comments on the ludicrous recent decision by the Supreme Court regarding the denial of the right to DNA testing of crimes by "convicted" people...the quality of mercy is severely strained...jg From the New York Times, June 21, 200, Letters Section

Unfair Denial of DNA Tests

To the Editor:

At its core, due process of law is about fairness, reasonableness and justice, none of which was served by the Supreme Court’s decision to deny a request for new DNA testing to challenge a rape conviction (“Unparalleled and Denied,” editorial, June 19).

The court wrongly deferred to the other branches of government in supporting its decision, as evidence so potentially overwhelming as DNA testing rises well above any technical legal argument the court’s majority used to support its decision. The court should never shrink from its duty to vigorously enforce due process in whatever context it arises.

Moreover, if the criminal justice system failed, as it may have here, not only was the wrong man jailed but also the guilty have remained free.

Bruce Neuman
Sag Harbor, N.Y., June 19, 2009

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To the Editor:

Re “Court Rejects Inmate Right to DNA Tests” (front page, June 19):

The five hard-line conservative justices on the Supreme Court have once again acted to curtail justice in our country. There is no reason, if DNA evidence can exonerate an innocent convict, that the simple test ought not be given.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s argument that such a right would overthrow the established criminal justice system makes absolutely no sense, and only reveals his anxiety to uphold the institution of justice rather than its spirit.

The aim of the justice system is to establish the facts of each case. Therefore, the opposite of Justice Roberts’s argument is true: far from overthrowing the system, DNA testing would affirm it, whereas to refuse to examine pertinent DNA evidence would amount to a miscarriage of justice.

William Youmans
New York, June 18, 2009

Anyone else feel that life became more special once leaving religion? (self.atheism)

submitted by HotMustard

When I was religious, Mormon to be precise, I believed that I was created by God and given a this life as a test and an exercise in free will. As soon as I left the Mormon church I had to deal with the idea of life most likely being a pointless event of random chance with no inherent meaning whatsoever. Coming from a belief system which asserted that there was a loving deity purposefully creating everything that I would spend eternity with in infinite bliss, this was a very jarring idea that didn't immediately sit well with me.

That is, until I began to read authors like Carl Sagan and learn more about the unfathomable awesomeness of the universe. It hit me like a supernova that it doesn't matter if there's someone else watching from above and putting some purpose in my time here. I have a truly priceless gift, no matter how infinitesimally short, of life in this amazing universe where I can think and feel and be. I can connect and share experiences with other people who also enjoy this chance existence. Just because my life didn't come prepackaged with a meaning doesn't mean that it's worthless; I don't believe nature has any inherent purpose and yet I feel that it has a beauty nonpareil, untouchable by anything we can create. I can give my life whatever meaning I want it to have, and no matter what happens in it or what I do with it it will be the greatest thing I can be certain that I will ever truly experience.

Hopefully that doesn't sound too corny, but I know there both people out there who struggle with the idea of life not having a religiously-given meaning and people who feel that atheism has nothing positive to offer, and to them and anyone else I just wanted to take a moment to share that my life has never been as special to me as it was once I left religion.

Michael Jackson!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/arts/music/26jackson.html?ref=global-home

Farah Faucet!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/arts/television/26appraisal.html?ref=global-home

jeez, I feel old and feeble, and it really sucks when the icons of your youth start dying

Next, an article suggesting cultural variations within the same species. Not so long ago, we actually debated whether culture even existed in n-human species, now some whales have blown that oldy moldy idea out their blowhole...jg

Hidden Whale Culture Could Be Critical to Species Survival

Though it sounds at first like a marine biologist’s take on political correctness, respecting the cultural diversity of whales may be essential to saving them.

Scientists are accustomed to thinking of whale populations in terms of genetic diversity. But even when they share the same genes, groups of whales can live in very different ways, raising the possibility that species might be saved even while individual cultures vanish. The tragedy of cultural extinction aside, cultural diversity may sustain the long-term health of Earth’s cetaceans.

“We have no idea what’s going on. As we mess up the world, it goes off in all kinds of weird directions,” said biologist Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. ”The more diversity that’s out there, both genetic and cultural, the more whales can deal with it.”

