Thought Docket

Glen Echo has a long history here in the Washington DC area. According to the official site

Glen Echo Park began in 1891 as a National Chautauqua Assembly, which taught the sciences, arts, languages and literature. By the early 1900s Glen Echo Park had become a premier amusement park, serving the Washington area until 1968. In 1971, after the federal government obtained the land, the National Park Service began managing the park. The National Park Service collaborated with artists and arts organizations to create a rich arts program in the spirit of the original Chautauqua movement. Today the programs and facilities at the Park are managed by a nonprofit organization, the Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture, Inc., while the National Park Service continues its role in managing the grounds and providing historic interpretation.

I have a vague recollection of going to Glen Echo one time as a child, when it was still an amusement park.

In recent years, I have associated Glen Echo, and its historic Spanish Ballroom, with contra dancing. I’m sure there have been many other kinds of dances at the Ballroom.

In today’s Washington Post, there is an article about Stan Fowler, a US Park Ranger that has been instrumental in rehabilitating and maintaining the flooring in the Spanish Ballroom over the past 30 years.

On nights when the Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park fills to capacity, Park Ranger Stan Fowler escapes from the live music to the crawl space beneath the maple floor. There he listens to a different musical ensemble.

Above his head, the historic floor he restored gives as toes tap, heels grind and stomp, feet land from jumps and hops. A contra dance, a type of folk dance, flows in perfect lines of synchronized sound. Waltzes gently sweep past. Swing and Cajun steps are accented by sporadic thuds.

“Other than the music and your partner, the floor is the most important part of dancing,” said Fowler, 60. “I know every floorboard in here. . . . A lot of people say the floor is in bad shape. It’s not in bad shape, it has a story.”

The decision by the US Park Service to transfer Stan Fowler has the dance goers up in arms.

Last month, Fowler was unexpectedly reassigned to the Mount Vernon Trail in Virginia, a job he began Wednesday, and Glen Echo Park lost the man who had been the heart and soul of its community dances for more than 30 years. Many dancers worry that their beloved 1930s ballroom will fall into disrepair without Fowler, who has spent his career staving off the aging hall’s closure.

A group of dancers has organized a petition and sent hundreds of letters to National Park Service officials and members of Congress, begging someone to reverse the decision to move Fowler.

“My life has gone topsy-turvy with this,” said Lindsey Dodson, 49, a Friday night dance regular whose father took the trolley from Georgetown to Glen Echo Amusement Park for weekend dances around 1940. “Stan’s very, very much a part of the life of this park. I don’t know what we’ll do without him.”

Fowler has labored to restore and maintain more than just the Spanish Ballrooom

In the early 1990s, Fowler wandered into the park’s dilapidated 1923 bumper car pavilion. The structure was likely to be demolished if it was not renovated, a cost the Park Service pegged at more than half a million dollars. Fowler said he sanded down the end of a pine beam in the pavilion, counted 169 tightly grouped tree rings and decided that the structure had to be saved — if for no other reason than to preserve the historic wood.

The project took seven years, $100,000 in donations and 19,000 hours of volunteers’ time, Fowler said. Volunteers moved the building onto a new foundation, leveled its roof, carved out tunnels for ventilation, built a stage from recycled wood and unscrewed 7,000 screws to remove the metal plates covering the pine floor.

Fowler has petitioned the Park Service to remain at Glen Echo in order to “archive the history of Glen Echo dances and the story of the ballroom floor before he retires in a few years.” So far, his petition has been denied.

Fowler is awarded the ThoughtDocket Seal of Approval for his dedication to Glen Echo, the Spanish Ballroom, and the bumper car pavilion. Here’s to hoping that the US Park Service reconsiders.

Stan Fowler

In 1994, the US Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act, which made the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (King Holiday) a national day of volunteer service. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service website provides many resources for those looking for opportunities to serve. That sites exhorts visitors to

Make it a day on, not a day off.

In today’s Washington Post, there is an article titled For King Holiday, Calling All Volunteers. The article begins

President-elect Barack Obama is urging the nation to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day as it was originally intended: as a national day of service.

With the holiday falling the day before his Jan. 20 inauguration, Obama is seeking widespread volunteer initiatives across the country, such as serving meals to the homeless, cleaning schools and neighborhoods, or helping disadvantaged youths and the elderly.

Colin L. Powell, an honorary chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, announced the “Renew America Together” initiative yesterday. He said he hopes the enthusiasm surrounding Obama’s election victory will inspire Americans to finally meet the holiday’s promise.

Later in the article

The Corporation for National and Community Service, is “thrilled with the extraordinary high level of attention the incoming president is giving this,” spokesman Sandy Scott said.

