Category Archives: Current Events

Mass Incarceration **Update**

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Mass incarceration is a growing topic of debate and I’ve recently posted a book review on the topic. This is an important political topic, so I’d like to share a related analysis from one of my favorite sites: StraightDope.com. Here’s a sample:

  • “According to the World Prison Population List, the United States has… 716 prisoners per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world.
  • “At the federal level… more than half the convicts are in because of drugs. However, at the state level — and the states account for 87 percent of U.S. prisoners — drug crimes account for only 16 percent of those doing time. The majority of state prisoners — 54 percent as of 2012 — were convicted of violent crimes, 19 percent of property crimes, and the remainder everything else (e.g., drunk driving).
  • “Do stiffer drug penalties single out black people? The numbers say no. Of state prisoners, 14 percent of whites are in for drugs, 15 percent of Hispanics, and 16 percent of blacks — no big diff.
  • “Whites constitute 80 percent of the U.S. population and 32 percent of imprisoned violent criminals. For Hispanics, it’s 17 percent and 23 percent; for black people, 13 percent and 41 percent.
  • “The appallingly high number of U.S. prisoners… resulted from get-tough-on-crime laws that have fallen most heavily on black men.”
  • Please read the full post at StraightDope.com.

The high rate of violent crime convictions probably has a further story to tell, but if any of us hope legalizing pot will empty US prisons, we’re not dealing with the total issue.

The Quartet – Founders of the America We Live In

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QuartetJoseph J. Ellis sub-titles his book Orchestrating the Second American Revolution 1783 – 1789.

In 1776, thirteen American colonies won their independence and prepared to go their separate ways, “destined to become a western version of Europe, a constellation of rival political camps and countries.” The Articles of Confederation were a Peace Pact among them, not a national government. Any far-away government was distrusted like the “quasi-paranoid hostility towards… London… [and] described as inherently arbitrary, imperious, and corrupt.” (Distances were hard to overcome back then.)

Ellis sketches biographies and covers pre-Constitution attempts at governance, the Revolutionary War, the dawning Enlightenment, the Great Debate that led to the US Constitution, and the “not-so-vacant” western lands that rendered “the local and state perspective… pathetically provincial.” Ellis provides a lot of detail on the flaws in the Confederation and political machinations that created the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Drawing on “massive,” “recently published” primary sources as well as other scholars; Ellis presents a compact 174 pages (Epub edition) with appropriate notes – fattened by appendices containing the texts of the Articles of Confederation, Constitution of the United States, and The Bill of Rights.

The vast majority of Americans had no interest in an American nation. It was “a small group of prominent leaders, in disregard to popular opinion, [who] carried the American story in a new direction.” Continue reading →

The Battle Flag and History

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Iced Tea with Pitcher

Sweet tea – Southern heritage

I have a friend who hangs a Confederate Battle Flag in his window. He’s not overtly racists as far as I know – I asked him why and he said because of his interest in Southern history. So I asked, why not display the Stars and Bars (which, at the time, was not attracting public controversy.) He didn’t recognize that flag. So much for an interest in Southern history!

Assuming my friend is not a racist – what does the flag mean to him? Rebellion, perhaps? Defiance of “The Man?” Fun, pretty girls, and car chases ala The Dukes of Hazzard? Alas, he only said he didn’t mean to offend.

I grew up in New York State and, to me, the Confederate Battle Flag was a symbol of opposition to civil rights, right beside images of governors blocking the doorways of schools to keep out black students.

Polling results show the flag losing support (though if you ask people questions implying they are racist, I’m not sure you get honest answers.) “In 2011, a Pew poll found that just 9% of the country had a positive reaction to seeing the Confederate flag, while 30% had a negative one, and 58% had neither.” I take that to mean most people hardly recognized the flag.

“When we recall our history, and especially when we bring that memory into the political arena, we are more often in the realm of myth than empirical fact — though most of our political and historical myths aren’t simply falsehoods; they include facts, but those facts are always wrapped in imaginative, symbolic narratives that dictate how we interpret the facts.” commondreams.org Continue reading →

Swastika – Symbol Beyond Redemption

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swastikaRecent debate over the Confederate Battle Flag led me to dig out a book I read years ago about another symbol: The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? by Steven Heller.

With widely spaced lines and half-page margins filled with illustrations, Heller’s slender volume is more a long essay than a book, so this is a short review. He asks, “Can the same image that represents the Holocaust ever represent anything else?”

