PREA
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I got an e-mail today about PREA -- the Prison Rape Elimination Act. At first I thought it was a joke, sent to me by one of my liberal friends. I kept looking for the punch line. You know, something like "Passed by the Republican Congress for their own personal protection," or "The Republican Party has your back(side) Scooter" or something like that.

Well, it would have been pretty funny, except it isn't a joke. PREA was passed in 2003. It authorized $15 million per year for the fiscal years 2004-2010 for the following purposes:

(1) establish a zero-tolerance standard for the incidence of prison rape in prisons in the United States;

(2) make the prevention of prison rape a top priority in each prison system;

(3) develop and implement national standards for the detection, prevention, reduction, and punishment of prison rape;

(4) increase the available data and information on the incidence of prison rape, consequently improving the management and administration of correctional facilities;

(5) standardize the definitions used for collecting data on the incidence of prison rape;

(6) increase the accountability of prison officials who fail to detect, prevent, reduce, and punish prison rape;

(7) protect the Eighth Amendment rights of Federal, State, and local prisoners;

(8) increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Federal expenditures through grant programs such as those dealing with health care; mental health care; disease prevention; crime prevention, investigation, and prosecution; prison construction, maintenance, and operation; race relations; poverty; unemployment; and homelessness; and

(9) reduce the costs that prison rape imposes on interstate commerce.

I guess that last one is in there to justify why the Federal Government is meddling with State and Local correctional facilities. What I found fascinating was the lengths they went to to demonstrate how prison rape impacts interstate commerce:

(15) The high incidence of prison rape has a significant effect on interstate commerce because it increases substantially--

(A) the costs incurred by Federal, State, and local jurisdictions to administer their prison systems;

(B) the incidence and spread of HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis B and C, and other diseases, contributing to increased health and medical expenditures throughout the Nation;

(C) the rate of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, suicide, and the exacerbation of existing mental illnesses among current and former inmates, contributing to increased health and medical expenditures throughout the Nation; and

(D) the risk of recidivism, civil strife, and violent crime by individuals who have been brutalized by prison rape.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of prison rape. But this all seems to me to be another one of those arguments based on the idea that it costs someone some money, so the Federal Government feels obligated to get involved. As to the interstate commerce argument, if you are running a prison that ignores prison rape, I'm not sure how that substantially increases the cost to administer your facility. On the other hand, I can clearly see how it might increase your costs to have to comply with a new set of regulations imposed by the Feds. And if anyone out there seriously believes that Federal expenditures for health care or mental health care will be significantly reduced by eliminating prison rape, I have some swampland in New Orleans Florida I'd like to sell you.

At another point in this law, the authors say the following:

(3) Inmates with mental illness are at increased risk of sexual victimization. America's jails and prisons house more mentally ill individuals than all of the Nation's psychiatric hospitals combined. As many as 16 percent of inmates in State prisons and jails, and 7 percent of Federal inmates, suffer from mental illness.

(4) Young first-time offenders are at increased risk of sexual victimization. Juveniles are 5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in adult rather than juvenile facilities--often within the first 48 hours of incarceration.

Look, people, if you want to protect young first-time offenders and the mentally ill from the prison environment, DON'T SEND THEM TO PRISON IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE. Don't send the first time drug offenders to prison for 10 years. Don't send mentally ill individuals (whose legal entanglements are often directly related to the lack of quality services and medical supervision in the community) to prison because you cut the funding for all the other programs you could have sent them to.

Utilized correctly, prisons should be full of dangerous, vicious, brutal, evil people. That's what they are there for. In such a place, there will be violence, there will be sexual assaults, there will be all sorts of predatory behavior. That's the whole point. Put these evil, violent bastards behind bars for a long, long time so they can't engage in their predatory behavior against us out here in the real world.

It seems to me that this is another example of the Government trying to fix the symptom and not the problem. Prison rape is regrettable. But saying we are going to solve the problem by spending a few million dollars to study the problem and then demand that all prison systems implement a zero tolerance policy is not going to make all those evil, violent, predatory individuals suddenly decide to play nice with each other. On the other hand, fixing our sentencing laws so that young, vulnerable first time offenders and the mentally ill don't get sent to prison (when the research shows that there are better alternatives for these individuals) would cost everyone less money (it is demonstrably cheaper to place someone on intensive supervision in the community than it is to house them in prison). Unfortunately, trying to change the sentencing laws in such a way doesn't make you (if you are a congressman) look like you are tough on crime. Nonsense like PREA allows you to still look tough on crime but posture like you have a humane side, too.

