The Wrightwing

The courts seem to think so. This court anyway:

A recent court decision in a custody battle between the biological father of a 2-year-old boy and the adoptive parents who have raised the child since he was 3 days old could have a “chilling and rippling” effect on future adoptions in New Mexico, legal experts warn.

The state Court of Appeals opinion, filed July 26, reverses the earlier decision by state District Judge John Pope in Valencia County to terminate the parental rights of Edgewood resident Mark Huddleston.

Not in so many words, but it seems that the needs of the child have little or no bearing on this argument which could just as easily be over a car as a kid.

Children need love, guidance, (discipline, if you prefer), and stability. This child has that from his two adoptive parents who care enough to fight this.
( As an aside: love, guidance and stability can be offered by any adult, whether a single or a couple, hetero or homo, or even a group family. Love and stability or dysfunction and abuse, are not exclusive to any particular arrangement.)

The natural father, while it seems to that he tried fairly quickly to gain custody, seems also to care more about winning than about what is best for the boy. After two years the bonds between the child and the adoptive parents must be pretty well made, and strong. To break them now, and place him in the care of someone who, to the child, is a stranger, seems uncaring if not callous. The court seems not to care either way. It seems to only care about the law as an algebraic equation to be solved for ‘X’, whatever or whoever ‘X’ might be. Solomon is missing in action.

In this case, the child should be the winner, not the biological father, not the adoptive parents, not the court and least of all the attorneys. But it looks like the opposite will occur. The court will make a logical decision, the adoptive parents will lose a child they love, the biological father will gain a tax deduction, the child will lose, and the attorneys will get fatter bank accounts.

So far as I know, one can not have rights to other people. You can have rights to property, like land and livestock, but not to people. Children are not toasters or other chattel. Rights to, or over, people is called slavery. Children are not slaves to be argued over in a market or courtroom. Children are young, developing persons that need nurturing, not pets that need feeding, walking and the occasional chew-toy.

Whatever the reasons for the biological father losing custody in the first place, at this point the child is in a caring stable home, and that should take precedence over whatever claims others may think they have, or the court thinks the law demands. And if the law says otherwise, the law is wrong.

Children are not property.

I am now sitting on my back deck. (And yes, yes I DO have a big deck).

I am working on a forum to add to this site, laptop in lap, where it rarely is, a jug of iced lemonade next to me, as well as an evening mug of Darjeeling tea, and I am thinking of opening a bottle of Ommegang Three Philosophers, a quadruple bock.

It is 79 degrees, low humidity, the slightest of breezes wafting by now and then, and I am in the shade of the trees that surround me. No one is running power tools; traffic is so light on I-287, about a mile away, that I can barely hear a quiet hum from it. The birds are active and vocal; my tenants scurry by every now and then and stop to stare at me. (Chipmunks are cute, but not very talkative). There is a pair of woodpeckers nesting nearby and often one scrambles around a tree close enough that I can watch it hunt for grubs by slamming it head against the bark. Something I find strangely entertaining.

A young deer, still in fawn spots, just crashed down the hill through the trees and stopped in horror at the sight of a human staring back at it. I shooed it back to mom. Someone just learned to look before they leap, literally.

The birds are chattering away so nicely I have not bothered to crank up some tunes, as I often do when working on the PC. (Current fave: Rob Costlow). The accompanying chirps, twitters and flutters, along with the occasional thwock-thwock-thwock from the woodpeckers are enough.

You know, sometimes New Jersey is not so bad, if you can forget the politics.

Crap. I shouldn’t have said that.

Please write the Sci Fi Channel to protest their presenting WRESTLING instead of science fiction:

What the heck are you doing now?

It was bad enough when you put on Jonathan Edwards cynical and fraudulent predation of the gullible, vulnerable and emotionally scarred, or that inane Scare Tactics show, or that Ghost Busters stupidity.

Now WRESTLING?

Have you gone out of your collective mind?

I’ll bet you thought the Pontiac Aztec was a good idea too.

What next? Live Call-in Astrology with a Caribbean palm reader?

Stop it. Stop it now and get beck to real Science Fiction. Even Plan 9 from Outer Space would be preferable.

In disgust,

Tom Wright

Write them here: Feedback at Sci Fi

Bill Whittle, whose writing I was introduced to with his post Tribes, just before he went on hiatus to go do something trivial like earn a living, has finally posted.

Humans are animals. I do not mean that in a negative way. But that is what we are: creatures capable of great good and great harm, susceptible to animal fears and passions, lower than angels but not without grace. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – a man who has seen a fair amount of both good and evil – wrote of that fault line, “that line separating good and evil, passing not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, but right through every human heart. “

As animals, we are wired to live in a state of nature. In the long marathon of our history, our civilizations are only the last two or three halting steps. It took millions of years to design and build the human animal. It will likely take that long again to design out all of the passions and furies that brought us here.

