gravity’s rainbow

Mrs. T suggests that pierogies make a good light lunch.  While I love pierogies, I don’t think it’s ever appropriate to describe them as light.

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mother of thousands

Originally uploaded by sarcozona

My plant has babies! Aren’t they cute? This plant makes new ones on the edges of its leaves, then they fall off. You can see some others forming in the leaf on the top left.

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To the nth term test:

When I first met you, I was excited by your simplicity and the opportunity to repeatedly use L’Hopital.  At first, I turned to you at every opportunity, but I have to go now.  I am anxious to determine whether or not this series converges or diverges.  Unfortunately, the limit is zero and so you are absolutely useless.  I am obligated to leave you for a different test.  Don’t even think about trying to get back together.

No longer yours,

Susannah

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Scientists say they have cracked a nearly eight-decade-old riddle involving the Moebius strip, a mathematical phenomenon that has also become an icon of art. [link]

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Some people say that there shouldn’t be hate crimes laws:

The bill directly violates freedom of religion in this sense as it declares moral disapproval to be unacceptable.

This is a hate crime:

“And they’re saying what’s why they killed him. Because he was gay. And he wasn’t gay,” said Thomas Hall. “I don’t know any crime on the planet that deserves that type of punishment.” Court papers show Gray and King brutally attacked, then photographed Hall. King hit him with his boots at least 75 times. The suspects told police they dragged Hall down the steps, loaded him into Robert Hendricks’ truck, and dumped his body in a ditch. They say they went back two days later, and found Hall in a nearby field. That’s when they tell police they wrapped the body in a tarp and hid it in Gray’s garage.

Either these people think that brutal murder is an acceptable form of “moral disapproval,” or they are confusing hate crime with hate speech.

Hate-crime laws are never about hate speech per se. They are only about acts that are already crimes. Now, certain acts of speech — particularly threats and intimidation — are the subject of criminal sanction already in the law, so if these crimes are committed with a racial, religious, or gay-bashing motive, then it is possible for some speech to be considered a hate crime.

But the core principle is this: The First Amendment has never covered criminal acts, because crimes are never a form of free speech. You can’t kill someone and claim it was an act of political protest, at least not under Western law as we know it.

These acts are still crimes whether or not the motive is considered, so why should the motive be considered and make the sentence more severe? For one, hate crimes hurt an entire community. If a man you know is tortured to death for being gay (or because someone thought he was gay), you understandably might do your best to appear not gay. If someone from your place of worship is killed for being a member of that particular religion, you may stop attending or talking about your faith.

And that is what hate crimes, in the end, are all about: Taking away the rights and freedom of our fellow citizens, denying them the right to participate in the community where they reside and forcing them to live as shadow citizens. People opposed to hate-crimes laws are, at rock bottom, profoundly anti-freedom.

An example of the fear and restriction a crime against someone you don’t even know can have (Via Feministing):

i thought about her on the train ride to work. and by this, i mean i thought about her and i thought about myself, in that we’re both women. as far as we know at this point, she was merely a young woman in a parking lot - i am that woman a lot of times too. and these horrible moments in time, regardless of how long the odds of them happening to any given woman are, exist for all women in the sense that we know it could happen to us. that we could walk out of a Target at 7:10 pm on a saturday and not make it safely to our cars. that we could be the victims of such terrorism, such pointed destruction, such punishment.

Hate crimes laws don’t just protect the queer community - they protect even Christians, who are often the ones most violently opposed to the laws.

the fact that the crime itself — arson against a place of worship — is backed up by a serious law carrying stiff penalties demonstrates once again how important hate crimes laws are in protecting everyone’s rights. The same laws that protect synagogues and mosques are now being brought to bear to defend the Victory Family Church and its members.

Hate crimes laws are also important because when no one speaks out specifically against these crimes, the perpetrators feel like their community actually approves. Often, the most outspoken opponents of hate crimes laws are Christians on the far right. This isn’t surprising considering the racism, sexism, and homophobia of some of their most beloved leaders (Via Majikthise).

But for Falwell, the “questions of the day” did not always relate to abortion and homosexuality–nor did they begin there. Decades before the forces that now make up the Christian right declared their culture war, Falwell was a rabid segregationist who railed against the civil rights movement

Even now, the Right defends the “white, Christian, male power structure” (via Feministing).

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Cleaning up

Yet emissions keep on rising. If greenhouse-gas concentrations are to be stabilised, then the carbon price or the support mechanisms for clean energy, or both, will have to rise or be adopted worldwide, or both. And if that happens, the returns on clean-energy investments will increase even further and the companies that have already invested in such businesses will have a head start over those that have not.

Minnesota case fits the pattern in flap over firing of U.S. attorneys

At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger’s office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.

Life 2.0

Scientists in the last couple of years have been trying to create novel forms of life from scratch. They’ve forged chemicals into synthetic DNA, the DNA into genes, genes into genomes, and built the molecular machinery of completely new organisms in the lab—organisms that are nothing like anything nature has produced.

If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural

when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.

