition you can fill out over the web including your name, degree, university affiliation, and location. I just wanted to get a buzz going and hopefully get some feedback from older and wiser heads.

Whether we’re talking about radical islamofascism or the statist/socialist pukes currently running the Democratic Party, everyone keeps telling me that [insert group here] are much more moderate as a whole than the people who act as their spokesmen (elected or not). Well then, FIX YOUR S***.

I’m getting tired of it, whether it’s someone telling me that most muslims are moderates even as terrorists keep beheading my spiritual brethren for daring to be Hindu and Buddhist in a traditionally Hindu and Buddhist area (Malaysia and Thailand), or threatening to behead my actual relatives for daring to pray on Hindu holy days in a traditionally Hindu area (Southern India), or bombing the subway stations I used every freaking day in London, or flying into the World Trade Center 3 weeks after I moved to New York. Yeah, I’m bitter.

Or it could be leftist friends telling me their party as a whole is much more moderate than Hillary, Ted, Diane, Barbara, and of course little Chucky.

I broke with the Republican Party a full year before I became 18, because I realized how far they’d strayed from their Jeffersonian roots. I’ve been throwing away my vote on lost causes ever since. But I’ve been vocal about it. And even brought a few over to the ‘dark side’ voting for those lost causes right alongside me. Eventually, those causes won’t be so lost because of the work of people who are willing to criticize their own, and the RP will either have to sit up and listen or take a backseat to a new conservative party.

Instead of saying “well, I’m not as bad as them,” you might want to put some effort into reforming the people who you claim as your representatives. Instead, people parade around two-faced liars who care nothing about their cause and everything about power as their leaders. Here’s something. If the DP worked at electing genuinely caring people who weren’t raging socialists, then I might not dismiss them out of hand. If CAIR didn’t spend so much time playing apologist and a little more time ruthlessly rooting out the corrupt, the power-hungry, and the evil that have hijacked Islam, then I might be a bit more sympathetic to their claim that ‘most muslims are peaceful.’

I’ve had many muslim friends, dated one, lived with another, go to school with a few right now, and they all have been moderate and peaceful individuals who were just as upset about the terrorist attacks as we were. Then again, I lived in a muslim neighborhood in England for a year. Where what I mostly saw was little bearded men six steps in front of their wives wearing floor-length eyeslit Burqas. In that muslim neighborhood, girls as young as 12 or 13 were freely prostituted out by their fathers. There were riots when they found out that school cafeteria meat wasn’t being blessed in proper Halal fashion. And on 7/7/05, there was cheering in the streets not three miles away from the bombing. “Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda,” you could hear as people were still being pulled bleeding from the wreckage at King’s Cross/St. Pancras.

The large majority of Democrats want us to believe they don’t want to bring our country into socialism. I’m willing to give their personal intentions the benefit of the doubt. But it’s been a long known fact that the entire ‘liberalism’ push both here and in Europe is a trojan horse for socialism, as so beautifully enshrined in the following quote:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”–Norman Thomas

Thomas was a big dude in the Socialist Party of the US, and I think he spoke those words before my Grandma was born. If Leftists want us to take them seriously, they’ll need to divorce themselves from their socialist roots. Which, considering they continue to vote in the epitome of socialist leaders (rich elitist powermongers who claim to be egalitarian and humanitarian while being nothing of the sort), they haven’t done yet. If Democrats want us to believe they’re not intent on driving the country into the same path Leftists took Europe down (see France riots and true economic indicators to see the stagnant results of socialism), they’d better put in more Zell Miller’s than Hillary Clintons.

Likewise, I don’t know how many of you saw this poll, which gives serious pause to the idea that terrorists and terrorist sympathizers are such a small proportion of the Islamic population. There’s a ray of hope in this poll too, in that many Muslims do feel loyal to their new countries and do see a burden on themselves to reform their own culture.

Here’s a few tidbits that’ll sicken you:

However, six per cent insist that the bombings were, on the contrary, fully justified.

Six per cent may seem a small proportion but in absolute numbers it amounts to about 100,000 individuals who, if not prepared to carry out terrorist acts, are ready to support those who do.

Of course more don’t condone these attacks, but they understand the motives of those who committed the atrocities (sound like Michael Moore?):

Moreover, the proportion of YouGov’s respondents who, while not condoning the London attacks, have some sympathy with the feelings and motives of those who carried them out is considerably larger - 24 per cent.

A substantial majority, 56 per cent, say that, whether or not they sympathise with the bombers, they can at least understand why some people might want to behave in this way.

Which means that more than half of all British muslims excuse the bombings to some degree.

And apparently 26% of the muslims in England don’t think that the terrorist philosophy is, to quote Tony Blair, “perverted and poisonous.” This scares me, a whole 1/4 of the respondents don’t find killing innocent women and children execrable.

But one of the most telling results, and the one guys on this side of the pond are most likely to be familiar with is this one:

However, nearly a third of British Muslims, 32 per cent, are far more censorious, believing that “Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end”.

And as a corollary, 18% of all Muslim immigrants feel no loyalty toward Britain whatsoever.

BUT WAIT I didn’t bring up this poll for the exclusive point of challenging just how moderate the majority of islamic immigrants are, I also brought it up to show that at least some Islamic immigrants are starting to *get it* with regard to being respected and accepted by their non-islamic peers:

For example, YouGov asked respondents how loyal they feel towards Britain. As the figures in the chart show, the great majority say they feel “very loyal” (46 per cent) or “fairly loyal” (33 per cent)

and…

YouGov asked respondents how they feel about Western society and how, if at all, they feel Muslims should adapt to it. A majority, 56 per cent, believe “Western society may not be perfect but Muslims should live with it and not seek to bring it to an end”.

Which, for all my philosophical libertarianism and patriotism is much the same way I feel about the west. I’ll never understand rampant humanism, the worship of progress, or the desecration of nature that seems implicit in the western ideal, but I like it here and don’t see it as my place to change that.

But, and this is the most important thing:

Despite these widespread doubts, a large majority of Britain’s Muslims clearly believe the time has come when Muslims must shoulder their share of the responsibility for preventing and punishing terrorist crimes such as those in London.

As the figures in the chart show, roughly a third of Muslims reckon they should assume “a great deal” of the responsibility and another third reckon they should assume at least “some” of it.

There’s more good stuff in there, including 73% who’d report people they suspected of planning a terror attack, and a further 47% who’d report imams they believed to be inciting hatred (which is great to hear). A full third of British Muslims acknowledge that the burden is on them. Based on my unscientific but very wide-ranging conversations with American Democrats, they pale in comparison in terms of their desire to reform their own party.

I’m sure you’ve noticed Bush’s plummeting poll numbers. Well under 50%. Only, this country is more or less evenly split between Socialist and Republican Parties. So anything below 50% more or less has to be coming from conservatives. That’s a lot of upset conservatives (up to 1/3 of us depending on the poll); Among my mostly conservative friends I can’t count one that would have said they do approve of Bush overall. Whether we’re talking Instapundit, Kim du Toit, or any of the other vocal conservative bloggers, we spend almost as much time excoriating Bush and the Republican Party as we do raging at socialists. We’ve admitted to ourselves that our party is losing direction, and we’re trying to bring it back in line. Heck, even talk radio is joining in the fracas. And let me tell you, it’s a scary day when Rush Limbaugh starts to sound like a ‘regular joe’ conservative.

The British Muslims clearly are starting to *get it*. CAIR and the DP could do well to listen.

If you want to have my respect, and if you want me to believe that you really are more moderate than your party/group seems to be, then FIX YOUR S***

I’m seeing a whole lot of mexican flags among those protestors. Shouldn’t that make one wonder? If they’re here, working and living off the fruit of our land, why are they showing allegiance first to another country?

And if that other country is so great, why are 10 million of them here illegally and begging us for permission to stay?

And if they think of themselves as patriotic to their home country, then why should they even want a ‘path to citizenship’?

You’ll forgive me for not being sympathetic to people who make every attempt to appear they only see the US as a means to an end.

I’m always amused when evolutionary and ecological studies confirm conventional wisdom when it comes to the mating game. Rockefeller researchers found that female mice prefered the scent of male mice who were already linked to other female mice to the scent of males who were not so encumbered.

Sound familiar?

I’m skeptical, but would be pleased if this were true. I still say that one of the biggest dangers to biodiversity and ecosystem protection is the fact that the poorest of the poor disproportionately increase their numbers despite having no room to do so.

Condoms, BC, and ending birth subsidies through foreign food and health aid (yech, i’m going to be lambasted for that) will be the only ways to keep these populations in check and the numbers down low enough that these people will be able to pull themselves out of poverty. All over Africa, India, and China, subsistence farmers are having more than 2 children. Anything over 2 children who survive to adulthood is more than the replacement rate (meaning local population increases). Subsistence farmers by definition only have enough land and produce enough food to support two adults and their children. So as long as subsistence farmers continue to have more than 2 children on average, they will continue to clearcut forest for more fields and continue to poach. And, because they’re already strapped for resources, their children will be poorer than they were.

I’ve been following ScienceDaily’s series on ADHD for a while now. The articles have been as fair to my side of the debate as one could possibly hope and they’ve never hesitated to show the holes in both sides of the ADHD treatment argument. The newest article is hands down my favorite. Honest and clear.

In discussing ADHD treatments, consider some straight talk about the disorder:

– Diagnosis is in the eyes of the beholder, there being no biological diagnostic test.