Last year, the agency recorded about 500,000 volunteers participating in roughly 5,000 service projects on King Day, Scott said in an interview. “This year will be the largest ever, fueled by President-elect Barack Obama’s call to service. . . . The number of volunteers will be in the millions,” he said.

Organizers are hoping that those who volunteer will stick with it year-round.

But, frankly, I think that Powell is going to be disappointed if he thinks that the enthusiasm surrounding Obama is going to translate into a sustained increase in volunteerism. No one, and I mean no one, that I have talked to that was an Obama supporter has cited anything like a call to service as the reason for their support for Obama. It always started and ended with the Iraq war. I very much appreciate the spirit of volunteerism, and I hope I am wrong. We’ll see.

The article continues

Renew America Together is using technology to build a network of once-isolated volunteers. Its Web site, USAService.org, can link a potential community helper with a winter coat drive or a blood bank.

“What this is, essentially, is something along the lines of a Craigslist,” said Linda Douglass, chief spokeswoman for the inaugural committee. “It’s a hub where we can connect people who are offering opportunities for service, ideas for service and people who want to serve.”

Just as the article was about to put me to sleep, I saw this

The meaning of “serve” appears to be relative: Most events are the traditional labor- and donation-oriented projects, but others are a bit different.

In Tempe, Ariz., for instance, the Center for Advanced Natural Healing is offering complimentary 90-minute massages; in Chicago, the Bethel Cultural Arts Center is promoting a “Relax, Relate, Rejuvenate” event that focuses on eliminating stress through “massages, yoga, spoken word, nutrition counseling.”

Relative, indeed. Something along the lines of Craigslist? Massage? It sounds exactly like Craigslist. Specifically, it sounds like the Craigslist barter section, where my unscientific assessment is that “massage” is the most frequently offered “item”.

I wonder if the Center for Advanced Natural Healing or the Bethel Cultural Arts Center will be providing this kind of massage?

The emphasis on service? It’s a stroke of genius.

Wikipedia has this to say about Simon Cameron

Simon Cameron (March 8, 1799 - June 26, 1889)  was an American politician who served as United States Secretary of War for Abraham Lincoln at the start of the American Civil War. After making his fortune in railways and banking, he turned to a life of politics. He became a U.S. senator in 1845 for the state of Pennsylvania, succeeding James Buchanan. Originally a Democrat, he failed to secure a nomination for senator from the Know-Nothing party, and joined the People’s Party, the Pennsylvania branch of what became the Republican Party. He won the Senate seat in 1857, and became one of the candidates for the Republican nomination in the election of 1860.

Cameron gave his support to Abraham Lincoln, and became his Secretary of War. He only served a year before resigning amidst corruption…

Corruption? Hmm. That is ironic, because Cameron is credited with one of my favorite quotations

An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.

By that definition, we don’t know, now, whether that &%@* head Blagojevich is honest or not. He may or may not be honest, but as of today, he has been impeached by the Illinois House. In his news conference today, that &%@* head Blago was directly addressing the jury pool as he characterized the impeachment as retaliation by the House for Blago’s crimes of trying to help people

From the very moment of my re-election, I’ve been engaged in a struggle with the House to get things done for the people.

The House has stood in the way of letting that happen.

The House has failed to act, so the House’s actions and the cause of the impeachment are because I’ve done things to fight for families who are with me today.

You have to admit, that &%@* head Blago is playing Illinois and Washington for fools. He’s just one ring short of a three-ring circus. Currently, we have one ring in Illinois and one in Washington, DC.

The ring in Washington is led by the ringmaster, Roland Burris. By all accounts, Burris is a nice enough man with a very nice resume of both private and public service. The Democrats in Washington, so smug a week ago or so, now appear to be resigned to the fact that Burris will be the junior Senator of Illinois. Burris met their paltry demands, which included an appearance before the Blago impeachment committee of legislators in Springfield, Illinois. The purpose was to explain that there was no quid pro quo for his appointment to the Senate. This statement by Burris fully satisfied Harry Reid

There is certainly no pay-to-play involved, because I don’t have no money.

Well, that settles it, doesn’t it. Uhhh, no! Lest us forget, we are talking about Chicago politics here. There is not no such thing as no pay-to-play!

