finknottle

Consider your example of hair. Hair color clearly genetically determined, but there is no 'hair color' gene. At best it is believed to be determined by the combination of several different genes, producing chemicals which - reacting with the environment - result in a hair color. Which may or may not change over time. You also point to race. It also is genetic. But it would be a mistake to say that there is a black gene or a caucasian gene. You have lot's of different genes which contribute to the whole. Genes that we might think of as typically black can occur in non-blacks, and vice-versa. The determination that we make about race is not tied to a gene, but rather to the collective contributions of many. And worse, such a determination is subjective - which, when you think about it, means the environment is playing a role. A person might be judged black by one group of people and white by another. Saying that there is a gay gene suggests that there is a particular gene which (1) you either have or do not have, and (2) it alone determines your sexual orientation. If you have it but don't think you are gay, stop fooling yourself. If you don't have it but are attracted to the same sex, quit being a poser. I believe this to be both wrong and dangerous - as dangerous as if, say, we isolated specific genes and declared them to be the official 'black gene,' 'asian gene,' 'caucasian gene,' etc for determining a persons race.

So employers are to be governed by laws with penalties, but it is enough that some unions frown upon malfeasance. Perhaps we should loosen the rules for employers and let them self-regulate their behavior too? Tell you what - why don't you try to start a rival union and tell us how it goes.

You didn't post one, unless you are referring to the Rachel Maddow youtube piece, which has all the objectivity of Rush Limbaugh. Or are you refering to the unattributed excerpt (presumably from a partisan CEPR press release) which contradicts what you say? It claims they need 30% - not one - just to petition for a secret ballot. And petition means just that - a request. If it is to be automatically granted, they would say 'file' instead.

No, calling it a 'long, captive audience campaign' without mentioning that it is on work time and you are getting paid during it, while neglecting to mention that the unions can engage in a long, captive audience campaign simply by pestering you at your house during your free time - *that* is a spin.

So it is not up to the NLRB, any request triggers it. Got a link?

That's a nice spin. By law, employers can only make their place in the workplace and on company time - that means you are getting paid to sit through it. By law, the unions are given your home address and number, and can contact you repeatedly at any time outside of the workplace and work hours. And they sure as heck are not going to pay you.

Are these the same Teamsters which, as one of the first actions of the Obama Administration, were removed from Justice Department oversight?

I would bet that the distribution is closer than one might expect.

So you are basing his consistancy on this, which summarizes as Talk about splitting hairs! By that logic the clock is yet to start ticking on Bush's expectation that the occupation will end quickly. But to the original point, the earliest comment they cite is after half of the debates had already occured, and all of the rest are from when either only Clinton remained (and Omama was moving to the center) or during the general election. Are we to believe there was nothing relevant said by Obama in the earlier debates when timetables for withdrawing from Iraq were extensively and contentiously discussed, and the get-out-now crowd was up for grabs? That he just sort of stood there with Kucinich and Richardson without saying anything? That is definately not the way I remember the summer of 07.

If by always you mean after the nomination was safely locked up and he could move away from the positions he took for the Democratic primaries, then ok. Personally, I think he expected the Europeans to take them, and that there wouldn't be an uproar over the remaining few which would go to federal prison.

Pakistan is not some banana republic, a baby uncomfortable in its big-boy pants. It is not a farce of a country either, like Iraq under Hussein. Some civil institutions run very deep and strong, the military in particular. They do not look for winks from us, they don't need our help securing the nukes (which is not quite the same thing as saying they are secured), and they certainly wouldn't let the US spirit them away. (As an aside, it's not the Pakistani military that has been getting its butt kicked in the tribal areas, but rather (at least until recently) the Frontier Corps. This is a paramilitary militia, very loosely equivalent to a border patrol/standing national guard. Most of the officers are regular military detailee's, but the soldiers are local recruits. They have neither education, training, nor adequate equipment. Sending in the regular army would be politically controversial.)