Fear-Mongering and Fiction: Cheney Addresses West Point Grads

As Cheney told the graduates of the enemies they may soon face — terrorists “who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character” — there were moments when it seemed that he had simply recycled an old speech from 2002. Indeed, long after most members of the Bush administration have distanced themselves from some of the more insidious claims that propelled the U.S. into war with Iraq, the vice president continues to repeat them as fact. At one point today he cited the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda (which has been thoroughly debunked) as the reason why the U.S. invaded Iraq. “America is fighting this enemy in Iraq because that is where they have gathered,” he told the West Point graduates. “We are there because, after 9/11, we decided to deny terrorists any safe haven.”

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Techdirt points out how the Government Accountability Office is getting things done.

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I found a post at The Blarg complaining about ER a few days ago. I started commenting on it, but there’s a lot to say, so I’m moving here. Now, I’ve only seen ER a few times, and like all TV shows it’s unrealistic, but the parts he labels “liberal nonsense” are not especially fantastic.

1) Huge numbers of people are gay, and they don’t act anything like gay people do in real life. Gaydar need not apply, because you could never guess, because the show wants you to think gay people are just like straight people, but gay. Oh wait, that’s not all, gay people are actually more with it than the straight people. The gay relationships are always great, and the straight people are screwed up.

There are a lot of GLBT people in the real world. And being queer does not mean you act a certain way. Otherwise, you wouldn’t need to come out. Everyone would already know. Sure, a lot of queer people have rejected gender norms, but a lot haven’t and that isn’t necessarily visible. And straight people reject gender normas too.

There doesn’t need to be a breakdown between straight and queer relationships. Relationships are the same pretty much everywhere. And after being accused of rape, pedophilia, bestiality, mental disorders, etc., it’s really nice that ER does portray good queer relationships.

2) Everyone is dying in Iraq. Last year a main character got killed in Iraq, and this year there was a family whose father had died in Iraq. They wouldn’t want to have a character that came back from Iraq alive and emphasize the good they were doing. No, Iraq is the devil and everyone is dying.

I’m sure some people do come back from Iraq and feel they’ve done something good. Most of the people I know either died or came back wishing they’d never had to kill anyone. Veterans of other wars are the same. My grandfather was proud that he helped in WWII. But he had a lot of terrible memories he didn’t want. People forget that no matter how good the cause of the war people die horrible deaths and see horrible things. Being reminded of that isn’t such a bad thing. Maybe we’ll try harder diplomatically.

3) National healthcare mumbo jumbo! The ER is always full and nobody has health insurance on the show. The characters are always screaming about how we need a national healthcare plan. What BS. Where are the illegal aliens in the ER? Oh that’s right, they never show any.

National healthcare isn’t mumbo jumbo. In a rich country like ours, it’s ridiculous that so many people who work so hard can’t afford decent healthcare. And yes, illegal immigrants do show up in the ER.

When I suggested that treating them was the right thing to do the author pulled out the teach a man to fish analogy. But many illegal immigrants do know how to take care of themselves. They’re doctors, teachers, farmers. As I mentioned a few days ago, our agricultural subsidies have done terrible things to the Mexican economy. These people come to the US looking for work so their families could eat. They are not looking for a handout.

They are accused of taking American jobs. But the only reason employers hire them is because they don’t get in trouble for paying them far far below minimum wage and the workers don’t complain about poor working conditions for fear of being deported. Illegal immigrants are rarely paid enough to eat well, let alone get a decent place to live or buy health insurance.

People say that illegal immigrants don’t pay taxes, so why should they get health care? How can they pay taxes? Despite the long long hours they work, they usually don’t make enough to have to pay taxes.

Fixing this system should be a priority. But until then, taking care of these exploited people who pick our food and clean our businesses cannot be compared to giving away something for free. We should be ashamed of how we’ve treated illegal immigrants.

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This isn’t spin. It’s an outright lie.

And people believe it (from the video comments):

Why does it bother you that the violence and immorality of homosexuality is finally being exposed for the evil that it is? What is so wrong with letting children grow up normal and without fear rather than deal with filth like this? They should round up these gangs and give them all major prison terms! The prisons are overcrowded? Too bad! They should have thought before inflicting their evil on innocent young lives!

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Fuel of tomorrow

Originally uploaded by boubou1
LMB recently wrote about farm subsidies in the US and the damage they do. They affect the major ingredients and prices of the food we buy.

there are five crops which receive huge, huge payouts from the US government: corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, and cotton. None of these five are all that nutritious (particularly the cotton), while healthier produce like broccoli and carrots and such get almost no subsidies.

The result? According to Pollan, “real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) [he means corn syrup] declined by 23 percent.” Calories are cheap and nutrients are ’spensive.

Since high fructose corn syrup is actually quite bad for you, it seems that one effect of subsidizing corn so heavily is to make Americans unhealthy. Wouldn’t it be a better idea to put that subsidy money into other crops and healthcare?

But the most devastating result of these subsidies is felt in other countries.

The second catastrophe that these food subsidies is the destruction of foreign agriculture. If you get a jillion dollars in free government money for growing soybeans, you can sell them for much cheaper than the amount it cost to produce those soybeans. And if those subsidies encourage you to grow more soybeans than you can sell domestically (and they do), then you’ve got extra to sell abroad. And if your exported soybeans are competing with local farmers who do not get a jillion dollars in free government money, then your soybeans will sell over your competitors. Then your competitors go bankrupt, and whee, global poverty.

This year’s Farm Bill might be different. Don’t just keep your fingers crossed, write to your elected officials about it.

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