We are supposed to take Burris’ double negative as a single negative and accept that he just does not have the financial resources to run with the big dogs. But what if Burris really was an honest politician, so honest, in fact, that the double negative is correct. Maybe Burris is rolling in the dough? Let’s see, according to this article in the Chicago Sun Times, Burris has all sorts of current and future income sources

• $169,300 salary as US senator.
• $70,000 for serving on the board of directors of Inland Real Estate Corp. He will need to give this up upon joining the Senate.
• $118,000 annual pension from the State of Illinois.
• Six-figure retainer as a lawyer with the Milwaukee law firm of Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan, which has enjoyed a big bump in its Illinois bond counsel work since Burris came aboard in 2007 as a rainmaker for government business. He will need to give this up upon joining the Senate.
• And let’s not forget his lobbying firm, Burris & Lebed Consulting.

According to this CNN article

Illinois state records show that Burris, who once ran against Blagojevich for the Democratic nomination for governor, and his lobbying firm have contributed more than $20,000 to the governor’s political campaigns.

Two years ago, Burris hosted a $1,000-per-plate fundraiser for Blagojevich.

What’s more, Burris’ consulting firm, Burris & Lebed Consulting, has won nearly $300,000 in state contracts over the past four years.

Finally, the governor’s wife, Patti, was hired in September to an $80,000-a-year job with the Chicago Christian Industrial League, where Burris’ lobbying partner is a board member.

I don’t see no evidence of pay-to-play, do you?

Here is the Illinois State Board of Elections Contributions Search page. Just plug in Burris in the Last or Only Name field and click on Search. Here are some examples of the more than 80 entries that come up for Roland Burris

Burris, Roland
8358 S. Indiana Ave.
Chicago, IL 60619
Occupation: Corporate Officer
Employer: Burris & Lebed

Burris, Roland
8358 South Indiana
Chicago, IL 60619

BURRIS, ROLAND
8358 S INDIANA AVE
CHICAGO, IL 60619

Burris & Lebed Consullting LLC
35 East Wacker Dr
Chicago, IL 60601

Burris & Lebed Consulting
1130 S Wabash
Chicago, IL 60605

Burris and Reed Consulting
35 W. Wacker
Chicago, IL 60601

Burris, Roland
8358 S. Indiana Ave
Occupation: Corp. Officer
Employer: Burris and Lebed

It’s obvious. Burris didn’t not pay-to-play. ’nuff said?

B&B No P2P

In today’s Washington Post, there was a brief news service article about a man, a woman, and the kidney that has come between them

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. - When his wife needed a kidney transplant, physician Richard Batista gave her one of his… Now that Dawnell Batista has filed for divorce, Richard Batista wants his kidney back as part of his settlement demand. Or …  the value of that kidney: an estimated $1.5 million.

As might be expected, there is much more to the story. According to the New York Daily News

The Long Island doctor wants the one-time love of his life to pay $1.5 million for the organ he bestowed on her eight years ago in a gift meant to save her life and their foundering marriage….

Batista charged his wife, Dawnell, repaid his gesture by first sleeping with her physical therapist - and then denying him access to their three kids in an increasingly bitter divorce.

Adding to his anguish, Batista insists his decision to donate his kidney in 2001 was in part a failed effort to rescue their troubled relationship….

Their marriage lasted just another four years, with the wife filing for divorce in July 2005.

The once-happy pair met two decades ago when he was a resident and she a training nurse at North Shore Hospital.

They were married in August 1990 … [and] … shared the joy of three daughters, but Dawnell was battling kidney failure and the couple’s relationship turned shaky….

Dawnell’s health continued to deteriorate. After two transplants failed, her husband volunteered to donate one of his kidneys - and discovered he was a match, a 1-in-700,000 shot.

“I was the first and only one to step to the plate,” the doctor recalled. Without his donation, Dawnell faced a long wait: There are 6,748 people awaiting kidneys in New York State, the New York Organ Donor Network says.

Successful surgery followed … on June 28, 2001. Batista said he was looking forward to happier times with his now-healthy bride - but his hopes proved futile.

“Nothing changed,” he said.

Dawnell Batista viewed the kidney as a new lease on life, too. She returned to school to earn a master’s degree in nursing, and took up karate, her husband said.

After an injury suffered while trying to earn her black belt, she began physical therapy - which evolved into an affair with her therapist, Batista said….

Batista said the ongoing ugliness began on day one of their divorce.

“She slapped me with divorce papers when I was in surgery trying to save another person’s life,” he fumed.

You gotta love it. Doctor, nurse, daughters, crumbling marriage, failing kidneys, odds of 1-in-700,000, transplant, karate, injury, physical therapist, infidelity, divorce papers served during surgery, $1.5 million. This story has everything, almost. What is missing? Why, a tractor, of course, if this story in the Daily Times of Pakistan is to be believed

The wife of a farmer from Bahawalpur has registered a case against her husband, accusing him of selling her kidney without her consent to purchase a tractor, police said on Monday.