Until then, we live with a choice: to live in a state of nature, or a state of law. The state of nature is the default condition that the huge majority of human lives has lived under, and continue to live under to this very day – lives solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short in Hobbes’ memorable phrase. Or, we can chose to impose upon our internal fault line a series of laws and customs, a Civilization, that imperfectly attempts to keep as many of us as possible on the side of the angels.

That Civilization is not a natural state.

A long and worthwhile post.

And he promises MORE!

Giggity!

Hat tip to Geek

Jeff over at Alphecca just sent me a note to say he was not able to connect to my blog, but all seems ok here. I can find me at .com, .net and .org urls.

It is nice to know there are folks out there looking out for you!

I have not posted in a while, since I actually got a job.

Plus I am back on the bike, when I can, trying to keep my waistline below my age.

Add keeping up with posts over at Colony: Alchibah, and I have been a busy boy.

Once things settle down and I get into the new routine, I’ll be back.

Maybe if I stop commenting on other blogs, I would have time for my own….

Update: Turns out I blocked his ISP. I was swamped by comment spam a while ago and blocked a bunch of ISP’s before installing a blocker, but forgot to unblock them even after I realize they were spoofed IP’s.

Sorry, if I blocked you, but at this point, you may not see this.

Recently, I have fed a troll over on another site who either refuses to, or is unable to, separate the sacrifices our soldiers have made, from earliest history up to today, from the actions of the politicians that sent them into harms way. This person, deficient in human understanding, paints all veterans, living and dead, with the stains of those that used them for reasons dishonorable, with no exception for those times that were honorable. It is people like this that have given Liberalism a bad name: The self righteous intolerance of the fanatic is not confined to religion.

Today I went online just to look up some poetry, thinking that would persuade and I found a lot.

Perhaps the most famous one:

In Flanders Fields
John McCrae
(1872-1918)

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Or this from Abraham Lincoln, while not poetry in the strict sense, is poetic how much it says in its brevity:

Executive Mansion
Washington, November 21, 1864

To Mrs. Bixby, Boston, Mass.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department
a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts,
that you are the mother of five sons who have died
gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words
of mine which should attempt to beguile you from
the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot
refrain from tendering to you the consolation that
may be found in the thanks of the Republic they
died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the
anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only
the cherished memory of the loved and lost,
and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have
laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

There is too much.

Perhaps I am getting soft in my old age, but much of what you will find brought tears to my eyes, and will to yours, if you have a heart and any human compassion in your being.

Do your own search, either online or in treeware, and find what affects you most.

The Instapundit posted a bleg for coffee maker advice a couple weeks ago, along with followup’s on the advice he got here and here, but with no resolution yet. I can not believe someone as busy as he is has gone cold turkey.

I sent him a reference to a site, coffeegeek, for advice. They list many that they think are very good, some of them surprisingly cheap, some cynically expensive.

Everything I read about good coffee comes down to good beans, freshly ground, good water, proper temperature (200+) and proper time to extract.

But when you use an automatic machine the last two items are out of your control. From what I gather most machines brew a too cool a temperature, and length of time depends on how much you brew.

Indeed, in my drip machine, I always brew between 4-6 cups, as otherwise it extracts either too little or too much.

Which brings me to tea brewing methods for coffee. These seem to be very close to the Turkish method, except without the repeated boils.
I have seen mention recently of folks trying to sell coffee bags and filters for this as well.

Yet the best coffee I brew I make with a simple tea infuser I paid $6 for years ago. There are many variations from different mfg and vendors. It is a simple strainer that fits in a 10 oz mug, I put in 2 1/2-3 tablespoons of coffee, pour in water just off the boil from an electric kettle, brew/steep for 3-4 minutes, with a couple of shakes of the strainer, and get great coffee. The strainer is removed, dumped, rinsed and reused. I can clean it in the dishwasher when it needs it.

I also have a ChefsChoice TeaMate I bought in a moment of weakness that has a timer to set the brew time on it. You set the time based on the tea, from 2 to 15 minutes. It heats the water while steam warms the loose tea, when the water is just at 200, (I measured with an instant meat thermometer), it releases the water into the tea, the timer starts, and when done, it dumps the tea all at once into the carafe, ending the steep/brew all at once. I tried coffee in it but the design is not good for coffee. It does not allow enough water into the filter for good extraction from coffee, so that the coffee ends up looking like undercooked chocolate cake, though it works very well for tea. But the concept is there, and it works.

So why have none of the coffee machine makers gone this route?

A bin for the water, a bin for the coffee. Heat the water, release only when hot, all at once into the coffee. Brew the coffee all at once, all for the same time as set on the timer. Release of the brew into the carafe, all at once, ending the brew. It avoids under extraction and over extraction and seems easy to do since it has already been done for tea, with a smaller market. Why not coffee with such a huge market?

So, any coffee geeks out there care to help out with this?

Ever have a craving for a certain food?

Well due to some medical tests a few years ago, I have cut way back on things like cheese and eggs. I need to watch both cholesterol and calcium.

No, I did not eliminate them, I just do not keep them in the house, and indulge occasionally, usually when eating at a restaurant. Usually.

