Progressive Fitchburg

The End is Nigh

2010-03-02T19:19:00.000-05:00

Well, a little more than nigh. I'm done here.

Most of you have probably already figured that out, due to my relatively long absence from blogging here. Or you might have seen this. Essentially, I put this blog on indefinite hiatus in mid-December, figuring I'd at least leave myself the option to come back if something really interesting and/or motivating happened.

Nothing did.

So I'm going to officially shut down this operation now. I'll leave the site in place, and probably even leave comments on. I just won't be writing anything new here.

As for the inevitable "why'd you quit?" questions, the answer's simple: I wanted to. I blog for fun, and the focus of this blog no longer provides me with any fun, not even that weird sort of quasi-fun that comes about from getting riled up over something awful. I'm happier devoting my energy elsewhere. There's really nothing more to it than that, so don't bother forming any dumbass conspiracy theories.

Thanks very much to the assorted commenters, emailers, blogbuddies, and general well-wishers. You guys did a lot to keep me going here well past the time I would have otherwise quit. I can't even count the number of posts that were born from someone emailing me an interesting and/or infuriating tidbit. I'm pretty terrible about responding to emails, but I read and appreciated all of them (except the dickish ones, obviously, but they were a tiny minority).

So, that's it, Fitchburg. Thanks for the memories, and good luck with everything!

On Mammograms

2009-11-23T09:17:00.005-05:00

While this is in theory a political blog, you may or may not be aware that I'm actually far more interested in public health. These two interests are tied together in a lot of important ways. Sometimes this is a good thing, as public health concerns can (and absolutely should) inform political decisions.

Other times, this is a bad thing. Public health is based on science, whereas politics is rarely even based in reality. But since the two are tied, public health recommendations often have political ramifications, and sometimes lead to political controversies. That's what we're seeing right now with the USPSTF's recent recommendations that screening mammography is not indicated for women under age 50.

It's worth noting a few things up front. First, this is only about screening mammograms. That is, mammograms performed on healthy women with no symptoms of breast cancer. If someone has a lump, they should have a mammogram no matter what age they are, and this recommendation doesn't change that. These recommendations also don't apply to women at increased risk, such as those with a strong family history of breast cancer. They're only for healthy, low-risk women.

Second, this is hardly a new topic. It's been debated for years and years, and while I didn't expect recommendations like this right now, I'm not a bit surprised that this is the recommendation. It's where the science points, and the science has been pointing that way for quite awhile.

Third, the recommendation to not begin screening mammograms until age 50 is pretty commonplace in Europe already, and has worked well in those countries. It's not like the US is doing something out of the ordinary, it's just joining much of the rest of the industrialized world.

Those elements out of the way, let's look at a pretty terrible editorial written by Martin Schram (a syndicated columnist who thinks H1N1 is called H1V1, so you know he's an expert on health matters), and published in the Sentinel. It's a load of made-up numbers, pointless fearmongering, and bad arguments. So let's take it apart.

A federal task force of experts had indeed reversed years of government guidance on breast cancer exams -- announcing that most women younger than 50 should not get "routine" screening mammograms every two years, after all. Nor should they examine their own breasts for lumps.

Yeah, the USPSTF is not a federal task force. Here's what they are, according to their own website:

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), first convened by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1984, and since 1998 sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), is the leading independent panel of private-sector experts in prevention and primary care. The USPSTF conducts rigorous, impartial assessments of the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a broad range of clinical preventive services, including screening, counseling, and preventive medications. Its recommendations are considered the "gold standard" for clinical preventive services.

In fact, the USPSTF's recommendations include this disclaimer:

Disclaimer: Recommendations made by the USPSTF are independent of the U.S. government. They should not be construed as an official position of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Pretty straightforward, that. The AHRQ is a federal agency, the USPSTF is an independent body that gets some funding from them. Maybe this is just splitting hairs, but Schram is not starting off well. He continues:

The reason given by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a panel chosen and funded by the federal government [Unicow: Was this clause stolen from the Wikipedia article?], is that these examinations are no longer considered statistically effective. But it sounds as if they really mean the costly mammograms are not cost-effective. The exams save women's lives, the panel acknowledged -- but just not as many of them ages 40 to 49 as women older than 50.

Schram is hearing things. He may think he knows that they "really mean" something about cost-effectiveness, but the head of the panel disagrees:

But Ned Calonge, who chairs the 16-member panel, defended the recommendations and denied that cost or the debate over health-care reform played any role in the decision. "Cost just isn't a consideration when the task force deliberates," said Calonge, who is also the chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

That's as it should be. The panel is concerned with the evidence, not the cost. Which isn't to say that cost concerns don't matter, merely that they're not part of the deliberations of the USPSTF, and their report only mentions financial costs very briefly and in passing, not as an element of the recommendations. There are other groups who deal with cost, the USPSTF deals with evidence only.

Now is where things get ugly.

Here's a close look at the statistical mind-bending that the task force pursued to arrive at its stunning conclusions:

The task force concluded that the risk of breast cancer in women age 40 to 49 is very low -- and there is a significant risk that a mammogram can produce false-positive results that can lead to unnecessary biopsies that can be disfiguring. For every 1,000 women who are screened annually starting at 40 years old, according to the model studied by the task force, a mere 0.7 women would be saved from dying of breast cancer. An estimated 470 other women would receive a false-positive result and 33 would be given unnecessary biopsies.

These numbers are a little weird right off. I'm not quite sure where he got them, because the recommendation statement gives the "number needed to invite for screening" to prevent one breast cancer death in the 39-49 age group as 1904 (CI, 929 to 6378), which is closer to 0.5 than 0.7 per 1,000 women. Maybe Schram has a different source I'm not seeing, or maybe he's just playing games with numbers. I certainly can't think of any other reason he'd talk about "0.7 women" instead of giving the more-understandable "it takes X screenings to prevent one death" measure.

But let's just assume that wherever Schram got his figures is correct, and maybe just measuring something slightly different than what I was looking at. What's not at all correct is what Schram then does with the figures. "Statistical mind-bending" doesn't begin to cover it.

But here is another way journalists can crunch the numbers to breathe measurable lives into that task force's 0.7 statistic: The last census showed there are 22,617,241 women in the United States aged 40 to 49. Now ask: What if all the women in America age 40 to 49 were given annual mammograms?

According to the task force's model, 15,832 American women would be saved from death by breast cancer. Yes, by that model 10,629,990 women might receive false-positive results and suffer the anxiety that surely would cause. And 746,361 women in America age 40 to 49 might undergo unnecessary biopsies. But all of those women would still be alive.

No, Martin, this is not another way journalists can crunch the numbers, unless they're trying to be deceptive. The task force's model tells you no such thing.

See, you can't take statistics that say that in a sample population it took 1903 screenings to result in one life saved and then go forwards and apply that (with ridiculous specificity) to an imaginary scenario in which every woman in her 40s is screened. It just doesn't work that way.

We have an estimate of what happens now, there's no basis for applying it to an imaginary wonderland in which everyone is screened. The simple act of screening everyone would likely change those figures. Furthermore, it's a blatant attempt to serve up higher numbers. Why not report on the number of women that age who we already know benefited? Because it's not going to be nearly as high as the stuff that Schram just makes up, of course.

At this point, Schram asks an odd question:

So, isn't the real question whether women should retain the option of deciding for themselves whether they want to undertake a mammogram that could save their lives but could also cause the anxiety of false-positives and perhaps an unnecessary biopsy? Is that the choice that the women should make for themselves? Or should it be made for them by their health insurance plan?

Well yeah, of course they should retain that option. Pretty much everyone has said that. And nobody's pushing for health insurances to stop covering mammograms. Not the USPSTF, not the government, not even any insurance companies (as far as I can see). Schram claims that insurances will stop covering mammograms, but provides nothing to back up this claim, and it seems pretty unlikely to me.

Regardless, even if insurances do stop covering them (which I don't think they should, or will), that doesn't change the facts as reported by the USPSTF. And that's where the ire is being directed, for reasons that I can't understand. The facts are what they are, the recommendations are in accordance with the facts. They may not be convenient or popular, but they're well-grounded.

The real issue here shouldn't be whether the USPSTF put out good recommendations or not. In fact, that isn't the issue. Very few people have argued with the evidence supporting these recommendations, because it's quite solid. The argument seems to be that it's somehow wrong to even make recommendations, or that it's misogynistic/socialist/rationing/whatever to even make them.

It's not. They're recommendations. You can take them or leave them. Medicare and Medicaid are going to pay for mammograms the same way they currently do, as will most private insurances. And that's fine. Women who want them can get them, and that's fine too. Hopefully this will help women in this age group to put a bit more thought into whether they need them or not, which is never a bad thing.

The fact of the matter is, screening mammograms in the 40-49 age group have little impact on survival, and do have real downsides. False-positives are no laughing matter, and they're quite common. Overdiagnosis (treating something that was found on a screening mammogram but would never become clinically problematic) can cause real harm. On the other hand, mammograms can save lives, even in this age group. It's a balancing act, for sure.

Finally, there's one quote from another Sentinel story that's bugging me. It's from Leominster native Kathy DiRusso, who leads a team that raises money for breast cancer research:

The results of the study seem to say the costs and false positives of administering mammograms do not justify the number of cases found in young women, but DiRusso contested that.

"To me, one life saved justifies the cost," she said. "If it was (task force members') lives, maybe they'd think differently."

Not if they're doing their jobs right, Kathy. The evidence points strongly in this direction. If you don't like it, then point out where it's wrong. Don't unfairly paint the USPSTF as somehow not caring about cancer patients. To do so is idiotic, and for all you know there may be members of the task force who have had their lives saved this way.

But while that was irritating, it's the "one life saved justifies the cost" that's really horrible. You hear this argument all the time, almost always used when evidence doesn't support what they want supported. Abstinence-only educators talk about "if it can keep one kid from getting pregnant it's worth the cost," D.A.R.E. proponents say "if it can keep one kid from using drugs it's worth the cost." I say that's all bullshit.

It's a stupid argument, especially since the "cost" we're talking about with screening mammography isn't in dollars, it's in quality of life. Does one life saved justify it if the cost is ten women who needlessly underwent radical mastectomies? How about if it's a thousand women undergoing biopsies? How about ten thousand women suffering needless stress and anxiety due to a false positive? Or, if you really want to talk about financial costs, how about balancing the cost of paying for mostly-unnecessary screenings versus spending that same money on finding better treatments? Unfortunately, there's only so much money to go around, and you can't pay for screenings without detracting somewhat from treatment and researching cures.

Saving lives is unquestionably a good thing, but saving one life does not justify any possible cost. These recommendations are trying to balance the cost (in quality of life) versus the benefit (in lives saved), and that's always going to be tricky.

By all means go ahead and argue that the benefit outweighs the cost, but let's not do it by pretending that even the tiniest benefit outweighs significant costs, and let's not do it by mangling statistics. Better yet, how about we just leave the politics out of this one?

Incumbents win everything

2009-11-04T09:30:00.004-05:00

Okay, the election is over. Here's how it came out.

First, in a result that should surprise no one, Lisa Wong handily beat Fuzzy and Tom Donnelly in the mayoral "race".

Lisa Wong - 60%
"Write-in votes" (presumably mostly for Donnelly) - 26%
Fuzzy Voisine - 14%

The city council elections were also predictable, sadly. All the incumbents are back, and known crazy person Rosemary Reynolds joins them. Blech.

In the ward elections, incumbents Boisvert and Starr beat their challengers (Rosado and McNutt).

Fitchburg sure does love its incumbents!

I have no idea why.

Today is a good day to vote!

2009-11-03T08:45:00.003-05:00

So, it's election day.

You can see where to vote here. Choose wisely.

That's all.

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T14:36:00.003-04:00

Here's a Halloween video for you. Might be NSFW in some environments, but only for a few moments.

Donnelly hides in his hole

2009-10-29T08:42:00.005-04:00

So, I checked the paper this morning hoping that newly-announced mayoral anti-candidate Tom Donnelly would be in it, presenting all his brilliant ideas about how he'll do things if anyone's stupid enough to vote for him.

Alas, I was disappointed.

Donnelly on Tuesday said Wong painted a "rosy picture" during the last mayoral race, while he gave a more sobering prediction of financial hardships the city would face over the next two years.

"The disparity is in what was promised," said Donnelly, after the Councilor-at-large debate at Fitchburg State College Tuesday night.

Donnelly did not return phone calls for a more extensive interview by press time Wednesday.

That's all we get. I suppose when you're as terrible a campaigner as Donnelly is, it's best to avoid interviews.

But we do have a little bit, so let's unpack it. Here's what Donnelly is basically saying:

During the last election, Lisa Wong gave people hope for great things, and hasn't been able to deliver on every single thing. I, on the other hand, was a gloomy gus who never even tried to inspire people. Therefore, you should vote for me!

Inspiring! Since the current mayor wasn't able to deliver on absolutely everything she hoped for (which of course is all her fault, and has nothing to do with the city council, economic downturn, etc.), people should vote for Donnelly, who promises absolutely nothing. That way they won't be disappointed when he delivers nothing!

Yay?

Oh, there's also this:

Transparency will be the focus of Donnelly's administration, if he is elected, he said Tuesday.

Is there even anything to respond to there? Transparency is what everyone running for office promises, especially if they have nothing else to offer.

Just how stupid does Donnelly think the people of Fitchburg are, anyway? Judging from the comments on Sentinel articles, most people who aren't rabid anti-Wong loonies have in no way forgotten what the guy's all about, or that he helped create the problems Wong has been trying to fix for the last two years. They also see through the whole "I'll swoop in late and avoid any actual campaigning" gambit.

His supporters are pretty much entirely limited to the nuts. Here's a typical example:

good for tom wong sucks and has ruined the city-we are number 11 at fu

Oh no! Not number 11 at fu! We need to get to work improving our fu ranking!

Those are your supporters, Tom. There aren't very many of them, and they're not very coherent. You are officially the anti-Wong candidate, nothing more.

And that's not a good thing to be.

Tom Donnelly running for mayor!

2009-10-28T09:07:00.004-04:00

The Fitchburg mayoral race has been really boring this year. Instead of crazy people like Ted DeSalvatore and townie losers like Tom Donnelly, we had crazy quitter Rachel Rosenfeld for a disappointingly short while, and now have Fuzzy Voisine "challenging" the mayor.

But Fuzzy's heart is clearly not in it. He didn't even show up to the debate, and his little recorded message on FATV was just an embarrassment. He was never even a remote danger to Wong's incumbency.

Now things have changed. It's not just Wong vs Fuzzy anymore. Rather, Tom Donnelly is back!

With encouragement from many friends and residents, Thomas Donnelly has decided to launch a write-in campaign for mayor for this year’s general election on Nov. 3.

Donnelly originally decided not to run after mounting an unsuccessful bid for mayor in 2007, feeling that the people made it clear then that they did not support him enough to gove him their vote.

Yep, Tom's back! And he's running a write-in campaign. With like a week to go. I imagine that he's hoping people will have forgetten what a massive douchebag he is and vote for him based on pure anti-Wong sentiment.

Actually, I don't need to imagine. He basically stated as much:

Many people changed their mind, however, as Mayor Lisa Wong’s term progressed, according to Donnelly.

“After people saw the way things have been going on in the city, they were saying that ‘I wish I voted for you’,” said Donnelly.

This is the political equivalent of seeing a few bumper stickers that say "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for the Other Guy" and deciding that you'll ride that tiny wave of discontent to victory.

So, what to make of all this? I have a few thoughts.

First off, I don't really consider Donnelly to pose a significant threat to Wong. He probably poses more of a threat than Fuzzy, but that's not saying much. He's also getting into the race extraordinarily late, and won't be on the ballot. He doesn't have enough time to present any compelling ideas, yet has to convince people to go out of their way to write him in.

Basically, his only hope is to ride purely on anti-Wong sentiment, which he'll be splitting with Fuzzy. Is there enough of this sentiment to give him a chance? I seriously doubt it, but you never know.

How about his strengths? Well, the truth of the matter is that Tom Donnelly has never presented any compelling ideas. He ran last time on the "vote for me because I'm an old white guy who has experience" platform, which he can't do this time around. But his lack of ideas does mean that this is the perfect time for him to get into the race. He can say any bullshit he wants, the bootlick newspaper will print it, and there's little time for others to rebut it.

As far as I can tell, Donnelly doesn't have a website (which seems par for the course this time around, annoyingly). He may or may not have an organization behind him to work on his sticker campaign, which will require a lot more work than if he were on the ballot. He hasn't yet put forward any reasons why people should vote for him, beyond the fact that some people don't like Lisa Wong. Really, he's more of an anti-candidate than a candidate. He's the one who bitter old townies will vote for because he'll tell them he's going to turn on their streetlights.

On the plus side, Donnelly getting into the race (or at least pulling up next to it) will hopefully motivate more people to go vote. Before, it would have been easy for the average citizen to skip the election, because Wong was essentially unopposed (sorry Fuzzy). Now there's a real reason to get out there and vote. The rabid anti-Wong whiners will no doubt be out to support Donnelly, so the pro-Wong masses will hopefully be similarly motivated to show up. While they're there voting for Lisa, they'll hopefully also vote in a few good city councilors, and not the bunch of losers who came out at the top of the primary.

So, there we have it. We're in both the early and late stages of Donnelly's campaign. Let's see how crazy he can get!

Fuzzy states his case!

2009-10-22T09:04:00.006-04:00

As they often do, the good folks at FATV have put together another informative video of municipal candidates stating their cases. It's pretty long, as they were each invited to give five-minute speeches and 17 candidates are involved, but there's one part of it you have to watch.

The part I'm referring to is Michael "Fuzzy" Voisine's message from 5:19 to 5:55 (yes, his five-minute message was 36 seconds long). It runs right after Lisa Wong's message.

If you're too lazy/at work to watch 36 seconds of haplessness, here's a complete transcript of Fuzzy's message (courtesy of Mr. Lincoln):

Hello Fitchburg. I'm Michael Voisine... Fuzzy as most of you know me. I'm running for mayor... and I'm looking to be all the people’s mayor. I'm hoping to get everybody out there voting. Every vote counts, so... I need your help to make things happen. If we all work together, I think we're gonna have a great time. Thank you very much.

Inspiring words indeed! Too bad the delivery really sucks all the life out of them (yes, the video is actually even worse than the text). He delivers it with all the certainty and vigor of a student trying to give an oral report on a book he didn't bother to read.

But whatever. C'mon Fitchburg, let's have a great time!*

*Preferably, by voting for someone who wouldn't be a total embarrassment to the city, unlike Fuzzy.

WBZ-TV News Is A Chocolatey Fountain of Bullshit

2009-10-14T13:54:00.009-04:00

It's not even worth the effort to respond to this piece of utter nonsense from WBZ. Hell, there's nothing there to even argue against. It's not based on anything remotely resembling facts, and is just the usual whining from people who experience petty crime and blame it on streetlights not being on.

Petty crime has always existed, it always will exist, and just because a few local dipshits want to link their particular case of vandalism to streetlights doesn't make it the truth. Five years ago, my neighbor had "fag" spray-painted on his car too, but he also got a bunch of swastikas to go with it. He was parked right under a lit streetlight. Whoopedy-fuck.

Sure, it's disappointing that a supposed "news" show would be so journalistically irresponsible as to claim that a few anecdotes equals a "crime wave," but it's exactly what one should expect from tv news. It's what they've been doing for as long as I can remember, and it's why I haven't willingly watched a tv news show since I was about 17. They tend to induce a sort of berserker frenzy of rage in me.

So, since there's nothing there to actually argue about, I'll just say the same thing I've been saying for 15 years: If you take anything on tv news seriously, then you are a fucking idiot.

That is all.

Mandatory Swine Flu Shots? Nope.

2009-10-05T08:46:00.006-04:00

Ugh. There are few things more irritating than misleading news stories about legislative bills. They're annoying mostly because it means I have to go digging through some piece of legislative gobbledy-gook in order to debunk them, and that's not fun.

Such is the case with the Sentinel article entitled Bill may make flu shot mandatory. The first flaw can be seen in that weaselly headline. What's with "may"? Either it makes them mandatory or it doesn't, right? This headline "may" be misleading!

Then there's this fearmongering lede:

A bill being considered on Beacon Hill would allow state government officials to search and destroy property without a warrant, fine and jail people for not taking a vaccine and bar people from assembling publicly during a state of emergency.

Well, that all sounds pretty bad. But is it actually true?

The bill in question is Massachusetts Senate Bill 2028. I actually heard about it a couple of weeks ago when a friend forwarded me a scary email from an antivaccination group, and wrote it off as senseless fearmongering from people who oppose vaccination no matter what.

I guess it's time to get more deeply into it. Here's the part of the bill that's going to scare people:

Specifically, but without limiting the generality of section 2A and notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the commissioner shall have and may exercise, or may direct or authorize other state or local government agencies to exercise, authority relative to any one or more of the following if necessary to protect the public health during an emergency declared pursuant to section 2A or a state of emergency declared under chapter 639 of the acts of 1950.. During either type of declared emergency, a local public health authority as defined in section 1 of chapter 111 may exercise authority relative to subparagraphs (1), (2), (3), (4), (6), (7), (13), (14), and (15); and with the approval of the Commissioner may exercise authority relative to subparagraphs (5), (8), (9), (10), and (11):

(1) to require the owner or occupier of premises to permit entry into and investigation of the premises;
(2) to close, direct, and compel the evacuation of, or to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated any building or facility, and to allow the reopening of the building or facility when the danger has ended;
(3) to decontaminate or cause to be decontaminated, or to destroy any material;
(4) to restrict or prohibit assemblages of persons;
(5) to require a health care facility to provide services or the use of its facility, or to transfer the management and supervision of the health care facility to the department or to a local public health authority;
(6) to control ingress to and egress from any stricken or threatened public area, and the movement of persons and materials within the area;
(7) to adopt and enforce measures to provide for the safe disposal of infectious waste and human remains, provided that religious, cultural, family, and individual beliefs of the deceased person shall be followed to the extent possible when disposing of human remains, whenever that may be done without endangering the public health;
(8) to procure, take immediate possession from any source, store, or distribute any anti-toxins, serums, vaccines, immunizing agents, antibiotics, and other pharmaceutical agents or medical supplies located within the commonwealth as may be necessary to respond to the emergency;
(9) to require in-state health care providers to assist in the performance of vaccination, treatment, examination, or testing of any individual as a condition of licensure, authorization, or the ability to continue to function as a health care provider in the commonwealth;
(10) to waive the commonwealth’s licensing requirements for health care professionals with a valid license from another state in the United States or whose professional training would otherwise qualify them for an appropriate professional license in the commonwealth;
(11) to allow for the dispensing of controlled substances by appropriate personnel consistent with federal statutes as necessary for the prevention or treatment of illness;
(12) to authorize the chief medical examiner to appoint and prescribe the duties of such emergency assistant medical examiners as may be required for the proper performance of the duties of the office;
(13) to collect specimens and perform tests on any animal, living or deceased;
(14) to exercise authority under sections 95 and 96 of chapter 111;
(15) to care for any emerging mental health or crisis counseling needs that individuals may exhibit, with the consent of the individuals.

Most of that is pretty uncontroversial, and all of it is contingent upon the governor declaring a public health emergency, and is limited to actions that help protect public health. When the emergency ends, the emergency powers go away.

How about that lede? Yes, in such a situation the state would have the right to destroy property, but only if that property poses a public health risk. They're not going to destroy your Xbox, but they could destroy your smallpox-infected blankets.

And yes, they could enter your property and even decontaminate it. But only if it's a risk to public health. Your anthrax lab may be in trouble, but your home probably isn't. Ditto to public assembly. If you're in the habit of hanging out with people who have ebola, you might be prohibited from doing so. If you're just going to the movies with some friends, no worry.

Now, that's not to say this is all a good idea. I'd be happy to see some amendments creating greater oversight than I find in this bill. The basic ideas aren't terrible, but they absolutely need to have sufficient oversight to keep them from being abused.

How about the claim that the bill would "fine and jail people for not taking a vaccine"? That's really not true. Here's what the bill says (with my emphasis):

(b) Furthermore, when the commissioner or a local public health authority within its jurisdiction determines that either or both of the following measures are necessary to prevent a serious danger to the public health the commissioner or local public health authority may exercise the following authority:

(1) to vaccinate or provide precautionary prophylaxis to individuals as protection against communicable disease and to prevent the spread of communicable or possibly communicable disease, provided that any vaccine to be administered must not be such as is reasonably likely to lead to serious harm to the affected individual; and
(2) to treat individuals exposed to or infected with disease, provided that treatment must not be such as is reasonably likely to lead to serious harm to the affected individual.
An individual who is unable or unwilling to submit to vaccination or treatment shall not be required to submit to such procedures but may be isolated or quarantined pursuant to section 96 of chapter 111 if his or her refusal poses a serious danger to public health or results in uncertainty whether he or she has been exposed to or is infected with a disease or condition that poses a serious danger to public health, as determined by the commissioner, or a local public health authority operating within its jurisdiction.

Part (1) there just gives public health officials the right to provide vaccinations to those for whom they're not contraindicated. No worries there.

Part (2) is the part that's being misrepresented in the headline. Nobody's going to be forced to get vaccinated. But if you refuse, and your refusal constitutes a public health threat, then you can be quarantined. Actions have consequences. But quarantine is not jail. That part comes from here:

Any person who knowingly violates an order for isolation or quarantine shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 30 days and may be subject to a civil fine of not more than one thousand dollars per day that the violation continues.

So yeah, if you violate quarantine and go running around coughing your drug-resistant tuberculosis all over everybody like an asshole then you can be fined and jailed. Forcibly quarantined, basically.

But no, you can't be fined or jailed for not being vaccinated. Only if you refuse a vaccination and are determined to be a public health risk worthy of quarantine and then you violate that quarantine, then you can be.

Now, all this stuff is conditional. It doesn't have to be done, and the decisions of public health officials constitute the final word. This just lays out what sort of options are open to them, without dictating what they have to do. I'd argue it would take quite a bit more than the current swine flu to trigger most of these measures, but they're available as options.

So yeah, that's some potentially scary stuff, and it definitely needs appropriate safeguards in place. But it's also worst-case scenario stuff. And while it could use improvements, the basic ideas behind it are sound from a public health perspective, at least for certain threats. Most public health officials are fully aware that quarantines and isolation aren't very effective at stopping the spread of influenza, so I'd be shocked to see that happen.

Continuing with the Sentinel article, here comes a group we probably shouldn't listen to:

Bob Dwyer, a coordinator for the Massachusetts Liberty Preservation Association -- a non-profit, non-partisan organization -- said the bill is a "power grab" by the state.

"If you don't want to take a vaccine you can be arrested," Dwyer said. "What type of freedom is that? I don't think declaring a state of emergency should change a person's Constitutional rights."

While it's true that the Massachusetts Liberty Preservation Association is politically non-partisan, it can hardly be said that they're non-partisan on the subject of vaccines. They're not: they're strongly antivaccinationist.

