Scurrilous Cur

Woe to that scurrilous cur Tom Collins when I catch up to him!

The Tom Collins may have achieved its zenith in the decades after Prohibition, but it got its start in the 19th century, named after a notorious hoax that spread in the summer of 1874.

The original prank went something like this: A friend would run into you on the street and, with great concern, tell you he just overheard someone named Tom Collins at a bar down the street saying hateful and libelous things about you. You race to that bar to confront the bounder, where you would be told that Tom Collins had just left for a bar several blocks away. When you get there, Collins would already have decamped for another joint across town. As you chase all over the city, your friends convulse with laughter.

Soon, not in on the joke, newspapers in cities across the country were reporting on people trying to find the scurrilous fellow. "Tom Collins Still Among Us," the Decatur, Ill., Daily Republican reported in June 1874. "This individual kept up his nefarious business of slandering our citizens all day yesterday. But we believe that he succeeded in keeping out of the way of his pursuers. In several instances he came well nigh being caught, having left certain places but a very few moments before the arrival of those who were hunting him. His movements are watched to-day with the utmost vigilance."

When the papers realized it was all a gag, they got in on the act. The Daily Republican kept playing along for months, gamely reporting that Collins had been spotted in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on his way to Arizona. "Next spring," the paper predicted, Collins "will jauntily enter the South American republics."

It doesn't take much to imagine how Tom Collins came to be a drink. How many times does someone have to barge into a saloon demanding Tom Collins before the bartender takes the opportunity to offer him a cocktail so-named? Indeed, you have to wonder if the whole Tom Collins stunt wasn't a marketing gimmick to promote pub-crawling.

Speaking of frauds, I don't recommend ordering a Collins at a restaurant or bar these days. You will likely get a drink made not with lemon juice, but with that backbone of the lazy bar — all-purpose, lemon-lime sour mix. Some bars make their own sour mix fresh, but for the most part the stuff comes in bottles or jugs or out of the dispenser "gun," a factory-produced concoction of citrus concentrates and corn syrup. I resent drinks made with prefab mixes and would no more drink them than I would eat mashed potatoes contrived from potato flakes.

Let's see, gin, check, lemons, check, seltzer - nope, fresh out. But the local stores are open tomorrow.

I'm coming after you, Collins!

(Fun article to read.)

(T)Hugo Sends In The Troops

(T)Hugo Chavez has found a use for his expanding military: against his own people. He has sent military forces to seize transmission facilities of the non-government controlled television network he has shut down.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan troops have seized an anti-government television channel's broadcast equipment, the station said on Sunday, ahead of a controversial midnight EDT/0400 GMT takeover by President Hugo Chavez that will take the broadcaster off the air.

Chavez sparked international criticism with his decision to not renew RCTV's license and to replace Venezuela's most-watched channel with a state-backed network that will promote the values of his self-styled socialist revolution.

RCTV representatives said troops had taken over relay stations across the country amid a show of military force meant to deter possible violence by opposition demonstrators.

"They have taken over the transmission stations," said Edgardo Mosca, Vice President of Engineering Operations at RCTV.

Since coming to power in 1999, Chavez has taken control of the judiciary, army and crucial oil industry as part of his leftist reform campaign.

But until the closure of RCTV, he had not moved aggressively against Venezuela's media, which his critics called a safeguard against him forging a Cuban-style system in the OPEC nation.

Thousands of opposition supporters marched through Caracas to protest the closure. Several hundred gathered outside RCTV's headquarters, chanting anti-Chavez slogans and shrieking excitedly to greet the arrival of the station's beloved soap opera stars.

"People should watch the channel they want to see, and if someone does not like it they can change the channel," said industrial engineer Luis Mora, 46, standing outside the headquarters. "I do not think it is right."

No, it isn't right. And it will get ever so much worse in the very near term. Come on , Joe Kennedy, you're a happy little shill for this thug, defend this as the will of the people. Defend this as democracy in action. Defend the elimination of free speech in your hero's happy utopia. Go ahead, we'd love to hear your defense of this nasty piece of - oh hell, I have to censor myself. Sometimes the comment policy backfires. 

