Nobody's Business

Beating the Bullies

Damn, these guys are cool, pink shirts and all. I kinda want to hug them. Not that way. But still.

One of my U.S. relatives (a little older, sweet and wonderful, and definitely not a bully) supports various religious-right causes and is OK with forms of anti-gay discrimination, such as the ban on civil unions between same-sex partners. When the subject came up the other week, I said, as politely as possible, "You know, your camp has already lost — you just don't know it yet. We're moving inexorably to equal rights. In 25 or 30 years, none of this will even be a topic of legitimate discussion anymore."

But she did know. She nodded and said (and I don't think she was just humoring me) "I believe you're right." And she smiled and didn't even seem upset.

Little steps.

[via Andrew Sullivan]

Cop: 'Lemme Murder the Guy With the Camera'

That story I blogged two days ago involving the rogue St. George, Missouri police officer? Well, it gets curiouser and curiouser. It seems that one or several of the man's colleagues have been anonymously threatening to kill whistleblowing motorist Brett Darrow. They even put it in writing!

In an unrelated development, the Newspaper reports that the St. George police chief, Scott Uhrig, was investigated by the State of Missouri Administrative Hearing Commission, which concluded that "Uhrig's unwelcome sexual advances to a teenager, while on duty and under the guise of enforcing the laws, indicate an especially egregious mental state, show that he cannot enforce the law, and are cause for discipline."

As regular readers of this blog know, that kind of behavior on the part of those we pay to protect us and our kids is more common than most people think.

As for traffic stops or any other involuntary contacts with police officers: Ladies and gentlemen, start your video cameras. Oh, and don your bullet-proof vests, of course. That's what I'd be wearing, anyway, if I were Brett Darrow.

[hat tip: Billy Beck. Also see reader Peter Parker's interesting comments here.]

Plastic Guns Lead to Plastic Indignation

A kids' plastic water pistol as a giveaway at a public library? That'll draw the burning indignation of some Albany, NY politicians, who insist that children should not be furnished "a replica of a firearm."

So the kids can go to the library and check out murder mysteries, and read encyclopedias containing entries from the Holocaust to Jack the Ripper, and thumb through newspapers documenting the latest mayhem in Iraq — no sweat.

They hear stories about how the West was won — with guns — and about the time when Uncle Pete went duck hunting and brought home fourteen plump birds. No problem.

But the moment they get their hands on a see-through plastic water gun, that's when these bright-eyed, towheaded little angels turn into the second coming of Dylan Klebold. Or something.

I detest the pandering and the manufactured, double-standard moral panic evident in cases like these — a nanny specialty born of the same impulse that leads to calls for a ban on violent movies or shoot-'em-up video games.

Earth to Albany: A plastic water gun is no more a replica of a firearm than a ring from a Crackerjack box is a replica of the Hope diamond.

Let's please all get a grip, shall we?

To Curse and Protect

You shouldn't have to carry a recording device in your car just in case you get pulled over by the police. But sometimes it helps. Such was the case when, just the other day, a foul-mouthed Missouri cop threatened to make up charges against a driver during a traffic stop. Unfortunately for the officer, he got caught on tape.

[James] Kuehnlein, a St. George officer for about two years, approaches a young man [Brett Darrow] who was sitting in a parked car about 2 a.m. in a commuter lot near Spokane and Reavis Barracks roads. Kuehnlein asks for identification. When Darrow asks whether he did anything wrong, the officer orders him out of the car and begins shouting.

"You want to try me? You want to try me tonight? You think you have a bad night? I will ruin your night. … Do you want to try me tonight, young boy?" Darrow says no. "Do you want to go to jail for some (expletive) reason I come up with?" the police officer says. Later, Darrow says, "I don't want any problems, officer." "You're about to get it," Kuehnlein is heard saying. "You already started your (expletive) problems with your attitude."

It's pretty obvious who's the one with the unhealthy attitude here.

Terrorists, Drug Warriors — What's the Diff?

