UnSpace

This is my personal blog; nothing in here should be construed as official from the Pleasant Hills Community Presbyterian Church. Sometimes, like when I'm being sarcastic or trying to think something through, this blog doesn't even represent my own opinions. As the Acting Director of Communications, I need to be careful about how the things I do are interpreted.

One of the wonderful things about the Presbyterian Church USA is that there is plenty of room for differing opinions. For example, some people at the church do not have any problem with celebrating Halloween, others do. I don't, but in my work as Director of Communications, I am careful to not alienate anyone. Mostly this was accomplished by not even using the word "Halloween." I can write creatively when I need to.

I suspect I'm one of the few who believe whole-heartedly in predestination. I know that sounds strange for a Presbyterian church. But remember that there are far more crucial points being dealt with by our congregation: feeding the poor, caring for the sick, studying the Bible, glorifying the Name of Jesus Christ, etc. There simply isn't much time for the more theoretical considerations. So I cannot speak with a definitive voice for my church on many things simply because there is no definitive voice or no one really cares enough to make a definitive pronouncement. For example, if someone wishes to celebrate Halloween, they can, as long as they don't rub it in the faces of those who don't wish to celebrate it. I don't know of anyone who asks at the grocery store if the meat has been sacrificed to idols, either.

I do not blog from work for three reasons. One, I don't want there to be any possible confusion between work and this blog. Two, I don't have time to fly my radio-controlled helicopter (that's pronounced "STRESS RELIEF") at church (a large, usually empty gym is a definite work perk), let alone blog. Three, I've forgotten the password I used for this blog and can't log on from any computer but the home computers — I couldn't blog from work if I wanted to!

Yeah, I could fix that last problem, but remember #2 and the lack of time.

Given what I'm thinking about posting here on UnSpace, I decided there was a significant need to clarify the relationship of this blog to my church.

Because my depression is gone (still, thank God![literally, I might add]), I'm getting things done better and more efficiently than before — but I'm also doing more! This "Acting Communications Director" gig at my church has me working harder than I expected. I'm having fun doing it, which means a lot of my energy is going toward the newsletter, bulletin, and all the other things the job entails.

I don't have the time to blog that I once did. I do hope to do a couple posts this weekend, but in the meantime, here's an update or three:

1. I asked the question about "church marketing," knowing I'd be attending a seminar on church marketing by Yvon Prehn. She answered my questions, including some I didn't know I had, and a follow-up post will discuss that. But now that I think about it, the answer is the same as the answer for the standard technology question "Is ______________ evil?" Are computers evil? Is biochemistry evil? Is church marketing evil? The technology is neutral; the question is, what are you doing with that technology? If you're using it to send out computer viruses, neurotoxins, or stuff designed to manipulate people, then what you are doing with the technology is evil. But if you're using the computer to turn data from a CT scanner into images a doctor can use to save a life, medicines to cure HIV or diabetes, or let people know who Jesus is or when the collection of goods for the needy is, then of course it's good. Yvon pointed out some Biblical answers. Yeah, I was impressed. If you're involved in church communications, you should take one of her seminars! More than one, actually! Her web site is a great resource. I'm not just saying that because she wants me to send her the link to this blog.
2. Speaking of links to this blog, I need to get up a statement that points out all of the opinions expressed here are either mine or me playing with ideas. This blog is not sponsored by my church, my church does not even have imprimaturs to give out, and I know some of the opinions expressed here are part of big discussions in my church. This is my blog.
3. I was talking with someone about Mother Theresa, and before I even got to my theory about her, the person said "You know a lot about depression. Did she strike you as terribly depressed?" It's the whole "microexpressions" and body language thing (c.f. Blink). I'm beginning to realize just how much I operate on intuition — trained experience on a subconscious level. So yeah, I have no doubt Mother Theresa was depressed. If anything, watching her when she speaks in a language I don't know improves my ability to catch it. No, it's not a DSM-4 level of diagnosis — I can think of other things that present as depression. As a rough analysis goes, though, she was depressed. And yes, I blame the Catholic church for being in denial about her depression. There are very few churches out there that aren't in denial about psychological problems among their members. If you think I'm picking on the Catholic church, remember that they're just the most public current example.

More later.

Having been approved by our church's Session, I am now the "Acting Director of Communications" for my church. Seeking to improve my skills, I began searching Amazon.com to see what books are out there to help me keep from re-inventing the wheel. I found the following comment on a review of one of the books:

There has been no Biblical proof yet offered which shows that Jesus was a marketing man, or that marketing is to be part of the growth of Jesus' Kingdom. See my critique in Testing the Claims of Church Growth. This is good marketing, but poor theology.

Our church believes that everything we do should be Biblically based. Our form of church governance is modeled on what little is recorded in the Bible of the early church polity. Our basic worship format is taken directly from Isaiah 6 (with things like hot coals being taken metaphorically, of course). Evangelism, small group Bible study, etc. are all to be based on Biblical models. Even our internal arguments about things like whether practicing homosexuals should be accepted into the ministry are based on the model given us by the early church as it debated whether Gentiles should be accepted into the church.

