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Neither is this.

A day of horror

09.18.06 (10:57 am) [edit]

About five years ago, our nation was thrown into a state of fear and panic. Some unknown person or persons seemed to have been attacking the United States. We did not know who was doing it, but we had our suspicions. We did not know if we would ever catch the person or persons responsible, nor did we know if we would be safe in our own homes.

A lot of people were panicking. They did not know if the attacks would be repeated. All they knew is that people had died because of it, and the attacks were unexpected.

They knew that we would have to make some changes and that our government would have to put things in place to prevent something so terrible and frightening from happening again.

The big question was how it would affect our nation in the long run. Would we bounce back? Would we always remember what happened, or would it slip from our minds to the point that we hardly thought about it? Would we even remember on what day it happened? Would the steps taken by the government even work? Five years later, would our news media be full of accounts of what happened, or would it go unnoticed?

The answers to some of these questions might surprise you.

If you haven't already guessed, I'm talking about the anthrax attacks. It's hard to find anybody who remembers on what date they first heard about it. Some of us know that we now irradiate mail. But only to Congress. And it won't make a difference, since you can still write to your congressman's district office. What we do know is that we sure as heck don't irradiate spinach, although it would have been a better strategy.

Why did we forget this? Why do we still remember 9/11? It's not that one was more of an ongoing threat. We are no safer from anthrax now, and nobody is spending billions to make us safer. It's not as if one had recurred. Neither has recurred. To be sure, the scope was different. More people died on 9/11. In rounded terms, both events killed 0.0000% of our population. More people die of preventable things each week than died due to terrorist attacks in the US in the history of our country. Spending a fraction of what we spent on food poisoning, or seat belts, or even swimming pool safety would have saved far more lives.

Instead, we spent billions on one incident, and forgot about the other. Those billions left us with more wounded and dead than on 9/11. Of course, we didn't really spend all those countless billions. Our own government admits that the war in Iraq is unrelated to the events of 9/11 and that there is no link now and was no link then between Iraq and 9/11. We understood Afghanistan, but the only people who see a link between Iraq and 9/11 are badly misinformed. Although Iraq is full of terrorists, they all took root after Saddam was gone. More Americans get killed by terrorists in Iraq every day than anywhere else by far. The money we spent in Iraq was completely unrelated to terrorist attacks. The people of Iraq may be better off in some ways without Saddam, but we are not safer from terrorism without Saddam.

Now we can't take liquid on airplanes with us. That means that I will have to leave my Purell home. It probably won't kill me, but I have a better chance of dying from something I caught on an airplane than from a terrorist attack. And the likelihood of catching something on an airplane just went up.
Our nation's position is to handle these things in a piecemeal manner. We close one door and leave another open. We now ban liquids, except baby formula. But we all know that terrorists don't care about killing babies, and they planned to use baby bottles to sneak the stuff on it the first place.

Terrorists could still blow up a plane pretty easily. Most luggage is not screened adequately. But if they want to blow up a planeload of people, there's no need to get the luggage on the plane. Since 9/11, major airports refocused their efforts. There is no longer an effort to match luggage tags with ticket stubs as people retrieve their luggage in most airports. Which means that a terrorist could walk in the exit door with suitcases full of explosives, and nobody would notice. They could take out several plane loads of people at the same time and not attract attention. They could place the luggage onto the carousel without attracting much attention. And it might even end up back on a plane if done right.

Of course, there's no need for any of that. Why smuggle on liquid explosives when you can smuggle on on anthrax? My Purell won't even help. All that would be needed is a puff of air near a vent. It's easier than blowing up a plane, or even blowing up a balloon. But if they use anthrax, they don't even need airplanes. They could just put it on our spinach.

Can you tell that I'm faking it?

06.18.06 (12:26 pm) [edit]

It used to be that advertisers were shady. They would run ads that were sometimes misleading, or incomplete at best. Then they would have a footnote, or some fine print explaining what they left out. For example, they might have offered a money back guarantee, but mentioned in the fine print that the shipping charge is not refundable. So you didn't really get all your money back, but they never claimed that you did.

These days, things have changed. Instead of leaving out details, they now use blatant lies. Then they have a "disclaimer." Somewhere in the fine print, you find out that the claims made were not true.

You don't have to read many newspapers, watch many TV commercials, or read many ads to find examples of this. Advertisements are full of words such as "only", "just," "absolutely," and other words that leave no wiggle room. Yet the advertisers wiggle anyway.

The problem is that this tactic is nothing short of blatant dishonesty. There's no room to mince words here. We are talking about lying. If a product is advertised for "only $19.99," then telling me that there's a handling charge means that the "only" part was false. They may claim that they were honest since they let me know, but they are still lying. After all, both claims cannot be true. If the "fine print" says "$19.99 plus handling" but the ad itself says "only $19.99," then one of the statements is false. Either the fine print is an admission that the "only" part was false, or the "only" part is telling you that the fine print is wrong. There's technically no reason why the fine print should override the main statements; it should serve to clarify, not contradict them. Indeed if one of the statements is false, there's no reason to assume that a particular one is definitive. It makes as much sense to assume that the fine print is wrong as it does to assume that the big print us wrong, or perhaps more.

Another problem is the very reason for the fine print. It's there because the ads are designed to fool you. If something is "absolutely" free, there cannot be any other conditions. If you check the dictionary, you will not find any wiggle room. So when you see an ad on TV that offers you one month's supply of vitamins "absolutely free," and then tells you that you pay "just" a small promotional fee of $69.95, plus shipping and handling, then you know that one of the statements is a blatant lie.

Just what is a promotional fee anyway? Are you hiring them to promote something for you? Are they doing anything for you except sending you the merchandise? If not, then it means that you are paying for the "absolutely free" product.

Another way that companies do this is by adding "shipping and handling." What exactly is handling anyway? You can ask, but they won't tell you the truth. The reality is that if you subtract the shipping cost from the S&H, you end up with the part of the price of the merchandise that they did not disclose. Yes, they split the price into two parts, and tell you about one of them. Then they add the other one back in later, so you are not aware of the real price. They give you the impression that the S&H is the reasonable cost of getting the merchandise to you, so it seems fair to view the "price" as the price.

But there's a problem with that. First of all, all merchandise needs to be handled. If you buy a can of soup at the supermarket, somebody has to get the soup from the factory to the warehouse, and then to the store. There are people and trucks and machines involved. Then somebody has to put the soup on a shelf for you. Then when you get to the cashier, somebody has to ring up your merchandise. If you were given the total price at the supermarket cash register, and found out at the end that $5 was added for handling, would you buy it if you were told that there are very real costs, so it's reasonable?

So what makes things different if you get something by mail? Yes, they have to put things in a box for you...maybe. And yes, they need to ship it to you. Those are extra steps, right? Actually, no. When the soup goes to the supermarket, a few dozen cans get put into a box. Some of the merchandise gets labels slapped on it too. In all, there's just as much work.

In reality, when you buy a Twist-A-Doodle Hair Thingy, it comes off the assembly line in a shipping container. After all, that's how they sell them. Perhaps some of the machines are set up to place two per package. That way when somebody gets the second one "absolutely free," (just pay $6.95 for shipping and handling) it's ready to go. The other reality is that when the operator takes your order, it goes into a computer. The computer causes a label to be printed out in the shipping room. Perhaps it gets pasted on the package automatically, then the box gets loaded into the UPS truck as it gets off the conveyor belt. Or perhaps there is actually a person to handle things. In that case, the handling consists of a person, who probably gets paid minimum wage, who takes a label and pastes it on a box. It might take all of ten seconds. In other words, take his hourly wage and divide by 3600. That's the real handling cost. And the shipping cost goes up very little for the second "free" item, if one gets added to your package.

This practice is not just limited to mail order companies. If you go to the American Express website, you will find an offer for their Clear card. "Clear from American Express has absolutely no fees of any kind." Except when you read the fine print, "absolutely" is not so absolute. They have fees.

Even retailers do this. Have you ever seen and ad for an HDTV, where the fine print says that a set top box is required to get HD programming? HDTV is a broadcast standard. If the HDTV tuner is not built in, it's not an HDTV. So they are saying "it's an HDTV (footnote: it's not an HDTV)." It just makes no sense. They could tell you that it's an HD monitor. Or they could just say that the average consumer is so stupid that he does not know that a TV has to have a tuner. They try to be a bit more tactful about that, but that's essentially what they are saying. It's okay to lie to you because they think you are stupid.
In the case of HDTV, the cable company and the satellite companies would just as soon keep you ignorant anyway. They fought to keep the tuners out of the sets. They told consumers that this would save them hundreds of dollars by not forcing them to buy something they don't need. Well guess what? Congress passed a law. Now most HD sets have tuners built in, and the prices went down, not up. And if you know anything about electronics, you know that the circuit board is no more expensive for an HD tuner than for any other type of tuner. If they are in all sets, the cost is negligible, not hundreds of dollars.

But here's the bigger secret. You don't need cable or a dish to get a high definition picture. If you live anywhere near a transmitter, you can get it for free with an indoor antenna, or a simple roof antenna. Even if you got lots of snow and ghosts with your old analog TV, and got cable so you could get an acceptable picture, it's not an issue with digital. Either you get the signal or you don't. If you get it, there are no ghosts, and there's no snow.

I live about 30 miles from San Francisco. I used to get one or two clear broadcast channels with conventional TV. Now I get 37 with digital TV, all for free with an indoor antenna. It was cheaper to buy tuners than to keep paying the cable company. The picture quality went up, the monthly cost went away, and the number of channels increased. And despite what they tell you, the quality of the picture from dish or cable cannot be one drop better that the one you get over the air for free if it's the same digital feed. So why are the stores telling you that you need cable or a dish to get the best picture? It goes back to assuming that the customer is stupid, and the customer does not understand that you get only what is being broadcast in your area, and it depends on how close you live to the transmitter. The funny thing is, everybody understood that just fine before cable came along.

But the bigger problem is that people let them get away with it. If they lie, somebody should complain to the TV station, or the magazine, or the state attorney general. After all, you have proof. They admit that they are lying right in the same ad.