In other words, this is about more than fears of government overstepping, it's also about promoting their antivaccine nonsense. Stuff like this:

Vaccine trials and testing has been scaled back and expedited adding risk. Government officials have granted advanced approval of these highly questionable vaccines.

The swine flu vaccine has had extensive testing, and is made exactly the same way as the seasonal flu (which has lots of testing of its own). There's nothing "questionable" about it, and to assert that's the case is disingenuous.

Further down the same page they have videos by an antivaccinationist chiropractor who keeps promoting the disproven assertion that childhood vaccination causes autism. It doesn't.

Maybe the MLPA has valid points about the bill itself. Unfortunately, their lack of understanding about vaccines and public health and the fact that they're using lies about vaccines in order to make their argument means they really can't be taken seriously. They may not be Democratic or Republican, but they're totally partisan on the issue of vaccines. They're on the quackery side, and have no credibility on this topic.

The rest of the Sentinel article is typical newspapery tripe. Local citizens think A and B, local public officials think X and Y and Z. Not much of use in it besides this, from James Eldrige:

"What this bill really reflects is an updating of our public-health laws from the 1950s," he said. "The new bill provides many civil liberty protections and improvements."

Eldridge said the previous law allows for a "blanket statement" that does not specify due process laws. The new proposal gives authorities specific direction of when a person can be arrested.

"Certainly with the number of viruses that have appeared across this country in recent years, I think that the state needs to be better prepared so that if there is a serious pandemic, the state can protect the public," he said. "At the same time, that needs to be done with a balancing act between liberty and security."

Yes, this is an updating of what was already an overly-broad law. Is it still too broad? I think it is, but not by too much.

It's indeed a balancing act. With a major public health emergency, you do need to respond quickly, and you're probably going to need to step on some people's toes when trying to protect others. There need to be measures in place to make sure that as few toes are stepped on as possible, and that rights are preserved as much as they possibly can be. There should be zero tolerance for any abuse of these laws, and any potential Constitutional conflicts should be eliminated before the bill becomes law.

But even as it stands now, this bill really can't be construed to mean that everyone is going to be mandated to have a swine flu shot. That's just not going to happen on that kind of grand scale. It's unenforceable, especially within the timeframe we're talking about. I'd be surprised if more than a few individuals, if any at all, get that kind of mandate.

The bill isn't perfect, but nor is it the mandate for swine flu vaccination that some are claiming. By all means let's criticize the parts that are troublesome, but spouting false claims about it mandating the flu shot when that's not actually the case won't do anything but muddy the real issue, which is that we absolutely do need up-to-date legislation for dealing with a public health emergency. Perhaps this bill isn't perfect, but let's fix the real problems instead of freaking out about invented ones.

Happy Blasphemy Day!

2009-09-30T08:55:00.010-04:00

Hooray, today is blasphemy day!

As you may remember, back in 2005 (on this day) a Danish newspaper published a bunch of cartoons depicting Mohammed. There were a lot of Muslims upset by the depiction of their prophet as a violent jerk, and so they engaged in the only rational response: violence.

Since then, there have been a number of attempts by various governmental bodies around the world to enact anti-blasphemy laws, designed to stifle this sort of free expression. Ireland, for instance, has a pretty nasty new anti-blasphemy law.

There are no enforceable blasphemy laws in America, of course. They'd be blatantly unconstitutional. But the sentiment exists here as well. Some people believe they have a right not to have their beliefs mocked and ridiculed. They don't. There is no right to not be offended.

Obviously, people's rights to believe in stupid things should be respected. They're free to believe whatever they like. But there's no reason the ideas themselves deserve respect. This isn't about making "converts" to whatever belief system you may hold, it's about freely expressing that some ideas are just really dumb.

You wouldn't respect the ideas of someone who thinks slavery should be legal, or who thinks lightning is created by some dude with a hammer, or anyone who thinks that disobedient children should be stoned to death. It doesn't matter that all those beliefs are based on religion, they're still stupid and you have every right to say so.

So, won't you please join me today in blaspheming whatever religion you feel like blaspheming?

While I think they're all utter nonsense, you don't have to agree with me to get in on the blasphemous fun. Lots of Christians enjoy blaspheming Allah, for instance. If you're a more timid sort, you could always pick a religion few people still believe in. It's about time Zeus and Odin were taken down a notch! Scientology's an easy target too, since it's pretty socially acceptable to make fun of it. Or you can pick on the most irritating local religions, like Christianity. You might offend some people, but that's your right!

You could also just post humorous/blasphemous videos, like this:

See, it's easy and fun! Happy blaspheming!

More lies about marijuana legislation

2009-09-29T09:18:00.012-04:00

It's about that time again.

Ever since marijuana was decriminalized (not legalized!) in Massachusetts, some people have been trying their hardest to subvert the legislation by creating ridiculous bills intended to recriminalize it, or at least to exact further punishment upon those who dare to smoke it.

Fine. They're allowed to do that, even if it's against the will of the voters and subverts the intent of the law. They can bring up all the bills they want, no matter how stupid they are.

It's even conceivable that there are good arguments to be made for changes to the law as it stands. Unfortunately, I haven't heard any of those arguments (the closest we get is "there are loopholes," which is pretty meaningless in itself). Instead, we get a lot of lies.

Let's look at some, as displayed in the Sentinel's Bill would fine drivers caught with marijuana article. First a little background on the bill in question:

A bill up for debate today in the Legislature would slap drivers caught with marijuana in their vehicle with a $1,000 fine. Those found in possession of the drug while driving would also have their licenses suspended for up to 90 days.

The bill slated for a hearing today at the Statehouse before the Joint Committee on the Judiciary was filed by state Sen. Scott Brown, a Wrentham Republican who is running this fall for U.S. Senate.

Not that I needed one, but there's yet another reason not to vote for Scott Brown!

Here's Brown's argument for why his dumb bill isn't just a waste of everyone's time:

Brown says he thinks driving under the influence of marijuana is just as dangerous as alcohol. He thinks the state should crack down on driving with pot just as it does against open alcoholic beverages in cars.

What does that have to do with fining and suspending the licenses of people who merely possess marijuana in their car? By all means punish those who are driving under the influence, but just because you have pot in the car doesn't mean you've been smoking it, or that your passengers (if there are any) have been blowing smoke in your face. There are already laws to deal with driving under the influence, how about we stick with those?

Brown is also wrong about it being "just as dangerous as alcohol." Here's a nice epidemiological study (pdf) about just that issue. I'm not going to go over the whole paper, so let's just skip to the end and give their conclusions:

Overall, we conclude that the weight of the evidence
indicates that:

1) There is no evidence that consumption of cannabis alone increases the risk of culpability for traffic crash fatalities or injuries for which hospitalization occurs, and may reduce those risks.
2) The evidence concerning the combined effect of cannabis and alcohol on the risk of traffic fatalities and injuries, relative to the risk of alcohol alone, is unclear.
3) It is not possible to exclude the possibility that use of cannabis (with or without alcohol) leads to an increased risk of road traffic crashes causing less serious injuries and vehicle damage.

Yup, there's no evidence that cannabis use alone (as opposed to cannabis + alcohol) increases the risk of traffic fatalities or serious injuries, and it may even reduce those risks. Cannabis use may increase the risk of minor accidents, but even that is unclear.

So no, it's nowhere near as bad as alcohol. Scott Brown is wrong. I'm going to assume he's just an ignorant twit and not a liar, but the effect is the same. He's introducing legislation based on a false premise.

It would be nice if he were the only guy to be spreading falsehoods in this article, but as usual we need to hear the fact-free meanderings of some poorly-informed cop too.

"When you look at the laws we are passing that outlaw smoking, this law just doesn't make any sense. You can't smoke a cigarette outside a hospital, but you can smoke marijuana," said [Lowell Police Superintendent Kenneth] Lavallee.

This just isn't true. I'm going to assume that a Police Superintendent actually knows the law still prohibits possession of marijuana. If someone is smoking pot outside a hospital he or she can be fined and the pot can be seized.

If Lavallee doesn't know that, he should probably seek a new line of work. If he does know that, he's lying to you.

Because that's what these prohibitionists do. They don't have data to back up their assertions. They don't have evidence for their claims, nor have they generally even sought such evidence. They just make false statements that support what they want to believe, and expect people to fall for it.

Once these people can actually formulate a cogent argument, based on facts and not just what they personally believe, then maybe we would have a reason to take them seriously. As it is, they're just a bunch of liars and fools, spreading falsehoods to promote their own prohibitionist leanings.

Don't fall for it.

Filth in the newspaper!

2009-09-28T09:14:00.009-04:00

Look, I'm not going to contest that a moose looking for love is an important news event. It plainly is, and I wish there were more stories like this.

But did you really have to disparage the moose's sexual mores that way?

Shameful.

Hey Streetlight-Lovers, Here's an Idea!

2009-09-25T10:06:00.008-04:00

I've made no secret of the fact that I think the whole focus on streetlights in Fitchburg is silly. For all the catastrophic predictions and hand-wringing, there's still no good data to support the claims streetlight proponents are making.

On the other hand, it's pretty obvious that there are a lot of people in Fitchburg who really love their streetlights. Or the concept of having lots of streetlights, anyway. They want those lights on, whatever the reason. Even if it doesn't have a real effect on public safety, it would at least make them feel better.

Unfortunately, lit streetlights cost money, and the city doesn't have a whole lot of that to throw around. What's a streetlight-lover to do?

One option is to whine incessantly about how awful it is that there are unlit streetlights. This is a popular choice, but it has the notable disadvantage of not actually getting any lights turned back on, as well as just being really annoying. So here's perhaps a better idea.

A couple of days ago I received an email from the president of the Fitchburg Institute for The Common Good. Here's a quote from their webpage.

We can do something. Already something is being done. We can organize and fix this problem.

Not by whining, not by complaining and not by agitation. We can fix the problem the same way we fix any problem, by rolling up our sleeves and getting to work--just like we do every day.

The Fitchburg Institute for The Common Good is pleased to announce its Lights On, Fitchburg! Campaign. We are raising funds to pay the power company to turn back on as many of our city's streetlights as we can afford. Already we have arranged to have several streetlights on the East Side of town powered up and we are looking to expand the scope of our project.

However, we can't do it without your help. This problem is too big for any individual or group to tackle alone. Besides, we're all in this together.

This, in my eyes, is a sensible approach. People can already pay to have individual streetlights turned on, but not everyone may be able to afford it, and even fewer may want to deal with the hassle of actually doing it. The FITCG's approach is to pool donations from multiple sources and put that money into turning lights back on.

Now, anyone with 15 bucks can buy a domain and stick a Paypal button on it, so how do you know this isn't a scam? Well, they are registered with the state as a nonprofit corporation, which is good. As you can see from that link, they're still a small group.

I also emailed the president of the group--Mr. John F. Triolo--with a few questions, and as far as I can tell things are on the up-and-up (if I didn't think so I'd be attacking them, not promoting them). Mr. Triolo seems like a well-meaning guy with some big ideas, and an honest desire to improve the city. I wish him luck.

Here's an added bonus: If you're a conservative/libertarian-type who thinks that government sucks and the private sector should handle everything (and I think it's safe to say that plenty of those demanding the city turn on streetlights are of that persuasion), this is a chance to put your money where your mouth is. There's no need to suckle at the government teat when there's a private group you can support in helping to attain your goals!

Even if you're a dirty big-government liberal like myself, there's nothing that says you can't help the government. The city doesn't have a lot of money, and the less they have to spend on things like this, the more they can spend on buying us all puppies and candy. Don't pretend that you don't like puppies and candy!

So there you have it. If you want streetlights back on, check out the Fitchburg Institute for The Common Good. If you're comfortable with them, I'm sure they'd be happy to have you as a supporter. If you're not, that's okay too, but what better way do you have of getting lights turned back on? And if you don't care, well just carry on then.

Pointless Primary Provides Predictable Poutcome

2009-09-23T10:23:00.007-04:00

So, yesterday's primary election for councilor-at-large is over. Ron Dionne lost, despite having a fancy book on city council procedures or something.

He probably shouldn't have spent his time on FATV whining about the former mayor and complaining that the primary cost thirty grand to get rid of one person. Instead, he should just have dropped out and saved the city thirty grand. Dumbfuck.

This outcome is surprising to nobody, especially if you read the psychic predictions of Mr. Lincoln.

Per the Sentinel, the breakdown went like this:

Stephan Hay
Thomas Conry
Marcus DiNatale
Dean Tran
Rosemary Reynolds
Michael DiPietro
Robin Streb
Dan Mylott
Stephen Seney
Robert Boutwell
Ron Dionne (eliminated)

Personally, I like exactly two people on this list (Streb and DiPietro, though I have a certain fond sympathy for Boutwell). It's depressing to see lunatic Rosemary Reynolds above them, but it's pretty nice to see Mylott and the deeply-irritating Seney down near the bottom.

Thus ends the obligatory boring-as-fuck post-pointless-primary post.

Awesomeness

2009-09-17T08:43:00.004-04:00

I can't express how happy I am that we have a president who does stuff like this:

Watch out, Cheney!

Are black people really abandoning Obama?

2009-09-15T10:22:00.017-04:00

Fairly frequently, the Sentinel prints editorials by Star Parker. They're always pretty full of self-delusion and crazy god-babbling nonsense. I suspect that her main appeal is that she's an ultraconservative black woman, which allows other conservatives to claim they're not racist or sexist if they agree with her. That's just my theory, though. She might just be cheaper to syndicate or something, due to sucking.

Today we get a prime example of just how flawed her thinking is. It's actually pretty remarkable. The editorial in question is entitled Blacks are changing their minds about President Obama, and as we'll soon see, even the title is wrong.

Let's begin with the quoting!

Americans of all political persuasions agree that the nation has problems. Big problems.

And here's where we all part company. The political left, who now control our government, thinks we need more government -- a lot more. Those on the right see our problems as the result of excess government and want to move things in the opposite direction.

That's about the most superficial and inaccurate assessment of the political divide that I've ever seen, but whatever.

The important part, and the premise of the editorial, is the idea that blacks are abandoning the president. Here's what Star argues:

According to the Pew Research Center, the president's approval rating nationwide is now 10 points lower than last April. Included in this is a three-point drop in his approval among blacks.

You might say, Star, a drop in approval ratings among blacks from 95 percent to 92 percent is trivial. But I say not so.

If we assume this reflects the 16 million blacks who voted for Obama last November, a three-point shift means there are about a half-million blacks who now have buyer's remorse.

Star Parker does not understand polling at all.

You can see the study she's talking about here (pdf). If you go down to the race part, you do see that Obama's approval has dropped from 95% to 92%.

Of course, if you go down to the bottom of the whole thing, you find this:

For the total sample, the margin of error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence is plus or minus 2 percentage points. The margin of error for subgroups will be higher.

So we've got a 2% margin of error on the whole thing, and higher than 2% on subgroups, one of which is race. Which means a 3% "drop" is utterly meaningless. It could be an actual 3% drop, or it could be no drop at all, or it could be an increase. There is no discernible change that you can detect from this poll.

It sure as hell doesn't mean there are half a million blacks with "buyer's remorse."

So, Parker's entire premise is fundamentally flawed, because she either doesn't know how to interpret polling data or chooses to misrepresent it in order to promote her own deluded thinking. With such a faulty premise already debunked, it's almost unfair to continue to point out how dumb this editorial is, but there's a part that just can't be ignored.

Parker babbles on for awhile about how blacks supposedly can't not be Democrats, because the big Democratic goon-squads will make fun of them. Or something like that, anyway. She apparently thinks that it's social pressures that keep them in the Democratic party, and not the fact that it's always Republicans who do shit like this (view the whole slideshow, it's fun!).

Here's the part that really gets me, though.

According to a Pew Research Center report, almost a third of blacks consider themselves conservative. [*]

However, these folks have always been inclined to be quiet because of the social pressures and intimidation.

But this is changing.

Despite slurs, intimidation and widely reported physical attacks from union thugs, a few brave black souls have shown up at tea party protest rallies.

What. The. Fuck?

Parker is actually suggesting that it's the left keeping black people from going teabagging? I had to read it a few times to make sure that's what she was suggesting, but it must be. She's not blaming the right for intimidation or slurs, and she certainly doesn't consider unions to be conservative, so she must be blaming the left.

That picture up at the top of this post is from a teabagger event. The following pictures are also from teabagger events:

These are the people that Parker thinks blacks are being prevented from hanging out with, by those nasty liberals in the unions.

Doesn't that look like an inviting environment? If I were a black man, I'd definitely want to run right out to teabag with all those people! No damn union thugs could keep me away from the warm and loving embrace of people who think that a tax decrease for the middle class equals "white slavery"!

Ms. Parker, after you finish reading "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding Margins of Error" you might want to consider the idea that the people keeping blacks away from teabag parties are the teabaggers themselves. Most people don't seek out locations where they're going to be treated like shit by a bunch of racist assholes.

Parker craps out some closing bullshit about abortion and Israelites and so forth at the end, but it's the same impenetrable drivel she usually produces and not really worth commenting on. This is a mind not in touch with reality. Not even close to it.

That's really all you need to know about this editorial. It has a false premise and ridiculous conclusions, and my dog has a better understanding of race relations than Parker does.

No, black people are not abandoning Obama. Star Parker has simply abandoned reality.

* While 32% of blacks do indeed self-identify as conservative, it's worth noting that this Pew study makes no differentiation between social and fiscal conservatism. Generally, the black community tends to skew towards social conservatism, with more liberal economic views.

Stop indoctrinating our schoolchildren, Mr. President!

2009-09-08T09:16:00.003-04:00

So, President Obama is giving a little talk to schoolkids today. It's a totally innocuous little pep-talk that of course has the right wing up in arms about how he's supposedly "indoctrinating" kids into the socialisms or something like that.

If you follow that link up above and read the speech, you can see it's not true. But surely some jerkass president was interested in indoctrinating kids to their political ideology via the teevee, right?

Ah, here's one!

Let's see what Ronald Reagan had to say to kids back in 1986:

As you know, my remarks are being broadcast live over radio and television to high school students throughout the country. While I was in Tokyo at the economic summit, I found myself thinking about all of you, and I decided that when I got back it'd be good to report to you -- share some thoughts that I've been having about the future.

In general, conditions in our country are about as bright as this very bright afternoon. I was worrying when I put that line in there that it might start to rain, and I'd have to say something else. [Laughter] We've been working to take an economy that was in bad shape and get it moving and growing again; take our national defense and make it first-rate again after a long period of decline; and to restore reason, respect, and reality to our foreign policy. And I think it's fair to say that we've made a good deal of progress.

Only 5 years ago our economy suffered from high inflation, high interest rates, mushrooming government spending, and steadily increasing unemployment. A lot of people couldn't find jobs, and people on fixed incomes were finding it harder to buy the basics, such as food and shelter. Well, we got inflation down, interest rates down, and our economy created over 1\1/2\ million new jobs just last year alone. The poor are now increasingly able to dig themselves out of poverty, and that's been good economic news.

The good news in defense is that our Armed Forces, which were suffering from neglect and low funding, have now made a comeback. Morale is up in the services, and the quality of our men and women in uniform has never been better -- and I mean never. As a matter of fact, we have the highest percentage of high school graduates in uniform today than we've ever had in the history of our nation, even back when we had the compulsory draft. In addition, our nation has encouraged a more realistic sense of defense needs.

In foreign affairs we've kept our friends close and the lines of communication with our adversaries open. We've tried to give the world the sense that the United States has a coherent and logical foreign policy that reflects our respect for freedom and our opposition to tyranny.

The point is that all we've done has had, and will continue to have, a direct impact on your lives. And the fact is, it's your future, not ours. And all that we've done, we've done with an eye toward how it would impact you. We want to make your future better, because tomorrow belongs to you. And since you're the leaders of tomorrow, I wanted to talk to all of you as a friend about the things you'll have to do to ensure a prosperous nation and a peaceful world. And I'm sure that peace and prosperity must be at the top of your agenda for the future.

You have some special responsibilities ahead of you -- very important responsibilities. America is back, yes, but we still face major challenges in the world. And it's your generation that will have to accept the primary responsibility for tackling these challenges. It's important that you're fit for the future and that you be all that you can be. So, go for it! In the area of education you have a responsibility to try to learn and care about scientific and intellectual inquiry. The world is an increasingly competitive place. And if we're to compete, we'll have to do it with brainpower -- your brainpower. So, keep learning and hit those books.

We have to remain economically competitive, and that means being aware of two things: first, what makes economies tick, and second, what works in other societies. We've been trying very hard in Washington to make America even more economically fit by really overhauling our entire tax structure. When we came into office, the top personal tax rate that the Federal Government could put on your income was 70 percent. Now, you can understand, I think, that if you were getting up in those brackets -- there were 14 different tax brackets, depending on the amount of money in each bracket you earned. And when you could look and say, ``If I earn another dollar, I only get to keep 30 cents out of it,'' you can imagine the lack of incentive there. Well, we lowered it to 50 percent, and the economy really took off. Now we're trying to lower it yet again so that families can keep more of their money and so the national economy will be lean and trim and fit for the future.

And it's your generation that will defend freedom from its adversaries. The biggest contribution you can make to that quest is to become a good citizen. Good citizenship is vitally important if democracies are to continue. Good citizenship means trying to understand the issues and great questions of your day. It also means voting. To vote is to take part in this grand experiment called democracy in America. It's your right and your responsibility to take part. Good citizenship also might mean considering going into teaching as a profession. There's a teacher shortage, as you may know. You could help ease the situation and give to others the advantages you've been given if you become a teacher yourself. And it's also important that you stay in school. That diploma counts. And I just want to personally congratulate those who have overcome some disadvantage and who stuck it out and will graduate this year.

And part of being a good citizen, part of being fit for the future so that you can meet America's agenda for the future, is seeing to it that you live your life with a clear mind and a steady intellect. And that means saying no to drugs. Nancy has traveled across the country talking to young people like you. And many of them have talked to her about the allure of drugs, about the drug culture, and the kind of peer pressure that you come under to experiment and try out drugs. But when you come right down to it, drugs are just a dead-end street. They have nothing to offer you. I think you also ought to remember we only get one set of machinery. If you wear this set out, you can't take it and trade it in someplace for a used one or a new one. So, what you do now and early in your life decides how able you're going to be to enjoy yourself when you get to be my age.

And I want to tell you, I'm enjoying myself. I've talked to young people from China to Europe to the islands in the Caribbean. And let me tell you, they're incredibly bright and talented, and they're going to create quite a future for themselves. And you can't keep up or catch up if you allow your mind to be clouded by drugs.

Well, that's more or less what I wanted to say to you today. I'll be talking to many young people over the next few months, and I'll be expanding on certain points and amplifying certain themes. But for today, before your questions, I just want to let you know that I have been thinking about you very much. You are a special generation, and you're facing special challenges. And the biggest is to be ready for a future that will prove to be demanding and exciting. Soon, we'll enter the 21st century, a time that'll have more than its share of great wonders. The next 10 or 15 years may well be the most exciting and challenging in the history of man. There's the continuing revolution in technology, the possibility of curing diseases that have stalked us from the caveman era. There's the marvelous conquest of space, a rich frontier whose riches we've barely glimpsed. And there's the struggle between the democracies and those countries which are not democratic.

All of these possibilities bring with them questions. And it's your generation that will have to answer them. That makes you all very important, indeed. You have much before you. And all I can say is that you've begun brilliantly. Continue to pursue excellence. Be proud of your country and its heritage, and be proud of yourselves, as we are proud of all of you.

Yup, nothing political about that! Kids just love hearing about tax brackets!

Crazy people are now driving our public discourse

2009-09-04T16:48:00.004-04:00

Several months ago, I posted a video by a crazy person. I mean an actual crazy person, not a hyperbolic crazy person. The video was about Obama, Satan, the swine flu, the NWO, Ba'al worship, the area code 616, and other stuff that crazy people talk about.

That was just a silly little Youtube video. It didn't get a lot of hits, and it's no longer even available. Which proves it was right, and the poster was rounded up by jackbooted thugs in black helicopters.

But I digress.

The idea behind that post was "ha ha look at what crazy people think!" It's funny* because nobody could possibly take it seriously.

It's a whole hell of a lot less funny when crazy people have their own tv shows that get millions of viewers. Yet that's what we have here.

This man is either the most dedicated satirist ever, or someone whose brain is so muddled he's turned to finding conspiracies in every little bit of art and architecture he walks by.

In closing, Barack Obama should be ashamed of himself for going back in time to make all these terrible communist / fascist / progressive (the words are interchangeable) works of art!

* Admittedly, not all that funny.

Rush Limbaugh's Foreskin

2009-09-01T08:38:00.005-04:00

First, my apologies for making you think about Rush Limbaugh's genitals. If I could make you unthink it, I would.

Why am I talking about Rush Limbaugh's junk today? Simple. It's because he thinks the government wants our foreskins.

Let's quote the corpulent fart-balloon!

RUSH: By the way, leave our penises alone, too! This is getting out of hand. There is a story that some officials in the Obama administration are pushing for circumcision for all boys born in the USA to fight HIV/AIDS. Not that I'm against circumcision, but it's a family's decision. Leave our penises alone, too, Obama! [...] So here's Obama out there saying we have to have circumcision of every young boy born in the country.

Trust me Rush, nobody wants your flaccid penis.

Some background would be sensible at this time.

The CDC (known to fearmongers as "officials in the Obama administration," apparently) are debating whether to recommend male circumcision as a potential way to reduce the transmission of HIV. They haven't made any recommendations at this point, and may or may not end up actually recommending it.

So yeah, that part about Obama "saying we have to have circumcision of every young boy born in the country" is quite simply a lie. Nobody's saying that. Nobody will say that, ever. If the CDC recommend circumcision, it's about as relevant as when they recommend not eating a dozen eggs every day. Decent advice, but it's up to you whether or not to follow it.

The evidence does suggest that male circumcision decreases the relative risk of transmission of HIV via penile-vaginal sex. But these studies are mostly on African populations, where there's a greater rate of HIV in the population, relatively few circumcised males (compared to the US), relatively little condom use (thanks, Catholic Church!), and where the majority of HIV infections are transmitted through heterosexual sex. In other words, it may not work the same in this country.

Notably, circumcision doesn't appear to make much difference in penile-anal sex. Since the majority of HIV cases in this country are found in males who have sex with males, we have a very different situation. We also have a lot more circumcised men, a lower rate of HIV, and more condom use. What works in Africa may not make any difference here. Or it may. That's why it's being debated.

There's this weird thread running through an awful lot of conservative bullshit these days, and this is yet another example. For some reason, conservatives seem to believe that whenever anyone even tangentially associated with the government makes a recommendation, that means they're going to force you to comply with it.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Even if they actually wanted to force everyone to get circumcised (which they don't, because c'mon), it's not like the CDC have a legion of jackbooted thugs they're going to send out with foreskin-snippers to make sure all foreskins are harvested (for use in kosher hot dogs).