I flinch every time I use terms like "advertising" and "marketing" in my job. Jesus Christ is not a pack of cigarettes or a politician running for president. If you watch the worst of the television preachers, you'll see them using the same manipulative tricks the cigarette companies and Swift Boat committees — tricks designed to cause the person to act against their "will" and best interest.

In doing the bulletin or newsletter or signs around the church, I know I'm using basic marketing skills. I'm surprisingly good at it. I'd like to think I'm not being manipulative (if it is even possible to communicate without manipulation), but still I wonder.

Is this Rodney Zwonitzer (who is marketing his own book by leaving comments on books he hasn't read) correct? Is "marketing" the church wrong? Or are there examples of "marketing" in the Bible? If not, then what should we be doing?

What do you think?

I've never really understood the stories where someone sells their soul to Satan. Whether Faust, the Devil and Daniel Webster, or any of a number of bad TV shows, the person selling their soul never asks enough. The bargains are universally bad, but at least they get something. Not the Republican presidential candidates (excepting McCain), though. They'd give their souls to the devil for nothing. I thought Republicans were supposed to be the ones who were good at business?

During one of the debates, the moderator asked about a scenario everyone describes as "24″-esque. Leave it to Fox to do "product placement" in a national presidential debate. To save American lives, how far would the candidates go to get information? In other words, would they resort to torture? With the exception of McCain, they all abandoned their moral principles for the situational ethics of torture. They would sell their souls — abandon their moral principles — for American lives.

They sold their souls for nothing. Torture doesn't work.

I've known this for years, strangely based on what I was taught at church. At church camps and youth groups, there's a common game that's played. The group forms a circle, with the exception of one person. The person is on the outside, and their goal is to either join the group or get inside the circle. The first couple of people try using force and fail miserably. Anyone trying to break into the circle is almost always rejected, even if they're the strongest person in the group working on the weakest. Force begets resistance. Invariably, though, someone will try bribery. Usually, it's shoulder massage. Stand behind a couple people for a few minutes rubbing their neck and shoulders, and they will eagerly let you in.

It's basic game theory, folks! And it applies to torture as well.

Think about it. Let's say you need to get information out of some terrorists. What does the terrorist think of you? Remember, they don't think they're evil, they think you are. They hate you, or at least the government or organization you represent. Torture them, and you confirm their world view. You prove to them that they are right. They become very passive-aggressive. For religious-minded terrorists of any faith, whatever you do that harms them makes them believe you've purchased them a first-class ticket to Paradise. Sure, they're going to want to end the pain, but they aren't going to want to give you anything for it. Maybe what they tell you is a complete fabrication, maybe it's the truth, with just enough twisted to make you waste resources and time. Maybe they're weak and give up the information, but you don't know if they're telling the truth.

In other words, in the "ticking bomb scenario," if you torture the captured terrorists, you're ensuring the death of the very people you're trying to protect. You're not going to get the information in time.

What does the military think of the "Jack Bauer" torture answer?

In November, Army Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, flew to Southern California to meet with the creative team behind "24."

Accompanied by three experienced military and FBI interrogators, he described how the show actually was undermining the academy's classroom lessons with the false message that torture is a jim-dandy idea in the real world.

Ain't that a kicker?

There are a host of techniques that work; some of them are covered in the article I linked to.

In my opinion, the ethical question of torture never arises. Torture doesn't work, so find something that does.

I've been on a new anti-depressant for two weeks.

Depression comes in two forms: typical and atypical. Typical, in addition to the other symptoms, is associated with weight loss. Atypical, in addition to other symptoms, is associated with weight gain. In one of "those" occurrences in science, atypical depression is far more common than typical. Alas, I've got atypical.

Most anti-depressants make you want to eat too much. The problem is severe enough that doctors are supposed to watch  patients on antidepressants to make sure they don't become diabetic. Just to make things even happier, even after weight, exercise levels, and everything else is accounted for, a new study shows that depression is a risk factor for diabetes in and of itself. Nice little vicious circle, huh? I'm a diabetic, for those of you who haven't been following along playing the home game.

Well, the anti-depressants would work on me for a while and then stop. So, all the anti-depressants were doing was resulting in mighty expensive urine and causing me to gain weight — a bad thing for diabetics, since weight gain makes diabetes worse. The last time I went into the doctor I told him "Look, nothing is working. Why don't we try Bupropion?" This isn't an anti-depressant that should work on me, but it causes weight loss. It also has "fewer sexual side effects." I'm sure you've seen the commercial. Even if Bupropion did nothing for my depression, I'd take the weight loss and probably be happier overall. Not dying tends to make me happier. I'm weird that way. The psychiatrist shrugged and wrote the script. It was one of those cynical "risk benefit" trade-off times medicine and "House, MD" are so fond of.

