Proof of Hanna/Barbera’s scientific accuracy

Via Schneier’s dis­cus­sion of the human/bear secu­ri­ty trade-off, we learn that:

“There is con­sid­er­able over­lap between the intel­li­gence of the smartest bears and the dumb­est tourists.”

This seems like a good time to remind peo­ple that, once upon a time, tourists in Yel­low­stone would smear their off­spring with hon­ey to get pic­tures of their brood being licked by a bear. They were con­sis­tent­ly sur­prised when the bear gave a lit­tle nip in the process.

Pot, meet kettle

The DI’s “Evo­lu­tion News And Views” blog com­plains that Live­Science’s “ ‘All About Evo­lu­tion and Intel­li­gent Design’ is nei­ther all about evo­lu­tion, nor is is it all about intel­li­gent design.”

Which is rich com­ing from a blog that, despite being host­ed at “evolutionnews.org”, has no evo­lu­tion news.

Random quotations

Appar­ent­ly this is what we’re doing:

The rules: “Go here and look through ran­dom quotes until you find 5 that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.“
Part of being cre­ative is learn­ing how to pro­tect your free­dom. That includes free­dom from avarice.
Hugh Macleod, How To Be Cre­ative: 31 Remain Fru­gal, 08–22-04

We can­not direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.
Bertha Calloway

Amer­i­ca believes in edu­ca­tion: the aver­age pro­fes­sor earns more mon­ey in a year than a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete earns in a whole week.
Evan Esar (1899 — 1995)

Don’t lim­it a child to your own learn­ing, for he was born in anoth­er time.
Rab­bini­cal Saying

It could prob­a­bly be shown by facts and fig­ures that there is no dis­tinct­ly Amer­i­can crim­i­nal class except Con­gress.
Mark Twain (1835 — 1910)

And, just because I can, one non-ran­dom quo­ta­tion, from Pete Seeger (and prob­a­bly Lee Hays before that):

Mod­er­a­tion in all things, even moderation.

Federal judge issues the obvious ruling: Illegal wiretapping is…

In a rul­ing that I could have pre­dict­ed last Decem­ber, a fed­er­al judge orders halt to the NSA’s ille­gal domes­tic wire­tap­ping:

A fed­er­al judge in Detroit ordered a halt to the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agen­cy’s war­rant­less sur­veil­lance pro­gram, rul­ing for the first time that the con­tro­ver­sial effort ordered by Pres­i­dent Bush was unconstitutional.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Anna Dig­gs Tay­lor wrote in a strong­ly-word­ed 43-page opin­ion that the NSA wire­tap­ping pro­gram vio­lates pri­va­cy and free-speech rights and the con­sti­tu­tion­al sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers between the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment. She also found that it vio­lates a 1978 law set up to over­see clan­des­tine surveillance.

The rul­ing first deals with the claims of state secrets priv­i­lege, the claim that the case can­not pro­ceed with­out nation­al secu­ri­ty secrets being made pub­lic. The group of plain­tiffs had sim­ply assert­ed their claims about ille­gal sur­veil­lance on the basis of pub­lic state­ments, and the court found that the defense of those state­ments had also been advanced pub­licly, and so “the court finds Defen­dants’ argu­ment that they can­not defend this case with­out the use of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion to be disin­gen­u­ous and with­out merit.”

Judge Tay­lor also found that the plain­tiffs had suf­fered actu­al harm as a result of the pro­gram, that reporters’ and researchers’ sources and attor­ney’s clients had refused to speak with them over the phone, requir­ing expen­sive trav­el and under­min­ing ongo­ing 1st amend­ment pro­tect­ed research and harm­ing the rights of peo­ple to obtain effec­tive counsel. 

But Tay­lor con­tin­ues by explain­ing that, even if that were not true:

it is impor­tant to note that if the court were to deny stand­ing based on the unsub­stan­ti­at­ed minor dis­tinc­tions drawn by Defen­dants, the President’s actions in war­rant­less wire­tap­ping, in con­tra­ven­tion of FISA, Title III, and the First and Fourth Amend­ments, would be immu­nized from judi­cial scruti­ny. It was nev­er the intent of the Framers to give the Pres­i­dent such unfet­tered con­trol, par­tic­u­lar­ly where his actions bla­tant­ly dis­re­gard the para­me­ters clear­ly enu­mer­at­ed in the Bill of Rights.

She goes on to cite Ham­di v. Rums­feld (the 2004 case which had been advanced as a par­tial defense of the pro­gram), and Clin­ton v. Jones (!).

“Indeed,” she con­tin­ues, “as the per­ceived need for secre­cy has appar­ent­ly required that no per­son be noti­fied that he is aggriev­ed by the activ­i­ty,” and no appar­ent actions have been tak­en as a result of it, “no vic­tim in Amer­i­ca would be giv­en stand­ing to chal­lenge this or any oth­er uncon­sti­tu­tion­al activ­i­ty, accord­ing to the Government.”

