Press Briefing by Scott McClellan

As usual with Mr. McClellan, the obfuscator extraordinaire of the White House, one can learn more about the United States from the questions reporters ask than from the answers he gives.

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan:
Q Scott, when this becomes a permanently democratically elected government, obviously it's free to make decisions -- everything from, you know, requesting that our troops withdraw to other matters. But we're still going to have a lot of influence on Iraq. We have troops on the ground securing the country. We have billions of dollars of reconstruction aid. So what's the President's priority when it comes to helping to shape a new government in the future?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, that would -- in terms of shaping the new government, that's going to be determined by the Iraqi people, just like it was yesterday. Now you'll have that assembly come --

Q We're not going to be that hands-off. We have influence over all kinds of democratically elected governments. What kind of influence does he want to wield over this government and the path that it follows?

MR. McCLELLAN: Democracy and freedom is about allowing people to make those choices and having the say over what the makeup will be. The President made it very clear in his inaugural address that we're not talking about imposing our standards or our values, that more often than not, the democracy that takes shape in countries around the world is going to be based on their own traditions and their own cultures, and I think you're seeing that in Iraq, as well. I think you will continue to see that going forward.

So it's a matter of supporting the Iraqi people as they put those institutions in place and as they determine the shape of their government. And that's what we'll continue to do.

Q But it just seems fanciful that we're not going to apply some pressure in areas that we care about.

MR. McCLELLAN: What areas are you talking about?

Q Well, you tell me. I mean, the President has talked about this before. They're going to write a constitution, you know, weapons of mass destruction or making sure it's a pluralistic government, a representative government. I mean, there are pressure points that this President can apply, just as he's applied in the past two weeks, calling every other day to say, don't get wobbly on us, have those elections on time.

So I'm trying to get at what role the United States wants to play here as they -- as the Iraqis build their government.

MR. McCLELLAN: We'll continue to make our views known about the values that should guide people as they move forward to put those institutions in place. I think the Iraqi people made it known through their interim government when they adopted the transitional law to be in place until that constitution is adopted by the Iraqi people.

But it's up to the Iraqi leaders who were elected yesterday by the Iraqi people to determine the specific makeup of that constitution. But I think that they've made it very clear that there are certain values that we all adhere to that are part of a fully functioning democracy. Rule of law, I think you mentioned that in your comments a minute ago; the respect and protection of minority rights, things of that nature. Those are important.

Q Just one more, if I can just follow. Senator Kerry, you may have seen, speculated that this government may be in private conversations with Iraqi leaders, encouraging them to ask the United States to withdraw troops pretty quickly. Is that -- any truth to that?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know what he was referring to. I didn't see what he had to say yesterday

Count the Black Dots!

Count the Black Dots!
This thing is pretty cool.

Colored bags
Posted by Hello

Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy

The ethical questions are boiling over...

National Geographic, January 25, 2005
Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.
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What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species.

Biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin is opposed to crossing species boundaries, because he believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species.

He concedes that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs. Still, they should not be done.
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Cynthia Cohen is a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which oversees research protocols to ensure they are in accordance with the new guidelines.

She believes a ban should also be put into place in the U.S.

Creating chimeras, she said, by mixing human and animal gametes (sperms and eggs) or transferring reproductive cells, diminishes human dignity.

"It would deny that there is something distinctive and valuable about human beings that ought to be honored and protected," said Cohen, who is also the senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C.

Quit smoking or lose your job?

Quit Smoking or Quit Your Job, U.S. Company Says: CHICAGO (Reuters) - The owner of a Michigan company who forced his employees to either quit smoking or quit their jobs said on Wednesday he also wants to tell fat workers to lose weight or else.

A ban on tobacco use -- whether at home or at the workplace -- led four employees to quit their jobs last week at Okemos, Michigan-based Weyco Inc., which handles insurance claims.

The workers refused to take a mandatory urine test demanded of Weyco's 200 employees by founder and sole owner Howard Weyers, a demand that he said was perfectly legal.