To be fair, there are some ads that don't lie. They deceive you some other way. If the commerical shows a man who lost 35 lbs in one month, it's not a lie if it really happened. They simply say "results not typical" and they are telling the truth. But what exactly does the phrase mean? It means that you have no reasonable expectation that the product will do that. It would have to be what typically happened for you to expect otherwise. So if I invent a diet, and try it on 100 people, and it fails on 95 of them, I can then show you the other five. I'll let you know that results are not typical. In other words, I'd be admitting that I studied my product and found that it did not do what I wanted it to do. But I'm selling it anyway, and somebody will be stupid enough to buy it. If the results are not typical, it's not the product that's producing the results. If you think that you have the willpower to do as well as those who succeeded, then you can succeed without the product. You can build those muscles by doing push ups, or you can spend $6 for a chin up bar. You can do squats for free. And you can go to the government's website to read the latest guidelines on nutrition for Americans. If you follow them, you will lose weight if you need to do so. Your health will improve. I guarantee it. (In other words, I'll refund your money if I'm wrong.)

Free at last?

05.29.06 (5:39 pm) [edit]

Quick. In what year did slavery end?

a. 1777
b. 1818
c. 1865
d. none of the above.

If you picked, a, you'd be correct. In 1777, slavery was abolished by the Vermont constitution. But that does not address the bigger picture of complete abolition. If you had said 1818, you would have picked the correct date for Illinois, the 11th state to abolish slavery. At that point, a significant portion of the US was free from slavery. If you had picked 1865, you would have gotten the correct date for the abolition of slavery by the 13th amendment to the US constitution. At that point, slavery was officially gone from the US.

But what if you had picked choice d? Would you have been correct? If the Constitution had put an end to slavery, then how could 1865 not be considered the correct date? The answer, in simple terms, is that there are currently 27 million slaves worldwide. Yes, 27 million. These are people who have no more freedom from forced labor, beatings, sexual abuse, or involuntary separation from family members than the slaves in the US before the civil war.

Perhaps you've heard something about what's going on in Sudan. It's not a new problem. For decades, militia members from the north have been raiding villages in the south. They did this, and continue to do this with the full complicity of the Sudanese government. When they arrive, they slaughter the men. In brutal acts of violence, they split the men's heads open in front of their families. They drag the terrified women and children off for a possible lifetime of forced labor, squalid living conditions, and routine punishment for the slightest infraction of their rules. Young children are forced to live outside with animals, and get to eat only scraps of food that are discarded by the families that enslave them. Their existence as human beings does not get acknowledged. If they try to escape, they are lucky to survive the beatings and torture they receive. There is not a thing that I could write that could compare to the constant horror that these people must endure every day of their lives.

Perhaps you find some of this upsetting. I hope so. Any person who is aware of what is going on and is not upset by it has no conscience. But when you finish reading this, you can put it out of your mind. Or you can do something about it. The choice is yours. If you put it out of your mind, those millions of slaves worldwide won't suffer a drop less just because you are not thinking about it. But if you do something about it, you may make a difference.

People should be outraged. Some are, but most just don't know. If we can spend billions of dollars fighting a war, then how much should we spend on this issue? Saddam was a tyrant. But the world is full of tyrants and they cannot be ignored.

This is not an issue that is solely tied to Sudan. The problem exists worldwide. Even the US has slaves. The CIA estimates that there may be over 17,000 slaves trafficked into the US each year. For many, the lives they lead can be as brutal as for those slaves in Sudan. But that's the tip of the iceberg. This worldwide problem exists on every continent.

What can you do about it? Tell somebody. The more people know about it, the more people will listen. Write to somebody. Perhaps you think a single letter to your congressman won't make a difference. But with any issue at all, it's always the efforts of individuals that makes a difference. If individuals do not act, issues die. Search the web. Sites such as iabolish.com can give you information, and tell you how to support groups that can work toward ending the problem.

If your efforts end up helping a single person, you will have done something beyond measure. If you don't believe me, you will have to ask that person. Now go and do something. There are millions of people whose lives literally depend on it.

Gas pains

05.03.06 (11:25 am) [edit]

Anybody who has been paying attention has noticed that the price of gas is rising in the US. Some take it in stride, but others wonder what to do about it. It turns out that there are many solutions. I know. I read it on the Internet.

One problem is that people drive cars that are not fuel efficient. If you had a more fuel efficient car, it goes without saying that you would pay less for gasoline. So is it time to trade your vehicle in? Probably not. If you drive 10,000 miles a year, which is not far from the US average, and currently get 16 mpg, then what would happen if you got a new car that gets 20 mpg? The answer seems obvious. You'd get 25% more fuel efficiency. After all, 25% of 16 is 4, and that's what you are adding. But the problem is that many people get statistics backwards. It used to take 1.25 gallons of gas to go 20 miles. Now it takes one. You have cut down by 20%. On the other hand, if you got 20 mpg to begin with, your gas usage would increase 25% by getting the car that gets 16 mpg.

But 20% still seems pretty good, right? Assuming that gas is $3/gallon, then you would pay $1,875 per year with the old car and only $1500 per year with the new one. That's a savings of $375 per year, or about $31/month. If you really drive 12,000 miles per year, you could save a whopping $37.50 per month. The problem is that as soon as you factor in the cost of selling a car and buying a new one, the gas savings will be petty compared to the monthly payments or insurance. It's simply not going to be a big factor in most cases, unless you drive much more than average and buy a vehicle that's drastically different.

Does that mean that you should ignore mileage? Of course not. If you are in the market for a car anyway, it should be a concern. If there are competitive vehicles, and one gets much better mileage, then you are better off with the efficient one, all other things being equal. But the reality is that choosing a passenger car over an SUV will get you better mileage, but you won't be buying the same sort of vehicle. A Hummer would eat away at your savings even if it were fuel efficient simply because of its sheer cost, and a Mini Cooper will not let you haul your trailer around.

We all know that most people who buy SUVs never take them off the road. Four wheel drive is nice, but you can get that on everything from an Acura to a minivan. Objectively, I can tell you that a 4WD minivan will do just as well getting you to the ski slopes, and will hold your gear, but I can't speak for your personality. If you are more concerned with your image than with what the vehicle does, there's not much anybody can say. Even if a $40,000 minivan has all the features you need, I can't expect you to buy it if it's not what you want. Being practical and buying what you really need is good idea, but the bottom line for most people will be getting what they can afford.

So if buying a new car will probably cost you more, even if it saves in gas, then what can you do? One thing I've been reading is that many people buy the wrong gas. If your car is designed for regular gas, buying premium won't help you. In fact, it will only waste your money. Most people don't even know what octane is. Without getting into too much detail, octane makes gas harder to burn. With high performance engines that have high compression ratios, having the gas ignite too soon will cause knocking. At least in theory it would. Having higher octane gas will slow down the ignition, and have the engine work properly. If you have an engine designed for regular gas, then having gas that is not ready to combust when expected will not help one bit.

But what about cars that expect premium? I said that in theory, they would knock without it. But the reality is that modern engines have anti knock sensors, and the engine would adjust its timing to compensate. Many sites on the Internet will tell you that if premium is merely recommended, you will do just fine with regular gas. It's only when the manufacturer says that premium is required that you should worry.

So at what point do you decide to use regular in a car that asks for premium? If gas prices are going up, wouldn't it make more sense now to consider making the switch? The higher the price of gas, the more it makes sense to buy cheaper gas. Or at least that's what many people think. The reality is the exact opposite.

When gas was $1/gallon, experts told people that using regular gas could save them money. It's true that the engines would not perform as well. They would not go from 0-60 as fast as the manufacturer claims. But with responsible driving, most people would do fine. The other issues are that gas mileage would suffer. If the anti-knock sensors find a problem, they retard the timing. Your car ends up with an overly rich mixture for the ultimate timing, and also pollutes more. But the change in gas mileage could not compensate for the 20% increase in gas cost.

But now that gas prices are rising, wouldn't the savings be bigger? The reality is that when gas was $1/gal, premium was about 20 cents more per gallon. At today's prices, the difference is still about 20 cents. The difference remains constant, and the percent increase for premium shrinks. If you get 20 mpg with regular in a car designed for premium, an increase of only one mile per gallon would only cost a typical driver about $35 per year. And the increase could be closer to 2-3mpg, making it cheaper to use premium gas in a car that was designed for it. Not only won't the regular gas save you money, it will cost you money and could hurt your engine. Many automotive manufacturers even say so in the owner's manual. But none of this counts if your vehicle was designed for regular fuel, in which case you should never need premium gas. You might need a tune up though.

In this case, rising gas prices reversed what once may have made sense in some cases. Rising prices can do the same in other cases too. At $1/gallon, going out of your way to save 5 cents per gallon was a 5% savings. Now it's a 1.6666% savings. The extra gas you use getting to a gas station might be more of a factor. If you save $1 per 20 gallon fill up, and you get 18mpg, then going 6 miles out of your way makes you lose money. Going 3 miles out of your way and coming back is not worth it.

But some stations have a bigger savings than that. Some warehouse stores and "cash only" discount stations might be 10 cents cheaper. But if you have to use cash, and maybe even pay a fee for your ATM card, then you are better off getting a credit card that gives you a 5% rebate on gas. That saves you 15 cents per gallon.

If getting a new car doesn't help, and getting different gas or cheaper gas might not help, then what does? There are actually a few things left that cost very little, if anything. Under-inflated tires can cut fuel economy by 2% per pound, according to some sources. And studies showed that about 1/3 of all cars have at least one tire that's down by 8%. If yours are down by 5 pounds, then fixing it could give you an extra 10% fuel economy. I have no idea how well these numbers reflect your own car, but a tire gauge can cost less than $1, and a good one is less than $5. If you already have one, then adjusting your pressure could be free, and it could help more than buying a new car. Or it might just help a little. But either way, you will save at least some money on gas. You will save money on tires, since they will wear better, and you can pump your tires for free, especially if you already have a pump.

Some people estimate that a blocked air filter can reduce your mileage by 10%. I'm not sure if that's true either, but if it's even in the ball park, it won't take long to break even. Air filters are usually not expensive, and are easy to change.

The most sensible thing you can do to save gas is to drive less. Make a list of the places you need to go. Plan trips so that you can combine them into a single trip. Walk more. The exercise will help. Or ride your bicycle. Even if these are not all practical for you, you can probably do at least some of them.

The bottom line is that if you are not already looking to buy a new car, the best thing to do is to keep your current car well maintained, including proper tire pressure, and use the grade of fuel that the manufacturer recommends. And cutting out seven miles of driving a day can save more than trading in your vehicle. Forget that extra trip to the grocery store, make due with what you have, and plan things better next time.

-- "The MBLOG Consumer Newsletter is published randomly, and is available by subscription. Send your money to the address below. All of it. Okay, some of it."