Fast forward two weeks. Yesterday was the first day I took two pills of Bupropion. After the first pill, my mouth went dry and my eyes went…wrong. Why the doctor had to ramp up the dosage seemed apparent. Then I tried to get to sleep at 11 o'clock. Usually, I climb into bed, read about a page of a book and have trouble putting the book down before I fall asleep. The book wasn't that interesting, so I put it down after a chapter and tried to force sleep. Bzzzz! Wrong answer. Finally around 3:30 a.m., I fell asleep — and then woke up at 6:30 a.m. so I could go to the church and finish printing the church newsletter so the volunteers could fold and label it. The printer broke yesterday, so we didn't finish printing it in time.

By noon, the newsletter was printed, folded, labeled, sorted into the bulk mail groups, taken to the North Side and mailed at the bulk mail facility. I skipped coffee, because I didn't need it. Let me take that back. I didn't dare drink coffee.

Well, the newsletter was done a day early, despite my setting an ambitious time schedule for myself. It was done well enough, although I can tell you about 300 things that are wrong with it. But I don't look at the newsletter and start mumbling how "All I can do is crank out crap." There was no drama, no major crisis. I got the newsletter finished early. Changing the saddle staple cartridges was about as dangerous as it got. Granted, if I were to break the new Cannon networked copier, there would be some excitement, but the copier walks you through changing the cartridges! Don't tell anyone the copier explains how to fix itself. They think I'm some sort of genius. It's all P.R.!

I'm down a pound, with no effort. Not much, but it's a start.

I don't feel depressed, but that happens with every anti-depressant at the start. Ask me mid- to late August how I'm feeling and we'll see how well Bupropion is working. That's one of the three "crashes" of the year, up there with Christmas and taxes. I wish I'd started the Bupropion before taxes. Now there was some drama!

For right now, I'll take it. I do hope I get more than three hours of sleep tonight. I don't feel sleepy, but I do feel something that feels like an all-nighter, only without the lack of sleep.

So tell me. If obesity is a moral problem, then why does diabetes cause weight gain? If it's a question of will, how could I run three marathons and not lose any weight? Do most anti-depressants make me less of a moral person? Does Bupropion make me more moral?

Well, that last one is a hope. One pound lost does not a weight loss program make; it's only a start.

I expected to hear Jerry Falwell claim that Elizabeth Edwards' cancer's return was because of gays, lesbians, and Hollywood. I expected to hear Pat Robertson ask people to pray for her death so that John Edwards could not possibly become President.

Granted, there was some slime spread about, but nothing as bad as I expected, and at least one incredible response to that slime. But none of the garbage I've come to take for granted in our modern world. Maybe I just got lucky and missed the worst of it.

Soon after, the world found out that Tony Snow's cancer had returned. Go read the article at Capitol Hill Blue about the hatred and evil directed at Snow at a time when humans ought to gather together to support the man in a difficult time. Even worse, read the responses to the very article criticizing such disgusting attacks. Some people can't buy a clue.

Maybe I need to keep repeating to myself my favorite of Larry Niven's Laws:

There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it.

I would dearly love to create a post to demonstrate how the Fox News attack on John Edwards worked. The headline would be about officials taking down a child porn website. The subhead would talk about how vile the porn was. In the body of the article would be a quote from Fox News about the incident. You know that Fox News must have reported on a child porn website being shut down some time. And so, to fully document the source of the quote, above the body of the text and below the subhead would be a giant 600 pixel across "Fox News" logo.

The post would cause you to associate "Fox News" and child pornography. Here's how the trick works:

Virtually everyone coming to my blog would read the title. Have you ever tried to look at a word and not read what the word says? By the time you're an adult, you can't. You have to read that word. So people read the title; the shorter and more succinct, the better. They also see the picture. Again, they can't help but see the Fox News logo.

That's the first thing readers see — and most readers never read another word. Alas, it's true. Look at the way Fox News and MSNBC and CNN are designed. Headline, Subhead, usually a photograph, and text. They do that because of how people skim websites. Most people just check the headlines and the photograph. A few read the subhead. A surprisingly small number of people read the body text, and the chance that a reader will leave increases as you move down through the text. Darned if I can find the stats that give how many readers you lose at each stage, but clearly, your headline needs to tell the reader what the story's about and the picture has to suck the reader in.

In other words, in my hypothetical example post, most people only read about a child porn website and see the Fox News logo.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. Have you ever taken a "Stroop test" to check how well your brain functions? I've taken too many, usually with needles in my arm and some polite (not mad) scientist pumping me full of insulin and a radioactive tracer. No, I'm not kidding. Anyway, they give you this list, and you have to read the words: red, blue, and green. The only problem is, the word "red" might be printed in blue or green, but never red. The same for the other two colors. For a normal adult, reading the list is just mildly annoying. When your blood glucose (normally 80 mg/dl) is down around 56 mg/dl, every word is a fight. Your brain believes the image it sees rather than the word it reads, and it takes real brain power to force yourself to read the word correctly.

In my hypothetical example, unless people work at separating the Fox News logo from the concept of a child porn site, they'll form an association. They may even realize the association is absurd and guess that the data came from Fox News. That doesn't matter: the association will form and some place, deep in their brain, they'll form a linkage between "Fox News" and "child porn website."