Update: Because the violent, predatory types are in prison, the Crazy Frog Kill Counter is up to 9.54 million registered kills.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, October 31 2005 10:47:03 PM

Exit Strategy
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Pick any blog that deals with the war in Iraq and runs a robust comments thread and you will inevitably see arguments about exit strategy. Personally, I'm not really all that interested in a publicly articulated exit strategy for Iraq. I think the less we talk about leaving Iraq, the better, at least when it comes to the "insurgents." I have said before that I think we will need to be in Iraq for a very long time as a backup for the Iraqi forces.

This is not to say that I am not interested in the topic of exit strategies. But before we get all worked up about leaving Iraq, hows about we come up with an exit strategy for Germany and South Korea?

by Cziltang 
Posted: Friday, October 28 2005 12:38:23 PM

Thought for the Day 2
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This is the reverse side of the coin I posted yesterday, a one ounce silver coin. I don't know its history. I guess it is for bullion purposes. Anyway I picked it up in a coin shop in Beaverton, Oregon a couple of years ago along with a couple of others I thought were interesting. No real significance other than that.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, October 27 2005 12:18:06 PM

Fighting for Peace
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First off, let me offer up this language disclaimer. Generally, I try to keep it PG rated on this site (whatever that means). This post is not going to be one of those where that standard is met. If you are offended by what in quainter times was referred to as "Salty" language, now would be a good time to surf elsewhere.

Thou Shall Not Suck is written by another blogging Kansan. (Howard, at the Smedley Log tipped me off about this one.) Generally, the material is left of center, or at least left of me. I haven't had a chance to read back too far, but what I've seen appears to be pretty good writing. Apparently writer had surgery, so there are several guest bloggers recently. One of the most interesting is the post written by the author's father. "The Old Man" (as he is referred to) is in some ways more conservative than the author. He also had some really interesting comments on the world, well worth reading, whatever your political stripe.

Buried in the middle of the post was this statement "And yes, fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity." I've actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about that. (I had plenty of time, hanging out in two doctor's offices for the bulk of the day. This is what happens when I spend the day staring at the walls, waiting.)

While it may in fact be true that peace and virginity are admirable states of existence for humans, it is possible that they may not be the be-all and end-all of human existence. Just as virginity is an aberrant state of existence for adult humans (at least from a perpetuation of the species standpoint, you know, that old "be fruitful and multiply thing) it occurred to me that peace may be an aberrant state of existence for human societies. For a preponderance of human history, the term "peace" simply implied that one was not in immediate, proximate danger of being killed. And, I daresay for most of human history most humans were or would have been quite content with that.

I'm wondering if we haven't attached baggage to the term "peace" that makes it both more and less than it seems on the surface. It seems to me that the word "peace" implies all sorts of warm, fuzzy thing: all men living together in harmony, everyone happy and healthy and cooperating for the betterment of mankind. In short, the word "peace" has become a code word for "socialist utopia."

OK, maybe "socialist utopia" was a cheap shot. Or maybe not. There is a big difference between being left alone to live one's life and being expected to actively participate in the warm, fuzzy, mutually cooperative society implied by the term "peace" as we use it today.

You know, we really don't think about words and the way we use them enough. Try this vision of the world:

Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships. Humanists long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern, free of cruelty and its consequences, where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence. The joining of individuality with interdependence enriches our lives, encourages us to enrich the lives of others, and inspires hope of attaining peace, justice, and opportunity for all.

Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness. Progressive cultures have worked to free humanity from the brutalities of mere survival and to reduce suffering, improve society, and develop global community. We seek to minimize the inequities of circumstance and ability, and we support a just distribution of nature’s resources and the fruits of human effort so that as many as possible can enjoy a good life.

Humanists are concerned for the well being of all, are committed to diversity, and respect those of differing yet humane views. We work to uphold the equal enjoyment of human rights and civil liberties in an open, secular society and maintain it is a civic duty to participate in the democratic process and a planetary duty to protect nature’s integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure, sustainable manner. (from the Humanist Manifesto III)

That all sounds very much like what a fair number of "peace activists" are striving for. It sounds very much like the implied definition of peace that seems to have developed in my lifetime. It also sounds very much like the socialist ideal.

I don't know, from where you live, the world around you might look like that vision of the world is achievable. From where I live (remember that I work in Corrections) the world is full of violence and con artists, people who will take advantage of every good faith effort you make to help and would gladly support you distributing some of nature's resources and the fruits of your effort to them so they can enjoy a good life. (They would also be happy to encourage you to make this re-distribution by deception, threat or at the point of a knife or a gun.)

If, from where you live, the human race looks like it is capable of the kind of personal and interpersonal growth necessary to make war an outmoded concept, I am happy for you. I would like to live in your world. It would be nice to believe humans are perfectible, that with the appropriate "guidance" (no doubt from an enlightened elite who think pretty much the same way you do) everyone will play along. But, just because it would be nice, doesn't mean it would be smart to ignore the world as it is. So, maybe fighting for "peace" as it has come to be defined doesn't make sense. Maybe that is because we have defined it out of the realm of the possible and into the realm of magical wishes.