UPDATE: Steven Taylor also notes the thuggish Chavez move. He has video from Gallup - over 60% of Venezuelans do not want the network shut down as opposed to under 30% who do.

C'mon, Joe! let's hear your defense!

Selling Indulgences

Good heavens. Something weird is going on over at the Associated Press. Someone (reporter Michael Hill, specifically) is actually questioning the delivered wisdom of Al "Gorezilla" Gore and his peddling of most holy indulgences to offset one's sins, or is that carbon credits to offset one's voracious energy consumption. Same difference - and, as the AP reports, just about the same result. That would be none.

ALBANY, N.Y. - If you plant some trees, is it OK to drive an Escalade?

The question isn't as silly as it sounds. People worried about global warming increasingly are trying to "offset" the carbon dioxide — the leading greenhouse gas — they spew into the atmosphere when they drive, fly or flick on a light. One idea popular with the eco-conscious is to have trees planted for them. You get to keep driving and flying, but those trees are supposed to suck in your trail of carbon.

Whole forests have been funded by tree-loving celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Coldplay, and more modest packages tailored to typical consumers are proliferating.

But some researchers say planting trees — while a good thing — is at best a marginal solution to global warming. Still others decry tree planters who continue to jet off to Cannes, drive their SUVs or generally fail to reduce their fuel-hungry lifestyle. To those critics, plantings and other carbon offsets are like the medieval practice of selling indulgences to wash away sins: It may feel good, but it doesn't solve much.

"The sale of offset indulgences is a dead-end detour off the path of action required in the face of climate change," says a report by the Transnational Institute's Carbon Trade Watch.

There's even more slamming of the entire snake-oil sale extravaganza:

The science is sound: Trees take in carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis and store the carbon. But even conservationists caution it's not as simple as planting a sapling so you can crank up the air conditioning without guilt.

Offset groups use averages to estimate how much carbon a given tree or forested acre can capture. For instance, the nonprofit Conservation Fund figures that each tree planted captures less than 1 1/2 tons over 100 years.

To put that in perspective, consider that about 7.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide was produced from the burning of fossil fuels worldwide in 2003, the most recent estimate available.

And how much carbon dioxide a tree can soak up varies, said John Kadyszewski of Winrock International, a nonprofit that works on environmental projects. A huge California redwood might have 30 tons of carbon stored while a 100-year-old pine might have less than a ton.

There are, of course, the true believers who "bristle" at criticism of their indulgence peddling:

Eric Carlson of the tree-planting nonprofit Carbonfund.org notes that his group does not promote trees as the only solution to climate change. Participants also can purchase offsets that support projects aimed at expanding renewable energy or improving energy efficiency.

Carlso bristles when critics focus on the perceived hypocrisies of the jet-setting, tree-planting rich people.

He fears the indulgence argument shifts the focus from what normal, everyday people can do to fight global warming: Cut down on electricity and gasoline use, support renewable energy and, yes, plant trees.

"You can find pluses and minuses to all the offset options," Carlson said, "but the worst thing is to do nothing."

Ah, as opposed to promoting a fraudulent "solution" that actually accomplishes nothing worthwhile while draining people's wallets? Forgive me if I see doing that as even worse than doing nothing. The vast majority of greenhouse gas is water vapor - not carbon dioxide. I'd rather we stop with the hysterical snake oil "solutions" and start talking about how to actually address stopping the burning of oil for fuel and replace it with another form of energy. But funding Al Gore's private jet isn't in anyone's best interest - other than Al's,  of course.

First Misrepresentation Exposed

Michael Moore's new film, Sicko, which is not self-referential despite the title, has its first misrepresentation exposed today in the New York Times by Anthony DePalma. He takes a look at the grandiose claims being made by Moore about the Cuban medical system and points to how Moore is distorting the truth.

“Sicko,” the talk of the Cannes Film Festival last week, savages the American health care system — and along the way extols Cuba’s system as the neatest thing since the white linen guayabera.

