Where Ignorance Is Bliss, 'Tis Folly To Be Wise

"d" at LGM has a post up about a new book on the science, if there is such a thing, of ignorance.

A reviewer makes this point about ignorance:

Ignorance is not simply a veil between the knower and the unknown. It is an active – indeed vigorous – force in the world. Ignorance is strength; ignorance is bliss. There is big money in knowing how to change the subject – by claiming the need for “more research” into whether tobacco contains carcinogens, for example, or whether the powerful jaws of dinosaurs once helped Adam and Eve to crack open coconuts.

More...

Having a memory so spotty that is a small miracle one can recall one’s own name is a wonderfully convenient thing, at least for Bush administration officials facing Congressional hearings. The Internet complicates the relationship between information and ignorance ceaselessly, and in ever newer ways. Poverty fosters ignorance. But affluence, it seems, does it no real harm.

This is, then, a field with much potential for growth. Most of the dozen papers in Agnotology are inquries into how particular bodies of ignorance have emerged and reproduced themselves over time. Nobody quotes the remark by Upton Sinclair that Al Gore made famous: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.” Still, that line certainly applies to how blindspots have taken shape in the discourse over climate change, public health, and the history of racial oppression. (In a speech, Ronald Reagan once attributed the greatness of the United States to the fact that “it has never known slavery.”)

The internet, with its speed of thought connections between previously unconnected things--such as voters and information--makes the sharp divide between voters and thought, history, and logic all the more striking. It has the potential to bring together people who believe one thing (erroneously) with people who believe another thing (correctly) but the conjunction of the two can be either fruitful or disasterous, explosive or rather more like a damp squib, as this link to a video onPandagon shows:

Amanda links us to a video interrogation and an attempted education of a small town, right wing woman who is spreading the rumor that Obama is, in fact, a baby killing "Arab." The woman, who at some point got herself on a national TV or radio show to spout her newfound "knowledge" of Obama's real background and thus his real intentions, is convinced that Barack Obama is an "arab" with "arab tendencies" who favors "killing live babies" because she learned about it from a "lobbyist" in "DC" who she misidentifies as the Christian Women for America. Not surprisingly she turns out to mean the front group "Concerned Women for America" founded by Tim LaHaye's wife, Beverley.

The video confrontation is very poorly done since the videographer has no idea how to talk to someone he disagrees with, and is not prepared to confront her with the kind of evidence she would find credible--testimony, pictures, counter-information from sources she would consider believable. For example he does not sit down with the woman and interview her in comfort or seclusion but remains standing the entire time looking down on her (he appears to be taller). He does not show up with anything like "evidence" that she can look at--pictures of Obama and Michelle at their children's baptism. Pictures of Obama in church. Pictures of Obama at their own wedding. He does not confront her with weak points in her own theology which presumes that blood history (Obama's father) is more important than conversion history in Christian belief. Simply raising the question of whether a person is "born" or "chooses" to become Christian would have been an important way in to destablizing her world view. White american ethnic tradition places a high value on blood and ethnic origin, even for religions of choice. This is what an anthropologist would call an ethno-theory or a cultural trope. But at a higher level of abstraction Christianity is and always has been a converting religion that places most of its emphasis on the notion that every individual, regardless of his race or religious background, can and should come to Jesus and that that coming to Jesus wipes out the past. So this woman's insistence that Obama is "really" an Arab at some fundamental level, below the level of his actual history as a practicing Christian, exists in a very fragile conceptual space for her. On the one hand she believes it because race and ethnicity hold a very important place in her own daily worldview--they are obviously ineradicable and they leave their traces on us as people. But in her concious religious tradition? They have no long term place. Obama's stated intention to be a Christian, and to live as a Christian, and to raise his children as a Christian can't be countered with "he was born an Arab" or "his father was an Arab" because there are no such things in Christ Jesus per Paul and all the great converting figures.

In fact Obama would have a great success with these people--if idiots like this videographer don't interfere--going on a barnstorming "before I accepted Jesus" tour in which he, like Bush before him, pointed towards his own state of "original sin" (Bush's drunken indifference to god, Obama's years in the wilderness of Islam) *even or especially if he has to make it up.* He can say Michelle converted him, all dressed in white. This is such a natural part of the fundamentalist christian worldview that they almost can't grasp any other orientation to religion other than sinner to saved. An anthropologist that I knew twenty years ago, when this stuff was just barely on the horizon for all of us, told me in a fury that his brother had become a born again Christian and was insisting that Jesus had saved him from a life of prostitutes and drug dealing. The fury part? He said that his brother didn't actually have all the sins he thought he'd been cleansed of--he'd never been a drug dealer and he'd never lived the life of loose sexuality that he had ended up confessing to. It was all a kind of popular delusion, as public confessions and repentances tend to be.

