Dean's World

The Los Angeles Times article Next speaker enjoys broad support (3/2/08) details the rise of Karen Bass, the incoming leader of the California assembly and the first African American woman to be elected to lead a legislative house in the U.S. The piece was a nice example of the subtle and not-so-subtle societal bias against fathers and fatherhood. The article begins:

"Anyone who knew Wilhelmina Bass might understand why her daughter Karen Bass, the Los Angeles Democrat elected Thursday as the next leader of the California Assembly, has devoted her Capitol career to making the state a better parent to its 80,000 foster children.

"A former beauty salon owner who raised Karen and three boys in a well-appointed house in the Venice-Fairfax area, Wilhelmina Bass was a kind, poised, contemplative mother, and 'the notion that people would come into this world and not have loving parents has always caused Karen pain,' said Sylvia Castillo, Bass' district director and a friend for three decades."

We all know the script: heroic, overwhelmed black mother raises her kids herself, and now one of them has done mama proud by making good in the world. Yet, believe it or not, Bass actually had a father, too.

It is only much further down in the story, after we are already assuming that Bass was raised by a single mom, that we are told, "She credits her father, DeWitt, a mail carrier, for making her a 'news junkie' — Bass said she used to wake at 4:30 a.m. to listen to the radio with him before he began his route."

In fact, in the autobiographical information that Bass herself provided the Democratic Party, she wrote, "Karen has dedicated her life to improving our neighborhoods. Her father, DeWitt Bass--a letter carrier for 40 years--and mother, Wilhelmina, raised Karen and her three brothers in the Venice/Fairfax neighborhood."

In other words, Bass saw herself as being raised by both parents, and it even seems like she was at least a bit of a daddy's girl. Why did the Los Angeles Times choose to place far more importance on her mother than on her father?

To write a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times, click on letters@latimes.com. Nancy Vogel, the Los Angeles Times Staff Writer who wrote the story, can be reached at nancy.vogel@latimes.com.

[Note: If you or someone you love is faced with a divorce or needs help with child custody, child support, false accusations, Parental Alienation, or other family law or criminal law matters, ask Glenn for help by clicking here.]

6:01pm Eastern--go!

I have no idea if this is endorsed by the Clinton campaign or not, but it is funny:

(Thanks Jack.)

Heh.

I don't think it's as bad as all that for Republicans, but that made me chuckle.

I see the Al Gore for President meme is being carried by some on the far right.

I'd suggest that when goofballs like John Derbyshire and Eleanor Clift think something is likely to happen, you can pretty much take it to the bank that it won't. Although it's certainly an entertaining idea to contemplate.

Dean's World should complete conversion to WordPress tonight, or at least the bulk of it will.

Does this mean you'll all need new comment accounts? Afraid so. So try to be patient, and just apply for a new account when the new system comes into place. We'll get things back to normal over the next week or so.

As I've said many times, Chicago politics are unbelievably corrupt. Possibly the only place worse is Louisiana. And it looks like those chickens are coming home to roost.

If Obama can't weather it now, he certainly won't be able to in the general election. He's going to have to talk about this, and talk about why he wants to clean up Washington even though he came up and succeeded in an environment that makes Washington DC look like a model of clean and honorable government. Doubtless his supporters will call such question "smears," but to the rest of us that will just look like tap-dancing.

By the way, is he anti-NAFTA or not? Apparently, it's anyone's guess. I guess that's what he means by the audacity of hope, or something.

A handy list.

(Thanks Alan.)

6:34pm Eastern--go!

Because there is no substitute for first hand testimonials, and because blogs often fall prey to vaporous threads in which people are accused of not knowing how to distinguish between reality and apparition, I decided to post three testimonials per day from the comments section at the petition against the Mother's Act, starting at the beginning of the nearly 1,000 (and counting) signatures.

I am posting only those that contain personal, direct testimonials, in hopes of transcending denial and obfuscation. I invite and encourage any possible interpretations of what we will be reading, but please think it through first because we are all responsible for our action and in-action:

1. Signatory #5

Feb 15, 2008, CAMILLE MILKE, New Mexico

My name is Camille Milke, my daughter's name is Sarina Angel. I lost her to suicide 110 days ago. She was the victim of Suicide-Causing Anti-Depressants. Her nurse practitioner prescribed my 95lb., 21 year old daughter an arsenal of six different Anti-Depressant and Anti-Anxiety pills all within a ten day period of time. My daughter is dead because of the FDA, Drug Companies, Psychiatrists, many in the political arena and all of these so called professionals. The Mother's Act must NEVER pass, many more will die; including those not even born yet. Please check out my website at COPESfoundation.com , read and educate yourselves on the dangers of psychotropic drugs, they are not safe for "anyone", especially pregnant woman and postpartum women.