Going a step further, even if you're batshit crazy and think that CDC goons are really going to come after you with pinking shears, it wouldn't work. It's just not something people would comply with if they're not willing to do it otherwise. For a guy who thinks the government is incapable of doing anything right, Rush sure seems to think they're capable of some pretty extraordinary things.

Of course, the idea that the government would force men and boys to cut off their foreskins is just totally objectionable. Yet Limbaugh has no problem at all with telling women what to do with their genitals. Seems like a little double standard there. Or for Rush, maybe I should say a teensy-weensy little "are you sure that isn't a Jujube?" double standard.

Furthermore, what's up with these conservatives constantly focusing on things that make them so terribly easy to ridicule? Does Limbaugh not realize that his status as a Viagra-popping sex tourist means that when he makes up lies about circumcision people are going to make dick jokes at his expense? Similarly, are teabaggers blind to the fact that taping teabags to their hats makes them laughingstocks?

Concerned citizen or scrotum aficionado?

You can't make up stuff this stupid. If you did, nobody would believe it.

Should I even go over the long history of white fears about black men cutting off their penises? The history of lies about sexual abuse perpetrated by black men being used as a fear tactic to fight racial integration? The implicit racism in this whole "a black man is going to cut off your penis!" bullshit?

Nah, dick jokes are less depressing.

So long, Ted

2009-08-26T09:53:00.001-04:00

You may not have had the best singing voice in the world, but you were a hell of a good senator. Thanks.

Barney Frank is Awesome

2009-08-19T08:40:00.003-04:00

He really needs to teach every other Democrat how to do this:

Lobbying to cure a disease that may not exist

2009-08-18T08:38:00.008-04:00

Science and health reporting in newspapers is notoriously pathetic. Reporters with no real background or knowledge about the subject on which they're reporting are forced to puke out stories that more often that not are full of inaccuracies and misunderstandings.

So I don't hold it against the reporter behind this article that he was taken in, but let's see if we can add a bit more informed commentary to the topic.

That topic is "Chronic Lyme Disease."

Please note in advance that CLD is not the same thing as the well-established and reasonably well-understood diagnosis of Lyme disease. More about that later, but first let's look a bit at this S&E article, entitled "Lobbying Hard for Lyme Disease Sufferers."

It's an awful feeling to hear a doctor say there is nothing wrong with you, when you know something isn't right, according to Groton resident Donna Castle. But for many people who contract Lyme disease, that's exactly what can occur, said Castle, whose daughter has the disease.

"'It's all in your head' is a classic diagnosis given to Lyme disease patients," Castle said. "There is no 100 percent reliable blood test for the disease, and the symptoms can vary so much, which makes it very difficult to diagnose."

Pretty weird, huh? Doctors treat Lyme disease all the time. They don't say it's all in your head, because it's not. And while no test is "100 percent reliable", the current test is about 90% accurate. That's actually a very reliable test.

Also note at this point the way that doctors and their extensive knowledge, resources, and familiarity with Lyme disease are presented as the bad guys, while the vague someone who "knows something is wrong" is presented as more reliable. Indeed, something may be wrong with that person, but there's a large gap between "I feel sorta funky" and "I have Lyme disease."

The fact of the matter is that the lobbying group (created by erstwhile congressional candidate Kurt Hayes) in question is not about Lyme disease. It's about Chronic Lyme Disease. Again, not the same thing.

So we'll just skip the part of the article where Lyme disease is discussed. Yes, Lyme disease is real, and yes it's endemic to this area. It's a public health issue that deserves attention, but that's not the attention that Hayes' group is going for. They're more interested in promoting the quackery of CLD.

Now would be a good time to talk about what CLD is, and the different groups that exist within those who believe they suffer from CLD. We'll use the four categories laid out by Feder et al. in this New England Journal of Medicine paper on CLD.

First, what is CLD? According to the NEJM:

This term is used by a small number of practitioners (often self-designated as "Lyme-literate physicians") to describe patients whom they believe have persistent B. burgdorferi infection, a condition they suggest requires long-term antibiotic treatment and may even be incurable. Although chronic Lyme disease clearly encompasses post–Lyme disease syndrome, it also includes a broad array of illnesses or symptom complexes for which there is no reproducible or convincing scientific evidence of any relationship to B. burgdorferi infection. Chronic Lyme disease is used in North America and increasingly in Europe as a diagnosis for patients with persistent pain, neurocognitive symptoms, fatigue, or all of these symptoms, with or without clinical or serologic evidence of previous early or late Lyme disease. [my bolding]

That's a pretty decent nutshell. But there are different groups within the CLD camp, and they're worth looking at too. Luckily, we have a nice little graphic to see them easily!

Okay, maybe that's too little. Let me reiterate here:

Patients in this category have vague and commonplace symptoms like fatigue, depression, headaches, etc. They have no observable evidence of having had a B. burgdorferi (the bacteria that causes Lyme disease) infection, and actually pop up pretty often even in places where Lyme disease is not endemic. Chances are reasonable that they've never had Lyme disease at all.
Category two patients have a disease, they just don't have Lyme disease. Rather, they have something else that has been misdiagnosed as CLD.
Category three patients have no objective history of Lyme disease, but do have antibodies against B. burgdorferi. Antibodies alone have a low predictive value, so the person may or may not have ever actually had Lyme disease, but their concern is understandable.
Category four patients have post-Lyme disease syndrome. They've actually had Lyme disease for sure, and now have something weird going on (often myalgias and the like). It's worth noting that evidence suggests this is not due to a chronic infection, and antibiotic treatment appears ineffective.

All the groups here are suffering from something (more likely, many different somethings), and it's totally understandable that groups 3 and 4 wonder whether Lyme disease is the cause. Groups 1 and 2, on the other hand, are just likely to be confused.

Back to the S&E article, here's someone in group 4:

Lunenburg resident Sheila Webb Richards was diagnosed with Lyme disease about a year ago, and continues to suffer from the symptoms.

A doctor put Webb Richards on antibiotics for 28 days and she felt better for a period, but her symptoms returned a short time after.

Doctors and an infectious-disease specialist have told her that although she continues to test positive for Lyme disease, the disease is not active. They refuse to put her on more antibiotics, Webb Richards says.

"It's frustrating, because my symptoms continue to feel very active," she said.

I'm quite sure that Mrs. Webb Richards is being honest when she expresses frustration, and I don't doubt that she feels crummy. But antibiotics are unlikely to be of any real benefit, at least if you exclude the placebo effect. You can't really blame her for wanting to feel better, even if it is a placebo effect.

Her husband is also frustrated:

Her husband, Tim Richards, said most doctors won't allow his wife to continue on the antibiotics past 28 days because of guidelines set by the Centers for disease Control.

"The heart of the problem is that the profession has guidelines that are decided by a review board," he said. "In the case of Lyme disease, they limit treatment to 28 days of antibiotics. The insurance companies go by that standard."

A "review board"? Yes, a bunch of extremely knowledgeable scientists, doctors, and epidemiologists got together and said "Hey, all this data we've got shows that antibiotics don't really help, but we'll recommend four weeks of treatment just to be safe." The bastards!

Worse yet, the insurance companies use this data to say they won't pay for unnecessary and pointless antibiotics that would only increase medical costs without providing any benefit to the patient. Jerks!

If Mrs. Webb Richards is one of those sympathetic group 4 cases, then our friend from the beginning of the article, Donna Castle, seems to fall into group 1 or 2, where I have much less patience for them. After all, she did seem to indicate that doctors found no evidence of Lyme disease in her daughter. So why does she talk like they did?

Castle's first experience with Lyme disease came about four years ago, when her daughter's Lyme disease was misdiagnosed as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).

"As awful as Lyme disease is, it was a relief that she did not have ALS, which is terminal," said Castle, who runs a Lyme disease support group once a month at the Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer.

Well yeah, Lyme disease is way better than ALS. But where's the evidence that she even has Lyme disease? She could be in the first group, where general symptoms lead to that self-diagnosis. Or she could be in the second group, and have something else wrong with her. I certainly hope that Ms. Castle is looking for the real cause of her daughter's suffering, though it sounds like she's put all her eggs in the rickety CLD basket.

So, what does this all lead up to? Legislation!

Hayes and Castle are now pushing for new legislation that would protect doctors who prescribe prolonged antibiotic treatment.

House Bill 1148, introduced by state Rep. Bob Hargraves, R-Groton, is tentatively scheduled for a hearing at the Statehouse, Sept. 22.

This bill is titled "An Act relative to the treatment of chronic Lyme disease" and the full text is here.

It's short though, so I'll just quote it:

Chapter 112 of the General Laws is hereby amended by inserting after section 12CC the following section: -

12DD. A physician may prescribe, administer or dispense antibiotic therapy for therapeutic purposes to a person diagnosed with and having symptoms of Lyme disease of [Sic] a diagnosis and treatment plan has been documented in the physician’s medical record for that patient and no physician shall be subject to disciplinary action solely for prescribing, administering or dispensing long-term antibiotic therapy fo9r [Sic] a therapeutic purpose for a patient clinically diagnosed with Lyme disease if a diagnoses and treatment plan has been documented in the physician’s medical record for that patient. [my bolding]

Man, are all bills that poorly-spellchecked?

Here's the thing about this bill, though. The way it's worded, it doesn't apply to Castle's daughter, and only may apply to Mrs. Webb Richards. Webb Richards doesn't have Lyme disease currently, she has post Lyme disease syndrome. Judging from the article, Castle's daughter doesn't appear to have ever been diagnosed with Lyme disease.

I won't even go into how prescribing an antibiotic that has no effect can't really said to be done "for therapeutic purposes".

But all that's just nitpicking. The purpose of the bill is to make sure people who think they have CLD can get vast amounts of antibiotics with no trouble. Even though antibiotics haven't been proven to do anything beneficial for them.

Nor would we expect antibiotics to do anything. Antibiotics in the treatment of Lyme disease are used to kill the B. burgdorferi bacteria. People with CLD don't have this bacteria around to kill anymore, and some of them never had it in the first place.

Of course, in addition to increasing medical costs for no reason, overprescription of antibiotics tends to lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. They should just call this thing the "MRSA and drug-resistant tuberculosis promotion bill."

Anyway, local politicians have their stances. Jen Benson unfortunately calls herself a "strong supporter" of it. Jennifer Flanagan, on the other hand, is "very interested in hearing from both sides on the issue."

Consider this my side, Rep. Flanagan! Please note that it's the side that actually cites evidence.

This bill is a bad idea, built on willfully ignoring the scientific evidence. People with CLD are suffering, but there's no evidence to suggest it's Lyme disease at the root of their suffering or that they will benefit from antibiotics.

Let's spend our time trying to figure out what actually is wrong with them, whether it be mental or physical, and not waste money and endanger public health by throwing antibiotics at them. People need real help, not placebos.

At Least One Guy Gets It...

2009-08-15T16:52:00.007-04:00

(click to embiggen)

Queen of the Birthers!

2009-08-04T08:45:00.012-04:00

This is really remarkable. I knew that Orly Taitz is crazy, but I had no idea just how crazily she presents herself. This is the person at the head of the whole birther movement!

I can only imagine how insane (or racist) a person has to be to watch that and think "Oh hey, she made some really good points!" Pretty insane, probably.

[Addendum:] In case you're wondering, "Dr." Orly Taitz is a dentist. Which just goes to further confirm my theory that crackpots who prominently identify themselves as "Dr." never have a doctorate in anything even remotely related to what they're talking about. It's all about giving themselves an undeserved air of credibility.

[Addendum 2:] Hey, it's Obama's birthday today! Here is a card for him, courtesy of Progressive Fitchburg's official Chronologically Aware Correspondent!

(click to embiggen)

Guy with funny nickname running for mayor!

2009-07-29T08:26:00.012-04:00

I'm a day late on this (due to laziness), but there's big news in Fitchburg politics!

According to the Sentinel, here's the deal:

Local sandwich shop owner Michael "Fuzzy" Voisine has pulled papers to run for mayor against incumbent Lisa Wong.

Voisine, 43, a Maverick Street resident, said he's running on a campaign of "change" and that he's fed up with the "good old boys" network that permeates city politics.

"I'm going to give it a shot," Voisine said.

I like that winning attitude, Fuzzy!

So, besides giving Mayor Wong something to do during the run-up to the election, what's Fuzzy all about? Besides sandwiches, I mean.

He's known widely around the city as "Fuzzy," a nickname he said he's had since junior high school.

I'm sure there's an interesting and/or humiliating story behind that nickname. Sadly, we don't get the backstory. I'm going to assume Fuzzy was either remarkably hirsute in junior high, had an unfortunate haircut, or maybe it was something to do with pubic hair (kids that age are crazy about pubic hair!).

What else do we know about Fuzzy?

He's worked on Main Street in Fitchburg for most of his life, first at Domino's Pizza, then managing Espresso Pizza for 14 years.

He left Espresso almost five years ago to start his own sub shop, Premier Subs, at 500 Main St.

"No one thought I would last a year, and I've been here for four and a half," he said.

Well, now I'm a little embarrassed. I drive by that place fairly often and had no idea it was still operational. My mistake! (Hey commenters, is the food any good?)

Anyway, it's nice to know that in addition to sandwiches, Fuzzy also enjoys pizza. He's a man of the people! Except maybe the people who think that sugary-sweet sauce they use at Espresso Pizza is incredibly disgusting, like me.

Maybe it's time to get into the part that's actually relevant to politics, though. Knowing his culinary habits is fine and all, but doesn't really say much about his qualifications.

Voisine said has been considering a run for public office for a few weeks.

He got frustrated during the Civic Days celebration when, he said, some city officials would not allow him to have a band or a vendor's tent during the city's block party celebration on July 3.

"I've had some tough runnings with certain people in the mayor's office and I don't like to be talked down to," Voisine said.

Crap.

Running for mayor after minimal consideration, based on some petty frustration, is not really the best way to get into things. Remember what happened with Rachel, who ran essentially the same way and then had to drop out due to ~~shame~~ health problems?

Also, dude, your name is "Fuzzy." If you don't like to be talked down to, you might want to choose a different nickname. I suggest "Admiral Ignatius." That would get you much more respect.

Perhaps it's part of a larger problem?

Voisine said that points to a larger issue of city officials not being receptive to local residents and business owners.

"It seems like they don't care about existing businesses," he said. "Whoever is in office needs to listen to everyone."

Well, those are some... pretty vague charges, actually. I mean, I agree that officeholders need to listen to everyone (within reason, anyway), but do you really think your one little difficulty means that the city government is ignoring huge constituencies? I'd like some more examples, please.

So, what are Fuzzy's plans for improving things?

He said after two decades of working on Main Street in Fitchburg, he would like to see more change.

"Downtown is dying with all the empty storefronts," he said.

One idea, he said, is to make parking more accessible and he likes Wong's idea of angled parking on Main Street.

He also said he would like to continue and expand Wong's First Thursday initiative, which encouraged residents to visit downtown shops on the first Thursday of each month.

Okay, those are really the current Mayor's plans for improving things. But they are good ideas, and there's nothing wrong with supporting them. They're just not really new.

Indeed, Fuzzy thinks Mayor Wong is doing a pretty good job:

Voisine does not have many criticisms of Wong.

He said "given the hand she's been dealt," she is, "doing as good of a job she can."

Oh no, Fuzzy! You're dangerously close to losing the crazy "I hate Mayor Wong no matter what she does" voters!

Actually, that's fine. There aren't very many of those, they're just disproportionately loud.

I have, however, detected another problem:

Voisine said he's not sure he can do better than Wong in terms of managing the city finances, but he would bring a different "mind frame."

Wha?

Okay, I know that Fuzzy hasn't run for office before, but I'm pretty sure that saying you won't actually do a better job with city finances (by far the single most important issue) than your opponent seems like a way to make sure nobody will bother to vote for you.

At this point I'm having a hard time figuring out just why anyone should vote for Fuzzy. He supports ideas Lisa Wong proposed, and he doesn't know if he could do a better job than her on city finances (which suggests he probably couldn't). Given that, why not just vote for Wong?

Give us something fresh, Fuzzy!

Voisine said he would be a down-to-earth, receptive mayor, and would rely on a group of trusted advisers.

He said during his campaign and if he gets elected, he hopes to surround himself with "the best people I can."

That's not fresh! Tom Donnelly said pretty much the same stuff in the last mayoral election, and now he spends every day shining shoes for nickels down at the bus station ^{[Citation needed]}.

But what's this?

Voisine said he hopes to run a clean and inexpensive campaign.

"Throwing dirt does no good," he said.

He said he may hold fundraisers and looks forward to researching city policies in the coming weeks in preparation for the election.

"Once I get going, if I surround myself with the right people, I think I can make it work," he said. "For my own peace of mind, I need to give it a shot."

Well, that's admirable. Ron Dionne did largely the same thing last election (sans fundraising), and Ron Dionne is awesome! He's not the mayor, obviously, but he's still very likable!

It's much too early to say with any certainty, but I suspect that's what we're going to get with Fuzzy too. A well-meaning guy who figures he might as well give running for mayor a shot. Because why not? I, for one, welcome him!

Unfortunately, so far he comes off as sane, reasonable, and unqualified to run the city. This all adds up to "sorta boring." As such, I have some unsolicited advice for Fuzzy.

Dear Fuzzy,

You seem like an okay enough guy, but from what I've seen so far you're probably not going to win this election. You probably already know this.

So, what to do? I have two options you may wish to explore.

The "Respectable" Option: While you're researching city policies, try to come up with some original policies of your own. They don't have to be great, but they should at least be new and interesting. Armed with these interesting new ideas, you can present them to the public and the current mayor as things to consider. Even if you lose the election, if your ideas are good enough they may get adopted by the winner.

Then you can sleep comfortably, knowing you ran a clean and respectable campaign and through the power of your ideas, you will have made an impact on the city, win or lose.

The "Batshit Insane" Option: Look at the past mayoral campaigns of Ted DeSalvatore and Rachel Rosenfeld, and try to be like them. Say lots of things that make no sense, and back them up with bluster and lies. Get personally offended by broad societal trends, and make bombastic, threatening gestures for no apparent reason. You can easily pull in the crazy asshole vote this way.

This option won't win you the election. It also won't make you look respectable, or even sane. However, it would be entertaining and make for some easy blog posts in which I'd be very mean to you.

Either way, good luck.
Pope Unicow

PS The second option will more easily allow you to start calling yourself "Admiral Ignatius," and is clearly the better choice!

FINI

Racism maybe not actually gone?

2009-07-24T08:48:00.004-04:00

Thanks to another of those terrible "local leaders weigh in on _____" articles, today we get to learn what local officials think about the arrest of Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., a situation that you're probably already aware of.

For this we will turn to the Sentinel's catchily-named article: Gates' arrest draws variety of views.

This is probably going to hurt.

The controversial arrest of renowned Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has sparked a conversation throughout the country, including in North Central Massachusetts, where leaders are offering diverse views about the incident.

Police arrested Gates in his Cambridge home after he allegedly berated them and told them they didn't know "who they were messing with," when they came to his home to investigate a possible break-in.

Well that's not a very complete description of events! You get no context, you get only the officer's side of the story, and Gates is immediately portrayed as the bad guy.

Never mind that this whole incident should have ended the moment that Gates showed ID proving that he was in his own house. The guy was rude!

Apparently we're supposed to believe that it's a crime to be rude on your own property. I have no idea how I've stayed out of jail so long.*

Gates believes his arrest was motivated by race, while some, including Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley, who arrested Gates, maintain the professor's belligerent tone, not his skin color, got him arrested.

This part of the tale is actually somewhat annoying to me. I don't know if the arrest was racially motivated or not (though I suspect it was to some degree). But really, it doesn't matter. It's not a crime to be a dick. We also don't know if Gates actually was a dick or not, but for the purposes of argument let's just assume he was.

Okay, enough of the setup, what do local leaders think?

Adrian Ford, the executive director of local community advocate group Three Pyramids, said the answer may lie somewhere in between.

"What I've found in working on these types of issues for 40 years is that we all have subconscious views and opinions that rise to the surface when we're not aware," Ford said Thursday. "It doesn't mean there's a conscious racism there, but this sort of thing is very common."

Yay, a smart person to start off with! I agree with Ford, and this sort of thing is unquestionably very common.

Now on to the dumbassery.

But Westminster Police Chief Sam Albert said police officers deserve more credit.

"I think trends are changing, the job is changing, and officers are becoming more educated," Albert said Thursday.

Well, that's nice. Those things are probably all true. They just have nothing to do with this case. You can be educated and still be a racist asshole or a power-hungry cop. Education doesn't fix those things.

Then the article gets sidetracked into talking not about the case, but about President Obama's statement that the cop did something stupid. How dare the president say such a thing!

The comments from Obama -- a personal friend of Gates' -- surprised most local leaders.

"It shocked me," Fitchburg community activist Yvette Cooks said. "I didn't expect that."

Cooks, an African American, is a member of the city's Human Rights Commission.

Okay, I guess that's nice too? But it doesn't tell us much. I'm a little surprised he weighed in on this too, but I also absolutely agree with him. And really, he only weighed in because he was asked about it at a press conference.

Who else has something to say? More cops? You know they'll give an unbiased opinion, because who's ever heard of a cop reflexively standing up for another cop even when they're clearly in the wrong?

John Collins, general counsel for the Massachusetts State Police Chiefs Association, called attacks on the Cambridge Police Department -- as well as Obama's comments -- "premature."

"It doesn't add anything to the situation, and knowing (the Cambridge Police Department) as I do, I suspect they'll address any issues quietly, and not necessarily in the newspapers," Collins said Thursday.

Oh, that's great. Yes, let's please keep important discussions about race and police misconduct quiet. It's not like we'd actually want to do anything about these issues.

Let's add yet another cop!

Chief Bourgeois, like Chief Albert, shot down Ford's assertion of "subconscious" prejudices.

"We train all our officers regarding any kind of racial profiling," Bourgeois said. "Officers approach every call objectively, no matter race, color or religious preference."

Okay, this is just blatant bullshit. There's no way even Bourgeois could believe this, unless he's the most naive man in the world.

Just because you "train" people not to be assholes doesn't mean they won't be assholes. I don't know what sort of training actually takes place, but does anyone with half a brain believe that it can eliminate the problem?

What's more, you can't just train subconscious prejudices out of people. That's sort of what subconscious means. They're not even aware of their prejudices, so how do you expect to train them out of them?

Also from the Obama part of this story, we had this:

Lancaster Town Administrator Orlando Pacheco said the White House "is too far from the situation" to comment.

Now, let's listen to Pacheco comment, because he is obviously right in the thick of things!

But minorities reported they sympathized with Gates, whether or not they considered Cambridge police racist.

"Profiling definitely happens, and I deal with it even in Lancaster," Pacheco, who is Dominican, said. "And it's not just races. Gays and lesbians, in some ways, are discriminated against even more."

When asked whether she has ever felt profiled by police, Cooks did not hesitate.

"Oh my God, yes," she said. "From police, from everybody. It's common."

Dang, that was actually a good comment. What the hell was his problem with Obama commenting? Also, yay our surprised friend Yvette Cooks is back! She's now relegated to the "minorities say this" part of the article, but at least she said something decent. I guess her surprise from earlier was similar to mine.

We'll also give Adrian Ford a little more to say, what with him being a minority and all:

Ford said profiling occurs regularly, and dismissed as "stupid" the notion that America has overcome racial tension by electing an African-American president.

Holy crap Adrian! Didn't you learn anything from Obama? Now everyone is going to get all mad at you for daring to call a stupid idea stupid.

See?

But Fitchburg Councilor at-large Dean Tran disagrees.

"The majority of people in this country have spoken, and voted for an African American, which means that race doesn't play as big a role," Tran said.

Tran is, of course, an irredeemable idiot.

He's actually using the exact same argument that the racists I profiled back in November were using (and will undoubtedly be using in the comments section of the S&E article).

Others have made this argument too. Here's a quote from an email that was sent to the W.E.B. Dubois Institute this week**:

"you can't possibly claim racism, don't you know we have a nigger in the white house?"

Presumably Tran didn't send that email, but he's making the exact same argument.

Never content to stop at saying one stupid thing when there's an opportunity to get even stupider, Tran continues:

Tran, who is Vietnamese, said he has never experienced profiling.

"For me, all this situation does is make me very fearful that police will be hesitant in responding to incidents that involve people of color because they will be afraid of something like this happening," Tran said.

Yeah, I'm sure that minorities (who are of course fully and respectfully served by the police now) will now suffer with sub-par police service because Skip Gates was arrested for being loud at his own home.

Talking about police abuse of power will make the cops scared of doing their job? Only if they're abusive cops.

Dean, you seriously need to take your own Twitter advice and look up "clueless."

Okay, enough of dumbass Tran. Perhaps there's someone out there who's not stupid?

Christina Gonzalez, youth development supervisor at the Cleghorn Neighborhood Center, said electing Obama doesn't mean a society has overcome its racial history.

"That's like when someone tells a racist joke and then qualifies it by saying, 'It's okay, I have a black friend,'" Gonzalez said. "You still feel a certain way about those people. It still shows in your facial expression."

Thank you, Christina Gonzalez! What you've said is totally honest and self-evident to all thinking people. Sadly, we seem to be lacking in thinking people right now.

Let's wrap this up:

Ford questioned Gates' vocal reaction and his call for an apology.

"This is an opportunity to create a learning experience, and a leader's job is to influence other people," Ford said. "(Gates) needs to step back, make this issue less about him, and approach it from a less emotional standpoint as a chance for everyone to learn. That's not happening. All we're doing is perpetuating divisions."

Adrian, I think you've got your wires crossed somewhere.

Here's what Gates said in an interview (emphasis mine):

I've received thousands of e-mails and Facebook messages; the blogs are going crazy; my colleagues at Harvard are outraged. Allen Counter called me from the Nobel Institute in Stockholm to express his outrage. But really it's not about me-it's that anybody black can be treated this way, just arbitrarily arrested out of spite.

Now, you could argue that he's making it about him despite saying that, but in the end it really isn't about Gates no matter what he does.

In fact, I'm not even sure that the arrest itself is the really interesting part here. The arrest was absolutely stupid, but whether it was racially-motivated or not is hard to know for sure. Personally, I see it more as another authoritarian cop (and there are lots of those) arresting someone for "contempt of cop" than as a pure racial issue. Of course, minorities are arrested with those sorts of charges at a disproportionately high rate, so there's no reason it can't be both.

Rather, the part that's revealing when it comes to race is not the arrest, it's the reactions. It's the guys sitting behind their keyboards screaming about "reverse racism" and utterly denying that the real problems exist.

It's the total failure of people to appreciate that if they had just come home after a 20-hour trip back from China and a cop started treating them like a criminal in their own home, then maybe they'd get pretty pissed off too.

It's the inability of people to realize that yes, there are cops out there who will arrest you for things that aren't illegal, and will justify those arrests however they feel they need to.

