Bill's Comments

...and often as the old joke goes. With all the emphasis on ID, voting machines, so-called suppression of the vote, I am more than disgusted. However, it is in keeping with the dumbing down of our society. I have been voting for 42 years, and in several different states. I just voted yesterday because I won't be home on election day.

There used to be a time when a voter showed up at the polls, and it was assumed he/she knew who or what they were voting for. The ballot was simply a list of candidates and a means to make a mark, either pen, or ink stamp. The ballots were hand-counted, and there were no exit polls. [The publication of exit poll results before polls close should be outlawed. That is not expression of political speech but an attempt to influence the election or to appear to be the first with the "right" answer.] In fact, the publication of tallies on any national race, e.g. the Presidency, should be prohibited until the polls close in Hawaii.

Back to my main rant. For the entire time I have lived in Ohio until this year, we used a very convenient punch ballot--the type used in Florida which produced hanging chads. The fact was that if you pushed the little stylus all the way down, there was no way you could leave a hanging chad, because pulling the ballot out stripped them off. The form of the ballot was easy to read, a set of pages like a book that you flipped over for each set of races. You then punched out the hole lined up by your choice. It worked for who knows how many years.

When I lived in Indiana and in particular when I was a precinct committeman in an Indianapolis suburb, we used the traditional voting machine. Those were very interesting, because you couldn't just start throwing levers for your choices. You had to vote a straight ticket then change your choices if you were splitting your ticket. Those machines over the years were involved in vote scandals and fraud, but for the most part worked fine.

In Oklahoma I used a set of paper ballots, different colors for different levels of races, and used a rubber stamp with an "x" on the end. Those were hand tallied. That has also been considered a source of error or fraud.

I think what is really important here, is that until 2000 there was no general doubt cast on our electoral process. We knew that there were problems from time to time, but we also had mechanisms for handling them. The lawsuits of the 2000 Florida balloting were not an attack on the result of the election, they were an attack on the very electoral process itself, and the meme has been growing and multiplying since. Consider what was done. The recounts, with their hanging chads, dented chads, dimpled chads, and whatever else, took the responsibility for casting an accurate vote away from the voter and put it in the hands of a person who sat there and made judgment calls. The voter didn't have to make sure she/he pushed the stylus all the way in. Someone would read their mind days after the fact and do it for them.

And all because, like little kids that lose, the Democrats wanted a do-over. The result of all this is, that on the news I keep seeing stories about computerized voting systems that don't work right. I'm in computers for a living--OF COURSE they don't work right. No machine is infallible, and computers are subject to some of the strangest types of failures. Everybody forgets that a computer is programmed by people, and the logic sometimes has branches that nobody thought of, or a part of the computer breaks and there is no fall-back to compensate. Parts of people break, and we have redundancy and backup systems and the ability to figure out a way around the problem.

The other result is that when I voted yesterday, I was handed two very large sheets (11" wide by about almost 30" long) of paper and told to be sure I voted on both sides of each sheet. It has become the standard in Ohio to print ballot information in very large type, eg names in 36 point font. When we had the punch card ballots, this was not a problem because it shrank to the size of a page for each set of choices. However, when it has to be serialized on sheets of paper, the impact is to make these over-sized pieces of paper where the little ovals to fill in ones choice are almost lost. At least Ohio did not go the high-tech route. It is made very clear that one completely fills in the oval of ones choice. We collectively have been doing this for years now on all sorts of forms. The forms are then read by mark-sense readers, a very well established and fairly simple technology. I was responsible for my vote being properly cast which is good.

But I am already seeing news items on possible preparations for lawsuits the instant someone doesn't get what they want. In effect, they are saying that the people are too stupid to vote properly or take responsibility. By attacking voter ID programs they are admitting that they count on fraud to obtain their results. Ironically, those who they claim are being disenfranchised, are actually being discouraged by their making such a deal of it. They come to believe they are disenfranchised and then don't bother.

We are seeing a battle for the integrity of the ballot box this year, but not in the terms we are lead to believe. Those who are making the loudest noise about it are those who are working the hardest to subvert it. They are the same ones that scream about campaign financing then pour millions of dollars into their particular ideological stance.

We seem to have taken some of our fundamental rights and their expression too much for granted. We don't want to either spend the money for manual balloting and tallying, nor wait for the results. Yet now we insist on a paper backup for computerized voting. Get rid of the computer; the paper ballot is its own backup.

Voting is a right, and in order to be valid, a right requires two things, a means of expression and a guarantee that it is extended only to those who have that right. The simplest means of expression is a paper ballot or a mechanical mechanism that is easily understood, easily operated, and reliable. The validity comes from registering and identifying at time of voting all those who are eligible to vote.

I’m flying at 34,000 ft and have just finished dinner. For the last hour my headset has been on Channel 5, and Delta has finally changed the program. (Three months of the same Mozart selections and then two months of Symphonie Concertanté got a bit old.) I am listening to Scandanavian composers and realizing that I use music for many reasons. My preferences are for Romantic and Neoclassical composers, with one exception—Beethoven.

The classical period composers form a good background to working. They are familiar and not challenging at all to listen to. In fact they can, at times, be boring. For me the one exception is the great triumph of Beethoven. Even at the depths of his despair over his hearing loss and loss of love, the music he wrote is uplifting and positive. He presaged the Romantic Period.

The Romantic composers on the other hand (from being boring), stir emotions. The wonderful exuberance of Robert Schumann in the Rhenish (Third) Symphony, or the desolation of Sibelius’ 1st, two of my favorites, can create strong feelings and ease pain. Almost any of the Romantic composers can grab my emotions at some point though not as strongly or consistently as Shostakovich, Sibelius, Rachmaninoff, or Rimsky-Korsakov. In fact, “Russian Easter Overture” will cause me to completely stop whatever I am doing and listen until it is done. If I am driving and reach my destination, I stay in the car until it is finished.

The neoclassical sarcasm, that still harks back to Romanticism, of Shostakovich is also something I enjoy. The appeal of Shostakovich to me is the need to engage my intellect as well as my emotions to properly enjoy his music. His “Festival Overture” to me is a great satiric joke. It is so completely overdone. In order to survive in Stalinist USSR, he had to write music that appealed to Stalin, once in a while. This is the joke of “Festival Overture.” It is nothing but triumphalism, major flourishes, grand brass choruses, to the point of being ridiculous. And I can imagine Stalin approving. Stupid idiot! He doesn’t even know when he is being made fun of.

