Category: Uncategorized

Washington, DC Keystone Kops

The Associated Press reports that police in Washington, DC are once again looking at Ingmar Guandique as a possible suspect in the murder of Chandra Levy. Guandique was arrested and convicted for attacking two female joggers in the same general area that Levy’s remains were found.

The scary thing is that DC police had ruled him out as a suspect apparently based largely on the fact that he passed a lie detector test. Now the police want him to take another lie detector test because they think the first one was faulty.

What is really faulty here is that a pseudoscientific process like a lie detector test is used to rule suspects in or out. Why don’t they just bring Uri Geller and a bunch of kids with dowsing rods in to tell them whether or not Guandique killed Levy. They’re likely to be as accurate as their lie detector test.

Source:

D.C. Police Probing Man in Levy Murder. Associated Press, September 29, 2002.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend on Affirmative Action

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is running for governor of Maryland. At a recent debate with her opponent, Robert Ehrlich, Townsend pointedly accused Ehrlich of opposing race-based affirmative action. Here’s her stunning defense of such initiatives,

He opposes affirmative action based on race. Well, let me tell you, slavery was based on race. Lynching was based on race. Discrimination is based on race. Jim Crow was based on race., and affirmative action should be based on race.

And she thinks that’s a defense of affirmative action. Oy.

Source:

Gloves come off at political debate. Associated Press, September 27, 2002.

Colin Aric Brian Carnell

On Saturday, Sept. 21, 2002 at 8:50 a.m., my wife, Lisa, gave birth to our second child, Colin Aric Brian Carnell. But to really explain the experience, first you have to know about Christmas 1996.

That was when my daughter decided to be born, and I can without any qualms say it was one of the most hellish experiences I’ve ever been through, and in some ways the second time around was even worse.

Back in 1996, my wife first noticed she seemed to be having more regular contractions very early in the morning. But since they were still very far apart, we drove the 60 minutes or so to a relative’s house for Christmas festivities anyway. We drove back in a nice snowstorm and went directly to the hospital.

Lisa is one of those people who wants as natural a childbirth as possible so she had almost no pain killing drugs (and an epidural was strictly out of the question). I had an abscessed wisdom tooth that was pulled a few days later and was myself in excruciating pain at the time (though I would not have switched places with her for anything). And on top of it all, it took almost 24 hours for my daughter to make her way out.

After that my opinion is that women who do not want epidurals or pain killers must secretly be masochists. Would I want an epidural if I were pregnant woman? Hell no, I’d want at least three of them and all the pain medication doctors are legally allowed to give.

But we should have expected that from the pregnancy which was one long vomit-fest. Lisa literally vomitted 6-12 times a day for almost 6 months. Ah, the miracle of pregnancy and childbirth. The real downside was that Emma came out being just on the edge of being low birth weight. Today she’s almost 6, but people who don’t know her guess she’s 4.

Compared to that, the second pregnancy was a breeze. There was no marathon vomitting and the ultrasounds revealed the child would be at least 7 pounds.

So we go to bed Friday night with Lisa thinking she’s having contractions and she wakes me up at 2:30 a.m. to confirm that indeed the baby is on its way. We both try to sleep for another hour, then wake up our daughter, call the relatives, and head out to the hospital. By this time it is 4:30 a.m. and my neighborhood is still filled with drunken students staggering around. My daughter asks me if all of the people on the street are coming to see Colin be born? I tell her that they might end up at the hospital for different reasons, but definitely not to see her soon-to-be baby brother.

We arrive at the hospital and my in-laws arrive around 6 a.m. or so. And then it starts to look like Christmas 1996 all over again. Lisa’s contractions are becoming longer, more frequent, and obviously much more painful, but she’s not dilating much.

Then Emma starts getting antsy because she didn’t get any sleep and she’s stuck in a boring hospital. So my in-laws take her to a waiting area on a lower floor (there are no waiting areas on the birthing floor) to play for awhile and watch television.

And then everything pretty much happens at high speed. One minute she’s not dilating, the next minute Lisa is screaming her head off, the midwife says she’s fully dilated, and the next thing I know there are 7 or 8 doctors, nurses and other hospital staff in the room. Something about how they’re not getting good readings from the electrodes attached to the baby’s skull.