We shouldn't be asking ourselves "was the cop right" or "was Gates a jerk"? We should be asking ourselves what we'd do in Gates' situation. Whether we'd feel that we were being protected and served, or intimidated and harrassed.

More importantly, we should realize that for every Henry Louis Gates, Jr. who gets arrested for no reason, there are a few thousand normal, everyday people (of all races) who suffer the same treatment, but don't have the means or influence to draw attention to it.

Whatever you think of this particular case, it's unquestionably true that people do get arrested for the crime of being black. It's unquestionably true that some cops are keen on showing how "tough" they are by mistreating those they are meant to serve.

If nothing else, Gates' arrest should be a wake up call. Like Adrian Ford desires, and like Skip Gates has said, it's not about Gates. It's about all of us.

* That's a lie. Of course I know how I've stayed out of jail: I'm white and I'm scared of arguing with people who could shoot me.
** Check it out, I have a contact! Take that, journalists!

Thanks, Fox News!

2009-07-10T08:49:00.002-04:00

The following clip from Fox News is about the Netherlands, and I'm pretty sure viewers are supposed to find it terribly disturbing. Their intended effect isn't exactly what I got out of it.

Happy stoners? Uncontroversial same-sex marriage? Lots of sex? An aversion to religion?

Sounds good to me. Let's all go to Holland!

Compromise is a jerk!

2009-07-09T10:25:00.005-04:00

Oh, crazy letter to the editor-writers, why must you tempt me so? I always feel a little guilty for mocking you, as if I were picking on the kids on the short bus. On the other hand, this particular crazy person is advocating imposing his religious beliefs on everyone, so he deserves it.

I am referring to this letter published in today's Sentinel with the headline of "Compromised values hurt America close to home." Damn dirty compromise!

Let the fisking begin:

America is losing the war, not the war on terrorism, but the war against the very soul of America. This enemy is cunning, highly intelligent and knows very well how to defeat America.

This enemy does not come at us from the outside, but from within directly attacking the core values and principles of this great nation and of its people. The very foundation that built our house and stood as a city on a hill.

Okay, so it sounds like the "enemy" here is Americans who happen to disagree with any of the views of our letter-writer. I guess that would be pretty much everyone who isn't the author of this letter. I'm pretty sure I know who will win this war.

As one who served in the military understands, to defeat one's enemy you attack the core.

This enemy is compromise, and it has been working in this country for at least 50 to 60 years now.

Oh wait, the enemy is "compromise"? How does that work? Compromise is "cunning" and "highly intelligent"? That's pretty good for an abstract concept!

Also, has compromise seriously only existed for 50 or 60 years? Didn't King Solomon propose cutting that baby in half as a compromise? Sure, they didn't go through with it, but clearly the concept was around.

Please explain your theory, sir!

The enemy of compromise could have started with one of the greatest deceptions in promoting separation of church and state. This deception has and continues to affect many Americans to compromise their core values and principles.

We as a people group, society and a nation are slowly giving over our core values and principles that our forefathers fought for and established for this great nation.

Umm... huh. Those sentences don't actually make any sense, but I think he's saying that separation of church and state is a deception? It must be a pretty good deception, since it's smack-dab in the First Amendment to the Constitution. Were the founding fathers deceived? Perhaps!

Or maybe they were the deceivers themselves! They did do an awful lot of compromising.

What else has this evil "compromise" done with its army of compromise-bots?

Compromise has taken prayer out of school.

Well, that's not really true, is it? You can pray in school all you want. You just can't force other people to pray, or to listen to you pray. But hey, if you want to pray in school, go for it!

Still, it wasn't "compromise" that removed official prayer from public schools. It was that pesky First Amendment again. Damn founding fathers!

Maybe compromise is up to no good elsewhere?

Compromise is removing the 10 Commandments from the public forum even though many of our laws are based upon them.

Which laws would those be?

I'm pretty sure having other gods before Yahweh is legal, as are making idols, using God's name in vain, doing things on the Sabbath, dishonoring your parents, committing adultery, bearing false witness (unless you're under oath), and coveting your neighbor's wife and oxen and assorted sundries.

Admittedly, murder and theft are both illegal. So that's two commandments that actually have laws related to them. Of course, murder and theft are illegal everywhere, and prohibitions against them predate the ten commandments by quite a bit. They're just sensible laws.

It's conceivable that our letter-writer is not a legal scholar. Maybe we should just move on.

Compromise gave us aborting innocent life and the acceptance of mercy killing of elders or those who are terminally sick.

Okay, at this point it's pretty clear that Mr. Crazy-Letter-Writer-Guy doesn't actually know what the word "compromise" even means. I suspect he thinks it's a synonym for "anyone I don't like," which it is not. But at least it makes the letter more coherent if we do a little mental substitution.

We have compromised the sanctity of marriage and allow people of the same sex to be married, and who knows what in the near future.

God dammit! Now he's actually using the word correctly. Jerk.

I do like that "who knows what" part. Indeed, who knows? Will fish start marrying televisions? Will clowns be encouraged to have sex on the steps in front of City Hall? Who knows, but it's probably terrible!

Further compromise is occurring within the area of underage drinking, illegal use of drugs, prostitution and gambling.

Fuck it, I don't even know what compromise means anymore. Maybe it's just shorthand for "compromises of my strict authoritarian standards."

Is this stuff still supposed to be related to Jeebus somehow? Because he pretty famously enjoyed hanging out with prostitutes, and didn't really have a lot to say about drugs or gambling.

He was way cooler than the jackass behind this letter, that's for sure!

We now see our government and judges willing to compromise these core values and our constitution as they continue to make laws that are contrary to basic moral and ethical values.

Translation: "Not violating the constitutional separation between church and state is a violation of the Constitution!"

Yep, clearly not a legal scholar.

I could go on and on with many other areas where we are compromising and diluting our values and principles and negating our constitution.

... but I'm far too drunk to do so right now. I need a nap.

Many say simply the times are changing and we should change with them.

However, I challenge you with this. It is not time that changes but people and how they think and what they want changes.

Actually, time does change. It goes forward. People change too, which is sometimes called "growth." How is this a challenge?

This very enemy is causing the American people to become selfish, arrogant and prideful.

Wait, which enemy? Change, compromise, or people you don't like? Maybe the founding fathers? I'm so confused.

As for the sun, it will always rise in the east and set in the west. Likewise with so many of our values and principles and constitution are deep rooted, they should never be compromised.

So because the Earth rotates in a certain direction, nothing should ever change? Hell of a theory you've got there, buddy. Also, you really need to stop throwing the Constitution in with your own personal biases, because I'm pretty sure most of the founding fathers would think you're a clueless asshole.

Finally, the coup de grace!

Many of you who read this may not agree, but then, why should you?

Oh, I get it! It was all just a big joke. He's making fun of people who take this kind of nonsense seriously.

Well done, sir! You had me thinking you were just another whiny theocrat, demanding that everyone follow your personal values system, and using your utter lack of understanding of the Constitution to try to give yourself some credibility.

I'm pleased to see that you are, in fact, merely a joke.

In search of a credible search engine

2009-07-08T09:15:00.011-04:00

The internet is obviously a wonderful source of information. Unfortunately, a lot of that information isn't actually true.

The misinformation isn't usually intentionally malicious. It's just the byproduct of every dumbass with a computer having the ability to put their own mistaken beliefs on the web. Some of the resulting misinformation is more widely-believed than the actual truth, and this leads to problems.

Google is really a very good search engine. I use it all the time, and generally the first few results you get from a Google search are decent enough. But not always.

Recently, I've been contemplating how much better searching would be if the results for certain kinds of searches were sorted not by popularity, but by credibility. Far too often have I encountered search results where the misinformation heavily outranked the truth.

Well, as it turns out there are at least two search engines out there who claim to promote credible information on searches related to health care (but nothing much else at this point). Since bad healthcare information dominates the internet, and since that misinformation can actually have pretty severe consequences for people who believe it, health information seems like a great place to start.

Today I'm going to examine these two new search engines and compare their results to Google on a number of health issues. Let's see how they work.

The following search engines will be used:

Bing - this is Microsoft's recently-renamed search engine, that they stupidly choose to call a "decision engine." I don't know what that means either. Wikipedia (itself not exactly the most credible source) describes its "Bing Health" search services as follows:
Bing Health (previously Live Search Health) is a health-related search service as part of Microsoft's Bing search engine. It is a search engine specifically for health-related information through a variety of trusted and credible sources, including Medstory, Mayo Clinic, National Institutes of Health's MedlinePlus, as well as from Wikipedia.
hakia - I just discovered this one last night. It's still in beta, but does make a very concerted effort to provide credible information. As they describe it, hakia gets librarians to submit credible sources, and require a source to be peer-reviewed, lack commercial bias, have current information, and not be controlled by outside parties for it to be considered credible. At this point, their credible search element is limited to health and environmental information.
Google - really needs no introduction.

I'll be using a few different health-related search terms to see how these three compare. They are:

diabetes - basic, easy one to start with.
vaccine ingredients - simple enough, just give me accurate information on what's in vaccines.
swine flu - because big stories draw scammers.

I'll submit each of those italicized search terms to the three engines, and let's see what we end up with. I'm only going to deal with the top five results from each, because that's where the vast majority of people are going to end up.

Test #1 - diabetes

Google - The first five results (discarding ads, duplicates from the same domain, and news results) are pretty good. At the top is the American Diabetes Association, with WebMD, a journal of diabetes, and NIH information in the top five.

Unfortunately, this site ranks third, and it's little more than a marketing site for the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. Pretty blatant conflict of interest there.

Bing - Bing separates its results out into different categories (like "Diabetes Symptoms," "Diabetes Prevention," etc). I'm just going to use the top-level stuff that doesn't have a subheading, and again ignore the ads at the top.

Bing does okay here. The top results is from the Mayo Clinic, who clearly have partnered with Microsoft here. Second is the ADA. Third is Wikipedia's article on diabetes, which is not exactly what I'd consider a credible source (Wikipedia articles are a great example of popular ideas winning out over true ones). GSK's little propaganda site is up there too.

hakia - A search at the default hakia.com domain brings up a special diabetes page. All the information seems pretty good, with the ADA, Mayo Clinic, and some other fairly respectable sources of information available. Notably absent are GSK's site and Wikipedia, which is nice.

Clicking on the "credible" tab for results gives us several PubMed articles, as well as a couple of top results for the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides. Which is a decently reality-based page, but probably not what you're actually looking for if you just search for "diabetes."

Verdict! - They're all pretty decent, actually. hakia is maybe a tiny bit ahead for keeping out GSK and Wikipedia, but loses points for relatively useless "credible" results. Let's call this one a tie.

Test #2 - vaccine ingredients

This one is going to be interesting. There's a large antivaccination contingent on the internet, so getting accurate information about what's actually in vaccines is tricky.

Google - It's not pretty. The top two results are both antivacine sites, publishing lists of dubious quality to try to scare people away from vaccines. Lots of talk of thimerosol, which crazy people insist causes autism despite tons of evidence to the contrary.

The third result is the CDC, which is the only credible source in the top five. Then it's back to the antivaccine propaganda. Just below the CDC, we even get Rense.com. One look at that site should be enough to show just how credible their information is.

Bing - Holy crap. Google's results were already horrible, but Bing's are even worse. Rense has moved up to the top spot, with the even more batshit-insane Whale.to taking up third place. The entire top 10 is utter crap, except for the CDC at number 8. Horrible results.

hakia - Well, the "Web Results" are still incredibly bad. But hakia does put the "Credible Sites" right next to them.

So we have batshit insanity right next to very good stuff. It would be nice if the credible stuff actually showed up in the general "web results" too, but perhaps that's something that will come about at a later stage (note that hakia is still in beta). Additionally, hakia's credible results are poorly-ranked. They skew towards overly-specific when people are looking for general information. Again, this is something that might be worked out later.

Verdict! - They all suck, but hakia sucks slightly less than the others. Bing is actually even worse than Google, despite their claim to provide credible health information.

Test #3 - swine flu

Google - Not too bad. The CDC's excellent swine flu portal is in the top position, with the rest of the top five rounded out by Wikipedia, a mostly-reasonable but ad-heavy medical portal, the World Health Organization, and Medline. Wikipedia's presence is probably okay in this case, because of H1N1's newsworthiness.

Bing - Again we get the Mayo Clinic at the top, with Wikipedia following close after. Then some stuff from the Guardian which is pretty reasonable.

But right after that we get a really stupid blog, which has a lot of bad information (like telling you to disinfect your shoes, which is just dumb) and appears to be a veiled attempt at selling you an herbal supplement. It's ~~a scam site~~ part of a network of identical scam sites, plain and simple.

Overall, the Bing results for swine flu appear to be about 20% credible and 80% scams and bullshit.

hakia - Pretty good! The credible results are indeed very credible, though they once again suffer from not being particularly relevant. The normal results are also pretty credible, and there's nary a scam to be found. The normal results do skew a little newsy at times, but overall not too bad.

Verdict! - Google and hakia both win this round. They avoided nonsense and provided good information. hakia's "credible search" is still giving good, but often irrelevant results, but their normal search made up for it. Bing was fine for two links and then turned to crap.

Results

I had intended to do a couple more test searches, but this is getting lengthy and there's a pretty clear pattern emerging.

Basically, when it comes to health information your best options are either Google or hakia. Google has a lot of bad stuff mixed in, but the top few results are usually decent. hakia has a way to go before it's truly useful, but the credible results it delivers are certainly credible. They're just not necessarily very relevant. If it works out the kinks, maybe by the time it's out of beta it'll be something quite good.

Bing, on the other hand, sucks really hard. I'm not sure how a search engine that goes out of its way to provide credible health information managed to provide worse information than Google (which makes no such attempt), but it did. Avoid this one.

Also notable is that all our engines did pretty badly with the vaccine ingredient search. This was not the least bit surprising, and is actually the reason why I chose that term. Faced with the tons of stupid out there, hakia seemed to do the best. Dealing with these sorts of controversial topics may be the most difficult test of a search engine, so hakia's relatively good performance may signal good things on the way.

Of course, it's necessary with any search engine to use your own critical thinking skills and actually sort out what's true from what's not. Even the most credible and well-respected sites can contain errors, and no search engine is going to be able to make the final call for you.

Hopefully we can reach a point where a simple health-related search can bring back mostly-credible results instead of mostly-nonsense results. There's still a way to go, but it's good to see some people trying.

A great musician is dead

2009-06-26T10:09:00.005-04:00

Let's take today to remember a truly great musician. A man of great honor, talent, and principle. A man whose death reminds us just how fleeting the best things in life can be.

I speak of course of the legendary D. Boon, singer and guitarist for the Minutemen. He died in an auto accident in 1985.

In memorial, here's an old, grainy video of the Minutemen performing "Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing" (lyrics here).

To the best of my knowledge, Jackson never actually did sing that song. His loss.

Swine Flu (probably) Hits Leominster Schools

2009-06-25T09:10:00.009-04:00

There's an interesting article in the S&E today about high absentee rates in Leominster schools. This is most likely an outbreak of swine flu/H1N1, but it seems as if those quoted in the article are reluctant to admit it.

Let's look at the article.

A large number of students have been out sick at Fall Brook Elementary School over the past week, but there have been no confirmed cases of swine flu, according to Superintendent of Schools Nadine Binkley.

"There has been a lot of flu going around, but it's of the fairly light variety," Binkley said.

Binkley said 65 students at Fall Brook were out sick Wednesday. The school has between 20 and 25 absences per day during an average week throughout the year, Binkley said.

Fall Brook has a total of 664 students.

Okay, that's a good chunk of students out. It's about 10% of the total student population, and three times the normal level.

There being "no confirmed cases of swine flu" doesn't actually mean a whole lot, because of the way the word "confirmed" is defined. According to the CDC, here's what it takes to be a confirmed case:

A confirmed case of novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infection is defined as a person with an influenza-like illness with laboratory confirmed novel influenza A (H1N1) virus infection by one or more of the following tests:

1. real-time RT-PCR
2. viral culture

So yeah, to be considered a "confirmed case," you have to actually do lab work to confirm it. You can have swine flu without being a confirmed case, and most people at this stage will not be confirmed cases simply because these tests are no longer being done for most cases.

This was pointed out in the article, though they neglect to give you the background about what "confirmed" means:

Leominster Health Director Christopher Knuth said Wednesday that there have been no confirmed cases of swine flu at Fall Brook, but also noted that the state recently stopped testing for it.

"We wouldn't get notified anymore," Knuth said.

Bingo. There actually can't be any confirmed cases if that testing isn't done. Hell, there probably can't even be any "probable" cases, since those also require a lesser degree of testing.

So when you read "but there have been no confirmed cases of swine flu", it really tells you nothing at all. These cases are going to be considered "suspected," as will the vast majority of swine flu. It's just not practical to test everybody at this stage.

Binkley's statement about there being a lot of cases of the flu going around, but them being "of the fairly light variety" is also telling.

First of all, there's no reason for that "but." H1N1 at this stage doesn't appear to be much more severe than the seasonal flu. Having had the seasonal flu, I'd never refer to it as "light," but if you're expecting H1N1 to be a death sentence you might.

Secondly, if there's a lot of flu going around currently, it's almost certainly H1N1. Here's a chart of flu cases by week from the CDC:

A very good explanation of this chart (including its weaknesses) can be found here, but I'll sum it up for you.

The orange bars represent swine flu, yellow is non-subtyped influenza A, which may or may not be swine flu, and the other colors are not swine flu, but are mostly what we'd consider the seasonal flu.

Knowing that, you can pretty easily see the seasonal flu fading away and the swine flu taking off. The little spike at the end of flu season is probably an artifact of increased testing as swine flu began to appear, but we were near the end of flu season, and subsequent weeks show it falling off.

The important thing to take from this is that the seasonal flu is basically done for this season. The swine flu is likely responsible for the vast majority of current flu cases.

Certainly it's possible that there are other factors at work in Leominster's situation. Absenteeism increases at the end of the year, normal colds and allergies may be getting misidentified as the flu, etc. But if it is indeed the flu, it's most likely the swine flu.

So, it's a possible flu outbreak. What are they going to do about it?

"We're going to sit tight with it for right now," Binkley said. "There are a lot of factors we weigh before we would close a school."

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education advises schools to remain open as long as the absences have not affected teaching and learning, Binkley said.

"We don't have a high number of teachers out, and we feel that the classroom environment is still productive," Binkley said. "We don't think it's serious enough to close the school."

This is probably fine. There are indeed a lot of factors to consider before closing a school. A closure doesn't just affect the students, it affects the whole community. Sick kids means parents staying home to take care of them, which means those parents aren't at work, which means your plumber can't come fix that leak because he has to cover for his coworker whose kid is sick. The impact reaches a lot further than you might first imagine.

Since Leominster's last day before summer recess is tomorrow, it's probably more reasonable just to finish up the year than to close early and make a mess of things.

The article gives several good pieces of advice about what to do if you have the flu, most of which you've heard before. Most importantly, if you're sick, and especially if you have a fever, stay home.

Let me repeat that: stay home. That doesn't mean going to the grocery story instead of work or school. It doesn't mean hanging out with friends. It means sitting around in your house, feeling crappy. (If you want to kill time, I suggest playing this flash game about sneezing on people. It's oddly satisfying.)

When school gets out on Friday, any student who does have swine flu will suddenly have a lot more opportunities to infect others in the community. Even on vacation, staying home and not becoming a disease vector to those around you is important.

Finally, if you're healthy, don't worry. Yes, there is flu in the community. There's not much you can do about it outside of normal disease control measures (hand washing, careful with sneezing, etc). If you get it you'll probably feel pretty lousy, but unless you have underlying medical problems you're unlikely to die from it.

It's nothing to panic about, and it sounds like keeping the school open is a perfectly reasonable decision. But let's call a spade a spade. Yes, this is probably swine flu, and there's no reason to pretend otherwise. Now let's deal with it.

Fitchburg's Bond Rating Improves

2009-06-24T09:21:00.007-04:00

This is actually pretty important news, but holy crap is it boring.

The Standard & Poor's bond rating agency increased Fitchburg's bond rating, Mayor Lisa Wong's office announced Tuesday.

Wong credited conservative budget practices, including increasing the stabilization fund and negotiating lower health care costs, with the improvement.

The bond rating was BBB minus with a negative outlook.

S & P officials upgraded the bond rating to BBB plus with a stable outlook, Wong's office announced.

Yay! Good news!

This is also news that is pretty much impossible to say anything funny or interesting about, so you're just going to have to make do with that picture of Timothy Dalton. We're nowhere near Connery level yet, but at least things are moving in the right direction.

Conservatives embrace political correctness, stupidity

2009-06-19T08:40:00.008-04:00

One of the more profoundly annoying things to come up in recent weeks has been the whole manufactroversy about David Letterman (a comedian) making a joke. If you're not familiar with it, consider yourself lucky.

If you're one of those people and want to maintain your blissful ignorance, please stop reading now.

See, I would have happily avoided writing about this if it weren't for yet another neuron-apoptosing editorial by (unbylined, but presumably) Jeff McMenemy, wittily titled Liberal media slow to scold Letterman for Palin comments.

Okay, let's get this over with...

If you don't believe a double standard exists in much of the mainstream media when it comes to how inappropriate or tasteless comments are treated, just consider the case of late-night talk show host David Letterman.

Letterman, before referring to what he described as Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's "slutty flight-attendant look," made a truly tasteless and classless joke early last week about the governor's 14-year-old daughter, saying she had been "knocked up" by Alex Rodriguez during a trip to watch a New York Yankees game.

Wow, lies right off the bat. That didn't take long.

Let's look at the actual joke, delivered as part of a top-10 list about Sarah Palin's trip to New York:

One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game. During the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.

I don't know about you, but when I first heard about that I assumed it was about Bristol Palin, who is Sarah Palin's famously knocked-up daughter. That is, in fact, who the joke was about, according to Letterman.

Clearly, it's also about a baseball player that I know little about, but I guess he's sort of sleazy? Arguably, the joke is more at his expense than Palin's. I wonder why nobody is coming to his defense.

But since Palin was at the game with her 14-year old daughter Willow (a fact that wasn't exactly common knowledge), all the deeply politically correct conservatives decided that Letterman was actually making a joke about statutory rape. Even though he wasn't. But when has the truth ever stood in the way of manufactured outrage?

Anyway, Letterman apologized and made clear his intentions, but Bible Spice was more interested in using her 14-year-old daughter as a political tool (which is totally not unethical) than accepting that it was a joke that went a little wrong and moving on.

So there's the background. It pretty much invalidates McMenemy's entire rant, but let's just check out what he has to say anyway. I'm sure it's enlightening.

Palin called the liberal-leaning Letterman "pathetic," and her husband quite rightly said that "any jokes about raping my 14-year-old are despicable."

Well yeah, that would be despicable. Not really relevant though, since Letterman didn't make any such joke.

McMenemy:

And if you think such a joke is harmless, please take a moment to consider how you would react if someone made a joke about "knocking up" your teenage daughter.

I suppose that would depend. If it was about my very knocked-up 18 year old daughter, I don't think I'd have a whole lot to complain about. But I'm not desperate to keep my name in the news for a 2012 presidential run, so maybe that would change things.

But while other less liberal talk-show hosts, like Don Imus for example, have been summarily fired from their job and attacked by the liberal media when they made tasteless comments, many were slow to respond correctly to Letterman's tasteless joke and basic lack of decency.

Here, McMenemy is whining about not enough people whining. About a joke on a late-night comedy show. Which didn't mean what he has decided it means.

I wonder how quickly McMenemy condemned Bill O'Reilly when he said this:

And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

... and then later dismissed it as a "satirical riff."

I bet Pope McMenemy, scourge of tasteless jokes, was right on top of that!

It hurts to go on...

But as slow as much of the mainstream media was to respond to the incident, Letterman was even slower, waiting a full week before he apologized for a "bad joke" that couldn't be defended.

But when he apologized on Monday night, Letterman still insisted he was making the joke about Palin's 18-year-old daughter.

Well, yeah. Of course he was. That's why people laughed (jokes about raping 14 year olds don't get a lot of laughs). That's how it was intended, and that's how it was taken by virtually everyone who heard it. The manufactroversy came later.

Also, it's worth noting that the apology a week after the joke was the second apology. The first came pretty quickly, but I guess Palin wasn't ready to stop exploiting her daughter for political points yet.

We find that claim to be unbelievable, but even if it is true, does that really make things any better?

"Unbelievable" is used in a nonstandard way in this sentence. It doesn't mean something that can't be believed, it means something that McMenemy chooses not to believe. Because he's a dipshit.

Anyway, yes it makes it better! Bristol Palin was knocked up! That's widely-known, and is the reason she goes on tv advocating... ummm... abstinence. Because it worked so well for her!

I'm also pretty sure that 18 is the age of adulthood (and consent, many places) in this country. That makes a huge difference. It's not a joke about a girl having sex, it's a joke about a woman getting knocked up. Even though she actually became pregnant before she was 18. Hmm... Levi has some 'splaining to do!

Enough of the intentionally-misrepresented comedy bits though, let's get to intentionally-misrepresented media response.

The big issue here is not whether Letterman should be fired -- that's up to his advertisers and his viewers -- but why so many in the media think it's OK to cross all lines of decency and verbally attack 14-year-old girls, as long as they're the daughters of Republicans.

Oh, there was still some intentionally-misrepresented comedy bit in there. Oh well.

Regardless, nobody in the media thinks that! Even this joke, which wasn't about a 14 year old, has gotten all kinds of media attention. Far, far more than it should have.

We're glad that Letterman has finally apologized, but we find it troubling that the same liberal pundits who have gleefully attacked conservatives when they make tasteless comments, remained silent after Letterman's comments.

Damn right! Those faggy liberal pundits should recognize the difference between a late-night comedian making a joke that went wrong, and prominent conservative pundits using eliminationist rhetoric that they later dismiss as "satire."

See, when Ann Coulter includes a line like like "I think our motto should be, post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'" in a speech to CPAC, and then follows it up with "You know, ok. I made a few jokes — and they killed 3000 Americans. Fair trade." that's an hilarious joke! Ha ha ha!

But when David Letterman (an actual comedian) makes a joke that right-wingers interpret incorrectly, that's a terrible affront to civility. People should be outraged!

Stupid liberals, don't they know that the only funny jokes are ones that denigrate Muslims or feature some sort of violent rhetoric? Jokes about celebrities having sex are just wrong!

Of course, no McMenemy piece is complete without an appeal to "civility":

And we hope that all political discourse, whether it's a serious political debate or just late-night jokes, will remain civil above all else.

Yay, civility!

Here are McMenemy's allies in the fight for civility. Enjoy.

Now that's funny!

Yet More Streetlight Nonsense

2009-06-17T09:23:00.005-04:00

Ha.

Just yesterday I was complaining about the lack of stupid scaremongering articles in the S&E of late. I even said I wanted "something about scary loud noises caused by kids exploding soda bottles, or about unlit streetlamps coming to life and killing everyone."