Before Aryan mystics appropriated the swastika and Hitler adopted it for the Nazis, it was a good-luck symbol and decorative motif appearing all over the world. The swastika became so strongly associated with the Nazis that, during World War II, Native Americans burned tribal textiles with the symbol and Jewish congregations chiseled it out of mosaic floors in synagogues. Americans destroyed thousands of items adorned with swastikas, from Girls’ Club magazines to US Army shoulder patches. Continue reading →

Cancer – Ho Hum

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Your smart phone reminds you – time for the annual test. You buy a capsule of nanoparticles – each one graphene with a tiny magnetic core, biodegradable and harmless, so available over-the-counter. If you’ve lost it since last year, you buy the corresponding wrist band to wear after swallowing the capsule.

Inside your body, the nanoparticles spread out. If they encounter some cancerous cells, they bind to them and mobilize some into your blood stream. Passing by the wrist band, they signal a positive result.

“Well, shoot,” you say. “I’ve got cancer. Better make an appointment – hmmm. I’m meeting friends for lunch on Tuesday. Let’s make it Wednesday.”

You don’t even need to see a doctor. Technicians slide you into a radio-frequency unit, maybe after another nanoparticle dose. Radio waves kill every cancer cell in your body – solid tumor, free-floating metastasized, it doesn’t matter – without damage to healthy cells.

“Better repeat the diagnostic test in a month,” the technician warns.

Yeah, yeah… You tap the new date into your phone and go merrily on your way.

Science fiction? Distant future?

Maybe not.

“This May, [Dr. Steven A. Curley, oncologist] filed protocols with the Italian Ministry of Health to test the radio wave machine on humans diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer. Pending approval in the fall, human clinical trials will begin in the spring of next year in Naples, Italy.”

The initial studies are aimed at proving the treatment is safe for humans. Success will mean trials to find out how effective it is.

Where did this idea come from? John Kanzius was a retired radio engineer, amateur radio operator, and dying of leukemia. Sick from chemotherapy, he became a citizen scientist, studied the latest cancer research, developed a radiofrequency-based concept to kill cancer cells without invasive surgery or chemotherapy, demonstrated the technique on hot dogs in his basement shop, dogged oncologists until he teamed up with Dr. Curley, and – well – read the story at newsweek.com. (Note how different it is from inventors of perpetual motion machines or pills to turn water into gasoline, who claim persecution.) Continue reading →

GMOs Revisited – Still Look Fine to Me

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tomato.svg.medProducts certified by Non GMO Project (by a private entity – proving the government is not the only source of such information) nearly tripled last year, and Whole Foods may require GMOs to be labeled in their stores, while Trader Joe’s and Chipotle have “sworn off”

GMOs, according to slate.com. But my opinion, expressed in previous posts about GMOs, has not changed. I see opposition to GMOs as increasingly irrational.

While philosophical concerns may appeal to some, fear of health effects seems to be the primary motivation for avoiding GMO foods. I have noticed no one worries about GMOs that manufacture medications.

I still find no compelling scientific evidence that GMOs are more dangerous than conventional foods.

Slate says “it’s true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It’s full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and lies… [Activists] defend drugs, pesticides, and non-GMO crops that are loaded with the same proteins [as the GMOs they condemn].” That’s a pretty strong statement.

The article goes on to discuss a few anti-GMO campaigns in detail, concluding that “the stories of papaya, Bt, and Golden Rice demonstrate, in several ways, that [health] concerns are unfounded.” If you’re worried I encourage you to read the article for yourself.

Slate also discusses pesticide resistance, which is a legitimate concern. Evolution doesn’t care where environmental factors come from, and weeds could become Roundup resistant. Shifting to crops that are naturally herbicide resistant also contributes to the future problem. A wise farmer will look beyond this year’s crop.

Slate also covered the super tomato: “Tomato lovers, rejoice, for science has achieved the impossible: the perfect supermarket tomato. The Garden Gem won’t bruise during shipping, it resists many of the major diseases that regularly decimate tomato crops… the Garden Gem is very different from every other supermarket tomato: flavor. It actually has it. Lots.”

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? If your own garden tomatoes are suffering from blossom rot, like mine this year, this could be the answer. But the tomato industry (yes, apparently there is such a thing) has said “no” in what Slate calls “incomprehensible dysfunction in the tomato market.” Garden Gem would cost more, and the tomato industry does not believe consumers will pay more because they just won’t believe a supermarket tomato will taste better.

I bet they’d be cheaper than my garden-grown! (Dip into The 64 Dollar Tomato for a story crazier than mine.)

Our previous GMO posts are here.