Gender Neutral

There’s a group at Beloit college is pushing for ‘gender-neutral’ bathrooms. 

“There are people for whom that is a very troubling and unfair burden in terms of always having to identify themselves when they walk through a door to relieve themselves,” said Catherine Orr, who chairs women’s and gender studies at Beloit. “The bathroom becomes a very political space.”

My first thought on this is that it is not a right to not feel uncomfortable.  People feel uncomfortable all of the time for all sorts of reasons. 

My second thought is that if we are going to set rules to prevent people from feeling uncomfortable, shouldn’t we set them to make the fewest people uncomfortable?  I’m willing to bet that there aren’t more than a dozen kids at Beloit college who can’t figure out what gender they are.  As for the rest of the kids, I’m willing to bet that a great number of them would be uncomfortable with gender-neutral bathrooms.  I know that I would have been uncomfortable walking into a bathroom with a bunch of my female classmates and pinching a loaf. 

This is another case of an extremely small minority trying to make the world around them more comfortable at the expense of making everyone else uncomfortable.

UPDATE: HLN has come up with the perfect door label for these gender-neutral bathrooms.

Optical Switching

Here’s something that has been a long time in coming.

The invention demonstrates for the first time, Intel researchers said, that ultrahigh-speed fiber-optic equipment can be produced at personal computer industry prices. As the costs of communicating between computers and chips falls, the barrier to building fundamentally new kinds of computers not limited by physical distance should become a reality, experts said.

This is a technology that we have been dreaming of for quite a while.  Fiber optics provide a means to transmit massive amounts of data over great distances with no resistance because it is using light.  The problem is that eventually, that packet of light needs to be switched.  To do that, the light has to be translated into electricity for the purpose of switching.  The packet loses energy and speed during the switching process, which greatly reduces the advantages of fiber optics in the first place. 

Optical switches will allow that packet of light to remain in its original form for the entire duration of its transmission.  It may sound small, because we are talking about fractions of a second, but it adds up.  Trillions of packets of data are switched in the public network (internet) and private networks every second.  Plus, a single packet may pass through dozens of routers and switches before it reaches its destination.  Any technology that can reduce the time it takes to switch and route packets will increase the speed of every network by several orders of magnitude.

What this means to the average person is 50 times as much bandwidth to your house for a tenth of the price.  It means cheaper phone calls as more calls are transmitted via IP on an optical network.  It optical processors for your computer that run 100 times faster with no heat. 

It’s a whole new world.

Crime Doesn’t Pay

This made my day:

A convicted burglar sentenced in Calhoun County to 20 years in prison this week as a repeat offender had an unusual run-in with his victim.

The victim, Richard Bussey, says he drove up to his father’s rural residence last summer and found a man loading furniture and other items into a pickup truck. 

Bussey held a gun on the would-be thief and ordered him to return the furniture. Bussey didn’t have a telephone, so he made 45-year-old Roy Andrew Gendron mow the lawn with a push mower until he could think of a plan to alert authorities.

Bussey ultimately took Gendron’s driver’s license and turned it in to police.

Assistant District Attorney Brian McVeigh says Gendron had been arrested 19 times and was on parole when Bussey caught him.

At sentencing Tuesday, Circuit Judge Samuel Monk says the case stands out for its comical twist, calling it “one of the better ones.”

And McVeigh says if he ever gets in that situation, “I’ll try to get some yard work out of the guy.”

Emphasis mine

Kerry Commits

John Kerry finally committed to the Wisconsin Debate.

Front-runner John Kerry has committed to participate in Sunday’s Democratic presidential debate in Milwaukee.

Kerry joins four other Democrats in the race - John Edwards, Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and the Rev. Al Sharpton who have committed to the event. Wesley Clark had said yes but dropped out of the race after primaries Tuesday in Tennessee and Virginia.

The 90-minute debate will take place at 5:30 p.m. Sunday at Marquette University. It is sponsored by the Journal Sentinel, WTMJ-TV and Journal Communications.

It will be broadcast in Milwaukee on WTMJ-TV and nationally by MSNBC. A live Webcast will be available on http://www.wisconsindebate.com and http://www.jsonline.com.

He was getting some flak for his lack of commitment.  It was coming off as if he was blowing off Wisconsin.

Quarter

Here’s an interesting story.

WASHINGTON,D.C.—Hang on to any of the new State of Texas quarters.  If you have them, they may be worth much more than 25 cents.  The U.S.Treasury announced today that it is recalling all of the Texas quarters that are part of its program featuring quarters from each state.