Well, over the weekend I was craving egg sandwiches. You know the type. From a bagel shop with a grill.
A crusty bagel with hot bacon or ham, melted cheese, and runny egg yolk dripping into the wrapper just begging to be soaked up on the toothy edge of the bagel as you scarf it down with some cold orange juice out of a carton.

Yum.

Since I had to go to market on Tuesday anyway, I picked up some eggs, some bacon, some extra sharp cheddar from Vermont, and stopped off at the local bagel shop, which makes very good bagels, the right way, New York style. Not those pathetic white bread donuts many places foist off on the unsuspecting innocent who is uneducated in the ways of the bagel.

I bought a dozen assorted: sesame, poppy, whole wheat, and garlic. I sliced, wrapped and froze 11. One was a snack.

Wednesday morning, I slowly cooked up three slices of bacon. While they were cooking I lightly toasted a whole wheat bagel. When the bacon was done, I cracked two eggs into the pan, one twist of the grinder, each, put fresh black pepper on each egg, and sprinkled lots of crumbled cheddar on them to melt.

I folded one slice of bacon onto the lower half of the bagel and waited for the eggs to cook just enough to hold together.

When the white of the eggs was still somewhat clear immediately around the yolk, so that it was still runny, and the cheese had started to melt, they were ready.

I lifted the first egg onto the bun, keeping the yolk intact, gently folded the second slice of bacon over it, lifted the second egg onto that and placed the third slice of bacon on top.
Some of the cheese had rolled off the eggs and into the bacon fat. I scooped out the cheese, and dripped it over the top egg and bacon.

Then the top of the bagel was placed carefully atop the entire creation, and gently pressed down to break the yolks and get that yellow juice running throughout the entire creation and down the side without squirting out.

The first bite was insanely good. Juices ran down the side, over my fingers. I had to eat it over a plate, sopping up the juices from the plate with the edge of the bagel, licking my fingers clean to keep them from slipping off the bagel.

All washed down with a tall glass of ice cold orange juice, that was so tangy it made my whole mouth flood with saliva.

Damn that was good.

Today, I had a poppy seed version for breakfast. A garlic version for lunch. I caved in and had a Romain and chicory salad for dinner.

But tomorrow…

For tomorrow I still have 6 eggs left.

Wherein I refute a modern connection, and expose an ancient and hidden one.

The recent premier of HBO’s new show Big Love has revived two controversies in conversations of late.

First, of course, is the morality and legal status of polygamy.
Second is the red herring in the debate over gay marriage, that G.M. would lead to all sorts of depravity, polygamy being perhaps the least objectionable.

Addressing these are two posts by Andrew Sullivan and Charles Krauthammer.

Krauthammer starts with:

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

…

What is historically odd is that as gay marriage is gaining acceptance, the resistance to polygamy is much more powerful. Yet until this generation, gay marriage had been sanctioned by no society that we know of, anywhere at any time in history. On the other hand, polygamy was sanctioned, indeed common, in large parts of the world through large swaths of history, most notably the biblical Middle East and through much of the Islamic world.

Sullivan, while stating he believes polygamy is a choice, whereas homosexuality is not, answers with:

I think legalizing such arrangements is a bad idea for a society in general for all the usual reasons (abuse of women, the dangers of leaving a pool of unmarried straight men in the population at large, etc.). I also think it’s reasonable for society to say to a heterosexual polygamist: we won’t let you legally marry more than one person, but we encourage you to marry one.

Althouse points out what so many forget, that marriage is as much, if not more, about economics than about child rearing and love. Volokh chimes in as well.

Homosexual relationships have indeed been accepted, institutionalized and even encouraged in the past. Ancient Greece is perhaps the most well known example. And considering that ancient Greece is one of the foundations of western liberal society, perhaps the US Military should have a rethink about don’t ask, don’t tell. Students of ancient cultures can point to others. While marriage was a child bearing institution, homosexuality was such an ingrained part of Greek culture that it all but a part of marriage. Polyandry is less common, but not unheard of.

What gay-marriage proponents are arguing for is full legal rights equal to those enjoyed by heterosexual couples. I can hardly blame them.

But to claim that the gay marriage discussion that is going on now in our society is responsible for the HBO program or any sort of attempt to legalize polygamy is putting the cart before the horse. In todays America, it is apparently often referred to as Polyamory.

Polygamy was legal in Utah before the Church of Latter Day Saints, (LDS or Mormon), hungry for legitimacy and the benefits that statehood would bring, agreed to change it’s own precepts and ban polygamy from it’s canon. This was all done with a wink and a nod, since polygamy was widely practiced behind the scenes by the mainstream membership, and the leadership, for decades after that.

Polygamy has also been part of many cultures throughout history up to today. Currently, only Islamic cultures and fundamentalist Mormon/LDS sects practice it openly. Though there are other small areas as well. The form that is practiced though, is in most cases, an atrocity that is akin to slavery and child rape. This is documented in parts of Under the Banner of Heaven : A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer. A worthwhile read for anyone interested in either polygamy or religious extremism.