– There are compelling clues but no patented proofs of the basis for the disorder.

– There is no cure.

– Treatment can control behavior, but there is little evidence it can increase knowledge or improve academic skills or achievement.

– The condition is chronic, likely to last years, perhaps decades, with the majority of children affected to some degree into adolescence and even adulthood.

– Most children improve with age, showing fewer symptoms and problems by their early 20s, whether or not they receive treatment.

– There is a dearth of sound scientific evidence of the effects of psychotropic drugs on growing brains and bodies over the long haul.

– Every chemical treatment, even when properly prescribed, can have unwanted and oftentimes unforeseen effects.

– Inappropriate administration of medication, either for the wrong child or at the wrong dose, can have additional, devastating, even deadly, consequences.

– All treatments come with caveats.

– Most psychiatric drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for younger age groups, and, like the majority of medicines for minors, are used “off-label,” or at the doctor’s discretion.

Well written. All I have to add is that we haven’t shown that ADHD type behaviors are anything more than simply one end of a personality spectrum. Ms. Wasowicz, excellent stuff.

…the annual number of prescriptions written for ADHD over the nine years mushroomed by a factor of 5, capping at 11 million for methylphenidate and 6 million and counting for amphetamines.

An estimated 80 percent of the total, or some 14 million, were for children, with 40 percent of these for youngsters 3 to 9. In addition, doctors made out 4,000 orders for stimulants for tykes 2 and under.

Critical of such trends, the DEA has made a point of noting most of these drugs are not approved for use in children under 6 and none for toddlers under 3 because their safety and effectiveness have not been established in those age groups.

These are basically street drugs. Stimulants are known to affect animal development at the neurological level in virtually every kind of multi-celled organism. Childrens’ brains grow and continue to form new synapses until they’re my age and older. Stimulants should thus be considered guilty until proven innocent as far as their effects on developing brains go. Indeed, Fred Baughman, MD has argued that extant research shows that use of stimulant ADHD meds for as little as a year can shrink the frontal lobe significantly. The frontal lobe would be what we think of as the seat of personality and consciousness, and to a degree, intelligence.

The preponderance of mainstream research suggests psychiatric drugs, if properly administered and monitored, are safe, at least in the short term, and effective, at least for clamping down on the core symptoms of ADHD, but there is little hard-core evidence they upgrade a child’s scholastic skills.

These kids are more sedate, but they aren’t learning any better. Anecdotal evidence of this can be found at nearly any school and any community as concerned teachers and educators talk about how the drugs destroy the ’spark’ that once drove some of their brightest, but least controlled, students.

It sure as hell seems to be that these ADHD meds basically function like a frontal lobotomy (and given Baughman’s very valid contention, they may be precisely doing just that). You’re a little bit less erratic. But you’re also a lot less you. Before we go shoving methylphenidate or amphetamines down these kids throats, it might be advantageous to try to see if they can learn self-control on their own. I did (more or less). And I kept my spark.

Stuff like this is why I find it hard to worry about Kyoto et al. Climate change politics are goofy, they’re hard to enforce, and they’re even harder to construct in a sensible manner. To quote myself,

Believe it or not, conservatives can be conservationists. Kyoto focused entirely on the developed world and not on the developing world. The developed world is stabilizing in terms of the amount of pollution created. Developing nations (such as Latin America, China, and India) are not. In the middle of industrialization themselves, they are ramping up the number of polluting sources at a dramatic rate. The bulk of the growth in emissions will come from them. The smart money would thus be to encourage them to go ‘green’ from the start, preventing them from ever getting to the levels of US and Europe.

It would not only be more cost effective, its impact on effective reduction would be greater in magnitude. Some of my fellow conservationist (and dirty liberal) friends have said ‘Well, at least Kyoto’s a start.’ Again, it’s easy to take your dog to the vet the first time. But the second time? There’ll be some fighting. When they get to be as old as my 15-year old golden retriever, you’ve practically got to knock them out cold with a baseball bat to get them through the door (I should know, I was there this morning).

It’s a matter of triage. I worry more about the cattle ranching and soy farming that is currently decimating the Amazon as we speak:

Existing laws and preserving public wildlife reserves will not be enough. Measures are also needed to protect rainforests from the impact of profitable industries such as cattle ranching and soy farming, they added.

The reason that existing law isn’t enough is because the way these guys create ‘pasture’ and ‘fields’ is to take a match to the rainforest, burning down thousands of acres at a time. Once those trees are gone and the undergrowth decimated, putting the guy in jail doesn’t change the fact that the clear-cutting has already been done. Some other guy will just use the land.

“By 2050, current trends in agricultural expansion will eliminate a total of 40 percent of Amazon forests, including six major watersheds and ecoregions,” Britaldo Soares-Filho, of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil, said in a report in the journal Nature

That’s a lot of forest. Forest that can’t be replaced, species that will probably be lost. Cures for cancer that we’ll never see again. More importantly, that’s a piece of our evolutionary and ecological heritage that’ll be lost forever. That doesn’t sit well with this evolutionary biologist. Hell, my master’s thesis covered the evolution of Amazonian monkeys. I’m still contemplating taking time off from med school to go play in the field, captivating myself with the sight of 4oz Pygmy Marmosets and the amazingly intelligent 8lb Capuchin monkeys. There’s a lot we can learn about ourselves from the study of biodiversity. Which is why we must ruthlessly protect it.

As I’ve discussed in A Primer On The Stem Cell Issue, embryonics are inferior to adult stem cells in almost every way. The one way they aren’t inferior is that Adult Stem Cells can be hard to get to (bone marrow being one of the most well known sources…and as anyone who knows how marrow is taken knows…isn’t very fun). However, an accessible source of stem cells was found by Australian researchers that’s as easy as picking your nose. Now, a German group has found a source in adult mouse testes.

This is a predictable site, really. Men manufacture sperm in copious amounts well into old age. New cells in such numbers can generally only be produced by stem cells of one kind or another. And honestly, I’d rather go the Australian route than get a ball biopsy. Still, anything that furthers research into the type of stem cell that actually has a proven therapeutic benefit is fine by me.

“These isolated spermatogonial stem cells respond to culture conditions and acquire embryonic stem cell properties,” Gerd Hasenfuss and his colleagues said in report published online by the journal Nature.
[snip]
The cells, which they call multipotent adult germline stem cells (maGSCs), under certain conditions, acted like embryonic stem cells. When the researchers injected the cells into early embryos they found the cells contributed to the development of different organs

Good news indeed. However, I continue to be dismayed by the frequency and pervasiveness with which self-harvested adult stem cells are considered ‘alternatives’ to embryonics. Considering the cell biology and immunology aspects of the whole deal, it really should be the other way around.

But their use is controversial because the most promising stem cells for treating human disease are derived from very early human embryos left over from fertility treatments.
[snip]
Professor Chris Higgins, the director of Britain’s Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Sciences Center, said the possibility of using the cells as an alternative to embryonic stem cells for therapy is intriguing.

Heh but in the concluding sentence we find a seemingly innocuous statement that adequately sums up why embryonics continue to be touted as the savior of mankind:

If it is possible to isolate the cells in humans and show that they work it would give scientists another source of stem cells for research.

It’s about research. And it’s about funding. And then, sort of, it’s about therapy. It’s the nature of the game. A whole lot of people studying very similar things are asking for funding from people who don’t necessarily have the knowledge of what exactly these scientists are studying. They distinguish themselves by saying stuff like ‘this process is similar to that of cancer’ or ‘this type of cell could one day cure everything from hangnails to recurrent anocranial fistula.’ They don’t quite lie. Most of the time. When it comes to ESC’s though, I’d say they do. ESC’s are an attempt at jury-rigging. Jury-rigging is fine and good, and as a hick I consider it something of an art myself. But we should probably check and see if we could do a proper job of repair before we rebuild that engine using spit and bailing wire.

Article Unfortunately, they’re Canadian Lynx, but they’re being released at the southern most tip of their former range (before we of course extinctified them due to our raging idiocy). 218 have been released since 1999, with 110 kittens being born in Colorado in the past 3 years. While I’m pleased to see them return, it’s something of a bittersweet victory. We’ve lost the original genetic diversity that once would’ve been seen in the continuum between Colorado and Canada. New diversity will come in its place as these scattered populations drift subtly apart, perhaps randomly, perhaps due to just a touch different selection pressures. But I won’t be seeing that in my lifetime.

I’m not a cat person, but Lynxes are just amazing creatures.
More here

Their heads look a bit too small, and their legs a bit too long. But they’re just so amazingly athletic for lack of a better term. And regardless, they’re mammals. Big mammals. Which means by default I’m utterly fascinated by them. Here’s a great link to find out as much as you care to about Felids. Animal Diversity Web has to be one of the greatest resources ever for biodiversity nerds.

I believe in a strong wildlife conservation and wilderness protection government program. Given my mostly minarchist tendencies, some might be surprised by this. But my logic is simple. Minarchy, classical liberalism, what have you, distinguishes itself from anarchy in that we are pragmatic and realistic enough to realize that there are some things people won’t organize on their own to do. Infrastructure, education (debatable), police force, cultural and historical landmarks (debatable), military, what have you. Conservation falls into that ‘debatable’ category. The reason these are debatable is because one can’t be sure a free market alone will protect these things. Markets only work when the value that the public places on an object is more or less commensurate with its actual value. Now me? I’d probably be willing to pay 20 or 30,000 dollars in fees every year to ensure the protection of wildlife reserves (and I’m not joking). Most, however, wouldn’t. But just because we as a society don’t give a dollar value to things like a free range of wolves and lynxes from northern Oklahoma up to Canada doesn’t mean such things aren’t important.