2. Signatory # 21:Feb 16, 2008, John Beard, California

In memory of my beloved son Daniel Roy Beard who took his life while under the influence of these horrific mind altering drugs I sign this petition with much sorrow in my heart and an empty hole in my own soul for the remainder of my own life.

3. Signatory #31:

Feb 16, 2008, James Torlakson, California

My daughter, Elizabeth Torlakson, was KILLED by her antidepressant via SSRI INDUCED suicide. The Mothers Act (or any other such effort) encourages the use these leathal drugs and is not only irresponsible, but MURDEROUS. For details concerning Elizabeth's death see: www.elizabethtorlakson.org and www.jamestorlakson.com (Elizabeth botton on left side). Sincerely, James Torlakson, Elizabeth's father

I am simply amazed.

Effective.

A fascinating look at America's growing strategic ties with India.

This must be cultural suicide on our part. About a third of their population is Muslim, and they recently had a Muslim president!!!!!!1!1!!!

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Today's humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great.
...
What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made.
...
And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq.

After completing two tours in Iraq, Sgt. Wayne Leyde won $1 million from a scratch-and-win lotto ticket on Tuesday.

Now that he's won, Leyde, a 26-year-old member of the Washington National Guard, says he's still going to volunteer to go back to Iraq for a third tour and won't spend any of the money in the meantime.
...
I met the most amazing marine in Fallujah - Gunny William Gibson from Pryor, Oklahoma - his friends call him Spanky. Gunny Gibson lost his entire leg after an Iraqi sniper fired a round through his knee in Ramadi in 2006 - May 16, 2006 - just 19 months ago. He is the first full leg amputee to be returned to the fight - redeployed as an active marine. This Gunny had been in the marines for 18 years - that is who he is. He said all he wanted to do was get back into the fight. He said returning to Iraq was his first step back to feeling like he was a marine again. He runs half marathons with his prosthetic and it was when he swam in a race from Alcatraz and ended up at the feet of General Mattis out in California. As he emerged from the water General Mattis asked him what he could do for him - he said, “Sir, send me back to Iraq.”

"...and he's talking to me very low, under the chatter, and what he said was 'Every morning I wake up, and I feel like I'm pushing a little girl out of the way of a bus. And I pick her up, and I bring her to the other side of the road, and I've saved that little girl,' he said, 'every day I feel like that.' And in fact that is what s happening there. I can't tell you--"

Ann Althouse notes a raving anti-Catholic loonie who's appeared alongside John McCain, and wonders why he isn't denouncing the guy. While the guy is clearly of the standard anti-Catholic bible-only fundie mold that every Catholic is intimately familiar with, to be honest I really don't care if McCain denounces the turd or not. Politics is an institution that virtually requires you to accept endorsements and support from people who make you squirm. Most Catholics know perfectly well that they are not welcome in the Republican party and have always been viewed with contempt by its establishment, and that it's not likely to change. They'll vote for an honorable man like McCain, and just shrug that he's seen in the presence of one of those "the Pope is the Whore of Babylon/the bishops of the Catholic church are in cahoots to destroy our freedom" bullsh*t that's so common.

I also note that Glenn Greenwald is completely distorting what Althouse says, again. Big shock eh? He'd be an embarrassment to the left wing establishment in the blogosphere, if they were capable of being embarrassed. I guess some of them probably are.

By the way, I don't agree with everything the Catholic League does, but they have a good defense of their own past history on these and related issues.

Iron Man Exclusive Trailer HD

Add to My Profile | More Videos

I love Robert Downey. I can hardly wait.

A candidate we can all support!

I've always been fascinated by the drug thalidomide, which proponents of strict controls on drug companies often use as their favorite example of why we absolutely need the strictest possible rules about drugs being released to the general public. I find it fascinating on multiple levels, not least being that it's been over a half-century since that drug was banned and it's still everyone's favorite example.

While I take no strong position one way or the other, I find it fascinating that we're discovering possible positive uses for dangerous drugs. And, in looking at that, I think: shouldn't this serve as a reminder that practically any drug may be useful and practically any drug is dangerous?

A prominent meteorologist and former NASA scientist has gone public with her questions about the global warming movement. Joanne Simpson was chief scientist for meteorology at the Earth Sciences Directorate at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Institute. She has authored more than 190 studies. She contends the conventional wisdom that man-made greenhouse gasses are fueling climate change is based almost entirely upon computer models she describes as "frail."