Since polygamy existed in this country before any sort of talk of gay marriage arose, and calls for the legalization of polygamy have occurred since the inception of the LDS, I think these are separate issues. They are related in that they both address one the the most personal aspects of life, but in that only.

So: Should polygamy be legalized? Provided we are talking about adults, yes.

Like all peaceful activities driven underground by criminalization, those that continue the activity tend to be those with little concern for laws or how much they may harm others. This is why we see polygamy practiced in the monstrous manner of the fundamentalist LDS adherents throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Since they have no recourse to the law, and also must keep their life style hidden, they also hide abuses. Few, if any, polygamists will report an abusive neighbor for fear of having vengeance taken upon them by others in the community, either directly or by being brought to the attention of the law. So abuses like underage girls being forcibly ‘married’, (raped), traded between ‘husbands’, and even sanctioned incest, can occur. All protected by a climate of fear imposed by a corrupt hierarchy protected by a Mafia-like society that uses fear of the government as a tool of intimidation.

But if this were legalized for adults, that enter these arrangements consensually, with full knowledge of their rights, their legal protections, and with the right to leave the arrangement legally and with police protection of need be, we could all but wipe out the hideous slavery that polygamy often is today.

By legalizing it, we can eliminate the evil practices of those child predators and slavers that infest that community, and protect the weak and vulnerable, adults and children alike.

Now many would argue that monogamy is the norm in human relationships, and I agree. On the surface, at least.

Polygamy is actually going on all the time. It is just hidden under the mask of monogamy.

How so? Well, according to many studies, up to 30 percent of children are not the biological offspring of the men thought to be their fathers:

In the early 1970s, a schoolteacher in southern England assigned a class science project in which his students were to find out the blood types of their parents. The students were then to use this information to deduce their own blood types (because a gene from each parent determines your blood type, in most instances only a certain number of combinations are possible). Instead, 30 per cent of the students discovered their dads were not their biologically fathers.

“The classroom was, of course, not the ideal place to find out this information,” said Prof. Dickens, who is often consulted on ethical issues by geneticists at the Hospital for Sick Children.

.

This has led to a surge in paternity fraud cases, where men who have been forced to pay support for children not their own, are starting to rebel.
The truth will set you free! And save your bank account as well, it appears.

So it would appear that monogamy is merely a way for male Lotharios that are successful in the mating game to get cuckolds to bear the expense and effort needed to raise the Lotharios offspring. Much in the same way that a yellow-billed cuckoo or a cowbird may lay its eggs in the nest of another bird, forcing the care of the chicks to someone else.

No wonder there is such a prejudice against polygamy. It might actually force the fathers of children to marry the mothers of all the children they spawn, instead of parasiting off of poor shlubs dumb enough to think that child with hair that does not match anyone in his or his wifes families is really due to a recessive trait, instead of due to the CEO in the boardroom or the neighbor at the local bar.

Radley Balko over at The Agitator needs some help getting some new equipment. If you have appreciated his work as much as I have, not the least on the Drug War, no-knock raids, and eminent domain issues, please stop over and contribute.

Yes, wheels, not toys. There is a desperate shortage of wheelchairs in Iraq for kids that have been disabled by conflict or born with birth defects due to Saddam’s chemical weapons use.

Michael Yon has a post on his site about some folks that have already helped, but more is needed. It was written anonymously by a mainstream journalist avoiding his organizations censorship.

Through his connections with Iraqi doctors, Maj. Brown and Deuce Four found the boy a replacement wheelchair. But the adult-size chair, made for an obese person, was too big to fit through the door of the family’s home.

“We were pretty stoked that we got the guy a wheelchair,” recalls Maj. Brown. “But you could tell his mother was a little disappointed.” … Blauser wrote home to all of the 300 people on his email distribution list. His friends wrote to their friends.

“E-mail is a pretty small world,” says Blauser. “People are just chomping at the bit to help soldiers and to help the Iraqis. They just didn’t know how to help. This was something that gave them an outlet.”
In the end, 36 children got into wheelchairs last year after the grassroots effort that eventually became Wheelchairs For Iraqi Kids.

36 is a great start, but we can do more. These are innocent kids harmed by conflict and tyranny. Time to help.

Update: oops, forgot to link to the wheel chairs for Iraqi kids site.

Ever want to file a complaint against a police officer? I have. Now, after seeing the report below, I wonder how I walked out of the station at all, let alone uninjured.

