Just a cartoon

(Jesus and Mo)

Dorothy Height, 1912-2010

 (from NOW photos)

Here's a fascinating obituary of a woman I'd never heard of. There are obits in The Washington Post ("founding matriarch of U.S. civil rights movement") and The New York Times ("largely unsung giant of the civil rights era"), too.

The Lowden Medical Plan

Democrats are having a lot of fun with Sue Lowden, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Nevada. Her plan for health care reform - repeated by the candidate when the laughter first began - is for Americans to take chickens and other produce to their doctors and barter for care. Seriously!

She's apparently not the only Republican who's confused about what century this is, either. But as a serious candidate for the U.S. Senate, she's getting the most attention. Here's how Josh Marshall at TPM puts it:

This does put the Nevada senate race into a certain clarifying perspective. The Health Care Reform bill wasn't Harry Reid's bill -- ideas and strategy from lots of people went into it. And many people had endless criticisms of how he managed the process over the course of 2009 and 2010. At the end of the day, though, it passed. The Senate is where it happened. And Reid was central to the entire thing. That is an historic accomplishment. If his career in politics ends in January, his place in history will be secure.

So on the one side you have Harry Reid, a key architect of comprehensive Health Care Reform, the product of decades of activism, in all its messiness and policy complexity.

And on the other you have Sue Lowden, who thinks bartering livestock and other commodities for health care services from doctors is a way to rein in spiraling health care costs. (If you think that's an exaggeration, take a minute and watch this video.) There's no end of comedic possibilities thinking through the logistical and logical difficulties of managing co-pays and long-term care and drug costs in chickens and other barter payment. But step back and give it a serious look and ... well, this is this woman's take on confronting medical inflation. It's funny and also sad. But as a contrast it's stark and painful.

Seriously, think about it for a minute. 

Yes, seriously, just think about that. Nevadans, please think about that! Check that video of Sue Lowden "doubling down" on her barter idea. This wasn't a slip of the tongue. It's really the only thing Republicans have to offer for health care reform (certainly now that they've refused to support a bill that is essentially Republican in the first place, just because it was proposed by Democrats).

As I noted, Democrats are having a lot of fun with this. Here's Sue Lowden's Chickens for Checkups, where you can send a letter to the candidate requesting her help looking for a doctor (for rickets, the vapors, and other old-timey ailments) who will take what you're willing to barter (chickens, goats, indentured servitude).

Apparently, it's not just the official Democratic Party, either. Here's the Lowden Medical Procedure to Chicken Converter, where you can calculate the number of chickens you need to bring to the doctor for various procedures (for a flu shot, you must take the doctor 5 chickens, according to this; for hip replacement surgery, 6,549 chickens).

This handy calculator converts many common procedures into chickens so you won’t look like an idiot at your next Doctor’s Appointment.

And there's a guy in Reno trying to trade a chicken for a heart transplant, on Craigslist.

But Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explains why this would be dumb even without the chickens:

Sure, it’s funny to see a 21st-century political candidate pining for the days of a barter economy. But her remarks would have been breathtakingly ignorant even if she had called for payments in cash.

The key fact about health care — the central issue in health care economics — is that it’s all about the big-ticket items. Checkups don’t cost much; neither does the treatment of minor illnesses. The money that matters goes to bypasses and dialysis — costs that are highly unpredictable, and that almost nobody can afford to pay out of pocket. Modern health care, if it’s going to be provided at all, has to be paid for mainly out of insurance.

Conservatives don’t like this; if few of them propose paying in chickens, there is nonetheless a constant refrain of calls for making the market for health care more like the market for bread, with consumers paying out of medical accounts and engaging in comparison shopping. There is, for example, vast romanticizing of things like Lasik and cosmetic surgery, which are held up as models for health care as a whole — even though they’re actually very poor models. (They’re discretionary and fairly cheap — not at all like the procedures that dominate health costs in the real world.)

Why this preference for cash? Because even conservatives know in their hearts that insurance markets are deeply imperfect, which means that standard free-market arguments become very weak once insurers are involved. And so they pretend that we don’t really need all that insurance.

The business with the chickens adds an additional level of absurdity. But Ms. Lowden’s perspective is ludicrous even without the feathers.

James Randi at TED

The Decade in Dumb

 (graphic by Plognark)

Well, it's 2010 and I was just thinking back over the past decade. Are we Americans getting dumber, or does it just seem like that? It's been completely nuts in recent years, don't you think? So I was just wondering, what's the dumbest thing from the past ten years?

