Creationists of Poverty are Social Darwinists

Breaking news (that breaks the back of families and labor):

The Florida House just passed a bill that overrides local living wage and sick time ordinances, meaning that South Florida employees could take a 40 percent cut in pay ...

According to a recent MIT study, someone in Broward County must earn at least $11.72 an hour, working full-time, in order to support themselves. To support a child as well, an hourly wage of $22.95 is required to meet daily expenses [ed. note: state minimum wage is $7.79 per hour] ...

Miami-Dade enacted a living wage ordinance in 1999, "to allow citizens to support themselves and their families above the poverty line and with dignity." It applies to any county contract over $100,000 and any work at Miami-Dade Aviation Department facilities. 

The bill, which passed Thursday 75 to 43, also overrides benefits granted by local governments such as paid sick leave and domestic partner benefits, according to the Sun Sentinel.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce, Disney World, and Darden Restaurants [brands include Red Lobster, Olive Garden, and LongHorn Steakhouse, among others] were backers of the bill.

“Workers who do not have access to paid sick days are one-and-a-half times more likely to go to work sick with a contagious illness, putting their co-workers and customers at risk, and costing an estimated $160 billion each year in lost productivity. Children are more likely to go to school sick when their parents can't get off work to care for them, causing illness to spread. Delaying treatment for illness can cause conditions to worsen, leading to more emergency room visits and increased costs for public health insurance programs. 

An estimated 40 million workers, or forty percent of the workforce, cannot take sick days without losing wages or possibly their jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Efforts to Kill Paid Leave Ordinances Tied to ALEC ).

Other paid sick leave laws have been passed in San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, New York, and Washington DC.

However, corporate-backed bills passed at the state level have nullified and permanently preempted paid sick leave ordinances at the local level.

Similar bills introduced in Florida, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Washington have been linked to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). This kind of legislation will drive down wages even further, punish a beleaguered labor force battered by harsh economic conditions, while offering yet another plum to corporate America earning record profits.

ALEC is EVIL.  I intend to boycott Darden and Disney - and all other corporate sponsors of ALEC-inspired legislation.

Some Gun Violence Truth

Unwanted, of course.  From a study by the Center for American Progress, here's a little map of gun violence in the United States by State:

I thought that it would be interesting to compare this with the following, a map of how States voted in the last Presidential election.  Note that this map was issued before the idiots in Florida could count their votes.  Florida should be blue on this map:

I'll save you the trouble of counting.  Every State in the top 20% of gun violence, with the sole exception of New Mexico, voted Republican.  Exactly three Republican voting States were in the lowest 40%.

Of the 26 States that voted Democratic, 20 were in the lowest 40%, 6 were not.

Draw your own conclusions.  While we are on the subject of maps, here is another interesting one I ran across a few days ago:

This is a map of how happy or angry people are in the various States, with green being the most happy and red the most angry.

I'm telling you, they don't call the South red states for nothing.

Ant Colony Optimization

By (O)CT(O)PUS

A tiny cube, two watch motors to power the wheels, a pair of antennae for light sensors, limited memory and less processing power, scientists have built and tested robotic ants that behave just like a real ant colony.

Individually, each cube is a dumb cube - moving around at random and getting lost. Yet, their secret is in their ability to take cues from other cubes – just like a swarm of insects.

Just like real ants, robotic cubes leave a trail that others can follow – not a pheromone trail – but a trail of light that will stimulate other cubes to follow the same path.

As Simon Garnier of the SwarmLab explains: "[The robots] have two antennae on top, which are light sensors. If more light falls on their left sensor, they turn left; and if more light falls on the right sensor, they turn right."

"If there are two possible paths from A to B and one is twice as long … the ants [or] robots start using each path equally.

"Because ants taking the shorter path travel faster, the amount of pheromone (or light) deposited on that path grows faster, so more ants use that path."  The result is a positive feedback loop that causes them collectively to take the shortest path 2pointB.