Trust me, Fox News works very hard to make sure stuff like that doesn't happen. The advertisers know it will affect how you behave. I don't dare create that post, because I know Fox News' lawyers would be sending me nastygrams — and they'd be right. I'm not sure if the lawyers would sue me or just threaten to, and I don't want to find out, because it's a nasty thing to do.

The Fox lawyers would sue me for doing to them what they did to John Edwards. Such a trick is not right. I didn't try that trick on Fox News, not because I'm afraid of their lawyers but because doing so is wrong. Not only is it wrong, but it would be funny, which is why I sound so full or regret.

Now you know how people read articles. Can you use it to improve your blog? Sure you can. I knew you could!

The FDA is about to approve cefquinome for use in cattle.  Cefquinome is a cephalawhatchamacallit — a cephalosporin-derived drug, used as one of the last resort drugs against multiply-resistant bacterial infections in humans. So what's the problem with that?

Go find a bit of dirt from your yard or a park. In that dirt, there's a biochemical war going on. Bacteria and fungi are attacking each other, throwing out chemicals designed to kill anything not of their kind. At the same time they're making these poisons, they're also making chemical defenses, both against the poison they make and the poisons everything else is making. If you look through enough dirt, you will find virtually any antibiotic or a close relative to a synthetic antibiotic. That's all antibiotics are — a form of chemical warfare that kills some forms of life, but not others. The ones we use in medicine kill bacteria faster than they kill humans. The better they are at killing bacteria and leaving them alone, the more powerful the antibiotic.

But that means that for any antibiotic known, somewhere out there a bacteria knows how to survive or thrive in its presence. Even if the antibiotic is synthetic, either it's based on a natural molecule or nature has come up with it first — and so there is a defense against it.

Evolutionists love to cite antibiotic resistance in the arguments with creationists. In fact, it is a form of evolution, but it's not the de novo evolution the evolutionists and creationists think it is. Some bacteria somewhere passed its antibiotic-defeating plasmid on to some bacteria someone was trying to kill with an antibiotic, and the chemical arms race continues. That plasmid might improve in effectiveness, or it might combine with other biochemical tricks to make it work better, but the basic DNA sequences necessary to get it to work have been around for a while.

Two things destroy an antibiotic's effectiveness. One, if the antibiotic is over-used, the antibiotic is more likely to encounter something that's partially or totally resistant to it.  Using cefquinome on cattle means "something bad" is going to happen. Even that wouldn't be too bad if it weren't for the second thing that destroys an antibiotic's effectiveness — improper usage. You know the "Take all your medication unless ordered to stop by your doctor" label? That's so you don't quit taking the antibiotic when you feel better but you haven't killed off all the bacteria in your system yet. If you stop early, the bacteria that remain are better at defending against the antibiotic. They might have a vaguely effective plasmid to protect them or some other genetic trick that almost works. Stop early and those few bacteria become many, and when you try using that antibiotic on them again, more of them survive. Farm animals, it turns out, aren't good at following labels. The humans have to follow the labels for them, but giving all the antibiotic costs money. Farmers have been known to stop the antibiotic when the farm animals look better.

The FDA, following some business-friendly rules, has decided that the chance of burning out a last-resort antibiotic for humans is worth the risk.

I wonder what possible reason the government would have for allowing such a potentially risky product on the market? Sure, the pharmaceutical companies make a lot of money, and sure they contribute heavily to politicians. But the FDA wouldn't risk human health for a buck, would it?

Imagine you are having a medical problem. Two paramedics show up. Do you ask their religion?

Strangely, some people did. I used a standard vague answer that kept the Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and the one Wiccan calm.

I've been on the wrong side of the heart monitor, and my concerns were not about the religion of the medics treating me. I was worried about their ability to take care of me and (in one case) find the hospital.

So it's with my "hammer theology" I approach the whole "Romney's a Mormon Presidential Candidate" brouhaha. I disagree with him on a number of stands and wouldn't vote for him — his being a Mormon has nothing to do with it. Not everyone feels that way. A number of Roman Catholics I've spoken with don't consider Mormons to be Christian, and so would not vote for Romney. These same people would freak at similar opposition to a Roman Catholic candidate.

In reading the Reuters/MSNBC article, I noticed that the author does not explain why Evangelicals and Fundamentalists do not accept Mormons as Christians. It comes down to how different religions view the nature of God and salvation. Mormons do not accept the concept of the Trinity (one God, three Persons in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) but instead believe that they are separate individuals united in purpose and divinity. The Mormon church also teaches that doing good deeds and faith are synonymous, while many Protestants believe in salvation by faith alone, with doing good things being a natural outgrowth of that faith. Note that some Protestants and Roman Catholics consider the Roman Catholic church to teach salvation by good deeds and faith. My father, a CCD instructor and Deacon in the Roman Catholic church would have disagreed, but if my theology is based on a hammer, my Dad's was fractal in nature to the point of being close to jerrymandering.

