leave those animals alone

Florida and Alaska are both considering laws banning bestiality, following incidents of men having sex with various animals.

I tend to be a "keep the government out of the bedroom" kind of guy, but I am completely behind Florida and Alaska on this one. And the argument isn't based on what I think is gross or fun or whatever. It's the same argument that should be applied to other acts involving sex that we deem crimes.

The lack of consent.

Animals can't give informed consent to have sex. So banning sex with them is like having laws for statutory rape, or against having sex with somebody in a coma, or somebody who is for whatever reason incapable of giving informed consent.

If they can't say or nod "yes", assume you should go somewhere else for your thrills. And dogs, sheeps, goats etc can't say yes.

ben stein's execrable "expelled"

You might have heard of the new Ben Stein "documentary" called "Expelled," which purports to uncover the "conspiracy" that is keeping "intelligent design" from being properly taught and studied at American universities.

Well, sufficient to say that it is the lowest, most foul form of anti-scientific propaganda to ever come from an allegedly respectable journalist/political figure. It isn't a documentary, it is right-wing agitprop that reaches low low low to slam anybody who doesn't kowtow to the Christianist insistence that the only explanation for life on this planet involves a Creator (and anybody who believes otherwise is going to hell).

For example, there is a long segment of "Expelled" that equates "Darwinists" to Nazis. Here is one writer's description:

"The most controversial part of the film follows Stein to the Dachau concentration camp, underlining how Darwin's theories of natural selection led to the eugenics movement, embraced by Adolf Hitler. If there is no God, but only a planetary lab waiting for scientists to perfect the human race, where can Darwinism lead? Stein insists that he isn't accusing today's Darwinists of Nazism. He points out, however, that Hitler's mad science was inspired by Darwinism."

That passage was by a writer SYMPATHETIC to Stein, right wing Christianist "media critic" Brent Bozell.

Yes, that was "controversial." The whole "Darwinism leads to genocide" thing has been used before by advocates of the mandatory teaching of Christianity by the state - which is EXACTLY what those who advocate "intelligent design" are really after. Anti-vegetarians likewise love to point out that Hitler was a vegetarian, as if that means all vegetarians are ready to mass murder every Jew on the planet if given the chance. Hitler liked airplanes too - does that mean that everybody at Boeing and United Airlines and in the US Air Force is evil?

In Expelled, Stein goes to Dachau and weeps. Dachau is a tear-inducing thing. But it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with evolution. And Darwin (and those of us who believe he was right in describing the origin of species) did NOT advocate mass executions or breeding programs, thank you very much.

Win Ben Stein's money? I think not.

Fuck Ben Stein. I am ashamed to ever admit that I ever agreed with him on anything even once, or that I ever enjoyed his "I'm so smart" schtick on TV or in a movie. This is truly vile stuff.

Returning to Bozell, he calls "Expelled" "a spotlight on the arrogance of this movement (Bozell means people who accept evolution) and its leaders, a spotlight on the choking intolerance of academia, and a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little."

When in fact, only the ignorant who know so very little can possibly believe the weak "proofs" of intelligent design, while ignoring or simply refusing to believe the masses of scientific evidence that overwhelmingly supports the fact of evolution.

Spend some time at this website, Expelled Exposed (courtesy of the National Center for Science Education). It gives the background on each of the people allegedly blackballed by the scientific community for believing in intelligent design, and fills you in on "what Ben Stein isn't telling you about Intelligent Design."

a massive human rights violation that requires immediate action and even the use of force if necessary

While everybody has been wondering about who's been torturing who, and whether the US Constitution should prevent a benevolent presidential dictator from doing whatever he wants, and whether a little bit of warming will cook the planet until human civilization collapses, or will just give us all a slightly warmer winter night and the chance to surf the Arctic Ocean, a truly important issue has failed to get the attention it deserves.

Members of a certain class of foreigners in Germany are being deprived of a fundamental human right due to a 1930s-era German law.

How awful. The brutality of it all.

I mean, why bother spending all those years of studying and living in crappy student housing to get a PhD if you can't go to Germany and be called "doktor"?

Yep, that's it. Apparently at least 7 American academics in Germany have been investigated by police after being turned in by an anonymous whistle-blower for using the title "doktor" in Germany - a privilege extended only those with a PhD from a German (and since 2001, any European Union) university.

One molecular biologist, Dr. (I'm not in Germany I can call him that if I want) Ian Thomas Baldwin, was actually interrogated by police for using the term "Dr." to describe himself. The crime? "Title abuse." Baldwin refuses to say whether they waterboarded him or not, but since it was German police the odds are pretty good they did NOT physically abuse him, although surely they taunted him for having a PhD from a cut-rate diploma mill like Cornell.

Yeah, titles are important in Germany. But this is a bit absurd. Even Germans think so - the head of Germany's office for foreign education, Barbara Buchal-Hoever, said
"This is a completely overdone, mad, absolutely ridiculous situation."

She added "The people who have pressed charges must be gripers or troublemakers who wanted to make a totally absurd point."

And what I'd like to know. Who turned in Baldwin and the other of the American Doctorate-Holding Seven? Probably some disgruntled German graduate student who was struggling with his/her thesis at Heidelberg and was peeved that these damn Yanks were calling themselves "Doktor" when they shouldn't have.

Let the investigation begin. Perhaps we should begin by interrogating law students - they seem like the sort that might learn of this law, and be narrow-minded enough to apply it.

don't panic, not every school teacher is fondling your kid

An alarming and long story from the Associated Press relays some examples of school teachers who have sexually misbehaved with school children makes for some unsettling reading.