But, as pointed out by the Old Man: Opinions are like assholes. Every one has one and they think that theirs don’t stink.

Of course, mine doesn't. No, really. Trust me.

And because we're all enlightened and peaceful and stuff: the Crazy Frog Kill Counter is up to 9.32 million registered kills.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, October 26 2005 09:43:31 PM

Thought for the Day
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by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, October 26 2005 07:17:02 PM

The Ratlands Assorted Pork Products and Cheese Smoking Festival
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We held the First Annual Ratlands Assorted Pork Products and Cheese Smoking Festival last night. OK, it wasn't much of a festival, just me sitting on the patio with a beer, watching the smoke rise in the cold night air. Still, it was rather pleasant and we now have a refrigerator full of assorted sausages and cheeses and won't be cooking for a couple of days at least. I tried smoking muenster last night along with the usual Gouda and mild and sharp cheddar. I'd put Muenster in the same category as jarlsberg: glad I tried it, won't do it again.

I had intended to write a bit more tonight, but I think I hear some cheese calling to me from downstairs.

The Crazy Frog Kill Counter is up to 9.27 million registered kills.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, October 25 2005 10:31:27 PM

More Magic, please.
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I was a serious leftist when I was younger. By that, I mean that in addition to being nearly humorless about politics, I thought I was a socialist. I subscribed to socialist newspapers, I jumped on the bandwagon of all the right causes, I mouthed all the right platitudes and I nodded approvingly and knowingly when the correct leftists said the correct things. I had a serious problem with right wing types. I hated news and commentary because I couldn't stand the right wing drivel. I repeatedly got angry at the corporate pawns, the high priests of the military-industrial complex and idiots who just didn't get it. I thought I was a master of the biting slogan and vitriolic invective.

A few years ago I began to notice that my thoughts on individual issues didn't match the official leftist line, the philosophy I said I believed. Thus began the painful process of examining my beliefs and discarding attachments to the ones I no longer held. I came to the inescapable conclusion that (gasp) I am not a leftist.

I'm still working out what I think now. But I'm not particularly concerned with labels, I'm not particularly concerned with belonging to an ideological group and I'm not interested in conforming to an ideological position. One thing hasn't changed. I still still have problems with news and commentary, particularly with commentary, including blogs. I have real problems with blogs on the extremes, primarily on the left, although the right is not immune to my disdain. I try to read a large number of differing opinions, but I confess I can only handle so much. After that point, I just can't take any more. It doesn't make me angry, it makes me tired. Part of it is the tone, the anger, the sheer nastiness. (It reminds me of myself when I was younger.) But there is something else, a structural flaw of some kind in the commentary that bothers me, something I couldn't quite put my finger on. But, I finally think I figured it out; why I dread most of the commentary and why most of the commentary is so angry.

A possible answer came to me while I was re-reading "Magic" by Bill Whittle. What grinds me down, what makes me tired, is all the magical thinking. Whittle talks about magical thinking like this:

Anyway, some time in the late 1960’s, Sauron gets the Ring and along comes the Hippie movement. Their entire philosophy was summed up succinctly in a slogan from the times: if it feels good, do it.

As a life philosophy, it simplistic and childlike. It is also extremely subtle and pervasive, and as a personal philosophy it has enormous seductive power. It frees you from the constraints of discipline, study, responsibility and ethics, not to mention relieving you of the burden of making choices based on evidence, reason, logic or fact.

Now those Hippies are college professors, and post-modernism is their Graille.

You know the drill: No objective reality. All truth is relative. You can believe whatever you want, when you want. You can be descended from Atlantean Priests! You can have Mental Powers to move objects, read the future, and speak to dead people! Even better, you can save six billion trillion tons of silicon, nickel and iron in the third orbit around the sun – a sphere that has endured 5 billion years of asteroid impacts, volcanoes, ice ages, and having its core knocked out and into orbit -- by holding up a piece of wood with some lettered cardboard on one end and by marching down the street chanting two-line political philosophies!

What’s not to like!

Whittle quotes the following passage from Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World":

‘A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage.'

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

‘Show me,’ you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, some empty paint cans, an old tricycle – but no dragon.

‘Where’s the dragon?’ you ask.

‘Oh, she’s right here,’ I reply, waving vaguely. ‘I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.’

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.

‘Good idea,’ I say, ‘but this dragon floats in the air.’

Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

‘Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.’

You’ll spray paint the dragon to make her visible.

‘Good idea, except she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.’

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.

Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire, and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

Whittle goes on to say

When a person wants to believe something, no amount of skeptical questioning, logical contradictions or contrary evidence will move them. Couple that with the example of the dragon – the constant moving of the goalposts of proof and verification, and you have the basis for modern magical thinking. And if UFO’s, Loch Ness Monsters and Bermuda Triangles can draw so many believers, how many more can we recruit with more nuanced sleight of hand?

So let's see some magical thinking in action. A prime example of magical thinking is the old leftist standby, "Bush stole the 2000 election." From Whittle:

Bush stole the election. No, he had the majority of electoral votes. Yeah, but Gore won the popular vote. The President is not elected by popular votes. He’s elected by electoral votes. The electoral college is outdated. Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but you don’t get to change the rules after you lost the game. Gore really won Florida. Not according to three recounts he didn’t. The recounts don’t matter because the Supreme Court selected him. The Supreme Court only told the Florida Court to play by the rules. Bush stole the election because I say so! Ahhh. At last. Now we get down to brass tacks.

It is sad, but there are still a lot of people out there who cling to this belief that Bush stole the election as if a) it is not demonstrably false, and b) that somehow it being true would in some way invalidate everything Bush has done they don't like. But, if you suggest to these individuals that the facts are that Bush didn't steal the election you'll get called a fascist or worse.

How about another example. There are a lot of people out there who believe beyond question that Bush is a great leader. Is he loyal, to a fault? Yes. Is he dedicated to his idea of the war on terrorism? Yes. Is he committed to the war in Iraq? Yes. Does this make him a great leader? Well, loyalty and persistence are admirable qualities, but in the long run, when judging leadership on a Presidential scale, we have generally required a bit more than just mediocre and we generally can't judge what was visionary and what was just ordinary until we have a bit of time behind us. But, suggest this to a die-hard Bush supporter and you'll get called a traitor or worse.

In each case the people holding the belief want to hold the belief. They desperately want there to be an invisible dragon. And they generally get incredibly angry when you won't take their word as fact that there is a dragon.

But why do they get so angry? Whittle gives an example of something that happened to him:

Fast forward six long, dry, magic-free years. Miami, 1975. It’s Friday night and I’m on the roof of the Southern Cross Observatory at the Museum of Science and Space Transit Planetarium. I’ve just been made, as far as I know, the World’s Youngest Planetarium Console Operator, an honor so monumental in the Great Halls of Geekdom so as to ensure that I would not get a date for at least three years.

So there I was, trying to convince a group of about twenty people that the image of Saturn they were looking at was not a slide taped to the eyepiece, when all of a sudden, someone screams: My God! Look! UFO’s!

And sure enough, there they were: A V-shaped formation of dully glowing ovals flying pretty much right for us! People were screaming, crying, hugging each other. One of our Junior Birdmen ran for the phones to scramble the interceptors. And they kept coming: no running lights, no sound at all, just weird, slowly moving grey ovals.

I had waited for this moment since I saw the leprechaun six years before. I grabbed the binoculars, and--.

Dammit!

What?! Are they charging their Death Rays?

Nah. They’re just birds.

How could they be birds? But they were. They were geese, with dark necks and wings, but white bellies. These white oval bellies were reflecting the city lights, but if you looked carefully as they got closer, even without the binoculars you could see the long necks and thin, flapping wings.

It was a flock of geese.

And then something happened that I will never forget: that crowd wasn’t relieved; they weren’t even disappointed. They were angry. They were angry at me. Not dogs and pitchforks and torches angry, but they were surly enough to burn the moment into my young brain.

I had taken away their magic.

The point? It is my contention is that there is, in fact, an objective reality out there and that it does matter whether the observable facts match the argument. If you don't like what Bush is doing, give me some facts. Don't rely on a magical wish that he is the embodiment of the death of western civilization, that he stole the election and that somehow invalidated everything else about him because it is demonstrably false and wanting to believe it doesn't make it so. If you think Bush is a great leader, give me some facts. Don't rely on a magical wish that somehow loyalty to a fault and dogged pursuit of the war (even though I happen to agree with it) proves that he is a great leader when we are looking at massive increased spending, erosion of personal liberty at home and an apparent lack of backbone when it comes to crossing Congress. Wanting to believe, wanting it to be true, doesn't make it so.

And now for the disclaimer. Is every angry commentary the product of magical thinking? No, absolutely not. However, I've found that the more bitter the invective, the more likely it is that the person is defending what they want to be true and not what is observably true. Look, I enjoy escapist fantasy and science fiction as much or more than the next guy. Sometimes reality sucks. I want warp drive and transporter beams and Santa Claus and friendly, benevolent aliens and wizards and dragons and faeries and world peace and the brotherhood of all men and a light beer that really does taste great. But just because reality sucks, abandoning it for what we want to be true when making political decisions or when making political commentary, for that matter, is a really bad idea.

