I Blame Global Warming for Illegal Mexican Immigration

The National Parks Services of both the United States and Canada are in the process of organizing migration corridors in response to climate change, which makes perfect sense. As localized climates change by seemingly small magnitudes - as small as fractions of a degree - the geographic ranges of flowers, trees, animals and even rivers and lakes will change with them. So migration corridors have been set up for bighorn sheep herds, porcupine caribou herds, wild bison, all sorts of raptors, etc. etc.

In fact, it only takes one degree to drastically affect an area's biota. Colder species move out, warmer species move in. Currents in rivers where the water is warmer or cooler by as little as one or two degrees make for entirely separate, and seemingly incompatible, ecosystems living next to each other.

It makes sense, then, that National Parks are cooperating across borders to ensure the safe travel of animals from one location to a settlement in another. Could the current American emphasis on amnesty be another one of these cooperative programs?

We spent a lot of time on the important and sensitive issue of migration. [...] I say important because a good migration law will help both economies and will help the security of both countries.

-- Pres. Bush, March 14, 2007, in Merida, Mexico.

Of course! The U.S. Government is only trying to ensure the survival of a threatened herd: the Mexican Wage Laborer. Through cooperation with the Mexican Government and local law enforcement, the U.S. has managed to establish a safe and inviting refuge for this threatened population as it flees rising temperatures in the South.

A Community to Respect

This is the South Korean response to the VT shootings a few days ago.

I am rarely moved by such pictures, but the sincerity of the men holding the banner is so real, so poignant.

(Photo credit Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Ahh, Paleocons

We need them, now more than ever:

When Sandra Day O'Connor was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1981, some Religious Right leaders suspected she might be too moderate on abortion and other social concerns. Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell told the news media that "every good Christian should be concerned."

Replied Goldwater, "Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass."

I'm Surrounded by Idiots

From a 2004 CBS News Poll, a 2004 Gallup poll, and a Gallup poll of U.S. teenagers.

81% of U.S. teenagers think that God controlled or influenced the origin of humans. (Gallup)

65% of Americans think that we should teach both creationism and evolution in schools. (CBS)

55% believe that “God created humans in present form.” (CBS)

45% believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old. (Gallup)

37% think that we should teach just creationism in schools, including 60% of evangelical Christians. (CBS)

36% believe in telepathy.

35% say that evolution is well supported by the evidence. (Gallup)

35% say that evolution is not well supported by the evidence. (Gallup)

25% believe in astrology.

25% think the sun goes around the Earth.

13% think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

Only 13% of Americans accept the standard scientific account of evolution, without a god’s involvement. (CBS)

Thomas Jefferson

It's his birthday today, worth celebrating for many reasons. While he favored an agrarian society (where Hamilton was busy founding a national banking infrastructure), his views on liberty were absolute: liberty is a natural right, and above all else, it is right. From Christopher Hitchens's "Thomas Jefferson: Author of America"

He [Jefferson] trenchantly restated the view that the American Revolution was founded on universal principles, and was thus emphatically for [its] export. He laid renewed stress on the importance of science and innovation as the spur of the Enlightenment, and scornfully contrasted this with mere faith and credulity.

In his last letter, dated June 24, 1826, to express his regrets at not being able to attend the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, words that are stirring still, words that need to resonate to this day:

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

Conviction with purpose, that is what is lacking in contemporary politics. Egoes swaggering about, seeking career advancement and power annexation, often through race-baiting or the language of class warfare. Jefferson was a man who had a cause worth fighting for, moreso than any after him. Fight for it, he did, and we've been enjoying his success ever since. Abraham Lincoln said of him, in 1859:

All honor to Jefferson: to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.

To that, Jefferson had already added, in 1791:

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

Happy birthday, Tom.

I Can Forgive Seven Pounds Overweight...

Hell, I can't even tell if someone has gained ten pounds over time... I never have, and I think only women and men in the fashion industry can tell that small of an increase/decrease, because they're obsessed with weight. My obsession with weight runs the other direction, though. I notice when people are, say, 60lbs overweight.

It occurred to me in early 2005. I was standing in the hot dog line at the Jacksonville, FL Sam's Club, when I noticed something horrifying: How many adults within eyeshot were Lipitor candidates? The answer from looking at them: all of them. Yes, it was Sam's Club. Yes, it was Florida - you slack-jawed yuppie Blue state class warriors can shut up now. But, I shopped at Sam's Club (then), and I lived in Florida (then), and I'm nowhere near overweight. In fact, my BMI is 17, which is apparently underweight. I ate a decent diet, bought from that very same Sam's Club, and consumed it in the very same state. Just a few people - sure, could be genetic. But all of them? Our gene pool can't be that tiny, or shallow.

The fact of the matter is that it didn't matter where they shopped, or where they lived - none of that changed the fact that these people were fat, and it was of their own doing. You eat deep-fried potatoes, you get fat. You eat cheese and mayo with every meal, you get fat. You go back for seconds of all of the above, you get fat. You eat too damn much, you get fat.

I mention this because a story was just released that scientists have found a gene which can predispose one to obesity. Not, gross obesity, mind you, but 2.6 to 7.0 pounds. That's it. 2.6 to seven pounds cannot account for this:

Fat.

That is not seven pounds. That's a beer belly. That guy's fat because he drinks too much beer.

The story tells us that if a specimen has one copy of a particular variant of the FTO gene (called the "fatso" gene), then they are predisposed to gaining up to 2.6 lbs. Two copies: 7.0 lbs. And there are asymptotically fewer numbers of three or four variants. But that's not what's going to get publicized, or acknowledged.

"I'm fat because of my genes," is what is reinforced through this finding. No doubt Oprah and the rest of them will jump all over this. "No, you may have gained 2.6 or seven pounds because of your genes, but you're fat because of your behavior."

I'm sure that'll go over.

If you're as overweight as the picture above shows, then you should be embarrassed about how you look. You can't move or think as fast as you should, you consume more expensive calories than you should, aesthetically you're an eyesore, and you're going to die of type 2 diabetes, simply because you eat too much of the wrong stuff, or too much in general.

Except for those 2.6 lbs underneath your neck - those are your genes'.

McCain's Dukakis Moment?

This looks vaguely reminiscent of the incident that sunk Dukakis's campaign, the infamous tank incident: