One method that intelligent design advocates use to weaken the case for evolution is to suggest that science itself is a religion, and anyone who refuses to examine critiques to evolution is just as dogmatic as anyone who refuses to examine critiques to religion. The underlying assumptions of this argument are based on either an ignorant misunderstanding of science or a malicious misrepresentation of it.

Syndicated columnist Paul Campos, appearing in the Dec. 29 issue of the Lake County News-Herald, makes the claim that science is just as based in faith as religion is. "A sure sign that a belief system has triumphed over its opponents is that it stops thinking of itself as a belief system at all. Instead it becomes 'what every rational person knows to be the case,' or 'simple common sense,' or, more concisely still, 'the truth.'" Campos' suggestion in this opening paragraph is that scientists belief that they are espousing "the truth." As any scientist knows, this statement is a straw man that is patently false. No scientist would ever claim that he or she is espousing "the truth." Only non-scientists would assume that scientists think this. A scientist creates a conclusion based upon the observed data.

Campos misunderstands science and religion. As I have written before in this space, science and religion operate on two mutually exclusive epistemological systems. Science operates on reason, the eighteenth-century epistemology which holds that "truth" is anything that can be empirically proven and supported by logic. What is "true" in the reason system is what can be comprehended by the senses and the mind.

Religion operates on faith, which is necessarily the opposite of reason. Faith precludes the existence of empirical data to support a claim, and in order for a person to believe in a religion, that person must believe in it despite the lack of empirical data. Faith and reason are two different epistemological systems, and it is disingenuous at best to try and evaluate a field of study that uses one system in terms of the other system.

In other words: religion cannot be supported by science, because religion precludes the existence of observable data. You must believe in a religion even though there are no observable data. Likewise, science cannot be proven by faith because its system of epistemology assumes that a dearth of observable data means that a claim is not true.

To use a cliché, you can't compare apples and oranges, which is what intelligent design advocates would like to do. And, by the way, it is only intelligent design advocates who are framing the debate this way. No scientist is suggesting that religion is wrong because it is based in supernatural, unprovable (through reason) evidence. Scientists understand their system better than that and they know that religion is unprovable through a scientific study. And scientists are secure enough in their own epistemology that they don't have to attack other epistemologies.

The problem here is that the official epistemology of the U.S. government is reason, not faith. I refer you to the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Using faith as an epistemological system is the same as respecting an establishment of religion; indeed, it is respecting religion itself, since using faith as an epistemology would mean that Congress supports religion's method of understanding the universe.

As such, Congress cannot endorse intelligent design, which is not only unscientific, but as Judge Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania notes, "intelligent design" is another way for creationists to get their religious, faith-based theory into a public school, where the official epistemology is reason and the official method of understanding the universe is science.

And while Paul Campos does not misrepresent the definition of a "theory," plenty of other intelligent design advocates do. It is a popular practice to claim that scientists claim that a "theory" is a universal truth, when in fact (according to the much more astute ID advocates) they are misrepresenting themselves, and a "theory" is actually not a universal truth. Again, this is the very definition of a straw man. No scientist would ever claim that a "theory" is an absolute truth. A theory means only that the conclusions of the theory have been repeatedly supported by empirical data. It is true that evolution is "just a theory," but this is not a pejorative statement; rather, it means that conclusions of the theory of evolution have been repeatedly supported by empirical data.

Intelligent design is not a theory; indeed, it has no place anywhere in the nomenclature of science because it is not science. Intelligent design predicates itself on an explanation of the unknowable. Its primary tenet is that biological life-forms are so complex that they could not have been formed by so random a process as evolution. There must, therefore, have been a "designer," an anthropomorphic entity who consciously created biological life.

There are four problems with this notion, in terms of a scientific theory. One, it is based on the logical fallacy called "argument from ignorance" (also "argument by lack of imagination") in which an idea is necessarily wrong because the arguer can't explain it or because it hasn’t been proven to the arguer's satisfaction. The fact that natural selection seems far-fetched to some people does not automatically discount it as impossible.

The second problem with "intelligent design" is that it doesn't predict anything. It is a "negative" theory in the sense that it disproves a competing theory but does not advance any new conclusions of its own beyond the existence of a "designer." A theory must be able to predict what will happen under similar circumstances. Dmitri Mendeleev, for example, theorized that elements with similar atomic weights would have similar properties, and using this theory, he correctly predicted the properties of germanium, gallium, and scandium based on the properties of silicon, aluminum, and boron. Without the ability to predict the future, a theory is useless.