Let's keep this to public figures, shall we? That won't be too tough, I suspect. Yes, I know that stupid criminals are all over the Internet, but that's setting the bar a bit too low. After all, criminals can't be too bright in the first place. And skip the anonymous tea-baggers, like the guy who wants to keep the federal government out of Medicare. Again, too easy.

However, Sarah Palin's comment about "death panels" is very definitely in the running. (In fact, it's probably in my top five.) She's a public figure, after all (too public, IMHO). But it's not just politicians. Religious leaders are also eligible, as long as they are known widely enough to be considered public figures. And other celebrities, of course.

Naturally, with the Bush Administration in power for eight of these years, there's no shortage of dumb. But I'm not looking for the most dangerous, the most damaging, or even the most important incident of stupidity in the past ten years. Just the one thing that strikes you for being purely, incredibly, impossibly... dumb.

My pick for the Dumbest of the Decade? Heh, heh. Well, remember freedom fries?

On March 11, 2003, Representatives Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and Walter B. Jones, Jr. (R-North Carolina) declared that all references to French fries and French toast on the menus of the restaurants and snack bars run by the House of Representatives would be removed. House cafeterias were ordered to rename French fries to "freedom fries". ... The simultaneous renaming of French toast to "freedom toast" attracted less attention.

Of course, these two Republican lunatics were upset that France wasn't sufficiently supportive of our invading an innocent country. But let's think about this for a minute. The move was reminiscent of World War I, when Americans renamed a number of items - notably changing "sauerkraut" to "liberty cabbage" - in order to reject anything German. It's closing in on a century since then, so you'd think we'd be more mature now, though this is part of a long history of such efforts in wartime.

But France was never our enemy. In fact, it's our oldest ally. France gave us the Statue of Liberty, for chrissake. How stupid can you get? And, of course, the fact that they were right about Iraq just adds to the sheer dumbness of freedom fries. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and the country did not attack America or threaten us in any way. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 and, in fact, he was the enemy of our enemies. And taking out Iraq was of huge benefit to Iran, as well as being a great recruitment tool for al-Qaeda.

The decision to invade Iraq could itself be in the running for sheer stupidity, but IMHO, that just adds to the wonderful dumbness of freedom fries. And freedom fries is so delightfully petty, too, isn't it? How could you get dumber than this?

Of course, private restaurants across the country began to copy this inanity (although I can't say that I ever saw freedom fries on a menu here in Nebraska). According to Wikipedia, even the makers of French's Mustard felt required to issue a press release explaining the brand name and "affirming its patriotism." Heh, heh. How loony is that?

France simply pointed out that French fries were actually Belgian.

(from ICanHasCheezburger.com via Bay of Fundie)

OK, think you can top this? I'd be interested in what you would nominate for the Dumbest of the Decade.

South Park Death Threats

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South Park Death Threats
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Whatever you think of South Park, it's completely ridiculous that a tiny group of insanely (literally) religious Muslims - in New York, no less - should have this kind of effect. According to this article, and to this brief announcement from the show's creators, it was Comedy Central that actually censored the show, following death threats from Revolution Muslim, a lunatic group of "probably fewer than 10 extremists."

Then again, the whole idea of riots and murder because of perceived insults belongs in the dustbin of history (that part of our history which was particularly loony, at that). I must admit that I hear some fundamentalist Christians with "fatwa envy," apparently dreaming of the good ole days when they could burn heretics alive. Some of those people actually seem jealous of how insane extremist Muslims can be. But in general, you don't get this kind of lunacy from other religious groups.

These days, civilized believers generally understand that you fight speech with other speech. I'm not a big fan of South Park, though some of the shows have indeed been very funny (others, not so much). But if you don't like it, don't watch it. If you think that your religion is being criticized unfairly, speak out. But death threats? How stupid is that?

I don't mean to tar all Muslims with the same brush, but rational Muslims do need to speak up at times like this. Loudly! You need to make it clear that this kind of behavior - the death threats, I mean,... obviously - is unacceptable, period. If you're too cowardly to speak up, then you're just letting the lunatics hijack your "peaceful" religion. And you're letting them keep you in the Dark Ages, when you could be part of a modern, civilized, diverse society.