I'm getting rather far afield from my original intention, which was to discuss ignorance and knowledge in the context of politics and the internet, but we've actually known quite a bit of this stuff for a very long time. John Emerson put up this great quote from Theodore Lowi's 1976 essay in Poliscide

From Poliscide, Theodore Lowi et. al., Macmillan, 1976, p. 282.:

Ignorance turned out to be a major result of specialization. Decision makers give up their knowledge of the whole as they seek full and complete knowledge of their particular piece of the whole. But ignorance is not only a correlative of specialization. It is almost a condition for peaceful coexistence among specialists.

Ignorance tends to be meaningfully distributed throughout the hierarchies. There was more ignorance at the center than at the periphery.....This brings our particular concern into focus. Ignorance at the scale that we observed could not have occurred by chance alone. Ignorance at this scale involving scientists -- that is, men dedicated to knowledge above all else -- had to be deliberate.
John Emerson

Reminding us that ignorance is a function of specialization, and specialization is a feature of modern societies and of modern media formats which consistently cut the world up into bits that can be commented on, or understood, only by "experts" whose knowledge is guaranteed by their appearance with degrees or histories attached to their names (a fellow of the AEI, a woman from Concerned Women of America) and by their appearance on your TV as an expert.

Individuals don't "know" much, outside of their own sensory perceptions, that they haven't heard or acquired at second hand from other sources of more or less dubious authority in their own social circle--or, with the growth of newspapers, books, radio, tv, and the internet their own imaginary social circle. When you go out to talk to someone who "knows" something that you think you know "just isn't true" you have to come armed with the same kind of information they are using to get to their erroneous conclusion, and you have to have a lot of patience. Just confronting someone and telling them they are wrong--or worse, that their trusted source is wrong is simply not convincing.

aimai

Ouch...

Woolcott says the obvious, in excruciating detail. Whatever's going on with the Press and McCain? Its not going away soon:

Until that doomsday crisis is fully manufactured, however, the presidential election this November is the sumo match that will dominate the news and keep Chris Matthews on the edge of his high chair. The vicissitudes of his veering enthusiasms provide a fever chart of the political libido of the Beltway, its babbling pillow talk conducted in broad daylight. “Like Elvis, Matthews can’t help falling in love,” Eric Alterman wrote in the Nation column about Matthews’s Man Crushes. “And also like the King—who developed a thing for both Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover late in life—the object of Matthews’s affection is invariably a tough-talking, self-styled Republican macho-man.” More... McCain, of course (“A lot of people like the cut of John McCain’s jib”). Fred Thompson, whose humidor aroma he savored. And Rudy Giuliani, whom Matthews lionized for, among his other accomplishments as mayor of New York City, getting “the pee smell” out of the subway. But it isn’t always the macho man who vibrates Matthews’s harp strings. After an Obama victory speech carried live on MSNBC, Matthews exclaimed excitement about “this thrill going up my leg,” as if he were singer James Brown feeling the funk, ow. But Barack Obama’s willowiness and inability to pass muster as a member of the bowling team militate against his becoming a durable Man Crush object for the Beltway dilettanti, who wouldn’t be caught dead in a bingo hall. I await the inevitable moment when Matthews or Mike Barnicle or some other barstool philosopher announces that he has a Man Crush on Hillary Clinton once she’s out of the race. It would be a tribute to her toughness and a misogynist insult in one neat wrapper, but at least it wouldn’t have any of the stale piety that leaves a haze whenever John McCain is invoked. Even Karl Rove has begun sentimentalizing about McCain in print, which you know can’t be good. A Machiavellian with a Man Crush weaves a terrible web.

Not only is there No Free Lunch, there is also No Free Ice-Cream Truck

It appears that Debbie Schlussel is just the poor woman's Peggy Noonan. Bet you didn't know that, did you? Why, Sadly, Yes! Down below Ahab watches Peggy Noonan wrestling with her ill fitting nostalgia like Bela Lugosi with the rubber octopus in Ed Wood. Over at Sadly, No! they print this nearly identical wail from Debby Schlussel: More...

You have probably been blissfully unaware that the latest tactic being employed by teh Moooslims in their battle to establish a caliphate in the United States and to replace your neighborhood Hooters with a Falafel Hut is going on in Dearborn, Michigan, and involves ice cream trucks. To learn more, we must enter the strange world of Debbie Schlussel where a Mooslim wielding a scimitar lurks behind every potted plant. (obviously that's Sadly, No!--ed)

Some of my fondest memories as a kid, hanging out with my Dad, are when we’d meet up with the neighborhood ice cream truck, during the hot summer, and he’d buy me one of my favorites: The Bomb Pop–red, white, and blue, it was patriotic, yummy, and cool on a hot day. And as you know, the only way to know the truck is coming is to hear its music.