As the report notes, there are 3 million teachers in the United States. Over the period 2001-05, AP found 2570 cases of teachers punished - usually fired - for allegations of sexual misconduct. And I'm sure there are plenty of cases where teachers have done something wrong - brushing up against students, even having sex with them - that have not been discovered.

But that is still a very small number out of the entire teacher population. Don't close your eyes to obvious evidence, of course, but don't panic - odds are very very good your kid's teacher isn't fondling your kid.

The odds are much better that YOU are sexually abusing your kid. Or your no-good brother-in-law is. Or dear old granddad.

deception in marketing?

I was simply shocked, shocked to read today that when you see those critics' blurbs for the latest movies ("the feel-good slasher flick of the year," "I laugh then I cried") in the advertisements in your friendly local paper, that the description of the critic is not necessarily accurate. For example, they may refer to Joe Blow of "ABC-TV" when in fact Joe Blow does reviews for some low-powered ABC affiliate in Podunkopolis.

Wow, am I disheartened. Next, you'll tell me I can't believe our own President when he tells me something. Gosh.

defending imus by defaming king

Last week Washington Post columnist Colbert King had a column about Don Imus's frequent resorts to racist commentary; King decried politicians and media figures for appearing on Imus' show despite his habit and for not standing up to him by calling a racist a racist.

This week, at the end of a column about Hillary Clinton accepting $800,000 from a fundraiser hosted by rapper Timbaland, who uses the word "ho" once or twice in his lyrics ... per line, King shares some of the emails he received after his Imus piece.

You can read King's entire column here, but copied below is a sample of the sort of crap he copped from Imus supporters.

"These two [yours truly, and another African American Post columnist] are the dumbest of the current black race-mongers at the Washington Post." -- J.S.

On (King's) reference to attending Francis Junior High School: "You never did matriculate, did you?" -- B.W.

Regarding (King's) membership in the National Association of Black Journalists: "Why don't you work for a paper owned and run by Blacks?" -- Angry White Chick.

"Clearly, seeking out and writing about (White) discrimination and stoking up racism is your job. Discrimination-hunting pays for your nice house, your late model cars . . . In fact, it's the only reason you have a job. Nobody would read your articles if you wrote about anything else." -- J.K.

"I am fed up with Imus but I am even more fed up with black people . . . Yes, all African Americans. As a whole. [Imus] was a piddling story to be making such hoopla over." -- R.S.

"Imus was the fall guy for a culture of rap and hate radio that, unfortunately, will never change." -- P.M.

"Get a life. Or maybe instead try dealing with where Imus learned to talk that way. Hip Hop and Rap, ohh but you wouldn't get the play you get by jumping on the bandwagon to silence someone who is white and rich." -- D.B.

"IMUS MADE A MISTAKE! BUT HE HAS DONE MORE GOOD IN THE LAST 10 YEAR THAN YOU WILL IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE." -- Bob.

King said he loves his job. When he gets emails like that, you suspect he's being a bit ironic.

it's a free country, don imus

You know, it's a free country*. Don Imus is free to call the women's basketball team at Rutgers "nappy-headed hos". But, being a free country, Imus' sponsors like Staples and Proctor & Gamble are also free to not advertise on Imus' show any longer.

Michael Wilbon writes correctly that this is hardly an aberration for old Don Imus. This wasn't a slip of the tongue, or a stupid out-of-character comment. Imus' descriptions of blacks as apes and cleaning ladies and all the rest of it are too frequent to give him the benefit of the doubt. Just like Mel "Sugar Tits I hate Jews" Gibson's track record is too well established to believe his protests that the bottle made him say those nasty things.

But I think Wilbon's probably right -- Viacom won't fire him because it will be tough to replace Imus with somebody else who gets similar ratings.

*Alberto Gonzales does not approve of this description.

and end to id all?

With today's shattering news, we can ask the question whether a long, ongoing tragedy will finally come to an end. I refer, of course, to the comic strips BC and The Wizard of Id. BC and Id cartoonist Johnny Hart died a couple of days ago.

Hart's BC had become controversial in the last 15 years or so for its overtly Christian overtones. But that's not the tragedy I'm referring to. I'm talking about how BAD both of these strips had been for so long. Rumor has it they were both pretty funny when they started, BC in 1958 and The Wizard of Id in 1964. But it's a fact that they had both become pretty stale a long, long time ago. I think they had both jumped the shark well before 1980 -- and still they appeared in our papers day after day, taking up valuable real estate on our size-constrained funny pages.

In Hart's defense, BC and The Wizard of Id were hardly alone in continuing on for years, decades even, after losing any sense of originality or humor. Peanuts was a shell (sorry) of itself by the end, Hagar the Horrible has lived up to its name for a long, long time, and Garfield was funny for about three months before it began repeating its lame lasagna jokes and its raison d'etre changed from humor (if that was ever the case) to reminding us of Garfield's existence so we'd buy his crappy merchandise. And reading Family Circus now is like experiencing one of Dante's circles of hell -- a particularly unfunny one.

Which makes me appreciate the decisions of people like The Far Side's Gary Larson and Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson's decisions to call it quits before the quality of their cartoons deteriorated. I miss them, but better to retire while still producing quality comics than to descend to the depths of BC and The Wizard of Id.

And that makes me ask -- will Hart's death mean the end at long last of his two signature strips?