That whales could even have culture is a relatively new scientific proposition. It was not unil the late 1960s that recordings of humpback whale songs provided a glimpse of the unexpectedly complicated and beautiful world of cetacean communication. The songs don’t appear — for now — to reach the level of language, but they’re clearly a form of learned communicative behavior common across the cetacean realm. And as researchers spend more time with whales, they’re realizing just how much their learned behaviors differ.

One of the best-known example of marine culture comes from killer whales (which, technically, are dolphins, but they’re mentioned in the same breath as whales by biologists). Pods of killer whales have highly varied dialects and ways of life, even while sharing the same habitat — the aquatic equivalent of a neighborhood populated by two different ethnic groups.

Over the last decade, two pods found off North America’s west coast and known to researchers as the Northern and Southern residents became the focus of an international conservation battle. Scientists showed that the pods had different dialects and feeding habits. The Southern Residents, their numbers at a fraction of historical levels, often ranged south through Puget Sound and into waters off the California coast. They’re more threatened than their Northern counterparts by shipping collisions and depleted salmon populations.

In 2004, Canada’s environmental officials declared the Southern Residents both distinct and endangered, but U.S. officials insisted on treating the two pods as a single, genetically similar and unendangered group. The next year, following outrage among scientists and environmentalists, the United States acknowledged the Southern Residents as unique and endangered.

Their decision was promising, but cultural considerations are otherwise absent from U.S. government conservation plans and the agenda of the International Whaling Commission. To some extent, the absence reflects the state of cetacean science. Most species have not been extensively studied at the cultural level. But with pollution, noise, global warming, overfishing and intermittent hunting threatening the recovery of creatures nearly hunted to extinction by the early 20th century, it might be time to expand the focus.

read the rest of the article here...

Who is Anonymous?

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  Anonymous is a cultural phenomenon which began on internet image boards. Many such boards require no registration for posting, and every poster remains anonymous. This format of communication is inherently noisy and chaotic. However, the unprecedented openness made possible by such boards has nurtured the appearance of a unique and persistent culture.
  We are a collection of individuals united by ideas. You likely know Anonymous, although you don't know exactly who we are. We are your brothers and sisters, your parents and children, your superiors and your underlings. We are the concerned citizens standing next to you. Anonymous is everywhere, yet nowhere. Our strength lies in our numbers. Our will as a whole is the combined will of individuals. Our greatest advantage is a knowledge of the fundamentals we share as human beings. This knowledge is a fruit of our anonymity.
  Anonymous has left its mark on society more than once. Previous Anonymous projects have resulted in the closing of the white-supremacist radio show produced by Hal Turner, and the criminal prosecution of Canadian pedophile Chris Forcand. Anonymous has been called a "Cyber Vigilante Group" by The Toronto Sun and Global News, though in reality we are much more than that.
  We are Anonymous. You can be Anonymous, too. Together, we can shape society.

(we have no idea who posted this...)

food for thought...no endorsement implied!
...a book review posted on Amazon.com

Customer Review

1,555 of 1,797 people found the following review helpful: Don't Leave It Lying Around the House, October 23, 2008 By Carl Wong This book should never be left where it could fall into the hands of children. Recurrent themes of bloody violence, murder, racism, incest and rape are dealt with extremely irresponsibly. Horrific events are presented as justified by circumstances and as solutions to petty wrongs. Worse than the depictions in the book are actual historic examples of such depictions being used to justify the worst kind of degradation and humiliation that humans have ever been forced to endure. These acts are not just inspired by this book, but characters in the book urge its readers to follow its example. Worst of all, however, is that, despite this book's obvious lack of coherent logic or sense, it inexplicably possesses a following of people that somehow find comfort in its horror. No doubt about it, the horrific images, and lack of intelligent discussion of those images, contained in this book makes it entirely unsuitable for children, or sensible adults. It is very doubtful that a book that meanders so terribly, and contradicts itself so often, is truly inspired by a deity. What you will read in here can be found in other mythologies. There is nothing truly unique about it. Upon close scrutiny, we discover that the content of Bible is a compilation of historically and archaeologically unsupportable Myths such as Noah's ark, Abraham, Joseph, David, Solomon, etc. Item Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible (NASB)

From the Bad Astronomy Blog, Posted to Discover Magazine

Homeopathy kills

[Note: This post may upset some people. It damn sure upset me. If you are easily upset by pediatric medical stories that do not end well, then you might want to skip reading this. The title alone may be all you need to know.]