(Lauderhill P.D.
tester: Yeah, I wanted to find out how to file a complaint against an officer. I just want to find out how you do it. Do you guys have a form or something that I could take with me.
officer: Well, you got to tell me first, and then I got to hear what’s going on. You’ve got to tell me what the complaint is.
tester: Do you have a complaint form that I can, like, fill out or something like that?
officer: Might not be a legitimate complaint.
tester: Who decides that?
officer: I’m trying to help you.
tester: Like, if there’s a form, why can’t I just take it and leave, right?
officer: No, you don’t leave with forms. You tell me what happened, and then I help you from there. Do you have I-D on?
tester: Why?
officer: You know what? You need to leave.
tester: Why?
officer: I’m going to tell you one more time, because I can’t do this anymore with you, okay. You’re refusing to tell me what you want to do, okay. You’re refusing to tell me who’s involved, where it happened, what transpired. You’e not cooperating iwth me one bit.
tester: I was just asking if you guys have a complaint form, like if there’s some way for me –
officer: Out of my way.
tester: To contact Internal Affairs.
officer: You can do whatever the hell you want. It’s a free country.
man” You’re cursing at me.
officer: Where do you live? Where do you live? You have to tell me where you live, what your name is, or anything like that.
tester: For a complaint? I mean, like, if I have –
officer: Are you on medications?
tester: Why would you ask me something like that?
officer: Because you’re not answering any of my questions.
tester: Am I on medications?
officer: I asked you. It’s a free country. I can ask you that.
tester: Okay, you’re right.
officer: So you’re not going to tell me who you are, you’re not going to tell me what the problem is.You’re not going to identify yourself.
tester: All I asked you was, like, how do I contact –
officer: You said you have a complaint. You say my officers are acting in an inappropriate manner.
officer: So leave now. Leave now. Leave now.
tester: I’m not doing anything wrong.
officer: Neither am I. It’s a free country.
officer: I’m not in your face. I’m standing on the sidewalk. It’s a free country. One more step forward, and you’ll see what happens. Take one more step forward.)

Just after the officer says “It’s a free country”, he reaches to his gun, releases the retention strap and loosens the weapon in his holster, then challenges the reporter, “One more step forward, and you’ll see what happens”.

These are the people that the liberal left wants to have exclusive control of all firearms. If the liberal left has it’s way, and all guns are confiscated from all citizens, just how do you think these little storm troopers will act then?

Every cop in this tape that gave any hassle to someone asking how to file a complaint should be summarily dismissed form the force. No suspensions, no reinstatement, fire the sons of bitches. They have no place holding the kind of authority they currently do. There is no excuse for this threatening and bullying behavior From those we have entrusted with lethal weapons and the authority to arrest and incarcerate people.

I just hope the videos stay linked on the stations page, please watch both.

Police: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, at The Police Complaint Center.

via boingboing

Update added links to two reports. Also, they work in ALL states, including New Jersey.

My grandmother is 100 years, 5 months old, give or take.

She may be 102, we are not entirely certain. But the best evidence is for 100.

Now, if you want to get an idea of what she is like, think of the character Granny from the old Beverly Hillbillies TV show. Your in the ballpark.

Yesterday, my uncle called to say he was taking her to a hospital because she was very weak and confused.
He had found her on the steps to the second floor, and was unsure if she had ever gone up to bed. Yes, at 100, she still climbs the stairs by herself.
Ornery is as ornery does.

We got her to give up driving around the age of 92, when she asked why she should stop since she could still see the white line on the side if the road.
She has survived a husband, cancer, cataract surgery, 2 World Wars, a Depression, various recessions and fashion mistakes.
She has outlived her daughter, her older brother who flew in the same WWI squadron as Eddie Rickenbacker, and every one she ever grew up with.
She swore she would not go before Clinton did. And did it.
She has published poetry, sold paintings in Woodstock, NY, and traveled to places many Americans have barely heard of.
She refuses to get a hearing aid, even though the neighbors are involved in every conversation, whether they want to be or not.
Her hair is still dark, though with lots of gray.
She says she has lots of complaints, but no ailments, and it is largely true.
She has seen the days of horse and buggy, Model T’s, wooden airplanes, titanium and carbon fiber jets, and moon landings.
She has seen wood stoves, coal heat and nuclear power.
Her father owned one of the first cars in the village, if not the first.
She has seen radio, television and the Internet rise, each in their turn.
She saw the rise and fall of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini and may outlast Castro.

Well, she’s made it onto the Internet now.

Not bad for the late child of a Catskill mill owner, public school teacher and part time piano teacher.

The Energizer Granny.

Well, it was a false alarm. So yesterday I spent cleaning up and clearing out a first floor room in her home and setting up a Murphy bed in it. I am still recovering today from the dust allergy caused by that. Old folks, especially when they can’t see that well, tend to let things go a bit.

She is as OK as a 100 year old can be. But she is forgetting to eat her meals, and drink enough water.
So my uncle is looking for ways to have more folks check in on her. She has some great neighbors that help out when they can, some more than anyone should expect.

My uncle does what he can, but it is a huge burden, caring for a centenarian and trying to run a small business himself. I live too far away for daily help. Finding people to check in on her is difficult in semi-rural areas, but we should be able to make do. She does not want a nursing home, and does not need it, yet. Nor would she want what little she has spent on it. She likes her home and wants to stay in it. She has, up till now, taken care of her daily needs, with some assistance in light cleaning, shopping and meals on wheels.

But the difference from a couple months ago, during the holidays, is marked. She has been getting ever more forgetful the past year or two. Forgets what day it is, who gave her what gift, loses track of where things are. But she can still remember the horse that tried to lick her all the time, and that used to walk over to join in conversations when the men-folk stood around wasting air.