'If you don't want to take the test, you can leave,' Weyers told Reuters. 'I'm not controlling their lives; they have a choice whether they want to work here.'

Next on the firing line: overweight workers.

'We have to work on eating habits and getting people to exercise. But if you're obese, you're (legally) protected,' Weyers said.

KVCC hiring rule: Smokers need not apply: If you smoke and want a full-time job at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, you can forget it.

A new hiring policy that took effect on Jan. 1 tells job seekers that tobacco users will not be considered for full-time employment at KVCC.

Part-timers looking to move up a rung to a full-time position can't if they smoke or use other tobacco products.

Officials say the new policy is an effort to contain health-care costs, based on national research suggesting that tobacco use increases medical claims.

About three dozen employees, or 10 percent of the college's full-time staff, use tobacco, according to an employee survey.

The sanctions will not affect full-timers hired prior to the new regulation, however.

Skeptic Friends Network: Arrrgh!!!

Skeptic Friends Network: Arrrgh!!!: "How do you think we defeat terrorism?"
I have an major problem with this question. Whenever somebody uses this, or something about 'the war on terrorism', it is a sign that they have allowed the neocons to define the situation in their terms.

There is no 'war on terrorism' in reality. Terrorism is a tactic, not a thinking enemy to be battled.

It infuriates me to no end that the republicans have so thoroughly saturated the public discourse with their definition of this term. Even liberal pundits use the phrase. Even John Kerry allowed the situation to be defined by his opponent.

In order to have a war, you need to have an enemy. By definition, an enemy must be atleast one thinking individual who is opposed to you and willing to use force to advance/defend their position.

When we allow our politicians to operate on these terms, we lose. When the American people buy into this fantasy 'war on terrorism' without EVER asking the government to clearly define the enemy and set conditions for victory, we give them free reign to use military force in whatever capacity they like against whomever they want.

Sex & The City

Janella, Sarah and I just finished watching Sex and The City on DVD, season one through season six. This was done over the last month or so, and I was quite impressed. We watched Six Feet Under before this, dabbled with Dark Shadows, and I've decided that watching television shows on DVD doesn't have all of the pleasure sucked out of it like television itself does. Next we're planning to watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

In the last couple of episodes, there's a scene in the coffee shop when all four of the best friends are sitting at the table as Carrie is about to leave to Paris, possibly forever. In that scene she asks the others, "What if we had never met each other?" They all start bawling, of course. So did I. Nicole, Gabrielle, and Jennifer, my life would have been so much poorer if I had never met you. Despite my silences, I love all three of you and think about you all the time.

Take Action: Tell your Senator to Oppose the Marriage Protection Amendment

If you click the link below to the Human Rights Campaign, which focuses its action on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues, you can send a letter to your Senators opposing the Marriage Protection Amendment which Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO)
is reintroducing on the floor today. It takes about a minute.

Take Action: Tell your Senator to Oppose the Marriage Protection Amendment

Mad Cow not so easy to spot

Health News Article | Reuters.com: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The agent that transmits mad cow and related diseases may spread further in the body of an animal suffering from certain illnesses, scientists said on Thursday.

Their finding raises the question of whether measures aimed at curbing the spread of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, are adequate, the researchers said.
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Scientists have believed that BSE-causing prions are limited to the brain, spleen, spinal cord and lymph tissue, although some tests have suggested blood and muscle tissue may also harbor the prions.
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People who eat BSE-infected beef products can develop a related human brain disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease or vCJD. There is no treatment or cure. It has killed 148 Britons, and five Britons are alive with the disease, according to the British Department of Health's monthly report on the disease.

The World Health Organization says it has reports of six cases in France, one in Ireland, one in Italy, one in Canada and one in the United States.
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The study suggests that even symptom-free animals may also have prions in their livers, kidneys and pancreases.