Would I allow a person's religion to affect whether I voted for her or him? My reaction would be "no," I wouldn't care what the person's religion was. I would be concerned with what the person would actually do in office.

Martha F. Bell, awarded "Businesswoman of the Year award from the National Republican Congressional Committee" was sentenced to an additional 44 months in jail for "…trying to cover up the death of a client" and "of neglect of a care-dependent person, involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment."

Mabel Taylor, 88, was a resident at the Ronald Reagan Atrium I Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Robinson. Due to poor staff training and a lack of safety measures, she managed to lock herself outside at night in the courtyard, where she suffered and died from exposure and heart disease. Bell organized a cover-up of the death. The cover-up fell apart, resulting in the charges against Bell and the Atrium care facility.

In October, Bell was sentenced to five years in prison for health care fraud and false health care statements.

The "Right to Life" groups have said nothing against Martha Bell's behavior. Special laws were not passed in a special session of Congress to try to save the lives of the people in Bell's care. Martha Taylor was conscious and capable of suffering and being aware of what was happening to her when she died.

Apparently, Michael Schiavo's only mistakes were that he didn't donate heavily to the Republican party and name something after a widely respected Republican.

Then again, Michael Schiavo isn't going to jail.

I hadn't even gotten to writing the 5th reason for Lisa Nowak pulling her now-famous diapered assault on her romantic rival before two things occurred to me. One, I was mocking a human being who was obviously messed up. Two, I had no understanding why she did what she did.

Why did Nowak act out?

A lot of reasons have been given.

• One MSNBC article lays the behavior at the feet of our need, as humans, for love.
• Similarly, Dr. Keith Ablow on the Today show discussed Nowak "losing perspective."
• An article by James Oberg on MSNBC discusses the astronaut's personal life as a source of this kind of problem — and mentions that David Walker, a shuttle commander, actually did something worse than Nowak.
• The former NASA space flight psychiatrist Terence McGuire says that everything that can be done is being done, and more would be "guilding the lily."
• Michael Hopkin's Nature article discusses the problem of detecting this pathology and mentions the problem of the "big event." Nowak worked for 10 years to fly in space, and last summer she did. What happens when you literally come back to Earth? Given the paucity of flights into space, that might have been Nowak's one chance (and I doubt she'll ever get another after what she did.
• Christopher Mim's Sciam Blog questions whether doing more might actually make the astronauts more likely to hide their pathologies and avoid help. This is the problem departmental psychiatrists and critical incident stress teams have faced for years when dealing with public safety personnel.
• Space.com (and the duplicate article over at Discovery Channel points out that there are additional pressures that female astronauts face that male astronauts don't (besides the obvious) men have much better support from their wives, where they can come home to few duties, unlike the super-career female astronauts who have to take care of their home as well as their astronautly duties.
• Three of Nowak's astronaut classmates died on the Columbia shuttle.

This explains some of the problem. But I don't think it's a full explanation. Everyone talks about how much planning went into Nowak's attack. In my joke list of wny Nowak attacked her rival, I made a subtle comment when I said "Her T-shirt says 'What would Jack Bauer do?'" As a fan of "24," I'm perhaps more aware than most how implausible a lot of "24″ is. Jack Bauer does all sorts of stunts that look brilliant on the show but would fail miserably in real life. Nowak wasn't even up to TV standards.

I shouldn't admit this, but when I heard about Nowak's assault, my first thought was how she should have done it so that it worked. A BB gun, pepper spray hammer, rubber hoses, a diaper and a wig? This wasn't some great MacGyver plan. Charging Nowak with attempted murder is giving this stunt far more credit for plausibility than it deserves. This was no plan. This was the epitome of no plan.

Think about it. She wore a diaper so she could drive 900 miles in a hurry. If you had to get 900 miles quickly, would you hop in your car? Even assuming she was driving like the mythical crazy astronaut, averaging 90 mph for the entire trip¹, it would still take her 10 hours to get there. Can you think of any way a Navy pilot might have covered 900 miles more quickly? Yes, that leaves a bit more evidence along the way, but if you can't figure out how to get around that, perhaps you should consider making your attack when you don't have to wear a pair of extra-strength huggies.

The way Nowak attacked was great, if she wanted to get caught. The place Nowak attacked was great, if she wanted to get caught. And you know what? She got caught.

Granted, one of the reasons I'm not the world's most feared supervillian is that, in the end, any crime scheme is far too risky for the payoff. I don't rob banks or kill people because I'm a nice guy. Even if I weren't, I wouldn't because eventually all criminal schemes wind up being hare-brained. Perhaps, because of the wig (which caused a lot of the Nolte-esque booking photo) I should say "hair-brained."

Nowak's attack on her rival, Colleen Shipman, was more likely to drive the rival and William Oefelein closer together. And guess why William Oefelein just took a leave of absence from NASA? Rather than attacking the rival, she really should have worked at making William Oefelein more interested in her. The odds are that even this wouldn't work, but at least it's legal and you don't wind up being the headlining joke for Letterman, Leno, and O'Brien.