“We are recalling all the new Texas quarters that were recently issued,” Treasury Undersecretary Jack Shackleford said Monday.  “This action is being taken after numerous reports that new quarters will not work in parking meters, toll booths, vending machines, pay phones, or other coin-operated devices.”
The quarters were issued in the order in which the various states joined the U.S. and have been a tremendous success among coin collectors worldwide.
“The problem lies in the unique design of the Texas quarter, which was created by a Texas A&M graduate,” Shackleford said.  “Apparently, the duct tape holding the two dimes and the nickel together keeps jamming the coin-operated devices.”

Wictory Wednesday

It’s looking more and more like John Kerry will be the Democratic nominee for president.  As a Senator, Kerry voted to cut the intelligence services and the military, and then complained when they couldn’t everywhere all the time.  He voted for the Iraq war, but against the money to fund it.  John Kerry is another liberal from Taxachusetts who thinks that the rules are for the little people - not him. 

Please help me in supporting President Bush in his effort to be reelected.  He is by far the better man to lead this country for the next four years.

Read the rest

GWB and the Guard

I hit this topic only to explain why I don’t see Bush’s Guard service as a big deal.

1.  If the critics took an honest look at how common it is for Guardsmen to miss drill, then make it up later in the year, they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

2.  As to the charges that he joined the Guard to avoid Vietnam, yes, he could have joined an active duty unit.  But, he had a desire to work in politics at the same time, and active duty doesn’t allow for that.  If he was truly trying to guarentee that he wouldn’t see service in Vietnam, he wouldn’t have chosen to be a pilot.  After all, at the time he joined, his unit was on an active rotation to SE Asia.

3.  And finally, drop the AWOL crap.  Those who fling around charges of “AWOL” and “deserter” don’t have any clue what those terms mean.  Guys who go AWOL or desert end up in Leavenworth, not honorably discharged.

 

Wes Clark is Out

Wesley Clark has dropped out of the race. 

As I’ve stated on this blog before, I believe that Wesley Clark was encouraged to run by the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party as a tactic to derail Howard Dean’s candidacy.  Once it became clear that Howard Dean has very little chance of gaining the Democratic nomination, there was no longer any reason for Clark to continue the effort. 

Since Kerry is likely to get the nomination, he will not pick Clark as a VP.  The only think Clark would bring to the table is a military credential, which Kerry already has, and the Southern vote, which Edwards would be a better choice.

It looks more and more like a Kerry/Edwards ticket to me.

The Age of the Battleship

On this day in 1906, the HMS Dreadnought was launched, and with her, the age of the battleship.

Stopping the Tax Train

I’ve mentioned before the effort to amend the Wisconsin constitution to limit tax increases - similar to Colorado’s amendment.  Now a promising poll has been released.

Of those who responded to the poll, 74% said they would back an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution that would limit government spending; create a “rainy day” fund; return surpluses to taxpayers; and require a referendum if spending limits are to be exceeded. Eighteen percent opposed the plan, 7% were undecided and 1% refused to answer the question.

What’s more, when presented with some of the negative effects of such an amendment, such as cuts in key programs and services, residents still supported the idea of limiting the government’s ability to spend.

After hearing arguments from both sides, 65% of respondents backed the plan, compared with 21% who opposed the idea and 14% who were undecided.

That’s very positive.  To pass a constitutional amendment in Wisconsin, the amendment must be passed by both houses of the legislature for two consecutive sessions and then be voted on by the public.  Both houses of the legislature are controlled by Republicans and this poll indicates that the public vote would be a lock.  The poll smells a little fishy to me (small sample, funded by special interest group, etc.), but I believe it to be fairly accurate.

This effort has longer legs than its critics are willing to believe.

Executing the Retarded

It looks like Texas is finally starting to have real trouble with Atkins v. Virginia.

I personally think that Atkins is a flawed decision, because it prevents an individualized determination of whether the death penalty is an appropriate punishment by excluding, en masse, an entire class of defendants (the same goes for Thompson‘s prohibition on executing those under 16, IMHO).  The logic is flawed, in that it presumes a retarded defendant (or one under 16 at the time of the offense) can never have sufficient culpability.

An example:

...Robert Smith, received a death sentence for the 1990 murder of James Michael Wilcox, whom he shot while fleeing after a clothing store robbery in Houston.