Then, I can clearly see the head and within a few minutes the baby is out. And then the midwife is doing the most controlled yelling of instructions I’ve ever seen. I look down and see why — there’s a goddamn umbilical cord wrapped once around the baby’s shoulder and then around his neck looking for all the world like some H.R. Giger painting of some alien parasite trying to suck the life out of the baby. The midwife just has this complete look of clarity and serenity, and while she’s yelling to the other doctors and staff that the cord is around the neck, she simultaneously removes the cord in a ballet-esque move that defies all logic. I saw her do it, but I still don’t know exactly how.

I don’t know if my wife saw or heard any of that, but I’m freaking out inside while trying to maintain some outward sense of composure. Once they’ve got the baby on a warming table to boost his temperature, I’m asking how much I need to worry about this. She’s reassuring me that the fetal monitor only indicated any sort of distress for a very brief time, so I shouldn’t worry. Right, tell that to the millions of years of evolutionary instinct that’s still screaming “danger, danger” as if I’d been temporarily awarded an after-the-fact Spidey sense.

Otherwise, the baby and mother are doing fine and the big sister is extremely impressed by it all. More pictures to follow soon.

Good for Buzz Aldrin

Over the past couple weeks, a number of people had weighed in as supporting Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon and, who decked an idiot who asked Aldrin to swear on a Bible that the Moon landing actually took place. The idiot, Bart Sibrel, is one of those folks who think the entire moon landing was staged.

But as much as I’m a fan of Aldrin, it didn’t seem to me that being asked to swear on a Bible that you weren’t a liar was rude, I’m not sure it warranted punching Sibrel out.

But the BBC has the rest of the story in an article about Aldrin being cleared of any charges in the matter. Sibrel lured Aldrin to a hotel on the false claim that he wanted to interview the astronaut. Sibrel then called Aldrin a “thief, liar and coward,” and physically poked Aldrin with the Bible.

And, as he had every right to, Aldrin then decked Sibrel. If I were a celebrity who thought he was doing a straighforward interview, only to end up outside a hotel with some wacko poking me with a Bible and demanding I swear on it that I wasn’t a fraud, I think I’d follow the same course of action.

Ted Rall vs. Wendy Chamberlain

Glenn Reynolds posted a link today to a massively stupid article by Ted Rall rehashing the lame conspiracy theory that the war in Afghanistan is really about oil. There are so many things wrong with Rall’s version of this conspiracy theory, that it’s difficult to know where to begin. So let me just stick to one of the early targets in Rall’s essay, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain. Here’s what Rall says about Chamberlain,

U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain met with PakistanÂ’s oil minister to discuss reviving the old Unocal deal on the third day of the bombing campaign, October 10, 2001. This was when the U.S.-aligned Northern Alliance still controlled just five percent of the country and defeat of the Taliban was still anything but guaranteed.[xxiii]

[xxiii] Frontier Post, Peshawar, Pakistan, October 11, 2001.

If you do a Google search on Wendy Chamberlain and Unocal you will find hundreds of left wing web sites repeating this claim. Rall makes an apparent error in his citation, though. Every other left wing conspiracy site puts this story as appearing in the Frontier Post on October 10, 2001, not on the 11th.

Unfortunately, the Frontier Post does not apparently maintain archives of its web site, so tracking down what the Frontier Post actually wrote about Chamberlain’s meeting is not easy. However, doing Google searches I ran across a web discussion group where someone had the entire text of the Frontier Post’s October 10, 2001 story on Chamberlain’s meeting. Here it is:

From The Pakistan Frontier Post

ISLAMABAD: The US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain paid a courtesy call on the Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources, Usman Aminuddin here Tuesday and discussed with him matters pertaining to Pak-US cooperation in the oil and gas sector.

During the meeting the Petroleum Minister briefed the US Envoy on the ongoing and future development activities in the oil, gas and mineral sectors, privatization process, salient features of the new onshore and offshore exploration policies and opportunities for the prospective investors.

Usman Aminuddin said that the government was attaching high priority to the promotion of these vital fields of the economy aimed at accelerating socio-economic progress in the country.