Customer service

04.24.06 (6:09 pm) [edit]

It used to be that companies recognized the importance of customer service. They knew that if they did not treat their customers right, their customers would go elsewhere. These days, there are still some places that understand the concept. But on the Internet, the idea of good service is all but lost.

I got an email from XM radio. It said that my User ID is: . It also told me that my password is "GET PASSWORD" but it didn't help when I tried to log in. I tried their phone system, but I gave up after being on hold too long. Then I decided to email them. I got back the following: "We value our customers' input and strive to provide you with amazing service. We will respond to your inquiry within 24 hours."

Since when is 24 hours "amazing service?" If I got somebody on the phone within a minute or two, I would not consider it amazing. If they always answered before the first ring finished, I'd consider calling it amazing, but that would depend on the competency of the people at the other end. But if they put me on hold for 24 hours, I'd consider it terrible service. Why would they think that because I used their website, I'd be fine with 24 hours instead of getting a response within a few minutes? The method a person uses to contact them should not be the factor. The sad part is that I don't really expect to get a useful response. If I were a gambler, I'd bet a great deal that the email will just tell me to call somebody.

In fact, writing to the customer support department of just about any company on the web rarely does any good. The people there don't even bother to read what the customer wrote. They try to use their psychic powers to guess what canned response they can send. But the response never seems to address a single question that they were asked.

I don't know why I even bother. I should know better than to expect a response to be meaningful. If I get an incoherent response the first time, there's not going to be much point writing back. Once I decided to keep going anyway to see how far I could go. I figured that eventually, I'd get a response that made sense, or they would just give up. It turned out to be both. But until that time, they never seemed to get the fact that their responses were nonsensical. I figured out what they meant to say after a few emails, but their responses seemed so out of step with what they should have been saying that I could not help but write back each time. In the end, they wrote something clear, but they told me not to write back.

The following is a transcript of an email exchange with my bank's credit card division:

paperless statements       03/23/06 12:27:08 AM       2 of 2
You wrote:

Your system and my paper statement both mention paperless statements. Currently, your on-line system shows something that it calls a statement, but does not have the equivalent of the information that's on my paper statement. If I sign up for paperless statements, does anything change with respect to what I see on line?

 Re: paperless statements      03/23/06 12:50:46 AM      2 of 2
Customer Service Wrote:

If you elect to enroll in the Statements Online Only option, you will not receive a statement by mail. Instead, you will receive an email notification each month when your statement is available to view online. To enroll, simply select Statements Online Only from the Manage My Account menu.
Thank you for using our website.

 RE: paperless statements      03/23/06 10:00:50 AM      2 of 2
You wrote:

Please answer my question instead of copying and pasting what I can already read on your website.

 RE: paperless statements      03/23/06 10:35:48 AM      2 of 2
Customer Service Wrote:

If you elect to enroll in the Statements Online Only option, nothing will change with respect to what you see in the statement by mail. You will not receive a statement by mail. Instead, you will receive an email notification each month when your statement is available to view online. To enroll, simply select Statements Online Only from the Manage My Account menu.
Thank you for using our website.

 RE: paperless statements      03/25/06 02:49:37 PM      2 of 2
You wrote:

Your reply says that nothing will change with respect to what I see in the statement by mail, but I will not receive a statement by mail. That makes no sense. If I currently get a statement by mail and I stop getting one, that's a change in what I see in the statement by mail. What I asked about was whether anything would change with respect to the statement I see on line, and how I would see the information from my paper statement that does not appear in the current on line version. Again, I ask that you please answer my question.

 RE: paperless statements      03/25/06 04:29:48 PM      2 of 2
Customer Service Wrote:

We appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

Nothing will change from what you are currently viewing online. If you would like to see a statement more like your paper statement go to Printable Version on the statement page.

Thank you for using our website.

 RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 02:02:01 AM      2 of 2
You wrote:

The problem is that the printable version is not more like my paper statement. It lacks information about my dividend dollars. The part of your system that is supposed to show reward information shows wrong information. What it says is the "Total Div Dollar Earned This Period" is really the base dividend dollars earned. The total earned is not shown. The bonus dividend dollars are not shown. The "Previous Statement Div Dollar Total" also shows a completely wrong amount. My paper statement has the correct numbers. I need a record of this on a month by month basis, since your system gives no indication of dividend dollars earned this year, and dividend dollars are limited by calendar year. Are there any plans to get the on-line system to show correct information? It would be pointless for me to switch if there's no way to get the data that's currently on my paper statement.

 RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 02:55:58 AM      2 of 2
Customer Service Wrote:

We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience. If you sign up for Online Statements Only your online statement will reflect the Dividend dollars just like your current paper statements do.

The Rewards section of the website does not display the bonus amount for unbilled activity. However, once your statement generates, it should show the correct amounts.

Thank you for using our website.

 RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 04:15:03 PM      2 of 2
You wrote:

Since I got one reply saying that nothing will change from what I'm currently viewing on line, and the most recent response says the opposite, I'd like some clarification. What will my statement look like on line, and how will it differ from my printed statement in terms of content, if I switch to online statements only?

RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 05:15:20 PM      2 of 2
Customer Service Wrote:

We apologize, we have reviewed your previous messages and our replies. If you elect to enroll in All- Electronic Statements, the only thing that will change is your Dividend activity will be shown on your online statements. Other than this one exception, your online statement will continue to look like your paper statement. We hope this information helps.

Thank you for using our website.

RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 06:21:45 PM      2 of 2
You wrote:

The last reply I got contradicted itself. It said that my on line statements would continue to look like my paper statements, with one exception. The exception it mentioned was my dividend dollars. But the same email said that the dividend dollars would be shown on my on line statements, so that would not be an exception to my paper statements, which currently show them correctly. Also, my current on line statements do not look like my paper statements. While financial institutions I deal with give PDFs that look like the paper statement, you don't. I had asked about content, not appearance, but if I'm now being told that they would look like my paper statements, that goes against what I was told in earlier responses. I would be happy to have on line access to something that looks like my paper statement. But if I keep getting conflicting information, then I still don't know what to expect.

RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 06:33:40 PM      2 of 2
Customer Service Wrote:

We have responded several times to your inquiries and we have again reviewed all of our information. Again, we apologize for any confusion we have not cleared up.

An online statement can never look exactly like a paper statement, however, it will look very similar to what you are used to viewing. We have read the earlier responses and see at no time where we told you any differently.

If you have any doubts, please go to View My Account and Statements to view the information for yourself. Once again, the main difference to your online statement would be if you choose All-Electronic, you will be able to see your Dividend dollar activity on the online statement.

If you have any further questions, please contact us at 1-800-xxx-4934. We are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Outside the U.S., call collect at 605-xxx-2222.

Thank you for using our website.

RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 09:01:36 PM      2 of 2
You wrote:

I found your last response very disturbing. It's bad enough that I can't get a cogent response from anybody, but now you are denying that your support group wrote the very words that are in this reply. Here's a direct quote "your on line statement will continue to look like your paper statement." Here's another direct quote: "An on line statement can never look exactly like a paper statement." That's total nonsense. Other financial institutions offer PDF versions of statements that are identical both in content and in format. Even [your bank] offers this sort of statement to banking customers, and they are available for ordinary checking and savings accounts. Aside from the fact that I don't have the paper stock that [your bank] uses to print them, the actual content of the text is identical, and if I did have such paper, there would be no difference outside of print process artifacts.

RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 09:08:57 PM      2 of 2
You wrote:

You said "If you have any doubts, please go to View My Account and Statements to view the information for yourself." However, if I do that, the statement does not show my dividend dollars at all. That's why I wrote in the first place. You even said that it will change AFTER I sign up for on line statements only. Here's another direct quote: "If you elect to enroll in All- Electronic Statements, the only thing that will change is your Dividend activity will be shown on your on line statements." In case it's still not clear, the dividend dollars do not show now. Your reply said that they will show. But the same reply had information in it that directly contradicted that statement. Is it possible for you to send a reply that does not contradict earlier statements or contradict itself?

RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 09:12:21 PM      2 of 2
Customer Service Wrote:

Just to clarify one thing. If you are not enrolled in All -Electronic statements program, you will not see Dividend point information on statements showing online. However, if you do enroll in All - Electronic program which would stop paper statements, Dividend point information would be shown on statements beginning with your first statement following All - Electronic enrollment. For any other details, please take a look at the online statements.

Thank you for using our website.

RE: paperless statements      03/26/06 09:15:37 PM      2 of 2
Customer Service Wrote:

Thank you for your inquiry.

As stated in the most recent message sent to you from us, the Dividend Dollars will not appear on the online statement until you sign up for the All-Electronic program. We apologize for the confusion.

We understand you may be frustrated and we respect your right to pursue this issue further. However, we have provided all the assistance we can in this matter.

Please note, we will no longer respond to messages that are in reference to this issue.

Thank you for using our website.

That was a close one

11.05.05 (5:18 pm) [edit]

When I was growing up, I had a friend named Jonathan. We went to school together, but his family and mine had known each other for years. One day, he was at my house visiting. It was winter, and the streets were icy. So was the driveway. As my father was about to back the car out, Jonathan slipped and fell right behind the car. My father could not see him and ran right over him. Fortunately, the wheels missed him. Unfortunately, he died in a fire a few weeks later.

I didn't think too much about it at the time. He was dead and gone. But at that age, it didn't sink in. If you are a child, you get introduced to people by your parents, and often never see them again. It should be different with friends, but it isn't. Friends come and go. Everybody who is in your class one year is gone the next anyway. When you are young, it's just a part of life and you are used to it. When somebody dies, adults say that you don't understand, but you understand just fine. The person is gone forever. What you don't think about is the future. You have no idea what being a grownup will be like. You have no idea what expectations his parents had. You have never thought of the things that you might have done together that will never happen. Because at that age, so much was spontaneous.

I also didn't think about my father. Had Jonathan been a few inches more to one side, he would have been dead. My father would have had to live with that for the rest of his life. He never would have known that it would not have made much difference. Indeed, had Jonathan been run over, perhaps the fire never would have happened. I don't know if the fire was his fault, but the activity would have been less likely to have happened had he died in an earlier accident. Ironically, his mother and one of his siblings might have still been alive.

The car incident was a close call. Inches meant everything.

I was reminded of that a few days ago when I was driving down the street and a dog ran in front of my car. I was able to slow down fast enough to miss it. I was relieved. There was heavy traffic and cars were moving at 40 miles per hour. But I avoided hitting the dog. I watched the dog continue to run across the street. It ran across the median, and I heard skidding. I saw the dog get hit and go flying through the air. I heard it too. I don't know what happened next, since I was moving in the opposite direction.