It is my belief that we as a society will continue to undervalue and undermine the protection of wildlife and our natural resources. To me protecting these is as important as maintaining the Smithsonian, restoring great churches and temples, and protecting other historical resources. Of course, I’m biased. Much of India was covered by forest reserves before the massive expansion taken on by King Asoka (ca. 300bc) and contemporaries. These reserves were mandated by our religion. Mahavana, I believe it was called. Forest for the animals. Poaching in the mahavana was a capital crime. Even for a King. And we do have stories of kings being beheaded for poaching there.

King Asoka, one of the first expansionists, himself was worried about the impact the development of roads and everything would have. So he created a protected species list. Animals needing to cross the road or otherwise vulnerable to new development were not to be harmed. Crossing points were created. As were artificial watering holes in the places he’d clear cut, to ensure the animals wouldn’t be parched. All this was undertaken to protect wildlife in a culture where animals were seen more as cousins than inferior playthings for Adam and Eve’s amusements. If Asoka needed rules to protect these animals. Then our society, with its rampant humanism, certainly does.

Keep in mind I’m a conservationist not an environmentalist or a PETA-freak. Feral cat hunts are necessary. Hunting, fishing, trapping isn’t wrong, so long as it’s done sustainably. I don’t want to close this land off from our enjoyment, just from our exploitation. It’s a great thing to hike through an Indian jungle on your way to a temple, surrounded by birds of paradise and monkeys (and mauled by said monkeys). But nothing was like my experience in the Tetons and Yellowstone. Pissing myself when I nearly ran into a bear was and will probably be one of the coolest moments of my life, until I run into some other dangerous large mammal I’m fascinated by. Maybe one of those Lynx this winter.

A new study finds that depression in their mother can often trigger depression in the child.

Houston, we have a problem. If it’s a biochemical disease, it shouldn’t be triggered by mere thoughts and behaviors. Yet, that clearly seems to be what we find:

The study results indicate that for children of depressed mothers, that trigger is sometimes their mothers’ illness acting up, said lead author Myrna Weissman, a researcher at Columbia University and New York Psychiatric Institute.

Sounds about right. Mommy, the central figure in your life, is acting a little sad. That sadness is going to affect you just a bit as well. Of course, mommy’s ‘chemical imbalance’ can’t induce your own chemicals to go off-kilter directly, now can they? Nope. Here we have thoughts influencing the biochemical picture. Just as you’d expect.

Effective treatment for mothers could mean their children might avoid the need for prescription antidepressants, the researchers said.

Since we know that the mothers’ depression is making the kids depressed, why would we use a biochemical treatment in the first place? The biochemicals aren’t the issue here; the home environment and the emotional state of both mother and child are. Health professionals shouldn’t be ameliorating symptoms, they should be aggressively and doggedly rooting out the cause of the symptoms.

Heh, they brought in ADHD, without me even asking for that talking point:

Dr. Peter Robbins, a Fairfax, Va., psychiatrist, said he’s seen similar results in his pediatric practice, and not just with depression.

For example, children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder often have similarly afflicted parents. Getting treatment for the parents yields improvement in the children’s symptoms, he said.

Again, if ADHD and Depression are solely the result of organic brain pathology, then we wouldn’t expect these results. If the parents are leading more controlled lives, staying on task, and being better organized, this is percolating down to the kids. This is thought and action in the model (parent) being reflected in the imitator (child). The fact that thought and action have such a profound effect on behavior–and, in depression at least, can be the inducer of psychological problems in others–mean that we can’t look at the brain as the source of the pathology. Instead changes in the brain should be seen as manifestations of these problems. Psychoactive drugs can change the way the brain works, and change the way input is mediated by the brain (making it mimic normal), but they won’t actually get to what caused the change in brain function in the first place.

Sorry about the sarcasm, but it really cheeses me off when the establishment contradicts common sense (and a good deal of neurobiology) by resisting efforts to tell the truth about psychiatric medication and the sometimes dubious claims about the reality and prevalence of various disorders. The latest brouhaha (spelling?) would be over the move to put warnings about the possibility of cardiovascular and psychosis-like side effects with the use of stimulant meds like Ritalin, Adderall, etc. Since many of these drugs are almost indistinguishable from street stimulants like crystal meth (which has long been known to have those side effects), should we be surprised? I mean really, if we’re going to present a coherent front, EVERY downside of stimulants we mention in anti-drug campaigns should be common knowledge to those children and their parents who are offered stimulant medication.

Some doctors, on the other hand, are predictably resenting these moves. They claim that putting such warnings might make parents less likely to ‘treat the disorder’. Of course, they’ve done a horrible job of proving it’s a disorder. Caring educators, parents, and friends continue to mention how those who are put on the drug may be more tractable but often lose their creative spark. The efficacy of ADHD drugs is usually measured by external observers; is the child more like a cow chewing cud in the classroom? Is he easier for mommy to control? And, occasionally, are his grades better? Of course, good grades in elementary school have little to do with later performance, learning, or creativity. For more on my rantings and views on ADHD see here, and here.

Anyway, time for some quoting:

Adding black-box warnings to some or all the drugs, which also include Adderall and Strattera, could cause more harm than good, some experts told the panel.

“I suggest confusion, polarizing viewpoints, initial press hysteria. But then what?” asked Julie Zito, a University of Maryland associate professor in pharmacy and psychiatry.

“What? Allow the minions to be fully informed about the drugs we tell them to take?” What the hell are medical health professionals? Seriously. To think we have a right to restrict information on adverse side-effects from our patients and their parents? Disgusting. I intend to look upon my patients (or their parents) as thinking individuals. To discuss with them how a drug works, and how it can backfire. I trust their rationality and intend to help them make their decision.

Psychiatrists and mental health advocates said leaving the disease untreated could rival the risks the drugs may pose.

“It is important to not let the discussion of ADHD medications overshadow the public health crisis of untreated mental health disorders in children,” said Cynthia Wainscott of the National Mental Health Association. Her 16-year-old granddaughter has ADHD.

“Take speed because your teacher doesn’t want to deal you and your parents won’t force you to develop a work ethic,” is what I’m reading. People with ‘ADHD symptoms’ go on to be very productive individuals without becoming meth-heads. I know this because I pretty much fit the DSM-IV guidelines 100%. Many high achievers do. We learn a work ethic and self control. Does the job just fine. As Thom Hartmann as argued, we wouldnt’ have Edison, Einstein, or da Vinci if ADHD medication were in place back then. These guys haven’t even proven ADHD is a disorder. And they certainly haven’t proven that behavioral controls are good enough. And all right-thinking individuals with knowledge of physiology, brain plasticity, and child psychology should be able to agree that the fewer drugs (especially controlled substances) you need to function, the better.

Jacqueline Bessner of Ishpeming, Mich., said her daughter, Leanne, 15, hanged herself last year two months after starting treatment with Concerta. Bessner said more black-box warnings would be useless without increased counseling and monitoring of patients.

“It’s being handed out like it’s candy,” Bessner said of ADHD drugs. “It’s too easily accessible.”

My heart goes out to Mrs. Bessner, it really does. I can’t fault her for her daughter going on ADHD meds when it’s forced down their throats by ‘educators’ and ‘professionals’. People like Mrs. Bessner and her daughter are why I’m going into psych. The specialty just seems to dependent on disinformation, propaganda, and manipulation, as some of these quotes (and in my earlier two blogposts I linked) show.

And a doozie:

FDA staff said they were struck by reports of several children under age 10 who were taking the drugs and mistakenly thought they saw or felt bugs, snakes and worms crawling on them. The hallucinations and other episodes most often occurred in patients with no known risks factors for such behavior, FDA staff said.

Heh. This should be familiar to anyone who’s more than a little steeped in pop culture. “Fear and Loathing”, “Requiem for a Dream”, need I go on?

Here’s an op/ed that takes a middle of the road stance. In response to the fact that most often parents are told by teachers that they suspect ADHD, the author offers the following:

This raises suspicions: Are some teachers using ADHD to control unruly students, particularly boys, who are naturally more rambunctious? Are parents seeking an edge for unfocused children who are struggling academically? Are time-pressed doctors handing out prescriptions based on little more than a 15-minute chat and a teacher’s note?

Excellent. External sources rather than internal are the way we measure ADHD. Which of course calls into question the motivation of that external observer. But of course, we can’t question that ADHD is real so the author turns right around with:

There’s also a risk in letting fears stop parents from giving their children medicine that could turn their lives around. About 70% of patients see improvement after taking the drugs, AAP notes. Children who go untreated for ADHD are more likely to use illicit drugs, drop out of school and have other problems.

You generally don’t ask a 10 year old kid if they feel like they concentrate better or if they’re being less ‘disruptive’. You ask their teachers and their parents. What do they mean by improvement? Tractability shouldn’t count. I find it also humorous that they point out that kids untreated for ‘ADHD’ are more likely to use illicit drugs. As I’ve said before, does it really matter? Either way they’re chemically dependent.