The third problem with "intelligent design" is that it cannot be disproved. Karl Popper, an Austrian philosopher, famously said that theories could be falsified or disproved. If you can't disprove it, then it's not a theory. "Intelligent design" cannot be disproved using reason; there is no way to disprove the notion that a supernatural force consciously created biological life. Again, science precludes the existence of the supernatural or the use of the supernatural as an explanation for natural phenomena.

The fourth problem with "intelligent design" is that it does not attempt to explain who the designer is. Ostensibly, since intelligent design is an evangelical Protestant movement, the designer is the Christian God, but since intelligent design is asymptotic to religion, it doesn't mention specifically who the designer is.

But the point of ID is not to forward anything resembling a scientific theory. ID proponents know that it is not a scientific theory. ID is a public relations initiative designed to sow doubt in the minds of those who are not entirely convinced of evolution or who believe that the United States has entered an age that is too secular. The Discovery Institute's notorious Wedge Document makes quite clear that the purpose of ID is not to advance a competing scientific theory to natural selection, but rather to "function as a 'wedge' that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points." The "wedge" in this case is intelligent design, and the "trunk" is "scientific materialism." The ultimate goal of the Discovery Institute is not to advance the cause of science but to "defeat materialism," which it sees as a "devastating" force. Its first tactic is to defeat "scientific materialism," which is the epistemology of reason over faith, science over religion. Once it can make Americans doubt science, they will begin to doubt reason and soon return to faith as their preferred epistemological system, with religion as their way of understanding the universe.

Scientists are not threatened by religion. They feel that religion and science can co-exist because they occupy two different spheres of knowledge. They know that they are not asserting absolute knowledge, just knowledge within their sphere. It just so happens that science is the official method of knowledge of the United States government.

Intelligent design is not, and should not regarded as, anything resembling a scientific theory. Do not be fooled: it is a marketing technique that is part of a larger reaction to American secularism and an attempt to return the United States to what it sees as the "good old days" of religion and an epistemology grounded in faith.

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Wired magazine writer Kevin Poulsen lists the best and worst tech moments of 2005.

With tech stuff taken care of, let's look at what happened politically in 2005. The year began George W. Bush's second term. In his inaugural address, he said that he had a "mandate" and "political capital" that he intended to spend in the coming four years. After his Social Security initiative failed to gain support, a lot of things started to go wrong. In June, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement, raising the eyebrows of everyone in Washington. Who would Bush pick? The Democrats wanted a moderate. Bush's base -- consisting of the religious right and corporate fatcats -- wanted a nominee who would overturn Roe v. Wade if the opportunity asserted itself. Bush chose D.C. Circuit Court judge John Roberts.

Pope died. That happened before June, but I didn't want to split up my paragraphs. After a few days of voting, Cardinal John Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. Pope "Eggs" Benedict has cut down on liberalism within the church, mandating that no priest can be homosexual, not even if he's celibate. Unexpectedly, he has ordered an increase in the church's supply of hollandaise sauce.

But it was about to get worse. In July, bereaved mother Cindy Sheehan went to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex. with a few family members in order to ask the president for what noble cause her son died last year. The camp-out turned into a magnet for war protestors as they came by the busload to Crawford to protest the war in Iraq. Bush and his Republican Spin Machine tried their best to smear Cindy Sheehan, portraying her as a puppet of far-left personalities George Soros and Michael Moore. Ultimately, though, the American people didn't buy either Sheehan's or Bush's arguments. Instead, they fell asleep, as is the custom of their people.

John Roberts was just about to begin his hearings as a new Supreme Court justice when Chief Justice William Rehnquist died, prompting Bush to elevate his nomination to the chief justice nomination. Great idea, but that meant that poor Sandra Day O'Connor had to remain on the bench.

Then, in September, a hurricane blew away the "political capital" that Bush claimed to have earned in the 2004 election. Hurricane Katrina attacked the Gulf of Mexico, leaving typical hurricane stuff in its wake. But it also left the city of New Orleans devastated by floods and revealed just how callous and unprepared our government was for such a disaster. Hurricane Katrina was, by all accounts, a complete foul-up that exposed many interesting facts, one of them that the nation's director of federal emergency management had absolutely, 100% no experience managing disasters and got the job because he was roommates in college with the old FEMA director. Oops.