It was a big dog. Perhaps it was a Labrador. It got hit right in the middle of its body with the bumper. After it went flying, the driver may or may not have had time to stop before reaching its body. I hope the driver was able to stop. I can only imagine the consequences, but I doubt that the dog survived.

The emotions were heavy. I went from relief to horror in a few seconds. I also thought about seconds and inches. Had it jumped in front of me a few seconds earlier, I would have hit it. I think I know how I would have felt. It never would have crossed my mind that had I not hit it, it would have died anyway a few seconds later. Instead, I have the image of the collision in my head in vivid detail. Since the dog had just run in front of me, I was watching it carefully. I was perhaps the only one who saw the collision from that perspective. Anybody else who turned his head at the last minute could not have seen the same thing. If they saw anything, it was probably the aftermath.

Two children were in the car with me. They were not looking out when it happened and they never saw the dog. They heard it, and knew what happened. I wish I hadn't said anything, but at a time like that, it's hard to be composed. One of the children asked me how often I see things like this happen. I answered, "Almost never." That's what I was thinking at the time, but it wasn't really true.

A few months earlier, I was driving in a heavy fog. I was going slowly. I heard a loud crash and didn't know what happened. "You hit a dog!" my passenger said. I couldn't have seen it because the impact was on the side of the vehicle. I didn't really hit the dog. It hit me. It ran out of its house through the garage door and never saw me. A second or two earlier, it would have been in front of my bumper. I think this one was a Doberman.

I got out and saw the owner. I was in a minor state of shock, but the owner was apologetic. The dog ran back to the house after the crash, and the owner kept insisting that the dog was fine. Still, I hope she took it to the vet. I'm sure that if anything was wrong, it was not life threatening. It was a lucky thing that the owner didn't open the garage door two seconds earlier. Perhaps she had turned around to turn off a light, or to do some other minor thing that caused a delay. I don't know and never will, but the timing was fortunate.

A few years before that, I was driving down a street, and saw a dog dart into traffic. There was a vehicle in front of me. When he saw that the dog was not stopping, he swerved into the next lane to avoid it. But the dog ran right into the next lane. A person might have frozen or backed up if he heard the skidding vehicle, but the dog didn't do that. There was no way the driver could have avoided it.

As I looked out, I saw that the dog was alive, but had blood around its eye sockets. I would imagine that the internal injuries were severe. Assuming that I had been keeping a two or three second following distance, it was another case where timing was everything. I don't know if I thought about that at the time, but I'm certainly thinking about that now. Two seconds later, and I would have been the one out there standing over it, wondering what to do.

Years before that, shortly after I got my driver license, I was driving down a street when a small boy ran in front of my car. He must have been about eight years old. I slammed on the brakes and missed him by an inch or two. He ran away. I had wished that I could have told his parents, but he knew he did something wrong and he was not about to stick around. My reflexes were good and I saw him right away. Had I been glancing toward the other side of the road, it would have been different. At the time, I probably thought about the need for somebody to teach that kid do be careful. Perhaps he learned his lesson, though. It might have stopped him from running in front of another car at some later date. Had I not been there at all, he might not have learned that lesson. But I'll never know. I have no idea who his is, what he's doing, or where he lives. I don't know if he's living or dead. But it's a safe bet that he's alive.

As with Jonathan, I would have had to live with it for the rest of my life had I hit him. I would have asked myself what I could have done differently. Was I paying enough attention, or could I have slammed on the brakes a second sooner? Even though it would not have been my fault, I don't think I would have been able to take that for granted.

I don't know how common these close calls really are. In all of these cases, my involvement could have been a lot more direct, and with much heavier consequences for me. In all but the last case, it wouldn't have made a difference. But I never would have known that. Seconds can mean everything.

Oh God, book II

09.15.05 (7:42 am) [edit]

When the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it was unconstitutional for schools to have students say the Pledge of Allegiance, there was an uproar. Conservatives could not understand how a court could have gotten things so wrong. Aside from not understanding how those Godless heathens could expect to impose their wills on others, they could not understand how the courts could fail to recognize the rights of anybody to express their religious beliefs. After all, that's what the Constitution is about.

In part, they are correct. In addition to preventing the establishment of religion by the state, the Constitution also very clearly states that the government cannot make any laws that prohibit the free exercise of religion. It's a delicate balance, but the government cannot stop people from exercising their religious beliefs, so long as it does not impose their beliefs on others.

To many, this issue seems clear. Those who say the Pledge are acknowledging their belief in God, something which the government cannot prohibit. They are also not advocating a particular religious viewpoint. A recognition that our nation is "under God" does not in itself force anybody to adopt a particular religion.

However, there are other things that must be considered. If we look at the history of the Pledge, it was not a government document, or a government creation. It was a item published in a magazine to promote patriotism. It did not even contain the phrase in question. It was not until the Eisenhower administration that this phrase was added, by our government, as a counter to those "Godless communists" who were our nation's biggest fear. Indeed, our government added "In God We Trust" to our paper money at the time. So despite the belief that these items have always been a part of US history, they are relatively recent additions. Many Americans grew up in an era when these phrases were imposed upon nobody, and prohibited by nobody. Normally, when somebody alters somebody else's work, we call it a copyright violation. When the government takes somebody else's work, alters it, and tells us that that's how we must read it, it's an outrage. Yet the backlash against the Soviet Union and the fear of mutual destruction were strong enough that there was no opposition.

Despite the history of the pledge, and despite the fact that the pledge existed just fine as intended, the change has been added and the current version of the pledge is the one with which most Americans are familiar. So doesn't it make sense to address the issue of whether it's appropriate for the government to prevent children from reciting it because a single parent does not like it?

In order to determine this, we need to set aside individual beliefs and look to the Constitution. The constitution makes it clear that the government cannot prevent the free exercise of religion. Religion is a key part of the lives of many Americans, and so is prayer. My religion requires prayer at certain times. For many Americans, this is part of life. Some of us cannot eat or drink without saying a prayer if we wish to follow our religious tenets. Others must pray several times a day in a strictly defined manner. The government can prevent none of this. So why should they be able to stop something as minor as a simple phrase, when they cannot stop something far more forceful? The answer is simple. The Pledge of Allegiance is not a prayer. I know of no religion that requires its recitation. Therefore, the failure to say it violates nobody's religious practice. Indeed, most Americans, even religious ones, do not recite the Pledge with any regularity. Although we may appreciate what it says, we are still free to practice those parts of our religion that are necessary for us to follow our faiths. The failure to say the Pledge does not preclude this right. As much as we may want to say that our rights are being violated if the Pledge is not recited in schools, it's simply not the case that doing so will in any way restrict our religious practice. We are still free as individuals to adhere to any specific practice of our religion, even if it is required during school time. The Pledge is just not one of them.

The issue of whether the "free exercise" clause of the Constitution is being violated here is a moot point. There is no legitimate claim that saying the Pledge is a necessary part of anybody's religion. That leaves the establishment clause of the First Amendment. The government cannot make any laws that establish a religion, and imposing a religious practice upon others is simply not allowed under the Constitution. If schools were to expect students to say a prayer, it would be much easier to tie it to a specific religion. But in this case, it's merely expecting students to acknowledge God. The problem is that, by doing so, even though a particular religion is not being imposed, it does require the imposition of a particular belief system that many Americans do not share. It is well understood that a religion need not be theistic. As incongruous as this seems, the umbrella of what constitutes religion is a big one. Furthermore, constitutional scholars as well as courts have recognized that imposing religious beliefs of any kind is establishing religion, even if it's not a specific religion.

So despite anybody's personal views on whether having children say the Pledge is a good idea, or whether it's harmful or beneficial, that's not the issue at hand here. The facts are that failing to impose the Pledge on all students cannot reasonably be said to prohibit anybody's practice of religion. The most religious as well as the least religious are still free to pray as they see fit, and those who complain the loudest are still free to practice their religion in its entirety. It's also clear that some Americans do not share the belief that we are "one nation under God," and that our constitution does not allow us to dictate to them that it is. So, from a constitutional point, the answer is clear. Prohibiting somebody from doing something that's a part of their religion is not an issue here. Nobody is harmed by not being forced to say the Pledge. All children are still free to do so at home, and the Pledge without those two words does just as much to instill patriotism.

That leaves us with politics. People on both sides can express outrage, but we all know what the Constitution says. We also know that nobody is harmed by not saying the pledge. Although it's questionable whether anybody is truly harmed by having to say the pledge, the right that they have to not recognize God is clear. The courts did what the Constitution requires them to do. Any statements to the contrary made by politicians who know better represent wishful thinking or political divisiveness.

If we truly wish to change this, the only real option is to change our Constitution. But changing our Constitution, whether it be to prohibit flag burning, prohibit gay marriage, or preclude our citizens from being able to deny God all go against the very nature and character of our Constitution and our country. Our Constitution defines the structure of our government, gives us a system of checks and balances, and affirms our rights as citizens. It is not a document that imposes restrictions upon us or takes any rights away from any of us.

Since the days of our founding fathers when our Constitution and Bill of Rights were presented, we have had only thirteen lasting amendments. We did at one time have an amendment to prohibit alcohol, and it was the only time in our history that an amendment was reversed. The only time that we changed our constitution to take away freedoms proved to be an unworkable mistake.

We all need to recognize and respect that our Constitution is a document that assures our rights, not one that takes them away. Whether we agree with the practices of any individual, we must recognize that they have those rights as Americans, and we should not try to hide behind the Constitution to impose any religious belief system on others. That's what we are about as a nation.

Please hold, somebody will be with you eventually

06.10.05 (9:30 am) [edit]

Yesterday, I needed to check on the status of a rebate. Not surprisingly, I got a recorded message. Chances are, you've heard these messages. They make little sense, yet they remain ubiquitous. In this case, I got a conglomeration of all the nonsense messages, and I'm sure the company was oblivious to the implications.

The message started off by telling me how my call would be handled by the next available representative. I knew it wasn't true. They went on to say that "my call" will be handled in the order "it was received." If we set aside for a moment that the statement makes no logical sense, if you combine it with the first statement, I would have to be at the top of the queue. Otherwise, the next available operator would have to handle somebody else's call and not mine.