Obviously, Jeff McMenemy is a devoted reader, because today he delivers another steaming pile of stupid about streetlights. To wit: Editorial: No fiscally bright side to turning off streetlights.

Having had several months to refine his arguments down into a light paste, let's see if he does any better with the scary "Unlit streetlights will doom us all!" rhetoric.

It doesn't start off very well:

Leominster Mayor Dean J. Mazzarella made it clear before he recently released his fiscal 2010 budget that he would not cut core city services, and we applauded the mayor for producing a budget that didn't call for any layoffs in the middle of a recession, although it did include a 2.5 percent tax hike.

That's why we were disappointed to learn that his budget does call for turning off about 200 of the city's 3,000 streetlights, in a move that would save about $20,000, according to Department of Public Works Director Patrick LaPointe, who talked about the plan during a budget hearing Monday.

Hilariously, McMenemy has just falsified his own title. Saving twenty grand is definitely a "fiscally bright side to turning off streetlights."

Following this poor start, the editorial includes quotes from Leominster city officials talking about how they're going to be careful about which lights are included in the less than 7% of the city's streetlights that they're considering shutting off. Which is reasonable, but I'm more interested in the arguments against turning them off at all.

Like this:

Turning off streetlights is a bad idea for many reasons. First, it makes the city less safe, both from a crime standpoint and just for kids playing at night or residents walking, jogging or bicycling.

Well, that's an interesting argument by assertion. Too bad it's not supported by facts. The evidence itself is inconclusive at best, which may be why the FBI doesn't list lighting under its review of variables affecting crime.

Two can play this game! I assert that leaving 93% of Leominster's streetlights on constitutes an attractive nuisance for invasion by space aliens. If they were to turn off all the streetlights, then the alien invaders would have more difficulty finding the town from their hiding place in the troposphere.

In other words, turn off all the streetlights or get ready for a lot of anal probes.

You've been warned!

When lights are turned off near homes, the value of the homes can also drop.

Can they?

I don't actually know, but probably. Lots of things can happen. That doesn't mean they do, and some quick searching didn't lead me to any evidence that turning off street lights makes home values drop. Admittedly, such evidence would be almost impossible to collect. Home values are affected by a lot of things, and I'm betting that an unlit street light is pretty unimportant in the bigger picture. But who knows?

It's probably not going out too far on a limb to assume that McMenemy didn't even bother with this sort of quick search, so we have another argument by assertion. There are few people whose fact-free assertions you should trust less than McMenemy's, so I guess this one fails too.

Perhaps another?

And even in great neighborhoods, fewer streetlights can encourage more property crimes, even if it's just car break-ins.

Okay, yeah, every one of these claims is an argument by assertion.

This one is a throwback to the first crappy argument. Less streetlights equals more crime. This assertion is still not supported by the evidence, so let's move on.

And turning off streetlights sends the clear message to residents and businesses that the city is in trouble, which Leominster is not.

No it doesn't. Most people wouldn't even notice this small number of streetlights being off. Futhermore, only a lunatic jumps from "the city shut off a few street lights to save money" to "OMG Leominster is DOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!"

If streetlights and crime are as tightly connected as McMenemy seems to believe, then we should be able to eliminate crime just by adding ridiculous numbers of streetlights so that everything is lit up. After all, it's not like crimes ever occur during the day.

Oh, wait. The FBI disagrees.

# Offenses for which time of occurrence was known showed that 57.4 percent of burglaries took place during the day and 42.6 percent at night.

# Offenses for which time of occurrence was known showed that more residential burglaries (63.6 percent) occurred during the daytime while 56.4 percent of nonresidential burglaries occurred during nighttime hours.

Dang. I guess we'd better start keeping street lights on all day.

Beware of Scary Flowers!

2009-06-16T08:46:00.015-04:00

It's been awhile since we had a good fearmongering article in the Sentinel. You know, something about scary loud noises caused by kids exploding soda bottles, or about unlit streetlamps coming to life and killing everyone. Those are great articles, and I've been missing them.

Luckily, today we get this article, ripped from the pages of the Lowell Sun (which has the same parent company and is just as terrible a newspaper as the S&E).

It's about the horrors of Morning Glory abuse, and how "teens" are looking to get high on them. Oh no!

Let's see what our intrepid mountain-of-a-molehill reporter has to say:

Groups of young teenagers would ride their bikes to the garden store to buy packets of morning glory seeds.

Their specific interest in the small black seeds wasn't for gardening, but rather a hallucinogenic high similar to taking LSD.

Teenagers eating legal plant seeds so they can convince themselves they're high? This is trouble!

This is also a topic that pops up every couple of years, when some heroic reporter realizes that yes, some people stupidly try to get high off morning glory seeds. Said reporter then tries to draw public attention to this huge problem and writes a dumb newspaper piece about it.

The chemical is Lysergic Acid Amide (LSA), the same chemical used to make Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, commonly known as LSD.

LSA is derived from ergot, a type of fungus that grows on grains, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Well, if the National Institute on Drug Abuse talks about it, then this must mean it's a dangerous drug, right?

I would have just checked Wikipedia myself, but that's why I'm not a newspaper reporter. Of course, I'd have found out that each seed contains about 10 µg of ergine/LSA, which is sort of interesting.

Anyway, it's well-known that Morning Glory seeds are a source of LSA, and that stupid kids try to use this property to get high (whether they are successful or not is a different story). So why should we, as a society that freaks out about drugs, care? What's the danger?

While LSD has been widely studied and documented, information about LSA isn't listed on the National Institute on Drug Abuse or U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Web sites.

However, because LSA mimics the hallucinogenic effects of LSD, doctors say it could be dangerous.

Know what else "could" be dangerous? Jumping to idiotic conclusions that aren't supported by facts.

LSA is not LSD, just like Ethylene glycol (antifreeze, basically) is not Polyethylene glycol (used in a bunch of stuff, including toothpaste and eyedrops). Little differences matter quite a bit when you're dealing with chemicals.

Furthermore, there are plenty of things that produce hallucinogenic effects, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're dangerous. Unless you think hallucinations themselves are dangerous, which I suppose they are in some situations. Luckily, most of those situations are not ones in which a Morning Glory junkie is going to find himself in.

So, "doctors," care to elaborate?

"LSD is a potent hallucinogenic; not only is there an acute effect, but people get all sorts of flashbacks and psychological damage," said Dr. Wayne Pasanen, vice president of Medical Affairs at Lowell General Hospital and medical director for Habit Management in Lowell.

So far, Pasanen has not seen any cases involving LSA, but Mike Miles, a Dracut School Committee member and Lowell police patrolman, has counseled two teens who have used morning glory seeds to get high.

Okay, so LSD is potentially bad news, because of the highly-scientific dangers of "all sorts of flashbacks" and other vague stuff. I can't argue with those facts!

LSA, which is what we're actually talking about, apparently isn't a huge deal. Dr. Pasanen hasn't seen any cases involving it, though this School Committee cop guy claims that he's known two (2) dumbasses who used it "to get high."

How'd that go?

Miles, a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in child and family therapy and drug and alcohol counseling, said both teens said they became sick to their stomach.

Oh, so those two didn't actually get high. They got sick. From eating a bunch of seeds. It's a drug epidemic!

Maybe someone else can provide better scares?

Other local law enforcement officials in communities surrounding Dracut say they haven't seen any incidents involving morning glory seeds, but are aware that it can be used as a drug.

"It's definitely on our radar," said Chelmsford Deputy Police Chief Scott Ubele.

So, even though they've never seen a case, and even though there's nothing illegal about Morning Glory seeds, the Chelmsford police are aware that some people might use them to try to get high. Hey, so am I! So is everyone reading this blog post. So what?

Maybe another cop will have more information?

In Billerica, Sgt. Roy Frost hasn't seen any cases, but is familiar with the ways morning glory seeds can be manipulated.

"These kids can smoke it (morning glory seeds), they can chew it, or cook with it just like traditional marijuana," Frost said. "With a lot of these drugs, kids unfortunately think it's OK because it hasn't been criminalized."

Again, no cases. Why was this article printed, exactly?

Still, at least Frost knows that this drug, which is nothing like marijuana, is "just like traditional marijuana." He also thinks you can smoke it and cook with it. Since LSA breaks down at high temperatures, either of these techniques will just leave you with seeds that are worthless both for getting high and for growing flowers.

In other words, Frost is totally talking out of his ass. Just like everyone else in this pathetic article.

One more cop!

However, the legality of LSA in morning glory seeds remains murky, said Richardson.

The use of morning glory seeds as an illicit drug is not listed under state law, only under federal law, [Dracut Police Chief Kevin] Richardson said. Local officers do not have the authority to enforce federal statutes, Richardson said.

Allow me to clear up the legality of Morning Glory seeds for this police chief.

They're legal.

There, that wasn't so hard. LSA is indeed a Schedule III controlled substance, but LSA is not the same thing as Morning Glory seeds. The seeds aren't rendered illegal just because eating several hundred of them might get you high. Opium is made from poppies, but that doesn't make poppy-seed bagels illegal.

Okay, enough of this fact-free article full of totally clueless cops. If this is the best they can do to drum up scary outrage about seeds, that's pretty sad. Hell, they didn't even mention that some of the seeds might have been treated with antifungals, which could make you feel lousy if you eat them! Lame.

As for the actual subject of using Morning Glory seeds to get high, it's idiotic. If some dumbass tries it they're not going to die, they pretty much can't overdose, they most likely won't even get high, and they stand a decent chance of ending up with some pretty unpleasant diarrhea.

It's also not the kind of thing anyone's going to do very often, because it's a giant pain for very little reward. Plus, anyone with half a brain is going to make fun of them for doing it in the first place, because it's incredibly lame.

In the end, this is a non-story about something that doesn't seem to be happening very often (two kids with tummy aches does not really support a whole article). It's full of logical fallacies and outright falsehoods, and it lacks any firm grounding in the real world. It also interviewed way too many cops, who are apparently all idiots.

In other words, it's almost a perfect ~~Sentinel~~ Lowell Sun article.

Way to go, MediaNews Group! I eagerly await your expose on the danger of smoking banana peels.

More people running for things!

2009-06-10T08:41:00.007-04:00

Yeah, I've been really lazy about the blogging lately. Mostly, this is due to there being no interesting news (there's news, it's just dull) to write about. Today's news isn't super-interesting either, but at least it's something.

The "something" in question should be obvious from the title of this post. People are running for office in Fitchburg, so let's see who they are.

This information comes from the Sentinel & Enterprise, in this article. So who's running?

There are now 10 candidates running for the city's five councilor at-large seats, according to City Hall records.

Councilors Stephan Hay, Marcus DiNatale and Dean Tran have already signed in to run for reelection.

No surprise on any of those, though it's interesting to note that Tran is running for reelection as a City Councilor and not making a mayoral bid. Ditto for DiNatale. Guess the local anti-Wong crowd is going to be disappointed about that (which is fine with me, fuck those jerks!).

We already knew about some of these, though it appears that Conry's supposed reelection bid from that old post has been abandoned. He and Annie DeMartino are not seeking reelection. Councilor Solomito is, though he apparently hasn't filed the paperwork yet to get his name at the top of the article.

That old post also has a few names that appear in today's article. McNutt, Reynolds, Bernard, and Hartman were all previously mentioned.

Also previously mentioned is former mayor Dan Mylott, who is still in the "has pulled papers" stage and is taking his sweet time getting to the "candidate who will lose" stage. Oh well.

So, who are the newcomers?

New candidates that have filed papers within the last six weeks include Robert Boutwell, 57, a Longedge Avenue resident and former member of the Airport Commission.

Boutwell, who's also running for at-large councilor, said he wants to dig into the city finances.

"I believe at this point that everything needs to be looked at and reviewed," he said. "Reforms are needed in policies and procedures, and if at all possible, we need to do more with less."

Standard stuff, really, but that's about all we can reasonably expect at this point. Make with the websites, people!

Who else?

Linda Nicholopoulos, 55, will be running for councilor at-large after she's served on the Zoning Board of Appeals, the Planning Board, the Cultural Council and the Friends of Senior Center.

"I would like to promote a positive image of Fitchburg," Nicholopoulos said. "I've lived here for 31 years and I see the good in Fitchburg."

Nicholopoulos said her priorities would be public safety, the seniors and the schools if she gets elected.

Okay, that's fine. Positive images are nice, and Nicholopoulos has clearly devoted some time to public service already. Good for her.

Next!

Sprauge Street resident and current Planning Board member Michael DiPietro has also pulled papers to run for councilor at-large.

Well, that's sort of content-free. He's run before though, and here's how Jason at the now-defunct Save Fitchburg characterized him in a liveblog:

Michael DiPietro: Live-long resident, seen the good and the bad. Dad was a school teacher, grandfather long-time caretaker at Crocker Field. Wants to give back to the community... Wants to erase negativity and move Fitchburg forward. Nice... Financial issues: Conservative spending, encourage biz and residential development. Mentions city image again... Says one of the reasons people move here is the school system. Uh, that image adjustment can't come all at once, Michael... Says Fitchburg can be better than ever, and the "pre-eminent community in the Montachusett" area. Not too shabby.

Which sounds okay, though it's still standard "I'm running for office and not going to say too much" boilerplate.

So far, so boring. But here's where it gets interesting! Lovable leprechaun, former mayoral candidate, and personal favorite Ron Dionne is running for City Council!

Also running for councilor at-large is former mayoral candidate Ron Dionne.

Dionne said he would bring an "outsider" perspective.

"If this is going to turn around, it's going to turn around from an outsider perspective," he said. "Someone not in politics needs to get in and say this is the way to go."

Well, Dionne is certainly "someone not in politics"!

Will he spend more than 30 bucks on his campaign this time? Who cares? All that matters is that he's in the race, and I'm glad to see him.

We also get a bit more information on some of the people running, like this from Ward 4 candidate Ryan McNutt:

Other new candidates that have filed for election include Ryan McNutt, 32, who is running against incumbent Kevin Starr for the Ward 4 seat.

McNutt said he regularly attends City Council meetings and has worked as an intern in the mayor's office and Board of Health.

"I see things in Ward 4 where I live that really, seriously need to be addressed," McNutt said. "And I don't see any action or plan."

McNutt said, for example, he would like to see a "long-term plan" to address foreclosure issues on Elm and Marshall streets.

See all that new information? McNutt is 32! (Also the internship & meeting-attending stuff is new, I suppose.)

The rest is the standard stuff, as usual. He does have a pretty decent website up already though, which will be reviewed at a later date, once I'm sure Starr's website has been made current.

Who else?

Juan Rosado, 30, a Madison Street resident, is running against Ward 2 Councilor Norman Boisvert. He said he's lived in the city for six years and he wants to see more action to improve Cleghorn.

"We need to have a better environment for the kids," he said.

Oh man, a guy with an Hispanic name looking to improve Cleghorn? The local wingnuts are going to hate him. I don't think they're too crazy about kids either.

Personally, I like him if only because Boisvert sucks so badly. We'll have to see what he's all about later, though. A single non-controversial sentence in a S&E article isn't much to go on.

Here's something else from the article that I wasn't aware of:

Councilors serve two year terms and are paid $9,000 a year.

Man, that sucks ass. I knew they weren't paid much, but had somehow gotten it in my head that it was eleven or twelve grand. Nine is just terrible.

So there you have it! People, running for office. I'm going to put together a post in the near future listing everyone who's running and providing links to their websites, so if anybody knows where websites for these new candidates are, please give me a hand in the comments.

In the meantime, these are the people for you to stalk.

Override!

2009-05-26T09:17:00.004-04:00

City Councilor Kevin Starr has done something that I didn't think anyone on the City Council had the balls to do; he has proposed a Prop 2 1/2 override for Fitchburg.

Ward 4 Councilor Kevin Starr said he'd like to see an override question be put on November's ballot to avert deep cuts in public-safety departments.

"So many people have strong opinions and their voices need to be heard," Starr said. "The choices shouldn't be left up to 11 people on the council. They should be decided by an entire city."

Makes sense to me.

The city needs money, and a way to get it is through a Proposition 2 1/2 override. It certainly seems like the sort of thing that's at least worth exploring. If the voters go for it, then it can help fix a lot of problems. If they don't, they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Councilor Jody Joseph sounds like he's on-board with at least having a vote.

Ward 6 Councilor Jody Joseph said he doesn't see many places in the budget to cut.

"I've been through the budget and to me, to cut any more would be taking something that's already bleeding to death and cut it even more," Joseph said.

Joseph said his priorities are not only in the public safety departments, but the human service departments, too.

Joseph said the only option besides cutting is adding new revenues.

Joseph's quotes here address what will most likely be the biggest complaint about an override (besides "I don't want to pay taxes, waaah!"); the idea that it's a lazy way to get around cutting junk from the city budget. There's only so much junk in the budget in the first place, so cutting only works to a degree. After that, you need revenue.

Of course, not everybody is going to be so accepting of the idea.

Ward 2 Councilor Norman Boisvert said he would not support an override.

"Once you add taxes they never come off," Boisvert said.

Boisvert said the city's fiscal problems will not go away next year, or the year after.

"Are we going to have an override every year?" Boisvert said. "Maybe we should just learn to live within our means."

Or, you know, we could understand that Prop 2 1/2 is inherently flawed and counterproductive and look for ways to work around it?

There have been nearly 4,500 attempts (about 1,800 successful) to override Prop 2 1/2 it since it first became possible to do so in 1983. Does that sound like a law that's benefiting communities, or one that's standing in their way?

City Councilor Solomito also weighed in with a bit of stupidity:

Ward 5 Councilor Joseph Solomito said he wouldn't support an override either.

"I think the people have already spoken," Solomito said.

Attention Fitchburg: All future elections are hereby suspended, because Joseph Solomito thinks that you've "already spoken" about everything, and your decision is whatever Solomito says it is. Solomito will be declared councilor-for-life, because if he was able to get elected one time, that must mean he'll get elected every time he runs in the future. Representative democracy is for wussies.

Incidentally, the public perception is arguably that an override can't pass. I don't exactly know why this is the public perception, but it probably has something to do with the loud and incessant whining of the anti-tax brigades.

Luckily, we're not dependent on public perception for our facts here, and can just look at these statistics on overrides from the Mass. Department of Revenue.

Fitchburg has only had one override vote on this list. It was for fiscal '92, seeking $200,000 for ambulance services. It lost almost 2:1. But that was nearly 20 years ago. During the 90's, overrides didn't fare well in general, with 1,843 attempts being defeated and only 931 attempts passing.

Now times are different, so let's focus on the years just from 2000-2009. Things have changed pretty dramatically. From 2000-2009 there have been 1185 override attempts. Of those, 580 were defeated and 605 won.

You could perhaps argue that the dramatically lower number of total override attempts explains the wins. Maybe people are less likely to propose overrides after the drubbings of the 90's, and only propose ones they think they can get support for.

Maybe so, but it's already been proposed. I don't know what Starr's thought process is, but I doubt he would have proposed it if he thought it was doomed to go down in flames. So we're already past the first step, and overrides clearly don't carry the same "no way will that happen!" stigma they had for many years.

So yeah, let's vote on it. Up until we do, I'm sure there will be plenty of local idiots ranting about socialism and "unconstitutional" taxes and probably abortion (because they always work it in somehow) for us to enjoy. Which will make for easy blog posts.

Thanks, Kevin!

Is this seriously their new argument?

2009-05-22T09:15:00.007-04:00

Yesterday I read this editorial in the S&E. It was mostly boring "give us whatever services we demand, but screw everyone else" bullshit, but one particularly odd pseudo-argument stuck out at me.

Here it is, with my bolding added:

We urge the mayor to remember she is still proposing a $92 million budget, which we feel should be more than enough to not only reject the idea of reducing the days of operation at the library and Senior Center, but to increase them.

Obviously, this stuck out because the fact that there's a $92 million town budget has fuck-all to do with there being money to spend on any particular service.

It's not like there's just a pile of 92 million dollar bills sitting around, unspoken for. The vast majority of it is going to be tied up, and there are far more programs and services that deserve funding than $92 million can cover.

Budgeting is about choosing what gets part of that money and what doesn't. The total amount of money in the budget is somewhat irrelevant, unless it's so high that you can fund absolutely everything anyone suggests, or so low that you can't even fund the very basics. Even the richest of oil-rich nations don't fall into the first group, and few (if any) places in the US fall into the latter one. Everyone else needs to make choices about what to fit within the available budget.

Using the town's $92 million budget to suggest that money is readily available for any particular purpose is about as sensible as using Sudan's $12.95 billion budget to claim they should have no problem building a dozen world-class hockey rinks. That's just not the way it works, guys.

But we expect to find baffling non sequiturs presented as arguments in everything McMenemy writes, so it wasn't such a big deal.

Then just this morning, I noticed this (my bold):

"I have said all along that I don't believe we need to implement any kind of waste disposal ordinance in order to generate revenue because our budget is still in the mid-90 million (range)," [City Councilor Dean] Tran wrote in an e-mail.

I don't know who's stealing whose talking point there, or if Tran is actually just as pathetically clueless as McMenemy and they both arrived at their red herring independently, but it really doesn't matter. It's a stupid argument, no matter where it originated.

There may be sound arguments against a trash fee (although I've yet to hear anyone present one), but just mentioning the size of the entire budget is absolutely not one of them. You could have a $92 million budget with a trash fee paying for part of it and helping to fund services, or you could have a $92 million budget with no trash fee and fewer services.

And that's assuming a balanced budget. If revenues are below expenses we're still screwed, even if it were a $92 billion budget.

The total size of the budget is irrelevant to this argument. Well, it's irrelevant unless Tran believes that every service that deserves funding can be funded perfectly well on this size. Maybe he does, but since I haven't seen giant billboards listing the names of all area sex offenders at 100-yard intervals on every street in town, I'm going to bet he doesn't.

Of course, it's possible that Tran and McMenemy know that they're putting forward nonsense arguments. In which case they're just using the size of the budget as a rhetorical tool, because they think you're stupid enough to fall for it.

So we're left with two choices: Either the editor of the local newspaper and a prominent city councilor are totally clueless, or they believe that we're the clueless ones and that we'll fall for their nonsensical rhetoric.

Neither one especially fills me with hope.

Ode to Jenny McCarthy

2009-05-15T09:33:00.001-04:00

The GOP is clearly thriving

2009-05-12T09:21:00.011-04:00

Call it schadenfreude if you like, but I really enjoy watching those on the far right as they flail around trying to convince everyone that the Republican party isn't dying. It's an even mix of delusion and desperation, which unfailingly serves to convince all watchers that yep, the Republican party sure is dying.

Today we have a fine example of that, in a Star Parker-penned editorial entitled No need for a GOP eulogy.

Poor Ms. Parker doesn't like the way people are saying the GOP is dead!

The columns are all over the place, and all the analyses seem to be the same.

The Republican Party is supposedly deader than a doornail. Except in a handful of states in mid-America and in the South, Americans, according to these columnists, see Republicans as irrelevant, out-of-touch, mean-spirited dinosaurs.

Well, that's probably because Republicans are irrelevant, out-of-touch, and mean-spirited. I wouldn't call them dinosaurs, though. Dinosaurs are pretty cool, and as far as I can tell the coolest Republican in the world is Kelsey Grammar. That's definitely a sub-dinosaur level of coolness.

But, may I remind folks, that we just had a presidential election in which 130 million voters cast ballots and the difference between the winner and the loser was 9 million votes. Not exactly what I would call an insurmountable divide.

Personally, I would call the difference between Obama's 69,498,215 votes and McCain's 59,948,240 votes 9.5 million. But maybe that's splitting hairs.

Of course, when you consider that even 9 million votes is about 15% of the total votes for McCain, that seems a little more sizable than the way Ms. Parker frames it. Math is fun!

Nor should we forget that there was that window following the Republican convention when the McCain-Palin ticket was leading.

Yeah, for like two days after the Republican National Convention McCain was actually ahead!

If only people had voted back then, when half the country thought Sarah Palin was just some MILF-y governor and not the repugnant idiot they later recognized her to be, then the Republican ticket would have (possibly, and just barely) won. Informed electorates are bad news for the GOP, I guess.

Having exhausted the "Republicans are strong because we lost the election" line of reasoning, Parker turns to a recent poll to further ~~strengthen~~ undercut her argument.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows 42 percent self-identifying as Democrats compared to 31 percent as Republicans. But the same poll shows 35 percent identifying as conservatives compared to 24 percent as liberals.

Umm, so? That conservative/liberal split doesn't really mean good news for the GOP. Unless she's just pleased that conservatives have done a fine job of convincing people that the word "liberal" is a pejorative.

Here's the source data (evil PDF link) for the poll. As you can see, Parker has her numbers right. But the implied interpretation that the GOP is doing okay because more people self-identify as conservatives than as liberals is just nutty.

It's not really surprising that more people self-identify as conservatives than as Republicans, since there are presumably at least a few conservative Independents and Democrats. But if we assume that the vast majority of Republicans identify themselves as either somewhat or very conservative (which I think is a fair assumption), then that means that very few Democrats or Independents think of themselves as conservative at all.

What's more, the 35% of the country that self-identifies as "moderate" therefore must lean heavily towards either the Democrats or "strictly independent." Mostly the former, since only 19% of respondents identified as strictly independent.

Was this supposed to be evidence that the GOP isn't a party of far-right kooks who are driving away moderates (and everyone else)? Because if anything it just suggests that yeah, the GOP is totally driving away moderates.

Of course, Parker may be happy about this. Segue to ranting about Arlen Specter...

According to Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Arlen Specter's switch to the Democratic Party shows what's wrong with Republicans -- they can't tolerate moderates -- and not what is wrong with Specter.

But there is little doubt that Specter changed parties because polls were showing him getting his clock cleaned in the Republican primary by conservative Pat Toomey.

Yes, he was going to get beaten by Toomey in the Republican primary. Because he's too moderate for the increasingly hard-line conservative Republican base which votes in the primaries.

Apparently Ms. Parker interprets that to mean that Specter is a weenie-head, not that moderates can't win election in the Republican party. Now, Specter is indeed a weenie-head, but he was clearly driven out by the far-right Republican base.

Of course his switch was all about self-interest. He's said as much. But the only reason it's in his self-interest to switch is because the Republican base wouldn't vote for a moderate. If they would, he would have no reason to leave.

At this point the editorial sinks into a boring mire of whining about how Arlen Specter is a big jerk who isn't as awesome as George Washington. I'll ignore most of that tedious nonsense (because who really gives a shit?) and just skip to the end.

We should also recall Washington's guidance in his farewell address that "Of all the dispensations and habits which led to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."

It's a message as relevant to today as when Washington wrote it in 1796, and relevant to every American of every background.

I guess atheists aren't Americans. Maybe Sweden will take me.

This is, however, a nice example of just why the GOP is dying. They just can't resist any opportunity to tell other people how to live their lives. If they can do so by quoting someone who died before the advent of indoor plumbing, so much the better!

Okay, last couple of lines.

Republican Party problems started from straying from principles, not from sticking to them.