He said that Pakistan is endowed with the fifth largest coal reserves in the world and the government is focusing specific attention to exploit them as soon as possible with a view to reduce the heavy dependence on oil and gas.

The Petroleum Minister said that a number of US oil and gas companies were successfully operating in Pakistan and were playing a tremendous role in the oil and gas exploration activities.

He invited the US investors to increase their participation in the petroleum and coal sector activities for the mutual benefit.

Usman Aminduddin also briefed the Ambassador on the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline project and said that this project opens up new avenues of multi dimensional regional cooperation particularly in view of the recent geo-political developments in the region.

Ms Wendy Chamberlain said that the United States attaches great importance to its relations with Pakistan.

She informed that the US Government had lifted a number sanctions ton Pakistan which would help revive it s national economy.

The Ambassador expressed the hope that the US investors would avail the opportunities in the oil, gas and mineral sectors of Pakistan.

Rall casts the article as claiming that Chamberlain met with the Petroleum Minister to talk about reviving the Unocal pipeline project, whereas the Frontier Post article is quite clear that this was a general meeting about petroleum and coal-related issues where the Pakistani Petroleum Minister raised the issue of the pipeline and apparently had to brief Chamberlain on the details of that proposal. Reading between the lines, Chamberlain appears to have been noncommittal (and for good reason — the pipeline is a nonstart for business reasons even with the Taliban out of the way).

Now, Rall could conceivably be referring to some other article the Frontier Post published about Chamberlain’s meeting. He should either produce that article or withdraw his claim about Wendy Chamberlain plotting to restart the Unocal pipeline project.

Source:

Peshawar Frontier Post article.

20th Annual World Farm Animals Day

Farm USA’s Alex Hershaft recently distributed a press release announcing the 20th annual celebration of World Farm Animals Day. The release had an odd title, “Activists bring the slaughterhouse to America’s streets.” Is that some sort of commentary on the movement’s penchant for terrorism and destruction? Hershaft has, after all, made it clear that activists who espouse violence are more than welcome at his annual animal rights convention, and no sort of criticism of such activists will be permitted therein.

The press release was filled with several dubious claims, but smartly avoided publishing any statistics on the number of farm animals killed in 1983, when the event began, to 20 years later

When World Farm Animals Day began in 1983, Americans ate a total of 180.9 pounds of meat per capita every year. For 2003, the USDA projects Americans will eat 193.6 pounds of meat per capita. But, of course, for farm animals the situation is (from Farm USA’s perspective) far worse.

Beef consumption during those 20 years declined from 74.2 pounds in 1983 to an estimated 62.0 pounds in 2003. The problem, of course, is that this means total chicken consumption skyrocketed from 34.5 pounds in 1983 to an estimated 53.3 pounds in 2003 — and it takes a lot more chickens to provide that additional 18.8 pounds of meat than it does cattle. The total number of farm animals has exploded just in the United States.

Yet, according to Farm USA,

Growing awareness of the adverse health consequences of meat consumption, including the largest recall of ground beef contaminated with E. coli, is driving consumers to meat alternatives offered by mainstream producers in local supermarkets.

Certainly there is a rise in the popularity of vegan and vegetarian products, but Farm USA makes the mistake of associating that with a total rejection of meat, which is simply not happening (my family, I suspect, is typical — we buy plenty of meat substitutes along with our chicken and turkey).

Moreover current estimates put the total number of farm animals worldwide as likely doubling this century as the per capita incomes in the underdeveloped world increase to developed world levels.

Farm USA also makes this odd warning about foot and mouth disease,

The foot-and-mouth and mad cow epidemics have devastated the European meat industry and threaten to have a similar effect in the U.S.

But, of course, the foot-and-mouth and mad cow epidemics have been a boon for American animal agriculture which has been exporting meat to make up for the problems in Europe. Neither Mad Cow nor foot-and-mouth have yet to rear their heads in the United States despite the wishful thinking of some animal rights activists.

It won’t be too long before Hershaft is issuing the press release for the 30th and then the 40th and so on observances of World Farm Animals Day.

Source:

Activists bring the slaughterhouse to America’s street. Farm USA, August 25, 2002.