And suddenly, the newsmedia that had been castrated since Sept. 11 started to ask questions again, to wonder why such a thing could happen, how such people could be employed, and why the government didn't do anything sooner or better. Down side: Anderson Cooper wasn't helping anyone by driving around in a boat and lamenting the devastation.

Hurricane Katrina also caused a spike in the price of oil ... or did it? Complex charts and graphs reveal that the price of oil was already on the rise before Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Gulf region's oil production. How about that? Sounds like we need to call the CEOs of the major American oil companies into a Senate hearing for some answers! Unfortunately for America, Alaskan senator Ted Stevens was in charge of the hearing. He could barely mask the fact that he was in bed with all of those CEOs as he decided that they wouldn't be required to testify under oath, despite motions from other committee members requesting it.

Following John Roberts' confirmation, Bush forwarded a new nominee for the O'Connor position: White House Counsel Harriet Miers. Oh, man, if he wanted to prove that he employed competent people, this was not the way to go about it. Miers angered Democrats who said that she wasn't qualified; she also angered Republicans who wanted a nominee that they could be absolutely sure would overturn Roe v. Wade. After a month of haranguing, Miers "withdrew herself" from the nomination after closed-door meetings between Bush and Senate Republicans revealed that there wasn't enough support in the Senate to get her out of committee.

U.S. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald indicted Vice Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame case. Woo!

Then, Bush went to Latin America. That went well, if "well" means dozens of anti-American protests. The president didn't do himself any favors by taking a pot-shot at Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who is also president of the Central and South American Branch of the Anti-Bush Fan Club. Turns out that the war in Iraq -- in addition to making the world safer -- has also made America less popular in the eyes of ... well, everyone who doesn't spend the day watching NASCAR. And that happens to be most of the rest of the world.

In Califoahneeah, Gov. John Kimball tried to get voters to approve measures that were bad for them. Curiously, they decided they didn't want to enact measures that were bad for them. Arnold Schwarzenegger remains at large.

The Washington Post revealed the existence of secret CIA prisons around the world, prompting the Bush administration to reply, "What prisons?" At the same time, it was revealed that Vice President "Darth" Cheney opposed John McCain-sponsored anti-torture legislation. The administration's usual tactics of ignoring the problem and smearing the critics wouldn't work this time; the legislation had the support of 90 of the Senate's 100 members. Bush, true to form, didn't seem to understand the conflict inherent in the statement "We do not torture" and the action of opposing anti-torture legislation. Bush's excuse was that they didn't want to rule out any tactics in the War on Terr'. Hell, as long as we're not ruling out tactics, let's put nuclear weapons on the table! What's the matter, Bush? Are you yella?

And, most recently, it was revealed that the NSA has been conducting semi-legal wiretaps within the U.S., all in the name of the War on Terr'.

Now, let's assemble a list of SEDHE Villains of the Year:

• George W. Bush, U.S. President
• Dick Cheney, U.S. Vice President
• Karl Rove, White House Deputy Chief of Staff (for now)
• Bill O'Reilly, Fox News Political Pundit
• Michael "Brownie" Brown, Disgraced Former FEMA Director
• Harriet Miers, Semi-Competent White House Counsel
• Ted Stevens, R-AK

All of these people have done something to really make me mad, whether it is placing the nation in more danger than it was in before, being incompetent, or generally being a jerk. I don't need to justify anything; it's my blog.

Oh, and guess what? Turns out that one of the craftsmen of this NSA wiretapping thing is a Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley) law professor, John Yoo. Man, what a great place to hide! Put that guy on my list, too.

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Scott clued me in to an amazing offer between hamburger franchise Wendy's and discount airline AirTran Airways.

Every time you buy a combo meal, a 20 oz. drink, or a 32 oz. drink, you get 1/4 of a credit toward either a one-way or round-trip coach ticket on AirTran Airways. 8 credits (32 purchases) will get one a one-way ticket; 16 credits (64 purchases) earns you a round-trip ticket.

Taxes of $28 (not including $3.30 per takeoff and landing) are not included. And there are blackout dates. And you have to be a member of AirTran's A+ Rewards frequent flyer program, but that's free to join.

Also, AirTran flies only to select cities. In Ohio, for example, AirTran flies to Dayton International Airport and Akron/Canton Regional Airport. If you want to come visit me in San Francisco, then you're in luck! AirTran does fly to San Francisco International Airport.

Oh, and hurry! The promotion ends Dec. 31!