Walking is a cautious and judicious enterprise now, with every step placed with deliberation and due consideration. She needs two people to assist outdoors where she needed only one a few short months ago, and none 3 or 4 years ago.

I am unsure if she will make it to 101, next July. She may, she had cousins that made it well past 100.

Every battery runs down, but it is sad to see it happen after such a long, strong run.

And so fast.

As you may have guessed from my post a couple of weeks ago about how I make chili, I like the stuff.

Well, after a couple of years of making chili with store bought powders, I had forgotten just how good chili made with fresh ground dried chile’s is. I had a discussion in an Oracle DBA class I took last year, over using powder or dried or fresh chile’s, where I agreed fresh or dried are better than powder, but that I preferred the ease and consistency of powders. I was just fooling myself, justifying my aberration. It is amazing what time will allow you to get used to. Sort of like how the drug war has numbed us to the destruction of our civil liberties.

Well, I finally replaced the whirling blade spice grinder I burned out, oh, a long, long time ago, in a state far, far away. I bought some dried New Mexico and some smaller dried chile’s de arbol, (little hot ones). Cleaned them out, ground them up and went to town.

The resulting chili was so good, I ate an entire pound of it yesterday. I am so shocked. I can’t believe I ate the whole thing. Do not tell my doctor.

Well I made more tonight, and am having trouble resisting eating more. I must store the rest, it is better after an overnight aging. OK. If I keep saying that, maybe I’ll believe it.

Meanwhile, the chaser. I always like something sweet after something hot. In my case Black Cherry soda or Orange Juice. Yum.

Oh MAN!

The WHO will tour in ‘06!
Probably with Zak Starkey on drums.

This is awsome news.

Plus, I was not aware of this, but Pete Townsend is serializing a novella he wrote at http://www.boywhoheardmusic.blogspot.com/. Not bad at all.

The kids are alright…

Update: Fixed first link

Julian Sanchez, guest blogging over at Andrew Sullivan’s site, points to some discussion on intellectually ‘gifted’ children.

Recently, there were also a couple of posts by Chris Byrne at The AnarchAngel:

Some folks assume that the very intelligent (or those that think they are) sit around all day congratulating themselves on how smart they are.

The mean of the various IQ tests I’ve had comes out to about 180, the lowest was 157, the highest over 200. According to the most recent numbers I’ve seen, there are somewhere between 6000, and 60000 people smarter than me in the world (gotta love those orders of magnitude eh).

That and $4.50 gets you a starbucks latte.

Followed by:

When I was a kid my mother refused to let me skip grades, which I always found kind of irritating because I was doing high school course work by the time I was in 3rd grade, and college work by the time I was in 6th. She ABSOLUTELY refused to send me to private school full time, or any special schools for the gifted, both of which were makign me offers all the time. One time the state even tried to take me away from her because some psychiatrist said she was endangering my welfar by not letting me go. She DID at least let me attend the accelerated and supplemental classes.

By the time I was 13 I was just tired of it and I refused to participate in any more unless there was a clear and direct advantage to my doing so; or the law required it (like the CTBS, SB, and ASVAB).

The WaPo opinion piece says:

Conspicuously missing from the debate over the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act is a discussion of how it has hurt many of our most capable children. By forcing schools to focus their time and funding almost entirely on bringing low-achieving students up to proficiency, NCLB sacrifices the education of the gifted students who will become our future biomedical researchers, computer engineers and other scientific leaders.

Followed by Matthew Yglesias response:

…really, we should care more about low-performing students and the glaring inequities in the current system.

I agree with that, but I also think the choice isn’t necessarily all that false. The rhetoric of No Child Left Behind is, I think, an appealing one. The idea is that, well, no child should be left behind. It’s an essentially egalitarian aspiration — the school system should try to do well for the hardest to teach kids, included ones coming from difficult backgrounds and ones who simply for whatever reason have a hard time with school. The idea of “gifted” programs is basically the reverse vision — that the school system should focus on the easiest cases and push them to the highest level of achievement possible.

As usual with discussions about the school system, the children are treated as “resources” to be managed like cattle for the “good of society”.

Crap.

I was a ‘gifted’ child, by just about any measure except possibly by what I actually achieved.

OK, I will try not to have the sub-title of this post devolve into “Bitter Much?”.

First, of course, you need to define ‘gifted’.

Wikipedia has this:

* Bright: 115+, or 1 in six (84th percentile)
* Moderately gifted: 130+, or 1 in 50 (97.9th percentile)
* Highly gifted: 145+, or 1 in 1000 (99.9th percentile)
* Exceptionally gifted: 160+, or 1 in 30,000 (99.997th percentile)
* Profoundly gifted: 175+, or 1 in 3 million (99.99997th percentile)

These are based on tests where the average, or ‘norm’, is set to 100. This is not true for all tests, so using ‘percentile’ is a more accurate term.