Unimaginable pain and suffering go untreated throughout much of the world because health authorities believe that strong painkillers, and their potential for addiction, are too great a danger to society. So to prevent abuse, they'd rather let Zainabu Sesay die in agony. Mrs. Sesay is a patient in Sierra Leone, who has breast cancer

...in a form that Western doctors rarely see anymore — the tumor had burst through her skin, looking like a putrid head of cauliflower weeping small amounts of blood at its edges.

Though her pain is as intense as being burned by a flame, she says, no one will give her morphine, a dirt cheap drug that could be in plentiful supply if not for the eradication and prohibition efforts of governments prone to drug wars. So Mrs. Sesay has to make do with Tramadol, a painkiller with one-tenth the potency of morphine.

According to this Times article,

[D]octors from Africa describe patients whose pain is so bad that they have chosen other remedies: hanging themselves or throwing themselves in front of trucks.

That may yet become the only way out for Abdulaziz Sankoh, a seven-year-old with sickle cell disease.

He moans at night when twisted blood cells clump together and jam the arteries in his spindly legs, slowly killing his bone marrow.

Sorry, Abdulaziz: the pharmacist might, just might take opioids recreationally if they were allowed to be imported into Sierra Leone. You never know! You can't be too careful! So to keep him from getting high, Abdulaziz, you're going to have to bite your pillow and let the pain rob you of your last shred of humanity until your body finally gives up and they take your miserable carcass to the morgue. I'm sure you understand. (Of course, there's always the rope, or the truck.)

Musa Shariff could be in for a similar fate. Musa is

...an 8-month-old boy whose scalp is so swollen by meningitis that his eyelids cannot close. Dr. Muctar Jalloh, the hospital director, said he would not prescribe morphine to babies or toddlers if he had it. ... That flies in the face of Western medicine, which allows careful use even in premature infants.

On the 11th of September, today, it's worth contemplating how much pain and grief terrorists have actually managed to inflict on us; and to then contrast that with the much more widespread cruel suffering that highly paid drug warriors and opioid-phobes inflict on frail, pain-wracked patients — babies and young children included — every day.

[hat tip: Nicky Eyle]

God Created My Shirt

Thanks to sportsy-outdoorsy retailer REI, I'm wearing my God shirt right now. Not that I knew that that's what I would get when I ordered it. On the REI web page, it looked like a pretty casual but nicely presentable shirt to me. But after I took it out of its packaging, there it was: a label affixed to a sleeve, taking a decidedly creationist view of the world.

I thought I was only buying a garment, but I got the little sermon for free! Hooray for two-fers!

I called REI to make sure that they really were OK with an atheist like myself wearing such a divinely endorsed article of clothing, and I also asked them if they were in any way officially affiliated with the Big Guy (yes to the former, no to the latter).

I love the shirt, obviously — it does near-biblical wonders for my appearance.

[halo courtesy of Funbooth]

A Newish Approach to Healthcare

Interesting frontpage story in today's Wall Street Journal. In summary:

Starting in 2006, the Netherlands has required all adults to buy their own health insurance, or pay a penalty. And insurers must offer policy to all comers, no matter how sick or old they are, WSJ’s Gautam Naik reports. The government subsidizes policies for adults who can’t afford to pay premiums and makes “risk-equalization” payments to insurers that cover the elderly and those with some chronic conditions such as diabetes. The current Dutch program differs from plans in other parts of Europe, which mostly offer national health care, and the U.S., which largely relies on employers paying for the bulk of coverage.

The idea behind the Dutch is that individuals will enroll in health plans that provide the coverage they need instead of a one-size-fits-all plan chosen by an employer. And individuals will pay more attention to health costs, which are largely ignored when the government picks up the tab. The Dutch want the "risk-equalization" incentive payments to motivate insurers to cover more than just healthy customers. It's too early to tell if the Dutch treatment to manage costs and improve quality will become a model for the rest of the world. But anecdotal reports show things are moving in the right direction.