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Boing Boing reports that the Oakland Tribune in Oakland, Calif., dismayed over the government's gross abuses of civil liberties, is collecting new or used copies of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. When the paper has collected 537 copies, it will send them to every U.S. senator and representative, as well as the president and vice president. Send your used or new copy of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to:

Oakland Tribune
401 13th St.
Oakland CA 94612

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In the United States, Great Britain, and other Christian places, it's Christmas time. In the United States, some African-Americans are preparing to celebrate Kwanzaa, a holiday invented out of whole cloth in 1966 by Dr. Maulana Karenga, then a professor at the University of California at Long Beach.

Tomorrow, in Great Britain, they will celebrate Boxing Day, historically the day when the servants got Christmas gifts from their employers (and also, apparently the feast day of St. Stephen).

Hannukah begins at sundown tonight. It's actually a minor Jewish holiday, but Christians made it into a major holiday because they figured that since Hanukkah coincided with their (Christians') major holiday, it must be major, too.

Ramadan has no relation to the month of December or to anything related to Christmas. The Islamic calendar is based on the moon, and as such, Ramadan happens at different times in different years by the Gregorian calendar. This year, for example, Ramadan began the first week of October.

George W. Bush, what have you gotten the United States for Christmas? Oh, look! It's a New York Times story about how the NSA harvested even more information than we could have imagined from their semi-legal wiretaps.

Merry Christmas!

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As we enter the last week before Christmas (has it been that soon? It seems like I got to California just yesterday, though it was Nov. 28), it's time we thought about what Christmas really means. If you're Bill O'Reilly, it's about forwarding the old straw man that the ACLU hates Christmas and religion and would like to see both destroyed in a massive, sodomistic fireball.

Or something like that.

The first major Christmas case the Supreme Court heard was Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984). In that case, respondents Donnelly, et al. objected to a Christmas display put up by the city of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The court ruled that a display that contained "a Santa Claus house, a Christmas tree, and a banner that reads 'SEASONS GREETINGS'" in addition to a Nativity scene was not in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Chief Justice Burger, author of the majority opinion in this 5-4 case, wrote that while a "wall" is a helpful metaphor for the boundary between church and state, the metaphor is not so simple in practice. "The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any," he wrote. (Chief Justice Rehnquist would later write about the "play in the joints" between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in Locke v. Davey [02-1315]. In that case, he noted that "[t]here are some state actions permitted by the Establishment Clause but not required by the Free Exercise Clause." But that's a different issue.)

The point of Lynch was that a Nativity scene (also called a creche), placed in the context of celebrating the Christmas season -- while at the same time acknowledging other religions and secular traditions, did not "impermissibly [advance] religion or [create] an excessive entanglement between religion and government." But a problem with Lynch was that Burger relied heavily on the old "our country was founded on Christian principles" and "it's a Western tradition" arguments favored by Justice Scalia. (Recall that a thousand-year-old "western tradition" is permissible as justification for a ruling, but contemporary rulings from other courts around the world about the same issue are not.)

For five years, the world was safe from the Ghost of ACLU Present. But then, in 1989, the Supreme Court heard a case called Allegheny County v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989) in which the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of two holiday displays in downtown Pittsburgh. The Supreme Court again found that the creche, a menorah, and an angel bearing the banner "Gloria Excelsis Deo" (Glory to God in the highest) were not in violation of the Establishment Clause. The case was not a fun and easy one. It was affirmed in part and reversed in part, which means that the justices were horribly split.

In the 1980s, then, it seems that the Supreme Court entered the ring with the pre-conceived notion that Christmas had to be saved, and found ways in which they could save Christmas. But then again, Christmas is also pretty secular. You can see how the justices might be split on this issue.

There are other cases dealing with Christmas, but I don't want to spend seventy hours researching them today, so I'll make this a multi-volume entry.

In Mark News, I took the CBEST (California Basic Educational Skills Test), the test that all people who want to be teachers in California or Oregon must take. It was incredibly easy, and yet there are some people who fret about it a lot. The point of taking the CBEST was to get an emergency teaching (substitute-teaching) credential and be a sub for a while in either Oakland or Berkeley. I recently received my "un-official" score results in the email, indicating that I had passed. Unfortunately, I can't apply for any sub jobs yet because, while I may have unofficially passed the CBEST, I haven't "officially" passed it yet, and I don't have the emergency teaching credential yet.

