Remember The Sound of Music?

I just watched this movie again after many years. It brought back a lot of memories. My parents were quite controlling with the TV and only allowed us to watch a select few approved shows. This was one of them. So we saw it many times. I watched it again with my wife and kids.

The movie is set at a time when the Nazi's were about to move in to Austria. Captain Von Trapp is not a fan of theirs. Some of the dialogue was interesting to hear. Liesl is the eldest daughter and has a crush on the boy that delivers telegrams, Rolf. In a scene late in the movie Rolf enters to deliver another telegram, but this is after the Nazi's have moved in. Here's the dialogue.

Liesl. Liesl!
Rolf!
I'm so glad to see you. It's been su--
Good afternoon.
Give this to your father as soon as he's home.
-He's on his honeymoon. -I know.
-You do? -We make it our business to know all.
-Who's "we"? -See that he gets it.
-What is it? -It's a telegram from Berlin.

Later a Nazi official approaches Captain Von Trapp regarding the telegram:

You never answered the telegram. . .
. . .from the Admiral of the Navy of the Third Reich.
I was under the impression, Herr Zeller. . .
. . .that the contents of telegrams in Austria are private!
At least, the Austria I know.

Von Trapp's response to Herr Zeller is full of outrage initially and finally sadness at the realization that the Austria he knew no longer exists. It's simply taken for granted that a violation of privacy like that is an outrage.

Meanwhile in America we had one Senator that had the courage to vote against the Patriot Act, which is a massive violation of personal privacy and yielding of our rights to the state. He lost in his re-election bid last Tuesday.

Rand Is Not Ron

I wish that Rand's victory in the Kentucky Senate Race meant we had a Ron Paul clone there, but I really don't see it. Rand appears to be a bit of a party hack. Ron is a principled liberterian.

Ron Paul was the original focus of the tea party. He didn't start it himself, but a grass roots movement created it in support of his presidential run. As it grew corporate interest decided to get involved. In came Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Ron did what he could to warn those involved and he has since in various ways distanced himself from them. He asks if we should pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from an inner city project while turning a blind eye to the billions sent overseas to fight aggressive and illegal wars. His hostility to them earned him tea party backed primary challengers. Rand embraced the Tea Party and rode their wave to victory.

Sure, Ron would love to see less regulation. But it seems to me he understands that the corporate takeover of government means that in the interim there is no check on corporate power without government. So take the repeal of Glass Steagal in 1999. This act is largely believed to be responsible for the financial crisis from 2008. This would be perceived as a repeal of regulations, which you might think Ron Paul would support. Ron voted against repealing it.

Here's Rand Paul bragging about how he has the support of the Chamber of Commerce and how he wants to do what it takes to help big business. He wants automatic sunsetting of various regulations. Does Ron Paul have the support of the Chamber of Commerce? He gets their lowest ranking amongst Republicans. That's a badge of honor in my world.

Take Rand on the war. His positions as described at his website don't say a single word about how our overseas wars are not only costly, but immoral. If you are really concerned about out of control deficits why are you only talking about spending that helps the poor and not the far greater amount of war spending that helps the rich? Ron talks about this constantly. Rand doesn't have a word to say about it at his website.

The so called "Ground Zero Mosque" issue is being played up by war mongers to induce additional fear so they can further their designs of world wide hegemony. Ron gets it and Rand doesn't.

Rand sounds like the kind of guy that will cut government everywhere that it might stand in the way of the rich exploiting the poor. The Chamber of Commerce crowd is really principled about small government on those issues. But when it comes to the far more costly and far more immoral aggressive wars that help corporate cronies, suddenly things get really quiet for Rand. That's why he's not Ron.

Censored From Your Textbooks

Seems lately I'm frequently hearing from creationists arguing that various young earth evidences are censored from our textbooks. Often it's Bob Dutko, but not always. Here's a post to address several of these claims.