Limited memory, less processing power, blathering to a base of robotic cubes, ant colony optimization sorta reminds me of Republicans.

The High Cost of Health Care

By (O)CT(O)PUS

A man runs into a vet's office carrying his dog - shouting for help. The vet rushes the limp dog into the examination room and paces it on the table. After a few moments, the vet tells the man - with deep regrets - his dog has died. The man, clearly agitated and in denial, demands a second opinion.

The vet leaves the exam room and returns with a cat. The vet puts the cat on the table next to the dead dog. The cat sniffs the body, walks from head to tail, sniffs again, finally looks at the vet, and meows.

The vet says to the man, "Sorry, the cat thinks your dog is dead too." The man, still unwilling to accept the death of his beloved dog, refuses to accept the word of a cat.

So the vet brings in a black Labrador. The lab sniffs the body, walks from head to tail, sniffs again, finally looks at the vet, and barks. The vet looks to the man and says, "Sorry, the lab thinks your dog is dead too."

Finally, the man resigns himself to the inevitable and asks to settle the bill. The vet says, "$650 dollars, please."

"What, $650 dollars to tell me my dog is dead!"

"Well," the vet replies, "The first diagnosis cost $50. The $600 charge covers the cat scan and lab tests."

This story is even more ridiculous:  Top Republican Alleges Affordable Health Care Act is a Voter Registration Ploy.  Quick!  Grab the cat, bring the dog ...

Foxerwocky

I've been waiting a long time for Fox to sic their gibbering, barking, slobbering and leg humping dogs on Easter and they finally have.  Yep, there's a war on Easter although it's hard to tell who the combatants are and even what Fox New's position is.  Seems some school in Alabama, speaking (according to Foxlogic of course) for all schools in all of the United States, cancelled all Easter and other Christian themed events because they thought it inappropriate. It is.  One classroom could represent as many as six religions. 

Consideration for others and respect for the right to teach one's own children one's own religious traditions. That's the sort of things Fox and Fiends like to call "politically correct" since to attack what might otherwise be called tolerance or good will or common decency requires a meaningless epithet that can mean anything you need it to mean. PC.

All this means of course, that someone, somewhere is waging war on Easter even though there's no evidence anywhere that the celebration of the holiday is being suppressed.  It isn't; neither the mythology of  death and resurrection nor the syncretion  of  Jesus with the European fertility Goddess for whom the holiday is named. It's long been a Goddess holiday and students of semitic languages will notice that the Ish in Ishtar, for instance sounds like the Isha -- the woman created for the Ish, Adam.

Yes, one principal in one school in Alabama doth a war make because he decided that his school is not a Sunday School, but a secular school, supported by taxes, whose business is not to give parties, either with eggs and bunnies or ridiculous stories about resurrected first century Jewish revolutionaries as recounted by people who weren't there.

Of course having no factual knowledge or rational basis for argument, having no interest in educating or informing the public, the Fox Coven launched this morning into a typically fatuous farrago of fallacy and peremptorily non-sequitur assertions such as Gretchen the Witch's:

 “Have we just gotten so deep into this political correctness that we now just can’t take the religion as it is, celebrate it and move on?”

 Pardon me?  Are we so stupid that we didn't notice you haven't made a case at all - neither logical or mystical or truthful?  You've just snickered and sneered and flung dung and declared war. Decency is PC so let's do what we will? 

The real question of the propriety of making kids perform rituals, ridiculous or otherwise, was not addressed, not discussed, not acknowledged, as the 'discussion' devolved into a bouillabaisse of bullshit.  Easter celebrations can't be offensive because bunnies aren't in the Bible?  Are you the same morons who want to get rid of Halloween because it's pagan?  What's next, they cackle -- can't we say Nor'easter?  Can we still teach about Easter Island in Geography? It's a pagan holiday anyway, or maybe it isn't and why can't we just gyre and gimble in the wabe with The Christrabbit and eat Mithras buns with the Mome raths
?  Right or wrong, we're right because it's just so much fun to mock -- anyone can do it!  Brillig, man, just brillig.