Not One Damn Dime Day

I really can't express my full opinion about this form of protest better than the following does:

Economic Boycott on inauguration day
So which form of protest is this supposed to be? Its ostensible purpose is a symbolic one — to "remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal" — which leaves us wondering how this form of protest is supposed to help effect any change in circumstances The merits and conduct of the U.S. war with Iraq have been endlessly debated, in every medium, since the U.S. invasion of Iraq nearly two years ago. The war in Iraq was the primary issue in a long, contentious, headline-dominating presidential campaign that ended just a few months ago. The war is still one of the lead stories in the news nearly every day. Many different polling organizations and major news outlets regularly survey public opinion on the issue. If the result desired by those who would engage in this protest hasn't yet been achieved, it's not because the issue hasn't received enough publicity or those "in power" are insufficiently aware of it.

All that aside, the suggested scheme is one of the least effective forms of symbolic protest one could devise: it literally proposes that people do nothing, and doing nothing generates little, if any, publicity or news coverage. Massing thousands of people in one place and engaging speakers to make rousing public speeches provide vivid, well-defined images for the news media to pick up on, but pictures of people not spending money just don't make compelling fodder for newspapers and television. (Images of normally bustling malls, restaurants, and airports standing eerily devoid of human traffic might make for a good news story, but public opinion on this issue is far too divided for this protest to be able to bring all business to a grinding halt.) Even worse, when you call upon people to do nothing, how is anyone supposed to gauge the success of your efforts? There's no way to distinguish those who are doing nothing out of principle from those who are simply doing nothing out of habit.
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As we always say about these kinds of things, results are generally proportional to effort: If the most effort one is willing to put into a cause is to do nothing, then one should expect to accomplish nothing in return.

Just a bunch of feel-good masturbation if you ask me...
How about a Stop-Writing-In-Your-Blog-For-One-Day-And-Write-An-Actual-Letter-In-Protest-To-A-Republican-Politician-Day instead?

Enough said

CNN.com - Poll: Nation split on Bush as uniter or�divider - Jan 19, 2005:
Forty-nine percent of 1,007 adult Americans said in phone interviews they believe Bush is a "uniter," according to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Wednesday. Another 49 percent called him a "divider," and 2 percent had no opinion.

Rat tissue grown onto a silicon chip

CBC News: Growing muscle cells power microrobots: LONDON - By growing rat tissue onto a microscopic silicon chip, scientists have created tiny robots that can move using their own muscle power.

The robots, which are less than a millimetre long, are the first to include such living cells as complex as muscle tissue, researchers say.

The self-assembling cells were melded onto a tiny robotic frame, resulting in a device that could move like primitive legs without an external power source.

In one experiment, the team fed a glucose solution to rat heart cells in a culture mimicking a living system. Muscle contractions propelled the tiny structure to shuffle along.

Carlo Montemagno and his colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles said the technique involved growing the muscle tissue onto the silicon structure, instead of dissecting muscle from a living animal.
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Harvard President on gender

I wonder what this guy's views about race are?

BBC - Harvard row over sex and science
The president of Harvard University has caused a stir among academics by suggesting women have less "innate ability" at science and maths than men.

Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers argued one group outperformed the other because of genetics, not just experience, the Boston Globe said.

Several guests walked out of a conference after hearing the comments.

Dr Summers said later that the shortage of senior female academics was partly because of child-minding duties.

local6.com - Education - Women Lack 'Natural Ability' In Some Fields, Harvard President Says
"It's possible I made some reference to innate differences," he said. He said people "would prefer to believe" that the differences in performance between the sexes are due to social factors, "but these are things that need to be studied."

Corporations lobbying for judicial nominations

Evidently, this is a new strategy. Are other people as uneasy about this as I am?


An industry group's plan to spend millions promoting conservative nominees brings a new dimension to the divisive confirmation battles
The strategy's engineer is former Michigan Gov. John Engler, a longtime friend of President Bush who recently took the helm of the National Assn. of Manufacturers.

Engler said in an interview Wednesday that his organization would make confirmation of judicial nominees a top priority for the first time — providing money and a recently honed ability to stir grass-roots action nationwide. The group plans to spend millions of dollars on the campaign, but the exact amount has not been decided.