The party's future lies in principles, not in pandering. We need George Washingtons. Not Arlen Specters.

Yep, it's another Republican saying that the way to stop moderates from leaving the GOP is to focus even harder on "principles." Which is wingnut-speak for "become even more conservative and drive out all the moderates!"

Good luck with that, guys. It's been working great so far.

Hey, remember this?

2009-05-06T11:22:00.008-04:00

I'm taking a bit of a mini-vacation from the blog this week. To tide you over, here's an old (1997) clip from WFXT about a Marilyn Manson concert that local idiots treated as if it were a huge scandal.

I particularly love the totally unbiased way this starts off. TV news hasn't changed a bit...

I was actually there as part of the counter-protest, though I don't spot myself in that footage. Honestly, it's sort of odd that this clip even exists, because the whole thing was a total non-event.

For one thing, the anti-free expression protesters were apparently too frightened of those scary Satanists to cross the street, even though the vast majority of concertgoers looked perfectly normal. The elaborately made-up goths in the clip were an almost insignificant minority.

Instead, the protesters gathered in front of what used to be the old RMV, barely visible from the Civic Center. There really weren't many of them either (the "handful" mentioned in the clip is being generous), despite constant ranting from the newspaper and local church groups prior to the concert.

The counter-protest actually took place in front of the Civic Center, near the attendees but far from the pro-censorship nuts. It was also small, not to mention totally disorganized. But it didn't really matter, because the protest itself was just so incredibly lame.

Anyway, you can view this as evidence that Fitchburg has had a core population of whiny idiots for quite awhile. They may be ranting about different things now than they did twelve years ago, but it's the same principle at work.

And they're just as ridiculous and impotent now as they were back then.

Saturday Video Bonus

2009-05-02T14:27:00.004-04:00

While I'm obviously an aging punk, Mrs. Unicow is more of an anti-folk fan. Oddly enough, there are instances where these two genres overlap.

As proof, here's a video for Jeffrey Lewis' cover of an old Crass song, off his album 12 Crass Songs.

Neat.

Swine Flu, Satan, Obama, and the NWO?

2009-05-01T15:48:00.005-04:00

I couldn't possibly introduce this better than the description given by the uploader:

EXCLUSIVE EVIDENCE .. comment ...rate ... AREA CODE 619 MANTRA WAKE UP TO TRUTH.. supercharged binary patheogens false flag bio weapons. USA is being sacrificed!..by NWO psycopaths ..wake up to the truth!

The video makes exactly as much sense as that description...

I don't know about you, but that sure convinced me. I am really disappointed that I missed the "Ba'al day of worship" festivities, though. Maybe next year.

Swine Flu Tied to Beloved Actor?

2009-04-30T09:13:00.011-04:00

The Boston Globe has pretty reasonable swine flu coverage. It's mostly sane stuff that promotes caution, while avoiding things that just serve to freak people out. For instance, they avoided irresponsibly sticking a giant "OUTBREAK" headline on the front page of the paper like our local idiots did today.

Anyway, as part of their coverage they have this neat "flu spreads" graphic.

The graphic consists of six slides, but it's slide number four that really caught my eye.

That is clearly Wilford Brimley in an Army helmet. Thanks for the pandemic, Wilford!

All you need to know about this idiotic pro-torture editorial

2009-04-29T10:59:00.015-04:00

Unsurprisingly, another pro-torture editorial appears in the S&E. It's by syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock this time, and it's somehow even worse than McMenemy's evil nonsense from a few days ago.

It's not even worth reading, to be honest. So let's just gut it right at the outset, which is easy because the entire thing is premised on a total lie.

Here's how it starts. (All emphases mine.)

Library Tower looms 73 stories above Los Angeles. But the Pacific Coast's highest skyscraper could have become a smoldering pile of steel beams had CIA interrogators not waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March 2003, as declassified memoranda reveal. Americans should be proud that our public servants had the patience and persistence to pressure al-Qaida's self-described military chief until he cracked, ratted out his homicidal conspirators, and prevented a bloody attack that could have murdered thousands of innocents and transformed much of downtown L.A. into Ground Zero West.

Simple enough. The claim is that the torture of Mohammed, who was arrested in March of 2003, prevented the Library Tower from being attacked. The entire editorial rests upon this premise.

Which means the entire editorial is based on an outright lie, since the plot was foiled in February of 2002.

From a White House Press briefing:

Q: Fran, just one other follow up. What we don't know is the time. Can you give us some more details on the timeline on this -- meaning, you know, when, exactly, was this plot scheduled for? Do we know that?

MS. TOWNSEND: We don't know exactly when the plot was scheduled for. The intelligence tells us that Khalid Shaykh Muhammad began to initiate it in October of 2001. We know that between then and when the lead operative was arrested in February of '02, between those two periods of time, they traveled through Afghanistan, they met with bin Laden, they swore biat, they came back, and the lead guy is arrested, which disrupts it in February of '02. So you see what I'm saying? It's during that short window of time, between October of 2001 and February of 2002, but we don't know when they planned -- we don't know when it was planned to actually be executed.

Want confirmation? Ok, how about this Fact Sheet put out in 2007 by the Bush administration?

In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay two months ago, KSM stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

So the torture of KSM in March of 2003 retroactively led to the foiling of the Library Tower plot in February of 2002? That's quite a feat.

Is there any lie these monsters won't tell to justify their beloved torture?

Swine Flu: From space?

2009-04-29T10:02:00.003-04:00

The "authorities" think the current Swine Flu outbreak started with a small Mexican child, but we know better!

Everyone knows that airplanes are giant disease-mobiles. Obviously, a space vessel could only make matters worse. George Lucas has screwed us yet again.

Torture's dumbest apologist

2009-04-27T12:07:00.012-04:00

Yesterday's Sentinel contained a particularly repugnant editorial (un-bylined, but presumably by editor Jeff McMenemy) about torture. It requires evisceration.

The editorial has the remarkably self-unaware title of Don't 'torture' us with half-truths.

Yes, there's a pun about torture in the headline, which shows you just how casually our shitsack editor views torture. As for the "half-truths"? Well, McMenemy mostly just lies, but maybe we can pick up on some of those too.

Sigh. Here we go.

Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is right: If President Barack Obama wants transparency regarding the CIA's alleged harsh interrogation methods, he should release all the top-secret memos, including those detailing information learned that led to successful anti-terrorism efforts.

This first paragraph contains the one thing I can agree with Cheney and McMenemy about.* I want to see all the memos released too. Let's see just how much useful information really is contained within. I suspect it's a lot less than McMenemy believes, but would like to see for myself.

Now we go our separate ways.

Obama's release of the memos -- some leaked selectively to the media to embarrass the Bush administration -- has stirred considerable debate among former CIA directors and national security experts. Most believe the interests of the United States have been weakened by the disclosure. Even Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA director, questioned the motives behind the disclosures.

Shit, this is going to take awhile.

What was "leaked selectively to the media"? Not the torture memos, which are readily available to anyone who wants to look at them. So it's not selective, and since they're declassified and are available to anyone who wants them, they're not "leaked" either. **

And if these non-leaked, non-selective memos embarrass the Bush administration, who's to blame for that? They're Bush administration memos about Bush administration policies. If the Bush administration is truly embarrassed about them, then maybe they shouldn't have fucking used them in the first place.

As for "most" security experts thinking the US is "weakened" by the release of these memos about torture methods we don't even fucking use anymore, that's totally made up. I doubt there are good statistics on this, but I've certainly heard a lot more "experts" saying that this information was pretty much known anyway than pretending it will actually have an effect on the country's safety. But I don't exclusively consume right-wing news.

Concerning Panetta, who really gives a shit? Of course there were people who wanted to cover this up, and Panetta's one of them.

More lies...

At first, Obama said he would not prosecute any officials but now he is flip-flopping as Democrats seek revenge. But revenge from what? The country's safety?

First of all, you flaming asshole, it's not revenge, it's accountability. If you commit war crimes, you should fucking be held accountable. That's what it's about.

Also, Obama has been consistent in saying that the people who were "just following orders" should not be prosecuted. The people who gave those orders get no such leeway, and anyway the decision is not Obama's to make. He's not the one prosecuting anybody, it's up to the Justice Department.

The Obama administration is rapidly changing the rules on CIA procedures. Techniques that were legal just months ago are being ruled off limits while Holder develops new guidelines. But the call to prosecute CIA interrogators who were doing their jobs, legally, is absurd.

Who's calling for the prosecution of interrogators? Not Obama. There's not a lot of political support at all for prosecuting the people at the bottom of the chain. So way to argue against something that very few people are arguing for, dumbass.

The bigger question is how will the U.S. fare going forward when it comes to obtaining valuable intelligence from captured terrorists?

While we know very little about the intelligence gleaned from the CIA's efforts, one thing is perfectly clear: The Bush administration, after 9/11, kept America safe from foreign attack for seven years. Our allies also benefited from an exchange of information.

Anyone who believes that is pretty much an irredeemable idiot. So it's a standard right-wing talking point, natch.

Obviously, the fact that the US wasn't attacked on its own soil since 9/11 in no way means the Bush administration "kept America safe." It just means we weren't attacked.

You can see that as being because of the Bush administration if you're so inclined, and rather stupid. I see it as being despite the Bush administration, who in reality made America far less safe than we would have otherwise been.

To then make the jump from "we weren't attacked" to "torture is good!" requires a special kind of malicious stupidity. It's highly prevalent in this editorial.

What we find unsettling is that the administration seems bent on "correcting" America's values and character on the world stage, as if the global perception of what America did and didn't do is worth more than its national security.

This is a foolhardy agenda that can only lead to soft spots in our diplomacy and defenses.

Once again, stupid binary thinking rears its head. The worldwide perception of "America's values and character" has a significant effect on America's security. Alienating the rest of the world isn't exactly a great way to increase security, but it's a fantastic way to ensure everybody is out to get us. Artificially separating the two makes no sense.

And what's this "soft spots in our diplomacy and defenses" nonsense? Does that even mean anything? Other than that the editor wants us to torture even more brown people?

America is not a monster, and it bows to no one. While we have made mistakes -- and acknowledged them in public -- we have set a standard for human rights, charitable aid and the cause for freedom. There is little to be ashamed of in the course of our accomplished history.

Jingoistic rubbish.

Genocide of the Native Americans, slavery, internment camps, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, the My Lai massacre, the continuing shitty way anyone who's not a straight white Protestant male is treated, and the fact that we fucking torture people are just a few of the many shameful things in the course of American history.

America has much to be proud of too, of course. But ignoring the bad things benefits nobody.

The world is a dangerous place. Threats exist against America, and there is no justification for letting down our guard or coddling terrorists.

Apparently in McMenemy's mind, "not torturing" equals "coddling." Be glad you're not his kid.

If President Obama wanted to prove something to the world in disclosing the CIA's top-secret memos he has failed, largely because his selectivity has tarnished the work of dedicated agents following orders to protect America against its worst enemies.

What? How the fuck can you "tarnish" torturing people? It's pretty much as tarnished as anything can possibly get.

That's all I'm going to bother with. McMenemy is a ghoul. His "defense" of torture doesn't even attempt to offer a moral or practical justification for using it. His concern isn't whether torture is right or wrong (NB: it's wrong), this editorial is all about public relations damage control for the Bush administration. It's a bitch-fest that the truth has finally been told.

But yeah, let's release everything we can. Let's get the whole truth out there. Not that people like McMenemy will ever pay attention to it, but let's get it out for the rest of us.

Then let's hold the monsters who were in charge of it accountable for their actions. And let's let apologists for torture (like McMenemy) know that they don't speak for us.

Ghouls like these called the shots for eight years. Their time is over, and we need to make sure they never have the opportunity to practice their twisted brand of ethically-insupportable "justice" ever again.

* I don't for a second believe that Cheney really wants all the memos released. It's political wrangling, because he knows full well that most of them won't be released and as long as something remains classified he can claim that the Obama administration is just not releasing the stuff that justifies the Bush administration's actions.

** I recognize that McMenemy was likely trying to claim that the memos were selected to embarrass the Bush administration and that claiming they were "leaked selectively" was just his usual incompetent writing. It doesn't matter. Of course they were selective on what memos were declassified. They couldn't possibly release them all at once, for reasons that are obvious to everyone but McMenemy.

Swine Flu: What to do, and not do

2009-04-27T08:58:00.008-04:00

There's a lot of news about swine flu right now, and for good reason. While it's impossible to know at this point whether this will lead to a flu pandemic, the potential does exist.

There's a lot that's still unknown about this flu strain, but there are some basic things that people can do--and other things people should avoid--at this point. I'm not going to offer medical advice, since I'm not qualified to do so, but most of this stuff is pretty simple.

Let's start with what you can do to protect both yourself and others. Most of these should be obvious, but they're worth repeating anyway.

1) Wash your hands. Use hot water and soap. A quick splash is not enough, you need to spend a bit of time. Recite the alphabet to yourself while doing it, and by the time you're done that should be about enough time. If you're unable to get to a sink for whatever reason, you could carry around some Purell or a similar product to sanitize your hands.

2) Cover your mouth if you cough or sneeze. But don't sneeze into your hand! If you have a tissue, use that and then throw it away immediately. Don't keep a used-up disease rag in your pocket. If you don't have a tissue, then cough or sneeze into your elbow, like this:

Yeah, you might gross up your inner elbow, but it's better than getting gunk on your hands and then spreading it to others, or sneezing unimpeded and spewing germs all over the room.

3) Learn about the flu. As with any fast-moving and poorly-understood disease, there's going to be a ton of bad information out there. Inoculate yourself against it with good information.

Here are some good resources:

The Center for Disease Control's Swine Flu page - Good general clearinghouse.
Pandemicflu.gov - Also handy if you're still worried about Avian Flu!
The World Health Organization's swine flu page - Another good clearinghouse for information.
Effect Measure blog - A blog written by epidemiologists and public health officials. Provides better context and analysis than simple press releases.
H5N1 blog - One of the better "flu blogs" out there. Is covering H1N1 (swine flu) extensively.

Most of these sites also provide a lot of links if you want even more information.

4) Don't kiss any pigs. This is just a good rule in general.

So, those are a few simple things that you can do to cut your own risk and the risk you might pose to others if you happen to get infected. Now on to things you really should not do.

1) Don't go to work/school/public events if you're sick. Going out in public while sick doesn't mean you're tougher than the disease, it means you're a jerk who doesn't care about making everyone else sick. Unless you really want to be known as the guy/girl who spread disease to all your friends, just stay home.

2) Don't stick your hands in your mouth, eyes, or nose. Again, obvious. Even if you think your hands are clean, the mouth, eyes, and nose provide an easy way for diseases to get into the body. Best just to avoid them.

3) Don't listen to quacks. You're going to see a lot of scammers offering totally ineffectual "cures" over the next few weeks. There will be spam emails trying to sell you imaginary medicines, there will be people offering the insanely diluted liver of a diseased duck as a medicine, there will be holistic "healers" and homeopaths aplenty offering you products that are nothing more than a placebo. Don't waste your money.

4) Don't blame Mexico. I include this only because I've already seen people trying to use this outbreak to grandstand about illegal immigration (Google "swine flu" + immigration and you'll find lots of examples). That's utterly absurd. This outbreak could have started anywhere, and viruses don't care one bit about political borders. People who try to tie this to immigration are playing politics in the stupidest possible way.

5) Don't panic. Panic never helps, and there's no reason for it anyway. While H1N1 has the potential to become a pandemic, it's impossible to know how it will turn out at this early stage. There's a lot more we don't know about this flu strain than there is stuff we do know, so don't freak yourself out by jumping to conclusions that aren't based on fact.

As always, these lists are incomplete. But these are easy things to do, and they're good ideas even when there isn't a potential pandemic looming on the horizon.

Thursday Angry Video

2009-04-23T12:10:00.004-04:00

I had started to write about the torture memos that were recently made public, but had to stop due to severe rage.

Instead, here's a live Big Black video.

Local AIDS denialism!

2009-04-22T09:20:00.008-04:00

If you don't pay a lot of attention to the lunatic fringes, you may not be aware that there are a fair number of people out there who deny the well-established link between HIV and AIDS.

Sure, there are the crackpots like Jeremiah Wright who think that the government invented HIV, but they're not the ones I'm talking about. Rather, I'm talking about people like Peter Tocci of Leominster, who in addition to being a local "holistic healer," just wrote a horribly misinformed letter to the editor that appears in the S&E today.

Fisking time!

Tocci starts off in the realm of reality. Don't worry, it won't last long.

On Jan. 30, the Sentinel & Enterprise ran a story about AIDS activist John Chittick's return from his awareness campaign in Africa.

On March 11, a Fitchburg march for National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day was reported.

Dedicated people like Mr Chittick, as well as Dorine Russo, who courageously told her story at the march, convey official AIDS information in good faith.

Well, that's pretty factual. See here for Chittick's website if you like. He's a good guy, doing good work, and is from Fitchburg.

Sadly, Tocci's use of the phrase "official AIDS information" suggests what's to come. So let's get on with it.

However, many qualified, even distinguished, scientists such as Nobel laureates Walter Gilbert and Kary Mullis, question HIV/AIDS. HIV was never isolated, and no study proves it causes AIDS.

There we go!

Our letter-writer gets his facts wrong right from the start. While Walter Gilbert did win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980, and was indeed an AIDS denialist, it appears that he changed his mind no later than 2006, due to the efficacy of antivirals in dealing with HIV/AIDS.

Kary Mullis, on the other hand, is not only the winner of the Chemistry Nobel in 1993, but remains an AIDS denialist. That's far from his only batshit-crazy belief, though.

In the lab, Mullis kept his beer in the radiation refrigerator, scoffing at safety regulations. He disputes that humankind can do anything to harm the environment. He believes in alien abductions; that he was visited by a radiant raccoon ET; in astrology; in telepathy; in “astral planes.” He happily recalls synthesizing experimental psychedelic drugs—and trying them out on himself. “It takes all kinds,” they say, and Mullis is in his own category. Colorful, creative, no doubt quite intelligent, he is many things…but not exactly a reliable guide to scientific facts and clear thinking, as the above examples show.

So our letter-writer has cited a guy who doesn't agree with him and a total nutcase as evidence for his claim. He pretty much had to go with these guys, though. After all, Mullis is the only Nobel winner to deny that HIV causes AIDS, and Gilbert at least used to agree.

How about "HIV was never isolated"? That's not true either, though it indeed hasn't been isolated to the very restrictive and largely arbitrary specifications that AIDS denialists demand. Go figure.

"[N]o study proves it causes AIDS"? Almost too absurd to even respond to. If you want to see some such studies, you could start with this and then dig into the references it cites. That's a tiny fraction of the studies out there, of course.

Phew! That was a lot of crap in one little paragraph. Let's move on.

No one denies people are sick. Cause(s), definitions, and approaches are what's being challenged.

Ralph Moss, Ph.D., author of The Cancer Industry, said, "The paradigm that was laid down for how to milk the cancer problem is basically the same paradigm which is being followed in milking the AIDS problem."

Hey, we're back to quoting crazy people! First, let me note that Moss's Ph.D. is in classics, nothing even remotely science related. He's a quack, who wants you to have coffee enemas and eat shark cartilage to prevent cancer (because sharks supposedly don't get cancer, even though they do).

So I'm pretty comfortable just dismissing him out of hand. I'll make sure to look him up if I ever have any questions about Jane Eyre or something, though.

More from our letter-writer:

Many people are taking highly toxic "anti-retroviral" (ARV) drugs. The DNA-chain terminator AZT was originally a cancer drug so toxic it was shelved. But the deadlier the disease definition, the deadlier the drug allowed, so AZT was revived.

The lies and misinformation just keep coming!

First, AZT is a reverse transcriptase inhibitor. It's not primarily a DNA chain terminator, for reasons too esoteric to get into here (see here if you're curious).

Second, it wasn't shelved because it was too toxic. Here's what its inventor had to say about it:

"It proved to be completely inactive in all of the test systems [Dr Sartorelli] employed. In my laboratory I found AZT incapable of inhibiting the growth of Jensen sarcoma cells in vitro at very high concentrations. Thus, AZT showed no activity as a potential anticancer drug at that time."

In other words, it was shelved as an anticancer drug because it was pretty crummy as an anticancer drug. Go figure.

Back to Tocci:

The lone AZT study used to manufacture FDA approval was a shambles. But treatment cost $18,000 a year at the time.

Those two statements don't go together, and have absolutely no relevance to the issue. Moving on.

Certain ARVs, such as Nevirapine/Lamivudine/Zidovudine, also contain the politically approved neurotoxin-carcinogen aspartame.

I have no idea if those drugs "contain" aspartame, but I can say that aspartame is neither a neurotoxin nor a carcinogen, so who cares?

Also, this isn't relevant to the topic either. At this point, Tocci is just running through a series of his misconceptions about health. I know who I won't be visiting next time I need a "holistic healer" (which is never, because they're quacks).

Officially, HIV antibodies (revealed by unreliable tests) are a death sentence. But you can "live with HIV" if you take toxic drugs whose effects, if they kill you, will be blamed on the virus.

Seriously? I have trouble believing even Tocci believes that nonsense. If you die from drug toxicity, it will be blamed on drug toxicity. That's why they do studies like this one that examine AZT and liver function. Because they recognize the dangers.

Authority recommends mandatory HIV testing and flu vaccinations (mercury-laced) for pregnant women: Pregnancy, flu vaccines and flu itself (among numerous other things) give false-positive HIV tests.

Oh boy, he's an antivaccination loon too! Jackpot!

Yes, some of the flu vaccines available contain thimerasol. Not that this matters either, since thimerasol isn't dangerous in these doses. Of course, that link comes from "Authority" (AKA people who know what they're talking about), so I'm sure Tocci would reject it.

As for false positives, a lot of things can conceivably cause them. Which is why any positive HIV test is followed by a confirmatory test. When using the Western Blot confirmation, the false-positive rate in a low prevalence area is about one in 250,000.

Once again, though, this isn't relevant to the topic. Tocci just likes to vomit his ignorance everywhere.

Wait, there's more!

My contact in South Africa doggedly researches HIV/AIDS. She says the millions of HIV-positives there may be false. This, and widespread depletion of CD4 cells, she says, are likely attributable to genetically modified (GM) corn.

GM organisms were introduced to Africa in 1985 as "food aid," coinciding with the onset of AIDS. There was also epidemiological correlation early on with the World Health Organization Smallpox Eradication Program.

Oh boy, he has a "contact" in South Africa (where they shower to avoid HIV) who has an utterly insane idea about corn!

That idea isn't backed up by any research I could find, though I did find this Onion piece about how "Generic Candy Corn Will Give you AIDS." Maybe that's where Tocci is getting his information!

I couldn't find any information about the supposed correlation between corn and AIDS. Probably because there isn't one, but even if there is it hardly matters. Correlation is a far cry from causation.

Getting tired, let's wrap this nonsense up.

Society must thoroughly rethink the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. Please look carefully into this before acting on official pronouncements.

Mr. Tocci clearly doesn't follow his own advice. If he did, then he wouldn't be promoting so many utter falsehoods.

Of course, actually following the science and the massive body of evidence tying HIV to AIDS would be detrimental to Mr. Tocci's quack healing business. And we wouldn't want that, would we?

That's it. Hopefully nobody was too tempted to take medical advice from some "holistic healer" who wrote a letter to the editor of a crummy paper in a small community. But just in case, now you know better.

Pointless Anti-Marijuana Laws

2009-04-21T09:31:00.010-04:00

As one of the many people who support drug legalization--particularly of marijuana--I was of course pleased last November when the voters in Massachusetts decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Sure, I would have rather seen pot legalized (and taxed), but it was a good first step.

Of course, not everyone agrees. As this AP article from 4/20 (coincidence?) points out, there are a number of local cities and towns that have passed anti-marijuana laws since that time.

Voters in November decriminalized possession of an ounce or less of marijuana, and replaced the maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $500 fine with a $100 civil fine and forfeiture of the drug. The new law does not require a suspected offender to provide identification.

Since then, seven communities — Duxbury, Lynn, Medway, Methuen, Milford, Salem and Springfield — have passed bylaws regulating or prohibiting marijuana use in public. Others are considering similar measures.

This is just baffling to me.

Question 2 didn't legalize marijuana, it decriminalized possession of an ounce or less. That's a pretty major difference. Marijuana possession is still illegal, you just face a fine and confiscation of the drug instead of potentially going to jail.

It's a bit baffling that law enforcement officials don't seem to understand this fact. Of course, it's probable that they do understand it, and are simply using it as a red herring for their power-grab.

“If I’m driving down Main Street in Springfield, and I see a guy drinking a can of Budweiser and a guy smoking a joint, the only guy I can lock up is the beer drinker,” Springfield Police Sgt. John Delaney said. “It seemed only natural to pass a law to keep people from smoking marijuana in public.”

Perhaps that's all technically true. You can't "lock up" a guy for smoking a joint on the street. You can fine them $100 and seize their pot, which seems like a pretty effective way to get them to stop smoking it, in public and elsewhere.

I also question the wisdom of locking up somebody for drinking a beer in public. Make them stop, sure, but why the hell would you even want to put them in jail for it? If they're drunk and being a public nuisance, that's one thing, but just drinking a beer in public seems like a pretty stupid reason to lock someone up.

Unless you're locking them up for drinking Budweiser specifically. I can almost endorse that.

Here are some of the details about what these cities are doing:

In Springfield, first-time offenders face a $100 fine; second-time offenders, $200; third-time and subsequent offenders, $300. In Salem, police reserve the right to subpoena into court people smoking marijuana in public. Offenders are required to identify themselves and face a fine of up to $300. The city also can fine an offender up to $300. In Lynn, offenders who smoke in public also face a $300 fine. In each community, the local penalties are in addition to the state fine.

What's with everyone wanting $300?

It's already illegal to smoke pot, not just in public, but anywhere. These local laws are--at best--attempts to solve a problem that already has a solution. More realistically, they're attempts to subvert the decriminalization of marijuana by adding more hassles and fines to something that's already illegal.

Surely they have a good reason for doing this, right?

For Police Chief Robert M. St. Pierre, Halloween in Salem — when thousands visit the city because of its spooky history — is enough reason to pass bylaws for possession of marijuana in public.

“When you have 60,000 people crowded in a small downtown, you can’t allow public drinking or public marijuana use. You have to have some laws with teeth to protect Salem, especially at that time of year.”

That makes perfect sense! People come to town for Halloween, therefore unnecessary marijuana laws must be put into place year-round!

Come to think of it, I've noticed that there's an awful lot of jaywalking that takes place on Halloween too. Jaywalking is already illegal, but I think we need stronger laws to make it even more illegal. Somebody needs to get on that right away!

Can this whole thing become stupider? Easily.

State Sen. James Timilty, a Walpole Democrat, has introduced a bill that he says clarifies some confusion. Timilty’s bill would allow police to arrest anyone who fails to produce identification. Police Chief St. Pierre said that amendment would help him deal with thousands of Halloween revelers in full costume.