Rompin' Stompin' Jesus

What's in a name?  Apparently that question requires more than most people really are willing or able to apply and when the name has religious significance, those who have the cranial horsepower will usually use it to run like hell. That leaves people like me to comment.

Florida Atlantic University finds itself in hot water on this cold Wednesday morning in South Florida.  Seems there was a classroom exercise in which students were asked to write the name Jesus on a piece of paper and "stomp" on it.  From media sources, it's still unclear what the context was and I can only recall reading about a similar practice in Japan a few hundred years ago where suspected heretics (Christians) were required to pledge their allegiances to traditional values by stepping on a picture of Jesus.  Refuse and you were beheaded.  But anyway, Full time gardener and part time student Ryan Rotelas, who identifies himself as a Mormon still has his head attached, even though he claims he was asked to leave the classroom for making a fuss about it, but he sure is mad and always quick to defend the real and proper faith, Florida Governor Rick Scott is demanding an investigation and an apology from the Boca Raton, Florida University.  I've been demanding that he apologize for ripping off Medicare for a few billion bucks and ask God for forgiveness for quite a while now, but that's a trifle compared with stepping on sacred and holy notebook paper.  I mean that piece of wood pulp is GOD!  Transubstantiation and all that.

But what a horrible offense, to ask college level students to explore religious intolerance particularly when it concerns Christian ideas of what is sacred - like pieces of paper with grossly mistranslated and mispronounced Hebrew names. Helped by Yahweh. After all we're talking about Joshua,  Moses' successor here.

The school of course promises never to desecrate such a common South American name again.  I don't recall Scotty having said much about the Koran-Burning Christian church in Florida, by the way, but of course that would require him to stomp on Jesus again, at least figuratively.

Too bad someone like Rick didn't get all Ezekiel on a college professor of mine who wrote books about how the Nazis didn't really have death camps or intervene when as a child I had to learn songs about Jesus in elementary school, but that was years ago and we've progressed. It's good to know that Christians, at least have not only God, but Rick Scott on their sides.

Worm Moon

Worm moon.
Yachts all straining at mooring lines.
Sea swollen with the spring tide.
Cold night moon.
Sharp stars.
Frog voices quiet in the dried ponds
and worms,
such as are left by the moles from underneath
and armadillos from above
have no voices.

Those little town blues

Small town newspapers.  When I first moved here over 11 years ago, Little Boots was in the white house and although the fear machine was running on afterburner and everyone was in the process of never forgetting and sending money to Taiwan manufacturers of plastic automobile flag holders, you still had headlines declaring that some local fisherman had caught a record Snook or irate letters about litter in the park.  Now it's outrage.  Every day. Even the fish are angry.

Printed opprobrium grew over the Bush years, at least those quasi-literate, misspelled, cliche-ridden  letters to the editor written in impotent rage at Mexican farm workers, people on food stamps, Liberals, immigrants, ethnic minorities, liberals, Muslims, atheists, Jews, Democrats -- did I mention Liberals?  Yes, sure, I and a few others sometimes wrote ( brilliantly, I must admit) alternate opinons, much to the further wrath of the toothless unwashed, but it's a small town as I said, and word gets around and  I really don't want to carry a gun in my bathing suit or they may think I'm happy to see them.   Discretion, valor and all that.

Of course it's hardly new.  I remember, back in the mid 60's, living in long hair and sandals in the tiny, rural, University town of Hamilton New York.  I remember when the school had an open symposium on Communism, and the good, go-to-church and keep-Christ-in-Christmas locals flooded the opinion page with demands to bomb the bastards back to the stone age - now.  Small town newspapers.  I wish I could believe that they didn't represent America, that they weren't just some boil on the ass of an otherwise great nation.