And speaking of cowardly, Comedy Central doesn't come off very well in this, either. OK, they don't want their people in danger, just because of some lame comedy show. But we Americans need to learn that terrorism works best on cowards. I realize that Fox "News" and other right-wing politicians constantly push irrational fear on the American public, but have we all become timid little people with no backbone whatsoever? Just because they constantly try to scare us, to advance their own political goals, that doesn't mean we can't stand up and boldly resist their campaigns of fear.

And look at the outsized effect this particular threat has had. Look at the publicity this tiny little group of lunatics have received (note that I'm deliberately not linking to their website). Should Comedy Central have paid any attention to these people at all? Honestly, is it any wonder that these people use terrorism and threats of terrorism when they seem to work so well on us? Why don't we understand that our own cowardice, our own over-reaction to things like this (and to isolated incidents like the "shoe bomber," the "underwear bomber," etc.) just plays into their hands?

As a people, we are already hopelessly gullible, it seems - and, admittedly, not too smart - but are we really cowardly enough to let less than a dozen religious nuts intimidate us like this? I'm not at all religious, but Muslims are not my enemy. Violent religious extremists, of any persuasion, are my enemy, and the enemy of every civilized human being. Are we too cowardly to stand up to our enemies?

Illustrated Dwarf Fortress Battle Report

If you're not familiar with Dwarf Fortress, see my earlier post. Otherwise, here's an illustrated battle report that's pretty neat - and rather funny, if you've played the game at all.

It begins when the thriving fortress, "Bronzemurder," population 66, disturbs a legendary fell beast far underground. Well, see for yourself. (Keep in mind that these dwarves are individuals, with emotions, not the typical indistinguishable computer "units." Under enough stress, they can become traumatized.)

Speek English, Morans!

(The Far Left Side)

The funniest part of this, for me, was the little Tea Partiers at the bottom of the comic.

Keep singing

(Mark Fiore)

Ask a Biologist

At the Ask a Biologist website, anyone can ask questions which will be answered by professional scientists. Yes, it's aimed at school kids, but it's open to everyone (and given the embarrassingly low level of knowledge of the biological sciences, at least in America, that's a very good thing).

It's also a fascinating site to browse, since the questions and answers are posted online. Check out the "Popular Questions," or just click on "Browse Answers."

This website is based in Great Britain, but that's the neat thing about science - it's universal. Unlike religion, the answers don't change depending on geographical location. Science is science.

Anti-Muslim, or just Pro-Bacon?

(photo from Indecision Forever)

Here's a weird story. A Muslim family had their application to become foster parents denied because they allow no pork products in the house.

We are denying your application because of concerns raised by statements made during the home study interview, specifically your explicit request to prohibit pork products within your home environment.

OK, I'll admit that I'm a huge fan of bacon.

Mmm,... bacon!

But I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that bacon is essential for raising a kid. I wonder if Maryland prohibits Jews from being foster parents, too? How about vegetarians? Something really doesn't seem right about this.

Then again, I do love bacon. And ham (the good stuff, not that water-soaked abomination that passes for ham these days). And pork chops and pork roast and, ooh, pickled pigs feet (must be served cold, though). And head cheese sandwiches. And fried pork rinds. Oh, man, hang on while I go get a snack...

Boobquake!

Beware of earthquakes next Monday!

This little bit of supernatural thinking has been floating around the blogosphere today:

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.

I have a modest proposal.

Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically. You all remember the homeopathy overdose?

Time for a Boobquake.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that's your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake.

(Edit: Looks like this story has been picked up by CNN. Judging by the comments, there's a lot of interest in this experiment.)

Thomas Jefferson pwns Sarah Palin

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The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion - the Treaty of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1797. (According to Wikipedia, this was only the third recorded unanimous vote - out of 339 total votes - in the Senate.)

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. - President Thomas Jefferson

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. - President Thomas Jefferson

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. - President Thomas Jefferson

Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. ... Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. - President Thomas Jefferson

Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law. - President Thomas Jefferson

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies. - President Thomas Jefferson

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. - President Thomas Jefferson

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes. - President Thomas Jefferson

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. - President Thomas Jefferson

The Tea Party and Ross Perot

Is there a political connection between the Tea Partiers and the Ross Perot movement of the early 1990's? I've seen claims that they have a lot of things in common, but here's an interesting post at FiveThirtyEight.com which disputes that.