District Police Officer (DPO) Bahawlapur Arif Nawaz said that police had registered a case against farmer Shakeel Ahmed following the written complaint of his wife, Safia, “in the light of a medical report indicating that (her) husband had unlawfully sold one of her kidneys”.

Safia moved an application to the Noshera Jadeed station house officer (SHO), stating that her husband, whom she married in 2004, had beaten her when she was three-months’ pregnant, causing her to miscarry.

She said that her husband then took her to Bahawal Victoria Hospital, on the pretext of seeking medical treatment. She accused doctors of removing one of her kidneys during a surgical procedure, claiming that they had acted in collusion with her husband and had failed to secure her consent before removing the organ.

Safia said that she only came to know about her ordeal when she later contracted a urinary tract infection and sought medical treatment. She also pointed out that that her husband then confessed what had happened, admitting that he had sold her kidney and used the money from the transaction to buy a tractor.

Noshera Jadeed police said that they had registered a case against Ahmed, adding that investigations into the alleged crime were still continuing.

The stories above are no laughing matter. So this post would not be complete without a kidney joke.

A man is walking on the beach when he trips over a lamp. A few seconds later, a genie pops out and says, “I’m required to grant three wishes, but since you did not treat my lamp with respect, I will give twice what you get to the person you hate most—your boss.”

The man agrees and makes his first wish: “I want lots of money.” Instantly $20 million appears in bags on the beach, and $40 million appears in his boss’ bank account.

Next the man asks for an incredible sports car. Instantly a Lamborghini appears, and at the same moment, two show up outside his boss’ house.

Finally the genie says, “You have but one wish left; you should choose carefully.”

The man says, “Well, I’ve always wanted to donate a kidney.”

Judging by some editorials, letters to the editor, and some comments in Facebook, it appears that there is a block of Obama’s supporters that are quite unhappy at Obama’s silence during Israel’s action in Gaza against Hamas. And there is at least some portion of this block that are especially vexed because Obama was quick to condemn the Mumbai Massacre.

For example, this from Khalid Mish’al, writing in the Guardian

Once again, Washington and Europe have opted to aid and abet the jailer, occupier and aggressor, and to condemn its victims. We hoped Barack Obama would break with George Bush’s disastrous legacy but his start is not encouraging. While he swiftly moved to denounce the Mumbai attacks, he remains tongue-tied after 10 days of slaughter in Gaza.

And these similar sentiments, from a comment on an article posted in Facebook

What is more abhorrent is the President-elect’s silence over the carnage in Gaza, while he was quick to condemn the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

What I find interesting here is the equivalency between the Pakistani killers in Mumbai and the Israelis in Gaza. Here’s how I would size things up.

• Whereas the Mumbai killers struck against innocent people, minding their own business, staying in a hotel or serving in a place of worship, the Israelis are striking against a group that has sent thousands of missiles toward the 800,000 Israelis living within Qassam, Grad, and Fajr rocket range.
• Whereas the Mumbai killers struck without (a real) warning and shot victims indiscriminately, the Israelis have used intelligence assets, precision guided munitions, air-dropped leaflets, and phone calls in an effort to reduce the inevitable loss of innocent life that is occasioned when combatants live and operate within a civilian population.
• Whereas the Mumbai killers struck targets that were known to be popular among travelers from the United States and the west, Israel is striking targets that have been characterized as a proxy for Iran and Syria, targets that no doubt danced and celebrated in the streets when the US was struck seven years ago.

Focusing for a moment on the idea of Hamas as proxy, consider this article from the TimesOnLine, titled Palestinian group Hamas admits that its fighters are trained in Iran

“Iran is our mother,” the commander said. “She gives us information, military supplies and financial support.”

Or this article, also from the TimesOnLine, titled Hamas wages Iran’s proxy war on Israel

So far, 150 members of Qassam have passed through training in Tehran, where they study for between 45 days and six months at a closed military base under the command of the elite Revolutionary Guard force.

Of the additional 150 who are in Tehran now, some will go into Hamas’s research unit if they are not deemed strong enough for fighting.

Conditions at the base are strict, the commander said. The Palestinians are allowed out only one day a week. Even then, they may leave the base only in a group and with Iranian security. They shop and “always come back with really good boots”.

According to the commander, a further 650 Hamas fighters have trained in Syria under instructors who learnt their techniques in Iran. Sixty-two are in Syria now.

But what Hamas values most is the knowledge that comes directly from Iran. Some of it was used to devastating effect by the militant group Hezbollah against Israeli forces in Lebanon in 2006.