Take the Lincoln Journal, of Lincoln County, West Virginia.  Seems public sentiment supported the termination of a teacher for fear she would "turn her students gay."  Faced with a reader's  voice mail (I used reader loosely here)  asserting that

 “We were really glad to hear that School Board is getting rid of them queers, The next thing is we need to get rid of all the niggers, the spics, the kikes and the wops.”

they decided to print it.  I don't fault them. Such people should be heard so we know what we're dealing with -- and where they are.  Now my local paper would probably not have, and it doesn't have a voice-mail line for illiterates.  Most of us here after all, come from elsewhere where literacy of a certain minimal level is fairly common, but those sentiments aren't exactly rare with the locals either.

“You know even them Catholics, they are wrong as baby eaters. We need to clear them people out and have good, white, God fearing Christians and everybody else needs to be put to death for their abominations. We’ll keep Lincoln County white and right. Thank you. "

You're welcome. White and Right indeed. I hope you do just that and perhaps building a wall will help the local economy for a while.  In fact I hope everyone like you moves to Lincoln County. It would be nice to have all y'all in one place and  I hope there's room. I'd hate to have to use up more than one of our precious nukes, but as for the stone age -- are you sure you're ready for that big an upgrade?

I have seen the enemy

and he is us.

I wonder if Liberals can claim to be united by mostly by principle, by a shared perspicacity or more by the habit of responding to organized provocation with a conditioned reflex. Certainly the kind of strong legislation designed to regulate behavior we often support and support vehemently isn't liberal in nature. Attempting to regulate what we eat and drink is, for instance, more likely to be supported by Democrats than by Republicans or Conservatives -- and yes, there is a difference. Is the spirit of submission, the tendency to find comfort and a feeling of safety under an umbrella of statutes, regulations, authorities and prohibitions really part of any definition of Liberalism or Liberty, for that matter?

It's not that Republicans are not fond, or even passionate about making certain behaviors disappear by banning, prohibiting and regulating them, but I don't really care about Republicans.  It does no good to argue about full citizenship for fertilized egg cells with people who don't believe in questioning such received certainties and in the long term, being firmly and inexorably on the wrong side of history means we only have to wait them out. Besides, they don't listen to me, so why should I bother telling you who are at least reading this, why the hijacked hulk of the GOP is headed for the rocks. I just want to warn us of the same shoals ahead.

Yes, I think Liberals can be just as intransigent and their positions as unassailable by fact or logic, herded together and immovable like cows in a stream.  Are we really the answer or are we just the opposite polarity of the same thing and just as hide-bound and intransigent; just as beholden to political puppeteers as they are?  When we latch onto a proposed 'solution' we can be just as unable to ask if it is indeed a solution, a workable solution, the only solution and if that solution really addresses real situations, or contrived, conjectural scenarios.  Yes, we have a party that really believes that a vaccine for Human Papilloma Virus will make our daughters into whores -- a belief that is independent of data -- and so we laugh at them.  But then some of us nod our heads in agreement at the notion that Americans, or at least New Yorkers are fatter than we think they should be because, and only because vendors are selling very large containers of soft drinks.  Selling what their customers want because they are greedy. Greedy profiteers for wanting not to be put out of business by someone who offers what they want.

It's that simple post hoc ergo propter hoc thing once again and we go after those mean irresponsible business men who should avoid selling what the 'experts' tell us is bad and we slam that old punching bag once again and forget to ask why we should forbid one source of calories and ignore all the others as though they weren't as much or more significant. I've yet to hear anyone propose rationing fried potatoes or cheese or bacon or mom's apple pie.  "Here's the problem and here's the solution" is all we need to hear and by 'we' I mean everyone.  Have we moored the good ship Liberal to a drifting piling, not attached to anything at all?