Insurer Rival UVIT offered to pay the gym membership fee for Rianne Boel, who was overweight and diabetic, if she lost 7.5% of her weight in 15 months. Boel cut back on french fries and pizza and started walking, cycling and rowing. The changes helped her reach the goal. “I don’t like exercising,” Boel says, “but at least I can now walk without a stick." 

And the competitive nature of the local healthcare field is such that premiums have stayed modest — substantially below the optimistic estimates of the Dutch state.

The headline of the WSJ piece is "In Holland, Some See Model For U.S. Health-Care System," and I do think the Dutch are on to something here. When I recently declared myself a "reluctant socialist" in the healthcare debate, this is akin to what I had in mind — a free market whose U.S.-style excesses are tempered by limited government interference.

I realize that by saying that, I once again dilute libertarian tenets to reach for a pragmatic solution. So be it. 300 million people's lives are more important to me than political purity.

Voice in My Head

Arrghh: 

Failing to follow a healthy lifestyle could lead to free [National Health Service] treatment being denied under the Tory plans. Patients would be handed "NHS Health Miles Cards" allowing them to earn reward points for losing weight, giving up smoking, receiving immunisations or attending regular health screenings. Like a supermarket loyalty card, the points could be redeemed as discounts on gym membership and fresh fruit and vegetables, or even give priority for other public services — such as jumping the queue for council housing.

But heavy smokers, the obese and binge drinkers who were a drain on the NHS could be denied some routine treatments such as hip replacements until they cleaned up their act. Those who abused the system — by calling an ambulance when a trip to the GP would be sufficient, or telephoning out of hours with needless queries — could also be penalised. 

I hate such official haughtiness and bristle at such Nanny-State excesses instinctively, but there's also a little voice in my head that mocks me for that response. "I thought you were for personal responsbility," it needles. "Libertarian, are you? Then why should people with unhealthy lifestyles gets subsidized by the government?"

And I'm not sure I know how to answer that.

[hat tip: Martin Owens]

Hate Materialism? Move to Ghana!

Environmentalism, which puts nature above human beings and despises true development, leaves Africans in abject poverty. I didn't just say that — De Roy Kwesi Andrew did. Kwesi Andrew is a teacher from Ghana who recently toured England to talk about a documentary he co-produced, Damned By Debt Relief. He wrote an article about his experience that amounts to a passionate defense of western-style economic progress against the kneejerk attacks of the West's purportedly progressive 'down with us' crowd:

The denunciation of material comfort is so widespread in the West that even schoolchildren seem to think affluence is an evil. Many people I met in Britain told me that there is less happiness and laughter in British society due to economic development. Some said that Africans are happier than Brits even though they are poorer. I thought that freedom from toil was the centrepiece of economic development, handing anybody the ability to unleash their potential and gain unlimited opportunities: most people in Britain have that freedom; we in Ghana do not.

If Westerners are not happy with such great things, perhaps they should swap with us Africans. We would love to have what these people seem to hate. You see, we believe in the material progress of mankind; the vast majority of Ghanaians I spoke to while making Damned by Debt Relief said they want more from life: more goods, more products, more choice. We hate being constantly subdued by nature; we are tired of dying early; we are tired of sleeping in mud huts; we are tired of walking long distances for water, food and fuel; we are tired of doing our washing by hand; we are tired of farming with hoes and cutlasses and waiting for nature to be merciful unto us. You think this way of life is 'natural' and happiness-inducing? Then you should try it out.

Touché. Whole thing here.

Chinese Porn Cops to Engage in Hot Lovin'

From C|Net:

[T]hese two virtual police officers have been created by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau to combat online pornography and other Web activity considered illicit. In what's just China's latest attempt to clamp down on the Internet, the animated beat officers will pop up ... to warn surfers on Chinese sites that they are being monitored, Reuters said. Beginning Saturday, they will appear every half hour on computer screens run by 13 major Beijing-based portals.

Anime porn is a thriving genre, so I predict that it will be a matter of only days before these cute little Chinese characters will be seen pleasuring each other in various uninhibited ways, on hundreds of sites, courtesy of a small army of animation-savvy hackers and pranksters.