Recall that during the campaign, Barrack Obama spoke pretty tough about Iran. It was Obama that refused to take military options off the table. It was Obama that talked of big sticks and big carrots. It was Obama that characterized a nuclear Iran as unacceptable. Other than Obama’s favoring some level of diplomatic talks, I didn’t see much difference between McCain and Obama in regard to Iran.

So what must those vexed by Obama’s silence be thinking? They seem to favor a President that is gripped by a Carter-esque anti-semitism. From what we know so far, it appears that they will be disappointed.

This article on sharks caught my eye recently.

Sharks have wimpy bites for their size and can crunch through their prey only because they have very sharp teeth — and because they can grow to be so big…

I think for us humans, who like to spend time in the water, the operative phrase there is “crunch through their prey”. And the operative word in the phrase is “crunch”. The great white shark has about 3000 serrated, triangular teeth, arranged in several rows. The teeth in the first two rows do the honors. When they are worn down, chipped, or fall out, the teeth in the back rows rotate into place. So, basically, no bridges, no root canals, and no crowns. That’s a dentist’s nightmare.

“Pound for pound, sharks don’t bite all that hard,” Daniel Huber of the University of Tampa in Florida, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

Huber and colleagues had trouble collecting data for their study, “due to the experimental intractability of these animals,” they wrote dryly in their report, published in Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.

You have to admire marine biologists when they manage to write “dryly”. But seriously, does Huber have trouble collecting data because of “experimental intractability”, or is it because there isn’t much left of the victims? Actually, according to the National Geographic

…new research finds that great whites, who are naturally curious, are “sample biting” then releasing their victims rather than preying on humans. It’s not a terribly comforting distinction, but it does indicate that humans are not actually on the great white’s menu.

Sample biting? My daughter affects this shark-like behavior whenever there is a cheese and veggie tray.

Shark

Huber and the the group at University of Tampa use novel techniques for measuring bites

They also measured the bites of small sharks such as sand sharks, and tested larger sharks by knocking them out and using electricity to stimulate the jaw muscles.

How’d you like to be simulating the jaw muscles of a shark, with electricity, and have it come out from the anesthesia a little early? That would be good on Letterman.

If I am ever attacked by nature’s greatest predator, I will be able to take some comfort in knowing that lions and tigers have more powerful jaw strength than the white death.

Regular readers of the Washington Post are treated to a recurring column by Shankar Vedantam. Always headlined Department of Human Behavior, Vedantam’s columns present interesting, and often counter-intuitive, results from social science and neuroscience experiments designed to yield insight into, what else, human behavior. I have found Vedantam’s columns to be superbly written.

Today’s column is sub-titled Mass Suffering and Why We Look the Other Way. Vedantam observes

[Obama's foreign policy team] of Obama, Clinton and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. have all called for aggressive American action against humanitarian crises and genocide. Susan E. Rice, Obama’s nominee for U.N. ambassador, has said that if a Rwanda-style genocide began again, she “would come down on the side of dramatic action, going down in flames if that was required.” Samantha Power, a leading proponent for an interventionist American policy in humanitarian crises, was a senior Obama adviser during the presidential campaign.

Vedantam then introduces Paul Slovic, a professor at the University of Oregon, who has conducted experiments to shed light on why the United States frequently fails to intervene in humanitarian crises and why this failure is likely to continue, even with Obama’s team in place.

Slovic’s research suggests that the central reason the United States has not responded forcefully — and quickly — to crises ranging from the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide, from the ethnic cleaning that occurred in the 1990s Balkan conflict to the present-day crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, is not that presidents are uncaring, or that Americans only value American lives, but that the human mind has been unintentionally designed to respond in perverse ways to large-scale suffering.

In a rational world, we should care twice as much about a tragedy affecting 100 people as about one affecting 50. We ought to care 80,000 times as much when a tragedy involves 4 million lives rather than 50. But Slovic has proved in experiments that this is not how the mind works.

When a tragedy claims many lives, we often care less than if a tragedy claims only a few lives. When there are many victims, we find it easier to look the other way.

Virtually by definition, the central feature of humanitarian disasters and genocide is that there are a large number of victims.

“The first life lost is very precious, but we don’t react very much to the difference between 88 deaths and 87 deaths,” Slovic said in an interview. “You don’t feel worse about 88 than you do about 87.”

Vedantam describes one of of Slovic’s experiments

Slovic asked people to imagine they were disbursing money on behalf of a large foundation: They could give $10 million to fight a disease that claimed 20,000 lives a year — and save 10,000 of those lives. But they could also devote the $10 million to fight a disease that claimed 290,000 lives a year — and this investment would save 20,000 lives.

