The peace of New England

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Michael

My top three states have always been Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. (Number four is Colorado because of its ample sun without 500 degree southwest temperatures.) Now my list has been solidified even more:

The rural New England states of Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are the most peaceful U.S. states, a distinction that gives them an economic advantage over the most violent, including Louisiana, Tennessee and Nevada.

Violence and its aftermath cost the entire U.S. economy some $460 billion last year, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace’s second annual United States Peace Index, which was released on Tuesday.

News of a homicide in these areas is treated like the national media treats news of a pretty white girl who has gone missing. It’s a really big deal and it gets a lot of attention. (The difference, of course, is that it gets attention because someone has been murdered, not because the victim is white and relatively affluent.)

The study found that the United States has become a less violent place over the past two decades, based on an analysis of historic data on homicides and other violent crime, the number of people incarcerated, police employment and the prevalence of small arms.

Now, if I was to argue like I see Christians argue about atheists, I would say that our high rate of incarcerating Christians – they make up an overwhelming majority of our prison population – is what has contributed to this drop. Of course, correlation does not equal causation.

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Judge Greg Weeks is an activist

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Michael

Judge Greg Weeks recently made this ruling in North Carolina:

A condemned killer’s trial was so tainted by the racially influenced decisions of prosecutors that he should be removed from death row and serve a life sentence, a judge ruled Friday in a precedent-setting North Carolina decision.

Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks’ decision in the case of Marcus Robinson comes in the first test of a 2009 state law that allows death row prisoners and capital murder defendants to challenge their sentences or prosecutors’ decisions with statistics and other evidence beyond documents or witness testimony…

Race played a “persistent, pervasive and distorting role” in jury selection and couldn’t be explained other than that “prosecutors have intentionally discriminated” against Robinson and other capital defendants statewide, Weeks said. Prosecutors eliminated black jurors more than twice as often as white jurors, according to a study by two Michigan State University law professors Weeks said he found highly reliable.

Doesn’t this judge listen to Rush or watch FOX Noise? If there’s anything we’ve learned over the past decade it’s that racism does not exist. Well. Okay, that’s not entirely true. It certainly exists. It’s just that there isn’t a single example of it. Anywhere. Ever. By claiming otherwise, Judge Weeks is clearly an activist. And probably a socialist. Maybe gay. Someone needs to call for an investigation.

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Ted Nugent

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Michael

I’m not going to offer up the context for this because it’s so stupid it doesn’t even matter why he said it.

I’m a black Jew at a Nazi Klan rally.

~Ted Nugent

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Republican complaints aren’t even valid

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Michael

I could mean all of their complaints, but I have a specific one in mind:

The White House on Thursday dismissed as “kinda ridiculous” complaints that President Barack Obama has been billing taxpayers for criss-crossing the country, giving speeches in states that could be critical to his reelection campaign…

The press secretary also hit out at critics who have noted that Obama’s message at political events is largely indistinguishable from his official events.”The suggestion that there is something wrong with the fact that the president says the same thing about what his vision is, and what his policies are, and what his beliefs are in front of official audiences, non political audiences, as he does in front of audiences who are his supporters, I think is kinda ridiculous,” Carney said.

How dare someone be consistent. This is American politics, god damn it.

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High fructose corn syrup

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Michael

I just finished up a biochemistry paper on fructose metabolism. As often happens when I write these sort of things, I found myself drifting to related topics. Namely, I looked into the research on high fructose corn syrup metabolism versus sucrose metabolism. What I found was interesting, but first I need to note something else.

About a year and a half ago I wrote about a bad opinion piece from the Chicago Tribune. I stand by most of what I said, but I want to distance myself from something contained in this paragraph:

Imagine, for those unfortunate to have it in their grocery stores, if SmartOption foods didn’t have nutrition facts. They look and sound so appealing. But a quick look at the nutrition facts and ingredients reveals that it’s a load of garbage. Or, more nationally, imagine if there was enough ignorance for those pro-high fructose corp syrup commercials to slide by uncriticized.

What I found in my research was that much of the criticism directed towards HFCS is bunk. There is evidence of short-term metabolic differences between HFCS and sucrose, but it is not without its problems. Namely, many of the studies (done with rats) look at artificially high concentrations of fructose in subject diets. No one in the real world eats just fructose. In fact, HFCS is usually listed as something like HFCS-55. That refers to the concentration of fructose (55%) in the product. Most of the rest will be glucose. There are other ratios (as high as 90% fructose, 10% glucose), but what will be found in most soft drinks is around 55% fructose, 45% glucose. Sucrose, in contrast, is about 50/50. (Those high ratio products are either used for specialty purposes or dilution.)

There is some legitimate ground for the anti-HFCS crowd. Upwards of 30% of people have difficulty absorbing fructose through their small intestine and so will face cramps, gas, and general physical discomfort and pain as a result. It’s much like lactose intolerance, though to a lesser degree. The solution for these people is to avoid too much fructose. However, manufacturers are allowed to list “corn syrup” in their ingredients instead of high fructose corn syrup. This presents an obvious problem. Those will fructose malabsorption can safely bet that any soft drink will have HFCS, but they can’t do that for a number of other products. Thus, those who oppose HFCS are right when they demand proper labeling on food products. (In contrast, I don’t share the same sympathies with those who want genetically modified labels on products.)