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The New York Times' revelation last week that President George W. Bush signed an order in 2002 authorizing the NSA to conduct domestic surveillance without warrants was mind-blowing. But did the administration violate federal law?

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 outlines what the government's powers are and are not when it comes to conducting electronic surveillance operations. The USA PATRIOT Act made some changes to FISA, but the changes were, in my opinion, not very substantial. The USA PATRIOT Act brought FISA up-to-date with the times; for example, it re-defined "wire communication" to "cable" communications systems and packet-switched networks (i.e., the Internet). The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is known to history as 50 U.S.C. 1801, et seq.

Curiously, there should be no need to enact secret orders to spy on people. FISA has a provision for authorizing warrants for foreign intelligence surveillance: the foreign intelligence surveillance court. This is a special court composed of 11 U.S. District Court judges (3 of whom must live within 20 miles of Washington, D.C.) who have the authority to hear applications for electronic surveillance. If any one of these 11 judges rejects an application for foreign intelligence surveillance, then the decision gets reviewed by a panel of three other foreign intelligence surveillance court judges. If this panel rejects an application, then the decision can be appealed, under seal, to the U.S. Supreme Court. Since its inception in 1978, the foreign intelligence surveillance court has rejected only 4 applications for electronic surveillance, and those were all in 2003. (The court does, however, modify applications for various reasons.) The foreign intelligence surveillance court is, essentially, a rubber stamp.

And yet, the Bush administration felt that even this rubber-stamp authority was too restrictive for the activities it wanted to engage in. When an administration is upset that a secret order has become public knowledge, that's when we should be concerned. The administration didn't want the American people to know that the NSA was conducting surveillance on domestic targets, and that should be cause for concern. Once our government actively tries to hide things from us, we become more like all those oppressive dictatorships we claim to hate.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is probably the least-public of the three U.S. intelligence agencies, the other two being the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The agency was founded in 1952 by an executive order of President Truman. Its function is to monitor domestic communications, especially government communications, and collect and analyze foreign communications. It is especially concerned with cryptography. The NSA's charter prohibits it from conducting domestic surveillance. (For more information, watch the movie Sneakers.)

Did the president break the law? 50 U.S.C. 1802(a) allows the president, via the Attorney General, to "authorize electronic surveillance without a court order" if and only if the targets of such surveillance are exclusively "foreign powers." As defined in 50 U.S.C. 1801(a), a foreign power can be a foreign country, an agent of a foreign country, or "a group engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor." I went into this analysis believing that the president broke the law, but after reading this stuff, it's pretty nebulous. The definitions of "foreign power" have been so watered down that if the government can prove that it was conducting surveillance on domestic members of an international terrorist group, then its activities would be legal. This is not to say, of course, that Bush's activities are right -- I think they're wrong -- but whether or not they're within the boundaries of the law is a different issue. Fortunately, this information was revealed at precisely the time that the Senate is debating whether or not to renew particular elements of the USA PATRIOT Act. Currently, the debates are stalled and it doesn't look like the Act's provisions will be renewed before they sunset at the end of the year, since the Senate will soon take a Christmas recess.

After the revelations came to light last week, Bush was unapologetic and brazen as he declared that, yes, he had ordered such surveillance to be conducted, and such surveillance would continue. So, the president will continue to spy on Americans without warrants and without oversight. We just have to trust that he won't abuse his power. Man, what a relief!

We also learned last week that the FBI has been conducting surveillance of activist groups "in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief". Forty years ago, activist groups were investigated for having even the mildest of communist slants. Now, activist groups are being investigated for having anti-war or pro-peace slants. Oh, and they're still being investigated for having communist slants. You know what they say: the more things change, the more every red-necked American betrayed his country by voting for a president based on his ability to keep the gays away.

But there's still hope. Just today, NYT reported that the NSA domestic spying program captured purely domestic communications, and that is 100% pure illegal. FISA was enacted precisely to prevent the domestic surveillance abuse that happened during the Vietnam War, when J. Edgar Hoover's FBI conducted surveillance on anti-war groups just for the hell of it. "Well, it's Thursday. Time to infiltrate the Black Panthers. Then we'll go to lunch."

And with Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay being indicted and Ralph Reed and Bill "I can diagnose a patient from the Senate floor and then later lie through my teeth by saying that I did no such thing" Frist under investigation for insider trading, things are looking good for Americans who don't want to be involved in a pointless war and who care about their civil liberties. But, wait! That's not all the Republicans have done! Doug Bandow, a scholar at the Cato Institute, a conservative think-tank, resigned last Friday after it was revealed that he, too, took money from Abramoff in exchange for columns that were favorable to Abramoff clients. Ah, it feels good to be on the side of justice!