She found that the pro­gram vio­lat­ed FISA and the crim­i­nal wire­tap­ping laws, and that these vio­la­tions crossed into con­sti­tu­tion­al ter­ri­to­ry. The Fourth Amend­ment, she reminds us “requires pri­or war­rants for any rea­son­able search, based upon pri­or-exist­ing prob­a­ble cause, as well as par­tic­u­lar­i­ty as to per­sons, places, and things, and the inter­po­si­tion of a neu­tral mag­is­trate between Exec­u­tive branch enforce­ment offi­cers and cit­i­zens.” She held that the pro­gram is “obvi­ous­ly in vio­la­tion of the 4th amendment.”

After review­ing the state of the law on sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, includ­ing Youngstown and Clin­ton v. Jones (again), she found that “the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers doc­trine has been vio­lat­ed.” The AUMF defense did not sway her, since it is gen­er­al and the specifics of FISA must gov­ern the gen­er­al­i­ty of that res­o­lu­tion. Even if the res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing force did replace FISA “Defen­dants have vio­lat­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of their cit­i­zens includ­ing the First Amend­ment, Fourth Amend­ment, and the Sep­a­ra­tion of Pow­ers doctrine.” 

The Court issued a per­ma­nent injunc­tion against the gov­ern­ment, hold­ing that it is “is per­ma­nent­ly enjoined from direct­ly or indi­rect­ly uti­liz­ing the Ter­ror­ist Sur­veil­lance Pro­gram (TSP) in any way, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, con­duct­ing war­rant­less wire­taps of tele­phone and Inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions, in con­tra­ven­tion of the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act and Title III.”

I’m told that the Pres­i­dent, when informed, went back to play­ing with toy soldiers.

Coulter on anorexics

“Anorex­i­cs nev­er have boyfriends. … That’s one way to know you don’t have anorex­ia, if you have a boyfriend.”–Ann Coul­ter

So says the freak­ish­ly skin­ny, appar­ent­ly sin­gle punditress.

Thanks to Lind­say for the tip.

Class Act

From the Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor:

SLENDER. Why do your dogs bark so? Be there bears i’ th’ town?

ANNE. I think there are, sir; I heard them talk’d of.

SLENDER. I love the sport well; but I shall as soon quar­rel at it as any man in Eng­land. You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not?

ANNE. Ay, indeed, sir.

SLENDER. That’s meat and drink to me now. I have seen Sack­er­son loose twen­ty times, and have tak­en him by the chain; but I war­rant you, the women have so cried and shriek’d at it that it pass’d; but women, indeed, can­not abide ’em; they are very ill-favour’d rough things.

A few cen­turies lat­er, such activ­i­ty is frowned upon, as Troy Gen­try is accused of killing a tame bear:

Author­i­ties allege that [coun­try music star] Gen­try pur­chased the bear from Green­ly, a wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er and hunt­ing guide, then killed it with a bow and arrow in an enclosed pen on Green­ly’s prop­er­ty in Octo­ber 2004.

The gov­ern­ment alleges that Gen­try and Green­ly tagged the bear with a Min­neso­ta hunt­ing license and reg­is­tered the ani­mal with the state Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources as a wild kill.

Gen­try alleged­ly paid about $4,650 for the bear, named Cub­by. The bear’s death was video­taped, and the tape lat­er edit­ed so Gen­try appeared to shoot the ani­mal in a “fair chase” hunt­ing sit­u­a­tion, the gov­ern­ment alleges.

The Eliz­a­bethans at least had the dig­ni­ty to sell tick­ets when they killed chained bears, and did­n’t pre­tend it was any­thing but cruelty.

Via Jesus’ Gen­er­al, who offers Gen­try some sage advice.

In which I survey the damage

So Ms. TfK and I are tool­ing along, mind­ing our busi­ness. A walk in the park seemed in order, so we had dri­ven off to enjoy some fine weath­er. At the left turn into the park, we wait­ed for traf­fic to stop when the light turned, and then made our quick turn dur­ing the yellow.

At least, that was the plan. Some­one else, try­ing to beat the now yel­low light, bar­reled through, send­ing our car into a 180.

Since I was in the pas­sen­ger seat, I’m under­stand­ably glad that it was the rear tire that got bent on its axle, and the met­al of the rear of the car that now hangs in ugly shards beneath the ripped plas­tic of the bumper. A few feet fur­ther for­ward and TfK would be on indef­i­nite hia­tus. My appre­ci­a­tion for seat belts is also con­sid­er­ably enhanced.

