With my past trip in mind, I sent off an email to Mountain House. I gave them the details on what I will be doing and asked if they would be willing to make a donation. As I said in my email, I plan on buying the meals whether or not the company can help us out, but I let them know anything they could do would be hugely appreciated. To my delight (and, in March, to the delight of a number of Haitians), they offered to match whatever I purchased up to 20 items. That constitutes a donation of approximately 40 meals (each pouch is two servings). This is going to make a positive impact all around. Not only will we have more food to share with our hosts, but we will have more space for carrying in other supplies such as crayons, pencils, clothes, and more.

In addition to thanking Mountain House here on FTSOS, I have also thanked them on the Facebook page for the trip. Only a few students have “liked” the page so far (I just recently created it), but it would be good for anyone to like it. I plan on utilizing it to get information out there on how to donate, including updates on bidding in an online auction of various items. (The auction is meant to bring in money we will be directly giving to Casale.)

So again, thank you to Mountain House and don’t forget to like our Facebook page.

Part of what the chubby little shitbag did was appeal to stare decisis, something he applies only when convenient to his political ideology. But more importantly in his dissent is his exploration of the implications of the ruling:

One of the benefits of leaving regulation of this matter to the people rather than to the courts is that the people, unlike judges, need not carry things to their logical conclusion. The people may feel that their disapprobation of homosexual conduct is strong enough to disallow homosexual marriage, but not strong enough to criminalize private homosexual acts–and may legislate accordingly. The Court today pretends that it possesses a similar freedom of action, so that that we need not fear judicial imposition of homosexual marriage, as has recently occurred in Canada (in a decision that the Canadian Government has chosen not to appeal). See Halpern v. Toronto, 2003 WL 34950 (Ontario Ct. App.); Cohen, Dozens in Canada Follow Gay Couple’s Lead, Washington Post, June 12, 2003, p. A25. At the end of its opinion–after having laid waste the foundations of our rational-basis jurisprudence–the Court says that the present case “does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.” Ante, at 17. Do not believe it.

In other words, Lawrence v Texas established adequate precedence for the constitutional legalization of same-sex marriage. At least it did in political figure Scalia’s view. (In reality, the 14th Amendment established it.) That means that once same-sex marriage makes it way to the Supreme Court in the coming years, Scalia is going to rule in favor of it. That is, if he really does care about stare decisis. But I wouldn’t bet on it.

I hope I’m wrong, but here’s my prediction: Scalia is going to rule against same-sex marriage in overt defiance of the principles he pretends he holds.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

“Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood,” he said.

This matches up with the old saying, “Republicans may not all be racists, but racists vote Republican.” And though this confirms suspicions of liberals/the rest of the world concerning the general intelligence of conservatives, I think it should be clarified that this is talking about social conservatives. Going hand-in-hand with that is economic conservatism (at least in American politics), but that’s probably more a quirk of history and shitty political polarization than anything.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.

“This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice,” said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

This matches up with the fact that large cities tend to vote more liberally. Using my home state as an example, independent 2010 candidate for governor Eliot Cutler – by far the most intelligent candidate the state has seen in quite some time – was doing very well according to early results. Unfortunately, those results were indicative of southern Maine where the technology and methods for reporting vote counts is more efficient due to more money as a result of a denser population. Once the results started coming in from rural northern Maine, our current shit governor [Waterville-R] started to take over. We saw the same pattern with the voting down of same sex marriage in 2009. Bigots like their rural atmospheres.

Of course, it has to be noted that this is all correlation. It matches up with a number of trends, yes, but that does not mean causation. In fact, since plenty of conservatives are intelligent, it’s obvious that believing in dumb ideologies does not make a person dumb. But still. Dumb people do tend to believe stupid things…

Pro: That ending was pretty epic.

Now, if someone asked the same question to a naturopath or any other quack, the result might be this, especially in Vermont: “Oh, sure, it’s great stuff. Really great stuff. Do you want an injection? I’m legally allowed to put this poison into your body, after all.” They would say this because Vermont, like several other states, allows naturopaths to prescribe certain things for ‘patients’. One of these things is colloidal silver, which is just silver suspended in a solution. My hope is the Green Mountain State is unique in its allowance to naturopaths to poison people, but I’m not sure.