Posted by Mark at 1:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

CNN reports that a liberal, activist, baby-killing, greenhouse gas-hating, America-hating, terrorist-loving, Happy Holidays-saying, Christmas-hating judge has ruled "intelligent design" unconstitutional.

Oh, and he's probably a pedophile.

The case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, which the ACLU has been vehemently fighting all year, ended yesterday when Judge John E. Jones, III, of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, ruled that the Dover Area School Board was in violation of the First Amendment in its use of "intelligent design" in biology classrooms. Jones also said that several school board members lied in an attempt to cover their religious motivations.

In the 139-page opinion (!), Jones said, "We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom." Jones is unimpressed by claims from ID advocates who say that ID is a scientific theory. In going through the history of creationism in schools, Jones notes, "[R]eligious opponents of evolution began cloaking religious beliefs in scientific sounding language and then mandating that schools teach the resulting 'creation science' or 'scientific creationism' as an alternative to evolution." Intelligent design, he says, is just another one of those attempts to circumvent the First Amendment by cloaking a religioius philosophy in the language of science.

The opinion, of course, will be appealed to the U.S. Circuit Court for the Third Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

Posted by Mark at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Air travel is a funny thing. Every element of air transportation is dependent upon the element that came before it. If there's bad weather in Chicago, then the plane that is supposed to leave Chicago is late departing. This means that the next flight that that plane makes from, say, San Francisco is late. And so on down the line.

For the past three days, San Francisco has had horrendous, terrible weather. By this I mean that it's been raining. The people of the Bay Area don't know how to deal with forty-degree temperatures, much less rain. When it's forty-five degrees outside, they put on winter coats and scarves. Jared and I walk around with our sleeves rolled up. When there's rain, everyone is late, because no one knows how to handle driving in rain. If it rained in Los Angeles, everyone would die.

As Gilda Radner's Saturday Night Live character Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, "It's always something." Last year, you'll recall that my Christmas travel was delayed thanks to a snowstorm in Cleveland and a shortage of de-icing fluid at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport (CLE). This year, I thankfully have to wait only an hour instead of twelve hours.

The "bad weather conditions" (i.e. rain) in San Francisco has made the incoming flight late, which means that I'll leave at 12:35 instead of 11:40. The only forseeable problem here is that I might not make my connection at Chicago-O'Hare (ORD). There's a line of people in front of me -- a very long line -- all of whom are trying to work their connections out with the SFO agent, even though there's very little a SFO gate agent can do for connections at ORD.

Moments after I wrote the last paragraph, my name got called. They rounded up the half-dozen people on the flight who had tight connections in Chicago and sent them to another gate. So it looks like I won't be late to anywhere; I'll be just on time.

On this flight to Chicago, I was reminded what midwestern girls look like. Midwestern girls have skin that's too tan (because they go to tanning salons) and bleached-blonde hair. This in and of itself isn't unusual, but it's the middle of winter. They desperately want to look like their idols, girls from Beverly Hills. (Note, of course, that not all midwestern girls look like this; it's just a hurtful stereotype.)

It's actually cold in Chicago. Not California cold, but real cold. The kind that requires a real coat. After waiting for an hour in Chicago, I got on a plane to Cleveland, where it is about ten degrees. I'm home!

Posted by Mark at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guess what? This time it wasn't! The New York Times, which can't be trusted because it's at the forefront of the Liberal Media Conspiracy, reported today that the NSA has been spying on U.S. citizens for the last three years.

President Bush, who has been definitively caught engaging in sneaky, underhanded activities, signed an order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to monitor "international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible 'dirty numbers' linked to Al Qaeda."

And now, the administration wants to renew the USA PATRIOT Act, asking us to trust that it won't abuse those powers. The USA PATRIOT Act is, for some reason, adored by conservatives because ... they want to spy on people? What happened to the Republican party as the party of small government? Unless it's the party of small government for only the Republicans. As for everyone else, their lives will be micro-managed and the intimate details of their personal conversations will be recorded in the name of the War on Terr'.

I feel ill. And so does the head of Richard Nixon, who engaged in similar actions when he was president.