Doctors have yet to prove that ‘ADHD’ is anything more than a personality type. A personality type that doesn’t fit in that well in the modern classroom, true. But the ‘gifted’ phenotype (basically ADHD behavior with a high IQ…I was changed from ADHD to ‘Gifted’ after I became involved in competitive math and science) doesn’t fit in the modern classroom all that well. We accept this in ‘gifted’ kids because they’re smart (and my high school administrators and teachers ignored and put up with a lot of antics for precisely that reason) while we drug ADHD kids because they’re ‘normal’. You don’t drug up a kid because the modern classroom is broken. My grades in elementary school might’ve been better. And I probably would’ve been less of a behavioral problem in high school. And probably wouldn’t have slacked off in college as much as I did. But I would wager everything in my bank account–well over 10,000 dollars–that I would not be the overachiever I am if they’d drugged me up. The early-life benefits aren’t worth the loss of later achievement that these drugs would bring. Instead we should teach these kids how to control that impulsiveness, how to make it through that hour of class time before you can get up, how to bring just enough discipline into your life to make it through the suppressive school environment before your own personality is allowed to flourish.

I say socialism. What I mean is any kind of redistributive income policy which goes after ‘the rich’ in favor of ‘the working class’ (expect me to excoriate that latter term in the near future). Anything with any degree of a ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ flavor. People are self-interested. This is a given. They will not work if they feel the payoff isn’t good enough for the effort/time/investment they put in. Socialism presupposes effort and ability will correlate if there’s no difference in payoff for achievement. Economics, behavioral ecology, game theoretics, in short any behavioral science that’s shown predictive ability refute this. Payoff and achievement correlate. Payoff and effort correlate. Payoff and ability correlate. Payoff correlates even better with a combination of ability and effort (which predictably leads to achievement).

Anyway, back to my story. So I went to the Dermatology Interest Group meeting for lunch today. I have about as much interest in dermatology as my dog does in vector calculus, but the speaker today was on the general topic of how to be competitive for residency placement in any specialty, so I went. Plus there was free pizza (remember what I said about people being self-interested). Dermatology, along with opthalmology, anesthesiology, and ENT (ear, nose, throat) are pretty much the most competitive residencies, period. OU had over 270 applicants for 2 spots last year, for instance.

The reason they’re so competitive is because they’re what we call the ‘lifestyle’ specialties. A lot of money, easy work hours (many doctors in these specialties don’t even work full days), and well, that’s about it. Effort, compensation, correlation. See?

This in one of those professions where you’d think there’d be a lot more idealists than others. The questing after lifestyle specialties has gotten so bad that directors of those programs are starting to look down on kids who ’show an interest’ in the specialty just a bit too early:

“So son, I see you’ve been shadowing a dermatologist since you were in undergrad.”
“Yes sir.”
“Why’d you become interested in this particular specialty.”
“The umm. You know. Thing. Acne. Pimples. I have a passion for pimples.”
“Reaaaaaally. Are you sure it wasn’t for Mercedes and a cushy lifestyle?”

Our speaker’s thing is clinical research. He’s interested in the processes by which auto-immune disease can attack the collagen and scaffolding that support our skin. Pretty cool stuff. The kind of thing that’s driven by passion, not money. But of course, in that specialty, he knows that most people don’t join for that. In fact, there’s a dearth of researchers in derm because the money’s just too good in private practice.

Moving beyond derm to the whole of the medical profession. The most well-compensated specialties attract our most diligent and arguably our brightest. The ‘gunners’ who obssess over straight A’s. They choose dermatology, ENT, ophtalmology. They don’t choose family practice, internal medicine, or any of those things that most think of as more vital (literally) than lasik and pimple cream. These young residents, once board certified, then proceed to shun research, payoff not being good enough.

Get the point? Even within a highly-compensated profession (Adolescent Psychiatry at 120,000 is one of the lowest median income specialties…it’s also what I want to do), we see those who put in the most effort, and those who arguably have the most ability going into the specialties that pay the most. Even when no matter what they do they’d be in the top tax bracket, they still choose money.

This saddens the idealist in me. Medicine for me is more calling than profession. I’d rather be researching monkeys if my ethos would allow it. But the behavioral ecologist that I nearly was merely shrugs. To be self-interested is to be human. Even more importantly, self-interest is one of the most basic underlying rules of behavior of all animals; it’s the guiding light of evolution. Natural selection only occurrs because animals quest after selfish ends.

And this is where the socialist and I part ways. I understand that self-interest is a part of us. That we will always make our decisions based on how much wealth, power, comfort we’ll accrue. The socialist doesn’t. In fact he denies it. He believes that being able to be a doctor, an engineer, an artist is enough to motivate one to do so. It isn’t.

Public Citizen, a ‘watchdog group’ is trying to quash a bill that would cut 39 billion on federal expenditures for socialist programs. A single sentence was changed in the bill between the Senate and House forms. This of course, makes the whole thing ‘unconstitutional.’

Pot? Meet Mr. Kettle. Public Citizen’s policy statements read as about half and half common sense and whacko leftism. Among other things, they are committed to socialized medicine:

Public Citizen has been long committed to guaranteeing all Americans access to high quality health care through a “single-payer” government-funded program such as Medicare for all.

Everything about socialized medicine is unconstitutional, from the way they’ll derive revenue to implementation. Not to mention socialized medicine being a stupid freaking idea. On the other hand, I do like their stance on Medical Residents and their work situation.

Just reading through Public Citizen’s goals and points we see a veritable litany of ‘initiatives’ and ‘pushes’ that would result in wholly unconstitutiona, indefensible, outright socialist ideas. For them to challenge the constitutionality of a bill is just a joke. In reality they’re trying to get this defeated on a technicality because they put socialism ahead of the country’s good.

I originally wrote this for the edification of my friends at Kim du Toit’s forum, where I spend my time instead of studying/researching/doing something productive. Legal Redux also happens to be a member of Life, Liberty, Property. And as I said before, I’m trying to be more active in the community, instead of merely ranting to myself. Seems like a good time to weigh in, since I don’t think there are too many biologists either among my readership or in the community.

I’m not here to argue on whether or not using embryos to create new stem cell lines is ethical or not. Instead I’m simply here to reduce and hopefully eliminate some of the disinformation spread by ‘scientists’ about embryonic stem cells and their potential to cure. As a preface, I need people to understand that scientists, like anyone else, can be petty, selfish, status-driven, and are quite capable of lying to further their own agendas. I’m not saying that all scientists are douches, just saying that you can’t trust the peer-review process and you certainly can’t trust integrity to always motivate our work, something that might be driven home by the recent Korean human cloning scandal.

A lot of embryonic stem cell researchers claim that ESC’s are the future of therapy for degenerative diseases from diabetes to alzheimers. But since they get their grant money for researching ESC’s, and their status and audience in the scientific world are directly dependent on how relevant scientists and the public feel they are, they just might be inclined to embellish a tad. A lot of people who support ESC research either morally or financially agree with these scientists’ logic. But of course, they aren’t researchers themselves, and so may be disinclined to challenge experts on the material out of a feeling of inferiority. And then, they may think that ‘Hey, these guys are biomedical scientists, surely they must be working for the betterment of mankind?’. And they are, I’m not questioning that. I went into med school because I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t go into a profession that directly furthered the betterment of people everywhere. But I also went this route instead of chilling with monkeys because it would probably serve as a better vehicle for my ambition. Time will tell. Eventually I want people to understand how much of our minds and our emotions are rooted in our social mammalian past. I believe this perspective will revolutionize the mental health professions for the better. But I’m speaking as a primatologist turned med student. So, just like the ESC researchers, I’m slightly biased as to the importance of my work. And, just like ESC researchers, while I’m here to give back to the people, I’m also here for myself. Point is, there are no Mother Teresas, even in the most altruistic of disciplines.

At the risk of sounding like an anarcho-socialist, let me conclude this preface by saying simply “Don’t Trust Authority. Question Everything.”

Now on to the meat. When the egg and sperm fuse, we’re left with a single-celled zygote. This one single cell contains all the genetic information and is capable of turning into every single type of cell in your body. As the cell divides, each of the daughter cells of this zygote is more restricted; it can turn into fewer types of cells. These daughter cells will eventually become stem cells. These are cells that can divide forever, and can turn into several different types of cell, each of which is a member of that lineage. There are stem cells that produce immune system-type cells. There are stem cells that produce red blood cells and platelets. There are cells that develop into nerves and their support structure (glia). This process, from the totipotent (it can turn into any kind of cell)early zygotic cells, to the multipotent(can turn into only cells in a specific lineage or family) embryonic cells to end-type cells (like red blood cells or neurons) is called differentiation. By the time the zygote has developed into an adult, almost all the cells in the body are fully differentiated; they can only make more of the same type of cell. Some can’t even do that. But in many areas, including the brain, muscle, intestine, and bone marrow, multipotent (not totipotent) stem cells remain, although largely either dormant or restricted to very specific jobs (as in bone marrow). That’s important.

Moving on, a lot of the diseases we face as we get older are a result of the differentiated adult cells dieing off and losing the ability to reproduce themselves. This is why skin gets wrinkly. The fibrocytes that produce collagen die off. This is why adult onset diabetes happens. Eventually you lose too many beta cells in your pancreas to continue making insulin. Dementia (like Alzheimers), blindness, and other disorders have also been linked to this inability of the body to repair its degraded tissue. Since the problem is the death of these adult cells, stem cells seem like ideal candidates to replenish and restore our failing tissues. And they are. It is my belief that stem cells do indeed hold the key to curing or at least ameliorating the devastating effects of these degenerative diseases.