Slovic found that people preferred to spend the money saving the 10,000 lives in the first scenario rather than the 20,000 lives in the second scenario: “People were responding not to the number of lives saved but the percentage of lives saved,” he said. In the one case, their investment could save half the victims; in the case of the more deadly disease, it could save 7 percent of the victims.

…

The mathematical side of our brain could tell us the absolute number of victims saved is more important than the percentage of survivors, but our analytical side isn’t usually in charge.

Well, in my case, being trained in operations research, the analytical side of my brain is usually in charge, and so I found the conclusions by Slovic to be counter-intuitive.

I think that there are other forces at work here. For example, I think many recent instances of genocide and ethnic-cleansing have occurred in places that are not particularly strategically important to the United States. And many of these recent instances have been perpetrated by, and against, people that - sorry to say - don’t look like the majority of Americans. And, the perpetrators and the victims are often called warring or tribal peoples; sort of savages. I wonder if we view these conflicts as “a way of life”.

The United States has done some heavy lifting in places like Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and so maybe there is a weariness. So why can’t the international community step up to the plate? The United Nations is, of course, a feckless partner when addressing the security concerns of the United States and many of our allies. But why can’t the UN be responsible otherwise? For example, more concerned about European sensibilities regarding conflict on the continent than about mediating and containing a war, the United Nations and the United Nations Security Council’s arms embargo of the former Yugoslavia in 1991 effectively tied one arm of Bosnia and Herzegovina behind its back. Deplorable.

We couldn’t all agree on the threat posed by Sadam or the consequences. But maybe, just maybe, the United Nations can muster the forces needed to combat genocide? Can’t everyone (except maybe a few African governments) agree on the genocide in Darfur, Sudan; that it is bad; and that strong action must be taken? Um, maybe not. In 1994, after the deaths of ten Belgian soldiers in Rwanda, the entire international community pulled out of that country, leaving Tutsi and Hutu moderates to fend for themselves against revenge-minded Hutus. The UN and the US refused to use the term “genocide”. Had they done so, it would have necessitated some type of action. Again, deplorable.

I know where Ms. Rice is coming from. I support Ms. Rice and the tough talk of “dramatic action”. But I disagree that the US should “go down in flames” if necessary. Resolve will see that we do not.

Darfur Poster

Many people I know, especially those of a liberal persuasion, point to the great country of France as a model for appropriate behavior with regards to things like infidelity, lying, and ethics among the political classes. I guess they would say that France is more enlightened than the United States in these matters.

One enlightened citizen of France is the French Justice Minister Rachida Dati. Ms. Dati was born to a Moroccan father and Algerian mother. She is a little bit controversial in France. This article from June of this past year explains one controversy.

Two decades ago Rachida Dati…It was not quite an arranged marriage. It was a marriage “to please her family”. She immediately regretted her decision. She persuaded her Algerian husband to agree to an instant annulment.

…

Two decades later, Mme Dati is France’s first senior minister of north African origin. She is a protégée of President Nicolas Sarkozy. … As Justice Minister, she has already made several mistakes and many enemies, not least among her own political “allies”….

President Sarkozy calls her a “symbol” of his attempts to break down racial and social and gender barriers in France. As a symbol, he has told her several times, she has “no right to fail”.

Mme Dati, 43, now finds herself at the centre of a dangerous but, in many ways, foolish, national controversy. By one of the great ironies beloved of novelists and filmmakers, the controversy turns on an annulled marriage between two young French people of north African origin.

M. X, an engineer in his 30s, and recent convert to a strict reading of the Koran, married Mlle Y, a nursing student in her 20s. Before they were married, she promised him that she was a virgin. On their marriage night, M. X stormed out of their bedroom to protest to the wedding party – still in progress – that his wife had lied to him. She was not a virgin.

Under Article 180 of the French civil code, a marriage partner can demand an annulment if his or her spouse fails to fulfil an “essential” part of their pre-wedding agreement.

The court’s decision was made public late last week. It was made clear that the crucial point was not the bride’s lack of virginity but her lack of truthfulness. She had misled her partner. “Married life began with a lie, which is contrary to the reciprocal confidence between the married parties,” the court ruled.

There followed an explosion of outrage and political posturing – partly understandable but partly exaggerated and based on deliberate, or lazy, misrepresentation of the facts of the case.

The Lille court, it was alleged, had decided that virginity was an “essential quality” in a bride. (No it hadn’t). In a country rooted in secular principles, this was a dangerous slide towards “sharia law” (No it wasn’t).