The message went on to say that the approximate wait time would be seven minutes. Forget for a moment that I was still on hold fifteen minutes later, because the message that immediately followed that announcement told me to continue to hold because somebody would be with me "shortly." Since when is being on hold for seven minutes the same as being served shortly? Since when is 15 minutes "approximately" seven minutes?

A bit after that, I got a message saying that I'm second in line. If they started by saying that the next available person would help me, then why was I second in line? Did that mean that the next available person was still going to help me and skip the first? What happened to the "order in which it was received" part? Oh, yeah! They never said that "calls" are handled in the order in which "they" are received. They merely said that my call will be handled in the order in which it was received. So if only my call was the only one at issue, then how did they determine the order? Sorting a single item is pretty trivial, but the statement is still nonsense.

About 18 minutes later, I finally got to speak to somebody. I told her about my five dollar rebate check, and she told me that it had been mailed out and was already cashed. "But if you'd like a copy of it, send us $25 and we'll send one to you. Then you can file a report with the police department. We don't replace already cashed checks."

My spider is gone

06.06.05 (9:53 am) [edit]

My spider is gone. It disappeared about two weeks ago, and I haven't seen it since. I don't know if it died, or just went away. But after two years, it feels as if something is missing.

One day, it just showed up. It spun a web across my side view mirror, and probably stayed in the space between the mirror and the housing. I might have brushed the web away at the time, but it came back. It always came back. It didn't matter if I cleaned it, or if it was just from high winds. Sometimes, it got mangled after a road trip. But the spider survived.

After a while, I realized it wasn't really in my way. There were always a few strands blocking the mirror, but it didn't really affect my view. It amazed me how it hung in there all that time. Spiders are amazingly resilient. They spin a web, and then they have to wait for something to fall into it, or they don't eat. It's not a very likely thing to happen, but then again, there's no shortage of spiders. They must be doing something right.

It had traveled at least 30,000 miles. It had gone to the snow packed Sierras, and to the floor of Death Valley. It had been on smooth roads, and ones so rocky that I'm surprised it stayed so long.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that there was nothing more than the slightest trace of a web. It never came out to fix it. I don't know if it died or just moved away. I did find another web shortly after that. It was near the base of my rear wiper. But there was no spider. It might have been coincidence, but I don't know. That spot offered no protection.

I couldn't exactly have called it a pet. It wasn't a friend, but a secret stow-away. It managed to keep out of sight, but I knew it was there. I don't know why I should miss that elusive stranger that I never chose to evict, but somehow, I do.

Oh say, can you see?

03.02.05 (11:58 am) [edit]

A pivotal moment in the history of national anthems came when Jimi Hendrix redefined the Star Spangled Banner both to the delight of fans and to the shock of others. His playing was considered irreverent and disrespectful by many. But what's disrespectful about music? The song itself is about how the flag stood as a symbol of pride over Fort McHenry in the War of 1812 against England. But Hendrix did not use the lyrics. He merely used the tune.

If he used only the tune, that raises a few interesting questions. Playing it in a way that's reminiscent of a battle and of pyrotechnics does not seem out of character with the battle on which the lyrics were based, but one must look at the origin of the tune itself to understand things better.

Back in 1812, musicians and musical instruments were scarce by today's standards, and there was obviously no media exposure to music. It was typical back then for people who wrote lyrics to adapt them to an existing tune. That way, when they were published, readers would know how to sing them. This practice still exists today for groups such as the Boy Scouts and for many summer camps.

The tune that Francis Scott Key appropriated was called "To Anacreon in Heaven." It was essentially a drinking song for a men's club. It was based on a Greek poet who had a revival in popularity at the time, when it was discovered that he wrote about women and drink.

So without the lyrics, Hendrix could have more properly been accused of playing an old drinking song. His performance hardly showed a lack of respect under those circumstances, but what does it say in general that we in the US sing our national anthem to a drinking song in the first place?

Response to Dragonbait22

10.27.04 (10:49 am) [edit]

What do you think is the single most important issue in this year's presidential race, and who do you think will win?

In this election, there are many issues. Some are important, and others are unimportant. While it’s easy to talk about the war and the economy as the most important issues of the day, I would have to differ. The single most important issue is the environment.

Talking about the environment is like talking about high cholesterol. If your doctor tells you that you have that problem, it’s not something you can see or feel. If you take medicine for it, you won’t feel the difference. You will have to trust your doctor when she says that the numbers in your chart look better. In a few decades, you still might not appreciate that you did not get a heart attack. You were not expecting one and would have no reason to thank the medication for it. But if you ignore the doctor’s advice, that one heart attack could prove fatal. Then you won’t look back and say you were wrong because it would be too late.

There is a lot of scientific consensus on global warming, and air and water pollution. We know that these affect the lives of many, and potentially all of us. Bush may think that the findings are inconclusive, but that does not justify ignoring them; it justifies erring on the conservative side. If we treat the planet with respect, we lose nothing. But an environmental shift could change things in irreversible ways that can make parts or potentially all of our planet uninhabitable over time.

We can recover from a bad economy. We’ve done it before. We can recover from a war, even if our children and grandchildren end up paying for it. But we cannot recover from a destroyed environment.

Politicians know that the environment is not an issue that resonates with voters, so don’t expect to hear much about it.

Does John Kerry have a consistent position on the war in Iraq, and, if elected, would he be an effective leader in this war?

With any Senate bill, there will be a level of complexity. A Senator may support some parts but not others. He may even speak about this on the Senate floor. But ultimately, he can vote one way or the other. If he finds certain that parts of a bill make support untenable, he will vote against it. To say that he is against the other parts, even when he went on record as a supporter of them, is dishonest.

A good example of this would be Kerry’s support for middle class tax cuts that were in a bill that lowered tax rates for the very wealthy. Although Kerry supported many parts of this bill, he could not vote for it as a whole. To say that he’s a “flip flopper” because he says he supports something that he voted against is not honest.

With the war, it was clear that Kerry approved of action, if it was taken in a proper way. He supported a worldwide effort to contain Saddam, and that included the use of force if necessary. It also included a plan for how any such war would be waged, and an overall strategy for stability, peace, and a rebuilt Iraq. When Bush’s plan had none of that, Kerry did not change his mind. He voted consistently with his viewpoint and did not vote to authorize funding. He went on to call it the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s not inconsistent either. The UN and the rest of the world had not concluded that the time was right. There was no evidence that invading Iraq for the purpose of stopping terrorism was a sensible course of action. That’s not flip flopping. That’s showing character.

Last year, there was a bill in Congress that dealt with murder of pregnant women. It would have increased the penalties for that crime to include an additional penalty for the damage done to the fetus. Kerry supported that bill. Republicans killed it. It would be easy to point out that they claimed to have supported every portion of that bill. It would be true. It would be easy to point out that they voted against this bill. That’s also true. It would be easy to call them flip floppers and say that they supported penalties for killing a fetus but voted against it. That would be true, but misleading, and untenable. Yet it’s a common tactic of Republican Party leadership. The reality is that they voted against it because they supported a different bill. Not mentioning this is just as dishonest as not mentioning Kerry’s support of certain bills before they were amended, or support of certain amendments that would have made a bill viable for him.

The important thing is to look at a candidate’s stated positions, not what his opponent says his position is. In Kerry’s case, he has decades of consistency. Bush does not. Bush has changed his mind on many issues, and some of them were extreme.

Has George W. Bush misled the country regarding Iraq, and is his doctrine of preemption in our nation's best interest?

To say that Bush misled the nation would imply that he did not sincerely believe his own rhetoric. I think that would be an overstatement. I think that Bush believed every word he said. I also know that the information was wrong, as the rest of the nation now should know.

Bush may not have misled us then, but he is misleading us now.

On issues Bush opposes:

69% of Bush supporters said he favors the comprehensive test ban treaty.
72% of Bush supporters said he favors the treaty banning land mines.
51% of Bush supporters said he favors participation in the Kyoto agreement.

When questioned about their own opinion:

68% favored the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
66% favor the land mine treaty.
54% favor participation in the Kyoto agreement.

It would appear that a majority of Bush's supporters oppose him on these issues, but don't realize it.

This study shows that Bush supporters often have different views than Kerry supporters, which is not surprising. But it also shows that Bush supporters have incorrect beliefs of factual issues at an alarmingly high rate. These include issues for which the Bush campaign and indeed Bush himself had acknowledged that the generally held view by Kerry supporters is the correct one.

Bush said in a debate that we were justified for going into Iraq because “we were attacked.” Even though Bush has conceded that Iraq never attacked us, 40% of the nation believes otherwise. It’s clearly based on Bush’s own rhetoric. A majority of Bush supporters hold this view. 47% of them believe that Iraq had WMDs. Bush supporters think that most experts agreed before the war that Iraq had WMDs. Chief weapons inspector Duefler was selected by Bush to deliver a report to Congress on his findings. Even though the report and the findings of his commission concluded that Iraq had neither WMDs nor a major WMD program, 57% of Bush supporters believe that the report said otherwise, compared to 23% of Kerry supporters who were misinformed on this issue. Bush continues to make statements that lead his supporters to believe things that are not true. While it’s arguable whether his supporters misinterpret his statements or get the facts wrong for other reasons, it’s clear that something is causing Bush supporters to misunderstand the issues. When Bush’s comments appear misleading and his supporters have an incorrect knowledge of the issues, but one that is consistent with what Bush’s statements imply, I can conclude that Bush is misleading America.

However, before the war, things were different. There were experts who were consulted. Some of the top scientific experts in the country examined the evidence that Colin Powell was later to present. They concluded that aluminum tubes, purportedly for a nuclear reactor, were the wrong kind of tubes. They concluded that certain types of equipment were not the proper type for manufacturing chemical weapons. Yet despite the scientific accuracy of the reports, Bush decided to pick and choose which experts to listen to, and he limited his scope to the ones who agreed with him.

Did Bush mislead America by ignoring the facts and choosing the words of his supporters over hard evidence? That’s not an easy question. It would imply that Bush was capable of understanding the scientific details of the report, as opposed to honestly believing that one set of people was right and another was wrong. Or he may have felt that if two different groups come to two different conclusions, both constitute evidence. But it’s in his best interest to put forth the evidence that supports his case. While such actions would show the limits of his intellect and his inability to handle critical decisions in a way fitting the presidency, it does not show that he was misleading anybody on purpose.

His doctrine of preemption was not in our best interest. That point was covered in my entry here.

Fun and games

10.27.04 (9:23 am) [edit]

Some of us are good at expressing ideas, and others lack eloquence completely. It's wrong to judge people solely on their ability to communicate. A poor communicator may be a good and sincere person. It makes far more sense to judge a person based on his actions and stated wishes.