…

And these Muslims–who don’t like American culture and want to shut it, and all American-style fun, down–have now succeeded in getting Dearborn Heights police to enforce old, never enforced noise rules to keep ice cream trucks out. /wingnut out/

Why teh Mooslims have issued a fatwa against ice cream trucks is never explained by Debbie. I assume it must have something to do with the red, white and blue “patriotic” Bomb Pops which steel young boys and girls against the wiles of the jihad. Without those Bomb Pops, American boys and girls will be kneeling on prayer mats and facing Mecca faster than you can say Allahu Akbar. (Sadly, No! again. Just fyi)

Now it ought not to escape any of us that Debbie's plaint is also identical to little miss "liberals took our diving boards" and littlerer even misser "liberals took my husband's balls but I was able to save daddy's from his five wives. " And these all bundled together reveal some kind of mass hallucination or hysterical reaction to modernity. What kind of reaction, I hear you cry? Well, for Peggy Noonan who knows, I try never to get into her head for fear I won't be able to crawl back out to the light. But the other two reduce themselves to this: liberals are fuckin' killjoys who took my children's childhood pleasures. Sane people read these things and think "people got together and thought that maybe inducing small children to run out into traffic at the sound of an icecream truck's music was kind of pointlessly dangerous or "people got together and for reasons of cost or of liability decided that putting up diving boards for young children to kill themselves on wasn't really a necessary part of childhood fun." Underlying both these horrifyingly muslimofascistliberalfunhaters decisions are what sane people call "public policy" that draw on this thing we call "information" and also "cost." See, as a parent I actually like the idea that problems for me and my kids like,hmmm, oh, you know, smog, lead, mercury poisoning, ice cream trucks inducing them to experience the most common form of childhood auto accident known as "mid curb dart out", and also that perennial summer favorite "total paraylisis due to smashed vertebra" are things that my local government is trying its damndest to prevent. I'm really sorry that Debbie Schlussel's kids can't rely on mr. frostee for their summer treats anymore--or at any rate, as closer inspection reveals, simply need to use their eyes instead of their ears to be alerted to the existence of icecream novelties--but the rest of us think the whole damn family is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too over stimulated anyway if her columns are any sign. But no doubt liberals stole her self control, as well.

Mark Penn? Still So Wrong he Makes Wrong Look Right.

The press always falls in love with the new cool intellectual candidate. You know, he is their kind of candidate. Go back through history. They didn't like Al Gore. They loved Gary Hart. They love those kinds of candidates, always have. But--but--but look, I think that he was the first African-American, you know, credible presidential candidate was a factor behind how much the press was enthusiastic about him. But she was also the first woman candidate. But the standard...

You know, the microscope that they put her under, that they did not put her opponent and opponents under, was just incredible. I don't think anybody has ever been put under this kind of microscope running for president.--Mark Penn in GQ by way of TPM

Gary Hart? The guy the press loved right into the White House?

I beg to Differ

Ahab thinks the linked corner piece below is almost self parody. I'd disagree, if you go to the corner's link--this Newsweek piece entitled

Obama's Official Blog is Boring. McCain's is Enjoyable. Why That's Bad News for the GOP.

you get to some real, serious, self parody. I don't even think the Corner can touch it, frankly. After reviewing the careful construction of Obama's outreach to that rather large number of people known as potential voters the author, a toddler apparently from the picture appended and the reasoning displayed, offers these counterintuitive gems: More...

The important thing here is that this personal tone and personal scale isn't limited to McCain's blog--it's reflected throughout the campaign. Obama's venue of choice? A 25,000-seat stadium. In contrast, McCain prefers the push and pull of a town-hall meeting--and has, in fact, challenged Obama to join him on stage. While a fixed, frictionless inner circle of aides runs Obama's massive, efficient organization like a successful private corporation, McCain is relying on a decentralized network of 11 "regional campaign managers" stationed in places like New Brunswick, N.J. and Royal Oak, Mich. to handle his affairs. Obama has 700 staffers blanketing nearly the entire nation; McCain employs only 250. Finally, McCain still invites reporters to cycle on and off his bus for face time and interviews, and top aide Mark Salter regularly responds to unfavorable reports with lengthy personal letters--unlike Obama, who interacts with the media only when necessary. "That's not how you win an election!" a McCain associate recently told Time. "McCain is about the only person left who thinks we ought to keep the bus going. Obama keeps the press at a distance. Why? Because he's trying to win!"

I think Julie and I in comments, and others over at SteveM's blog were just discussing the probability that McCain would successfully poormouth his way to the presidency by marketing every necessity as a choice and, of course, as a choice springing from his authentic, maverick, down home, shit kicker, fly boy, manly roots. This came up in the context of McCain's stunningly arrogant demand that Obama and he share Obama's plane to ride to shared debates. On the one hand, we cried "What, he can't borrow a corporate jet from his corporate cronies or his rich wife?" On the other we saw the thin end of the wedge in constructing the visual argument that McCain was the poor man's choice who willingly got out of his old clunker of a bus, exhausted, (my god the man can't lift his arm over his head! didjaknow he'd been a prisoner of war?) to fight the good fight against that *&^% limousine liberal Obama in his fancy shmancy jet. The articles not only write themselves they have already written themselves and are lying neatly stacked before they publish themselves.