These quotes are from Ronald B. Rapoport of William & Mary, co-author of Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence:

The major difference is that Perot movement was a total rejection of both parties, while the tea party movement is a total rejection of only one party--the Democrats.

Whereas only 5% of tea party supporters said that they usually or always voted Democratic, fully one-third of Perot supporters had voted for Walter Mondale in 1984 and slightly more had voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988.

In the New York Times survey, 54% of tea partiers rated the Republican Party favorably. Only 17% of Perot callers rated either party as “above average” or “outstanding” and 43% rated both parties as “below average,” or “poor” with 8% rating the Republicans as “above average” or “outstanding,” and 9% rating the Democrats as “outstanding” or “above average.” Sixty-nine percent rated the Republicans as “below average” or “poor,” with 64% saying the same about Democrats.

The level of favorability among tea partiers for George W. Bush is extraordinarily high—far more than in the population as a whole. Fifty-seven percent of tea party supporters rate Bush favorably, and only 27% rate him unfavorably (for the sample as a whole the corresponding percentages are reversed 27% favorable, 58% unfavorable. On the other hand Perot supporters rated both Geroge H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton unfavorably, Bush moreso than Clinton.

Perot callers were slightly right of center on the liberal-conservative scale, but on specific issues they were were not consistently conservative. They strongly favored abortion rights, national health insurance, and government controls on pollution, while strongly opposing affirmative action, gun control and the revocation of the death penalty.

... On the other hand the tea party movement and the Perot supporters were both about 60% male and over 90% white.

Master of Orion

GOG.com has started selling classic Atari PC games, and their first offers are really something: Master of Orion 1 & 2, together for only $5.99, and Outcast, also only $5.99.

I never played Outcast, but that 1999 action-adventure game has a lot of fans. Check out this retrospective. (There's even an Open Outcast fan project working on a modern sequel.)

The original Master of Orion, though, is one of my all-time favorite games. Released in 1993, it's probably #3 on my personal list of favorite strategy games, just behind Civilization II and X-Com: UFO Defense. And although I was disappointed in the 1996 sequel (why, I don't remember), I was just about the only one. If anything, MOO2 is even more highly regarded than the original.

1993 was a long time ago in computer years, but GOG.com makes sure these old games work on modern computers (bundling DOS games with DOSBox, already set to run the game). Of course, the graphics aren't much. They weren't much even back then. But it's a great game.

(screenshot from Wikipedia)

Master of Orion is a turn-based strategy game, sort of like a space-based Civilization. Like the latter game, the opportunities to build were a much bigger attraction for me than just waging war (though warfare is still a critical part of both games). In MOO, you colonize star systems. Planets vary widely, and you must research terraforming technology to settle many of them. It's been a long time, but it always seemed to me that improving planets was a very satisfying part of this game.

MOO also had a unique research feature. In most strategy games, after a few plays, you learn what works best, and then you use that strategy in every subsequent game. In MOO, (unless you played the Psilon race, who were research specialists), your research options had random gaps. You never had the opportunity to research every single technology in the game, but you never knew ahead of time which technologies would be missing.

It wasn't a big difference. You wouldn't miss out on a whole branch of technology, but just an improvement here and there. But this meant that your optimal play was slightly different for each game. For example, I used to like building huge fleets of tiny, laser-armed ships. But if I didn't get early research options in laser technology, it would make more sense to use missile weapons. That's a minor matter, of course, but this feature really did make a difference during gameplay. It encouraged you to play different games differently.

I kept Master of Orion on my hard drive for years, but as I say, it's been a long time now since I've played it. I still have MOO and MOO2, but at this price, I'm tempted to buy them again through GOG.com, since then I wouldn't have to worry about getting them to run in Windows XP. But there's only so much time in a day, and right now, I don't have any time to spare. But I'm sure tempted.

Mark Fiore

(Mark Fiore)

Maybe this will make up for that cat video.  :)

I never wanted to do this

A cat video??? OK, I never wanted to do this, but it's just too funny. So sue me.

Abortion Politics

Anti-abortion activists are the dedicated foot-soldiers of the GOP. Republican leaders can count on the pro-life base for donations, volunteer work, and assured voting behavior. Many of these people are single-issue voters. Nothing matters to them as much as abortion. And the Republican Party platform has included a firm anti-abortion plank for years.