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Gay student sues school over shirt

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Michael

A student in Ohio is suing his school after he was denied the right to wear a shirt reading “Jesus is not a homophobe”:

The mother of 16-year-old Maverick Couch filed the federal lawsuit on his behalf against Wayne Local School District and the principal of Waynesville High School, northeast of Cincinnati.

Couch is a junior at the public school. His lawsuit says he’s been threatened with suspension if he wears a shirt bearing the message “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe.” The lawsuit says school officials told him the shirt is “sexual in nature” and inappropriate.

I find this interesting for two reasons, neither of which having to do with the specific subject matter. First, I think it’s going to be spectacular to hear the school defend its stupid position that the shirt is somehow sexual. Second, students are usually denied basic rights in school because, well, fuck ’em, amirite? I would be mildly surprised to see Couch win this. And, of course, I hope he does.

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Polls: President Obama making gains amongst women

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Michael

Who can say this was unexpected?

Female voters in battleground states are rallying around President Obama in droves, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday, suggesting a gender gap could pose one of the Republicans’ biggest challenges in this fall’s general election race.

Obama led Mitt Romney by 18 percentage points among female registered voters in the nation’s top 12 swing states. The gender gap between Obama and Rick Santorum was 15 points. USA Today reports that this is the “first significant lead” the president has held in these key voting states.

I think the only surprising thing about this is that it isn’t always like this.

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Abortion and the concept of humanity

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Michael

I have written about my stance on abortion in the past, but there is one thing I would really like to emphasize: the concept of humanity.

Everyone likes to claim the mantle of science. It’s very alluring, after all. Unfortunately, plenty of people are willing to claim it without a rightful basis. That especially includes so many anti-abortion folks. Just take a look at this site and scroll down to the excerpts from various biology texts. Again and again, the quotes say that human development begins at conception. However, that is not how they are being understood in the given context. The way the site (and those who cite it) are understanding the quotes is that they have definitively found a number of sources which say that humanity begins at conception. It’s just too bad that that is not a scientific concept. At least not here.

The important issue within the abortion debate is when humanity begins – and that is not something which can be determined scientifically. We can certainly say when development begins – that’s what all those quotes have done – but that is only an illuminating factor, not a definitive conclusion. That is, development is the joining of gametes and the process that takes place within the womb thereafter and we can thank science for the shedding of that light, but a human it does not make. We’re only picking out an arbitrary point; we may as well say the emergence of a new sperm or egg is the beginning of a human since each one contains its own unique DNA and a potential pathway to birth. The only difference is that a sperm or egg have less potential on their own than together because they haven’t an ability to appreciable change based upon their environment.

Anti-abortionists are muddling the debate when they claim development is the same thing as humanity. The first is a distinct, clear scientifically determined issue whereas the latter is only a scientific concept when we’re talking about species and evolution. The fact is, “humanity” is a subjective idea which only bears a relationship to development by virtue of human rationale.

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And the Republicans lose the rhetoric battle

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Michael

I have written in the past about when I know I’ve beat someone in a debate. The best sign comes when that person starts stealing my rhetoric in a way which is not intended to quote or mock:

It’s sort of like when something embarrassing happens to a kid in grade school who in turn tries and do something more embarrassing to someone else. Or, equally, when a kid drops his ice cream on the ground, so he goes and knocks his brothers’ ice cream down too. Something negative happened to a person and that person wants to reflect that negative thing onto someone else in order to make himself feel better.

I had this in mind when I heard that the Republican National Committee released an ad contending that President Obama had a “War on Women”. Take a look:

It’s no secret that the Republicans have been facing a lot of criticism for their actions towards women in recent months. The result has been for people to popularly say the GOP is waging a “war on women”. Now the RNC is responding by simply declaring that Obama is the one who is waging a “war on women”. It’s almost hilarious.

I don’t expect very much from Republicans, but this ad is especially uncreative. It doesn’t say anything new. It isn’t well made. And worst of all, it’s just stealing the rhetoric from the other side. The RNC dropped its ice cream and now it wants to slap everyone else’s cones to the ground too.

Filed under: Language/Rhetoric, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

The ethics of the rich

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Michael

I was sent this big, long graphic about how ethical the rich are compared to the rest of us. It came to me via an email from someone who also had some other unrelated graphics to offer, so I presume this is just part of some business model. In fact, as can be seen on the sources panel, there’s a big ol’ ad for some accounting degree. I’m not getting money or anything else in return for posting this.

Several of the points this image makes can be explained in a way which has nothing to do with ethics, but there are at least some interesting studies cited. I’m not standing by one or all or any of the claims it makes, though. I’m just posting this because, well, it’s my blog.

Rich People Are Unethical

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