But remember what I said? About the fact that all adults have stem cells in their body? They’re just dormant and/or hard to get to? Why aren’t we researching these? Turns out a few have. And an australian researcher, with a budget of less than 40,000 US, has already had as much or more success as the ESC guys, using self-harvested stem cells(SSC). And about the stem cells being hard to get to? He can actually do it without any kind of crazily invasive procedure, simply by sticking a pick up your nose. Turns out you can use a stem cell colony used to replenish your smell receptors to produce many types of cells. He’s done skin, bone, muscle, and nerve that I know of. All with only slightly more than the cost of my dad’s last car. And a whole lot less than what the ESC guys have spent.

Beyond the KISS principle the aussies have so elegantly demonstrated, are there any other good reasons to pursue self-harvested adult stem cells over ESC’s? Turns out there are more than a few downsides to attempting to use ESC’s instead of self-harvested adult stem cells to cure disease. And here’s the thing. It’s not like these were unexpected side effects. These could be predicted by anyone with an undergraduate class in cell biology. (It was actually my first undergrad cell bio class that caused me to raise these concerns). First thing. ESC’s share a lot of similarities with cancer cells. For one thing, unlike normal cells which can only reproduce a few times before they die, ESC’s and Cancer cells are immortal. They also have a lot of extra cellular machinery turned off, which allows them to put more energy into multiplying. Basically most cells in the adult body are designed to do a specific job; skin protects you from the outside environment, your liver detoxifies stuff, your pancreas produces insulin and digestive juices, your brain helps you think, etc. They thus expend their energy doing that job. SC’s and Cancer, on the other hand, make it their job to reproduce. And pretty much only reproduce.

Funnily enough, when ESC’s have been injected into rat and mouse models, they…tend to multiply at an explosive rate, producing tumors and metastases. Who’da thunk it?

Then lets not forget the lessons we can learn from basic immunology, lessons learned before my mother was even born. Immunocompatability. Your immune system is a highly evolved and extremely perfectionistic system…some say overly so. Every cell on your body has what are called Major Histocompatability Complexes (MHC’s). These act like little ID tags on the surface of every cell. Your immune system uses these to prevent friendly fire incidents. Although you might not be familiar with MHC’s, you are undoubtedly familiar with rejection of transplant organs, when your body not only refuses to integrate with a transplanted liver or other organ, but actively tries to kill it. This happens because the MHC’s on the transplant organ don’t match your own MHC’s closely enough, causing your immune system to try to kill the ‘invading cells’ as fast as possible. This is also why transplant patients take immunosuppressants; an attempt to keep the immune system from doing its job. Even so, this doesn’t work a huge portion of the time. And, again, even if it does, you’ll have to intentionally compromise your immune system for the rest of your life.

Ever hear the ESC guys mention that? That this has all the downsides of organ transplant with the additional possible risk of cancer-like ridiculosity? Nope, didn’t think so. But the research is out there. It was predicted. And it came true.

Turning to SSC’s, we’ve got a fairly easy source to get them from, we’ve already manipulated them into all sorts of different types, and they’re already immunocompatible. In addition, because SSC’s are naturally dormant, rather than active like ESC’s, you have to actually COAX them into proliferating and differentiating in the first place (something, which as I said we can readily do). Seems like an overall plus. All the benefits, none of the costs. And a MUCH higher return on investment for research dollars thus far. Yet ESC’s are the future of curing disease…

I have no professional stake in this fight. My research involves monkeys, and eventually theoretical aspects of psychiatry. My career will gain nothing from one school of thought triumphing over another. In fact, I actively despise cellular biologists of EVERY stripe as overt reductionists who readily ignore aspects of biology that contradict their own claims. On the other hand, I have a high personal stake in this. Everyone on my dad’s side has diabetes, there may or may not be dementia on my mom’s side (great-grandma, who did have dementia, was the only person who died of old age on that side of the family), and there’s definitely late-onset blindness in my family. All of these are prime candidates for stem cell therapy. Combine this with my nerve injury, and basically everything that has or could go wrong in my body could be cured with stem cells. I hope this has helped clear up some of the crap surrounding SC research and why I think ESC researchers who lie to the public need to be shot.

Finally, I’ll direct you to an article by a much more prestigious person, a guy who has an MD instead of just a Master’s in Monkey Science and a little under a year of medical school under his belt.

I’m kinda pro-life. And by ‘kinda’ I mean I’ve been known to scream so hard I started to nose-bleed at pro-life demonstrations. With me it’s one of those personal things that’s tied into religion (Hindu), personal responsibility, and the fact that I refuse to think of my miscarried sister as anything but a baby. Anyway, what always gets me about the pro-abortion people is how they love to lie about what a developing fetus looks like in the womb. Jane Roe was told that ‘it’s just a mass of tissue’. When she found out the truth, not only was she horrified, she–among other life-changing moves–became a tireless pro-life crusader. She even spoke at Cornell, my alma mater, last year under the auspices of the group I used to be a part of, Cornell Coalition For Life.

These peoples’ vehement opposition to telling potential abortion-seekers the truth smacks of propagandism of the worst kind. I’m a big fan of informed decision-making. Just a post or two down you’ll see that I talk about its importance in bringing healthcare costs down. More importantly, it just makes sense that if you’re going to undertake a medical procedure you should know what it’s going to do and what the whole deal looks like. I’m barely into my 1st year of medical school and already it’s being beaten into my head how important it is that we dialogue with our patients and help them understand what we’re talking about.

On to the article. Michigan just passed a law saying abortionists have to at least offer to show the women who seek their services the sonogram of their baby. Originally it was going to be mandatory that the woman be shown this; however, the governor would’ve vetoed that out of hand.

Whether it should be required or not is something I’m torn on. On the one hand, there is so much disinformation at the hands of Planned Parenthood, Inc. (which precipitated the torture that Jane Roe went through), that a requirement would ensure PP, NARAL, et al. could only go so far in their propaganda campaigns before reality brought them up short. On the other hand, as a classical liberal I tend to be opposed to requirements of any kind.

In this case, however, I’m slightly more in favor of requiring women be shown the sonogram. There are two reasons for this:
1. Education/Information - It’s important that people be informed of what they do. Abortionists by their very nature are pro-abortion. And as time as shown again and again, leaders of these groups often have less than pristine reasons for advocating the procedure. We could be talking about Margaret Sanger’s eugenics or some of the feminists’ insistance that pregnancy is part of the cycle of oppression they endure. Of course I, as a pro-lifer am no better in my bias. But I’m not going to be the one sticking a pair of scissors through the back of a baby’s skull. Furthermore, the diagrams they currently show women are sterilized. Its one thing to look at a cartoon of a 4 month fetus, quite another to watch it kicking and moving in ultrasound. For another, ultrasounds don’t lie. The tone people use, the way they construct their sentences. their body language, all of these can imply things that may be quite contrary to the actual words they speak and the pictures they show. An ultrasound doesn’t lie.

2. Mental Health - This is a bigger deal than some would have you think. From the time we’re pre-schoolers we understand that pregnancies tend to end in babies. The decision to abort thus necessarily carries with it a huge load on one’s conscience. If you’re told, as Norma Jean was, that it’s just a mass of tissue, you won’t feel so bad aborting it. “Sure, it would’ve been a baby. But it might as well have been a piece of placenta at the point I terminated it. And no one cries over afterbirth.” And then you come to find out just how much like a fully developed baby it was. That guilt will hit, and it will hit hard. And the worst thing is, it’s going to be a lot like having a fight with someone just before they died. You’ll be left thinking about that moment you decided to end it all your life. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done it. Maybe I really did kill a baby.” That’s a heavy load to carry.

On the other hand, knowing just how developed it was, how much like the end-point of pregnancy it resembled, a woman will be able to deal with the enormity of her decision at that time. I’m not saying all of a sudden the decision will be an easy one, or that there might not be days she regrets it. But that knowing what in fact she did at the moment she did it will allow her to cope and to recover, and to someday perhaps forgive herself (I won’t be forgiving her though) just a little bit sooner. As I understand it, there are abortion clinics now where women name their fetuses, and write them a letter explaining their decision and asking for forgiveness. Somewhat morbidly, there are some that allow women to hold the fetus after the procedure has taken place (ewwww).

On to the article.

Abortion opponents hailed the new law. Right to Life of Michigan said it ensures that pregnant women have fuller access to accurate information before having abortions.

Well yeah. We would. There really shouldn’t be any more Norma Jean McCorvey’s out there. What a horrible heart-breaking story, regardless of your feelings on the legality of abortion.

Critics called it a further erosion of women’s rights.

How exactly is more information about the process of gestation an erosion of rights?

The ultrasound bill is one of the “small, incremental steps … all designed to put up barriers” to legal abortion, Kary Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, told the Detroit Free Press. However, the ACLU does not plan legal action to block the measure, she said.

Now how the hell is this a barrier? Honestly? They’re just going to offer to show a freaking picture. A grainy, horribly incoherent representation of a fetus. No one is saying women can’t get an abortion. No one is saying they have to jump through any hoops, justify their need, or have to work harder to find an abortionist. If this is a barrier to abortion, then a doctor telling his patient how a procedure is carried out is a barrier to treatment.

My position is simple. A woman has every right to know exactly what she’s agreeing to when she signs on that dotted line. Abortionists and interest groups won’t always be forthcoming. Ultrasounds don’t lie. Show her the ultrasound. For her own damn sake.