What no one discussed is something that, while not causing Nowak's break, probably set her up for it: being an astronaut sucks. Have you ever noticed the astronauts don't have a patch on their flight jacket saying "Astronaut Local #1″? Undocumented Wal-Mart employees are treated better than NASA treats the astronauts.

There actually was a strike by NASA astronauts. Gerald Carr (no relation) led the crew of Skylab 4 (the third manned Skylab mission) in a strike when NASA's scheduling of their activities became absurd. The strike ended with more reasonable scheduling on Skylab and promises that astronaut abuse would never happen again.

Yeah, right.

When you spend hundreds of millions of dollars to put someone in orbit and there's people willing to pay tens of millions of dollars to go do it for free, abuse is the order of the day in orbit. Humans are expendable. The NASA people were all weepy about the deaths of the Challenger and Columbia astronauts, but NASA as a bureaucracy was mostly concerned with the bad PR and two terribly expensive spaceships.

Even when the astronauts are on the ground, they have to ask "How high?" to every trivial administrative request to jump. "You don't like it? Where, oh where could we possibly find someone to replace you?" Any guess how high the stack of applications is for astronaut? The NASA employment office probably has more paperwork than there's paperwork for all the tiles on the shuttles' thermal protection systems — and each tile has 30 ft. of paperwork behind it.

People talk about "critical incident stress" and how seeing bad things and doing dangerous stuff messes with your head. Speaking from my own experience, I don't think that's the real problem. Cops and medics and firefighters understand danger and tragedy and, if that were all it was, would mostly be able to deal with it. But when you just saved a life or got shot at and some supervisor comes over and starts kvetching about paperwork that wasn't filled out correctly, your ability to cope decreases. Think of the volunteer firefighters who have to beg their communities for funds so they can risk their lives — and then the people of the community complain about the firefighters asking for money.

I'm not saying public safety personnel and astronauts should be treated like kings and queens. But basic respect and decency would go a long way toward helping them deal with the stresses they encounter.

Nowak came unhinged for a number of reasons. She'd just reached the epitome of her life. Love formed under stress can be weird. Sex drags up the primitive chunks of the brain. Her lover and her husband were both abandoning her. Her friends died horrifically over Texas. Heaven only knows what happened in her childhood.

But I'll bet you good money that you would not know who Nowak is or recognize her picture if NASA treated the astronauts like human beings instead of like butt-wiping and toilet cleaning droids.

Until NASA fixes this pathology in its program, I don't think a lunar colony or mission to Mars are good ideas.

1. Yeah, it's implausible, but I don't have to pull up the calculator to figure out how long it takes to drive 900 miles at that speed. [back]

Update: Bigwave pointed out that I was extremely sloppy in what I wrote. The firefighters at the Valentine's Day fire had PASS devices, but they were earlier models that were not as sophisticated as the ones currently in use over a decade later. The PASS devices of the time were often thought of as more problems than they were worth, and in the excitement of a response, could often be left turned off.

The way I wrote this article, it sounds as if they did not have PASS devices at all. That is incorrect, and I thank Bigwave for pointing out this error. I knew what I meant, but I did not write this post in a way that told the reader what I meant. I was wrong. Thanks to Bigwave for the correction.

On February 14th, 1995, the Pittsburgh firefighters did not have PASS alarms that would go off if a firefighter fell down or did not move for 30 seconds. As a result, while fighting the Bricelyn Street fire in Pittsburgh, three firefighters died. My friend Patty Conroy was one of the three.

As a result of the investigation following their deaths, Pittsburgh now has an accountability system for firefighters who go into a building and each firefighter carries a PASS device.

Unfortunately, when exposed to excessive water or heat, the current PASS devices can fail. The Federal Government knew the PASS devices were faulty and did nothing for as long as possible:

Documents made public under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that nine of those deaths came after the federal government blocked an investigation by its own expert into possible failures of PASS alarms and other firefighting equipment. A manager for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that is charged by Congress with investigating firefighter deaths, ordered an agency fire safety engineer on Feb. 14, 2000, to "minimize your fact gathering during investigations" and to restrict his investigations to issues relevant "for the prevention of future similar events."

There's a pattern: The Federal Government doesn't want to know when Americans are being harmed, if finding out about that harm might cost their business campaign donors money. Whether it's PASS alarms, mine safety, soldier's body armor, medications that have dangerous side effect, or global warming, the trend seems remarkably consistent.

While I believe the Republicans have contributed much to this trend, they're not the only ones who are willing to sell their souls to fill the campaign coffers. The result of this blood money is a consistent effort to protect not the people but the corporations. Those hired by the politicians know what will happen to them should they harm the corporations. Some employees are willing to risk their jobs, but a lot more know what happens if you hurt a political contributor.

Patty Conroy was a member of the Pittsburgh Critical Incident Stress Management team. I remember her explaining to firefighters and medics at a defusing that one way of dealing with a tragic event is to use it to prevent future tragic events. The changes made to protect firefighter lives after the deaths at the Valentine's Day Fire on Bricelyn Street was a consolation. Even in death, my friend Patty helped to save lives.