When I am in a really troubled and incoherent place, I found that Igor Stravinsky’s work, especially “Rite of Spring”, can blend with and structure the mood, which then allows me to gradually bring myself back with less and less troubled and emotional music. The other alternative is to leave classical music altogether and start with Pink Floyd and work my way back to Alan Parsons.

For me, listening to music is sometimes, though infrequently, a passive activity. Most to almost all the time, it is an active engagement with the sound, the emotions it generates, and my own state of mind. It is powerful stuff.

When Kim du Toit closed down his blog last year I was quite disappointed. I enjoy his well-written directness, and his love of firearms. The AnalPhilosopher published a link to his new blog, The Other Side of Kim. I have included it on my blog roll to the right.

While writing the previous post I was struck with how much of our problem with the Iraq/Afghanistan environment is simply due to failure to persist. We, as a nation, seem to be afflicted with ADHK (I know exactly what I am talking about I have a son with it). We start things with great energy and then are suddenly distracted by something trivial or totally unrelated. We have no staying power at all. When we displaced the Taliban, we didn't put enough boots on the ground to properly wipe them out, and are now paying the price. When we dislodged Saddam Hussein, again we didn't put enough energy into the establishment of order. Again it was a matter of man-power. Enough troops in place would have provided the necessary cushion against our mistakes in managing the aftermath.

This is not to fault our leadership completely. They are politicians. It is necessary for our leadership to be politicians. They exist at the will of the people, and I think President Bush is very good at reading the will of the people. He has done pretty much what we, as a nation, have wanted him to do, and when it fails of its own contradictions, has taken the heat of the failure. It doesn't do any good to point out that is what we said we wanted.

I keep thinking about WW II. It is because I see the war in the Middle East the equivalent in importance if not scale. In WW II almost every able-bodied male that could be spared was a soldier. It was a huge percentage of the population. Every commodity was rationed to provide supplies for the war. Women worked in factories so the men could go to war. A huge percent of our GNP and most of the Federal budget went to the war effort. We sustained this for four years, and then supported our troops occupying Japan and Europe for years more. But when we were done, neither of our former enemies were neither in a position to create more trouble nor were our enemies.

In those days, nothing came easily to anybody. We all worked long hours to obtain the things in life, and those things were not nearly what they are today. I think what was different was there was a work ethic that had to be developed simply to survive. And there was a set of common values. As a society we had common standards of what was right and wrong, and common priorities--politics was less important than winning the war.

The boomers after the War changed all that. They were raised with permissiveness and a reaction to the rigors of the War. Parents that had sacrificed during the War didn't want their children to be victims of it. But they lost sight of what makes for healthy growth--challenges, work, responsibility, discipline, high standards. The boomers then raised generation of their own, and that is the one in charge today. President Bush is a sincere man, who sees the problems, but has little clear idea of how to solve them. He fortunately chose two main advisors who were old enough to have some wisdom, Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld and V. Pres. Cheney. I think we would be even further off track than we are if it weren't for them.

We, as a nation, don't take things seriously enough for long enough. The WTC collapse marked the collapse of American will. It is quite symbolic in retrospect. The great, tall buildings that looked so wonderful, that when damaged just so, suddenly collapsed into a pile of rubble. It is further symbolic that five years later, we still are wrangling over what to do with the site, and, as precious as land is on Manhattan, nothing has been done to use the land. Just like this country, it continues to wrangle over what to do with the Middle East and is paralyzed by its own debates.

At this point in my life, all I can do is write, vote, and make a living. I have three living children that are heading into a world the likes of which they are not prepared for. (I don't have good prognostications for them.) Our lack of will will cause a fatal hesitation this election year. It is the wrong time to hold the GOP accountable for its mistakes, but when people have enough they do something about it. It may only last two years, but if the Democrats control Congress, though little will happen domestically, because I think Pres. Bush will discover he does have veto power, nothing will happen internationally either, because the Democrats are determined to back out of this war. When we have another national disaster it will be too late for us to say, oops.

Any number of people have said it, but Gerard said it best with an item he published a year or so ago. There is a perfect storm brewing between our immigration and border policies, the attempts to shut down internal security on grounds of rights violations, the attempts to give a pass to terrorists on grounds of criminal rights, and a general lack of will to pursue the bad guys. If the elections go as predicted, I am almost certain that we will see a much bigger attack on US soil than 9/11 was. I have heard that there is a desire to set off multiple nukes, either nuclear or dirty, in several major cities. Sure. There may be biological attacks or chemical attacks, similar to the Sarin attack in Japan several years ago.

The question is, will we react as we should or has the PC Brigade and its followers finally been successful, and we will simply roll over and play dead? I wouldn't make book on either option.

Michael Yon, who's blog did such a wonderful job of relating the events of the war in Iraq from the position of being an embedded independent reporter, has a very important essay on the embed situation in the Weekly Standard. One of the things he reports is that in the spring of 2007 the Taliban will turn Afghanistan into a blood-bath because of the money obtained from the opium crop this year.

Go read what is needed for us to properly understand the war.

The Interpretation of Scripture
Those of you who read my Sunday Notes, know that I have my own way of interpreting what is written in the Bible, and that I am anything but a traditional Christian. Instead of discussing a particular passage or concept, I want to talk about approaches to interpretation.

One way of approaching the Scriptures is to assume every word is literally true. In doing so, the literalists create some difficult problems sorting out passages that are at least incompatible with, if not contradictory to, other passages taken literally. In addition, even when taken literally, many parts of the Bible are quite ambiguous. When approached this way, the Bible becomes not just a story of mankind's relationship with God, and guidelines for living a good life, but a prescription for specific behavior and belief. If one does exactly what the Bible says to do, one gets to Heaven. Of course there is still the problem of figuring out what the Bible says to do, especially in a world totally different in circumstance than the times in which it was written.

The other extreme is a dismissal of the Bible as a set of myths with no meaning to modern man. Even if God exists, the expositions in the Bible are dated and of no significance. This can be coupled with a belief in God, but usually a Deism-style God, a Being that set up the Universe then left it to run itself.

Once we leave either extreme there are many variants. Some essentially discard everything but the Gospels. Many mega churches are in this category. The Gospels become the only lessons at a service, which is mostly a feel-good kind of event. This group of Christians believe in salvation by Jesus' death on the cross but after that don't seem to hold much truck with Biblical teaching except as it supports that doctrine. It is almost a form of Gnosticism lite-modern, where my behavior today isn't important as long as I have accepted Jesus as my savior.