So why is abortion still legal in America? The GOP controlled Congress for 12 straight years recently. They had their guy in the White House for eight. The Supreme Court, while technically nonpartisan, has been packed with Republicans, too. For a full six years during the Bush Administration, they controlled all three branches of the federal government. Yet they never once even made a serious attempt to outlaw abortion. Why not?

Note that they worked hard on tax cuts for the rich - and got them. Well, Democrats in Congress were pretty spineless, giving Bush pretty much all he wanted (including war with an innocent country). And note that there are a number of conservative, anti-abortion Democrats in Congress. The Democratic Party isn't anywhere near as monolithic as the GOP. It's rare to find a Republican who'll go his own way, but the reverse is true across the aisle. It's very rare to have every Democrat heading in the same direction.

So why wasn't there even a serious attempt to end abortion in America? They had years, after all. Well, I think it's obvious that the GOP doesn't want to end abortion in this country, and certainly doesn't want to see an end to the abortion wars. In fact, I'll bet the whole idea fills them with dread.

Think about it. Pro-life activists are the most reliable voters the Republican Party has. No matter what, as long as the GOP pays plenty of lip service to ending abortion, these people will be there. But what if abortion actually did end? What if long-term contraceptives became so effective, so cheap, and so readily available that there were very few unintended pregnancies? What if the whole issue became relatively unimportant to everyone?

All those single-issue anti-abortion activists would start looking at the other GOP policies - the tax cuts for the rich, the deregulation of banks, the invasion of an innocent country, the torture of prisoners, the politicization of the Justice Department, the anti-environment, pro-pollution policies,...  Suddenly, the most dedicated members of the Republican Party would start looking at what else they were actually supporting. And some of them - quite possibly a lot of them - would not like what they saw.

IMHO, this is why the Republican Party did not even make a serious attempt to outlaw abortion when they were in power. It's not at all to their benefit to give pro-lifers anything but rhetoric. Oh, sure, Republicans in state legislatures - like Nebraska, just recently - will continue to pass restrictive measures on abortion. But those generally don't accomplish anything, before being shot down by the courts. It's just a way to keep the abortion issue front and center, a way to keep their activists happy.

But the last thing they want is to actually succeed in eliminating abortion. Can you imagine what a disaster that would be for the Republican Party? They'd have to find some other issue to fire up the base, something important enough that their members would overlook the other disastrous policies of the GOP. It's no wonder than nothing changed on the abortion front in the Bush years, wouldn't you agree?

You must be so proud.

(Calamities of Nature by Tony Piro)

Dwarf Fortress

After a year and a half of development, Tarn Adams has finally released a new version of Dwarf Fortress, one of the most incredible computer games out there. How incredible?  Well, this might give you some idea: the game is free to download and play, so the solitary developer (with some help from his brother) lives on the voluntary donations from his many fans. Yes, his fans continued to donate even during that year and a half between DF versions - and in the middle of an economic collapse, too!

Dwarf Fortress is a single-player game, a detailed fantasy world simulation with two different kinds of play. But the "adventure mode" - basically, a single-character, turn-based RPG - has seen little development so far. The meat of the game is in "fortress mode," where you take a few dwarves, and an assortment of supplies, into the gameworld and attempt to build a thriving colony.

You can't win the game, you can only lose it. That is, the game continues as long as you want, provided your dwarves survive. But losing is common - and frequently hilarious. The motto of Dwarf Fortress is "Losing is Fun," and it's true. If your fortress is overrun by enemies, gets flooded out (deliberately or not) by water or magma, or simply disintegrates socially as unhappy dwarves run amok, that's fun, too. And then you can start a new fortress somewhere else (in the same gameworld, which will incorporate your first effort into its history) and try again.

This isn't your typical commercial game. For one thing, it uses ASCII graphics - basically just simple letters and symbols which stand for animals and items in the game. There are some minor graphical add-ons developed by fans, such as the May Green tileset shown below, but clearly, the graphics aren't the draw here.

The interface is pretty bad, too. This is a complicated game, and Tarn has been busy adding even more details to it. He hasn't wanted to work on upgrading the interface until he knows exactly what features will be in the final game. Meanwhile, it's certainly playable, but you have to work at learning the commands. There's a significant learning curve here.

So, other than poor - almost non-existent - graphics and a terrible interface, what else does this game have to offer? Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that it takes a pretty decent computer to run it. Sounds great so far, doesn't it? But there's a reason why this game is famous among gamers in the know. I'll get to that - if I haven't scared you off already - after the jump.