I score somewhere between the 98th and 99th percentile. The lowest I ever got was a 97 plus, the majority are all 98, with a couple at 99. So solidly in the ‘gifted’ range. I maintain my membership in Mensa, which requires a test score in the 98th percentile or above. Dunno why I maintain it, I rarely participate.
This only means I can speak to the experience such a person can have on our society. It doesn’t mean I am representative or that I am right.

First, as is pointed out in Wikipedia, the etymology of the term ‘gifted’

“is derived from a some belief that such a trait is supernatural, or metaphorically so, and had been gifted by a supernatural being. The uniqueness of this ability makes the gifted subject to certain social conditions.”

I have a problem with this phrase, since no one gave me my intelligence any more than they gave me my height, weight, eye or hair color. I have no more obligation to society due to my intellectual talents than does someone with great athletic or musical talents. The supposed obligations people try to impose on the intellectually talented are, in my view, just attempts to place restraints on people they do not understand, and to try to get a free ride on others skills. To paraphrase: ‘from each according to their smarts, to each according to their dumbth’. Sorry. If you benefit at all from the intellectually gifted, it should be as a side benefit from what they accomplish by their own choices. This happens all the time as it is, since intellectually talented folks tend to go into business, scientific and other fields that benefit others, but they do it because it interests them, not because of any sense of obligation.

So stop with the ‘gifted’ stuff and keep your shackles off me.

OK, back to the issue originally raised above. How do deal with the intellectually talented.

The idea that the intellectually talented can fend for themselves. I can tell you this is not true. Yes, they can read earlier, do math earlier and maybe play musical instruments earlier, but, for the vast majority, they do not develop emotional or social skills any earlier than do average people. The intellectual talents they posses can, and often do, make them stand out from their age cohort. Being a standout in those years can be very difficult for a kid. If you do not understand this, just think back to when you were a kid, and how you treated those that looked different, spoke different or smelled different. If someone was out of norm in height or weight, or ate food vastly different from the majority, like curry, which caused them to have a strongly different odor, they were in for it.

The intellectually talented have a similar problem. I can tell you from experience that being labeled as a ’smarty pants’ and other hurtful appellations was just that: hurtful. It will lead a child to misbehave, either by withdrawing or fighting. It can lead them to dumb themselves down to fit in, or start to avoid school to avoid the whole harassing environment.

And when that harassment comes at home, due to a dysfunctional family or parents that just do not know how to handle an intellectually talented child, the problems can be even worse.

The idea that we should concentrate on the intellectually deficient at the expense of the talented is first of all unfair. Under the Constitution there is a concept of equal treatment under the law. I think this requires that the intellectually talented have educational programs funded at levels equal to those for the deficient.

Secondly, it is one more blow to scientific and economic progress. If we hold back those with the most potential to make progress in any area, we damage ourselves in the end.

I can tell you what leaving an intellectually talented child to fend for themselves did in my case: A socially awkward, reclusive loner, with poor people skills, high school dropout, college dropout, military dropout. Get the idea? It starts a bad pattern that is very difficult to break. I am 47 years old and I still struggle to stay out of that pattern. While I do not know from experience myself, I imagine it is like an alcoholic struggling to never drink again.

I’ll tell you this. From what I have heard in the news the past few years, if I was in school today, and treated the same way I was back when I was in school, I would have ended up as a school shooter. Yes, I had that much anger in me, and it took years to simmer down. As you may guess, some is still there.

So here is my advice, from hard knocks experience, on dealing with intellectually talented kids:

If you are a parent of an intellectually talented child, and you notice ANY problems, like boredom, withdrawal, lack of friends, or behavior problems: get your kid into a program for intellectually talented kids. In that program they will be able to socialize with true peers, who will understand them, instead of ridicule them. Do not listen to people that say your child should be ‘mainstreamed’ for socialization. You can’t be socialized if you are ostracized.

Fund educational programs for the gifted at the same rates as for the deficient. If ten percent of the school budget goes to the deficient, ten percent should go to the talented.

Skipping grades is not a good idea in general. You place a child in a setting where he will not be able to socialize with those around them. It is better to have a separate school with the same age group. While Advanced Placement classes are better than nothing, it still leaves many in socially, emotionally and maybe even physically dangerous situations.

Charter schools and satellite schools are only a partial answer. But setting up special schools for intellectually talented kids, as we do in many areas for music and the arts, or vocational trades, is a good idea.

Grant dollar for dollar tax credit to anyone that pays for a child to attend a non-public school. This goes equally for all kids, not just the intellectually talented. We need a way for parents to help their kids without needing to beg a bureaucracy and have their kids sink into a pit of uselessness while the administrators bicker. Vouchers are troublesome from many points of view, but letting people spend their own money, and get their own taxes back is just plain fair play.

It seems cyclists are targeted for violence in places other than the U.S. as well:

BULLYING drivers are leaving cyclists for dead on Townsville roads.

After being knocked off her bike six times this year, Linda Bateson is waging a war against maniac motorists.
Six potentially deadly blows and five drivers did not even stop, leaving Ms Bateson for dead on Townsville’s busiest thoroughfares.