Mr. Moore transports a handful of sick Americans to Cuba for treatment in the course of the film, which is scheduled to open in the United States next month, and he is apparently dumbfounded that they could get there what they couldn’t get here.

“There’s a reason Cubans live on average longer than we do,” he told Time magazine. “I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime. I just want to say to fellow Americans, ‘C’mon, we’re the United States. If they can do this, we can do it.’ ”

But hold on. Do they do it? Live longer than, or even as long as, we do? How could a poor developing country — where annual health care spending averages just $230 a person compared with $6,096 in the United States — come anywhere near matching the richest country in the world?……

…….Of course, many people regard any figures about Cuba as at least partly fiction. But even if the longevity statistics are correct, they are open to interpretation. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a professor emeritus of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, said statistics also show that Cuba has a high rate of abortion, which can lower infant mortality rates and improve life expectancy figures. The constant flow of refugees also may affect longevity figures, since those births are recorded but the deaths are not.

Despite such skepticism, many medical experts say they do believe that average Cubans can live as long as Americans, and the reason may lie in a combination of what Cuba does well and the United States does poorly, if at all……

…..But that changed after the collapse of the Soviets, according to Cuban defectors like Dr. Leonel Cordova. By the time Dr. Cordova started practicing in 1992, equipment and drugs were already becoming scarce. He said he was assigned to a four-block neighborhood in Havana Province where he was supposed to care for about 600 people.

“But even if I diagnosed something simple like bronchitis,” he said, “I couldn’t write a prescription for antibiotics, because there were none.”

He defected in 2000 while on a medical mission in Zimbabwe and made his way to the United States. He is now an urgent-care physician at Baptist Hospital in Miami.

Having practiced medicine in both Cuba and the United States, Dr. Cordova has an unusual perspective for comparison.

“Actually there are three systems,” Dr. Cordova said, because Cuba has two: one is for party officials and foreigners like those Mr. Moore brought to Havana. “It is as good as this one here, with all the resources, the best doctors, the best medicines, and nobody pays a cent,” he said.

So Moore being "dumbfounded" at the care given in his stunt is more like Moore being gulled by a gamed system. He didn't have to provide what everyday Cubans do if they go into the hospital: food, soap and sheets along with pretty much everything else. Because there are none of those niceties for the average Cuban. Only for party officials and gullible American film directors more interested in propaganda than the truth.

A New Firesign Theater Skit?

The Further Adventures of Nick Dachshund, Third Eye? A New York man has hired a private investigator to find his missing dachshund.

NEW YORK - Gus the dog was living a luxe lifestyle: He had his own agent and was training for work as an advertising model. That is, until the rare, cream-colored dachshund disappeared a few weeks ago. Now the dog's owners have hired a publicist and a private detective, and they've papered several Westchester County towns with posters promising a $2,500 reward.

His owner, Ken Chandler, former publisher of the New York Post, says Gus ran off while they were taking a walk in Teatown Lake Reservation in Yorktown.

Chandler believes the dog was stolen, local police have a rather different set of suspicions:

Yorktown police Lt. Kevin Soravilla said officials are on the lookout for the dog, but they have no evidence Gus was stolen.

"I hope they locate the dog," Soravilla said. "But there are coyotes in the area, and they've been known to take a dog down."

How can you be in two places at once when you're being digested by coyotes? Let's hope the gum shoe Chandler hired doesn't find anything other than gum on his shoes…….

(Firesign Theater references give me a chance to link their site!)

Trivialities And Nonsense

Great news! Al Gore is going to shut up!

Former US vice president Al Gore on Friday criticized the "trivialities and nonsense" of celebrity gossip in the media and called on people to focus instead on issues like Iraq and climate change.
Gore, who is promoting his new book "The Assault on Reason," made the comments at a book signing in New York, where he was treated to a rock star reception by more than 1,300 cheering and screaming fans.

"What is it about our collective decision-making process that has led us to this state of affairs where we spend much more time in the public forum talking about — or receiving information about — Britney Spears shaving her head or Paris Hilton going to jail?" Gore asked.