Fadela Amara, the minister for France’s troubled multi-racial suburbs … said the court ruling was a “fatwa against the emancipation of women”. Dounia Bouzar, an … author of books on Islam in Europe, said: “It’s a victory for fundamentalists and a victory for those who look at Islam as an archaic religion that treats women badly… I’m sure the judge wanted to be respectful to Islam. Instead, the decision was respectful to fundamentalists.”

The ruling can be read that way. Fundamentalist Islam does not demand virgin bridegrooms, only virgin brides. The judgement is also, however, a fairly logical application of France’s existing marriage law. Several devout Catholic spouses have won similar annulments on the grounds that their partner had lied to them and concealed a previous divorce. Devout Catholics have a right, under French law, to demand undivorced spouses. That does not mean that French courts disapprove of divorce.

Left-of-centre politicians were outraged by the judgment. Centre-right politicians were oddly divided. Some seemed unsure whether to support the court ruling because they approved of virginity or to oppose it because they disapproved of Islam and north Africans. The veteran feminist campaigner, Elisabeth Badinter, injected a welcome note of common sense. The real, practical problem with the judgment, she said, was that it would boost an existing, disgusting industry in the “re-creation” of virgin hymens among young French women of north African origin.

Into this wasp’s nest of sincerity, confusion and deliberate bad faith, Mme Dati innocently reached her hand. No, she said, she saw no reason why the Government should appeal against the Lille judgment. “The annulment of a marriage is a way of separating rapidly – a way of protecting someone who wishes to be free of a marriage,” she said.

“I think that this young woman, for her own part, also wanted to be separated from her husband as soon as possible.

“The justice system is there to protect the weak and the modest when they are in difficulty.”

No one has asked Mme Dati about her own annulled marriage. No one in the French press has tried to make a connection between the two episodes 20 years apart. It is telling, however, that Mme Dati’s sympathies were with the young woman. Remembering her own narrow escape from a loveless marriage, she had perhaps, thought that the young woman was fortunate to have escaped from life with a narrow-minded, religious and sexual bigot.

Politically, however, Mme Dati’s reply was a catastrophe. Everyone from the far left to Marine Le Pen on the far right piled in to accuse her of insensitivity, of lack of understanding of France’s secular tradition and – implicitly – of being soft on Islam.

Finally, yesterday Mme Dati was forced to retreat. The justice ministry acknowledged that the Lille ruling had, “provoked a heated social debate”. In the circumstances, it said, “the ruling could be said to have wider significance than the relationship between two individuals. It touched all citizens of our country and especially women.”

The justice ministry has therefore asked the local public prosecutor to appeal against the judgment – and to try to restore the marriage of two young people who no longer want to be married. The episode is, therefore, officially over, until the appeal hearing is heard. But has Mme Dati been fatally wounded? Has the woman who “cannot afford to fail” finally exhausted the patience of President Sarkozy?

…

Well, has Dati finally exhausted the patience of Sarkozy? Maybe. But there is a second controversy. Ms. Dati just gave birth to a daughter, Zohra. Single, Ms. Dati has refused to identify the father of her baby.

Gravid Dati

As might be expected, there are no shortage of rumors and speculation regarding the identify of the father. Here is one source of speculation.

After months of gossip François Sarkozy, the younger brother of the President, was seen at the private Muette Clinic last night, adding to persistent although unconfirmed claims that he is le père. A source told The Times that he had visited Ms Dati with Guillaume Sarkozy, the President’s older brother.

So, the French President’s younger brother is rumored to be the father? The article continues

[François] Sarkozy, 47, a pharmaceutical industrialist, is reported to have spent Christmas with Ms Dati. Their liaison, if confirmed, may explain why the President appears reluctant to dismiss Ms Dati, 43, despite criticism of her performance at the Justice Ministry.

Yes indeed, when it comes to things like infidelity, lying, and ethics, the French are a veritable wellspring of enlightenment.

Yes! Minister!

Beginning this year, new cars sold in California will be required to display an Environmental Performance label. There will be two numeric values

• Global Warming Score
• Smog Score

The scores will be on a 1-10 scale, with the higher values indicating lower environmental impacts. Presumably, the “average” vehicle will receive 5 scores.

California Environmental Performance Label

According to this California website

• the Global Warming Score is based on greenhouse gas emissions - nitrous oxide, methane, A/C refrigerant, and carbon dioxide - from vehicle operation and fuel production.
• the Smog Score is based on smog-forming emissions - non-methane organic gases, oxides of nitrogen, and hydrocarbons -  from vehicle operation.