Posted by Mark at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Rumsfeld v. Fair. I have written about this before, but here is a brief synopsis. The Solomon Amendment requires any school receiving federal funding to allow military recruiting on campus. A conglomeration of law schools, FAIR, has objected to this policy on the grounds that it disagrees with the military's anti-gay policy, and forcing the schools to allow military recruiting would be "compelled speech."

SCOTUSblog analyzed the oral arguments and concluded that the Solomon Amendment was probably here to stay. Even the court's more liberal justices joined conservative justices John Roberts and Antonin Scalia in raising an eyebrow at FAIR's opposition to the Solomon Amendment. The other justices "seemed to be troubled by the prospect that a major First Amendment ruling in favor of the law schools would open the way for individuals to resist obeying all kinds of laws -- including federal anti-discrimination laws -- by claiming their refusal to obey was a matter of their beliefs or conscience." Remember: Supreme Court justices must not only consider the impact of a decision on the parties at hand, but also the impact of those decisions on anyone in a similar situation in the future.

We have a situation in which a public organization -- a state-funded university -- is being compelled to do something with which it does not agree. "Compelled speech" is just as heinous a violation of the First Amendment as censorship or anything else the government could do with its power. If the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of the Department of Defense, then it would be saying that compelled speech is okay in the case of state institutions. Or, the court would be saying that it is okay to deny funding to organizations that disagree with a particular government policy or refuse to implement that policy.

Also, the Supreme Court has always viewed money as synonymous with power (cf. McCullouch v. Maryland, in which Chief Justice John Marshall observed that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy," and concluded that since no state body could destroy a federal body, the state of Maryland could not, therefore, levy a tax upon a branch of the Bank of the United States within Maryland), and the withholding of money is synonymous with the withholding of power.

Then again, laws that require states to have a drinking age of 21 are also constitutional. (The federal government withholds highway funds from states with a drinking age of less than 21, thereby creating a de facto national drinking age of 21. A state may disagree with the law, but if it wants its federal highway money, it had better have a drinking age of 21.)

Posted by Mark at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that Mark has allowed me back on the venerable sedhe train, I am going to update all you greedy readers, i.e. matt and maybe scott, on a fascinating and surprisingly undocumented topic, ME. Since Mark won’t tell you about his life, I will tell you about mine, at least briefly. Mostly because I am really really really bored at work right now. Also cuz you care. And I renounce sedhe protocol and refuse to use correct grammarness and capitol letters (sic).

so what does a day in the life of a confused little hippy look like? well, it can be surprisingly mundane. i get up circa 8 (aka 8:40, or 4 hittings-of-the-alarm) and get a small shock as i get my first glimpse of a frail corpse lying next to me in bed. then i realize it’s mark and…i still get a small shock (what does this wonderful intelligent good friend man see in little ol’ me?!). i drive about fifteen minutes from my run down rental house on a park at the foot of the berkeley hills to my work in emeryville, or, as we affectionately know it, pixar-ville (home of pixar, it is also home to chiron). my work days are either 1) spent at the office doing myriad non-job things like writing for y’all and checking out rock climbing info or 2) cruising for hours in a little isuzu truck with a genuine vintage hippy who regales me with his years of labor organizing, blunt comments, and insight into reality that he has gained with the help of… um… various… herbal, fungal, chemical aids. i’ve often entertained the idea of quitting because of days type 1, also the low pay, but stay because of days type 2 and the utter lack of supervision i enjoy. sometime between 3 and 6, i get fed up with work and leave whenever i feel like it. on days type 1, the office days, i am gone to 1-1.5ish hours eating fast food on the shores of the bay, which is minutes away, while listening to, inevitably, air america radio, your show for progessive talk. currently, it being dec 14 so understandably cold and all, it’s in the low 60s, not a cloud in the sky so i see a picnic in the near future, i.e. when i am done writing.

about twice a week, i try to make it rock climbing in the huge berkeley climbing gym. i recently got my own shoes off of craigslist and am now searching for a harness. climbing makes me feel all strong and muscular-y, even if it’s a false since of muscular-y-ness, and i like it almost as much as my other common recreational activity, i.e. smoking, although i find the two mutually exclusive because it’s hard to climb when you have smoky lungs and i certainly don’t feel like climbing after i smoke. once, i climbed this huge rock without any ropes a few months back and smoked at the top. man, getting down was NOT FUN and certainly not safe, so… no more of that. mark joins me in most of the climbing/smoking ventures here mentioned, so the company’s been wonderful since he’s moved (and not updated you about his life, which is going well, i hear).