Check out the anger of one person afflicted with argyria:

If NDs had known as much about medicine as I, an educated consumer, do, they would have searched the medical literature before including anything in their formulary. If they had done that, they would have seen that: there are no studies showing that ingesting silver in any form or amount offers benefits; colloidal silver does not treat eye infections; taking silver internally or putting it in your eye can result in permanent discoloration.

If NDs had checked common toxicology reference books, they would have seen that silver causes argyria. If they had looked at old pharmacology books, they would have found warnings about the uselessness and danger of taking it internally. If they had checked current ones, they would have discovered that those practicing scientific medicine discarded silver long ago.

If NDs followed notices published by NCCAM, the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine, or the FDA, they would have seen consumer warnings as well as the FDA rule in the Federal Register stating that silver cannot be used as a drug because ingesting it offers no benefits and is dangerous.

If NDs had googled “silver” or “colloidal silver”, they would have learned all of the above.

If they followed the mainstream media, they would have seen Paul Karason or me. The local, national and international media has covered our stories extensively. Paul was on Oprah. Consumers Reports listed “colloidal silver” among its latest list of “dirty dozen” supplements to be avoided. The Wall Street Journal said, “federal regulators say it a total scam”.

(Paul Karason is the guy pictured above.)

I find it just deplorable that we license these people at all, but to allow them prescription rights is actively dangerous. Even if they manage to not prescribe contraindicated drugs – something I doubt most of them are even aware should be a concern – they still have the right to effectively give people poison. It’s awful.

via SBM

And all that said, anyone who is not a sports fan who comments on these matters ought to be kicked in the face.

Barbour granted 222 acts of clemency in his tenure to 221 individuals: one convict’s sentence was initially suspended in 2008 and he then received a full pardon last week.

Of those, roughly two of three were white, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Corrections and a search of public records. The racial makeup of Mississippi’s prison population is the inverse: about two-thirds’ black.

Whites make up about 59 percent of the state’s population as a whole and blacks about 37 percent.

Barbour is saying race played no role, and in fact, it wasn’t even listed on relevant applications. It sounds like he may be off the hook on this one, but the Parole Board isn’t. The people who run that are responsible for most of the recommendations for pardons and it’s hard to believe they’re all blind.

But, hey, maybe it’s just a coincidence, right?

“The odds of a random sample of the prison population coming out with the same or greater disparity in racial proportions as the pardons list is less than one in a trillion, if race were truly unrelated to pardons.” [said University of Georgia statisticians Kim Love-Myers]

I know most conservatives will be apt to say race really isn’t a factor here, presumably because they want to make my brain explode, but it’s obvious that there are pervasive racial issues at play. There are some mitigating factors, of course. For instance, just as money equals power outside prison, it equals empowerment inside prison. Whites will tend to have more money to explore all their legal options. But this is a relatively trivial issue in this context. The fact is, whites are inherently more favored than blacks when requesting pardons:

Love-Myers and Reeves also found that based on Mississippi’s prison demographics, white prisoners were about four times more likely to be pardoned than black prisoners. That echoes a recent examination of presidential pardons under President George W. Bush by public interest non-profit news organization ProPublica.

In an analysis released last month of 1,918 applications for pardons during Bush’s administration, ProPublica found that white criminals seeking presidential pardons were nearly four times more likely to get them than minorities.

“It is, to say the least, astronomically unlikely that Barbour’s selection was color-blind,” said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Conviction. “Now whether that’s Barbour’s fault or the review board’s fault, is a different question. It was somebody’s fault. It’s not color-blind.”

What’s perhaps the most unfortunate thing in all this is that now even fewer pardons will be given out due to political pressures. Whether the percentages change in any appreciable way remains to be seen, but if things continue to trend as they have been, the fact is the sheer number of blacks getting pardons is going to decrease.

I suspect in conservative la-la land, though, none of this has a thing to do with race.