Here is a car that gets a very good score

Green Car

I suppose to get a really good idea of a car’s environmental costs, the following could have been considered

• fabrication
• import of car/parts
• maintenance
• recyclability  of consumables such as batteries, tires, fluids (oil, coolant, and brake fluid), brake pads and rotors, belts and hoses, etc.
• recyclability of the non-consumables

I can’t say that I am surprised by this new sticker. We are talking about California, after all. I always thought it was pretty obvious that the Prius was easier on the environment than the Hummer. That higher mileage vehicles were better than lower mileage. That Ultra Low Emission Vehicles (ULEV) were better than the average vehicle, etc.

Living in the Washington DC area, and having ridden the Orange Line (of the DC subway) for the past two and a half years, I see lots of hybrid cars on I-66. Many of the folks that live “further out” have purchased these cars because of the tax breaks and the commuting benefits (i.e., they can drive in the HOV lanes without additional passengers). That is, they make an economic decision to purchase these vehicles that has nothing to do with environmental costs whatsoever.

I have chosen to not live “so far out”. In fact, I have chosen to live within walking distance of the Metro Station. I have chosen to live in a smaller house, on a smaller lot, than some of these hybrid drivers that live out in Manassas or Centreville or Haymarket. I don’t get a tax break and I don’t get to drive the HOV by myself. Yet I suspect that I may have a lower overall environmental impact than some of the folks driving from Manassas to DC.

I believe that New York will be going with an Environmental Performance sticker for model year 2010. And I believe that California will be unveiling the following labels in 2011 or 2012.

• Drive-By Performance Label, which rates a vehicle on qualities such as height of cabin, tint of windows, volume of bass, getaway speed, and storage space for Glocks. Rather than a 1-10 scale, I believe the scale will be 9, 40, 357, and 45. It could be confusing.
• Chick-Magnet Performance Label, which rates a vehicle on the following dimensions: cute, bad-ass, expensive, and gay.

In recent interviews as a possible replacement for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, Caroline Kennedy did not fare too well. For example, according to the New York Daily News

In a 30-minute session with The News on Saturday, Kennedy punctuated her answers with “you know” more than 200 times. “Um” was fairly constant, too.

Transcripts of her interviews with other media outlets showed the same problem. She said “you know” at least 130 times to The New York Times and more than 80 times on New York 1.

As one example, when asked if President Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthy should be repealed immediately

Well, you know, that’s something, obviously, that, you know, in principle and in the campaign, you know, I think that, um, the tax cuts, you know, were expiring and needed to be repealed.

You Know Who

I’m no public speaker, not by any stretch. I sometimes step on my crank. I’m not going to insist that our public servants all speak eloquently. In fact, according to this, Caroline Kennedy is in pretty good company

Caroline Kennedy is not the only politician to suffer from, you know, a verbal tic. Yes, she may have used the phrase some 144 times in a New York Times interview. But she can reassure herself that she’s in pretty good company. Here are some other multiple offenders.

1) Barack Obama

The President-elect is widely regarded as one of today’s great rhetoricians. But that doesn’t prevent him from falling back on the odd ‘uh’ when the talking gets tough. And by odd, we mean some 30 times in this David Letterman clip. The nickname Obam-uh wasn’t far behind.

2) John McCain

McCain may have lost the presidential race but he certainly didn’t lose the repetition war. His obsession with the phrase ‘My friends’ won him ridicule in the campaign and this splendid article in Slate. Sadly for McCain, he just didn’t have enough of them at the end of the day.

3) Tony Blair

Yes, he dropped his t’s. And he used almost as many ‘you knows’ as Kennedy. But the tic that really defined Blair’s speech? That would be ‘Look,…’ As in ‘Look, you know you’ve heard it many, many times.’

4) Bill Clinton

Life was ‘a big deal’ for the former President. According to one report, he used the phrase to describe everything from the deer population in Arkansas to the latest bill against crime. Everything that is except for his own heart surgery. His description of that? Inevitably, it was ‘no big deal.’

5) Bob Dole

The royal ‘we’ is one thing. But Bob Dole’s constant references to himself in the third person were, well, just weird. And that was before he’d even begun to advertise Viagra. Kennedy will have to go a long way to compete.

I’m not going to insist on Toastmasters, but self-awareness would be nice. According to Fox News (and numerous other sources)

Kennedy offered no excuses for why she failed to vote in a number of elections since registering in New York City in 1988, including in 1994 when Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was up for re-election as the state’s senior senator.

“I was really surprised and dismayed by my voting record,” she told the Associated Press. “I’m glad it’s been brought to my attention.