I think the argument that Obama is just some kind of elitist rockstar who prefers big stadiums and large crowds because he's some kind of nutty egotist while John McCain "prefers" the "push and pull" of a town hall meeting is the tip of the iceberg for this. Oddly, the most recent McCain speech was certainly in a small venue but it wasn't a "town hall" meeting since, as I recall having used that thing called video, no questions were asked or answered but rather a canned speech was delivered. If that was not McCain's "preference" can we find out who in his small, taut, tanned, sincere and authentic mini crew of believers is forcing his preferences on the candidate and fire him?

But what I really came to say is isn't this exactly the political stratagem I pointed to here ("Its Maverickly Delicious") where McCain, unable to get any actual votes in a straw poll, tried to argue that he actually renounced in advance any interest in getting votes in deference to our Commander in Chief and his apparent need during wartime for a show of clapping hands. This "act which is not having an act" has been so debunked in the last few months and years that its pretty astounding to find someone in the real world over the age of five who doesn't get that its an act. Here's a clue, little Newsweek reporter: "when your mother says she loves you: check it out." If McCain could drag Bob Hope's rotting corpse from the grave to headline for him before thousands of screaming people he'd do it. But he can't. And if McCain had as many reporters lining up to spend some quality time alone with him as Obama does he'd have to turn them down because there wouldn't be any time for actually campaigning and talking to the voters. Its not because he loves each and every one of those reporters that he lavishes his attention on them--its because its a strategy that works for him and because he has no other choice since no one but reporters wants to turn out to hear him speak.

aimai

That's some condition, and some linking

Use of the Taser on Heston didn't cause his death, Klint said. Heston fit ``the well established symptom pattern for methamphetamine intoxication and associated excited delirium,'' a condition linked to sudden death in custody, Klint said.

My question is—are these guys early adopters or late neanderthals?

Packing in public: Gun owners tired of hiding their weapons embrace 'open carry'

I knew I should have blogged this yesterday when, mysteriously, this LA Times piece appeared in the paper formerly known as my local paper. See Dave Neiwert at Orcinius for an educated take on this. I prefer to point and hoot:

PROVO, UTAH -- For years, Kevin Jensen carried a pistol everywhere he went, tucked in a shoulder holster beneath his clothes.

These guys are strong, capable, determined—they can be trusted with guns at all times because they put public safety above all other considerations...except chafing. More...

In hot weather the holster was almost unbearable. Pressed against Jensen's skin, the firearm was heavy and uncomfortable. Hiding the weapon made him feel like a criminal.

They're normal too, just like the rest of us

"What we're trying to say is, 'Hey, we're normal people who carry guns,' " said Travis Deveraux, 36, of West Valley, a Salt Lake City suburb. Deveraux works for a credit card company and sometimes walks around town wearing a cowboy hat and packing a pistol in plain sight. "We want the public to understand it's not just cops who can carry guns."

So far, public feedback has been good:

Now Jensen carries his Glock 23 openly into his bank, restaurants and shopping centers. He wore the gun to a Ron Paul rally. He and his wife, Clachelle, drop off their 5-year-old daughter at elementary school with pistols hanging from their hip holsters, and have never received a complaint or a wary look.

Although there have been a few, tiny, hiccups in the new system:

Police Chief John Greiner recalled that last year in Ogden, Utah, a man was openly carrying a shotgun on the street. When officers pulled up to ask him about the gun, he started firing. Police killed the man.

And sometimes you get the feeling these guys have a little too much to prove in some other departments:

Travis White, 19, who has ear and chin piercings, congratulated Brandon Trask, 21, on carrying openly for the first time that night. "Just wait until you get confronted by a cop," White said. "It'll make you feel brave."

While as for others, they have a point:

Glancing around the restaurant, as armed families like the Jensens dined with men in cowboy hats and professionals like himself, Thompson smiled.

"I love this," he said. "I want people to be aware that crazy people are not the only ones with guns. Normal people carry them."

Okay, granted, but which is which?

Its Maverickly Delicious

Every day is "I hate McCain day" but did you know that today is "Great Selections from Free Ride day?" Lets call it Uriah Heep meets Dick Nixon. Yes indeedy heh heh:

"Hardly a mention of McCain goes by without Matthews blurting out the word "maverick"...And what was it that Matthews was praising so highly? McCain's praise of George W. Bush. "the fate of the world may hang in the balance and we shoudl all of us keep our personal ambitions a distant second to standing with the president of the United States, our commander in chief," proclaimed McCain at the convention. Facing a straw poll he knew he was likely to lose to Tennessean Bill Frist (the convention was held in Memphis) McCain came up with a brillant solution. "Straw polls are entertaining, my friends, even extremely early ones, but I think we have bigger things to worry about. So if any friends are thinking about voting for me, please don't. Just write in President Bush's name," said McCain. His statement not only made it possible to dismsiss his eventual loss in the straw poll, it demonstrated to Republican activists his fealty to Bush--two birds killed with one deftly tossed stone.
But without irony, Matthews pointed to McCain's tribute to Bush as a case study of the maverick in action...a year later [chuck todd, political director of NBC news] once again found McCain's willingness to support the presdient (and agree with nearly all his Republican colleagues) to be the essence of maverickness. "It would be easy for him to criticize the war...the maverick thing to do is actually to take the unpopular stand."' Witness the logic at work: When McCain challenges Bush, it is proof that he is a maverick. When he cozies up to Bush, it is also proof of the same."