The traditional churches all tend to fall on the other end of the spectrum being to one degree or another literalistic, and looking at the entire Bible for their lessons and guidance on how to live. If I were to draw a midpoint on the scale it would be where a church has a contemporary service, characterized by simple, modern songs, a single Gospel lesson, a praise group rather than a choir, and a sermon that is less a sermon and more a feel-good message. Once that line is crossed, interpretation of the Bible becomes a private thing, if it exists, not a subject for sermons.

Having come to my beliefs from 30 years of atheism and agnosticism, I first of all, consider the Bible to be an excellent source of wisdom. I do not believe it is literally true. The main reasons are that if it is literally true, what version is the correct one of the hundreds out there, in English and all the other languages of the world, and how do you reconcile the obvious contradictions both internally and with respect to the modern world?

I also don't believe that people have changed in the last three thousand years in any major way. They still show all the same personalities and traits today that they did back then when the Bible was written. Or conversely, we can interpret personalities and traits back then the same way we do today. If this were not so, the politics of the Jewish leaders and Pilate at Jesus' crucifixion would not be obvious to us.

So here is the lever we need to open up Biblical interpretation, the similarity of people across time. In order to use that lever, we need to take off our rosy-colored glasses of mythical greatness of Biblical people, and see them as humans trying to solve the same kinds of problems we are today. The reason they became recorded in the Bible is that their solutions and behaviors were the correct ones for the time and situation.

I arrived at this conclusion long before I became a theist. I became very aware that the teachings I was hearing in church with my family were correct without bringing in God as a commanding/demanding figure. In and of themselves they worked when applied correctly. "Turn the other cheek," nicely translates into don't sweat the small stuff, and an abbreviated version of "sticks and stones...." I found that simply letting the small things roll past allowed the other person to reconsider without pressure to defend and usually led to a far better outcome for both. Where the literalists get in trouble here, is that it turns into a call to total surrender under deadly attack. Another example is the story of Abraham and Isaac. I consider this to be the myth or legend that indicated the cessation of sacrificing ones first-born. Its power is in the fact that Abraham was doing what he thought was God's will and God actively stopped him and stated His displeasure in the practice. He (God) also provided the substitute for a people that believed one had to make a sacrifice to get God's attention.

The Bible has to be read as a record of what worked for other people and why they thought it worked. The reasons why are not so important as what worked. The reasons why are based on knowledge of the world over two thousand years ago, and can change. Also much of the Old Testament is written in a symbolic style, taken from dream material. This does not negate is underlying truth, but may obscure it to us.

The other premise I hold is that writing the Bible, in all its variety of styles and authors over time, is inspired by God, but not dictated by God. When the writers had an experience that could be attributed entirely or partly to divine intervention or activity, they then wrote about it. It was important to them that people know what happened.

So when I approach the Bible, I read what is there, determine if it is primarily factual or mainly allegorical or metaphorical, and think about what it meant when it was written. Only by understanding its meaning to the writer can we bring the essence of the meaning into our own lives. Often this understanding requires outside sources to properly understand. I have five major commentaries on the Bible and there is at least one other I eventually want to acquire. The value of these is that after I have taken everything from the passage I can on my own, I can then learn where scholars have found factual explanations, or expanded the context of the passages and have improved my understanding of terms. Then I integrate this material into my own understanding.

I don't necessarily consider that my approach is necessary for everyone or desirable for everyone. I'm a nerdy, geeky kind of guy, and really get into scholarship. However, the general idea that Biblical people were pretty much like us, and what worked for them can be ADAPTED to work for us, is the take away from today's note.

The Constitution of the United States is designed to limit government and protect the citizens from abuse of government power. With the addition of the Bill of Rights, it clearly spelled out the freedom which we were to enjoy. But inherent in governments is a monopoly on the use of force. This monopoly is what allows for the enforcement of the laws that are passed. The implied use of force is what stands behind every government request or order.

The Founding Fathers were well aware of this when they wrote the Constitution having just separated from England and its use of force. What they understood is that the ultimate protection of our persons and property is ourselves, whether against an unjust government or against criminal assault. Thus, they wrote the Second Amendment.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The wording is a bit unfortunate, because the militia clause has created a number of attempted avenues of attack on the right to bear arms. An example of a better worded version comes from the State of Connecticut:

Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state (1818).

I think our Founding Fathers were more concerned with defense of the US without having a standing army, such armies were seen as a source of potential abuse and trouble. There is much more on this here.

What the right to bear arms gives us is the right to have personal weapons. It cannot with any reason be taken to the extreme that one can have a missile in ones back yard. The existence of such would be a clear and present danger to all around. It might be construed to allow fully automatic weapons, but there are major concerns about their security from improper use. The most extreme would be the Sherman tank in an old James Garner movie. I think it was called "Tank." However, it definitely allows all sorts of rifles, shotguns, and hand guns, and it makes no distinction as to their use, e.g. for sporting use only.

So why has there been so much pressure to limit and control firearms? The two largest groups favoring firearms control are the fearful and the grieving. The fearful think that by controlling free access to firearms that they will not be available to be used either by criminals or by accident. They are also afraid of the weapons themselves, as if the weapon can magically cause them to do harm merely by possessing it. I suspect in some cases they are fearful that they might do harm if they had a firearm and therefore want to block all possibility of their obtaining one. Their fear blinds them to any consequences except what they want to see, namely the disappearance of firearms. However, as is pointed out, over and over, the firearms only disappear from the possession of those who might have a legitimate need to protect themselves. Those they fear go right on using them.

The grievers do not see beyond the fact that their loved one was killed by a firearm, and using the simple logic of the grieving think that if there were no firearms their loved one might be alive, and so try to rewrite history. Lest you think I am callous, by the same logic, I should want dune buggies outlawed since my son was killed in one. These people receive a lot of press simply from sympathy. And they have my sympathy on their loss, but not my agreement as to a course of action.

Then there are the poor fools who think there is no need to be armed or protected, that the police will always come to the rescue in time or just being good and innocent will be protection. Yes, 6 million good and innocent people were sent to their deaths in the Nazi empire before it was destroyed, and the police did the dirty work of rounding them up. These same people also didn't believe in being armed. As a consequence they became human cattle. In the modern day an Islamic Jihadist will behead you whether you are nice or whether you aren't. You might stand a chance if you shoot him/her first.

The worst are those who believe in the power of government to solve all problems. Actually, I don't think they really believe that, but it creates a motive to expand government power and with their power. Instinctively they understand that firearms are the final protection against government power, that an armed citizen must be treated with respect or else taken down so openly as to void all pretenses of what is going on. These people prey on the grieving, the fearful, and the fools, telling them what they want to hear in order to expand their control of firearms. Do not kid yourself, the goal is total disarmament. But they do it just like the old boiling a frog routine, a little bit at a time so it is not noticed.