She adds — "One distinguished scientist has shown that many aspects of climate change are regional, some of the most harmful caused by changes in human land use. No one seems to have properly factored in population growth and land use, particularly in tropical and coastal areas."

I have been upbraided a few times for citing only "anecdotal" evidence on the "link" between SSRIs and violence.

May I ask those people who have expressed that, with a genuine spirit of open dialogue, if they find this collection of cases to be something approaching "proof?"

A Swedish journalist has recently uncovered that the Swedish government suppressed something like 80% of the damning data on SSRI's and suicide. There are a growing number of citizen-driven websites where this data is now being assembled. The Internet is a great tool for the liberation of information our governing powers think we can't handle or shouldn't have.

Some linguists speak of the uselessness of not splitting infinitives. They offer as a counter example the famous "to Boldly Go". And they claim that the rule is a mindless mimicry of infinitives in earlier languages, which are expressed with one word.

I am not so sure that the mimicry is either mindless or useless. And I do not pretend to know why the rule developed.

But at any rate, it seems to me that the rule is rational: I think that in most cases it's wise not to separate an infinitive's components. An adverb or adverbial phrase is notionally dependent on its object. Without the object, an adverb has no concrete meaning in so far as the context of the housing grammatical element (the phrase or clause).

So with a split infinitive and the reader arriving at the adverbial element before its object, the mind does not have anything notionally concrete to hold onto. When the reader, then, moves on to the object, the mind uses the non-concrete data contained in it's memory to define the notionally concrete object, thereby arriving at a more complex concrete idea.

In other words: (non-concrete data = '0'; concrete data = '1'; complex concrete idea = '2')

With a split infinitive, at step one (reading the adverb) the mind stores '0', and at step two (reading the object) he arrives, through adding '0' to '1', at '2'.

With a unified infinitive, at step one (reading the object) the mind stores '1', and at step two (reading the adverbial element) arrives, through adding '1' to '0', at '2'.

Therefore, if one holds, as I do, that it is more taxing on the mind to hold onto non-concrete data ('0') than it is for it to hold onto concrete data ('1')--it follows that unifying the elements of the infinitive is a more efficient way to communicate content, since it either does not require the readers mind to hold onto non-concrete data ('0') or requires it for less time.

To illustrate: The reader's mind being what it is, a writer can get away with "To boldly go". But it would seem more problematic for him to write, "To--boldly and swiftly, eyes frontward and never looking back--go.

"To go boldly and swiftly, eyes frontward and never looking back" is more easily understood.

Accordingly, it would seem logical to place adverbial elements after their respective objects generally; I do not know the rule on that.

Also, it would seem (?) to follow that adjectival elements should follow their respective objects as well. We rarely if ever do that it English, but, interestingly, that is the norm in Hebrew.

The following was added after the original posting:

After looking at the post, it occurred to me that according to the forgoing explanation not splitting infinitives is merely an instance of not placing adverbial elements before their respective objects.

In reality, however, splitting an infinitive is worse than placing (at least) one adverb before its object, as the "to" of the infinitive is at least as non-concrete as the adverb itself. And since, when reading a split infinitive, it takes as least one more step to resolve the non-concrete "to", the mind has to hold onto it for that much longer.

Therefore, splitting an infinitive is, according to this explanation, roughly equivalent to placing two adverbs before their object.

However, if "to" is even less concrete and thus harder to hold onto than an adverb, as I think it is, then splitting an infinitive is worse.

After reading the sample phrases mentioned earlier in the post, it also occurred to me that a split infinitive presents a unique difficulty in combining the language components to render their complex referent: (the 'to' element of the infinitive = '0'; the verb element of the infinitive = '1' ; the adverbial element = '2'; the complex idea = '3')

Resolving "To go boldly" requires the mind to add thusly: '0' + '1' + '2' = '3'. At step two the mind is able to perform '0' + '1', and thereby needs only to hold onto the product. At step three, the mind adds thusly: (presolved product of '0' + '1') + 2 to arrive at '3', the complex idea.

Similarly, resolving "boldly going" requires the mind to add thusly: '1' + '2' = '3'

Resolving "to boldly go", however, requires the mind to add '0' + '1' + '2' = '3', but receives the data in the order of '0' + '2' + '1' = '3'. So not only must the mind hold onto '0' + '2' as separate data entities until step three, at step three it must rearrange the data into '0' + '1' + '2' to arrive at '3'.

A sudden death to my newly developed enthusiasm for Obama who apparently supported the "Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act" bill.