I Am Not An Economist But...

Doesn't it strike you that there is something very wrong with this quote from Dean Baker on what is wrong with McCain's tax free gas proposal:

Of course, we know that the price is determined by demand, because supply is constrained by the refinery capacity of Exxon and the other big oil companies.In other words, there is a fixed amount of supply, so the price will go as high as is necessary to eliminate any shortages.

The elevation of price doesn't, in fact, "eliminate any shortages" it may, long term, bring more product onto the market (or it may not if war and shortages of actual unrefined crude interrupt supply) but the one thing it won't do is "eliminate shortages." A rise in price means that *fewer people can afford* oil/gas and they will cut back on consumption thus *experiencing shortages* while wealthier buyers will continue to experience no shortages at a higher cost.

McCain's proposal, besides being absurdly beside the point since he's not yet in a position to get his horse declared a god, is wrongheaded on a number of levels. But raising or lowering the total price of the oil doesn't, in fact, eliminate shortages as such. Just, perhaps, shortages for some people.

h/t Obsidian Wings

aimai

How I learned to Relax and love the "V" word.

Rebecca Traister has one of those irritating articles she writes for Salon up, about Eve Ensler and the Vagina Monologues . In the article Traister, as usual, explains to us that she is personally sick of all that gyno feminism and has no idea why it continues to speak to women who don't have a writing career or really, any kind of career or social power. She explains that she is so very important that a previous article attacking Ensler made Ensler not want to be interviewed again which is so totally not, like, nice of Ensler that it calls into question all the great work Ensler has ever done around the world raising consciousness about the physical abuse of women and seeing her work performed around the world to enthusiastic audiences. Because if Ensler doesn't want to be best friends with Traister, who like, totally doesn't like her shtick, well, Ensler is really mean and so her work can't be important.

I love the Vagina Monologues, at least the version I saw with my grandmother many years ago. We both found it side splittingly funny and it spoke to us both, at opposite ends of the female life cycle. I have a personal love and respect for Eve, as well. For many years she went to Bedford Hills Prison, where a cousin of mine was in prison, and led a playwright's workshop for a number of the women. The work that they did, week after week, privately, and often agonizingly, began with Eve asking them to come forward and write about something they had never before had the courage to say to anyone else. The end of the process, many years later, was a performance both at the Prison and on stage at Alice Tully Hall (there's a film as well) called “What I want my words to say to you.” Its incredibly powerful, honest, sad, and it grows out of the very thing that the Rebecca Traister's really hate—Eve's willingness to do what isn't cool, or popular, for years and years and years in an utterly quiet and unthanked way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it feels like kitsch, sometimes it feels like a revelation. That is what makes it great art and, sometimes, lousy art. Its daring and it sometimes fails. But its not what any one else is doing, that is for sure. And that fact that it merely appeals to or talks about 50 percent of humanity? That's not exactly a limited or elite audience. (Check out the hysterically angry posts after Traister's essay. The first ten are men who feel insulted that any woman should feel she has permission to work on the subject of female bodies and female lives. Doesn't she know that talking about women's stuff is a distraction from what is real and unfits women from being good wives and mothers?)

When I saw the Vagina Monologues Eve was just starting her V day project. I marveled then at the incredible gutsiness of this little woman to try to make her work so powerful that it could affect millions around the world. She doesn't do it from a place of personal power, or privilege. She's a person who has had a difficult and frightening life and who has mined it, produced a piece of work that engages people, and who has used that tiny bit of power to (as she sees it) improve the world one woman at a time. Traister's piece unwillingly and begrudgingly acknowledges that but it drips with resentment that Eve has chosen to do it using icky body parts, and dramatic language, and metaphor and symbolism. It cracks me up, as well as makes me angry. Traister's a cultural critic who doesn't like culture. A spoken theater piece that includes vaginal iconography? A happening that uses pink imagery and circles? One scarcely knows whether its the word vagina, the DFH'ness of the happening, or the use of symbolism and imagery that she considers more dirty and declasse. She is especially irritated when Eve uses common bodily imagery to describe political and social realities like calling New Orleans “america's vagina.” Shocking. One would think she'd never seen the Washington Monument or watched Dr. Strangelove.

Well, there will always be the Rebecca Traisters of the world, more concerned that they not look impressed by someone else's work than that they honestly evaluate that work in context. I hope there will always be Eve Enslers in this world to forge on with their improbable mission so they can be taken for granted by the next generation who will not be able to remember the world they fought so hard to describe and change.

Tell me again why Reverend Wright was Wrong?

AP reports in the Globe today that:

Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development...

Comparable research was conducted by the Agriculture Department and Environmental Protection Agency in a similarly poor, black neighborhood in East St. Louis, Ill. Residents there also were not told of the potential risks.