Ms. TfK and I caught our breath, deter­mined we were not notice­ably injured, and looked around for the oth­er car. It seemed to have stopped, or at least slowed, but giv­en its rapid accel­er­a­tion away, the cut in speed prob­a­bly just reflect­ed lost momen­tum. This was unfor­tu­nate, since we were hop­ing to exchange insur­ance infor­ma­tion, and per­haps offer some friend­ly tips on what those col­ored lights at the inter­sec­tion meant.

Alas, they left, tak­ing with them our hope of recov­er­ing the deductible. As luck would have it, they left behind their front bum­ber, as well as assort­ed glass shards, and attached to the bumper, their license plate.

A kind soul chased after them and wrote down the same num­ber from their rear bumper. He saw four guys crammed in a crap­py old sedan, then came back and sat with us until the police arrived to take his state­ment. On some karmic lev­el, he helped bal­ance out the tru­ly atro­cious thing those guys had done.

The police were excel­lent, effi­cient, kind, and infor­ma­tive. The para­medics who came to check us out were ami­able and under­stand­ing. The AAA tow truck dri­ver had sage advice. The insur­ance com­pa­ny is an insur­ance com­pa­ny, moral­ly neu­tral at its best.

Hav­ing the license plate – DWN 1133 – the cops read­i­ly iden­ti­fied the own­er, and were pret­ty cer­tain that there was no insur­ance on the car (reli­able sources tell me that’s prob­a­bly because they pre­vi­ous­ly got a tick­et for dri­ving with­out insur­ance). The police are on the look­out for the vehi­cle and its own­er, but con­sid­er their hopes pret­ty slim.

They expect that, giv­en the Lati­no last name, the car’s behav­ior, and the num­ber of peo­ple in the car, it was prob­a­bly owned and dri­ven by ille­gal immi­grants. The entire house­hold will prob­a­bly have the same last name, and will all deny dri­ving the car, or even own­ing it. And even if the own­er were to come for­ward, he prob­a­bly does­n’t have insur­ance, let alone the mon­ey to pay back the insur­ance company.

I sup­pose there’s some sort of les­son here. I could talk about how this argues for giv­ing dri­ving licens­es to peo­ple who will dri­ve any­way, so they can then get insur­ance, and won’t have to skip the scene after an acci­dent. Oth­ers would make a case for send­ing the lot of them back to Mex­i­co, which seems to be a bit late at this point.

But for now, let’s rise above that fray and focus on a few impor­tant truths.

1. Seat­belts save lives. Wear yours.
2. Because of seat­belts and gen­er­al­ly safe dri­ving prac­tices, we are alive and unharmed (bar­ring a few aches and pains).
3. There are ass­holes in the world, and they dri­ve. Watch out.
4. There are nice peo­ple in the world. Some in uni­form, oth­ers just doing a favor for some­one they nev­er met.

Ms. TfK and I are still a bit shak­en up a few days lat­er, but we are large­ly set­tling down, and I think my heart rate and blood pres­sure are back with­in nor­mal tol­er­ances. Ms. TfK’s may still be ele­vat­ed because she’s been deal­ing with the insur­ance company.

How you bal­ance points 3 and 4 above, or how you bal­ance the colos­sal dam­age to the car against the fact that we seem to have dodged any seri­ous harm, says a lot about how you see the world. We’re try­ing to be upbeat about this.

This isn’t a bleg, but the deductible on the repairs is a lit­tle steep for two grad stu­dents. If you could spare a lit­tle Pay­Pal cash, click on the hand in the sidebar.

Hack or Buffoon?

Part of the rea­son Har­ry McDon­ald lost a his Board of Ed. race against incum­bent John Bacon was the 10% of the vote that David Oliphant siphoned off. Sug­ges­tions that Oliphan­t’s run was intend­ed to weak­en McDon­ald’s show­ing have swirled since Oliphant entered the race, and the Pitch Week­ly asked Oliphant some tough ques­tions. I put the whole exchange below, but let’s just pull out a few choice quotes.

First, he demon­strates his innu­mer­a­cy and total lack of inter­est in the race by get­ting a sim­ple inequal­i­ty wrong, and being unable to either add two num­bers or remem­ber the results of his election.

Asked about his lack of fundrais­ing (he spent only $425 he gave him­self), and how he could get his name out if he did­n’t spend more than pock­et change (and did­n’t show up at can­di­date forums), he replied “Well, that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

That it did­n’t have to be seems to have escaped him. Asked about who he would have picked of his two oppo­nents, he utter­ly fails to see the con­tra­dic­tion in back­ing John Bacon while think­ing that Bacon’s sci­ence stan­dards are the top edu­ca­tion­al problem.

Here’s the interview:

The Pitch: Are you respon­si­ble for John Bacon win­ning the primary?

Oliphant: No. If you add mine and the oth­er guy’s togeth­er, it still comes out less.