Via Vera Sharav, Association For Human Research Protection:

The bill, HR 20, incorporating S. 1375, is promoted as "The Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act" ostensibly to combat postpartum depression. The bill would authorize "screening" and "treating" women deemed "depressed" after giving birth. The bill's covert intent is to INCREASE use of SSRI antidepressants and antipsychotics.

What's scary is that HR 20, authorizing appropriations for fiscal years 2008-2010, has already passed the House with ne'er any resistance!

Instead, a grass roots crusader against HR 20, has stepped up to the plate:

Amy Philo, a mother who became homicidally psychotic following ingestion of Zoloft prescribed by a psychiatrist who kept increasing the dose to frightening ill effects.

Her experience led her to found Children and Adults Against Drugging America

- www.chaada.org

See her story and videos on YouTube:

and

Sign the petition to stop the "Mothers Act" which will benefit the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, but cause great harm to American women, children and their families.

(Later tonight I will try to make active links out of all those.)

I forwarded this to a few dozen friends and contacts, with this note:

Researching SSRI's for my next book, I came across this:

Please watch it. Once you have, I don't think you will need my prodding to sign the petition and join the human chain to stop this insanity.

(I am sorry to learn that Mr. Obama lent his name to this malevolent bill.)

I don't think, personally, this country is facing any greater threat right now than the threat of the pharmaceutical industry's constant desecration of all human freedoms, starting in utero.

With respect and thanks for your time--

Celia

good news, we won:

''Coalition forces, including many brave Afghans, have brought America, Afghanistan and the free world its first victory in the war on terror,'' Mr. Bush said. ''Afghanistan is no longer a terrorist factory sending thousands of killers into the world.''

John McCain's Afghanistan strategy:

Our military recommitment to Afghanistan must begin with greater troop contributions by NATO members and an end to the limitations that hinder their combat operations. We should intensify our training of the Afghan national army, including inviting Afghanistan to join NATO's Partnership for Peace to institutionalize our train and equip programs. We must expand our police training programs, provide greater resources for judicial reforms, and work with our partners to boost reconstruction. The international community should set benchmarks for Afghan governance and hold the government to them. We must also strike a new deal with Pakistan that ends the sanctuaries for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters on Pakistani territory. We will not succeed in Afghanistan if our enemies enjoy safe havens, where they will also threaten Pakistan's own ability to ward off an internal Islamist challenge as well as its neighbor's.

Discuss.

Provincial elections are of especially pressing importance because it is anticipated that they will create a political outlet for the Sunni leaders who previously boycotted the political process and/or engaged in insurgency, yet who have since allied with the US and Iraqi government against al Qaeda in Iraq. The Awakening tribal alliance based in Ramadi probably will dominate provincial balloting, as its politicians are generally considered more representative of the Sunni population than the Iraqi Accord Front.

In addition, provincial elections will shape the ongoing power struggle between ISCI and the Sadrist Movement in southern Iraq. The Sadrists boycotted regional elections in 2005 and now want to challenge ISCI power through the ballot box, while ISCI wants to consolidate its current regional dominance through dramatic decentralization outlined in any final version of the Provincial Powers Act.

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
...
The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis.

There are thousands of scientists all over the world who spend their entire professional lives examining that data.

Steven Pinker is an professor of psychology in MIT's department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences. In 1994 he wrote the following in the pages of The New Republic:

Language is a human instinct. All societies have complex language, and everywhere the languages use the same kinds of grammatical machinery like nouns, verbs, auxiliaries, and agreement. All normal children develop language without conscious effort or formal lessons, and by the age of three they speak in fluent grammatical sentences, outperforming the most sophisticated computers. Brain damage or congenital conditions can make a person a linguistic savant while severely retarded, or unable to speak normally despite high intelligence. All this has led many scientists, beginning with the linguist Noam Chomsky in the late 1950's, to conclude that there are specialized circuits in the human brain, and perhaps specialized genes, that create the gift of articulate speech.

But when you read about language in the popular press, you get a very different picture. Johnny can't construct a grammatical sentence. As educational standards decline and pop culture disseminates the inarticulate ravings and unintelligible patois of surfers, rock stars, and valley girls, we are turning into a nation of functional illiterates: misusing hopefully, confusing lie and lay, treating bummer as a sentence, letting our participles dangle. English itself will steadily decay unless we get back to basics and start to respect our language again.

What is behind this contradiction? If language is as instinctive to humans as dam-building is to beavers, if every 3-year-old is a grammatical genius, if the design of syntax is coded in our DNA and wired into our brains, why, you might wonder, is the English language in such a mess? Why does the average American sound like a gibbering fool every time he opens his mouth or puts pen to paper?