Sometimes I think it's what we don't ask that defines our political polarity. When we argued for "55 stay alive"  we didn't ask why the death toll was declining faster in Germany. We didn't ask why we were focusing our safety campaign on the very safest portion of American roads. We didn't even stop to notice that the proposed fuel savings weren't materializing because of all the speeding up and slowing down one had to do to get around the little bunches of cars and trucks the speed limit caused and we fooled ourselves into believing that people really were obeying the law and that we weren't making more and more people into cynical scofflaws and spending a fortune doing it. We were so sure that it was cars and cars alone driving up the cost of fuel that we forgot to regulate trucks and gave birth to the SUV.  Did those third brake lights really do a damned thing to reduce collisions? Have we ever asked?  No, the goal was to pass a safety bill and we did. 

I'm not going into the same phenomenon as it applies to our perennial approach to gun violence or drug usage or any of the other issues that not only separate us from them, but separate us from reality.
Ask yourself, does this incident the media is howling about indicate a headlong descent into chaos, or is it random incident someone wants to use to sell an idea?  Are we getting sold hysteria so as not to care whether something is getting better or worse?  Are we out waving signs and chanting for the weakest, most ill conceived solution to a problem that's not as much of a problem as you think?

Does out ability to know about every meteorite, every earthquake, every school bus accident and every epidemic within seconds and hear about it over and over really indicate some apocalypse is coming and we need to do this or that before it's too late?  Or is someone selling something?

Are we Liberals being used as a foil the way Fox used to use their token Liberal Alan Colmes? Are our scapegoats handed to us to distract us or to make us seem silly and ill informed and who created them?  Will our passionately offered solution really work and will we bother to find out if they have worked after we pass them or if they have worked elsewhere or failed?

Or will we do as we have too often done, smile and nod together like Viziers in some Arabian Night and say "we passed a crime bill"  and move smugly on to some other Crusade that needs to be completed  right now, before the bars close?  Wisdom, I think, comes from asking questions and the wise question their every thought. It's not enough to frolic in criticism of them, to feel superior to those loonies and idiots and crooks and liars.  I've seen the enemy, you know, glaring at me from the bathroom mirror. . .

ALEC and the Beast

I hope I can be forgiven for bringing this up out of phase with fashion, because it's not about a crime wave that isn't happening or Republican intransigence or the psychotic fugue brigade out to prove Obama is Satan's evil twin.

It's about pigs.  Perhaps it's because I enjoyed a piece of bacon for breakfast and shortly before viewing this video.  It's not that I'm against eating meat.  If farm animals are given a better but shorter life, free of the constant fear and the disease and parasites and hunger that define the lives of wild beasts, I can live with it.  What I can't live with is the brutality quite on a par and sometimes worse than what happened at Sobibor or Auschwitz.

I don't want to eat something that was skinned alive or that lived its entire life unable to move or that died in prolonged screaming agony.  Pigs are intelligent as animals go and yet people who get all moon eyed at kittens and puppies which may be less intelligent and aware, are themselves unaware of piglets being tossed around with pitchforks like dead meat or tossed squealing into machines of slaughter. None of that is necessary.  There are ways to slaughter animals without pain or terror and to raise them without extreme misery.  But no, it's not just about pigs, at least not the four-legged kind. It's about the monsters who own these houses of horror, the factory farms, the slaughter houses that not only scoff at the law, but want to put you in jail if you expose the satanic operations that sicken any but the most depraved and inhuman amongst us.

ALEC, a conservative business advocacy group is attempting to criminalize meat industry employees who might neglect to tell an employer how they feel about the illegal torture and abuse of animals on job applications. I'm talking about laws that mandate jail time for filming illegal activities and fulfilling a legal requirement to report them to authorities. Yes, it's already a jail-time crime in some states to expose the crimes of your employer and ALEC seems to want a country where although the government can capriciously carry on surveillance and seizure over individuals, the privacy of meat packers is sacred no matter how many heinous offenses to decency they commit.

There must be something we can do, short of  taking the family Kalashnikov down to the farm and expressing your opinion ballistically.  There are congressmen, senators and others who may under duress be tempted to ignore the blood soaked contributions of  slaughterhouses and factory farms.  Some of them can read.  Some of them do read -- and you can write, can't you?