“It’s very hard if someone is bent on trying to commit a criminal act and they have masks or face paint or a costume,” he said.

This man is allowed to enforce laws?

First, we're not dealing with "a criminal act." Remember that fancy "decriminalization" word? It means that marijuana possession is now a civil offense, not a criminal one. This seriously shouldn't be that hard to understand.

Second, do the Salem police somehow have pictures of everyone who goes there for Halloween? Is the one thing stopping them from identifying these foreign ne'er-do-wells on sight the fact that they're wearing costumes? Seriously, what the hell?

Also, are police really so easily foiled by people wearing costumes and/or masks?

If so, I'm going to head over to that costume shop by the strip club, buy a naughty nurse outfit or something (since 90% of their stock is "slutty something-or-other" costumes and I'm in a rush), don it, and rob all the banks in town. The police will be helpless to stop me as long as I don't carelessly remove my mask. It's a perfect crime!

The amendment in question appears to be this one, by the way (thanks for not citing anything yet again, "journalism"). It appears to do what they say, amending the current law to add the ability to arrest people who don't give correct identification when suspected of a marijuana offense.

It also does some other things that look worrisome, but that I don't have the time to cross-reference right now to find out for sure. If you want to check how the amendment changes the current law in other ways, feel free. The current law is here.

There is a fatal flaw in Timilty's amendment, though. Nowhere does it say that people have to take off their ridiculous costumes. Salem's dumbest will never manage to get around the masks and face-paintings without a law explicitly stating they have to be removed!

The reality behind all these utterly insane rationalizations should be easy enough to see. City governments want to appear "tough on drugs," so they make up pointless laws to solve non-problems.

Never mind that there's little indication that public pot smoking is any sort of significant problem. Politicians want to be seen as doing something, even if they're not actually accomplishing a damn thing.

That's why you get so many pointless (and sometimes counterproductive) laws about sex offenders, and it's why you get pointless laws about smoking pot. The people being targeted probably aren't going to put up much of a fight, so they're easy pickings for unimaginative city councilors.

It's totally legal for them to do so, since the state law allows for it. It's straight from the ballot question itself, which allowed for it for reasons I can't fathom. They're no doubt political in nature.

But just because they can make these silly laws doesn't mean they should make them. They're unnecessary, redundant, and even if they fit the letter of the ballot question, they certainly don't fit the spirit of it.

CRITICAL BREAKING NEWS!

2009-04-17T18:06:00.010-04:00

There is BREAKING NEWS in the Sentinel!

Yes, Britney Spears' house has been... trespassed... against(?). We must follow this story, as it is perhaps the most important news item of our lifetimes!

Here's the news, which I reiterate is very important.

Miranda Tozier-Robbins, 26, a longtime former Fitchburg resident, said she knew going onto pop star Britney Spears' Los Angeles County property was illegal, but she did it anyway.

"I went in through the back yard, to the gate, it was unlocked and open already," said Tozier-Robbins. "I was just sort of like on cloud nine being in Britney Spears' backyard."

Security personnel on Spears' property quickly found Tozier-Robbins and LA Sheriff's deputies arrested her and charged her with trespassing and disorderly conduct.

[blah blah blah pointless nonsense]

*See Saturday's edition of the Sentinel & Enterprise for complete coverage.*

That's not enough information! I must know more about the home of this talentless crime against music! Is it ok? Were flowers trampled? Was the grass stayed-off-of?

Luckily, they'll fill us in on all the details tomorrow.

But... hold on... oh my god!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

GODDAMN YOU, MCMENEMY! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO HIDE???

Obama is Brainwashing us with the Tee-Vee!

2009-04-17T10:30:00.006-04:00

This starts off slow and boring, so just skip to about 2 minutes in. That's when the crazy kicks into high gear. It gets even better around 4:50.

And people wonder why I say that conservatives have lost touch with reality.*

* That's a lie. Nobody wonders.

[UPDATE!] You're probably wondering how Joe the ~~Plumber~~ Phone Sex Operator fits into Obama's mind-control-via-digital-tv-converter-box machinations.

As it turns out, he's part of the conspiracy!

We're through the looking glass, people.

Hooray for Teabagging!

2009-04-16T08:54:00.010-04:00

It's hard to know where to begin with this whole teabagging thing.

Once upon a time, it took effort to make fun of Republicans and Libertarians. Not a whole lot of effort, admittedly, but the jokes at least didn't write themselves.

Over the last few years, however, the right wing in this country has done its best to become not only completely insane, but also totally clueless about how others perceive them. That's comedy gold, but sort of too easy. Let's try to resist making the easy jokes as best we can. Leave that to the newscasters.

If you're not familiar with the whole "Tea Party" thing yesterday, let me sum it up for you. See, these brave patriots are mostly angry about taxes, but they also hate the deficit, as well as other things (like black people). The majority of them have had their taxes lowered by their elected representatives, which is obviously upsetting.

As you'll recall from grade-school history classes, early American gangsters once railed against "Taxation Without Representation" and dressed up as American Indians in order to dump tea in Boston Harbor, to protest Britain's Tea Act. Also, they were probably drunk.

The commonality between the colonists and modern tax-evaders is really striking, isn't it? Except for the "Without Representation" part. Or most of the other parts, actually. But maybe some of them were drunk?

Anyway, let's take a look at this Telegram article, cleverly entitled "Taxes not their cup of tea." (Oh, Telegram headline-writer, you are a stitch!)

It's about a "Tea Party" in Worcester yesterday, which supposedly attracted 1,500 people (though you wouldn't know it from the photos, which you really must see).

Quoting time!

“I heard about this watching Glenn Beck on TV,” said Ms. Stearns, a Worcester mother of three who stood next to her son, Elijah, 10, who held his own placard exclaiming, “Obama Spends, Jesus Saves.”

Actually, Jesus advocated giving away all your stuff. No going to heaven for you, Elijah!

Here's an interesting quote:

“Think of what our founders did,” [event organizer Kevin] Mandile said to a cheering crowd, speaking over the cacophony of automobile horns blown in solidarity. “They took on the most powerful country in the world, and won.”

“… I’ve even heard that the Department of Homeland Security considers the Tea Party an extremist organization and a threat. We are a threat, to the crowd in Washington.”

Is that thing about the DHS true? I could only find it being promoted by right-wing blogs, who aren't exactly known for their fact-checking skills.

Whether or not it's true, is it really smart to go threatening the government? I appreciate a good revolution as much as anybody, but generally revolutionaries try to actually do something, and not just dress up in silly costumes and whine about taxes.

Also, remember a few years ago when anybody who dared criticize Bush in any way was called a "traitor" and had their patriotism questioned? That was for criticism, not calls for armed insurrection (which you don't find in this article, but are certainly happening). The people who called folks like me a traitor back then are the ones calling for a revolution now. Would it be too much to ask for a little logical consistency?

Yes, it would.

Jodie Chapin of Northboro, who carried a framed photograph of former President Ronald Reagan, stood at the base of the granite stairs to Worcester Memorial Auditorium with her daughter, Juliet, 11.

“Ronald Reagan would not have allowed things to get to the point where we would have to do this,” she said. “He epitomized the Free World. He is the hero to all the people here. He was a proud conservative who believed America was a shining city on a hill.”

Oh what the fuck, people? Why don't you just form a new religion, call it "Reaganism," get the religious tax exemption, and shut the fuck up?

While you're at it, maybe you shouldn't whine about the deficit while lionizing Reagan, who took the deficit from 2.3% of GNP to 5.6% of GNP, adding more than a trillion 1988-era dollars to it. Hell, even with his disease-ravaged brain, Reagan himself recognized that he screwed up.

Look, conservatives, we need to have a talk.

I know you guys are new to this whole "revolution" thing, because "conservative" and "subversive" are basically antonyms. So let me offer you some advice for your next horribly misguided public spectacle. If you just follow these simple guidelines, you should be fine.

First and foremost, don't name your protest after a slang term for a sex act. If you're considering Dirty Sanchez immigration protests or Angry Pirate anti-piracy rallies, you might want to reconsider.
Making protest signs is an art. You want to be brief, but clever. It also helps if they make sense. Additionally, you should probably not endorse slavery on your sign.
Costumes are always a nice touch, but giant furries with huge penises are probably not going to draw a lot of people to your cause.

There are obviously more than just these three guidelines that should be followed, but they would at least be a good start.

Once you get the blatantly ridiculous bullshit out of the way, we can get into more esoteric stuff like "actually understand the historical events you refer to," "don't contradict yourself mid-sentence," and "for God's sake, just shut the fuck up already." But we have to start somewhere!

In conclusion, teabagging rocks!

PS. Note that this post contained almost no jokes about scrota. Yay, self-control!

Does DiNatale value streetlights over firefighters?

2009-04-15T12:02:00.013-04:00

Roughly a month ago I wrote this post, about a couple of city councilors making fun of Marcus DiNatale for being an annoying, hypocritical buffoon.

If you recall, the issue at question was the whole streetlight idiocy, and DiNatale wanting to raid the city's free cash in order to keep more streetlights on. Stephan Hay and Jody Joseph then made fun of him for being a self-ordained "fiscal conservative" while being so eager to spend the city's free cash, and also for being an oppositional dummy.

Good times...

Now it's a month later, and we have this story about the city council transferring $91,000 from free cash to pay the city's firefighters. You just know that DiNatale will have something stupid to say about it, and he delivers right off the bat!

"I'm not crazy about taking money out of free cash," said Councilor at-large Marcus DiNatale.

Huh? Where did the freewheeling, free cash-spending Marcus of late March go? That guy would have been totally on board with this plan!

Maybe he just doesn't think firefighters are as important as having some extra streetlights on? Or maybe he's hoping that the light produced by burning homes will eliminate the need for more streetlights? Who knows?

He can believe whatever he likes, but I have to disagree on this issue.

See, if my home is on fire, then I really don't care if the sidewalk near it is well-lit. My bigger concern would be getting rid of the fire, which is where the firefighters come in. It's considerably more important to me to have a home that isn't just a smoking pile of rubble than it is to not stub my toe on a dark sidewalk.

DiNatale's stated reasoning isn't along those lines, of course. Rather, it's a fine example of a dumb idea couched in reasonable-sounding language (like most politics, really).

DiNatale said three budget line items have had money left over in them at the end of the year for each of the last three years.

Those include accounts in the building, health and employee benefits categories.

"Those three accounts, I believe, can cover this overage without using free cash," DiNatale said.

Golly, that almost sounds reasonable on the surface. Well, if you ignore the fact that he's relying on a speculation that maybe there will be money left over at the end of the year.

This argument was pretty-well eviscerated by Mayor Wong.

But Mayor Lisa Wong urged councilors not to support DiNatale's plan.

Wong said the fiscal year is not over, so it is not definitive those accounts will remain where they are. Furthermore, Wong said if those accounts do under run, any money left over would go back into the free cash account.

"At this point it doesn't make sense to transfer money out of those departments," Wong said after the meeting.

Ouch. That's eminently sensible.

If they use free cash and DiNatale's three cited accounts end up with extra money, it'll go back into free cash anyway. Which means what DiNatale is suggesting is basically a stupider and more limiting way of doing the same thing Wong is proposing.

Hmm, if that's the case then why would he be opposed to it? Oh, maybe late-March Marcus is back!

Let's not forget about what Jody Joseph said back then:

Ward 6 Councilor Jody Joseph said he was "tired" of hearing DiNatale criticize Wong.

"I'm constantly hearing the same thing, 'My way is right, her way is wrong,'" Joseph said.

This leaves us with three potential explanations for DiNatale's inconsistency.

He could legitimately believe that raiding free cash to turn on a few streetlights is more worthwhile than using it to pay firefighters.
He could reflexively disagree with everything the mayor supports, just to be a dick.
He could actually not believe anything at all, and just grandstands about any issue he thinks might appeal to local dimwits, in order to get his name in the paper and further his political career.

Whichever of those is correct (I vote for all three), I sure hope he keeps it up.

Not for the good of the city, mind you. Being obstinate doesn't really help the city, as far as I can see. No, he should keep it up because after the disappearance of Rachel, Fitchburg is in desperate need of more insanity in its politics. Because it's funny.

Alternately, he could adopt sensible positions and actually study issues instead of just being a reflexively oppositional nuisance about everything. Then he might actually be well-respected and get something worthwhile accomplished. But where's the fun in that?

Stay the course, Marcus. For the comedy!

Tuesday videos, because why not?

2009-04-14T10:40:00.004-04:00

One of my absolute favorite albums of all time is The Rezillos' Can't Stand The Rezillos, which sadly was also their only studio album. Anyway, here's a good old (1978-ish) video of them.

A good chunk of that band later reformed as The Revillos, who were still pretty enjoyable, but a bit too new-wavey for me. Still, crazy video!

Man, the 80's were nuts from the very start.

Locals officials scared of transgendered people

2009-04-13T08:31:00.008-04:00

Sometimes you see a headline and just know that the story that it goes with is going to be chock-full of stupid. Today we have a fine instance of that in Bill to protect transgendered people draws mixed response.

The story itself centers around a bill (I assume it's HB1722, though the story neglects to identify it) that would have two parts, as explained quite succinctly by the Human Rights Campaign.

This bill would (a) expand existing hate crimes laws to cover crimes based on gender identity or expression and (b) expand existing anti-discrimination laws to prohibit discrimination in employment, places of public accommodation, real estate, and education based on gender identity or expression.

I'm not a fan of hate crimes legislation, but this doesn't seem too crazy. The hate crimes laws exist whether or not I like them, and as long as they exist they might as well cover all applicable groups.

But even if I were opposed to it due to the hate crimes stuff, it's easy to get behind the anti-discrimination stuff.

Well, easy for me anyway.

It's not so easy for Groton state representative Robert Hargraves:

Opponents point specifically to one aspect of the bill that would allow men who self-identify as women to use women's bathrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa.

"It gives license to perverts to go into ladies' rooms," state Rep. Robert Hargraves, R-Groton, said. "I have a problem with that. I have two daughters and six granddaughters, and this is bull-[shit]."

Do you use that potty-mouth around your granddaughters, Robert? For shame!

But let's assume he's right, and that transgendered people (or "perverts," if you're as dumb as Hargraves) could use the bathrooms of whatever sex they identify as. I suspect--and hope--that this is in fact the case. But so what?

I've used a lot of co-ed bathrooms in my short life. Yet, despite being in a bathroom with members of the opposite sex, I somehow refrained from showing them my junk. Remarkably, the women in these bathrooms also managed to avoid flashing their vaginas at me. I guess maybe I could have stuck my head under a stall door or something, but bathroom floors are yucky.

Does Hargraves think that women's restrooms are full of naked women lounging about? Probably. He seems to get most of his ideas about transgendered people from old Bugs Bunny cartoons, after all:

"What this does is, it gives men the chance to put a couple grapefruits in their chest, shave their legs, put on a little lipstick and a skirt, and go into the ladies' room," he said. "To me, any man that wants to do that is a pervert."

I suspect Hargraves has never seen a human breast. They only resemble grapefruit in poorly-written internet erotica, Robert. Additionally, they do not feel like bags of sand.

Look, this is pretty simple. If someone self-identifies as a woman and therefore wants to use the womens' restroom, there's no reason they can't. Womens' restrooms are fully capable of handling even the most manly man's leavings.

But what if the person self-identifying as a woman is just doing so in order to get into the womens' room to molest women, like Hargraves imagines happens all the time? Well, then they're molesting people and should be arrested and prosecuted. Of course, if they're going into the womens' restroom in order to molest women, then they're probably not going to bother with the comically inept crossdressing.

And, as Jen Benson (the only local politician in this article with any brains) points out, there is nothing keeping people from going into whatever restroom they want as it is. So prohibiting discrimination against transgendered people really won't have much effect on bathrooms. The bathroom stuff is even debunked elsewhere in the S&E article, where it mentions that 13 other states already do this and haven't had problems.

It's notable that while Hargraves seems to be very concerned about women being harassed by "perverts," he doesn't seem at all concerned about the harassment a transgendered person may experience for using their chromosomally-dictated bathroom. I wonder how he'd respond if a man dressed as a woman pulled up at the stall next to him.

Ah, I'm sure it wouldn't bother him. He's clearly an enlightened guy.

But not everyone is so enlightened, and finding a safe bathroom to use is a big enough issue for transgendered people that the Transgender Law Center even publishes the wonderfully-named Peeing in Peace Resource Guide, which is partly devoted to giving advice on how to deal with harassment and assault.

It doesn't take all that much imagination to recognize that a man dressed as a woman takes a not-insignificant risk any time they step into a mens' room. Especially if they can convincingly pass as a woman. It works the same in the other direction, except women are probably less likely to fly into a homophobic rage and physically assault a woman dressed as a man.

Hargraves isn't the only local dumbass, of course. Dennis Rosa wants to get in on the act, too.

But state Rep. Dennis Rosa, D-Leominster, said Friday he opposes the bill.

It may not openly promote criminal activity, Rosa said, but it encourages it.

"If someone is close to the edge, by encouraging it, you're adding to the problem and pushing them over," Rosa said. "That could be a real concern, because you're talking about people who are possibly having psychological problems because they're struggling with who they are."

I've read this a few times now, and for the life of me I can't figure out what Rosa is talking about. Is he freaked out about bathroom stuff for no reason too? Does he think being transgendered itself is criminal? Or does he think that transgendered people are somehow on the "edge" of becoming serial killers?

And how does he think their possible "psychological problems" will be helped by denying transgendered people equal rights? Perhaps if we learned a bit more about his feelings towards transgendered people we might gain some insight...

Rosa said the bill would "legitimize incorrect behavior."

"I'm for equal rights, but this is taking it way too far," he said.

Yep, that cleared it up.

Rosa is most assuredly not for equal rights. At least not for those damn transgendered people and their "incorrect behavior." I guess being a bigoted sack of shit is "correct behavior."

Clearly, his opposition doesn't really have anything to do with the fear of bathroom shenanigans. No, that's not really what worries Rosa (or Hargraves, I'd argue). They just think transgendered people are icky. I'd wager they don't want them in either bathroom.

Unfortunately for non-existent transgendered bathroom goblins (and also for perfectly nice transgendered people who just don't want to be discriminated against), Rosa and Hargraves will fight this bill:

Hargraves said he will vocalize his opposition to the bill.

"I may not use the word pervert on the house floor, but I'll let people know how I feel," he said.

But Hargraves may be one of the few willing to state his opinion openly, according to Rosa.

"If you didn't ask me the question, I probably wouldn't talk about this bill until it was time to vote on it, and then I'd just vote against it," the first-term representative said. "I think most legislators are hush-hush about it."

Rosa said at least one colleague told him in private he opposed the bill, but would not state his opposition publicly.

"My gut feeling is that there's a silent majority against it, but no one seems to really want to talk about it," he said.

Gee, why could it be that people don't want to talk about it?

Maybe it's because even assholes like Hargraves and Rosa realize on some level that being a bigot isn't really considered all that cool these days. Best to keep that stuff to yourselves, guys!

See, if you're willing to endorse discrimination against a whole group of people just because you're scared of having to pee next to a "pervert," that's actually really terrible. If I were that stupid, I'd try to keep it a secret too.

So, I actually have to applaud the Sentinel for running this story and letting the world know just what kind of morons Hargraves and Rosa are.

Also, this will be fun to refer back to when Hargraves shows up in a ladies' room with pomegranates under his shirt in a few months.

Hey, she stole my shtick!

2009-04-10T14:21:00.006-04:00

As you're no doubt aware, I've had a lot of fairly negative things to say about Sentinel & Enterprise editor Jeff McMenemy. His mind-numbingly stupid editorials are always a nice easy target for a post, and I've drunk at that well many times.

Of course, I only know McMenemy through his editorials and the "news" stories that are editorials in disguise. Either way, I come at this as a mere consumer of the news. I don't think I've ever met the man, and I certainly haven't worked for him. Surely someone who knows him better would be able to add a lot that just isn't available to me.

Well, there's a new blog out there that focuses just on McMenemy, and it's written by someone who actually did work for him (my condolences!).

Please direct your browsers to My Own Worst Menemy, subtitled "Jeff McMenemy is the worst editor-in-chief ever." Awesome.

There are only a few posts at this point, but they're quite entertaining, and definitely worth a read. So go show Samm (the blogger) some love.

There's more than enough shtick to go around!

Rasmussen: Capitalism more popular than capitalism.

2009-04-09T12:53:00.005-04:00

According to a recent Rasmussen report, Americans prefer capitalism over capitalism by a 33 point margin.

Twenty-seven percent of Americans weren't sure whether they preferred capitalism or capitalism, proving once again that our educational system is woefully inadequate.

Gay marriages for everyone!

2009-04-07T14:32:00.009-04:00

It's a gay marriage frenzy!

Just a few days ago the Iowa Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in Iowa. Which was nice and all, but results in the same old boring complaints about "activist judges."

The term "activist judges," of course, means any judge who overturns a ruling that conservatives like. Judges who overturn laws that conservatives don't like (like medical marijuana or euthanasia laws) aren't activists, they're just judges. Don't get confused!

So good for Iowa! Still, while adding to the very short list of states that don't treat gays like shit is great, the arguments arising from it are very predictable. It's the same old bullshit we got with Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California.

Booooring!

But Vermont has upped the ante! Not only did they legalize gay marriage, but they did it through the legislature. Hell, they even overturned a veto by the douchey governor to do it!

That's just awesome.

Now there can't be any talk about "activist" anythings. The legislature did it. They were elected by the people, ostensibly to represent those people. Ergo, the people of Vermont have legalized gay marriage.

Which is great, especially since it means that now we'll get new insane arguments from conservatives about how gays are destroying America. The local crazies aren't up in arms yet (they won't be aware of how Vermont is destroying the sanctity of marriage until McMenemy's whiny editorial appears), but there are free-range idiots to make fun of.

Let's see what the new conservative bitching-point is! Here are some comments from the AOL reprint of the AP story.

God will have the final word on this. Vermont might seem like a quaint inland area, but beware, they are not immune to an act of God!

Hmm. That's pretty poor, as far as crazy freakouts go. Saying God will punish them is good, but the "inland area" part is weak. Is God going to somehow turn Vermont into a non-quaint coastal area?

Because that seems like it would mostly punish New Hampshire. And New Hampshire is already feeling pretty uncomfortable, what with Vermont and Massachusetts rubbing up against it all sexy-like.

Here we go again the government overriding the rule of the people. I thought we lived in a democracy, where people vote and the majority rules.

Disqualified for poor reading comprehension, and still using the old arguments! Time to formulate new stupid arguments, dammit!

The only solution to the ECONOMY is to DEPORT all ILLEGALS and bring home the troops from Iraq and put them on the MEXICAN BORDER!!!

Umm... huh.

ill never go to vermont, sick sick sick, and no im not a bible thumping dude, but im not taking it in the back door !!!!!!sick sick

This fellow thinks that legalizing gay marriage means he has to be on the receiving end of anal sex if he sets foot in Vermont.

He will absolutely not masturbate tonight to the thought of visiting Vermont. Seriously. He just won't. Probably.

We are headed downhill as a country. Next we will have polygamy and then people marrying animals. It's just gross thinking about 2 men getting married. So sad what our children of tommorow are facing!

Rick Santorum is now commenting on AOL?

First it was overwhelming support for Barack Obama now it is legalization of gay marriage. My home state of Vermont has become a cess pool of failed liberal ideals.

Failed? Obama won, and gay marriage is legal.

I'm starting to think that commenters on AOL are actually sort of dumb. Won't anyone update their crazy stupid arguments? Must we stick with all the old, boring ones?

How do these "Gays" explain the birds and the bees to there adopted children? What kind of message does this send? Those kids will get so much harassment in school, those are the kids that blow schools up!

Now, that may not be a new crazy argument, but it's a pretty good one!

Gay marriage should be outlawed because adopted children of gay parents (who don't exist unless they can be legally married) will get confused about procreation, which will lead to them getting harassed, which will lead to them BLOWING UP SCHOOLS!

How do you like that, Vermont? Let's see how "gay" you are when all your schools are blown up!

Another loss for the moral beliefs of most Americans every time a gay marriage ban is lifted. It shows how far we have came from our roots of one nation under God. Now it is quickly becoming one nation under Satan.

This counts as crazy, because of Satan. But I don't think it's a new argument, really. Just a really dumb old one. And yeah, the "one nation, under God" part of the pledge of allegiance dates from 1954.

Okay, this isn't working out how I expected. There's a whole lot of crazy, but it's mostly just Christians freaking out about Jesus and equating homosexuality with bestiality, as is their habit. I could only find one clearly new argument in all my looking, and here it is:

HERE IS WHAT'S NEXT: THEY TRY TO TAKE OUR HUMAN BABIES.

That's right, married gays are coming for your human babies. Quick, stuff as many in your mouth as you can!

Hurry, the gays may already be here!

About Open-mindedness

2009-04-06T18:42:00.009-04:00

If you frequent the same nerdy scientist blogs that I do, you've probably seen this already. It's a nice animated thing about the concept of open-mindedness.

Seeing as I've been accused of being close-minded on this blog before (by our illustrious ex-mayoral candidate, if I remember correctly), I figured I might as well throw it up here so I can refer back to it later.

If you don't want to watch a nearly 10-minute-long, somewhat self-congratulatory cartoon about how skepticism is cool and gullibility is for losers, feel free to skip this one.

Technical Difficulties

2009-04-03T14:25:00.008-04:00

It looks like my commenting system has gone nuts.

Where we once had lovely comments from people who think Obama is a space alien, there's now a strange discussion about the British National Party or something.

I'm going to try to get this sorted out, but in the meantime you might want to refrain from commenting. Or go for it, but be warned that there's a possibility your comments will end up on a xenophobic British blog somewhere.

UPDATE: Okay, looks like that's over for the moment at least. It was fun while it lasted!

UPDATE 2: Never mind, it's broken again!

UPDATE 3: Fixed again. Maybe for good this time?

Redneck Grand Jury Indicts Obama!

2009-04-02T09:35:00.009-04:00

Wow, it's hard to even know where to start with this.

It's a WorldNetDaily (known to some as WorldNutDaily, WingNutDaily, etc.) article about various people who are trying to use legal challenges to get rid of B. Hussein Obama (known to some as "The Usurper").

It's a boring article that's not worth reading, except for the awesome part about these wacky rednecks who created their own grand jury in order to... ummm... subvert the government?

Georgia resident Carl Swensson, whose work is detailed on his Rise up for America website[*], told WND he got tired of the issues over Obama's eligibility, as well as his performance in office.

"I took it upon myself to find as many patriots as I could across the state, for the purpose of seating 25 for a grand jury," he said.

What is it with crazy conservatives wanting so desperately to be a part of the legal system while at the same time not understanding a damn thing about it?

It's bad enough having to deal with all these dipshits who think that taxation is unconstitutional, now we actually have to deal with people trying to use the fucking Magna Carta to depose the president. Seriously.