I apologize to Bill Whittle for quoting so much of his marvelous essay "Magic". I really don't like quoting so much, but I have 2 excuses in this case. 1) As with so many other ideas, I wouldn't have started thinking about this one if I hadn't read the essay, 2) Mr. Whittle is a much better writer than I am and I didn't feel I could do justice to his ideas through my limited ability to paraphrase. So, because it is only right, and because it is a more powerful essay in its original form than the bits of it are as used in my essay, I wholeheartedly suggest you go read the whole thing.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, October 24 2005 04:32:09 PM

Well, why not?
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Actually, I have no idea why I used that phrase for the title. It just came to me. One of those random synapses firing, I guess.

Normally I try not to be up quite this late on a Sunday night, but I'm taking a week off work, so there's no real reason not to be, I guess. I have no real reason to take this vacation, other than the organization I work for has a rule that you can't carry more than 160 hours of accumulated vacation into the new year. As I will finish up the year with 199.9 hours, it was pretty much a case of use it or lose it. Since I have lots of personnel stuff booked up in November and I usually try to cover for my staff who want to be off around Christmas, it became clear that it was this coming week or just kiss off the 39.9 hours of vacation. I told the Head Rat I took off for our anniversary (23 years) but she didn't buy it. (Probably since our anniversary is this coming Saturday.)

As it turns out, this is a pretty good week to take off. The weather has finally broken here in the Ratlands (in the 50's today) and I will have both the time and the correct weather for smoking cheese. If you've never had real smoked cheese (not the stuff they put "smoke flavor" in) you've missed one of the really good simple pleasures in life. More importantly, the Head Rat has a couple of physical therapy appointments and a date with an Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist. The ENT appointment is for a problem with her sigmoid sinus. I have no idea what a sigmoid sinus is, but I'm pretty sure it better not be anywhere near her sigmoid colon. (Actually, the Head Rat is not someone you would be likely to accuse of having her head up her butt because a) her behavior and attitude don't warrant it and b) she has access to firearms.)

While I'm just sort of rambling tonight, I guess I'll cover a couple of other odds and ends that have come up recently.

For some reason, I've always been curious about the internal temperature of my computers. They just always seem to be putting off a lot of heat and my office is upstairs on the south side of the apartment. Anyway, I've just always been curious. I know there are programs out there that monitor internal temperature, but I could never find one that wasn't part of some expensive "computer health" software package. Quite by accident last night I stumbled across a web site I haven't visited in a couple of years: Ars Technica. Ars Technica has a lot of techie articles and information about computers and most of it is still over my head, but they also have some neat software available. They have commercial software, but they also have a site called ArsWare.org where they have some free programs available.

I had one of theirs called Dead Man Switch on my old computer (The basic idea is that you have to reset it every couple of days. If you don't, you have it set up to automatically send out e-mails or delete files or any number of other tasks. If you were running an investigation and were afraid the folks in the "black helicopters" were after you, you could set it to e-mail your files to a reporter or something if you didn't reset it when "they" came to get you.) I was hosting a turn-based online game at the time and was also having some health problems. I had played in a couple of these games where the host just went missing and none of the players knew what happened, which was real frustrating. I missed generating a turn once when I spent the night in the hospital with chest pains, so I set up the DMS program so it would e-mail all the players (with a note saying I was having health problems and to e-mail my daughter to make arrangements to transfer the game files to the alternate host) if I didn't reset it every two days.

Anyway, now at ArsWare they have a system monitoring program called CoolMon which when combined with another free program called MBM (mother board monitor, available here) gives me a little window in the corner of my screen that has a lot of interesting information, including temperature (currently 43 degrees C) and fan speed (1493 rpm). Do I absolutely have to have this information? No. Does anyone else care? Probably not. Do I still think it is cool? You bet. The only downside so far is that I still have to calculate the Fahrenheit temperature manually (you remember from math class: F=C(9/5)+32. Yeah, well 43 C is about 109.4 F, in case you were wondering).

Damn that was a long way to go to say I got a cool new toy for free.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, October 24 2005 12:16:19 AM

Its not just the Flying Spaghetti Monster
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Since I have to live here and listen to the ongoing intelligent design stuff, I figure I might as well milk it for all I can get. So here's another take on it from Planet Moron

the intelligent design of thunder

Professor Michael J. Behe argued yesterday in a Pennsylvania courtroom that the phenomenon of thunder is far too complex to be explained away by unsubstantiated theories involving low pressure areas and ionic discharges and as such strongly suggests that other explanations, perhaps involving a “thunder god” of some kind, should be made part of the curricula in our public schools.