I believe that George W. Bush is a sincere person, if nothing else.

Let the games begin!

Conservatives for Kerry

10.27.04 (8:40 am) [edit]

The last place I would ever expect to find an endorsement for Kerry is in The American Conservative. That magazine is aptly named, and has never been a Kerry supporter for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, it does not come as a complete surprise that they don't support George W. Bush.

While they promise to oppose Kerry every step of the way if he gets elected, they still say that doing so is better than having Bush reelected. A continued Bush presidency will do so much to damage the cause of conservatism for years to come that they cannot look forward to another term of Bush's awful policies that fly in the face of sound conservative thinking.

Read this article to find out what the true voice of conservatism in America thinks. When what is perhaps the most conservative magazine in the US endorses Kerry over Bush, it's time to give things some serious thought.

American Conservative Magazine

Terrorism

10.22.04 (11:42 pm) [edit]

Anybody who is running for the presidency has to take terrorism seriously. It is a serious issue. But any presidential candidate who puts it in perspective would lose the election. We lost several thousand people to terrorism, and that's nothing to trivialize. But in the same year as the attacks, we lost 408,000 people to cigarettes. Those deaths were preventable. Most of those people would have preferred not to be smokers. Most smokers in the US would rather not smoke. If the US adopted smoking programs similar to the ones in California, the number of lives saved would be at least 100 times greater every single year than what we lost on 9/11. Given the choice between saving 200,000 lives of saving 2,000 lives, the choice should be clear. But anybody who ran on a platform of saving us from preventable deaths while prohibiting no adult who wants to smoke from being able to do so would lose the election faster than Mondale lost to Reagan.

Likewise, the US has an epidemic of obesity. Outlawing McDonald’s French fries could save far more lives than we are saving with our token steps to stop terrorism. But it would not be a viable platform to run on. Of course it would not be legal either, but there are ways around that.

We could start by having more meaningful nutrition labels, and education to go with it. Right now, there is no requirement for labels in the US to list trans fats. And portion size is up to a food manufacturer to determine. If the average consumer uses twice what they consider to be a portion, it changes nothing with respect to labeling requirements. When the requirement for trans fat labeling does go into effect, companies can play around with the portion size until the trans fat content is less than half a gram per serving, and then round it down to zero.

Companies such as Fleischmann's are already claiming that their products are trans fat free. They are liars. They may not have to list it on the nutrition label, but if they list it in the ingredients, they are lying when they say it’s not there. If we had honest labels, at least people could learn what foods might kill them. According to estimates, anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000 people a year die from trans fats. Wouldn’t improving the diets of Americans save far more lives than preventing another 9/11? Of course it would. But no politician can run on a platform of improving the nation’s health. As Bush keeps telling us, we can afford a war, but we cannot afford to care for the sick.

The fact is, the food pyramid is nothing but government propaganda. It was not put together based on scientific studies that showed that diets that adhere to it are actually good for people. It was put together by the USDA. Their job is to promote agriculture and promote the sale of food. Ever since the food pyramid was introduced, the obesity epidemic in the US grew to alarming proportions. Most Americans are now overweight, and close to a quarter are obese. It is literally killing people.

I’m not saying we should not try to stop terrorism. We should. If I had a few billion dollars to spend, I could think of a few things that might help. But instead, we close one door and open another. Ships come to the US every day with cargo containers that are not inspected. The cargo hold of airplanes never gets inspected. Do you really feel safer with all the extra security at the airport?

It seems much harder for a terrorist to get to the gate. People are weary of unattended luggage in the ticket area or even in the terminal’s departure area. But did anybody notice what happens in the arrival area? Not only don’t people notice unattended bags near the carousel, or even on it, but many airports got rid of the folks who check your luggage tags as you leave. This might cause a few bags to get stolen, but it also does something far worse. It allows somebody to walk right in through the exit with some baggage, plop a few pieces on each carousel (pretending he took the wrong bag, of course) and blowing up a few planeloads of people – while they are on the ground. That’s not to say that some of these bags would not make it back onto the planes. Luggage tags that convince somebody that they were misrouted might be all it takes.

When we close one door and open another, politically, all that matters is who notices. It’s easy to get bombs and weapons into this country and it’s easy to blow people up by the planeload or trainload. It just has to be done differently.

Some politicians would spend the money more wisely than others. They cannot afford to point out every way a terrorist can blow up huge numbers of people, but there are more easy ways than most people think. And the politicians are well aware of it.

Bush was right to say that he need not be too concerned about where bin Laden is. In the scheme of things, there are much more important things to be done. But getting bin Laden does send a message, and we cannot underestimate the value of that – or the value of watching what we say for political reasons. It’s not the first time Bush said something stupid. Lots of politicians say stupid things. But sometimes what is stupid politically might be more sensible than the acceptable alternative.

If we want to save lives, we need health care. We need jobs. We need a lot of things. And we should fight terrorism not by looking at what the terrorists did last but at what they might do next.

I could write to Congress telling them I’m concerned about airport security. I could have written to them years ago telling them how ridiculous I thought their knife policy was, and how they merely compounded it by posting signs outside of security telling people what sort of weapons they can take on board. But congress is not about to listen to me. They wouldn’t listen to me if I told them to improve people’s health either. It’s only an issue when Americans see it as one. And it takes a lot more people than just me. We can pretend that politicians are really talking about the important issues, but perhaps some of us are beginning to learn.

The real issues in the election

10.21.04 (5:47 pm) [edit]

With the upcoming election, many politicians are discussing the issues of the day. Some of them elicit strong and polarized responses from voters. Nevertheless, we cannot have an election without considering the major issues and where the candidates stand. So what are the major issues?

Abortion I hate to break it to folks, but this is not a major issue. It has little to do with the presidency, if anything. Reagan was the first president to make a big issue of it, and it got him support. His supporters liked the fact that he agreed with them, but in reality, he did nothing about abortion one way or another. Who becomes president has nothing to do with the abortion issue.

Ultimately, it’s the Supreme Court that decides whether abortion laws are constitutional, and neither Congress nor the President can change that by enacting new laws. A constitutional amendment would change things, but it’s not going to happen when most people don’t support it.

The Supreme CourtIf the President can’t do anything about abortion, surely he can influence things by appointing justices who will see things his way. Wrong again. You see, there’s a game that all politicians play. They know who can pass the muster of a Senate confirmation hearing. They also know who their backers would support. And it’s never the same person. So here’s how the game works. First, the president finds somebody who is relatively neutral and can breeze through the Senate. That person may seem to lean slightly to one side, and that person may not even let on that much. The next step is to get somebody controversial whose views mirror those of the President’s extreme supporters. That’s the person the President will nominate. When the person gets chewed to bits in the Senate, the President will send in his more moderate choice. That person will fly through, especially considering that he’s not as bad as the last one. The president looks good to his supporters, because he “really tried.” The Senators who opposed that choice look good too, because they “saved the Court.” But the reality is that the President knew that the first guy would never make it. How could he not?

Yes, we do get an occasional Clarence Thomas, or Antonin Scalia, but not when things are this divided. And sometimes the seemingly conservative choice turns into an ultra liberal. If you follow the Court at all, I did not need to tell you that.

Gay marriage We all keep hearing about this one, so it must be an important election issue, right? Wrong! Bush is warning us about the “activist judges” and how we must be protected from them. But no judge can make such a decision without it going to the Supreme Court. Does Bush consider them to be “activist judges?” They are one of the three branches of our government, and they, and not the President get to decide such issues. If Bush is worried that the Court might not side with him on this one, shouldn’t he do something about it? Not so fast. If they don’t agree with him, that means it’s unconstitutional not to allow Gay marriage. It’s a right that people have. It would take a Constitutional amendment to change things, and advocating views on it without one makes no more sense than the abortion debate. So what’s the problem? The President has nothing to do with the amendment process. It’s up to Congress to come up with an amendment. It’s up to the states to ratify it. It never goes to the President, and legally, his voice is no more important than mine on this issue. Indeed, the best thing Bush could do to help his cause here is to get Kerry out of the Senate. Yes, if Bush loses, he’d be a tiny step closer to getting this amendment.

What about Kerry? He’s using the issue too. His stance is that he supports everything that gay marriage stands for. He just won’t call it that. It’s a semantic game. The only role that the government has in marriage has to do with defining rights and upholding contracts. The laws requiring individuals to get married in order to have sex are long gone. There is no law saying that anybody needs to be married to have children. If I were single, I’d be able to live with five different women and have children with all of them, and there’s nothing the government would be able to say about it. Marriage is not about having a family, or about having sex, or any of the things that Bush’s side says. Nothing gets preserved by Kerry’s definition either. People can live the same lifestyles with or without this change.

But what about the religious aspect? For that, you need to consider the first amendment to the constitution. The government simply has no say in this. An amendment defining marriage would change nothing. Right now, any church or temple or mosque or any other religious group could perform a gay marriage if it wanted to and there’s not a thing that the government could do. And people could still call it a marriage whether the government recognizes it or not. Likewise, if the Supreme Court rules that gay marriage is a right, no church in the nation would be forced to perform one. If they feel that it violates their religious views, they don’t have to do it. If the couple got married at City Hall, the church need not recognize it. The religious aspect has nothing to do with it.

So if Bush and Kerry both deny that they want to take rights away from anybody, then what’s the issue? There is none. It has nothing to do with the presidency. The President has no power to do anything about it one way or another no matter how he feels and who gets elected makes absolutely no difference here. Both sides bring up issues such as these to get people in their camp. If you think that Bush is a lousy president, but you can’t stomach Kerry’s ideas on abortion or gay marriage, those arguments might persuade you. But they should not. They are simply irrelevant.

The economy This one is a real issue. But the President does not affect the economy nearly as much as people think. The economy has cycles, and it’s difficult to change them. When the economy is good, I might go out and buy stuff. I might buy a new car. My neighbors might do the same thing. As the economy continues to grow, more people will jump on the bandwagon. Eventually, a critical mass of people will have new cars and will stop buying. There will always be some who did not buy a car at the peak, so there will continue to be sales. But they will be slow when the economy is slow. The exception to this rule comes with new technology, and the President can have an influence there, but I don’t hear big ideas coming from either side.