He lamented what he described as the "destruction of the boundary between news and entertainment" and said the United States was "vulnerable as a democracy to mass and continuing distraction."

We presume Gore will now stop blurring the line between science and celebrity. Unless of course this is just another one of Gore's "do as I say, not as I do" moments. As in when he preaches conservation and lifestyle changes for others while consuming mass quantities of energy at 20 times the average. Or when he pontificates about protecting the earth while presiding over his little strip-mining enterprise.

Nah, no hypocrisy there.

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

(This post got hung up in the queue while I was on vacation. I'm getting it out now as I try to clean up the wreckage around the Crabitat.)

Don Surber notes the chirping of crickets from the mainstream media and Amnesty International about the release of captured al Qaeda documents that provide budding sadists with guidence on how to torture captives. We're not talking the twisted definition of torture that some people promote that keeping someone standing is torture. We're talking things that would have made Torqemada smile. Blowtorches to the skin, eyes gouged out. That sort of thing.

And yet such false stories as the “flushed Koran” got widespread play in the newspapers and on television.

We are hearing those awful “Sounds of Silence” that Simon and Garfunkel warned us about.

Whether intentional or not, the message is clear: The United States must be above even false reports of torture, while the enemy is allowed to promote eye removal, blowtorching skin and horrors I won’t go into.

The handbook shows that the enemy really is perverted and that its “cause” has less to do with global politics or any religion; they are sickos who like to torture people.

The sounds of silence or the sounds of enabling? I think the latter.

UPDATE: Don Surber also notes today's rescue of 42 Iraqi civilians from an al Qaeda torture chamber. The AP managed to report that without mentioning the captured torture manual.

Just in case anyone thinks Iraq would be better off without the United States, here is a report from the Associated Press: “U.S. rescues 42 Iraqis from Al Qaeda hideout.”

The report said, “42 Iraqis imprisoned inside, including some who had been tortured and suffered broken bones.”

This was not done to get information. This was done for the same reason Saddam Hussein and his thugs did it: To intimidate the civilian population.

But the people will not be intimidated. 2-star general William Caldwell said: “The people in Diyala are speaking up against al-Qaeda.”

Hello darkness.

Saving The Tasmanian Devil

One cartoon at a time. Warner Brothers has agreed to donate one dollar (Australian) from each DVD it sells in Australia to a fund to try to save the Tasmanian Devil from extinction.

HOBART, Australia - Warner Bros. will donate money from the sale of DVDs featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to help efforts to save the Tasmanian Devil from extinction, an Australian official said Saturday.

The Looney Tunes character Taz — a whirling, growling rival to Bugs Bunny — is based on the Australian marsupial, which is being threatened by contagious cancer in its homeland, the island state of Tasmania.

State Tourism, Arts and Environment Minister Paula Wriedt said Warner Bros. had struck a deal with the government to donate one Australian dollar — the equivalent of 82 cents — for each sale from a new series of DVDs to be released in Australia featuring the company's cartoon characters.

Proceeds would be donated to a fund managed by the University of Tasmania to help the animals, Wriedt said in a statement.

"This partnership will go a long way to assist in raising funds, awareness and future opportunities to ensure the survival of the Tasmanian Devil," she said.

The rapid spread of a contagious cancer on Tasmania is very likely going to kill off the native population unless something is done to save them. This is a brilliant public relations move by Warner Brothers, incidentally, as well as a good thing to do to try to save the animals. More about the contagious "Devil Facial Tumor Disease" from Wikipedia. The disease appears to spread due to the animals own natures: they fight over carcasses, and transmit the disease via bites. Given that every single animal studied has a genetically identical chromosomal makeup, it appears likely the disease originated in a single individual and is not developed by each animal individually due to some external agent like a virus. Unfortunately, it a a very aggressive and highly contagious disease.