Biologist Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University had argued in earlier court testimony that such systems are easily explainable using the scientific method and that the circumstances giving rise to thunder are really quite ordinary. He had planned to continue his testimony later this week but was stoned to death for being “witchbreed” while catching a quick lunch at Applebee’s.

(...)

“If they can’t fully explain the origin of the leader pre-discharge or the resulting implosion of the plasma column,” lamented one Dover parent, “then they have a responsibility to let the kids know that.

“They call it the ‘theory’ of thunder for a reason you know.”

Opponents of intelligent design see ulterior motives. Noted one sociologist who wished to remain anonymous as he was still cleaning lamb’s blood off his door, “It’s a backdoor attempt to get the teaching of Norse mythology into our public schools.”

Adherents reject such criticism. “All we want to do is see to it that our children are getting the whole story and not just the secular Odin-rejecting humanist side,” said one Dover PTA member. “Sure, maybe thunder is a byproduct of the rapid ionization and expansion of air, or maybe it’s the result of mystical emanations from Thor’s mighty hammer, Mjolnir. Who’s really to say?”

(Oh, yeah. The Crazy Frog Kill Counter is up to 9.14 million registered kills)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, October 23 2005 11:40:43 PM

Milestones
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As if I haven't plugged the site enough, the Crazy Frog Kill Counter is over 9 million registered kills. (And just so you know, you can still club baby seals on the internet at Newground in four separate, distinct and uniquely disturbing ways.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, October 20 2005 10:03:46 PM

Sidebar Update
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I finally got around to updating the links on the sidebar. I thought they should more accurately reflect what I'm reading, so I split them into two categories.

Since I've removed the comments about the links, here are a few notes about these sites:

The Smedley Log : still one of the homes of civil discourse on the web

The Agitator: generally libertarian, with an emphasis on over regulation and drug policy

Small Dead Animals: Kate McMillen is unabashedly a conservative Canadian, but she writes well and maintains a certain decorum that I like

Samizdata: a libertarian group blog, mostly from England, with a couple of American contributors

Captain's Quarters: conservative news analysis from Minnesota

Cafe Hayek: mostly about economics and market theory. I know it sounds dull, but it isn't, since it is more about real world application than theoretical discussion.

and finally Chizumatic: This is the anime site Steven Den Beste writes.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, October 20 2005 09:32:40 PM

Institutional Bias
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Radley Balko has an interesting article today at the Agitator about bias in the media. In it he quotes John Tierney from the Kansas City Star (an article worth the read, in and of itself) to make the point that it isn't so much media bias in the coverage of politics that we should be concerned about, it is coverage of seemingly apolitical issues that are the problem.

From Tierney: The problem isn't so much the stories that appear as the ones that no one thinks to do. Journalists naturally tend to pursue questions that interest them. So when you have a press corps that's heavily Democratic -- more than 80 percent, according to some surveys of Washington journalists -- they tend to do stories that reflect Democrats' interests.

When they see a problem, their instinct is to ask what the government can do to solve it.

Balko's point: It's media's knee-jerk tendency to call for government solutions to every misreported outbreak of kidnappings, shark attacks, corporate greed, school shootings, rainy days, and cold sores that's irritating. Sometimes, bad things happen. People screw up. Doesn't always mean we need Congress to come save us.

'Nuff said.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, October 20 2005 08:46:47 PM

RSS anyone?
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For reasons I can't begin to explain, my RSS feed seems to be working now. Imagine that.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, October 19 2005 09:47:55 PM

That's more like it
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I hate hot weather. From sometime in March or April, I wait all summer for October to roll around because the heat finally breaks (usually the end of September) and it starts getting dark much earlier in the evening. Monday and Tuesday it was in the upper 80's here in the Ratlands. That's just not right.

Finally, today a front moved through. It is in the low 60's, with rain and a bit of a lightning storm to liven things up a bit. The forecast is for cooler weather into next week, which is good, as I'm taking a week off and I was hoping to get a chance to smoke some cheese.

I had an essay in the works for tonight, but I got real cranky at work this evening while I was working on personnel evaluations, so I think we would all be happier if I backed off for tonight and just sat here enjoying the rain.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, October 19 2005 09:33:59 PM

Norm Stamper Says...
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(via the Agitator)

Legalize drugs. This is the same Norm Stamper who was the chief of police for Seattle. His take on the War on Drugs: It is obscenely expensive, fuels police corruption, fill up our prisons with non-violent offenders and we get almost nothing to show for it.

From an article in the LA Times:

The demand for illicit drugs is as strong as the nation's thirst for bootleg booze during Prohibition. It's a demand that simply will not dwindle or dry up. Whether to find God, heighten sexual arousal, relieve physical pain, drown one's sorrows or simply feel good, people throughout the millenniums have turned to mood- and mind-altering substances.