The researchers said the sludge could help protect the children from brain or nerve damage from lead, a highly toxic element once widely used in gasoline and paint. Other studies have shown brain damage among children, often in poor neighborhoods, who ate lead-based paint that had flaked off their homes.

The idea that sludge - the leftover semisolid wastes filtered from water pollution at 16,500 treatment plants - can be turned into something harmless, even if swallowed, has been a tenet of federal policy for three decades.

In a 1978 memo, the EPA said sludge "contains nutrients and organic matter which have considerable benefit for land and crops" despite the presence of "low levels of toxic substances."

But in the late 1990s the government began underwriting studies such as those in Baltimore and East St. Louis using poor neighborhoods as laboratories to make a case that sludge may also directly benefit human health.

The Baltimore study concluded that phosphate and iron in sludge can increase the ability of soil to trap more harmful metals including lead, cadmium, and zinc, causing the combination to pass safely through a child's body if eaten. The results were published in Science of the Total Environment, a research journal, in 2005.

However, there has been a paucity of research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals, and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.

Why I am not a Ballerina

The nine year old is getting ready for her Tap/Jazz recital. My part, the chaufferring, is largely done but one last trial remains to me--making up her face. I don't use makeup so this is always very stressful for me, and even reminding myself that the dance school's exacting style book leans to "early trollop" and the other mother's seem to merely lay the stuff on with a pallette knife doesn't help. Still, I thought I could offer some valuable assistance by advising her to get dressed before doing her hair and face.

"No mom" she said, breaking it to me gently "you step into your leotard, they don't go over your head."

This.Explains.Why.They.Kicked.Me.Out.Of.Miss.Olga's. School.of Ballet. some forty years ago. I wonder if there are pictures?

aimai

Science and the Internet are Amazing

Can THIS be true? Its really thought provoking on a number of levels. I haven't had time to listen to the original story, or look it up and find out about it, but Amanda's report over at Pandagon (and yes, I know she's a girl and stuff but still, science...cool!)

Here's a slice of the post, linked above:

So I just listened to a recent edition of Radio Lab about bioengineering and chimeras and the possibilities of blending genes, and in the show was this really amazingly cool story. Basically, this woman they interview needed a kidney transplant. (That’s not the cool part.) They go to family members first, of course, and they tested their DNA for a match. And they found that her sons…..were not her sons. They were her husband’s sons, but they weren’t a genetic match to her. So they retested her, same result. So they desperately tested a lot of different tissues around her body, after she demonstrated that she did in fact give birth to these boys, and they found out that the reason for all this was some of her body had one set of DNA and another had another. Her blood had one, but her reproductive system had another.

I felt bad for the lady. Obviously, this whole situation unnerved her and rattled her to the bone, and it’s too bad. I can’t help but think that if I found out that I’ve got the genetic material to make two people, I’d be stoked.* What great cocktail party banter! You could probably convince people you had superpowers and shit. I don’t truck with the more superstitious need to have individuality strongly defined in religious or biological terms—a person is a social construct that I think is best defined around the concept of the lived experience of having your consciousness and your body and your memories. But most people probably don’t think very much about the constructed nature of identity, and thus a revelation like this was pretty rattling. Most people think what you are is what you are, that your race and ethnicity and gender are set in stone and that your unique personhood is something special. But really, it’s not. Human beings are what we socially define them to be, and the boundaries can be blurred as the social understandings of these things are blurred.

And of course, the biology. For those who find these sort of oddities fascinating, you’ve probably already guessed what happened to this woman. When her mother was pregnant, she was initially pregnant with fraternal twins. At the embryonic stage, the two fused together, a process that often results in Siamese twins [A commenter pointed out this is not exactly accurate for all conjoined twins.--Aimai.] In this case, the twinning happened on the level of organs, with some being made by one set of DNA and some being made by the other set. Her sons were actually her sons, of course, but they were just made by one twin half of her body. We like to think of Siamese twins as being two sets of individuals fused together, but more often, that’s not what happens. If a Siamese twin body is like this, or one fetus is absorbed into the body of the other that was born, or if the twin is split from the waist down and has three legs instead of two heads, we understand that person as one person. Only if there are two unique brains—two unique consciousnesses, that is—do we understand that there are two people.

Why I love Howard Dean part XXXXXXCLV to the moon

Steve Benen misses the funny but for the rest of us, this is why we love Howard (emphasis mine)

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean hosted a press briefing yesterday to go over some new polling data from 17 swing states, and mentioned that the party would probably not go after John McCain’s age as a campaign issue.

Noting that it’s the kind of personal tactic Republicans would be far more comfortable with, Dean said, “I doubt we will bring it up in the election.” He added, “There is somewhat of a higher ethical bar on what we do. We don’t have any Lee Atwaters or Karl Roves on our side.”

That’s true. But, McCain is running to be the oldest president in U.S. history, and if Dems did want to make an issue out of it, voters apparently care quite a bit about this.

The age question may be this year’s sleeper issue. Stay tuned.

I don't know whether to feel better, or worse

after reading this.

Still, if anyone knows where the sausage is buried, or how they make the bodies, or something, its David Brock.