Under the Clinton administration, things were different. Clinton supported high tech, and made it easy for companies to grow. And Al Gore brought the Internet from obscurity into mainstream America. Folks gave him a hard time about claiming to invent it, but he never actually said that. He was talking about a series of initiatives he took in Congress, and one of them was for funding of the Internet. It created the Internet as we know it today. It was an obscure government project before Gore brought it to prominence. But Gore is not running, and the folks who are don’t seem to be talking about this.

Although the President cannot cause economic cycles, he is not without power. When an economic cycle lasts longer than it typically would, there may be other factors. When Clinton was president, the economic boom lasted far longer than would have been expected based on cycles alone. He got the minimum wage raised. He got taxes raised for the richest Americans. The Republicans predicted disaster (as they did with the family leave act) and they told us not to blame them for what would happen as a result. If they wanted to make Clinton responsible for what came next, they should not be so quick to forget their own words.

Yes, cycles happen. But they need motivation. When people think the economy is getting bad, they will save their money. Eventually, they will find that they have money, and their car finally gets old. That’s when they spend. Raising the minimum wage will help the economy because people spend more. People who earn the minimum wage will spend literally everything they have. Businesses do not get hurt by this because they are taking in more money. It makes up for the extra money they have to pay. If a cashier makes an extra 50 cents an hour, but in that hour, she checks out more merchandise, the store is ahead. Likewise, the very rich do not fire people or cut down on their spending just because of a tax increase. There may be rare exceptions, but in general, if things are that tight, business taxes are low. The fact is that if they need a certain number of people to make a certain profit, they will not cut their staff because they know they will lose more money if they do. If that were not the case, they would make the cuts regardless of any tax changes.

Yes, the economy can be stimulated to make the boom happen early. If people believe in the economy, the boom can go into overtime. Despite what the experts said, we had a period of very low unemployment and a strong economy without triggering inflation under Clinton. The textbooks said that this was theoretically impossible. The textbooks had to be rewritten. The experts were wrong.

Likewise, a President can talk the economy down. So can a candidate. When Bush ran for office, he spent a year telling the nation that the recession was coming. At the time, there was no strong notion that Gore would win. When people heard such a thing, many of them saved their money for fear of losing a job. It was not the time to be extravagant. Yes, Clinton was still president. And yes, the recession started under Clinton. But make no mistake here. Clinton’s overall record on the economy was one of the best in history. If you want to blame Clinton for the beginning of the recession, fine. But Bush was President ever since. There are fewer private sector jobs now then when he took office. The stock market is no higher than before the recession. In fact, it’s lower. We had no real recovery. We are not better off than we were four years ago as Reagan used to ask. If you want to claim that Clinton started it, how do you justify that Bush could not end it and instead ran up record deficits? The answer is war.

The War September 11th happened. It was not Bush’s fault. It was not Clinton’s fault. A bipartisan commission looked into that. I could be a partisan here, but I won’t be. If a bipartisan commission found no single party or person at fault, I’ll have to live with that. But the next question is what to do about it. Sometimes, you lead the world to victory. Other times, a situation falls in your lap. On 9/11, Rudy Giuliani went from being an extremely unpopular mayor to the darling of the country. Why? Because he was attacked. It really had nothing to do with him. And that part had nothing to do with Bush either. Congress was almost unanimous on its decisions regarding Afghanistan. It did not much matter who was in office.

At the time, Bush had done nothing to change the military since taking office, nor had he make any funding changes. He essentially won the war with Clinton’s military. But he got distracted and decided to go into Iraq.

We all know that there are no weapons of mass destruction there. Some blame the earlier lack of knowledge on failed intelligence. But the fact is that scientists looked at the evidence long before the decision was made to go to war. They were shocked to see Powell make statements that flew in the face of science. I can’t say what happened, or why Bush considered only the opinions of those whose findings were in line with his ambitions, but it’s not hard to make a case that he did what he wanted, not what was needed. He told us that Iraq was defying the UN and something must be done about it. His solution was to defy the UN and take us to war, and people missed that leap of logic.

Before that war, Iraq was contained. The borders were secure. We had a no fly zone in place. Saddam had been disarmed. He had no weapons of mass destruction and we knew it. He had no means of being a major threat to us. Indeed, he didn’t even want that. Saddam actually liked the West, but wanted to stand up to us to look good in the Middle East. Iraq had no terrorist networks or connections with 9/11. These days, Iraq is crawling with terrorists. We did nothing to keep them out. We did the opposite. Who are they killing or injuring? Our soldiers. More soldiers have been killed or injured by terrorists in Iraq than the number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks. We are not saving American lives. We are losing them. Zarkawi was around before we got Saddam out, but he had Saddam to contend with. Not any more. Iraq is his.

Even calling it a war at this point is inaccurate. To have a war, you need a sovereign enemy. We got Saddam out of power. There is no more enemy government in Iraq. We have an occupation. It’s not enemy soldiers killing our soldiers in a war. It’s terrorists killing our soldiers in an occupation.

But we had to stand up to them, didn’t we? We could not have shown them that we are weak. They thought we were weak. When Reagan had troops in Beirut, our troops were attacked by a suicide bomber. Reagan pulled us out. The Arabs saw us run away with our tail between our legs. We did not show strength. But we should not have been there in the first place, and we should not be in Iraq now. All the reasons we were given have been proven false.

If you want to know Kerry’s background and how he really feels about war, I suggest you see "Going Upriver - The Long War of John Kerry" for free (as a Torrent) here: http://www.thekerrymovie.com/... You will need broadband, but it will give you an idea where he is coming from. Then you can judge his leadership skills and views on the war more fairly.

If you are afraid of “changing horses in midstream,” keep in mind that the current horse does not know where it is going. It’s no secret that most people in the US have no confidence in how Bush is handling the war or the economy. Yet we become so obsessed with issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the presidency at all that we lose track of the real problems.

An isolated incident

05.06.04 (9:34 am) [edit]

Suppose I were a soldier and I suddenly got the urge to strip a bunch of prisoners naked, humiliate them, and take pictures? How would you react? “It’s not like him,” you might say. “He never did anything like that before.” But would you simply forgive me? Would you decide that I must have had a good reason? Perhaps you wouldn’t say any of that and just condemn me from the beginning. But would you do that if I were a close friend?

How would my fellow soldiers react? Would they do the “right thing” and report me? Would they simply go along with it, and if so, why? If they did, it would not make me think that they found it abhorrent.

How many would go along with it? Wouldn’t somebody step forward and say that it’s wrong, illegal, and would disgrace my country? Is it conceivable that every one of them would go along with it?

What if somebody else in my unit did it? Should I report it? Should I be proud of myself for doing so? Would I be treated with respect for it and commended as a hero? Would the folks back home be proud?

What if the person who decided to do this outranked me? Should I still go along with it? The military code says that I do not have to follow an order that is clearly illegal but is it that simple? Would I be praised for going over my commanding officer’s head? Would I be chastised for it and treated like an outcast?

A lot of this depends on the culture. If my training reinforced the difference between right and wrong, it might not be so bad. Had it been reinforced time and time again that we must uphold our moral character above all else because the whole world is watching, had it been reinforced that reporting misconduct is noble and protecting the miscreant is wrong, then the answer might have been clear.

But the problem is pandemic. It’s not that a few soldiers disregarded everything they were taught. Those values were not instilled in the first place. It’s the entire military. It simply does not have the culture to prevent such a thing.

To the Arab world, this is an American problem. We have a lying president who does not care. That was their reaction to his speech. When I listened to Bush on the radio, he sounded largely credible. I did have problems with his answers to the questions about Al Qaida, though, and I think he ducked the real question, but the other answers were at least pointed in the right direction. Seeing him on television was another matter. “He’s such a liar.” That was my wife’s reaction. Bush did not look very comfortable to me, but women are much better when it comes to interpreting body language. What she saw and what I had heard were two different things. Now the reports are all saying that Bush gave excuses, but no apology.

I thought from the beginning that Bush needed to apologize. America needs to apologize. When we do something wrong, we should own up to it. The current administration, and elected Republicans in general have always had a problem with this. They didn’t like it when Clinton apologized for past mistakes that the country made. While I can understand why they feel that they are not personally responsible for past injustices, that’s very different from not admitting that our nation was responsible. It’s also very different from the current situation. A few days ago, I heard a general discussing the issue. “Am I going to apologize for it? Hell no!” he said. In a case where there is no question that there was wrongdoing, and there was no question as to who was responsible, why do we have generals like that in command? It’s now clear what the problem is. The military as a whole has a serious problem understanding appropriate conduct and owning up to their responsibility, and the problem goes all the way to the top.

In the mean time, we had Rumsfeld burying his head in the sand. Rather than making sure that the highest levels were aware of this severe problem, he pointed to a vague press release from months ago as if that was full disclosure. While Bush may have been mad about it, he’s still behind Rumsfeld 100%. Don’t expect his head to roll any time soon.

But what about America as a whole? Should we be shocked? Is it really part of our culture? To answer that, we don’t need to look very far. We can look at our school systems. We can even look back to the schools we attended in our youth. Those who are miscreants outrank those who behave. They are more worthy of protection. That’s our code as Americans. Don’t tell. It’s wrong. When a first grader sees somebody do something wrong and tells the teacher, it won’t take long before he learns that he made a mistake. He should not be protecting the well-behaved students from the troublemaker. He should be protecting the troublemaker from the teachers. Instead of reinforcing good behavior, our schools let this be the status quo. We don’t want our children to become a bunch of finks and snitches even if it really means that nobody gets hurt unless he does something wrong and it protects those who do things right. It’s not as if reporting a poorly behaved child will put him in jail. It would merely teach him that neither his teachers nor his classmates would let him get away with it.

What do we have instead? We have a culture in which those who tell are chastised. It doesn’t seem to matter that they are protecting others or keeping people from doing wrong. They are being cops.

It’s not that we dislike cops. We like them when they help out. We hate them when they cross the line. But that applies only to “real” cops. Those are the ones in uniform who are hired to tell on people. And that’s the part we are fine with. The problem is that even when real cops step over the line, they have their own code of silence. It’s the American way.

No, this is not an isolated event where a few soldiers did something wrong on their own. This is not something that merely extends to the entire military. It is America at fault, and it extends all the way up to our President. It’s the fault of anybody who does not speak out. It’s the fault of anybody who does not teach his or her children right from wrong and that being a good citizen means looking out for other good citizens and that protecting the bad guys is just a sham started by the bad guys for their own good.

America as a whole has a lot to be ashamed of here. So does everybody who does not act to change this.

Zero tolerance!