In most attacks on fixed targets, terrorists have mapped out exactly where they want to go within a compound for maximal effect with a good probability of success. Thus, for example, in the bombing of the UN compound in Iraq they didn't drive up to the front of the building, but drove around instead to a rear door to a corridor off which were the offices occupied by two Under-secretaries. It is not about hiding the location. It is about sowing uncertaintity as to the layout.

No, we are hard-wired to seek out and grab onto an explanation for things. Having an explanation, no matter how arbitrary or flawed, encourages responses in unfamiliar situations where doing nothing may be harmfull ("Run! The Mountain-God has a stomach ache and is Angry!"). Some responses may be worse than doing nothing ("Let us save our tribe by throwing the virgins into the volcano!") but natural selection takes care of many of those over the long haul. That's why 'rule-of-thumb' religious lore tends to be correct - the tribe whose commandments began 'Kill Thy Neighbor' didn't last very long. Creating a mythology in our heads for how the universe works allows us to better anticipate and react, and encourages decisive action. Decisive action in the face of the unknown ("I've never before seen the food in this new valley, but dammit I'm hungry") can be advantagous at the species level - it can be a sort of insurance policy. With elements of a group reacting decisively to a crisis in various (perhaps arbitrary) ways, for most of the elements it will end badly. But it will end well for those whose decisive action turned out randomly to be right. In contrast, the survival of groups predisposed against decisive action are much more all-or-nothing. So if natural selection likes decisive action within a group, it doesn't care much about the source, be it charisma, religion, or science. All that matters are the outcomes. So why is religion so prevalant? It is easy to grab hold of - you don't have to think much, just follow the priest - and more immediately practical. The guy who say's "Run! The Mountain-God is Angry" gets his people out, the guy who say's "Wait a minute, the science is still inconclusive" does not. If the Mountain-God really is Angry, one group survives to spread their ways and the other does not.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is laughing at all of you. As for the question at hand, the FSM follows a policy similar to that of the Catholic Church. All are invited to partake of His sauces and debate the merits of each, but only those who follow His teachings will be honored with their own. Do you really think Paul Newman would have gotten his own brand, had he not donned the Western equivalent of pirate regalia in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in what can only be described as a 1900 buccanears tale? Hunt, Luigi Giovanni, and the dread ship Ragu - swashbucklers all of them.

Because Biden is inconsequential?

Slightly off topic, but your comment prompts me to think about one committment which apparently is not shovel-ready: the promised web-site which tracks the spending. Posted signs may be all we have to go on for a while. I am just finishing "Backstabbing for Beginners" by Michael Sousson, and recommend it to everyone as a cautionary tale about bureaucracies. It is the darkly-comic account of his time at the UN, joining in the mid-nineties as a young idealist and becoming a central player in the trenches of the oversight division for the Oil-for-Food program. (Ultimately he became a whistle-blower). The lessons one takes away from it is that the turf wars and petty politics of any large organization without market-place accountability will undermine the best of intentions and allow corruption and self-serving agendas to flourish. Attempts to create accountability are defanged and stifled by the interests of the lower-level bureaucracies in showing that they are carrying out their mandates, that everything is rosey, and that their programs should be expanded - irrespective to the truth. We saw what happened to the TARP money, and it does not bode well for the stimulus package. Like the oil-for-food program, the stimulus represents a sudden but sustained massive infusion of cash, for which we have contradictory mandates: (1) we will spend the money quickly, (2) but we will spend it only on worthwile projects, and (3) we will make sure there is no fraud and waste. And also like the oil-for-food program, an organization to monitor the program is being spun up after the fact. Within the government, elements will readily charge ahead on (1). It will be the job of this toothless oversight organization to assure the public on (2) and (3), regardless of what they actually find, lest the politically unacceptable happen and the program is labeled a failure. And you can pretty much bet that they'll get the runaround and any waste will be hidden from them. So far, they have not even been able to set up a web-site listing contracts awarded - in an appearance before congress, this was attributed to a lack of hard-drives... It is a very entertaining book.