From the Politico (I know, I'm embarrassed to be caught reading them too.)

But after a dinner Tuesday night at the Manhattan apartment of liberal megadonor George Soros, at which Brock and consultant Paul Begala laid out the group's plans, Brock said his group now has commitments worth $7.5 million — almost twice what the Fund for America is expected to report raising in the first quarter of this year. He said the group would begin running ads before it meets its $40 million goal.

Brock suggested that the group could do the work of a press corps that, he says, has "fallen down on the job" when it comes to McCain.

Can't think of a title, but is it any wonder?

Remember, choosing to care about Tibet--or, hell, Iraq, is a sign that liberals are foolish and ill informed. But choosing to read about Brittany Spears or Obama's terrorist bowling practices over reading dull stuff like Glenn Greenwald on John Yoo and torture memos *signed by the president of the United States* is a valid life style choice. See how that works?

And for the musical version, please don't miss "The Wreck of the Megan McCardle" by the sadlynauts. Truly one of the greats.

Media’s sacred trust is sadly not a sacred trust fund

Don’t I have obligations as a journalist beyond crass money grasping? Haven’t I been invested with a sacred trust that shouldn’t be held hostage to profit? Indeed I have: to report stories that are factually correct and more importantly, to the best of my knowledge and ability, fundamentally true. But I don’t think that I have a duty to lose vast sums of money doing so–I already took quite a hefty paycut when I devoted my MBA to journalism. I gave, as they say, at the office.

The Atlantic Unbound,
Keened a querulous sound,
As a wave broke over the railin’.

So did everyone else who took their college degree into journalism, from editors on down. Nor do newspaper owners exactly mint money.

And everyone knew,
As McArdle did too,
That the best she could do, it was failin’.

We Want To Know

Passover is in a few weekends. Its the only jewish holiday and jewish mitzvah I really perform. Something draws me to it, and I love it for its complexity and its paradoxical combination of history, structure, and oppenness. From outside the tradition imagine if every year the highest, holiest of masses was entirely scripted, rescripted, and performed by lay people and specifically women and children, who were urged both to study the traditional texts, reflect on this year's events, and project themselves and their issues onto the fundamental covenant with g-d? To me its like a web or a piece of clothing which we are all, simultaneously, designing, imagining, weaving, admiring, wearing, and sharing.

In getting ready--which consists of mundane tasks like realizing I don't have chairs or seating for 22 adults and 8 children, doing the cooking with the four hour wait between finishing and actually serving the meal in mind, digging out my haggadahs and planning things for the children to do--I always find myself learning something new and wanting to start the whole process over again to focus the Seder on this new idea.

Just yesterday, while reading the Velveteen Rabbi's haggadah (which she was kind enough to put on line) I came across this marvellous poem, by a friend of my mother's (oddly enough), and it has brought me to a standstill with its perfect, lapidary, distillation of a peculiarly jewish relationship with g-d and the written word, with the writer and the world. I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate it into the Seder but I wanted to share it with you guys. I'm not crazy about the lack of punctuation, but it certainly renders it more open to interpretation.

Psalm

Like a skin on milk
I write to you

I hurl the letters of your name
onto every page, one and many

I know you are reading over my shoulder
look each of us possesses a book of life

each attempts to read what the other has scripted
in these almost illegible letters tipped by crowns

what is the story
we want to know
--Alicia Ostriker

Athenae goes there so we don't have to

Here's her capsule review of Feith's book on his life as the stupidestfuckingguyin the universe:

If you were playing Where's Post 9/11 Waldo, it would be useful, but a good read it is not.

The book proceeds as a list, which I'll paraphrase here:

I was born.

I grew up.

Kind of.

I work at the Pentagon!

Old school liberals aren't pussies! They're hawks! Richard Perle is awesome!

Being a lawyer sucks.

9/11.

I shook the president's hand! I was in a meeting! I wrote a policy paper! Rumsfeld listens to me! The president listens to me! Everybody listens to me!

The president didn't want to go to war, except that he did, and we didn't make him, except that we have enormous influence, which is impossible to resist.

I hate Seymour Hersh.

Colin Powell is an asshole.

The CIA sucks.

WAR!!!!

Acronyms. Operational details. Tom Clancy.

WAR!!!!

Whoa, war sucks.

Here's what Bush screwed up to make the war suck.

Let me teach you my ways, so that you might replicate my phenomenal successes.

The end.

Oh, go read the rest. She did actually buy the book. So give her some love.