Fortunately, there seems to be some sanity starting to occur in this area. Many states have enacted concealed carry laws, and some states are now allowing the use of deadly force to protect ones property and life. (As if it were the state's to give or take.) The media, being on the anti-gun bandwagon doesn't report it, but where citizens have the right to concealed carry, violent crime diminishes.

I learned to shot safely when a teen-ager at a YMCA program run by a city police sargeant. We teach our children to drive, why not to shoot? Actually cars are far more deadly than firearms. During frontier times children were expected to shoot their dinner, small game, rabbits, squirrels, and birds. It is not difficult to learn safely, it is literally childs play.

As we rave on over First Amendment issues that sometimes aren't we ignore the most fundamental right of all, the right to protect ourselves from force.









People who use the first two
people who don't understand and don't care

Here and here are two examples of how atrocious science reporting is today. Both deal with highly politicized issues and contain errors and distortions as well as internal contradictions.

Let’s start with the one relating to global-warming:

Greenland ice sheet shrinking fast: NASA
Thu Oct 19, 2006 5:12pm ET

Right up front there is a scare tactic. Everyone by now has been told that if the icecaps melt the oceans will rise and flood huge areas will be underwater including all major seaports. So if Greenland’s ice cap, the smallest of the bunch, is shrinking fast we are to assume that all of them are shrinking fast. Not only that, but use of the word fast in this context is pure distortion. To most people fast means certainly within their lifetimes, a few years, or less, depending on the context. Even at the current rate it would be several lifetimes to hundreds of years for the Greenland ice cap to disappear.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The vast sheet of ice that covers Greenland is shrinking fast, but still not as fast as previous research indicated, NASA scientists said on Thursday.

Fast is not defined but already we see a retraction from the headlines.

Greenland's low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice each year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, the scientists said in a statement.

The high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall, they said.

Finally some actual facts. Notice they don’t complete the calculation which means the ice cap is losing about 100 gigatons a year. Actually it is disingenuous to use the equivalent value of 41 cubic miles. It is a big number, but misleading, because people will think of a cube 41 miles on a side, not a cube slightly less than 3.5 miles on a side. What is missing that would create information rather than just scare facts would be the amount of ice in the ice cap which is on the order of 25,000 cubic miles. So at 41 cubic miles a year, it would take 600 years for it to melt. (Yawn, wake me when it is over.)

This is a change from the 1990s, when ice gains approximately equaled losses, said Scott Luthcke of NASA's Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory outside Washington.

"That situation has now changed significantly, with an annual net loss of ice equal to nearly six years of average water flow from the Colorado River," Luthcke said.

Even the scientists get into the act. Significance in science is not the same as significance to us. Significance in science simply means something has changed enough to measure a difference greater than the error of the measurements. Comparing the loss to six years of water flow from the Colorado River is more scare tactics. We have a concept of how big the Colorado is, so six times that much must really be a lot. In absolute terms it is. But again, without context it really is simply a fact.

Luthcke and his team reported their findings in Science Express, the advance edition of the journal Science.[italics mine, bk, poor editing]

The ice mass loss in this study is less than half that reported in other recent research, NASA said in a statement, but it still shows that Greenland is losing 20 percent more mass than it gets in new snowfall each year.

Wait a minute, this huge mass (101 gigatons) is only 1/5 of the total new snowfall? But that means it gets about 500 gigatons a year in new snow, but only 54 gigatons sticks? So what is going on here? There is a lot not discussed.

The Greenland ice sheet is considered an early indicator of the consequences of global warming, so even a slower ice melt there raises concerns.

Now we get to the payoff, THE BIG SCARE—global warming. Actually as constructed the sentence is internally contradictory. If the ice sheet is an indicator of warming, then the way the word, slower, is being used actually says the rate is getting less which would indicate the problem is getting less. But somehow, we are to be concerned anyway.

"This is a very large change in a very short time," said Jay Zwally, a co-author of the study. "In the 1990s, the ice sheet was growing inland and shrinking significantly at the edges, which is what climate models predicted as a result of global warming.

Don’t get me started on climate models. These are the least precise and least accurate of any forecasting tool I am aware of. They can’t predict the very data they are built from, and yet we are supposed to rely on them to predict the future. Besides as imprecise and spotty as current data is, how do we know that the earlier measurements are accurate? I read frequently of revisions of estimates made from earlier data, both due to better analysis, and to reinterpretation of mechanisms by which they are explained.

"Now the processes of mass loss are clearly beginning to dominate the inland growth, and we are only in the early stages of the climate warming predicted for this century," Zwally said.

Again the scare tactics—only the early stages, predicted for this century, climate warming—I told you so and I will keep telling you. My reading of global warming reporting gives me the impression that NASA is particularly corrupt scientifically. They use global warming as a lever to justify part of their budgets. What is worse they are also big on supporting the hypothesis that mankind’s production of carbon dioxide is the cause of global warming.

More information is available online at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/greenland_slide.html.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

One final shot on this one, nowhere does it discuss the causes of global warming. We are to assume it is mankind’s production of carbon dioxide. My own view is we don’t really know the causes, but my reading of the history of the earth’s climate, is that what is being measured is smaller than the natural variation. There has been far more extreme warming millions of years before mankind appeared, and equally extreme cold periods. Not only that, but the analyses that first caused the global warming furor have been shown to be wrong. There is no hockey stick, it was an artifact of the technique used.

Now let’s look at another controversial topic—the ozone hole. This one has caused major economic disruption over the last few decades and changes in cooling technology which are less efficient than what they replaced.

Antarctic ozone hole biggest on record, U.S. reports
Thu Oct 19, 2006 3:40pm ET

Uh, oh, the biggest on record, and it was a big cause of concern when it was smaller. I supposed to be worried already.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - This year's ozone hole over Antarctica is bigger and deeper than any other on record, U.S. scientists reported on Thursday.

Didn’t we do things to stop it from getting big? I can’t use the earlier forms of Freon; it costs quite a bit to get rid of an old refrigerator; Auto air conditioning service is far more expensive than it used to be; I can’t get certain chemical solvents without a lot of regulatory headaches, and new car air conditioners don’t work as well, because of the ozone hole.

The ozone layer shields Earth from the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays, and the layer thins out over the South Pole each year, primarily because human-made compounds release ozone-eating chlorine and bromine gases into the stratosphere.