The CDC workers who prevented an investigation into the PASS failures spit on Patty's grave, and on the graves of every firefighter who died since the failures were suspected.

Yes, that's over the top and inflamatory. It's also true.

Malcolm the parakeet and Spike the cockatiel passed away.

Back in December of 2004, Malcolm developed a xanthoma (fatty tumor) on his wing. The wing had to be amputated. A bit more than two years later, on April 11th of 2006, he developed another tumor on his preen gland that had to be removed.

Malcolm was an English budgie, a set of mutations that results in a larger bird. The normal mass for a budgie is around 35 grams; before he died, Malcolm weighed an astonishing 71 grams — bigger than some of our cockatiels. We and the vet suspect that was the problem. The genes that cause Malcolm to be a large bird made him susceptible to tumors. The weight also put a strain on his body. Budgies aren't supposed to mass 71 grams. As Malcolm aged, he just kept growing, even though he was put on an entirely fresh food diet, which gives a bird the minimal amount of fat. Moving around just got harder and harder for Malcolm; he'd get winded climbing the birdie ladder. We acquired Malcolm back in February of '04, and he was an adult bird then. We estimate his age to be somewhere between 4 and 7 years as a result. Four would be young and seven beyond the modern budgie average life expectancy of six years.

Were the two surgeries worth it? Cost-wise, we felt it was our responsibility to take care of the bird. Yes, we could have replaced Malcolm several times for the cost of the surgery. We don't consider animals disposable, any more than most people wouldn't consider their kids "disposable." Any money spent on bird medical care gets matched to a human charity, so ethically, I don't have a "bird vs. human" argument. Malcolm did more to raise money for charity than a lot of people I know.

The main concern would be what Malcolm himself went through. With the metacam, the surgery didn't appear that painful. Malcolm adapted easily to walking, so the loss of the wing was no big thing for him. If he forgot that he couldn't fly, the absence of one wing would send him cartwheeling. If he fell, he hit harder than a bird normally would. The room he was in, though, was carpeted, and he never seemed hurt by the longest of drops. Malcolm played with the other birds. Malcolm had a "girlfriend" that he took care of and cheated on.¹

Given that we could afford the surgeries, I think they were the right thing to do. Someone else who didn't have the money might have had to put Malcolm down, which would be sad but understandable.

Spike presented a different problem. He developed gout that rapidly cost him the use of his legs. We'd wondered about putting him down, until we saw him walking on the wing elbows in his cage. Spike's form of locomotion was strange, and involved some thrashing on his part, but he got pretty good at it. He would run on his elbows to get a drink of water when a fresh cup of water went into his cage. When fresh food went into his cage, he would run on his elbows to get to that. After he was done eating, he would make his way to the back of his cage, which was up against the cockatiel aviary. He would sit near an aviary perch and the other birds would come visit him through the bars of the two cages.

Still, getting around seemed to be getting harder. Like Barbaro the horse's owner, we were watching Spike's decline looking for a sign that it was time to end his life. Gout in birds signals a significant biochemical malfunction, one that will eventually kill the bird. I was afraid that Spike was just a few days away from a trip to the vet when he died, answering the question for us. We did what we could for Spike, but I don't think we should have done anything more.

1. Malcolm was a parakeet, not a human, so I don't attach any moral significance to his cheating. It's what parakeets do and frankly what his mates did. There were no nestboxes in that room and so none of the eggs hatched, which eliminated a concern about his genes being passed on. [back]

December 27th, 2010 — AP:

The execution is expected to take place sometime in the next 72 hours.

I just got a phone call "not paid for by any candidate." The woman on the recording said that I had recently been sent an absentee voting ballot request form and that they needed my vote in the November election because it will be close.

I'm a Democrat. I don't think they really want my true vote. Nancy was a Republican, but the last time she got her license renewed, she changed to Democrat.

Has someone requested an absentee ballot in one of our names? Is there a way to find out? If, on election day, one (or both of us) are told we cannot vote because we are voting by absentee ballot, what is the appropriate procedure for us to take?

I believe the phone call was simply an automated mistake. But I received no absentee voting ballot request.

When it comes to voting, I'd rather be prepared to deal with potential problems, rather than trying to figure it out on an emergency basis.

Any and all help would be appreciated.

Ok, so Foley is scum and can't take responsibility for his own actions and is a flaming hypocrite. Republican leaders knew and did nothing, being more concerned with maintining the Republican majority than with protecting the teenagers.

Everyone's upset about this. I don't understand why.

Look, Foley was a joke. The pages thought of him as a dirty old self-hating gay nutcase and knew to stay away. The pages weren't 4 year-olds being offered candy. If it turns out a page or two didn't wrap Foley around their little fingers and take advantage of the jerk, I'll be surprised. Foley had "Mark" tattooed in 3 in. high neon lettering on his forehead. And that's not just his name, it's a description of what any competent sociopath would have thought about him. Pages, being potential future politicians, ought to score far higher than normal on the sociopathy scale.