Of course, this is ‘an assault on reproductive choice.’ I’m the son of an economist, I work with game theoretics in behavioral ecology. Information about choice is considered vital to properly making that choice. As far as I’m concerned, this is about allowing women to make her choice with the best and least biased information available. If pro-choice people really believed they were doing nothing wrong, they probably wouldn’t fear the truth, would they?

Linky

I’m not a fan of socialized medicine. I recognize that access to medical care is an important issue, and although currently covered, I pay through the nose for some of the most worthless health insurance in the history of the US. The sad part of that is that I’m at a health science center. At a medical school, basically surrounded by doctors. And I still can’t see one without fighting my worthless PPO. I just don’t think that socialism is ever the solution…to anything. When i left for graduate school in the UK, I told my friends and family that I only had two real fears:

1. That I’d be mugged. Not because of the mugging per se, but the resultant incarceration…of myself. The UK’s draconian anti-self defense laws result in harsher penalties for defending yourself than for the person who mugged you. I’m a big bastard and have training in the martial arts. Not defending myself would be nigh on impossible.

2. That I’d need medical care, possibly because of a London violent crime rate over 6 times as high as that of New York City. I had and still have an unfounded fear that I’d be left bleeding on the doorstep of the gigantic hospital less than a block from my school. Between their lack of triage, subpar emergency and surgical care, and Multiply Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (one of those ’superbugs’ you hear about) rates higher than those in India, needing a doctor in the UK is something to truly fear. Although, of course, you don’t have to pay.

Socialized medicine merely results in equally horrible medical care for everyone. It turns into a rationing system in a sense, with waiting lists up to 2 years long for surgeries that mean the difference between excruciating pain which most of you can’t even fathom and the ability to function. It means higher complication rates and lower success rates. It’s just…well, it’s bad.

Although the US doesn’t participate in a retarded scheme like the UK’s, the market in which we purchase medical care and medical coverage is far from free. One thing that is vital to the operation of basic economic principles is what’s known as perfect information. This means that the consumer has to know about the cost, quality, and other aspects of the product he’s purchasing.

When’s the last time a surgeon told you his success rate during consultation? Complication rate? What about actual price for a doctor’s visit or a run-of-the-mill procedure? No clue, right? I know the cost of a couple things due to dealing with a car accident related knee injury. Had to pay out of pocket and get the other guy’s auto insurance to reimburse me. And more recently, my PPO has denied every claim I’ve made, even after getting confirmation of coverage over the phone, and every possible referral and approval necessary. So I can tell you how much a 5 minute visit with a Physician’s Assistant costs. Or an actually very worthwhile visit with a Physiatrist (not psychiatrist) costs. Or how much physical therapy costs. But enough about my bitterness. Point is, we have very little idea of what we’re actually spending and what we’re getting.

Sensing that void, dirty capitalists at HealthGrades have come to the rescue. They’ll charge you 8 bucks for the service, but in return you’ll find out some or all of that information that makes a free market possible.

Beginning Monday, consumers can learn the cost of 42 medical procedures ranging from gastric bypass to cataract surgery through the Web site of HealthGrades Inc., based in suburban Denver. The company plans to add information for 14 more procedures soon.

“What this helps an individual do is to shop for health care, which is a very new concept,” said Scott Shapiro, a spokesman for the company. “But because individuals are paying an increasing amount from out of pocket for their health care, they are increasingly looking for information that helps them shop for health care.”

Hah, free markets here we come. We’ll find out the true prices of procedures and surgeries as provided by various health professionals. Some HMO’s like Aetna are also providing this information to their clients:

“This is not about cost savings for Aetna. What’s in it for Aetna is we do believe the entire health care system will benefit as more people become educated on quality first, but also on the price of things, just so they can start having these discussions with their doctors,” Morphew said. “As it stands now, people don’t have that information until after they’ve seen the physician and that seemed backward to us.”

And that dirty bastard President Bush has been encouraging this whole process! When we could be waiting years for surgery on herniated disks instead of weeks. When we too, like the British, could have our wisdom teeth removed by methods that are almost barbaric!

Last month, President Bush said providing consumers accurate price information could help control the country’s soaring health care costs.

As such information becomes widely available, health care costs could ease, Weisbart said.

“Even when the information isn’t being used on a widespread basis, there will obviously be pressure on the high-cost institutions to bring their prices down, if for no other reason than because they look bad,” he said.

And that’s one of the important things. We’ve got a situation where there’s excessive and unnatural price inelasticity of demand both for health coverage and for health procedures. Price inelasticity of demand basically means that people will buy a product or a service in the same numbers even if the price rises precipitously. For HMO’s/PPO’s/whatevers, we buy through our company. Because that’s how it’s done. We bitch, we moan, we grumble, and then we write the check anyway. As far as we think, there’s little other choice. You don’t want to be uninsured, and you don’t want to mess with some of those crazy ass alternatives. Like that retarded option of the health savings account that President Bush keeps mentioning; socialism is clearly a better option.

Once we understand what these costs actually look like, for many of us health savings accounts look a mite bit better. For instance, I’m a healthy 22 year old male. Family history of diabetes, but they probably could’ve held that at bay if they’d been a bit more diligent in their diet…also I don’t have a sweet tooth. The only thing I’ve seen doctors for in the recent past is sports physicals and opthalmologist checkups.

Couple that health savings account with another cool idea. Critical Illness Insurance. I’ve only ever heard about this on a local talk radio station, but it sounds pretty trick. Name your common age-related or otherwise life-altering illness from cancer to heart disease to stroke. It pays out when you get sick. Kind of like life insurance, except they give it to you before you die.

Between my high deductible/low cost insurance, health savings account, and critical illness insurance, I could save a bundle (something like 50% based on a rough estimate) per yaer while sacrificing nothing in access to care. And getting a tax break. Sounds like a pretty good deal.

Now, your mileage may vary, since not everyone is in my situation (although I’d say a large minority of us are). Those of you with kids, especially young kids will probably want to stay with traditional health insurance. Those of you who are getting up in age and may already have some of those age-related problems may want to stay with it too. But even you’ll benefit. Because now, now that we’re getting closer to perfect information, coverage providers will have to work a bit harder. Since my insurance company does mainly student insurance, and most students, like me, have little need of healthcare, they’re going to take a pretty hard hit in enrollment. Most others will too, as we learn that other options are not only viable, they save us money. And when people compete, they either lower prices, increase quality, or both. And those doctors and hospitals will be competing too, lowering their prices if they’re a bit insane. Which, of course, will trickle back to the HMO’s. Since they’ll be paying out less, they’ll pass those savings on to you. And now i think I’m repeating myself. So back to Respiratory Physiology lecture I go!

I’ve mentioned externalization of responsibility with respect to obesity before. I’ve also hinted at it in the political and psychological spheres as well. The basic premise is that, far from being agent of his own destiny, Man is as impressionable and strong as a piece of wet clay. We are solely the product of our experiences, reaction-driven automatons who have no choice but to succumb to pressures. At least, that’s what many of the obesity crusaders would have you think.

Personally, I think that since most of these people are out of shape themselves, they don’t want to look in the mirror and accept that they made themselves that way. So they’ll blame anyone they can. The media (and all leftists really) love externalization. The media needs to have a big bad man to get us excited and upset enough to watch their shows and buy their papers and magazines. Leftists need to have a bad guy so they can step in as the knight in shiny freedom-destroying armor. They need to create victims. And so the cycle of externalization continues.

Here’s a funny thing. Someone can profess to be ‘just a reporter’ while manipulating word choice and the way they introduce quotes in such a way to slant the story just subtly enough to keep from being noticeable. It’s a talent, but not a difficult one. We do it every day when our body language meaningfully and intentionally belies our words. The old saw about being ‘damned by faint praise’ is another example of this technique. It’s rife in the following article.

It’s tempting to blame big food companies for America’s big obesity problem. After all, they’re the folks who Supersized our fries, family-portioned our potato chips and Big Gulped our sodas. There’s also the billions they’ve spent keeping their products ever on our minds and in our mouths.

It continues to amaze me how few people grasp the theoretical concepts of economics. They didn’t supersize fries. We did. They didn’t Big Gulp our sodas. We did. We were willing to pay more for a larger portion. They gave us larger portions because we wanted them. Conversely, a lot of restaurants offer ‘lite’ portions or preparations. A lot of my female friends will only eat at places that offer such menus. Would public health officials laud these restaurants? No, now they’re simply ‘responding to demand’ for healthy eating. Be consistent, you douches.

Sure, companies set the stage with cheap, calorie-dense foods.

But government also has propped up agribusiness, the medical community was slow to take on obesity and good nutrition, and consumers seem determined to move less and eat more, says Tillotson, a former food industry executive.

How much of that burden of blame belongs to the food industry can be difficult to answer.

It’s actually pretty easy to answer. None of it. Not to agribusiness, the government, or the medical community. I firmly believe in the agency of people, especially when it comes to food choice.

Yale obesity expert Dr. David Katz says that’s because companies aggressively peddle food to people who don’t need it.

Food industry officials prefer to call it consumer choice.

Nothing to say here, just look at the way those two sentences are constructed. Posing an obesity expert against a food industry official. Now obesity experts tend to be experts on the physiology, the etiology, or the statistical side of things. They dont’ actually study or understand the process by which a person puts food in his face.