Its Called Kabuki because its Stylized, Not Because Its Art

Atrios complains today that Hillary Clinton, like everyone in Washington, continually makes gestures towards the "grand old men" when looking for a way to fix the very problems the grand old men have caused. I don't disagree. I'm on record calling for everyone who recently published a mea not-so-culpa on the Iraq war to be taken out and shot *just so we never have to see their names in print again* other than in a snarky obit. But in complaining about Hillary calling for an old fart council on economics composed of Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan Atrios is mistaking shadow boxing for the real thing. A public call for something is a signal *to the public* not the actual thing in itself. And the public doesn't know anything about economics--barely knows (if it knows) who the F*&^^ Alan Greenspan *is.* Atrios and the other economists and econ mavens are still pissed off at Greenspan for giving the green light to the rapists and looters known as ARM mortgate sellers. And they are right to do so. But I guarantee you that no one who took out an ARM looked to Greenspan's moronic comments to legitimize their choice. They didn't know what he'd said and clearly wouldn't have grasped it if they had. All that the names "greenspan" and "rubin" mean to the public is "some old guys with experience." Converseley, choosing (wisely) some young or old turks who actually knew what they were doing economically and had the people's interest at heart instead of being corporate cronies? Would signal nothing to the public since they wouldn't have even the dimmest hope of name recognition (Unless you could tack "nobel prize winning" blah blah after their name and we see how far that got Stiglitz). Hillary's comment is *positioning* to call attention to *The problem* that bush et al and mccain et al are pretending doesn't exist. Saying you'll put greenspan on the theoretical, hypothetical, never to be constituted working group is like saying you'll have a stuffed margaret thatcher sitting at the end of the table. It just makes bush et al look weak and meanspirited when they refuse to constitute such a working group.

aimai

What, is there only one Borg Mind?

Oh for *&^% Dennis Hartly over at Digby wrote the post I've been too sick to write for a few days--about the BBC series The Politician's Wife:

My personal favorite of the genre is an outstanding and overlooked drama from 1995 that was originally presented as a three-part miniseries in the UK, The Politician’s Wife. Juliet Stevenson delivers a tour-de-force performance as Flora, the staunchly supportive wife of Duncan Matlock, an ambitious rising star in England’s conservative Tory party.

My mother recommended it last week and I watched it a few days ago. It is truly a tour de force--Mamet for women in the sense that every word counts and the writing is spare and cut to the bone. But more important is the "for women" part. The plot is basically that a Silda Wall type character discovers that her husband has been carrying on a year long torrid affair with a female staffer. The right wing party daddies close ranks about him--even the heroine's own father demonstrates that loyalty to party and to his own dreams of power and a knighthood are more important than she is. Worse than that, they rush about making sure she "puts her best foot forward" and "doesn't let the side down" and not only make her stand by him but instruct her that she must "touch him frequently" and "seem at ease" and also go and stand in for him at every ladies lunch and "christian women's affair" that is on offer. Meanwhile, she is to continue serving as his unpaid secretary and keep up her real function which is serving as a buffer between him and his actual constituents who are quite poor and needy. We see endless scenes of the men discussing how best to use her, and how useable she is, over their whiskey or their port. But slowly she figures out that this was no one time fling and with the aid of his gay administrative assistant she and the "left handers" (who are everywhere) take their revenge.

What's really interesting is something that I think Hartley doesn't quite notice. Flora decides to do her husband's career in by slow cuts. She uses the fact that she has become an important cog in the men's plans as a way of gaining liscence to call them up and manipulate *them.* They are so afraid that she will stop being their patsy that they rush to deal with her whenever she calls and keep offering her more and more little girl treats if she plays along. She plays the weak, proud, hopeful woman of their imaginations to a T and slips the knife in at every stage. They can't see what she is doing because they simply can't grasp that a woman like Flora can have interests of her own, intentions that are separate from theirs, and a hidden meaning to her words. Time after time she bursts into tears on the senior ministers and says sadly how she is coming to understand she must put party over personal feelings (just what they said to her) and so...would they mind if she told them something her husband told her, in confidence? which is that he never liked minister X, or he knows that minister Y is sleeping around? Pretty soon the senior politicians think they are using Flora to get rid of her husband politically, when it is she is is using them. She secretely blocks their political plans for the privatization of child benefit and women's education. She secretely exposes the machinations of the top politicians to end the welfare state. She chips away at her husband's status as a rising star by dropping hints about how selfish and ruthless he is so that the more charming and in control he seems the more suspicious his former friends become. There's a fantastic scene where Flora manipulates the christian women's conservative association, playign them like violins and speaking movingly of women's role in politics and dropping, apparently accidentally, that her husband despises them as "ladies who lunch" in "fancy hats" and even "menopausal old biddies." And a yet more amazing one where she tries the same thing on some working class "child minders" with business before the council. She tries to cry her way into their sympathy as a scorned wife but they remain sturdily unimpressed and ask her right out what's in it for them. They'll help her, they say, but only if it pays off and only if she's up front about what she wants. They are the only people in the entire film, other than the gay admin staffer, who grasp that women are people with aims and objectives of their own, not the shadow tools of the men around them.

My favorite scene in the entire movie, other than the scene where the child minders give Flora some good brutal honesty, is a hilarious feminine rip off of the scene in the God Father where Michael goes to the baptism of his nephew while his assassins go to work on his enemies. In The Politician's Wife the cuts go between Flora making a cake in her country kitchen to the unfolding of the doom of her husband as one by one his friends fall away from him and refuse to take his calls and the press begins to bay for his political death.

aimai