The two facts are accurate taken individually. The statement of cause is not. Ozone is produced by the Sun’s ultraviolet exciting oxygen in the atmosphere and splitting it. The individual atoms are not stable so attach to other molecules of oxygen, creating ozone. The ozone then absorbs ultraviolet in the harmful-to-life wavelengths. The ozone hole occurs naturally every winter, due to the lack of sunlight. It is not well-known, but there is also one over the North Pole, and it is also not well-known that a heavy thunderstorm season will deplete the ozone layer over North America.

It was shown that the release of molecules containing chlorine and bromine, the various freons, would react with ozone in a chain reaction. As the concentration of these two elements increased in the atmosphere, so did the size of the winter ozone hole in Antarctica. This was good science, a relationship and a possible mechanism to explain it. Based on that information, the politicians and scare-mongers took over. The fear generated was that we would destroy the entire ozone layer and then be exposed to more ultraviolet with an increase in skin cancer. One thing ignored in all this was that the hole disappeared in summer. This means that wherever the sun could cause harm, ozone was formed and the shield was in place. If anyone stated this back then, they must have been shouted down. More likely, the scientists that might gainsay the fears stood to profit from them in research money.

"From September 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles ," said Paul Newman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington.

Ten million square miles is a big number. That is about the size of North America. Compared to the area of the globe it is fairly small—go ahead, look at a globe and see how much of it is North America.

If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach a size of about 8.9 million to 9.3 million square miles, about the surface area of North America, NASA said in a statement.

OK, let’s see, 10.6 – 9.1 = 1.5 or a 15% change. In those terms it is noticeable, but certainly not frightening. What’s more they just contradicted their earlier statement about the cause—“If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal…” So the hole is not caused by Freon.

Scientists measure the total amount of ozone from the ground to the upper atmosphere in Dobson Units, and a NASA satellite detected a low level of 85 Dobson Units on October 8 of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

By themselves, these facts have no meaning. They are specialists numbers.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used balloon-borne instruments to measure ozone right over the South Pole, and by October 9 the total ozone in a column from the ground to the upper atmosphere had dropped to 93 DU from about 300 DU in mid-July.

Temperature variations in the Antarctic stratosphere causes the severity of the ozone hole to vary from year to year. Colder temperatures result in larger and deeper ozone holes, while warmer temperatures lead to smaller ones. This year, the lower stratosphere was about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) cooler than average.

This piece is not quite as bad as the first one. We now get some sanity in the article. However, note that it is a direct contraction of their statement that the primary cause is man-made chemicals.

Concentrations of ozone-depleting chemicals in the lower atmosphere have been declining since 1995, and scientists estimate the ozone hole will be completely recovered by about 2065.

So there is no problem after all. The so-called complete recovery most likely means that we won’t be able to measure any ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere, or that their concentration is low enough that they don’t cause a net loss of ozone.

On last shot, consider the source of the articles. Reuters is notorious for slanted coverage of the war in Iraq. It only would be consistent for them to mis-report science as well.

Thanks to Drudge for both links.

One of the two-edged swords of being a road warrior is that I get to try every car in the rental inventory--that is, at the intermediate or higher level. (OK, I'm a bit spoiled and won't request less than intermediate) Over the years I have driven various boulevard cruisers, sports cars, SUV's, mini-vans, and general transportation. Of the last category, this year I have driven the only General Motors car I have liked, the Chevy Malibu LS V6. This is my second favorite car of all the rentals--the first will be rhapsodisized upon in a bit. The Malibu is a hot little car. It has Overdrive lockout on the shift lever, and it has a floor shift. Sure, it is automatic, but put it in drive with O/D lockout, punch it, and it will spin the tires--on dry pavement, from a standstill. The first time I drove one, I was on the entrance ramp to the freeway and looked down and was shocked to see I was doing 80! It wasn't even straining, and it didn't feel like 80. It is a sweet car, and with the fully adjustable seats, very comfortable. The versions with the less than fully adjustable seats aren't so comfortable, but run fine. BTW even with positrack engaged it will bark the tires--SWEET!

By this time, my secret is out. I am a hot-rodder in old fart's clothing. Now for this week. The rental company in its infinite ??? let me have a 2007, Mustang convertible for the week. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this car. I am in love with it, but my wife would be jealous, worried, and I no longer am wired to handle it the way it can be handled. However, I have had a wonderful week with it.

First, the interior is top-notch. The seats are high quality vinyl and the bucket seats are the most comfortable I have ever sat in. The seats are fully adjustable for height, distance, and angle, and there is a lumbar pump. The instruments are well arranged. The tach is red-lined at 5500 rpm, and the speedo goes to 120. Based on my calculations at a lower speed, in overdrive, it will do about 150 at least. The overdrive lockout increases rpms by 33% which is a significant difference--it gives it real street rod potential.

Having broached that topic, let us say I know it does 95, and can race effectively, even in O/D. I did settle down after the second day. It wouldn't look good for me to land in jail. The suspension is firm. You can feel the bumps but it stays solid. There is no sway. It corners like it was glued to the road. I don't have either the experience or the nervous system to properly test this, but I was doing corners at speeds that I would never attempt with a standard sedan or my truck.

Aesthetically, the external lines are nice. It looks both fast and tough. Not a muscle car. In fact, Ford did make a traditional muscle car this year. Fire it up and it has a audible exhaust. If a modern street rod or muscle car would be either a Johnny Cash or Tennessee Ernie Ford bass, then this car is a European baritone, e.g. Dietrick Fischer-Dieskau. One person I talked to said like a cat--a BIG cat.

In summary, it is a good thing this car did not exist fifty years ago. I would either have landed in jail or been dead. I have a lot of the racer in me, and it is good that the opportunities now appear when I have more sense (though not much). If I win the lottery, which I never play, I would buy my ultimate truck and this car.

My ultimate truck is an F350 with crew cab, long bed, 4X4, Manual transmission, 17" tires, hard bed cover, nerf bars, and trailer hitch. Lincoln actually sells it for $50K, except it has a short bed.

If nothing else, make your day. Go test drive it. You don't have to buy, but if you try it, you will want to buy it.

I have been ranting the last couple of days, so I guess it fits.

Thanks to the Maximum Leader for the link.

From Fox News comes this troublesome [Yes, I know it is not the first] bit of news:

Massachusetts School Bans Tag Amid Fears of Injuries, Lawsuits
ATTLEBORO, Mass. — Tag, you're out!

Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.

While there is no districtwide ban on contact sports during recess, local rules have been cropping up. Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.

Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid."

Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said.

One sane mom, one terrified of the world, and a school administration that has become "better retarded in development than sued."