Homeopathy is the antiscientific belief that infinitely diluted medicine in water can cure various ailments. It’s perhaps the most ridiculous of all "alternative" medicines, since it clearly cannot work, does not work, and has been tested repeatedly and shown to be useless.

And for those who ask, "what’s the harm?", you may direct your question to Thomas Sam and his wife Manju Sam, whose nine-month-old daughter died because of their homeopathic beliefs.

The infant girl, Gloria Thomas, died of complications due to eczema. Eczema. This is an easily-treatable skin condition (the treatments don’t cure eczema but do manage it), but that treatment was withheld from the baby girl by her parents, who rejected the advice of doctors and instead used homeopathic treatments. The baby’s condition got worse, with her skin covered in rashes and open cracks. These cracks let in germs which her tiny body had difficulty fighting off. She became undernourished as she used all her nutrients to fight infections instead of for growth and the other normal body functions of an infant. She was constantly sick and in pain, but her parents stuck with homeopathy. When the baby girl developed an eye infection, her parents finally took her to a hospital, but it was far too late: little Gloria Thomas succumbed to septicemia from the infection.

Thomas and Manju Sam were convicted yesterday of manslaughter in Australian court. As a parent myself I cannot even begin to imagine the pain they are going through, the anguish and the emotional horror. But let us be clear here: their belief in a clearly wrong antiscientific medical practice killed their baby. Homeopathy doesn’t work, but because they were raised in an environment that supports belief in homeopathy, they trusted it. They used it, and they rejected real, science-based medicine. And their daughter suffered the consequences.

And suffer she did. The accounts of the pediatricians who tried too late to help little Gloria Thomas are simply harrowing.

Every time I hear about something like this — a baby dying due to "alternative" medicine, or the lies and disinformation from the antivaccination movement, or some other belief system that flies in the face of reality — a little bit of me dies as well. I held my daughter shortly after she was born, and I would have done anything to protect her, and that included and still includes protecting her against people who fight so adamantly against reality.

The reality is that the antivaxxers’ work will result in babies dying. The reality is that belief in homeopathy will result in more babies dying. The reality is that denying science-based medicine will result in more babies dying.

And I know these words will fall on many deaf ears. And I will guarantee the comments to this post will contain many loud and irrational arguments supporting homeopathy and the antivaxxers. I’ve seen it before, and I know that many of those people are completely immune to reason and logic. And if you wonder what might wake them up, the answer may very well be nothing. Just read what Gloria Thomas’ father — the man just convicted of the manslaughter of his own daughter — had to say:

But even after Gloria died, Thomas Sam adhered to his belief that homeopathy was equally valid to conventional medicine for the treatment of eczema.

He told police: “Conventional medicine would have prolonged her life … with more misery. It’s not going to cure her and that’s what I strongly believe.”

He and his wife face 25 years in jail, where they will have plenty of time to rethink their convictions.

Kung Fu is Dead!

Actor David Carradine found dead

American actor David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok, Thailand, hotel, according to his personal manager, Chuck Binder.

David Carradine became famous in the 1970s after starring in the television series "Kung Fu." Binder said Thursday that the death is being investigated but could provide no other details. Carradine's death was "shocking and sad. He was full of life, always wanting to work ... a great person," Binder said, according to People magazine.

Carradine, who became famous in the 1970s when he starred as traveling Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine in the television series "Kung Fu," was 72. Modern audiences may best know him as "Bill" in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films. He earned a 2005 Golden Globe nomination for his role in the second movie in the two-part saga. iReport: Share memories of David Carradine

You can read the rest of the obit here

It may be hard for some of you to imagine, but I watched Kung Fu religiously when I was a little kid, and I took it in deeply.

The spiritual side of a Buddhist Monk, with the kick-ass side of an American Wild West hero. I know he was just an actor, but to me he was Kwai Chang Caine.

As mentioned in the article above, he was also Bill in "Kill Bill," but I'll always remember him as the gentle monk who never looked for violence, but when it came his way, he took care of business.

It introduced me to both Buddism and the martial arts, and I started studying Judo right after that, which I practice to this day.

Namaste, David, and I hope your next incarnation brings you a better life. jg