After the Atkins ruling, Mr. Easterling hired a psychologist to evaluate Mr. Smith, and the Harris County District Attorney’s office did the same. Both psychologists reached the same conclusion: that Smith - who has an IQ of 63 and reads at a third-grade level - was mentally retarded.

...even though he recommended commutation to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal says he considers Smith’s a “borderline” case.

“I didn’t have any choice in recommending commutation since my own expert found him mentally retarded. But here’s a guy who was shrewd enough to use aliases, who drove a car, and did a lot of things mentally retarded people don’t normally do,” says Mr. Rosenthal.

 

Exactly.

In practice the biggest problem with Atkins is how to define retarded.  For those who are borderline (i.e. those who are able to function “normally” in society, or close to it), how do you make that determination?  Science has not evolved to the point where we can accurately define the bounds of the class.  Could the definition of “retarded” balloon in the same way the definition for “disabled” did after the ADA was passed?

And the result on the criminal process?

For his part, Rosenthal - sporting black cowboy boots and a white mustache - says defense attorneys are raising the issue of mental retardation in every case now.

“I think Atkins is a flawed decision and really doesn’t give much guidance as to what to do,” he says. “And since the legislature won’t give us [a definition of mental retardation], we just to have to fly by the seat of our pants.”

 

I think this quote is telling:

BUT since the Supreme Court’s decision, the state Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that almost 30 Texas death-row inmates are entitled to hearings on whether they meet the standards set down in Atkins.

 

Outbreak of retardation reported in Huntsville.  Film at 11.

Green Party Run

Say Uncle points out this interesting story.

Former Vermont Gov. Howie Dean and his advisers are looking into options that would allow him to run for president on the Green Party ticket should he fail in his bid to wrench the Democratic nomination away from Sen. John Kerry.

Dean had been looking at the Green Party long before his campaign caught fire. As early as late last summer, Dean was considering the Greens as an option, particularly because at the time Ralph Nader, the Green nominee in 2000, appeared less interested in a run.

“This isn’t a ploy to get Democrats to pay attention to us,” says a Deaniac in Washington. “This is about ensuring that our man’s views and this supporters’ views get carried into the fall campaign. A Green Party bid puts him in the debates with Bush and whomever the Democrats nominate. It keeps us viable.”

Granted, the story is from a tabloid, but it may have merit.  Given Dean’s massive ego, I wouldn’t be surprised if he switched parties to keep running.  And heck, the Green Party will let anybody run on their ticket just to get the media attention.

Tragic Fate

This story is so sad.

A girl died after her coat got caught in a car door and she was dragged for about three miles on rural roads.

The girl, thought to be 7 years old, was dropped off by a relative at a rural bus stop before 8 a.m. MST Tuesday. While waiting for a bus, Iron County Deputy Sheriff Michael Crouch said another relative drove up to a nearby mailbox.

The girl went to that car and asked the relative for a ride to school as she climbed into the back seat.

However, Crouch said the relative told the girl she didn’t have time to drive five miles into town, and the girl got out of the vehicle.

“She apparently became caught and tangled,” Crouch said. “The relative was not aware this had happened and drove off with the little girl caught in the rear passenger door.”

The driver went about three miles before Crouch said a witness stopped them.

The driver then put the girl in the back seat and drove for help. 

Wow.  How sad.

Practice Court Update, Day 2

More of the same today.

I survived almost intact today.  I brain farted as the morning Evidence class was concluding, so I got to entertain the class with dumb answers throughout the afternoon session.  Not too dumb, I guess, in that we eventually arrived at the correct answer, but I didn’t make it very easy.

I’m beginning to think that as long as I prepare well for class, I’ll be alright.  The profs appear to be tolerant of mistakes, as long as they can see that some effort has been put in by the student to think through the ultimate answer.  I’m afraid hells a-comin’, though, cause there are a lot of students less prepared than I, and it’s only a matter of time before one of them gets nailed and pisses-off the profs.

Overall, a good day.

Bush’s Record

Bush looks like he’ll be releasing some records regarding his participation in the National Guard.

Hoping to quell election-year questions from Democrats about President Bush’s Air National Guard service in the 1970s, the White House said it will release payroll records Tuesday that will show he fulfilled his obligations.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the payroll records from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, Colorado, will include documents and dates of payment.

McClellan said the president would not have been paid if he had not shown up for drills—as some critics such as Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe have suggested.

This won’t resolve anything.  The Dems will be insinuating (if not outright saying) that the President fabricated the records.  Their “evidence” will be that he didn’t produce the records during the last election.

Still, I think that reasonable people understand that this issue is without merit.