He said federal judicial confirmation debates are important to business, particularly because of judges' roles in civil liability cases.

"There has been too much of a tendency in the past to cast these judgeship battles as a social debate about abortion or gay rights. In fact, there are very few of those cases in contrast to those dealing with the tort system and the rights of individuals and companies," Engler said.
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Longtime observers said the involvement of well-heeled organizations such as the manufacturers' group — which represents such large, blue-chip firms as General Motors, Boeing and Caterpillar as well as 10,000 small and medium-sized manufacturers — could increase pressure on moderate senators whose votes helped block confirmation for 10 of the 34 Bush nominees to federal appeals courts in the past two years. Several of those senators face reelection in 2006 and are already facing threats from religious conservative leaders if they try to block conservative jurists.

My Response to an Alt-Muddled Friend

While spinning around the net today, I found this, which I liked. But I have one problem with skepticism which I'll address below.

My Response to an Alt-Muddled Friend: She uses Nikken magnets and says she wouldn't trust any studies on magnetism that didn't use that particular brand because they were better. I sent her a list of links with studies specifically done with Nikken magnets, with information debunking magnets in general and specifically Nikken magnets, and about the Nikken company and regulatory action taken against them for false claims. She said she didn't have time to read them, but it wouldn't change her mind anyway, because Nikken magnets worked for her. She ended the discussion, agreeing to disagree, saying, "You have raised some valid points and made me think about my choices, which is good. I hope that some of the points I've made have done the same for you." I answered:

I'm afraid your points have not made me think, because I've heard them all before, and have already researched the facts, evaluated the arguments and rejected them. I work with these issues on a daily basis; I've read lots of books and articles, I've exchanged e-mails with world-class experts on both sides and I've heard the best that alternative medicine has to say for itself. The fact that our discussion made you think but didn't make me think tells me that I have read what you have about alternative medicine and you have not read what I have about alternative medicine, pseudoscience, critical thinking and the psychology of how people deceive themselves.

I'm surprised to see you relying on testimonials and "what works for you" in alternative medicine, just as I would be surprised to see you depend on a friend's opinion when choosing a car instead of checking out sources such as consumer reports and comparative statistics on reliability, safety, repair history and customer satisfaction. It strikes me as comparable to reading the first three names on a class roster and assuming the class is all women because the first three names happened to be women; you don't get good statistics if your sample size is too small. I don't imagine you depend on testimonials when deciding whom to vote for; I suspect you rely more on things like the candidate's platform, his actions in office, and his voting history.

Small children believe in the tooth fairy. It "works" for them, because they get money every time they put a tooth under their pillow. But as they get older, they usually want to know the "truth." I asked a gullible friend what she would think of me if I told her I still believed in the tooth fairy. She said, "I'd think that was sweet." I don't think it would be sweet, I think it would be pitiful. No matter how satisfying a false belief may be, I prefer the truth.

Some people have the philosophy that they can create their own reality; some prefer wishful thinking, random trial and error, and intuition to rational thinking and testing. The scientific method leads to one consensus answer; all other methods lead to several different, conflicting answers. I have come to believe that the scientific method, while imperfect, is the only valid tool for understanding reality. I like nothing better than changing my mind, because it means I was mistaken and I have been able to correct my mistake. Just as I gave up the tooth fairy, I have given up a whole slew of things, from the reliability of memory to ESP, because my original beliefs were contradicted by the evidence I found.

To rely on testimonials and to not wonder how things work or what science says about them is like having a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and using it only to press flowers. Our brains are capable of much more and I think it is far more satisfying to use them to look at information that challenges our preconceptions and increases our knowledge.

I do my utmost to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out. I'm ready to accept any alternative treatment as soon as it is supported by convincing evidence (by the standards of the scientific method). I won't argue with you about alternative medicine any more, but I do hope you will read some of the arguments from the other side.

I have an issue with skepticism and I suppose the scientific method itself because of my belief that any topic has two sets of statements which can be made about it:
Set 1 consists of all those statements about which examination [of the subject] of the statement will make no change in the truth value of that statement.
Set 2 consists of all those statements about which examination [of the subject] of the statement will make some change in the truth value of that statement.