Bob Dutko recently interviewed Ted Rall and told him that every formerly living that has been C14 dated has "plenty" of measurable C14 still present, which is unexpected if C14 dating is reliable. It should all be pretty much gone by 50K years. But there's a reason some C14 is always showing up on the measurement equipment. The reason is that it is being made in the atmosphere all the time and cannot be entirely eliminated in the laboratory. So if a specimen is older than 20,000 years it has less C14 than is present at all times all around us. So you can't tell how much is in the specimen. You could date a piece of tin and your tools would still see some C14 because of the background radiation.

Bob went on to say that dinosaur bones were radiometrically dated via C14 methods by the University of Arizona and he has the documentation to prove it. Normally you wouldn't expect C14 to work on dinosaur bones because they are too old. He probably has in mind something like what you see here (no need to read the whole thing, just keyword search "Arizona"). If this is what he's referring to, then you can get more of the background story here. In sum creationists under false pretenses provided samples to the University of Arizona for radiometric dating. They claimed that the specimens were bones. Small amounts of contamination can radically effect the test results and these specimens were radically contaminated. All scientists involved are now in agreement that these dating results are meaningless for this reason. Additionally all indications are that the specimens were fossils, not bones. The creationists assert that these are bones, but there is no reason to think so.

Young earth creationists claim that unfossilized dinosaur bones have been found in Alaska. How can these items be at least 65 million years old when they haven't fossilized entirely? Preliminary indications are that this claim is also bogus. Some untrained creationists found a specimen they are calling a dinosaur bone and they say it isn't fossilized, but nobody else has been allowed to examine it. Give me a break.

Another is that a T-Rex specimen with soft tissue was discovered. Once again, no. Or perhaps rather than saying "no" I should say we don't know. A specimen did have something present that was able to exhibit some flexibility when hydrated and worked over, but scientists aren't sure what it is. The tissue may have been replaced in a manner not unlike fossilization by some polymer which is difficult to characterize, but which does have some properties that permit flexibility unlike typical minerals.

Some George Carlin on Voting Day

Still haven't decided if I'll bother voting or not. I probably will.

Scary Muslims are In Demand

In the course of discussions I have with people regarding the causes of Islamic terrorism I find that my opponents are often duped by fakes. Recently I had a discussion with an atheist friend and as proof of the scary nature of Islam and how the religion itself is the primary cause of the violence he appealed to Hassan Butt. Here's an excerpt from the article in the Guardian:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

Pretty scary. But it turns out it's a scam. Even the extremist Muslim bashing right wing blog Jihad Watch has had to concede that Butt is a scam artist, going so far as to stab himself in the arm and blame it Muslims so as to portray Islam poorly. Wikipedia has more.

More recently the proof was offered in the form of a guy named Anjem Choudary and his interview on Hard Talk. See!! Islam is a violent religion!!

Well, let's do a little googling first and see if we don't have a case where somebody realized he can get a lot of attention by simply saying outrageous things. So Choundary is an ex-LSD using, pot smoking womanizer. He has no Islamic credentials, never studied under anybody. But he did grow a long beard and put on a hat. Kind of looks religious now. Smells like a rat.

Then there's Ergun Caner. More of the same. Here's a guy that couldn't speak Arabic but pretended he could, so he'd make up what he thought were Arabic sounding phrases to gullible audiences as he talked about the jihadi ways of scary Muslims. It was enough to propel him to President of Liberty Seminary. There's money to be made and attention to be had pretending to be a scary Muslim. Or ex-Muslim.

How Many Die From Drugs?

Let's think about this for a second. Our government is engaged in a massive war on drugs ostensibly because of the lethal nature of these substances. This means imprisoning between half a million and a million people in the US every year. It means massive violence perpetuated against foreign countries through military aid. It means the bombing of peasants, clearing land and driving them into the hills where they must resort to drug production to avoid starvation. It means CIA funding of covert military action elsewhere in the world. It means things like the Mexican Drug War. We're talking about enormous costs, but presumably necessary due to the lethal nature of the drugs.