Making The Country Smarter

Steven Pinker, Johnstone professor of psychology at Harvard University, reviews a new book by  Natalie Angier titled “The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science,” in today's New York Times. Pinker starts right out with some real classics:

A baby sucks on a pencil and her panicky mother fears the child will get lead poisoning. A politician argues that hydrogen can replace fossil fuels as our nation’s energy source. A consumer tells a reporter that she refuses to eat tomatoes that have genes in them. And a newsmagazine condemns the prospects of cloning because it could mass-produce an army of zombies.

These are just a few examples of scientific illiteracy — inane misconceptions that could have been avoided with a smidgen of freshman science. (For those afraid to ask: pencil “lead” is carbon; hydrogen fuel takes more energy to produce than it releases; all living things contain genes; a clone is just a twin.) Though we live in an era of stunning scientific understanding, all too often the average educated person will have none of it. People who would sneer at the vulgarian who has never read Virginia Woolf will insouciantly boast of their ignorance of basic physics. Most of our intellectual magazines discuss science only when it bears on their political concerns or when they can portray science as just another political arena. As the nation’s math departments and biotech labs fill up with foreign students, the brightest young Americans learn better ways to sue one another or to capitalize on currency fluctuations. And all this is on top of our nation’s endless supply of New Age nostrums, psychic hot lines, creationist textbook stickers and other flimflam.

The costs of an ignorance of science are not just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures and a unilateral disarmament in national competitiveness. There is a moral cost as well. It is an astonishing fact about our species that we understand so much about the history of the universe, the forces that make it tick, the stuff it’s made of, the origin of living things and the machinery of life. A failure to nurture this knowledge shows a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements humanity is capable of, like allowing a great work of art to molder in a warehouse.

I've tried to point out some of the misconceptions and outright falsehoods that true believers expound as the salvation of everything in the whole universe,  so this is a subject near and dear to my heart. Many of the most vocal proponents of these solutions have absolutely no understanding of the underlying basics. A book which helps provide some basic knowledge in science is quite welcome. Pinker does not like everything about this book by any means. He is not fond of the overly clever wordplay Angier uses throughout the book. Yet he also believes the book is an important one that, if widely read, will smarten up a lot of people about some of the real science in the world. As opposed to the distorted nonsense many people believe with a religious fervor. If that is the case, may this book be the biggest best-seller in American history. Lord knows there are a lot of people who could use a dose of smarts on these subjects.

Moral Choices, Knotty Problems

Mark Steyn writes another powerful column today that is well worth the read. He weaves three apparently unrelated stories together into a single coherent theme: the knottiest problems in a civilized society are often the result from moral choices.

Item One: In Gaza, Islamic Jihad is planning to send waves of female suicide bombers into action against the Zionist Entity. Asked by an Israeli reporter whether self-detonating ladies enjoy the same 72-virgin deal as the lads, an Arab scholar said no, but that the gals will be served in Paradise by "dwarfs." Snow White got seven dwarfs, but it's unclear whether Blow White will get the full 72: Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, etc., all the way down to Incendiary, Non-Alcoholic and Anti-Zionist.

Item Two: From Sikeston, Mo., comes the touching story of a 3-year-old girl and Raymon and Richard Miller, two brothers who happen to be the father and uncle thereof. Unfortunately, they don't know which is which. Four years ago, Holly Marie Adams, who was in town for the rodeo, "slept with" both men on the same day. And in the fullness of time, upon discovering the fullness of her belly, she decided Raymon was the dad and demanded child support…….

…….Item Three: America's bipartisan "comprehensive immigration reform" bill. Just because this story comes above the fold on Page One doesn't mean it's not just as nutty as the foot of page 27 news-in-brief stuff up above. Peggy Noonan's take at the Wall Street Journal bore the sub-headline: "Open Borders? Mass Deportations? How About Some Common Sense Instead?"

Indeed. Everyone wants to sound reasonable and be the chap who charts the middle course between the Scylla of open borders and the Charybdis of mass deportation. But these are not equivalent dangers. The Charybdis of mass deportation is a mythical monster: It does not exist. It will never exist. No politician is arguing for it, and no U.S. agency is capable of accomplishing it. Indeed, even non-mass deportation does not exist. Go on, try it. Go to your local immigration office and say: Hello, boys. Here I am. I'm an illegal immigrant, got no right to be here, been breaking the law for 20 years, but I've seen the light and I want you to deport me back to Mexico, Yemen, you name it. The immigration guys will say: Leave your name and address and we'll get back to you in a decade or three.