Swensson cites on his website as authority for the grand jury the Magna Carta, the bill of rights that formed the foundation of British common law on which U.S. law is based.

See, the Magna Carta gave barons the right to depose the king if they could get 25 of them to agree to do so.

Obviously there's no difference at all between 13th century British nobility and a bunch of pigfuckers in 21st century Georgia, or between an elected president and a hereditary monarch, so the legal argument is totally sound!

He said the members were chosen, sworn in and observed all of the rules of procedure. Swensson declined to elaborate on the specific allegations about Obama, telling WND that remains confidential at this point because of the possibility of a prosecution.

Well, that's disappointing. But the mention of "eligibility" makes it pretty obvious that this is at least in part about Obama's birth certificate.

Apparently the same detachment from reality that makes people think that Obama is a space alien also makes them believe that there's an actual possibility of this wingnut masturbation fantasy resulting in a prosecution. I wish there were, because it would be incredibly funny to watch.

Be careful, though! These "patriots" mean business!

However, the website explanation of the procedure includes some intimidating language.

"If the government does not amend the error within 40 days after being shown the error, then the four members shall refer the matter to the remainder of the grand jury," it says. "The grand jury may distrain and oppress the government in every way in their power, namely, by taking the homes, lands, possessions, and any way else they can until amends shall have been made according to the sole judgment of the grand jury."

Let me translate that from the legalese for you. Here's what they're actually saying:

"If the government doesn't kick B. Hussein Obama (A.K.A. Barry Soetoro) out of the presidency and back to Islamistan in 40 days, then we're going to take over. When we take over we will throw a giant fit, and seize your trailers, trailer parks, NASCAR collectible mugs, and anything we can fit in the back of our pickups."

Them's fightin' words!

I really, really hope they follow through with their threats. The government must see the light, or these brave patriots will be forced to overthrow it!

All 25 of them.

* You absolutely must go to that website. They start by spelling the president's name wrong in the page title, and it just gets funnier from there on out!

Yet Another Abstinence Clown!

2009-04-01T15:50:00.013-04:00

Oh my. This is just remarkable.

It's an article from the Catholic News Service. In it, leaders in the Catholic Church whine about people making fun of the pope. Apparently, mocking decrepit old virgins in fancy dresses and funny hats is a sin or something.

Mockery is not acceptable in public discussions, especially when the subject is the pope, said the president of the Italian Catholic bishops' conference.

Oh, this is going to be fun...

"We will not accept that the pope, in the media or anywhere else, is mocked or offended," said Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, opening the spring meeting of the permanent council of the Italian bishops' conference.

Bad news, Angelo! See, you really don't have a choice.

While it's pretty unlikely that I'll ever have the opportunity to directly offend the pope, I can (and do) mock him pretty much whenever I feel like it. In fact, anyone can go right ahead and mock the pope, at least in countries where freedom of speech is respected.

What's even better than the ridiculous "you must not mock this old fart" complaint is that they're complaining about people criticizing the pope for things he absolutely should be criticized for!

He said the public criticism began in January when the pope lifted the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops belonging to the Society of St. Pius X, including a bishop who denied the extent of the Holocaust, and continued into March when Pope Benedict said the distribution of condoms was not the key to stopping the spread of AIDS.

Ethics quiz! Which of these is the most evil?

Making fun of some guy.
Giving support to a bunch of blatant anti-Semites.
Lying to millions of people who believe you to be infallible, and in so doing discouraging them from doing something that could save their life, thereby condemning at least some of them to disease and eventual death.

Now, I'd personally rank #3 as the most evil, with #2 being pretty evil, but not deadly, and #1 not even really qualifying as "evil" at all. But I don't get my morals from an ancient PR pamphlet for a nonexistent deity, so I could be wrong.

What does the cardinal have to say?

The cardinal said the Italian bishops would continue asking people "to never abandon the language of respect, which is an indication of civility" even when they disagree with him.

How handy, I just had a quick post about civility. Thanks for proving my point!

The pope represents "a moral authority" in the world, which his March trip to Africa highlighted once again, he said.

That would be the trip on which he claimed that condoms "can even increase the problem" of AIDS.

I guess I'll need someone more deeply schooled in the Catholic faith to explain to me how that statement isn't a lie. Because I'm pretty sure lying is considered immoral even within the Catholic church. I'd have to check my Bible to be sure, but I think there may even be a commandment or something about it!

The bishops defended Pope Benedict as "the most loved and respected spiritual leader of Catholics all over the world." They argued that the world had received with respect his views on the recession, terrorism and moral issues such as AIDS and abortion.

The pope has often urged the world to become "more God-fearing while building a society based on humanitarian values and moral principles of life," they said.

Apparently "principles of life" is some sort of secret code for "dying from a horrible and totally preventable disease, just because this old Nazi is scared of vaginas."

But enough of this silly press release. Let's get down to business: how does the pope compare to Derek the Abstinence Clown?

Well, they both dress ridiculously! If anything, the pope dresses even more ridiculously than Derek.

Benny the Abstinence Clown

How about skills? Derek can juggle pretty decently. I'm still trying to figure out what skills the pope might have. If he can juggle, he keeps it to himself. Is being really fucking scary looking considered a skill?

I'll call it a draw. The pope must have some skill to get elected pope, right? He probably throws great parties in his rectory or something. Oh, I know, he gives a hell of a salute!

How about sexiness? Well, obviously the pope was a total hottie back when he was a young man. Derek the Abstinence Clown is still relatively young, and is not a hottie at all.

However!

Derek the Abstinence Clown preaches about abstinence, but it's possible that at some point he actually found someone stupid/desperate enough to fuck him.

Not the pope, though! Benny the Abstinence Clown would lose his job if anyone were stupid enough to fuck him. Luckily, he looks like a moldy piece of beef jerky these days, so he's probably safe.

Looks to me like Derek is winning... wait... HOLY CRAP WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS???

I take it all back. Making fun of the pope is dangerous!

Derek the Abstinence Clown*

2009-04-01T12:15:00.009-04:00

I hereby present to you the best thing ever. It's even funded with your tax dollars!

I think I'm going to start using the phrase "practice juggling machetes" as a synonym for "masturbate."

I'd also like to point you to this article by a nice reporter lady who also became an abstinence "educator." If it didn't cost $50, I'd be inclined to do so myself.

Reverend Unicow, Licensed Abstinence Educator would be great on a business card.

* [Honestly, I don't think he's a clown. He's actually a pretty decent juggler who just dresses like an idiot. But "Derek The Abstinence Juggler Who Dresses Poorly" doesn't have the same ring to it.]

Fundamentalists are funny

2009-03-31T11:53:00.004-04:00

This is pretty entertaining. It's just these guys reciting stuff that they got from online fundamentalist forums (like the S&E Topix forums, but even dumber).

Just one complaint: without the random capitalization, hyper-prevalent spelling errors, and wall-of-text formatting you'd see online, you really miss out on the full batshit-craziness of these people. Oh well.

This post has been brought to you by the letter Z, the number i, and the Fitchburg city council being too whiny and stupid for me to stomach writing about them today.

Save Fitchburg is no more!

2009-03-30T08:52:00.009-04:00

Well damn, this is sort of sad.

It seems that Jason at Save Fitchburg, the biggest and oldest local political blog, has called it quits. There will be no more posts at Save Fitchburg.

That's unfortunate, but understandable. While Jason & I certainly haven't always agreed on everything, he's always come across as a decent, intelligent guy who really cared about what he was doing. Unfortunately for him, he also ended up as the guy at the center of a commenting community that could be deeply infuriating.

Sadly, it sounds like the stresses of dealing with the commenters is what did him in, and that sucks. It's totally understandable, though. Most of my commenters here are awesome, but the occasional troll or flaming jackass can quickly sap the fun out of an otherwise good time. Once things become un-fun, there's no reason to continue.

He says he's getting out of blogging and politics and all this nonsense, and doing something else. I'm not quite certain, but reading between the lines of his post, I gather that he's going to start racing Nitro-burning funny cars. And who can blame him?

Pictured: Jason Lefferts and friend

Anyway, it's a little sad to see him go. But such is life.

Good luck with your funny cars, Jason!

Now, somebody please step up to fill his former role of serious local political blog guy. I'm going to stick with making dick jokes.

Attack of the Vampire Schoolgirls!

2009-03-27T08:51:00.009-04:00

Hey everyone, listen up! It's time to start stockpiling garlic and crosses, because there's an outbreak of vampirism in Boston!

I've learned this from an article in the Boston Globe entitled "Vampire rumors spur alert at Boston Latin - on bullying". Witness the horror!

Boston Latin School headmaster Lynne Mooney Teta issued a notice to parents and students yesterday quashing rumors of vampires at the school. An odd move for the head of a historic elite preparatory school, but Teta and Boston public school officials declined to elaborate on what triggered the unusual message.

They did, however, adamantly offer assurances that no one at the school has been hurt, arrested - or bitten.

You can't quash rumors without elaborating, dummy. That just intensifies rumors! And good thing, too, because the vampire menace must not be ignored.

Please note that they say no one at the school has been hurt or bitten. What about the community, I ask? If there are vampire schoolgirls, then I'm not so much worried about the students (there is probably a cute blonde vampire slayer in the student body, after all), I'm worried about the community at large!

Let's get to the bottom of this. Do we need to be posting additional guards outside blood banks or not?

Two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the incident said a group of girls at the school had been bullying at least one other student who likes to dress in Goth-style, a vampirish look popularized by musician Marilyn Manson. The officials said the girls began spreading a rumor that the student was a vampire who had cut someone's neck and sucked the blood.

Well, thank Jesus that these brave prep-school cunts had the foresight to ostracize and torment this evil vampire who may or may not listen to a washed-up musician whose music was more industrial than goth! Can you imagine what would happen if these "Visigoths" were allowed to run free, smearing their damn eyeliner all over the place and feasting on human blood? It would be bedlam!

What's worse, it looks like the headmaster lady may indeed be a vampire herself!

"It has come to my attention that rumors involving 'vampires' began spreading through the building yesterday," it said.

"I am very concerned that the safety of certain students may be jeopardized as targets of rumors and speculation," she wrote. "Please alert any adult in the building if you feel that any student is being harassed or targeted."

Yeah, right. Don't fall for it, students! Teta is one of them! If you try to report "bullying" of vampires, it'll be the last thing you ever do.

Obviously some students have noticed that their school is turning into a vampire picnic, and have tried to draw attention to the fiendish culprits, by being assholes to them. That's not "harassment," it's saving the human race!

It gets worse!

One student who contacted the Globe said a male student, rumored to be a werewolf, had threatened on Facebook to bring a gun to school because he was being harassed.

Okay, you know the NRA is just totally out of control when even known werewolves are allowed to buy guns. I support the second amendment and all, but you have to draw the line somewhere!

We must be alert to these lycanthropic dangers, because it appears the parents are dropping the ball (as usual):

John Maguire, who was picking up his 13-year-old at the school yesterday afternoon, said he didn't know there was an issue about vampire rumors until his son told him yesterday. He said he laughed it off.

"C'mon, a vampire in the school? Don't you think that's a little woo-hoo?" he said, pointing to his head.

First off, "John" (if that is your real name), the proper sound for crazy is "woo-woo," not "woo-hoo." "Woo-hoo" is an exclamation of joy, as in "Woo-hoo! I just escaped a deadly gun-toting werewolf!" Dumbass.

Second, "John," you have just established yourself firmly as the first guy who will get eaten. It's always the doubter who goes first. If you're black, you're in even more trouble. Sorry, that's just the way it goes. It serves you right for asking questions.

"But where's the evidence?", you might ask. I don't actually recommend asking that question unless you want to end up disemboweled like "John" up there, but fine. Here's your evidence, smarty science pants!

Students leaving Boston Latin yesterday said rumors about students claiming to be vampires, or more specifically "half-vampires," have been circulating for months. Several said two or three female students at the school carry umbrellas in all weather to avoid exposure to the sun.

How do you like that, doubters? Full vampires can't go in the sun, even with an umbrella, but half-vampires are much better at tolerating the sun without bursting into flames. All they need are umbrellas to walk among us! There could be no other possible reason for someone to avoid sun exposure.

Pictured: A Vampire!

Sadly, not all students are as intelligent as the "rumor"-starters. To wit:

Seventeen-year-old Davis Murphy said he heard that some students claiming to be half-vampires were draining their blood to make their skin paler or had claimed they could fly.

"No one bullies them," he said, laughing. "We just want to know why they're vampires."

Oh, Davis, you don't even know what a vampire is, do you? The whole turning-into-a-bat thing is a myth. Vampires can't fly, and they don't need to make their skin paler. Their skin is pale because they're dead. Haven't you learned anything in that fancy school? Stupid boy.

I'm glad to hear that you don't bully them, Davis, but are merely asking why they're vampires (presumably while giving them wedgies and calling them "fags"). But if you don't even know what makes someone a vampire, then you can't be trusted to fight them. Leave it to the professionals, please.

Okay, let's wrap this up:

"There's no bullying here," [senior Victoria] Browne said. "It's just that everybody is really weirded out."

And who can blame them?

I mean, there are ~~students~~ half-vampires in the school who look and act differently from everybody else. That sure freaks me the fuck out! And it's an almost certain indication that they're undead soulless demonspawn who deserve whatever treatment they get.

Now is the time, patriots! Rise up against this undead menace, and fight so that future generations won't have to be made uncomfortable by ~~people~~ hell-demons who are slightly different from them.

Do it for the (non-vampire) children!

Movies!

2009-03-26T15:23:00.007-04:00

Well, this is really neat.

On my daily romp through the local blogs (a romp which is getting shorter, since not a lot of people are writing these days for some reason), I discovered that the illustrious 1970s Abraham Lincoln has created a really nice gizmo for listing what movies are showing in Fitchburg, complete with links to trailers and average review scores and stuff.

It's vastly superior to the crummy website that the theater has, and it apparently will update every morning.

If you haven't spotted it already, read about it here, and check out the listings themselves here.

Yeah, the movies mostly suck, but that interface is really nice! Yay for nerds!

In which a couple of city councilors earn my respect

2009-03-26T09:03:00.004-04:00

In my perusing of the local news yesterday, I saw and skipped over this article, because it seemed boring.*

Boy, was I wrong! The Progressive Fitchburg City Council-tolerating correspondent sends word that there was a lovely display of asshattery, courtesy of well-known local asshat, Marcus DiNatale!

Apparently, even with some of the streetlights being turned off, there's still a deficit in the streetlight budget. There is also a difference of opinion on how to deal with it!

Even with Wong's plan to shut off about 60 percent of the city's streetlights, the streetlight account in the Department of Public Works still has about a $90,000 deficit.

Wong has proposed leaving two positions within DPW unfilled to cover the rest of the deficit in the streetlight account.

But DiNatale, the at-large councilor, said he would have liked to have seen money taken out of the city's free cash account to reduce the number of lights that would be turned off.

"I think 60 percent is really drastic," DiNatale said.

He said he would like to see a plan that would turn off only a quarter of the city's lights.

Ah, clever plan! Instead of saving money by turning off streetlights (which has caused a lot of whining, but no discernible problems), he wants to raid the city's free cash instead. Because, umm... actually I have no idea how that idea makes any sense.

But DiNatale saying stupid things is not really news. It's just what he does. Lots of sound and fury, signifying a young man's desperate attempt to differentiate himself from his father (while still benefiting from the surname), by acting like an idiot.

Where it gets fun is that at least a couple of other city councilors are clearly getting sick of him too. First, Stephan Hay:

Other councilors said that approach was not looking at the "big picture."

"I'm surprised my fiscally conservative watchdog councilor is so quick to spend our free cash," Council President Stephan Hay said to DiNatale.

Not bad at all! That was pointed and sarcastic, while also shining the light on DiNatale's hypocrisy! Very nice! I give it four out of five stars.

Can anyone beat that? Your turn, Jody Joseph!

Ward 6 Councilor Jody Joseph said she [Sic] was "tired" of hearing DiNatale criticize Wong.

"I'm constantly hearing the same thing, 'My way is right, her way is wrong,'" Joseph said.

Okay, that's pretty decent. I think Hay wins, though. Joseph is blunt, which is good, but Hay is funnier.

See, now is the time when I wish I actually did watch these things. I'm sure there was more entertainment to be had there. Hey, FATV, how about providing edited down clips of only the interesting parts of council meetings? By which I mean the parts where they bicker.

Let's have a contest! The first city councilor to call DiNatale a "twatmonkey" (or an equivalent insult, have fun with it!) during a council meeting will win a fabulous prize!**

I'm rooting for Annie DeMartino, because of her lovely accent.

Oh, DiNatale did defend himself, sort of:

DiNatale responded saying he would "provide criticism when I feel it's appropriate."

In other words: "I will continue to grandstand at every opportunity, even if I have nothing of value to contribute. Because I am a twatmonkey."

That is all.

----

* Also because if I write about city council meetings without having actually watched them personally, Mr. Follies might yell at me. But he seems to have disappeared, so fuck it.

** Prize may not actually exist.

Tuesday video of fun!

2009-03-24T09:22:00.003-04:00

No news has moved me to write today, and I'm not in the mood to go digging for something, so instead please enjoy this old Dead Milkmen video I just saw for the first time.

Yay!

The problem with civility

2009-03-23T11:44:00.012-04:00

I've written and discarded multiple posts about the term "civility" and the way it's used as a weapon to silence dissent.

I touched upon this briefly in my post about "bipartisanship", but never felt I could get what I was trying to say about civility across clearly enough to justify a post of its own.

Yet today, I find Coturnix commenting here, and he expressed it almost perfectly. So I'll just quote him:

The call for civility is the method for the privileged to exclude the outsiders from conversation, because the only way to shock them out of their privilege is to tell them to fuck off.

Dammit, I wish I had said that.

You're invited to Jeff McMenemy's pity party!

2009-03-22T13:09:00.015-04:00

Today I rolled out of bed to find that the official Progressive Fitchburg car crash correspondent had sent me a hot tip: Sentinel Editor Jeff McMenemy had an accident and was crying about it in editorial form.

Normally, I'm not inclined to make light of someone's car accident. Car accidents suck, and not even the despicable McMenemy deserves to have one.

But then I read the actual editorial, entitled It's time to get dangerous drivers off the road, and any shred of sympathy I might have had evaporated. It's just that bad.

One trait common to most people who have trouble with the real world is that they put too much importance on their own experiences and actions. Show an astrology buff any of the dozens of well-controlled experiments debunking astrology and they'll claim that it's still valid, because it "works for me."

You get the same thing with car accidents. Some delusional people will see a car accident as a sign that the world is out to get them, when they should probably just take it as a sign that cars + icy roads = trouble.

Anyway, let's start the pity party!

I left work at about 7 p.m. on a Thursday night several weeks ago and headed up South Street in Fitchburg. The temperature had risen above freezing that day for the first time in several days and some of the snow had melted.

But as night fell, the temperatures dropped and even a main road like South Street was starting to get icy.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, there were no Department of Public Works trucks in sight.

Here our protagonist is setting up the story. The tale of a ~~young~~ man who unwisely decides to drives on one of the steepest, curviest, slipperiest roads around on a night it was getting icy, before the DPW had a chance to get to it.

Make sure not to interpret this as a sign he was doing something stupid, though. That would ruin the rest of the story. Just pretend that he's an adventurous type, instead of just a guy who doesn't know how to pick the proper route.

Onward, brave adventurer!

I headed up South Street and as I came to a slight turn in the road, I immediately saw a large black truck already about halfway in my lane.

I tried to get closer to the side of the road to avoid him, but because of the snowbanks and the piles of debris from [Sic] ice storm, I had nowhere to go, and in an instant, he crashed into me.

His truck had turned totally sideways when it crashed into my car.

The impact sent my small Subaru crashing first into a snowbank, and then into a pile of debris, before I stopped.

Oh no! Our hero has encountered a setback! A deadly ~~fire-breathing dragon~~ black truck was out of control in front of him! The roads were too narrow to avoid its devious sideways-driving and a crash ensued!

Since our hero was driving a Subaru (apparently known for being tiny), he was bounced around like some sort of bouncy thing. Did his heroic instincts kick in and allow him to pull the Subaru-beast out of its deadly spin?

In those short moments, I felt like the little silver ball inside a pin-ball [Sic] machine [Note from Unicow: the ball inside a pinball machine is known as a "pinball."] and promised myself I would buy a bigger car if I got out of the wreck uninjured.

I now drive a Ford F-150.

I kept waiting to crash into my windshield, part of which had been crushed when my car crashed into the pile of debris, but I had my seatbelt on and walked away without getting hurt.

Unfortunately, my car was not as lucky.

The impact of the other driver's truck hitting my car crushed the driver's side of the car, smashed part of the windshield, smashed the bumper, both headlights and the front passenger side of the car.

Okay, not so much with the heroic pulling out of the spin. But wearing a seatbelt is very sensible! Not heroic, but at least a good idea.

Predictably, the tiny car was lost. Which is why our hero had to replace it with a needlessly-huge penis surrogate. Or maybe he's planning to quit his editor job and take one in construction? Either way, not that heroic.

Plus, he then spends a few boring paragraphs talking about other cars almost hitting him and how he got out of the car (into the snowbank, people!). Okay, fine, we get it. You were in a car accident.

But now he's out of the car, time to be heroic!

I called one of my reporters so he could call the police for me -- I didn't know the direct number and I knew the newsroom did -- so I could get an officer to respond to the scene.

But because I was not hurt, they told him they were too busy to come to the scene and invited me to fill out a police report in the morning.

Umm... wow. That's not heroic. That's not even competent.

Hey, Jeff, I have information! Try not to forget this: The direct number for the police in this situation is 911.

See, that's the number for emergencies. If you call that number instead of forcing one of your employees to call the number they'd call to get an interview or something, then the police come and actually help you. Try that next time!

Of course, since you weren't injured, it's possible that they'll be off attending to people who have bigger problems. But I'm sure you'll be able to cope without turning into a bawling mess, right?

This isn't going so well anymore, but maybe it picks up?

I continued to wait and look around for the other driver, but he was -- as we used to say -- long gone and hard to find.

And it started to dawn on me that the driver had actually crashed into me and likely totaled my car, and then took off.

Oh no! A hit and run! We could be back into heroic excitement, now! Though the heroism is sort of diminished by the hero apparently being extremely slow to notice the world around him. Still, car accidents are scary, so maybe he was busy pissing himself or something. I'd leave that out of the retelling too.

Onward!

Finally, I saw a police cruiser slowly driving up South Street and I thought he was coming to look for me to file a report, but he instead blocked off the road so a DPW truck could sand it.

Here's a thought: Next time maybe the DPW trucks should start sanding before the accidents happen.

Okay, enough of this hero bullshit. McMenemy has just revealed himself not as a hero, but as a whiny idiot (you knew it was only a matter of time).

Here's a thought: Next time don't drive on slippery unsanded roads, you flaming jackass!

The DPW can't be everywhere at once, and you're the moron that chose to drive on one of the single most hazardous-when-icy streets around, despite it being untreated. If you had waited 15 minutes, or taken another route, maybe you wouldn't have gotten yourself in an accident.

Let the whining continue:

As I was sitting in car [Sic] trying to stay warm and decide what to do next, I started getting angrier at the truck driver who had drove [Sic] into my lane, crashed into my car and then took off.

Umm, do you actually know that he took off? I mean, he was going sideways. On a curve. He probably didn't stop on a dime right after hitting you, so maybe he was in a snowbank around the curve?

Or maybe he did hit-and-run, in which case shame on him! That's a shitty thing to do, but what can you do? Life is shitty sometimes.

Most of us recognize that fact, and try to just deal with whatever shit life throws at us. But most of us don't have editorial columns in which we can cry about how unfair everything is:

What kind of a person drives into another vehicle and takes off?

What kind of a person crashes into a car that is half the size of his vehicle and then isn't even a decent enough human being to stop and see if the other driver is all right?

The hit-and-run wreck literally cost me thousands of dollars because I had just done about $2,000 of work on my car, and I just had to turn around and buy a new one.

Yes, car accidents tend to cost money. Deal with it.

Or, if you're unable to deal with it, maybe you could take your one isolated accident that resulted from driving on an untreated icy road that is treacherous even in a light rain and see it as a sign that everyone but you is a terrible driver.

And if you're really a despicable shitsack of a human being, you can compare your accident in which you were in no way injured to accidents in which people lost their lives. Same thing, right?

The sad fact is that there is an unacceptable level of dangerousness on Massachusetts roads because state officials would rather soak dangerous drivers with high fines and fees, and keep them on the road, than just take their license [Sic] away.

Take the case of Westminster resident Myja Parviainen, who died earlier this year when a Worcester driver speeding the wrong way down Route 495 in Bellingham crashed into her car and killed her.

Then we have a long list of all the shitty things this Waterman guy who killed Parviainen did. To prove that "state officials" hate taking people's licenses away, McMenemy provides the following information:

Waterman lost his license for nearly four months in 2007 after Worcester Police arrested him on charges of driving while intoxicated, according to his driving record.

and ...

The arrest marked Waterman's seventh surchargeable offense in three years, leading to an automatic 60-day license suspension under state law, in addition to his drunken-driving suspension...

Yeah, just look at all those "high fines and fees"! It's terrible! And eventually this horrible driver (who I'm sure totally never got behind the wheel while his license was suspended) killed someone. Which, yes, sucks.

But what does that have to do with McMenemy's stupid little accident in which nobody was hurt? He doesn't even know who was driving the other car. It could have been someone with a spotless driving record who was having a very poorly-timed heart attack for all he knows. Not that it matters when you can just make up your own reality.

Besides Waterman, McMenemy whines for awhile about some other driver who also drove poorly. This is the part of the editorial I like to call the "Jeff is out of ideas and just going to plagiarize some old story from the paper" part. So he does that for awhile, then ends with his coup de grace.

It was only through the grace of God that the driver didn't kill someone when he crashed, and that's apparently what state officials don't understand.

I'm not talking about someone who has a few tickets and got into an accident or two, accidents do happen.

I'm talking about someone with a history of accidents, driving drunk or multiple and excessive speeding.

People like that get way too many chances to stay on the road in Massachusetts, and every day that they get to keep driving, they put all of our lives at risk.

Hear that, state officials? You could have killed Jeff McMenemy! Even though there's no indication that the person who hit him had so much as a parking ticket, we're obviously supposed to think that whoever did it was undoubtedly a repeat offender. Probably an ILLEGAL too (at least that's what some dumbass thinks).

So, what have we learned?

Just a few things:

Don't drive on South St. when it's icy (though most of us already knew this).
The number for the police is 911 (again, most of us knew this).
If your loved one dies in a horrible auto accident, your loss might be fodder for some douchebag who likes driving on icy roads to complain about something stupid.
If you see a guy who looks like the lovechild of Joe McCarthy and a kiwi fruit driving a Ford F150, give him a wide berth.

The moral of the story? Jeff McMenemy is a whiny-ass titty baby.

The end.