Stories like this are why I am so hesitant to start riding again. It seems to not be a U.S. phenomenon.

First, there was imposition of marriage licensing after the Civil War to prevent intermarriage of Euro-Americans with former slaves, mostly Africans, and others. We fought that and won, after a century or so, but we won.

Then there are the laws preventing same sex couples from marrying. We are fighting this and winning, slowly. Give it a decade. Or two.

Now, there are those fighting the laws against plural marriage, also known as polygamy:

“Polygamy rights is the next civil rights battle.” So goes the motto of a Christian pro-polygamy organization that has been watching the battle over homosexual “marriage” rights with keen interest.
“We’re coming. We are next. There’s no doubt about it, we are next,” says Mark Henkel, founder of www.TruthBearer.org.

No mention of whether they are talking of polygyny, (one man with multiple wives), or polyandry, (one woman with multiple husbands), but just about everyone advocating for legalization is talking of polygyny, from what I see. Most do not recognize the polygamy is inclusive of both practices.

I have some problem with the language used in these debates. They speak of ‘giving’ or ‘extending’ the right of marriage to these groups seeking it. But a Right is not granted, given or extended: Privileges are.

Rights are inherent in each individual, not in groups, not in authorities nor governments.

So far as I can understand, each of us is able to love and care for anyone we wish to. There is no authority that can force you to love or not love another person. So we are not talking of rights here, we are talking of SUPPRESSION of rights, and the removal of that suppression. It would seem a minor distinction, but minor or not it is an important distinction.

We are also talking about gaining special privileges, (not Rights), to advantageous tax status, legal status and benefits such as health care and survivors inheritance.

Setting aside religious objections for the moment, what objections can there be?

Procreation and children? There are plenty of childless marriages now, are we to invalidate them? And if another version of a marriage has children, whether by natural conception, artificial conception, adoption, or whatever means, why should they be denied the same ability to get tax benefits, health benefits or any other thing current marriages with children get? Do we eliminate benefits for single parents? Do we tear children out of the arms of parents simply because there are two daddies or mommies or some other combination of people? So long as the children are loved, cared for and disciplined to behave with others, and are not abused, why should we care? It would seem better than an orphan institution or foster care by an impersonal state. It’s difficult to get a hug from a regulation or statute.

Estate law, inheritance and taxes? We are talking of material things here. What happens when any other type of partnership ends due to the death of a partner. What happens when one of the two partners in Smith and Jones Carpentry dies? If it is Smith, Jones, Doe and Roe Carpentry, is it any different? If we can handle the disposition of storefronts, lumber yards, tools and equipment, we can handle the disposition of homes, cars and the family silver.

Well? I’m waiting. What is there other than religious objections? If that is all that is left, what are we arguing over? Whose religion rules? How about mohammedan? They allow up to four wives. How many others allow more than one spouse? A few, though not many. But the point is why have any of them RULE?

And left out of the debate are folks like me, who I will refer to as the Nonogamous. Those who have little or no interest in marriage, for whatever reason. Why should we be left out? Why should we be denied these same privileges under law? We may have children, especially single women. We can avail ourselves of some of the legal privileges, but not all. Child tax credits, listing children on health plans. But can we leave our property to someone without having it taxed out from under that heir? Can we list someone on our living will who is not a spouse, without having other family protest? There are other privileges we can not avail ourselves of, that should have NO bearing on whether we are married or not, hetero or homo, monogamous, polygamous or Nonogamous.

I was raised by a christian scientist. If I found myself in hospital, in a coma, could I designate someone to make my medical decisions for me without having that parent try to interfere and impose christian scientist beliefs on my helpless body, denying treatment that may save me that I may have expressed a wish to receive should I ever be so incapacitated? No. I can have a living will, but that may not be recognized over the wishes of a parent, even if I am well over 40 years old.

So for the sake of all people, including me and my Nonogamous cohort, lets get government out of the marriage business altogether, and leave it to settle disputes over toasters and silverware when survivors can not agree amongst themselves. That is the proper, and only, place for government in an institution so wildly varied in its possibilities and so fraught with human emotion.

Michael Yon surprised me. He is not just a war journalist. Go figure.

This is a wonderful, almost meditative piece on birds and how he relates to them in Iraq.

I love birds. Everywhere, I notice the birds; often I hear their voices before seeing them. To my ears, the most beautiful singers are the mockingbirds. I can listen to their songs for hours and hours, especially in the springtime, when the bachelors are courting and they sing all night during the full moons. In cities, lovesick bachelors often mistake a streetlight for the full moon, and perch in a nearby tree, singing their hearts out.

Well worth the time to read. I needed it after that story below of how that despicable waste of DNA that calls himself a police chief railroaded an innocent man onto death row for the crime of defending himself. That son of a bitch defiles the memory of those that fall in service to this country. They do not fight for him, they fight for his victim, who now sits on death row.

Sounds like the next mission to free people from tyranny will be in Mississippi.

heh