They're not about to stop, no matter what their government says or does. It's time to accept drug use as a right of adult Americans, treat drug abuse as a public health problem and end the madness of an unwinnable war.

Just a little food for thought.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, October 17 2005 07:39:49 PM

One more
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Still no RSS feed, but I thought I would take care of this, as I'm sure you're all breathless with anticipation: The Crazy Frog Kill Counter is now up to 8.8 million kills.

In a similar vein, one of my readers (thanks Linda) sent me this link to a site where you can Spank the Monkey. No kidding. It even measures how fast you are spanking the Monkey.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, October 16 2005 08:43:41 PM

Onward
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Well things seem to be working now. So, on with the show.

Howard had another meme post a few days ago. The idea with this one is to go to Google. Enter your first name and the word "needs" (as in [cziltang needs]). Post the first 10 things you need according to Google. Actually it is pretty clever, if you have something reasonably normal for a name.

Apparently, what I need is the Smedley Log, as this esteemed institution was 4 of the top 5 slots in my search. That and a brushless motor, a drug addiction and an Isuzu Trooper. All-in-all, I guess it doesn't surprise me, although I've always considered myself a Ford kind of guy. I was also interested to find (when I ran it out of curiosity) that my daughter needs her vaccinations.

While I was on the "Cziltang needs" google search pages (and there were only 5) I decided to look at them all. Somewhere along the line, my essay "On Substance Abuse Treatment" got referenced by a drug addiction web page. That was a decided surprise.

I also discovered I had been catalogued in the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem as a "Slimy Mollusc" and as of today I ranked 22508th in the blogosphere. In order to be a "Slimy Mollusc" you need to have two blogs link to you. I know one of the links is from the Smedley Log, but I'll be damned if I can figure out where the other one is.

As for the problems with the web site, I still can't seem to get the Listgarden RSS feed generator to work. It appears to be something about the loopback address (yeah, like I know what that means) and Listgarden not being able to connect to the port it is supposed to. I've been working on it for several days now, but until I figure it out, there won't be an RSS feed.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, October 16 2005 07:58:35 PM

Test
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I've been having some problems with the site. Or rather I can't pin down whether it is with the site or with my computer. Hence, this meaningless test verbiage.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, October 16 2005 07:53:55 PM

Star Wreck
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I meant to get to this earlier. Via The Register, I heard about a Star Trek parody film that has been released for free on the Internet. I got a chance to download it and watch it this weekend.

Wow. Star Wreck is a full-length (1hr 43min, I think) film made by some guys in Finland who do this as an expensive hobby. They filmed some of it on location in public buildings in Finland, but most of it was done in a guy's living room. They used a piece of blue linoleum for their blue screen and did most of the film on home computers. OK, it's not George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic, but it is pretty impressive given how it was made. The best part is that it is a decently written parody, which is always hard to do. I don't see too many foreign films, so it is a bit odd listening to dialog in Finnish, but the English subtitles are pretty well done, with only a couple of obvious errors and they even managed to work in some idiomatic slang in English (things like "he is so going to get it")

The best parts for me: (not much in the way of spoilers) 1) the "France Surrenders" newspaper headline, 2) the Vorlon scratching his nose, and 3) the Engineer character speaking Finnish with a Scottish accent.

If you can manage a 541MB download, you might find this worth watching. It is certainly better value for the money than most of the movies I paid to see in my life.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, October 11 2005 08:35:12 PM

Embrace the Horror
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I see over at the Smedley Log that Howard succumbed. He was lured into the Crazy Frog bashing frenzy and thus a serial killer is born. Everyone knows that violent video games cause violent behavior. Except that it isn't necessarily so. Usually the argument goes something like: 97.4% of all convicted murderers played violent video games (or something like that). The assumption is that co-occurrence or correlation implies causality. The problem with that is that probably 97.4% of all convicted murderers had milk in their fridge, or 97.4% of all convicted murderers drove a motor vehicle. We don't imply causality on things we find innocuous. We only imply causality for things we find objectionable.

Another classic example is that "poverty causes crime." Everyone knows that poverty causes crime, except I'm not sure that it does. I think a lot of it has to do with how we define "crime". Think about it: if you take money from a government facility it is called "stealing". If you take money from the government through creative accounting on your taxes it is called "cheating". The social engineers and "economic justice" folks jumped all over the "poverty causes crime" argument. And it is small wonder why: it provides an excuse for classifying poor people as victims and it provides an excuse to justify "progressive" calls for redistribution of wealth. The problem is that the social engineers and "economic justice" folks can't explain this: If poverty causes crime, why do the vast majority of poor people not commit crimes? Perhaps the answer is that poor people are no more likely to commit crimes than rich people. Perhaps rich people just have the motive, means, and opportunity to commit crimes that are less obvious and less visible than poor people. After all, bank fraud is harder to spot than armed robbery.

