The World May Be Ending

It's entirely possible that the world is coming to an end. Not because of anything the Religious Right has foreseen, or Glenn Beck, or even Sarah Palin. No, the universe may be verging on imploding because Harriet Carter, the online version of the decades old catalog purveyor of gadgets and trinkets none of us ever knew we actually needed, is on Twitter.

Harriet Carter has been selling stuff from a catalog since about 1958, items including the doggy "Potty Patch" (so your pooch can take a dump inside and not ruin your carpet), the "Fanny Bank" (a plastic coin bank that looks like a bare butt; you can see where the coins go), a heated ice cream scoop, the "Marshmallow Popper" (a kids' toy gun that rapid-fires mini-marshmallows), and "The Solitaire Board" (which allows you to "play your favorite card games anywhere, even if you don't have a table!"). Does anyone actually use cards to play solitaire anymore?

A lot of the items Harriet Carter sells remind me of the kind of chachkas you used to be able to buy at "five and dime stores," like JJ Newberry, Woolworth, WT Grant, or Ben Franklin. They've almost all gone to retailer heaven and most Americans don't remember they even existed or that Kresge became K-Mart. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Harriet is still there ready to supply us.

Anyway, Harriet Carter apparently has decided that this social networking thing is here to stay, so she wants you Twits to "follow" her on Twitter. This company is just one of many that has decided that there's money to be made via Twitter, and it's leading me to conclude that while I thought Twitter was a goofy concept to begin with, the prospect of corporations sending tweets about products I should seriously purchase makes it even less attractive.

I'll do without hearing about what celebrities had for lunch today, or what Harriet Carter thinks I absolutely must have. If the world is ending anyway, I won't have anyplace to store more "stuff."

Politics and Global Warming

I'm not sure what to make of the fact that there seems to be a vocal minority in the US that still doesn't believe than humans created the world's pollution levels and that the pollution has caused global temperatures to rise over the years and that this temperature rise is a threat to us. If you use the commentary section on newspaper web sites as an indicator, it would appear that there are an awful lot of these folks out there; more on that later.

In a recent news report on the current Governor's race in Illinois, the Daily Herald reported that five of the seven candidates for the Republican nomination don't "believe" that humans have caused global warming. One candidate allowed that humans "contribute" to global warming, but wasn't sure how much. The seventh candidate hedged his bets and stated he believes global warming research is "still evolving." I'm surprised he was brave enough to use the word "evolve."

The question was raised to elicit comment from the candidates on their views of "cap and trade" legislation at the Federal level. As such, it's really of small importance to the potential Governor of Illinois, but these candidates felt the need to explain their opposition to cap and trade. Rather than simply stating that they felt that a cap and trade approach to reducing pollution would have an unacceptable detrimental impact on business and employment (presumably because they think cap and trade will add costs to doing business), these politicians felt that they needed to attack the very notion that humans caused the climate changes scientists are observing. The public comments these people made are positively stunning in the depth of ignorance they displayed:

"I don't accept the premise that man is the cause of global warming, if global warming even exists," Kirk Dillard, a state senator from Hinsdale, said at a candidate forum last week.

"Global warming is not created by man and anybody who says that, it's just bad science. It's not true," said Bob Schillerstrom, chairman of the DuPage County Board.

Dan Proft, a Chicago-area public relations consultant, said Al Gore and other global warming activists are "kind of enviro-terrorists."

The State of Illinois is staggering under huge budget deficits, a regressive state income tax that hasn't been changed in a generation, more corrupt politicians than you can shake a stick at, and a public education system that is going bankrupt due to its reliance on property taxes. One could argue that the position of a potential Illinois Governor on global warming, climate change, and whether humans or polar bears caused these problems is of little relevance to the Chief Executive of the State. One would probably be mostly correct.

On the other hand, the fact that five candidates for statewide office had no compunction making such patently ridiculous statements in a public forum is disturbing for another reason. These politicians are so busy pandering to the "GOP base," that they can't accept what every middle school student knows is true; there's no explanation for global warming and its impact on climate besides humans and the pollution we have generated.