No tag, no dodge ball, no Red Rover, no jungle gyms, no swings. The stupid idiots and the equally stupid parents should watch puppies and kittens play--they fight. Not for blood, but for the practice. That is what recess is for, to develop the skills needed in life, besides academics. Competition, getting hurt and in so-doing learning how to avoid it the next time, working out the rules and dealing with cheating, learning the physical limits of ones body.....there is much to be learned on the playground that education forgets, ignores, or outright suppresses.

I once predicted that on moral grounds the Baptists and Fundamentalists would end up saving us because they were the only ones unafraid to take a moral stance. I will now predict that if we are physically saved it will be by the people that grew up disadvantaged and never considered being hurt anything other than a lesson on what to avoid. Leave the world up to the education types and the elitist parents hovering around their children to protect them from a bruise, and we will be dhimmi tomorrow.

We have become a nation of quavering cowards, thinking that wars are like the movies, and hoping that talk will do it, because we have neither the guts or the knowledge to really fight. We certainly don't have the willingness to endure. The first Gulf War was a two-edged sword. It proved that the US was capable of fighting and winning, but it happened so easily that we get dismayed if it takes more than 100 days. It is easy to see that most of us who were alive during WWII are now dead. With the body public we have today, Hitler, Mousselini, and Tojo would have conquered the world in a year or two. Pearl Harbor would have caused us to sue for peace.

We are raising a nation of wimps, and then wonder why they suddenly become uncontrollable. Leadership and courage are not learned in a classroom. They develop on the playground--but only if let alone. Stop flagrant bullying, but otherwise let the kids sort it out. They can. I was small and picked on, because I was less physical and more mental than most of my peers. But one day I learned that bullies can be hurt too, and I learned a valuable lesson and was left alone after that. Yes, it is a harsh way to learn, but in some cases the only way to learn.

BTW, Self-defense classes only do so much. They are so structured, that the student may learn how to physically defend him/herself, but they don't learn much else.

....we will roll over and play dead when they say boo!

I don't have the vocabulary I once did or I would find enough words to describe my dislike of voice menus. Whoever dreamed them up deserves a special place in Hell where he/she/it is required to sit there and constantly try to navigate a circular menu that will give no option desired, and no escape route, no customer representative, and always returns to the same place after about 15 choices.

I have actually been in a system where I followed about nine links got a customer service rep that said I was in the wrong department, connected me to the "right" department and found myself back in the same damn menu again.

What makes it even worse are the ones that have these synthesized pleasant airhead voices that repeat everything and take twice as long to do anything as punching in numbers would. What is worse, they now don't offer the option to punch in a number to navigate. Notice how they bury the customer service representative option at the bottom of the list and after a pause. Not only that but they frequently use a very non-intuitive choice to get to it. Too many people hit zero anymore before the menu is done. Despite their hopes, we aren't stupid.

It was not for our convenience that these things have come about--it reduces service desk head-count, or PBX head-count as the case may be. In most cases, it just ticks me off. I don't want to "say or speak ...." and then have it repeated back to me to make sure the voice recognition software did its job. Of course my time is worth nothing to the other end of the line, theirs is the only time that counts. I have noticed that the less option one has of using a alternate service, the more annoying the voice menu is.

I grew up in an age when personalized service was the norm, not an expensive luxury. Retail clerks were trained to help people effectively; there were real telephone operators, secretaries, and customer service representatives. When the first exposure by phone to a company or organization is a voice menu, what does it say about their attitude toward customers or clients? It is an assumed pigeon-holing of their reason to call.

"Hello, you have reached the XYZ Company. Please listen carefully to all the options because our menu has changed."

[Translation: We are too cheap to hire a receptionist, and the top six reasons for calling have changed, so we want to head you off at the pass as soon as possible. All we want is for you to give us your business with a minimum of effort on our part.] My favorite is when you leave an address by voice menu. It disappears into a black hole from which it may emerge correct or may be hopelessly garbled by whoever or whatever transcribes it with no chance of a correction.

I will tell you why WalMart is as successful as it is--not just the low prices, but the WalMart Greeter. Walk in the door of WalMart and there is someone who can tell you where to find what you want, who acts glad to see you, and will even provide a cart if you don't have one. The first impression of WalMart is that it is personal. Meier's (A large mid-West grocery and everything store) does the same thing.

OK, I've wound down for the moment. But as a last thought, maybe the reason companies get away with it is that too many of us are willing to be de-personalized, having been brought up in the mill of public education and the mindlessness of mass media. There may be people who can survive on no contact or only indirect contact with other people. I am not one of them. This is a society, not a factory. In societies people interact, have conflicts, agreements, projects, and simply enjoy each others company or hate each others company. Whatever it is, it is what makes us human. We are slowly destroying that.

My good friend, Peg, posted this bit apropo Halloween. It is quite scary.

Last week when flying out to Phoenix, I observed that the passage of passengers up and down the aisle to the restroom was in complete disconnect from the activities of the flight attendent, who was trying to prepare drinks and a meal for the first class cabin. In fact it struck me as being like some avant garde movie where people seem to move aimlessly all around the place and in every scene and bear no apparent relationship to the scene itself.

During a lull, I mentioned this to the attendent and she said, "We are invisible." To most of the passengers, she didn't exist except as a function to provide for their comfort, and certainly not as a person. Today on my flight to Phoenix, I verified that this indeed was the case, when I talked to two other flight attendents. They said anyone in a service position is generally invisible.

I find this both horribly sad and very explanatory. I find it sad that people can accept services from other people and not see the person providing the service. Especially flight attendants who are there primarily for safety reasons, and secondarily for personal service, drinks and food. I was told that people no longer respect the safety rules on an aircraft, in particular the seat-belt sign. But mostly I feel for these dedicated women and men that find themselves "invisible." I would imagine it feels terrible.

As for its explanatory power, it gives insight into why most service is mediocre. Nobody rewards good service nor punishes bad service, nor pays attention to the service provider beyond their function. It is rather that they accept whatever is given and demand whatever they want without consideration of the provider or the circumstances. Then they leave some standard tip without making a judgement as to whether it is earned or not. Heck, if I were providing service under those conditions I would probably provide the minimum required also. Why should I bust my butt for nothing.

The really sad thing is that I have discovered that simply recognizing a server as a person, and that doesn't mean a lot of talk or life history exchange, but rather obviously being aware of the server and being polite, will create wonderful service. Most people want to do their best, but they also want some recognition for it. They want to be visible.

If you do decide to see your server for the first time, don't fake it, don't overdo it, and don't be patronizing. They are very sharp and will catch it in an instant. Just simply be willing to treat them as you would wish to be treated. It works wonders.