It's worth considering that when we send children to school, we start teaching them to read and write. We don't set about teaching them to speak and listen, because they already do that quite well. Written language is not an innate skill, and until quite recently the vast majority of human beings were not literate. But speaking? Illiterate people have been inventing wildly complex languages since the dawn of history (and likely well before). Children often speak quite well before they can control their bowels.

Pinker also writes:

So there is no contradiction, after all, in saying that every normal person can speak grammatically (in the sense of systematically) and ungrammatically (in the sense of nonprescriptively), just as there is no contradiction in saying that a taxi obeys the laws of physics but breaks the laws of Massachusetts. But still, this raises a question. Someone, somewhere, must be making decisions about "correct English" for the rest of us. Who? There is no English Language Academy, and this is just as well; the purpose of the Académie Française is to amuse journalists from other countries with bitterly-argued decisions that the French gaily ignore. Nor was there any English Language Constitutional Conference at the beginning of time. The legislators of "correct English," in fact, are an informal network of copy-editors, dictionary usage panelists, style manual writers, English teachers, essayists, and pundits. Their authority, they claim, comes from their dedication to implementing standards that have served the language well in the past, especially in the prose of its finest writers, and that maximize its clarity, logic, consistency, elegance, precision, stability, and expressive range. William Safire, who writes the weekly column "On Language" for the New York Times Magazine, calls himself a "language maven," from the Yiddish word meaning expert, and this gives us a convenient label for the entire group.

To whom I say: Maven, shmaven! Kibbitzers and nudniks is more like it. For here are the remarkable facts. Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens make no sense on any level. They are bits of folklore that originated for screwball reasons several hundred years ago and have perpetuated themselves ever since. For as long as they have existed, speakers have flouted them, spawning identical plaints about the imminent decline of the language century after century. All the best writers in English have been among the flagrant flouters. The rules conform neither to logic nor tradition, and if they were ever followed they would force writers into fuzzy, clumsy, wordy, ambiguous, incomprehensible prose, in which certain thoughts are not expressible at all. Indeed, most of the "ignorant errors" these rules are supposed to correct display an elegant logic and an acute sensitivity to the grammatical texture of the language, to which the mavens are oblivious.

Before commenting further, I suggest you read the whole thing.

Pinker explores this and much else in his delightful book, The Language Instinct. And no, I don't think he's right about everything, but I do think he's right about practically everything in this essay. (And, having read it, and some other books on linguistics, I have to say I found this essay a scream.)

The Boston Globe recently discussed Fathers & Families' shared parenting bill at great length in their editorial A fair role for fathers. While the Globe did not endorse the bill, the editorial essentially agrees with the main arguments behind shared parenting--to learn more, click here.

I don't know if anybody else caught it or thought of it, but I thought this paragraph from the Boston Globe editorial was particularly annoying. The Globe wrote:

"Charles Kindregan, a law professor at Suffolk University, soundly argues that a presumption of joint legal and physical custody could handcuff judges who should be free to consider the best interests of children on a case-by-case basis. 'You don't need a presumption when you have facts,' Kindregan says. The relevant facts include children's age, temperament, emotional development, and medical needs, as well as how parents get along and how far apart parents live from each other. A judge looking at an infant will have to make very different decisions than a judge looking at a teenage boy."

In case anybody missed it, what he said is code for "Dad can see the infant maybe an hour or two a week if he's lucky, and if mom allows it. However, we may be more solicitous of dad's time when his boy is a teenager. Of course, by then the boy will already be damaged from growing up without a father, but it's okay for dad to spend real time with the boy, as long as mom is not unhappy about it, and as long as they still live within 1,000 miles of each other."

The most irritating part of this is the presumption that an infant needs only its mother, not its father. From time to time I get letters from mothers of infant children who are outraged that the fathers want to see the children and — gasp — want to spend some time with the infants in their own homes.

I have been the primary caregiver for my daughter, now almost 10 years old, from the time she was six weeks old. Those first few years home all alone with her, before she went to preschool, were the greatest years of my life. She and I shared everything together, and we were as happy and close as any two people could ever be.

The only downside to it was that I worked in the evenings and my little girl would cry herself to sleep every night because she missed me and I was not there. I still believe that one reason my daughter and I are so close are those special years we had together.

The Globe editorial and the expert it quotes are wrong--there is absolutely no reason why a father should be kept away from his baby or toddler, even if mom and dad are separated.

[Note: If you or someone you love is faced with a divorce or needs help with child custody, child support, false accusations, Parental Alienation, or other family law or criminal law matters, ask Glenn for help by clicking here.]

Okay, for real this time: here is the final installment of Bill Ardolino's excellent series on Iraqi politics.