"War on the MIddle Class"

Lou Dobbs is a joke. Here we have an exceedingly rich white guy pretending to be worried about immigration (I bet his nanny is an illegal) and this supposed "war on the middle class," the title of his book. The middle class in this country could be defined as anyone not poor (making less than $25,000 per year) to $400,000 to $500,000 per year. The fact remains that this broad group runs the country since they consistently vote - after all, no one speaks for the truly poor nor cares about them -- and the rich are too few in number to make a difference until after the election when they buy what they want from our esteemed elected officials. So why this Dobbsian concern for the "middle-class?" Could it be he has plans to run for something?

A recent article by Clive Crook in the Atlantic puts some Dobbs' assumptions in perspective:
1. The so-called stagnation of incomes is belied by a steadily improving quality of life.
2. The so-called rising debt of the middle-class is mostly in mortgages that are supported by increased capital property values. In fact, "40% of middle-income households have no credit card debt at all."
What may become a problem is the impending retirement income problems and health care. But Dobbs doesn't seem to care about them Why would he when he has millions socked away.

Piraha, linguistics, and direct experience

How is how we think connected to our language. This is a question that has always fascinated me, and there is a fascinating article in the April 16th issue of The New Yorker ("The Interpreter" by John Colapinto) that relates the reexamination of Chaomsky's theories of language (the rules of grammar are innate biological constructs.)

An Amazonian tribe, the Piraha, has resisted all attempts from missionaries and others in the outside world to teach some basic concepts (such as numbers larger than three) and knowledge of the past - or future. This small tribe lives only in the present and perceives reality "solely according to what exists within the boundaries of their direct experience." Dan Everett, a brilliant linguist now teaching at I.S.U. who lived with the Piraha for many years, argues their "dedication to empirical reality" explains their lack of interest in art and complete lack of interest in how they came into being -- their tribe has no creation stories. Everett suggests their immediacy of experience extends into their grammar and they state ideas and thoughts as discreet units. The idea that they accept as real only what they observe has made it impossible for them to accept the idea of a supernatural entity.

Why does God always get a pass?

If you were standing next to a drowning child and all you had to do was reach out and pull the child in, but you did nothing, you could be charged with negligent homicide. So why does God get a pass when he/she had the power to divert the tornado just a little bit to avoid Greensburg KS? Did he/she really mean to nail Greensburg? If something good happens we praise God; when something really bad happens, he/she gets a pass. Let's face it, if you treated your children the way God treats his children, you'd be in jail for child abuse. Unless of course, there is no God, in which case everything makes sense.

Biological Weapons

Rats by Robert Sullivan is a fascinating study of rats and their cohabitation with humans. One particularly interesting section was on rats and plague, which, as you may know, is spread to humans by the rat flea. Apparently the Japanese were the first to experiment with the use of plague as a biological weapon during WWII under the direction of General Shiro Ishii. He discovered that the best was to infect a city with plague was to fill clay bombs with infected fleas. An attack was successfully conducted against the Chinese city of Changde. A clue that the outbreak was caused by humans rather than rats was that the rats began dying of plague weeks after the humans, a reverse of the normal situation.

General Ishii also practiced vivisection on live humans. He was never tried for war crimes, apparently having made a deal with the Americans who got copies of his notes and papers which formed the basis for the early American attempts at creating biological weapons. He retired a respected medical man.

The United States began experimenting with biological weapons in the early fifties and tested their weapon distribution methods on unsuspecting Americans. In one case, Navy planes sprayed the eastern Virginia coat with microbes similar to Anthrax but "thought to be harmless," and as late as 1966, soldiers dressed in civilian clothes dropped light bulbs filled with the microbes on the tracks in New York subways in order to measure how the microbes dispersed -- all without the knowledge of the public or Congress.

Stats, the Bible and the Christian Right

Some data to consider. These numbers were compiled by a Catholic priest.

1. There are more than 31,000 verses in the Bible.
2. Not one verse relates to gay marriage.
3. Only two verses could even remotely have anything to do with abortion.
4. Over 5,000 discuss alleviating poverty.
5. The number 1 item of the published Christian Coalition's agenda was preserving the Bush tax cuts.

Maybe the Christian right needs to reorient its priorities.