I now have the time and energy to bring back my Sunday notes. For those of you new to the blog, these are a collection of thoughts on religious issues, some long some brief. They are archived in my Religious Archives Blog.


This year we are in Mark in the gospel lessons, and currently in the section known as the "hard lessons" because Jesus has such an uncompromising point of view in these verses. Last week was on divorce, and I thought the Pastor handled it very well. He must be given credit for tackling it head-on, because many pastors duck on this and preach from the epistle or the Old Testament lesson.

Back to the eye of the needle. It is the well-known verses about the rich, young man who asked what he had to do to get into Heaven, and Jesus told him to sell all he owned, give it to the poor, and follow him. It was followed by the often quoted, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven." This message resonates with those of envy or those in want, and creates a lot of distress for those who are well-off.

Taken literally it is used as a blanket condemnation of the rich and a demand that they give up their riches. But looking at it from a real-world perspective, riches are required to produce wealth and sustenance from which comes charity or opportunity for the poor and needy to permanently fix their problems by being employed. From my viewpoint, what is being emphasized by the story is that the young man valued his money more than life itself.

The ultimate exemplar of the story taken literally is Mother Theresa and her kind, who live lives of poverty and bring the gospel to the impoverished. She is being held up as a wonderful example for all of us. If that is so, then the whole world should be poor, sick, malnourished, and miserable. That is what would happen if all the rich gave away all their riches and gave them to the poor who would then consume them.

I have a hard time believing God wants us all to suffer and be deprived on this earth. What would be the point? We would appreciate Heaven all the more? If one views Heaven as merely a better Earth, then that might be considered possible. However, I think Heaven is entirely beyond our comprehension, though I have made my own speculations on the subject. What I would think would be God's wishes is that we all be as comfortable as possible on this Earth, enjoying it to its fullest possible, morally, and helping others to do the same.

The complete opposite of the gospel lesson, both literally and spiritually is Scrooge. He denied everyone, himself included, any benefits of his wealth, he simply accumulated it in every way possible. He did indeed love his money more than his life. Somewhere between Mother Theresa and Scrooge is the truth contained in this gospel lesson.

Never being reticent to offer an opinion, here is my take on it. We should pursue a life of productive work using our skills and talents to the best possible way. If that way leads to large incomes or good incomes that through savings and investments become large, there is no shame in it, and in fact it may be a source of realistic pride. We should also be aware of and take advantage of opportunities to help others in a constructive way. As an example on the small end of the scale, be willing to buy a beggar a meal but give him/her no money. The first has the benefit of guaranteeing the person being fed, the second has no guarantees at all but what it will disappear into a bottle, a vein, or up a nose. On a larger scale, assist with time and money for programs such as housing homeless or Habitat for Humanity. On a still larger scale assistance to charitable foundations or creating charitable foundations are good.

Throughout all of these activities, I see no virtue in giving to look good, or giving to buy ones way into Heaven. The gifts have to be given freely and with a genuine desire to help. There is no virtue in giving so much that one makes ones self or family suffer. That simply creates resentment and self-righteousness, both of which are forms of deadly sins, envy or covetousness in the first case and pride in the second.

I see no sin in the enjoyment of ones money, as long as there is willingness to share with others and to provide charity. It is when the money becomes more important than caring about or for people that it is a problem.

UPDATE: 10/17/2006 Rendering unto Caesar
This topic seems to be a constant thread in our culture lately. The newspapers have latched onto the morality issue and the liberals are trying to hide their secularism. Today on the airplane I engaged in a debate with a man who was trying to use religion to justify left/liberal positions on the war in Iraq. Needless to say we didn't get very far, both being of strongly held positions, but I was struck by the way he wanted to interpret the Bible for his side and not recognize the fact that both of us could have different interpretations and both be right, due to the open way the Bible is written. To him it was imperative that one should act a particular way because of one's Christian beliefs. He didn't seem able to see that there might be more than one way to determine the actions required, and that one used the body politic as an individual working with other individuals to arrive at a course of action. While trying to illustrate my point that there were different interpretations possible, it seemed to really hit a nerve when I pointed out that both he and I enjoyed the consumption of alcoholic beverages (he was drinking whiskey neat), and that there were those whose reading of the Bible would condemn us for it. He immediately said the conversation was over. Most peculiar. If anyone has an explanation for it, I would be interested. My first thought was that he had lost and didn't want to admit it.

For those interested, my sermon on this topic is here.

It would appear that somebody is either very idle or they have found a way around the word verification on blogger comments. I have had three different spam entries in my comments, and currently have a total of 32 in roughly equal numbers among the three. They apparently are hitting my archives now, though I did find them in the current page a couple of days ago and deleted them. Any one else have the problem? they are labeled "tutorial", "Mental Health", and "Photographs."

I am going back over things I didn't have time for in the past few weeks. One of them is back posts of the WSJ Opinion Journal. A post by Peggy Noonan, called "Media Anarchy Has Its Downside" points out the lowering of standards on TV. She mentions the market forces that would kill a major outlet if it returned to earlier days of programming standards. She also has some hidden sarcasm of what the past was like. It was the usual, excellently written, commentary from Ms. Noonan. Her punch line was from an interview with a network executive--"You mean it's gone from the dictatorship of a liberal elite to the dictatorship of the retarded."

I don't think it is actually the dictatorship of the liberal elite, but the financial elite. At one time there were two newspapers in any town or city of good size, and one, usually the morning paper, was conservative, and the evening paper was liberal. The morning paper was conservative because it was read in the morning by professionals who went to work around 9:00 A.M. The evening paper was liberal because it was read by workers who had to be at work about the time the conservative paper was delivered, so read the paper in the evening. The content was adjusted to the market.

Television is not and never was part of the press. It has been an entertainment medium from the start. As such it was first the play-thing of the moneyed elite, many of whom were Eastern and therefore mainly liberal and intellectual. Thus, TV pandered to their tastes, with Omnibus, Hallmark Hall of Fame, and symphony concerts and the like. As TV became less expensive the programming changed and more shows for kids came on, and news became a major evening feature. The predecessor of sitcoms were the retreads of vaudeville--Your Show of Shows, and variety shows--The Ed Sullivan Show. This was standard middle-class entertainment. But television became available to everyone and at that point the market became controlled by the lowest common denominator.

In the meantime, people being naturally lazy, watched the news on TV and thought they had enough information about what was going on in the world. It was probably true. I suspect most people bought the paper for the sports scores, the sale notices, and the funnies. They read the headlines, and maybe the first few sentences and then went on. Watching TV was a natural to replace that behavior.