on thursday nights, we go to needle exchange, mark having jumped on the community work bandwagon, much to my delight (he’s a wonderful person, that mark, btw, also rather cute). and mark and i just started what we hope will become a weekly tradition. after needle exchange, we head to the albatross, one of the coolest bars ever, where there is 25 cent bottomless popcorn bowls and one dollar unlimited darts.

on the weekends, i mostly travel and have gone from local backpacking trips, santa cruz, and the rocky marin beaches to places such as the lost coast, the redwood forests, oregon, olympic national park, seattle, vancouver, big sur, los angeles, and the previously described whirlwind tour o’ the west. sometimes i stick around the bay area and hike or go to the ocean, usually under the influence of something interesting. on my week nights, mon-wed, i go to lots of restaurants, eating my way around the world, as there is everything from ethiopian to nepalese in berkeley, but only one fast food place. i also see lots of "films," i.e. sh1t you can’t see in ohio.

i agonize about whether or not to take the MCATs again. the rebel side of me says NO WAY. the rational side of me realizes that there are only two schools in this area where i want to stay, ucsf and stanford, ranked 1 and 6 respectively, so i better have my sh1t together if i wanna chance at those two. hmmmm.

but mostly i agonize about when i will see the cherubic faces of you, my dear readers. will scott make it here before feb and shipping off to parts unknown??? what’s this i hear about a certain mr. smith weaseling his way out here on the company dime circa jan??? these are the great mysteries in my life.

Posted by Ed at 1:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that I can easily travel to San Francisco, you might think that I'm there all the time. Not so much. Only recently have I been going to the city, for my job(?). I think I've found the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals building. Which brings me to my story.

John Gilmore, you'll recall, is a dot-com millionaire and a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He's currently involved in a legal tiff with the government over his right to travel anonymously. The government says that there is a law on the books that requires passengers to produce identification to travel on airplanes, but the law is so top secret that Gilmore, a U.S. citizen who would like to obey the law, isn't allowed to see it.

Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held an open hearing regarding Gilmore's case -- and I missed it! Scott chided me for not going to the hearing, and I responded, "But I don't have Internet access!" I just got Internet access on Tuesday.

Fortunately, Boing Boing has a link to an audio file of the hearing. Also, for your perusing, papersplease.org has a list of legal documents pertaining to the case, which is now called Gilmore v. Gonzales.

Posted by Mark at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Unless we torture. But we don't -- unless we do. And it turns out that we do. The Associated Press reports that a European investigator found "mounting indications" that the United States held War on Terr' detainees in European countries, but quickly moved them last month when it was revealed that the United States had secret prisons.

But those prisons didn't exist. Unless they did ... which, apparently, they did.

Posted by Mark at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I went in this morning to interview for an office manager position with a non-profit organization called the California Housing Partnership Corporation, which helps other non-profit organizations make affordable, low-income housing available.

While they appear not to be interested in me for full-time office manager skills (although that is apparently still being decided), they hired me immediately as sort of a contract worker for technical support. They want a dependable, dedicated technical support person and were very interested in my IT background. At the end of the interview, they asked if I could start immediately ... as in, would you like to see what IT problems we need to be fixed, and what can you do about it right now? So, instead of being back home at 3:30 PM PST, I'm still at CHPC's office in downtown San Francisco, updating an old iBook and an old eMac to Mac OS 10.4. Later today, I'm going to the Apple Store near Union Square to get a battery for a Titanium PowerBook. They've essentially told me that I just have to submit an invoice to them for the hours I work, and I'll get paid. They threw out $25 an hour as an hourly wage. Of course, I'm still looking for full-time work. But they'll certainly let me take time off around Christmas. My schedule is pretty flexible.

This, however, was the strangest interview I've ever been to; I walk in, and they put me to work immediately! And I got free lunch out of it.

More updates later. The Comcast guy is coming tomorrow to activate us for the Internet, so hopefully once I have an Internet connection I'll be able to put up more information, as well as pictures from Ed's Whirlwind Tour of the West.

Oh, and to Elizabeth and Brian: I'll get your accounts fixed.

Posted by Mark at 4:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

So, apparently people care about what I've been doing? Well, if I haven't replied to your calls, emails, etc. for the last week, don't despair; it's because I've been looking for more permanent housing and a job. I've found the housing, but now I'm working on the job.

Posted by Mark at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)