But critics call Earl’s assessment disingenuous. Personal responsibility has limits in the face of a multibillion-dollar marketing whirlwind pushing countless high-calorie treats.

“They (food companies) are putting $36 billion into directing those choices,” says Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University and critic of the food industry. “And their methods are very effective.”

Now I’m just shaking my head here. ‘Personal responsibility doesn’t really apply. They use advertising.’ Part of being a human being is the ability to think rationally and make choices based on the information you’re given. Advertising is just one more source of information. What you do with that info, whether you’re swayed by it or ignore it, is up to you.

Personal responsibility also falters when it comes to children, who are bombarded by junk food ads that undermine parents.

Everything from child-friendly merchandizing of sugary cereals to cartoon ads is designed to give companies more sway over what children eat, says Dr. Susan Lynch, a child obesity doctor and wife of New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch.

Such tactics make it tougher to teach good eating habits to kids who equate food with entertainment, she said.

Any parent that can’t take a firm stand in their child’s eating habits probably has no ability to prepare their child for an independent future.

And as a last cautionary word, these ‘experts’ look at things that contribute to the problem. And advertising does. I won’t deny it. So does super-sizing. So did the medical community’s late and lackadaisical response to the problem. But this isn’t to say they caused it. At the end of the day what all these things did was poor decision-making on the part of people. People who didn’t need the extra food saying ‘here’s a quarter, gimme twice as much fries.’ Or ‘hmmm that Ben & Jerry’s looks good. I think I’ll eat a pint tonight.” But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that people made the wrong decisions; blaming anyone else for that is to ignore the real problem.

Sick, I tell you. Sick. To listen to these people, a human has about as much control over his destiny and his actions as a robot. I have more faith in humanity than this And I expect a lot more out of people. Because I respect them.

Caught this editorial at news.yahoo.com

I now have to replace the chair I broke in a fit of rage. As I’ve discussed before, Dr. King’s dream was that we be viewed equally. Content of their character the powerful speaker said, not the color of their skin. Why then are so-called minority advocates so fond of dividing us up, separating us from the pigmentally challenged, and then insisting we be treated differently?

But what really sickened me was that this editorialist dared to include us Asians as minorities that would be helped by affirmative action:

Demographic changes are our nation’s new reality. More than 13% of Americans are Hispanic (who can be of any race), and nearly 13% are African-American. About 4% are Asian-American, and nearly 2% are Native American. Together, nearly a third of our residents are people of color. Some experts predict people of color will be nearly half of all Americans by 2050.

Now it’s true that we’re definitely minorities. But we’re treated differently. Most of us are recent immigrants, or the American-born children of recent immigrants (like myself). Minority scholarships aren’t open to us for the most part. We’re not ‘underrepresented’ (a topic that’ll become even more relevant later on in this post). Indeed, although most are loathe to admit it, the typically white admissions committees at colleges all over the US expect even more from Asians than they do from white kids. Certainly no Affirmative Action for us.

Indeed, in recent years its been confirmed that Affirmative Action policies adversely impact Asians more than they do white people. It’s not ‘The Man’ who’s taking the hit for AA. It’s minorities. But the kind who aren’t politically expedient. And, as a pro-AA person will tell you, ‘It’s not like it actually hurts you people’. True, I’ve been educated at some of the world’s finest institutions…as well as Oklahoma University (just kidding, I love it here). But I had to be a stronger applicant than a white kid, and much stronger than a black or hispanic, to achieve it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re holding my parents’ sacrifices and my work ethic against me.

Opponents of minority scholarships, such as the Center for Individual Rights and the Center for Equal Opportunity, say people have a right to be treated equally. These groups have been so aggressive on the issue that universities, including Southern Illinois University and the State University of New York, have simply opened access to aid to all students.

The bastards? Equal treatment? How could they?

The center said the education levels of the fastest-growing groups - Latinos and African-Americans - raise special concern. Why, then, are the Departments of Justice and Education pushing colleges and universities to allow white students to apply for scholarships, fellowships and programs targeted at students of color?

Moving on, it’s amazing how latinos have snuck into the AA umbrella without anyone holding up their hand and saying ‘umm, wait a second.’ The traditional justification for AA has been ’systematic racism’ and ‘cultural capital’ that white people have over Blacks and Native Americans due to slavery and the fallout from Manifest Destiny, respectively. While this has some intellectual merit for Blacks and quite a bit more for the reservation-bound Native Americans, where does that come into play for hispanics? Between 1980 and 2000, the hispanic population tripled. Roughly the same thing happened with asians. In both these groups, most of the growth came from immigrants and their children. Meaning systematic racism cannot apply. We haven’t been here long enough. And most rational people freely admit that racism in the modern day is negligible. And if cultural capital deficits apply to hispanics, they apply to me as well. One of my grandmothers doesn’t even know English…never made it out of grade school for that matter.

But hispanics have become a large part of the AA-applicable population. Roughly half in fact. Why? They’re ‘underrepresented.’ So it all comes back to Equality of Outcome or Equality of Opportunity. And again, if we use the Equality of Outcome logic, Asians must in fact be the racist bastards who rule the world. We do after all have 20% of the enrollment in professional schools versus only 4-5% in the population at large. This is news to me. I certainly don’t remember my ancestors owning black slaves and holding down the poor white sharecroppers. But that’s what the numbers say. It turns out we’re the new ‘The Joos’.

This is about political expediency. It’s about bribing hispanics and blacks to get their votes. It’s about eliminating and avoiding meritocracy. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different. If this were about helping the underprivileged get to school, they’d use a purely socioeconomic system. Recognize that it’s harder for the poor than the rich. And, since blacks and hispanics are poorer on average than whites or asians, those that really needed the help would get it.

And diversity? Does an American-born American-raised Christian black person really differ all that much from an American-born American-raised Christian white person? Not as far as this Telugu-speaking Hindu/Buddhist Asian can tell.

For a little background, the frogs, the limeys, and maybe the krauts (not so familiar with them), have for the past 40 or so years developed an economic policy not too different from what the Democrats want to instate in the US. Guaranteed comfort. Want to be a drain on society and not even try to get a job? No big deal, here’s your house and a decent standard of living. The guaranteed comfort level is so high in France that top students in high school are going on to become plumbers, because, as they say themselves, the 8-10 years extra time to become a doctor or lawyer simply doesn’t profit. They’ll be comfortable enough anyway. Whoda thunk it? Remove the incentive to get a professional or graduate degree and people don’t do it? Wow. That…makes perfect sense given economic and ecological behavioral theory. Too bad libtards understand neither. Europe is currently in a stagnation bordering on recession due to their stifling economic policies that not only shortchange business, but also actively work against individual ambition in ever avenue. The one thing they excel at is propaganda. Their smoke and mirrors job has actually convinced many people both libtard and otherwise that Europe is doing just fine. I believed it myself until I lived there for a year.

Anyway, students are now screaming their heads off now that Villepin is doing something smart for a change and trying to dissolve the excessive worker protections that exist right now.

What do I mean by excessive? I mean it’s so hard to fire a worker that workers are free to slack off with little repercussion, while making too much money for product to remain competitive in the global market place (*cough* UAW *cough*). Higher prices AND lower quality do not compute well. Employers are thus loathe to hire anyone new, knowing that they know they can slack.

Villepin’s measure would give employers the ability to reward merit and punish laziness/incompetence. This would thus make employers a little more willing to take a chance on hiring new people. The risk/benefit ratio increases considerably on making this little investment. The students, being typically divorced from the real world, are up in arms. “Don’t take away our protections,” they scream. Unable to understand that these protections are what’s preventing them from finding jobs in the first place.

Their children want not revolution but status quo: the same access to pensions, jobs, prosperity and generous welfare systems their parents enjoyed. In short, a comfortable European lifestyle that many feel is under grave threat.

Of course it’s under grave threat. As the article mentions, their ridiculous pseudo-socialist policies only worked because Europe was under explosive growth and could sustain the handicap with no problem. But, such policies, being by their nature a handicap, are and were unsustainable over the more stable long term. To draw an analogy. As a young, testosterone-filled male, I can abuse my body with 3 hours of sleep a night, 10 dollars of taco bell a day, and idiocy-fueled excursions rock climbing, hiking, and participating in fight clubs. I can do this because the energy of youth allows me to get away with excesses. I won’t be behaving the same way at 30 or 40. I probably couldn’t even if I wanted to. I’m abusing myself, and I’m getting away with it. Likewise, Europe abused itself, and got away with it. But they’re not in their early adult life any more. They’re approaching middle age, and living fast and hard is taking its toll.

Once again, leftism shows that it’s incompatible with long term prosperity. Leftism is, much like my own exploits, a product of youthful folly. And like youthful folly, can only survive so long before the real world must catch up.

This is just cool. A bunch of researchers at Cornell have linked the development of cooperative breeding in sweat (halictid) bees to a period of global warming between 26 million and 15 million years ago. Sweat bees, for those of you who are wondering, are named that because these are the bastards that are attracted to your sweat in the summer. Making life hell for anyone who works, trains, or plays outside. The bastards.

Why I find this rediculously exciting (god I’m a nerd), is because I study marmosets and tamarins, which similar to halictids, became cooperative breeders during that exact same warming period. Most monkey females raise their offspring with little or no real help. A couple of South American genuses (genera, if we’re being proper) have actual, you know, dads instead of sperm donors (Owl Monkeys and Titi Monkeys). This itself is rare among primates, and not all that common in mammals in general. But the Marmosets & Tamarins (together called Callitrichids), take this one step further. With siblings and offspring of the mating pair often staying behind to help.