On the other hand, President George W. Bush sent many of our young men to an unnecessary war, an ill-advised war¹, one that was poorly planned, poorly executed, and poorly supplied. You know those Improvised Explosive Devices that are killing our troops? You do know where the explosive parts of those came from, right? You do know that Iraqi ammo stores were ignored when the U.S. took over the country, allowing them to be pillaged by those unhappy with our presence and those with a bit of foresight to realize how to make a power grab, right?

Repeatedly, the Bush administration was warned that they were screwing it up. Rather than doing something about said screwing up, they closed their eyes and pretended there weren't any problems. "Mission Accomplished."

So now, Afghanistan, which used to be a success, is now so screwed up the Taliban might have to be brought into the government. The biggest crops in the country are drugs. Iraq has become a training ground and recruitment poster for Islamic fanatics. More people have died fighting the War Against Terrorism" in a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 than died on 9/11 itself!

Before the Second Iraq War, Iraq was mostly a joke. Now, Iraq may be the site of a war we cannot win. Continuing to fight an unwinnable war may not be a good idea. Abandoning it and making Iraq the Al Qaida home base ain't gonna be good either. The only good solution might be to donate Iraq to Iran and hope that Iran can't pacify the country any better than we can.²

American soldiers, some of our bravest men and women, have fought, been wounded, and died over in Iraq because a) Bush wanted his glorious little unnecessary war and b) he and his cronies aren't willing to fix what's not working.

And everyone's upset about Foley?

How many people are dead because of Foley's pedophilia?

It seems to me there's bigger things to be upset about than Mark Foley's failed sex life.

1. Anyone remember what President George H.W. Bush thought about taking down Saddam Hussein after the First Gulf War? [back]
2. Y'know, all joking aside, that might not be such a bad idea, especially if we can find some way to keep the Iraqis stirred up and shooting each other and their new Iranian overlords. [back]

Back in college, one of the members of a local church was riding me somewhere. I'm no longer clear on who or where we were going, but the radio was on, tuned to the local Christian radio station. The program was, I believe, by one of the national ministries — Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, or someone of that ilk. And they were mighty concerned because there was a push to create laws against wife and child abuse.

Whoever it was talking didn't approve. As God was head of the Church, the husband was head of the family. Sometimes, God had to discipline the Church harshly for her own good; in the same way, a husband sometimes had to take strong action to save the souls of his wife and children. Therefore, the government should make no law interfering with the husband's God-given right to discipline his family as he saw fit.

The man on the radio wasn't the only one. This wasn't even the first time I'd heard that kind of argument. I'd even seen it, to my shame.

At that church, before church service one day, a father lost his cool. He ran down the hall after one of his children, screaming. He pounded on his child several times; the kid got away. He chased the child out of sight, but you could still hear the blows and screaming. And I stood there and did nothing.

I keep trying to tell myself that I was only 19, wasn't yet an adult, hadn't taken karate yet, weighed only 120 lbs, and that I just didn't have enough life experience to know how to respond. No one else did anything either. I think that's the real reason I didn't do anything. If I had gone after the father, called for help, and had the father start to beat the crap out of me, at the very least I could have pressed charges. Even more likely, someone would have tried to break up the fight.

I failed, and I am ashamed of my lack of actions. I'm also ashamed of everyone else who stood there, folks who were older, were adults, were wiser, and were not likely to be tossed about like a rag doll by that father.

When I read the article "Viewing God as male 'contributes to domestic abuse' says Church" in This is London (via Powerblog!), I understood what the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams was trying to get at. I'm not sure if he misphrased some things or if that was the reporter, but basically, I understand what he's getting at.

I don't believe that Christianity supports abuse, either of children or wives or husbands. But humans are incredibly good at twisting anything to reach the conclusions they want to reach. In deciding that God has given them "permission" to be violent, the abusers may actually be more violent than non-Christian abusers.

Standing by and doing nothing is not the answer. I learned that the hard way, to my eternal shame.

Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and others speak about what they see as the great evils of homosexuality and Democrats and such. When was the last time you heard them speak about the great evils of spousal abuse? When do they get up and say "Assaulting or insulting your spouse or your children is an abomination and should not exist in the Church or the Christian home"?

When was the last time your minister stood up in church and preached against spousal abuse? Forget about "last time." Ever?

If anything, the advice coming from far too many corners seems to be that, if a wife is being abused, she's not being submissive enough. It's her fault; she causes it. I'm not kidding; you have no idea how much I wish I could footnote that one to tell you who it came from. I've heard it more than once, though. So have other people.

This is not to say that all Christians implicitly or accidentally support abuse. At my previous church, the minister passed out pamphlets about what to do if you are being abused and asked the congregation to give them to anyone they knew who might need them. Not only did that expand the reach beyond the church, but it also gave cover to women in the church who were being abused. If their husbands found the pamphlets, they could say it was something Rev. Kellie had asked everyone to pass onto people who need it.

I think the Archbishop has a point that is worth considering.