As Steyn points out, there are two competing narratives here - but they are not truly equivalent. The mass deportation narrative is a myth - it is not going to happen. But a real terrorist coming across the border with intent to harm the United States is a reality. It has already happened. We have no idea how many more like the Fort Dix six there are already inside our borders, nor do we have any apparent way to stop more of them from coming across in the future. That should give every politician in Washington incentive to fix the real problem. But, as Steyn calls it, the "immigration reform" Congress is contemplating is just so much political kabuki. Highly stylized theater where the form is more important than the content.

We, as a nation, cannot long survive a complete failure by our government to secure our national borders. We can have the high fence with a wide gate and still be a welcoming society while ensuring it is hard for unwanted - and potentially lethal - people do not come through that fence.

Ban Animal Testing

Use humans instead. Furthermore, do so in secret, without getting consent first.

The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting patients' permission.

The $50 million, five-year project, which will involve more than 20,000 patients in 11 sites in the United States and Canada, is designed to improve treatment after car accidents, shootings, cardiac arrest and other emergencies.

The three studies, organizers say, offer an unprecedented opportunity to find better ways to resuscitate people whose hearts suddenly stop, to stabilize patients who go into shock and to minimize damage from head injuries. Because such patients are usually unconscious at a time when every minute counts, it is often impossible to get consent from them or their families, the organizers say.

The project has been endorsed by many trauma experts and some bioethicists. Others question it. The harshest critics say the research violates fundamental ethical principles.

Do I believe the organizers of the studies are trying to do good here? Yes. Do I think they are going about it in the wrong way? Absolutely. I'm with those critics who believe this is a fundamental violation of ethical principles. Neither the government nor the medical profession have a right to subject any person to medical experimentation without prior consent. Promoters say that it is the only way to do this sort of study - despite having seen that this sort of thing has caused a firestorm of protest in the past (another case of being condemned to repeat the present, apparently.)

The project proceeds only after also being vetted by a set of local independent reviewers known as an institutional review board. Another group of independent advisers known as a data safety monitoring board will periodically review the study for any signs of problems.

Despite such oversight, some previous similar projects have sparked intense debate. Most recently, a study testing a blood substitute called PolyHeme was criticized for putting patients at risk without consent.

In fact, concerns raised by the PolyHeme study and others prompted the FDA to launch a review of the entire program that permits experiments to be done without consent in emergency situations.

"The ethics and policy concern is how you balance the streamlining of research to get the best information to treat patients against the moral imperative to get consent," said Nancy M.P. King, a bioethicist at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "The emergency consent exception is supposed to carve out a very narrow window. What's been happening is that narrow window seems to be expanding."

And that is the real danger of things like this. Like it or not, there IS such a thing as the proverbial slippery slope. Studies like this will make it easier the next time to experiment on patients without their knowledge or consent. Once the door is opened, it becomes easier to pry it a little wider with the next study. The quote from one of the ethicists critical of the study sums it up perfectly:

"This just seems like lazy investigators not wanting to try to get informed consent in situations where it is difficult to get it, so they say it is impossible," said George J. Annas, a Boston University bioethicist. "I don't think we should use people like this."

Annas was particularly disturbed that children as young as 15 might be included in the research.

"Suppose a 15-year-old child is in the back of a car that is in a terrible accident," Annas said. "The EMTs arrive and say: 'We are doing an experiment with two techniques. We think they are about equal. Is it okay if we flip a coin to see how we treat your son? Or would you rather we just give him the treatment we think is best?' Unless you think all parents would have the EMTs flip a coin, consent here is necessary."

Would you consent to a coin toss to determine emergency treatment? For yourself? For your teenage child? No? Then it would be the right time to raise your voice against this. Before the coin-tosses become standard operating procedure.