Warren G. Kinzey, who i was a decade too late to meet in person (something I’ll always regret), theorized that the huge variation among closely related species of monkey in South America occurred during that 26-15 million year ago global warming period, as the large forest that included both the current Amazon forest and the Brazilian Atlantic Forest fragmented, reproductively isolating daughter species of various lineages and reducing the home ranges of extant populations. This could help explain why you encounter everything from the buff-colored 120gram Pygmy Marmoset to the beautiful 700gram Golden Lion Tamarin in the same sub-family. I don’t recall if he ever used the island forest theory to directly explain the evolution of cooperative breeding.

I hope not, since I’m working on that right now. Hopefully Bryan Danforth’s paper can help me out a bit. Amazingly enough, insects can teach you about monkeys. That’s the beauty of convergent evolution. I got some random speculation involving population density that I can neither back theoretically or empirically yet, but hell, you gotta start somewhere.

Men like Warren Kinzey were the lucky ones (well if you exclude the whole dying of cancer before you turn 60 thing), they came early enough to be theorists. To propound on how things could’ve gotten the way they are. This the domain of Richard Wrangham and his ecological theory of mating systems, of Bob Trivers and, well nearly everything, and of Hamilton and kin selection. I wanted to be one of them. It’s getting hard to find things worth theorizing about these days though. So instead I play with numbers and I model. I’ve already hit aspects of Trivers, Hamilton, and Wrangham. And Kinzey’s next. They wrote the outline, I’m going to try to fill in some of the gaps.

As if amphetamines and drugs not too different from ecstasy weren’t bad enough, now we’re giving anti-psychotics to kids who aren’t psychotic in the first place.

4% of all kids are on anti-psychotics. FOUR PERCENT. That is MULTIPLES of the incidence of psychosis among children. But it’s ok because “attention deficit disorder is sometimes accompanied by temper outbursts and other disruptive behavior. As a result, some doctors prescribe anti-psychotics to these children to calm them down — a strategy some doctors and parents say works.” What really angers me is that we still haven’t even done a good job of proving ADHD is real(as I discuss in this earlier post).

People don’t like hyper kids, so they drug them up. Of course it gets rid of the temper tantrums. Anti-psychotics work a lot like horse tranquilizers. Some doctors are raising concerns, pointing to the coincident arrival of heavily marketed anti-psychotics like Risperidol.

Dr. David Fassler, a University of Vermont psychiatry professor, said more research is needed before anti-psychotics should be considered standard treatment for attention deficit disorders in children.

“Given the frequency with which these medications are being used, there’s no question that we need additional studies on both safety and efficacy in pediatric populations,” Fassler said.

But forgetting about safety and efficacy, what about appropriateness? Just because these drugs control the kids, are they a good thing? No one has even thought to ask the kids apparently. Personally, I can say my own growth and development as a person had very little to do with the schooling side of things, despite the fact that many of my friends describe me as ‘over-educated’. If they’d put me on ritalin and risperidol, I might not have had the behavioral issues I had earlier (which basically amounted to being bored out of my skull), and I may have had a slightly stronger GPA. But I wouldn’t have thought the thoughts I’ve thunk, wouldn’t have pondered the things I’ve pondered, woudln’t have written the things I’ve written.

And well, nothing’s worth taking that away from me. Nothing is worth taking these kids’ brains away from them.

If this is for the children, why do all these drugs seem to only involve making things easier on parents and teachers?

My personal opinion of Judge Scalia is that he’s slightly inferior to Clarence Thomas. He’s a constitutionalist…until it starts to interfere with his own socially conservative tendencies. I can understand this myself; it took me a few years to separate my own personally socially conservative tendencies from my politics. But Scalia appears to have hit a home run with his most recent speech.

It’s always been my belief that issues involving basic definitions and values shouldn’t and cannot be decided by 9 people appointed by a single man. Hell, I don’t even think a legislature is right for that. It needs to start at the roots, at the people, and move its way up, in a process not too dissimilar from the constitutional convention.

Anyone who thinks the country’s most prominent lawyers reflect the views of the people needs a reality check.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. The supreme court is simply too impressionable, too divorced from criticism, and too random in its makeup to decide these things. Even if we lived in a world where the 9 people on that bench were always constitutionalists and always impartial, they still shouldn’t have the ability to redefine basic philosophical questions.

He pointed to the granting of voting rights to women in 1920 through a constitutional amendment as the proper way for a democracy to fundamentally change its laws.

“Judicial hegemony” has replaced the public’s right to decide important moral questions, he said. Instead, he said, politics has been injected in large doses to the process of nominating and confirming federal judges.

Damn straight. “Do women have the right to vote?” “Hard to justify that they don’t, but at the same time, we’d be redefining a very large and very important part of US Government.” “How about putting it to the people?” “Sounds good to me.”

Now if only we’d approach abortion and gay marriage the same way. The US currently has the most retarded, indefensible, and feminazi-guided position on abortion in the world. This is one case where Europe has actually shown a more intellectually consistent position than the US has, banning abortion after an infant can live outside the womb (since it has then proven it’s a life and deserving of the same protections given to any child). This a result of the 1973 rediculosity we call Roe v. Wade. I’m not asking for a South Dakota-style abortion ban. Merely one that recognizes that there ain’t a whole lot of difference between a baby born at 8 months and a fetus still in the womb after 8 months. And, you know, that if a father is to be legally responsible for a child, he should have a say in the decision-making process (or, you know, vice versa. Either one is fine with me).

Gay marriage? Remove a legally-protected marriage from EVERYONE. Instate civil unions for male-female, male-male, or female-female couples. I’m happy. I just don’t like the use of the word marriage, considering that as long as there has been marriage, it has been tied to the process of making babies.

Take it to the people. It’s our country, it’s our laws. Let us f***ing speak. Come on Democrats, you practically capitalize The People. So why are you so afraid of an amendment process for either decision?

Nice of her to use a fairly inane death threat as a soapbox to stump from.

Wow. A death threat that was almost completely devoid of actual intentionality in it. An anonymous posting on an internet forum at that. Mr. Bush recieves these everyday, in fora nominally dedicated to everything from automobiles to movies, and yes, even conservative politics. Hell, even I have received death threats and various slanderous remarks when campaigning for Cornell Coalition For Life. Death threats that, since I knew who made them and since they knew where I lived, and since they were completely bonkers Rich Liberal Moonbats, were far more credible. As far as I was concerned, it was a sign I was doing something right.

Ms. Ginsburg is trying to make herself a martyr; even if undermining and urinating on the US Constitution made one worthy of such a treatment, the circumstances themselves are overblown. Get back to work, read your f***ing founding documents, and understand why we can’t listen to international law. They don’t base their codes of justice on the same philosophical principles we do. Apples and freaking oranges. Get back to ‘work’ Ms. Ginsburg (well, I’d appreciate retirement more), no one’s going to assassinate you. You know that, I know that. Now shut up you grandstanding old biddy.

I guess you could expect this given the Declaration of Human Rights that continues to read like a manifesto of childish, contradictory, feel-good, typically leftist/statist BS.

Still, one can always hope. After all, to listen to my leftist acquaintances ‘The UN is a good thing’. They were given a chance to reform one of the most laughable parts of a laughable organization, and failed to do so. In related news, the leftist media will hail this meaningless facelift as an important move in the quest for world peace. They will probably criticize John Bolton’s mustache, and possibly his ‘outrageous demands’ for you know, actual accountability.

As I understand it, Mr. Bolton lead the charge for a stronger change. Including a 2/3 majority to elect a member to a seat. And an easier way to get fatasses out who don’t deserve a seat. Makes sense to me, given the fact that some of the recent holders of seats on the commission include Lybia, Syria, and Sudan. The HRC currently has NO credibility (unfortunately they still have a loud voice).

The primary argument against Mr. Bolton’s stand was that ‘it’ll be too hard to get members to agree. And this new resolution will make the HRC slightly less of a joke.’ The good things in life don’t come easy. This is especially true when you’re dealing with representatives from almost every government in the world. This one strengthens things somewhat, but generally with moves like this you can’t take the stairstep route. It’ll be much easier to make one BIG jump to accountability rather than three small ones.

This was my primary reason for not being a Kyoto supporter. Believe it or not, conservatives can be conservationists. Kyoto focused entirely on the developed world and not on the developing world. The developed world is stabilizing in terms of the amount of pollution created. Developing nations (such as Latin America, China, and India) are not. In the middle of industrialization themselves, they are ramping up the number of polluting sources at a dramatic rate. The bulk of the growth in emissions will come from them. The smart money would thus be to encourage them to go ‘green’ from the start, preventing them from ever getting to the levels of US and Europe.

It would not only be more cost effective, its impact on effective reduction would be greater in magnitude. Some of my fellow conservationist (and dirty liberal) friends have said ‘Well, at least Kyoto’s a start.’ Again, it’s easy to take your dog to the vet the first time. But the second time? There’ll be some fighting. When they get to be as old as my 15-year old golden retriever, you’ve practically got to knock them out cold with a baseball bat to get them through the door (I should know, I was there this morning).

I can fault a lot of Bush’s appointments to various high ranking positions. But so far Bolton seems to have done everything right. It’s too bad Europe and the rest of the world is too busy playing Realpolitik to bother with the actual business of changing the world for the better.