Q. Real­ly?

A. Yes. I did­n’t exact­ly do the exact math. John got 62 per­cent, if I remem­ber right.

Q. I don’t think that’s true. [TfK- It isn’t. Bacon got 49%, McDon­ald 40%, and Oliphant 10%]

A. I’m just sort of going off what I remem­ber vague­ly from that evening. And the oth­er thing is, it’s pret­ty pre­sump­tu­ous to think that all of my votes would go to either can­di­date. I mean, that’s not even some­thing I’d con­sid­er as a possibility.

Q. Your cam­paign did­n’t raise any mon­ey beyond the $425 you donat­ed your­self. Does that sug­gest a lack of effort?

A. No. I chose not to accept any mon­ey. I did­n’t want to be behold­en to any­body but the vot­ers. [TfK- Like the ones who would have been donating?]

Q. But how were you going to get your name out? Obvi­ous­ly, that effort was insufficient.

A. Well, that’s the way it goes some­times. I def­i­nite­ly did­n’t want to take any mon­ey from the NEA. John’s back­ing was pret­ty wrapped up and tied. So I just felt that some­one need­ed to run rep­re­sent­ing parents.

Q. Did any­one ever talk to you about drop­ping out of the race?

A. Well, I actu­al­ly had been asked to drop out a few days after I signed up. I said that I’m not a quit­ter, and I thought the vot­ers ought to have the option of choos­ing who they wanted.

Q. If you could­n’t win, would you have rather seen Bacon or McDon­ald win?

A. Me, per­son­al­ly? Sim­ply because of the way he ran the cam­paign, I thought I would have much rather seen John. I thought he ran a much more pro­fes­sion­al and hon­est cam­paign and tried to keep it cen­tered on the issues.

Q. But you stat­ed that the state’s top edu­ca­tion prob­lem is the board­’s deci­sion on the sci­ence standards.

A. Right.

Q. Yet you would rather see Bacon win as opposed to McDonald?

A. Well, McDon­ald def­i­nite­ly did not rep­re­sent par­ents. McDon­ald rep­re­sent­ed pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tors. Nev­er once did he ever real­ly talk about par­ents hav­ing input in their child’s edu­ca­tion. In fact, his posi­tion was that if you weren’t a pro­fes­sion­al edu­ca­tor, you weren’t com­pe­tent to make a deci­sion in your child’s edu­ca­tion­al future. I can’t sup­port that out­look at all.

It bare­ly seems worth observ­ing that John Bacon is always “John,” while Har­ry McDon­ald is always McDonald.

NRCC lags in ad purchases, surrenders Kansas 3rd

MyDD points out that the NRC­C’s ad pur­chas­es fall below the DCC­C’s, and:

con­spic­u­ous­ly absent from the Repub­li­can list are peren­ni­al tar­gets like Den­nis Moore in Kansas and Jim Math­e­son in Utah.

Democ­rats are chal­leng­ing more seats, rais­ing more, spend­ing more, and frankly are field­ing bet­ter can­di­dates. Den­nis Moore’s seat isn’t safe yet, but when you win as many times as he has in tough fights, the seri­ous oppo­si­tion looks elsewhere.

And Nan­cy Boy­da con­tin­ues to raise funds and fight hard to hold Jim Ryun account­able to his con­stituents. I con­tin­ue to be amazed that he’s even in Con­gress, let alone a mul­ti-term incum­bent. His pri­or expe­ri­ence is as a fast run­ner, and he has­n’t demon­strat­ed any spe­cial skills in office. It seems to me that any attempt at bal­anc­ing him against a busi­ness­woman with expe­ri­ence in gov­ern­ment ser­vice and in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try would quick­ly put Boy­da in Con­gress. She’s sharp and she has a lot of good ideas about how to make life bet­ter for the 2nd dis­trict of Kansas. Next time she’s in your area, be sure to vis­it with her, and don’t be afraid to tell her that Josh sent you.

Phelps family backs Phill Kline

Phelps dona­tion to Kline cam­paign brings crit­i­cism:

Paul Morrison’s cam­paign for attor­ney gen­er­al crit­i­cized Atty. Gen. Phill Kline on Mon­day for tak­ing a cam­paign con­tri­bu­tion from a mem­ber of the Fred Phelps family.

“The fact that Phill Kline would take mon­ey from a per­son who protests the funer­als of our ser­vice­men and women is dis­turb­ing,” Morrison’s cam­paign man­ag­er Mark Simp­son said.

“Some­one with such ter­ri­ble judg­ment and skewed pri­or­i­ties has no busi­ness being attor­ney gen­er­al,” Simp­son said.

Ben­jamin Phelps has since decid­ed that Kline is a meanie, but his $500 dona­tion helped put Kline in office. Help put the Phelps clan in its place, put Paul Mor­ri­son in office.