What Ms. Noonan doesn't see is that the so-called mass media were always that, just that their market has changed. Instead of lurid newspapers we have lurid TV. The residues of lurid journalism live on in The National Enquirer. Such tabloids were much more common at one time. It is not that the standards have fallen globally in the media, it is that the media she partakes of, have become wider spread and more available, and therefore have matched their standards to their audience.

It never was a dictatorship of the elite, the majority of people simply had different outlets from what she was reading. The media has always pandered to its audience, that is survival. It is simply that the audience has changed. There were no standards other than what sells.

Those of us who want something different don't watch television. We read books, blogs, or if we watch TV, we watch one of the specialty channels. Actually what is available now has far more variety than ever before.

Actually the press is still dominated by a liberal elite (e.g., the NYT) that is still living in the past. Talk radio is dominated by conservatives and various comedians. Television has come up with various forms of all news channels for the news junkies. I was glued to CNN during the Gulf War, then to Fox News during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. [I consider CNN liberal, but Fox is not the pure conservative channel it is accused of being.] There are several other news-type channels, that exist because the newspapers are neither flexible enough or fast enough in their coverage any more.

So I do not think there has been a loss of standards--there weren't any to start with. The version of the story Ms. Noonan tells is not about standards but personal image.

I can't find the source, but today I read that a congressman defended Rep Hastert from an attack by Ted Kennedy, by pointing out that what Hastert may or may not have done in protecting Foley, was nothing like driving off a bridge, leaving a girl to drown in the car and holding a press conference the next day. And some poor idiot of a Democrat thought he had gone too far to mention this.

Hey folks, he may have gotten away with it in the courts, but no one will ever completely let him off the hook in real life. Mary Jo Kopeckne did the US a great favor, though I would far rather she hadn't. She prevented Ted Kennedy from ever having a hope of running for President. Actually I think in the long run it would have been better for him to have been able to take the shot at it. I doubt if he could have won.

It is no wonder we have such poor representation and such a major lack of effectiveness in our government. We don't judge our politicians by what they say they believe in and what they say they will try to do, and then compare their record to the promises.

It has become a glorified ball game. There are two sides, The Repubocrats and the Demlicans, and the idea is to see who can make the other guy look the uckiest. Known misdeeds are hoarded until some wonderful mystical moment when they can be revealed to the most damaging effect on the election--not when they occur or are found out. The crises of the world which should be of genuine concern are considered only in light of re-election. Mud-slinging has always been a part of American politics, but it is becoming an art form. Worse yet, people deliberately look for all the bad they can find on an opponent. There is never a substantive discussion of issues.

It is like a couple of studs strutting around, but instead of saying "mine is bigger" they are busy saying "yours is dinkier" not realizing the full meaning of what they are saying.

The play went very well. I will now have more time to read, write and think about other things besides the play. I don't believe I can make up for the lost time, but I can certainly start providing some new material.

Thanks for hanging in there.

In USA Today there was an article on pg 3A about Muslim cabbies not carrying passengers that have bottles of wine or liquor and don't want to carry passengers to liquor stores. When they are in line at the airport and refuse a passenger they go to the back of the line, which can cause a three hour wait for a fare. There was a proposal to allow them to identify themselves as not carrying alcohol and a massive email campaign against it occurred.

Because almost half the drivers are Somali Muslims, people may have to try several cabs before getting a ride.

OK, I see several things going on here:
1. If they are a self-employed business person, its their choice. If they work for another company and are expected to take the first ride presented regardless, then they should leave the company or the company should fire them.

2. Religious freedom is not religious license. They should be free to act according to their beliefs...and be free to accept the consequences.

3. I see nothing wrong with identifying the cab as not hauling alcohol. It would be a more effective method of distribution instead of the current lottery.

4. If the government did not own the airport and regulate it, a solution would have been found a long time ago, because an email campaign wouldn't have even been tried.

5. Freedom is misunderstood by at least one cabby:

"When I'm an American, I have freedom to practice my religion and freedom to work anyplace I want to work," ... "This is the way we address Islam. ... We have the right to say this is how we do it."

No you do not have the freedom to work anyplace you want to work. You have the freedom to work anyplace you can find employment. Obtaining a job is not a guarantee you will keep it. Sure you can refuse customers with alcohol, but that may also impact your bosses earnings, so he has the right to fire your butt.

6. Number 4 implies a misunderstanding of the market by consumers. A taxi is not a guaranteed ride. The person driving may refuse to take a customer for many reasons, all of them valid, including his religious beliefs. Instead of seeing that labels would ease the process, you want the myth that the next cab in line is mine.

...and over something it shouldn't.

There is a lot to get angry at Islam over, but this is not one of the things.

I am a software consultant for for a major enterprise-level software company, and travel extensively in the US installing and customizing a product that collects, warehouses, and reports on computer system performance data. I have been in data processing for 25 years and it appears to suit my analytical penchant. (My formal training was as a chemist.)

I have been married to the same woman since June, 1982, and have two sons, a graduate with a multimedia degree from a private university, and one that was killed in a dune buggy accident in the early Fall of 2000. There are two children, now adults, who are like a son and a daughter, that we have raised ever since their mother, who was my wife's best friend, died of cancer. He is a Navy diver and EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) technician, and she is an Equity stage manager in Chicago. We have acquired extended family through involvement in our church, and one young woman and her husband call us Nother Mother and Nother Dad or Nothers for short. We are honorary grandparents of their daughter. Her parents are like a brother and sister to us.

I also had two dogs, Dalmatian littermates. The male, Chester, weighed 110+ lbs and looked more like a rotweiller with a spotted coat than a Dalmatian, and the female, Annie, who weighed about 50 lbs and looked like a classic Dalmatian but was too small. The male was the most laid-back dog I have ever had, and the female maked up for it. We had to put the male to sleep for a weak heart, about a three years ago, but before that, my oldest son's boxer, Billie the Kid, moved in with us. Annie had to be put to sleep in April of 2009. So we now have one dog.

I enjoy golf, downhill skiing, and ice skating, but only casually. I am a fairly accomplished woodworker, cook, and musician (At one time playing French horn, then singing tenor. My voice is gone now, so I direct the drama ministry at our church). Using my research discipline, I am in the midst of a a major study in Christianity. I am a theist, but not of any traditional version. I do try to deal with a number of philosophical, theistic and political issues, and have spent a lot of time considering such things over the past several years. I enjoy civilized discussion and am perfectly willing to see an idea of mine refuted, if I learn in the process. I suspect this blog will give me plenty of opportunity! :-))