Now back to the online comments made by newspaper readers. This article generated the same kind of vitriolic and ignorant rants that cause me to generally avoid reading such commentary. Virtually all of these comments are posted by people using pseudonyms and their anonymity empowers them to make broad assertions as if they were facts. While they lambaste other commenters for making unsubstantiated or false "liberal" or "left-wing" statements about global warming, these posters make just as unsubstantiated claims masquerading as fact. Some of them make simple blanket statements about how well wildlife is faring in the Arctic, as if to settle the fallacy of global warming for everyone.

The ignorant comments of the public after news articles (about ignorant comments of politicians) are even more worrisome than the politicians' statements. The anonymous public vitriol tends to discourage rational discussion, and is little more than online bullying. For an excellent post on what's wrong with the public comment sections of news related web sites, read Steve Dahl's excellent 11/11/09 article "Everybody is a know-it-all these days."

In the end, it's impossible to debate with these folks and expect that they will ever be able to modify their viewpoint. If they don't "believe" in global warming by now, they never will.

Nothing To Do? Fake A Kidnapping?

This post may be about the goofiest story for the month: the wife of a Florida health care executive faked being kidnapped by a mechanic and tried to extort ransom money from her wealthy husband. The Associated Press account can be found here.

I thought one of the strangest aspects of the story are the names of the principals. The wife's name is Quinn Gray, the husband's name is Reid Gray, and the mechanic's name is Jasmin Osmanovic. It's too bad the husband and wife aren't lawyers, because they've got a built-in name for their firm: Quinn, Reid, and Gray. The names alone are enough to begin a script for the Lifetime Channel. The story line is also silly enough for an episode of Psych. It includes a note from the wife that she'd been kidnapped for ransom, phone calls in which she gave instructions for dropping off the ransom, and a bunch of college kids stumbling across the ransom delivery and panicking because they thought they'd gotten in the middle of some sort of drug transaction. Finally, the story includes Mr. Gray's decision not to divorce his apparently loony-tune wife, who was taken into custody and told FBI agents that "her kidnapper worked for a loan shark who wanted her husband to pay up."

Made for TV.

Gay Rights As Civil Rights

There's been a lot of coverage this past week over the recent vote in Maine repealing gay marriage in that State. I know that much, if not most, of the funding on both sides of the issue came from outside Maine, and that fact bothers me. I don't like the idea of "outside" money being used to sway "local" opinions on a referendum. I get lots of emails soliciting financial support for lobbying efforts around the country, and I generally don't participate, unless it's for something that is on my ballot. I don't want people in other States telling me what I should do, and I don't want to tell them what they should do. That said, I do support the right of gay couples to marry.

Those that oppose it seem to focus on the "sanctity" of marriage, but that argument seems to be fallacious when one considers that the majority of heterosexual marriages in this country end in divorce. If marriage is sacred, why have we made it so easy to dissolve one?

At any rate, it's hard to rationally counter the shouting of the religious right on this topic, unless you're comfortable with debating the finer points of biblical texts. Burt Constable's column "Don't remember the Maine vote, just keep eyes on gay prize," does a good job of it with a discussion of Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell, a retired, black, heterosexual, Methodist minister who is a new member of the Board of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

This week's vote in Maine against gay rights was disappointing, but Caldwell calls it another example of "letting the majority determine the rights of the minority." If not for court decisions upholding the rights of the minority, some states still might vote to ban interracial marriage or integrated schools, Caldwell notes.

You might expect a retired minister to be fluent with biblical texts, and Rev. Caldwell, who was an active participant in the fight for civil rights in the early 1960s with Martin Luther King, does not disappoint.

People who use the Bible to deny rights to gays, "use the Bible to sustain their bias," Caldwell says. "And that, to me, does great damage to the sacred book for those of us who are Christian. I say we've done damage to the depth and breath of scripture when we have used the Bible as a book to bash people."

There is a certain calming influence to Rev. Caldwell's words. He urges us to be steadfast and not be discouraged and to continue to seek equality for everyone. He paraphrases a Martin Luther King quote "Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral":

Caldwell says the days when civil rights belong only to the heterosexual population are dying. "We're in the funeral-making with heterosexualism," Caldwell says, employing a word he lumps in with racism and sexism. "We just have to figure out how long that will be."