I don't think there were protest zones there - indeed, because of expectation of violence by the Yippies and the SDS I believe Mayor Daley refused to grant *any* protest permits.

Not so rundimentary not to make my explanation the most consistent. But I'm sure it appears as utter nonsense - random scribblings even - to your eye. Go ahead and believe in the magic gene or the corruption of God's will as you prefer, and keep hiding smugly behind "our understanding of the science too incomplete." I have yet to see you articulate a nontrivial argument on this board.

That's 'cause they know the new guy gives out more medals. (Ok, that's a cheap shot. I don't actually have an opinion on him, I just remember that it was he who recommended Tillman for the Silver Star, knowing that it was probably friendly fire.)

Doesn't mean it's right or wrong, particularly when it's such a charged issue. Environment versus Genetics are over-simplifications. About the only certainty is that there is no 'gay gene.' That's not to say there isn't a large genetic component, only that that phrasing is a dangerous simplification. Genes nudge. They rarely dictate. If I have a genetic predisposition towards accounting, say, it is the result of hundreds or thousands of genes working in incremental ways, adding up to ability and desire. In some this summation may be strong, and in others it may be weak or non-existant. But it's not coming from some super gene that is either present or absent. My predisposition in the presence of such genetic influence can also be encouraged or discouraged based on the environment. Perhaps I have a bunch of genes that say 'you are happy when you are admired.' If society frowns upon accountants, those genes may yield greater happiness than my accounting genes. Of if society showers admiration and respect on accountants, then by becoming an accountant I can get all of my genes firing - woo hoo! But ultimately, on the question of the attractiveness of accounting all of my genes are weighing in, many at odds with each other. And more than a few genes weigh in to demand that my life lessons - what I've been taught, what I've figured out about accounting and society, etc - be the primary guide to my behavior. Put me in a different society, or educate me differently, and I might be just as happy as an accountant as not. But then again I might not - it depends on my genes as a whole.

He (or more precisely, the handlers) has continued the practice of stacking audiences with supporters while suggesting otherwise. We'll see what policy on protesters emerges if/when there begins to develop a pattern of protest. There certainly is not one yet, and no administration is going to react unless it becomes a recurring problem. Btw, Bush didn't invent the practice, even though he did start to rely on them after about two years in office. Here's a picture of the Protest Zone for the 2004 Democratic Convention: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4...dment_zone1.jpg

Both of those sentences are true irrespective of whether one is gay, straight, or completely unsexual. You have the same options available regardless of your orientation. Please clarify: are you saying it is a civil right issue? To apply your example to mine, if the state said all of the state schools had to teach creationism instead of what they now teach, I would imagine that everybody would be angry (except for the young creationist). Does their outpouring of anger validate his reasoning that he was previously being denied the same opportunity to a higher education in the state system?

So let the fans form their own team and see how well they enjoy their product.

If you are a gay man, you still have the RIGHT to get married to any woman who will consent, even if you don't like each other. For that matter, if you are a straight man, you have the RIGHT to enter into whatever domestic partnership relationship are recognized locally with any man who will consent, even if you don't like each other. Love and sexual interests have nothing to do with it. It's a contractual arrangement, open to anyone (even gay people) who meet the requirements (age, etc). Unfortunately, the state is not in the business of guaranteeing satisfaction in marriage, just laying out the rules for regulating it. I have no problem with recognizing gay marriage, and in fact am in favor of it. I simply reject Kelly's argument that it is a denial of a civil right. Suppose I am some kind of creationist wanna-be who does not want to be around people who believe in evolution and an ancient earth, let alone be forced to study it. I look around at all the state schools and ask "where is my university? Why am I not afforded the same opportunity to go to an affordable state school that everybody else is?" I am - it just doesn't meet my needs and interests as well as it does others.