Back to video violence and serial killer causality: I'm not buying it. Yes, you can probably say most violent criminals played violent video games or watched violent movies or smoked cigarettes or masturbated or drank milk or whatever social ill it is you happen to be crusading against. But, until you can prove causality I'd just as soon you take your crusade elsewhere and not blather on about a causal relationship you simply wish were true.

So: although Howard laments being caught in the evil and seductive grasp of crazy frog bashing, my conscience is clear. I am reasonably certain that my deviously crafted and sinister invitation to participate in animated savagery has not loosed another brutal serial killer on the world.

Time to go kill that annoying amphibian a few dozen times before I hit the sack. I find that it relaxes me.

Sweet dreams.

(By the way, the counter is now up to 8.4 million kills.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, October 09 2005 10:33:59 PM

Crazy Frog Kill Counter 2
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The Crazy Frog Kill Counter is now up to 8.18 million kills. (Because for some reason I thought you really wanted to know.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, October 05 2005 10:17:11 PM

Crazy Frog Kill Counter
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The crazy frog kill counter is now up to 7.958 million kills. (I only added 5 to the total. Really. No, I'm serious. Just 5 more. Honest. That's my story and I'm sticking to it...)

(OK, so I added another 5 when I went to copy the URL for the link...)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, October 03 2005 11:07:13 PM

I love animals. They're Tasty!
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I mostly live in the world of stupid. Working in corrections, that's mostly what I deal with. Unlike what you may see on TV or in the movies, most of my clients are not criminal masterminds. In fact, one of our former maintenance men used to say there are "knuckleheads," "chuckleheads" and then there's "stupid with a vengeance." We see a lost of "stupid with a vengeance." Sometimes even "stupid with a vengeance" doesn't cover it. It's more of a "special brand of stupid."

Then there are the clients that are just plain evil. (You know, there are a lot of people out there who believe that there are no bad people, just people with bad socialization. "Bad" people are really victims of the system, etc. I'm here to tell you that that is pure bullshit.) There are some truly evil people out there. I've worked with some of them. I've seen the aftermath of a lot of despicable stuff: the legacy of rapists and child molesters, murderers and other assorted slime that cared only about what they wanted and to hell with anyone or anything that got in their way. (The fact that such a description can be applied to most of our governments, both present and past, is a point I may deal with at another time.)

Anyway, I've seen a lot of despicable stuff, but very little of it can compare to the latest from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. (PETA) PETA has decided that fishing is inhumane. They know full well that they are not going to convince most of the avid fishermen in the world of the correctness of their belief, so they have decided to attack (and I do mean "attack") the next generation. Enter the new children's "comic book" entitled "YOUR DADDY KILLS ANIMALS." (It is in pdf format and you really need to see it to truly appreciate how despicable it is).

A few glorious quotes from this propaganda masterpiece:

Ask your Daddy why he’s hooked on killing! Visit FishingHurts.com for more info.

Fish may not be cuddly or cute like kitties and puppies, but fish are really smart. They learn from each other and can remember things for a long time. Just like people, fish eavesdrop to get info and can even use tools!

Everyone knows that killing is wrong—but some people forget about that when the victims look a little bit different from us. Since your daddy is teaching you the wrong lessons about right and wrong, you should teach him that fishing is killing and killing is wrong.

Until your daddy learns that it’s not “fun” to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He’s so hooked on killing defenseless animals that they could be next! (emphasis mine)

"Since your daddy is teaching you the wrong lessons about right and wrong"? "...keep your doggies and kitties away from him?" Please! Can you imagine what that would do to a second grader?

Don't forget that this is coming from the folks who took in $29 million last year in donations but were too cheap to feed all the adoptable animals given to their main facility in Virginia, so they killed them, put them in plastic bags and dumped them in dumpsters behind local stores. These would be the folks who have killed over 79% of all the animals brought to them in the last 7 years.

Just another example of people who have the delusion that they should be able to tell all the rest of us how to live because something about the world as it is doesn't suit their fancy. I haven't been fishing in over 20 years, but you can be for damn sure I'm going to make a point of taking my nephew fishing next time I see him. Oh, yeah. and if fish are so damn smart, why do they fall for the artificial lure thing?

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, October 03 2005 10:48:23 PM

Sometimes its better if the spouse doesn't know...
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I showed the Head Rat the kill the Crazy Frog with a baseball bat website this morning. She was singularly unimpressed. So I thought I would show her the original Crazy Frog video. Her comment:

"You're in serious need of mental health assistance."

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, October 03 2005 11:55:25 AM