05.03.04 (6:17 pm) [edit]

I just read this article in the newspaper today. It was about a kindergarten student who brought a bag of "marijuana" to school. While it's not clear what will happen to the student, the article made it clear that the school has a zero tolerance policy and it's likely that this child will be punished.

What's wrong with this picture? Plenty! First of all, zero tolerance policies do the opposite of teaching. Instead of getting children to understand the consequences of their actions, and that different actions carry with them different degrees of culpability, they are told that there is no difference between a small inadvertent infraction and a blatant large scale one. This sends the wrong message. Children need to learn that circumstances count. That's why we have courts and trials. That's why a soldier who shoots a person in self defense is not guilty of the same crime as a person who does it to steal your hamburger.

In the past, I read about a child who was suspended for taking a knife to school. His mother inadvertently left a paring knife in his lunch box when preparing lunch. He turned it in, thinking he was doing the right thing. In another case, an asthmatic student saved the life of another student who could not breathe. Yet she was suspended for even having a life saving inhaler. We must say no to drugs.

But in this case, it was no accident. The child intended to take it to school to show off. So what's the problem? First of all, it was a bag of seeds and stems. Although they come from the marijuana plant, they are about as useful to a pot smoker as a wooden branch from an orange tree is to an orange lover. Second of all, there was no evidence that this child planned to smoke marijuana or distribute it. Indeed it was clear that a child that age was just playing "show and tell." Finally, when you punish a child who did not have a clue that he did something wrong before he did it, then you are teaching that punishments are an inevitable and unfair way of dealing with problems. It was not reasonable to expect a child that age to know that it was prohibited or even wrong. Sending him to an intervention program is just plain stupid.

Just say no to zero tolerance programs. Teach our children to think and be responsible instead.

What do you put into your body?

03.25.04 (9:41 am) [edit]

People tend to break things down into broad groups. Some things are good, and some are bad. Some people prefer natural foods to artificial ones. Some consume food with added chemicals, and others don't. Some use drugs for recreation or for medicine, and others shun them completely. Some use herbal or non-western remedies, but not drugs. Some use vitamin supplements and others do not.

But what do all these terms mean? Do they mean anything?

If we start with good and bad, what makes a food inherently good or bad? If it contains a poison, I can see why it's bad. But that's not what people mean in general. Just about anything that we call a food has some essential nutrients. We need a balance of calories, protein, carbohydrates, and vitamins in our diet, and these occur naturally in food. We can even use fat to some extent. But is it legitimate to say that a food itself is inherently bad? With some foods, such as McDonald's French fries, reports have been issued showing that the health risks are high enough that they should never be consumed. But would that apply to all people? Would it apply to a malnourished person who has the opportunity to eat them to avoid starvation?

What about natural and artificial? Is this really a valid concept? Something is natural if it occurs in nature. Potato chips don't occur in nature, so can there be natural potato chips? The ingredients, potatoes, vegetable oil, and salt all occur in nature. But is a diet consisting of foods with natural ingredients such a bargain? We know that potato chips are not among the most healthful items we can eat. Being natural is not the most relevant issue.

We are also hearing reports of contaminated food. Scientists are concerned about mercury in tuna and arsenic in our drinking water. But aren't those two natural? They are both elements that occur in nature. Natural does not necessarily seem to be such a bargain.

What about added chemicals? Any chemistry professor will tell you that H₂O is a chemical. So is NaCl. Those are water and salt and are both essential for life. It's impossible to make foods without adding chemicals. Red die number 2 is a chemical also, yet it was banned for health reasons. It's clear that we need some chemicals and not others.

What about drugs? Not long ago, nobody cared if you used the word drug or medicine. They meant the same thing. But with the "say no to drugs" mentality, many people are swept into the "anything that's pill shaped is bad" mindset. Is this rational? If we have chemicals that can remedy the body, does it make sense to examine whether they work, and whether they have potential side effects, or should we just ignore them as a group?

The first wonder drug was aspirin. It comes from the bark of the willow tree. This is not much different from the concept of eastern or herbal medicine. It has "magical" healing properties. It can reduce a fever and eliminate pain. It can reduce swelling. It can thin blood and keep people from having heart attacks. And it's a salicylate. Salicylates not only occur in nature, but also occur in foods that we eat. And they work better and do far more than Tylenol, which is not a natural chemical.

Before supermarkets went to the effort to give us "perfect" food, fruits used to have blemishes. Nobody picked out the best looking fruit for us, instead of the best tasting fruit. Nobody delegated the rest for canned fruit or other purposes where the peel got thrown away. Back then, fruit had natural marks and some bruises. Nature's way of dealing with this situation is to produce salicylates. They would end up in the peel. Your fruit was making its own aspirin, and you were eating it. Or at least your ancestors were. Our diets are lower in salicylates than ever before, just at the time when some people are shunning aspirin. Yet some scientists are wondering whether aspirin should be classified as a vitamin.

In the 20^th century, aspirin was first available as a powder. Those who shun pills had nothing to worry about. Here was a substance that was derived from a tree bark and came as a powder, but nobody had yet pressed it into pill form. But these days, that distinction can make all the difference for some who shun drugs, but accept herbal remedies.

What about vitamins? There are some who don't want to take vitamins because they don't want to take drugs. But vitamins are not drugs at all. They are natural substances that are necessary for the normal function of the human body. You can get them all through foods alone. But many people do not get enough of some of them. Is getting it through something pressed into a pill so bad just because of the shape? How does that differ from drinking milk or orange juice? When you drink milk, you are getting many things that are good for you, and sometimes more fat than you need, but the vitamin D that's there is added. It's a vitamin supplement just as much as the one in that pill. If you drink orange juice, you have a natural source of vitamin C, but you may be taking an artificial source of calcium. But it's there because it's good for you. That breakfast cereal with all those vitamins is probably enhanced too. Somebody took the same vitamins that go into the pills and added it to your breakfast. But there are some who will eat that bowl of Total with milk, yet would not take a vitamin pill.

What about a gummy-vite for the kids? It's a gummy bear that's a vitamin. In that case, it's a food that is fortified with vitamins just as with a breakfast cereal. Would that get over the objections of those who avoid vitamin pills but would eat or drink a food with a supplement? They would probably think of it as a vitamin that is shaped like a gummy bear rather than a gummy bear that contains vitamins, as do many other foods. Because of this, they might be avoided too.

And if you do actively avoid vitamin pills, whether you eat fortified foods or not, do you actively avoid foods with artificial colorings or flavorings or preservatives? The colorings do nothing to help you. Unless the psychological boost is so strong that it gets somebody to eat something with an essential nutrient that he would not eat otherwise, you just don't gain anything from them. I can also see the potential for artificial flavors to be worse for you than natural ones, and humans already have a pretty good idea of which natural products are edible. As for preservatives, you don't need them. In an ideal world, you get fresh food and eat it right away. But for practical purposes, people don't eat things right away. There's a trade off between preservatives and bacteria, and we already know what the bacteria can do.

What does it say about you if you are willing to eat a bag of Cheetos, but will not take a vitamin or an aspirin?

It would not surprise me if people were avoiding anything with 'artificial' ingredients regardless of what they are, but I think there are more people who would eat them on a regular basis, yet avoid things such as aspirin or vitamins.

Has the "just say no to drugs" mantra blinded us to the point that we can't think? Can't we pick and choose between what helps and what does not? Words such as drugs, pills, natural, artificial, organic, chemical, additive, vitamin, and even poison can be meaningless without addressing the context.

What do you put into your body?

Fun little quiz

03.19.04 (11:35 am) [edit]

The following glossary is taken from a website dealing with crustaceans. It's from the Australian Isopoda: Families section. Just for fun, read through them and let me know how many of the definitions you already know. Some of them are easy, but some are not everyday terms.

This glossary contains definitions of morphological terms as provided by Wilson (1989) (with an emphasis on the asellotan superfamily Janiroidea) and Wetzer et al. (1997) (more generally to Crustacea and Isopoda). Kensley amp; Schotte (1989) also provide a glossary for terms used in isopod systematics.

Aesthetasc. A long, tubular sensory seta having thin cuticle, found on the antennula. Aesthetascs may have a chemosensory function, because males generally have many more than females.

Ambulosome. The part of the thorax of munnopsoid isopods that bears the walking legs. It consists of pereonites 1-4.

Ambulosomite. A body segment of the ambulosome.

Annulus (plural annuli). A distal segment of the either the antenna or antennula, generally tubular in form.

Antenna (synonym, second antenna). The second, paired, cephalic appendage. It consists of four short, robust, proximal segments, two long, intermediate segments, and a long series of tapering annuli, called the flagellum. The third basal segment bears a smaller, lateral appendage called the antennular scale that is homologous to the exopod in other Crustacea.

Antennula (synonyms first antenna, antennule). The first paired cephalic appendage. In munnopsoids, it consists of a wide flattened basal segment, two segments of intermediate thickness, and distal annular segments of varying lengths. The most distal segments generally bear aesthetascs.

Appendix Masculina. An alternative name for a stylet-like copulatory structure on the male pleopod II. This structure is not homologous to similarly named structures found in non-isopod Eumalacostraca.

Article. A segment of any limb, but usually applied to the antennula or antenna.

Basis (plural Bases). The second segment of a thoracic limb. See pereopod.

Biarticulate. Consisting of two articles or segments.

Bifid. A structure with two distal tips, as in unequally bifid seta.

Biramous. Having two branches, a typical condition for most primitive crustacean appendages.

Brooding Female. An adult female with fully-extended oostegites on the coxae. In most deep-sea samples, the developing embryos are lost during sample processing, so it is generally not possible to tell whether the female was in fact brooding embryos, or whether she released the young before sampling and had not moulted to a preparatory stage.

Broom Seta. A sensory seta that has a distinct articulated pedestal, and two distal rows of long, extremely thin setules. It may be found on the antennulae or any of the pereopods.

Carpus. The fifth segment of a thoracic limb. See pereopod.

Cephalic Dorsal Length. The length of the cephalon measured in a straight line along the dorsal midline from the posterior edge to the anterior vertex or rostrum, depending on which is present.

Cephalon.The head, or anteriormost body unit. In isopods, the cephalon bears the eyes, mouth, antennulae, antennae, and 4 pairs of mouthparts (mandibles, maxillulae, maxillae, and maxillipeds).

Chaetotaxy. The form, number, and shapes of the setae.

Circumgnathal. Around the biting or grinding surface, as in circumgnathal denticles.

Claw, Dactylar. A modified seta found on the distal segment