Just exactly how deadly are these drugs? Let's have a look. My source is here.

Annual Causes of Death in the United States
Tobacco	435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity	365,000
Alcohol	85,000
Microbial Agents	75,000
Toxic Agents	55,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes	26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs	32,000
Suicide	30,622
Incidents Involving Firearms	29,000
Homicide	20,308
Sexual Behaviors	20,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect	17,000
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin	7,600
Marijuana	0

Seriously? The death of 17,000 entitles our government to enact policies that wreck the lives of millions of people? How would we react if we were treated like Colombia is treated? Suppose Colombia decided that they were entitled to bomb North Carolina because of lethal substances produced there. They have a far more reasonable claim since tobacco is far more lethal. Suppose further that the consumers of tobacco were mostly Colombian. How would we react to that? It isn't even a question. We'd wipe them out immediately.

And it's worse than that. Foreign countries are obligated to take tobacco and to take advertising for it or face devastating trade sanctions. Suppose that not only did Colombia bomb North Carolina but they also imposed cocaine on us and advertising for it, showing handsome people using it and extolling its virtues. The thought is like living in bizarro world, but it makes sense if you accept the logic of the drug war.

Polls Schmolls

When people don't like the implications of polls the response is frequently that polls can be made to say anything. Sort of like saying you've got your sources and I have mine and I guess it's too difficult to determine who is right. Is that fair?

So for instance yesterday Bob Dutko interview a guy by the name of Mickey Huff who contributed to this book. Huff and I see the media very much the same way. Corporate media naturally offers a product that is intended to maximize profits. This results in various skewing of the stories we hear. Dutko conceded that corporate interests are a factor but he said the media also has a left wing ideology. Huff said that's just inconsistent. Left means anti-corporatist/anarchist, which is fundamentally incompatible with being pro-corporatist. He said that studies show that in the mainstream media guests skew to the right according to studies done by media matters. Maybe he had in mind something like this.

Bob tries to blow that off by claiming that since media matters is a left wing source it is not to be trusted. He likewise has studies done by right wing groups such as the Media Research Center. Huff wouldn't accept those so Bob won't accept the claims coming out of media matters.

Huff's reply was interesting and something I agree with. No, he doesn't necessarily disagree with the studies done by MRC. Let's have a look and see. I find that it's a very rare study that I would just assert is flat out wrong. If proper scientific methodologies are followed then studies from right wingers can be trusted.

Bob was vague in his description of the so called studies, so I wasn't sure what he had in mind. But I went to MRC to see what it might offer, and they do have some polling data here. As I look through it I find I have no problem with it. I don't dismiss it because it's being reported by a right wing group. I think it's probably true.

Take this poll as an example. The public generally thinks the media is too liberal. I suspect they do. Doesn't mean they are right, but this probably is what the general public thinks. To determine if they are right you actually have to look at the content of the news. That's what the Media Matters study does. So both of these claims are correct. The majority of guests on the Sunday talk shows are conservative, but public perception is that the media is too liberal.

Just to pick another poll at random, this one shows that the public thinks media coverage of the war in Iraq is too negative and too liberal. I have no reason to doubt that this is what the public thinks.

Again, the implications of the poll can be wrongly extracted. The classic example involved New Coke. Taste tests indicated that the new flavor was preferred. But sales did not reflect that. Was the poll wrong? Not necessarily. One of the reasons the poll was misleading was that the sample size was too small. People did prefer the new Coke in small dosages because it was sweeter. But when you drink an entire bottle you might not prefer it.

Bob can't imagine that there is sometimes a sense in which the media does tilt to the right. So when presented with solid evidence he just wants to dismiss it, and he does so by pretending studies can be made to say anything. He probably rationalizes his positions on health care in a similar way. But while it is true that polls and studies can be misleading I think there is much to be learned from them and they shouldn't be dismissed so cavalierly. Bob should consider first that his intuitions are wrong before pretending that the result of any given study must be wrong.