The problem I have is trying to figure out whether a statement is possibly part of set 2. For example, are some, all, or none of the statements involving Chi members of Set 2 or members of Set 1? How does one discover which set a statement belongs to? Then there is the meta-question: If a statement, A, which defines statement B as belonging to set 2 exists, is statement A a member of set 1 or set 2?

[Sidenote: And I suppose there also exists those statements which change their truth value just by making the statement itself, as the Torah claims about the name of God and the Tao-Te-Ching says about the Tao: The Tao which can be spoken of is not The Tao.]

A skeptic would probably say that Set 2 is an empty set, but I don't know how she/he would prove that.

Economist.com | Meritocracy in America

I know only a few people who are libertarian or who don't like the idea of much higher taxes for rich people in order to raise the foundation for those at the lowest economic levels of society. Those people usually hold with the belief that they could be one of the rich someday with hard work and perseverance. The Economist magazine has an article for them.

Economist.com | Meritocracy in America:
Whatever happened to the belief that any American could get to the top?

A growing body of evidence suggests that the meritocratic ideal is in trouble in America. Income inequality is growing to levels not seen since the Gilded Age, around the 1880s. But social mobility is not increasing at anything like the same pace: would-be Horatio Algers are finding it no easier to climb from rags to riches, while the children of the privileged have a greater chance of staying at the top of the social heap. The United States risks calcifying into a European-style class-based society.
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Most Americans see nothing wrong with inequality of income so long as it comes with plenty of social mobility: it is simply the price paid for a dynamic economy. But the new rise in inequality does not seem to have come with a commensurate rise in mobility. There may even have been a fall.
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The most remarkable feature of the continuing power of America's elite—and its growing grip on the political system—is how little comment it arouses. Britain would be in high dudgeon if its party leaders all came from Eton and Harrow. Perhaps one reason why the rise of caste politics raises so little comment is that something similar is happening throughout American society. Everywhere you look in modern America—in the Hollywood Hills or the canyons of Wall Street, in the Nashville recording studios or the clapboard houses of Cambridge, Massachusetts—you see elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves. America is increasingly looking like imperial Britain, with dynastic ties proliferating, social circles interlocking, mechanisms of social exclusion strengthening and a gap widening between the people who make the decisions and shape the culture and the vast majority of ordinary working stiffs.
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Some researchers claim that social mobility is actually declining. A classic social survey in 1978 found that 23% of adult men who had been born in the bottom fifth of the population (as ranked by social and economic status) had made it into the top fifth. Earl Wysong of Indiana University and two colleagues recently decided to update the study. They compared the incomes of 2,749 father-and-son pairs from 1979 to 1998 and found that few sons had moved up the class ladder. Nearly 70% of the sons in 1998 had remained either at the same level or were doing worse than their fathers in 1979. The biggest increase in mobility had been at the top of society, with affluent sons moving upwards more often than their fathers had. They found that only 10% of the adult men born in the bottom quarter had made it to the top quarter.

The Economic Policy Institute also argues that social mobility has declined since the 1970s. In the 1990s 36% of those who started in the second-poorest 20% stayed put, compared with 28% in the 1970s and 32% in the 1980s. In the 1970s 12% of the population moved from the bottom fifth to either the fourth or the top fifth. In the 1980s and 1990s the figures shrank to below 11% for both decades. The figure for those who stayed in the top fifth increased slightly but steadily over the three decades, reinforcing the sense of diminished social mobility.
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at the least, most people agree that the dramatic increase in income inequality over the past two decades has not been accompanied by an equally dramatic increase in social mobility.
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There is also growing evidence that America is less socially mobile than many other rich countries. Mr Solon finds that the correlation between the incomes of fathers and sons is higher in the United States than in Germany, Sweden, Finland or Canada. Such cross-national comparisons are rife with problems: different studies use different methods and different definitions of social status. But Americans are clearly mistaken if they believe they live in the world's most mobile society.
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