Fundraising for Bowl-A-Rama

I have only one month to try to reach my fundraising goal for this year's Bowl-A-Rama. I know times are tight, but if you can spare a few dollars please visit my page and make a donation.

(Photo is of the Lippard household's latest adoptee from RESCUE, Buster.)

Republican states lead in divorce, teen pregnancy, and porn subscriptions

Charles Blow has an op-ed piece in yesterday's The New York Times commenting on the spate of recent Republican sex scandals which contains this infographic (an aptly named "blowchart") ranking the states based on divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, and subscriptions to online porn sites as a percentage of broadband subscribers.

Blow suggests that conservatives address this hypocrisy by becoming more concerned about what goes on in their own bedrooms than in everyone else's. It also highlights the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.

(BTW, the data for the third column comes from the work of Ben Edelman (PDF), who I've cited here before for his excellent work on spyware and adware, and on the ineffectiveness of TRUSTe.)

UPDATE (June 30, 2009): There's at least one error in this chart, in that Tennessee should be red, not blue, near the bottom of the broadband porn column.

Bad military botnet proposal still being pushed

I just came across an April 2009 BBC story which shows that USAF Col. Williamson is still promoting his idea of building a U.S. military botnet to engage in offensive denial of service attacks against foreign targets on the Internet.

But I haven't seen him respond to any of the criticisms of his bad idea, including in the online forum of the journal where he published it.

I think a more effective idea would be to adjust the computer crime statutes to provide immunity to prosecution (or at the very least an affirmative defense to criminal charges) for private responses to attacks that meet certain criteria, so that ISPs, security researchers, and competent individuals could engage in offensive actions against compromised machines to disable malicious software or take them off the network. Perhaps some kind of licensing or bonding would do the trick, and ISPs could put an exception into their acceptable use policies for entities that met the criteria.

That's also my partial response to this more recent BBC story about "what rules apply in cyber-wars" which led me to find the Williamson article.

$40 million in federal housing stabilization money not working in Phoenix

In April 2009, the city of Phoenix received $40 million in federal stimulus money under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. This program is designed to put a floor on house prices by providing zero-interest loans of up to $15,000 to home buyers to cover downpayments and closing costs on purchases of foreclosed homes.

The number of home buyers who have used this program to date: zero.

Several hundred people have applied for the program, but none has purchased a home yet.

The program requires that buyers have incomes between $55,350 and $104,400, depending on size of family, must complete eight hours of financial counseling in budgeting and home ownership, and must invest $1,000 of their own money. The NSP loan must be repaid in the event that the home is sold or refinanced.

(Via ABC15.com.)

John Wilkins on atheism and agnosticism

John Wilkins has written a blog post on definitions of atheism and agnosticism, in which he suggests that the definition of atheism has been shifting of late (and encroaching upon agnosticism's territory). His discussion and that which follows in the comments is well worth reading.

Mark Sanford wants me to join him...

Talk about great timing--a few minutes ago, I received an email from "Governor Sanford" with the subject "Join Me." I thought perhaps it might be an invitation to travel to Buenos Aires. But no, it's an appeal from the Goldwater Institute to join, signed by Mark Sanford, the Republican Governor of South Carolina who is in the news today for confessing that his recent week-long disappearance was to visit a woman in Argentina that he's been having an affair with.

I suppose they can be sure the recipients are more likely to open such an email today, though I'm not sure how much Sanford's name will result in people giving them money.

BTW, Fox News ran a caption on Sanford's confession press conference identifying him as a Democrat, just like they did with Republican Rep. Mark Foley of Florida back in 2006.

Obama's record of kept and broken promises

Radley Balko summarizes PolitiFact's report card on Obama's promises, as:

31 promises kept, of which 20 expand government power and 6 of which make it smaller, more transparent, or more accountable, and 5 are neutral.

6 promises broken, 5 of which would have limited presidential power, provided tax breaks, or more transparency or accountability to federal government, and one of which was symbolic (recognizing the Armenian genocide).

No promises broken which expand government power.

Part 3 of SP Times series on Scientology

The third part of the St. Petersburg Times story on Scientology, "Ecclesiastical justice," is out, and it's a bit of a disappointment. It's a few more charges of abuse by the four high-ranking defectors that were already summarized in the first part, plus some accounts of the well-known Sea Org practice of "overboarding," used with swimming pools when ships aren't available. Surprisingly, the story doesn't mention that the Olympic-sized swimming pool at the Scientology "Gold Base" compound in Hemet has a faux ship, the Star of California, built into the hill next to it.

Today's stories also include some more detail about the departures from Scientology of the four senior-level defectors interviewed for the story, and some media and Internet reactions.

All in all, I think this new series of stories is not as damning as, say, Janet Reitman's "Inside Scientology" that appeared in Rolling Stone in 2006, nor as any of the older classic exposures like the six-part Los Angeles Times series by Joel Sappell and Robert W. Welkos from 1990, Richard Behar's "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" from Time magazine in 1991, or Richard Leiby's work in the Clearwater Sun in the 1970s and 1980s and the Washington Post in the 1990s.

I hope someday we'll see a more detailed exposure of Scientology's battle with the IRS, and the role of the Church of Spiritual Technology/L. Ron Hubbard Library in the Scientology organizational structure, and why its trustees are lawyers who aren't Scientologists, including a former Assistant Commissioner of the IRS.

UPDATE (August 2, 2009): Other Scientology defectors are now coming forward with their stories, some of which confirm the accounts of abuse given by Rinder, Rathbun, and De Vocht.

CMI makes Darwin docu-drama

Via John Lynch's blog, I see that Creation Ministries International has made a docu-drama about Darwin titled "The Voyage That Shook the World," featuring professional historians who are well-known experts on Darwin. And why did these historians participate in a creationist project?

It seems that CMI took a page from the producers of "Expelled" and set up a separate production company, and failed to disclose the nature of their production to the historians in question. That suggests to me unethical deception--lying by omission--though I'd like to know what exactly the historians were told and what releases they signed before they participated.

Updates to come if I find out.

UPDATE (June 27, 2009): CMI describes its process for the documentary, including the document sent to interviewees, on its website. No mention is made of CMI or a creationist slant to the film. The director says that "if anything, CMI’s influence was one of moderation, ensuring that all sides were fairly represented," but if he is himself a creationist and set out to make the film from a creationist viewpoint, this isn't much of a defense. Note that at least one participant questioned who was providing the funding, and was told only "private investors." And one participant tried to return his fee in order to not appear in the film.

The proof will be in the pudding--it will be interesting to see what the film's narration says and how they fit the interviews into it. There's clearly no defense if it says things that are false or misleading.

Implicit in the CMI position is that creationism is a valid, reasonable, and evidence-supported viewpoint that deserves equal representation, but that's not the case.

One thing that's clear is that anyone being interviewed for a documentary in the age of Borat and Expelled should do some due diligence before signing a release.

UPDATE: John Lynch has responded further, as well, and I agree with everything he says. Their statement about atheists having "no compunction to be truthful at all" is false and offensive, and their analogy to an investigation of the Communist party is a bad analogy.

UPDATE: P.Z. Myers has weighed in. This may be the sort of online media coverage they're hoping for--the film is showing at so few places that the biggest place in Arizona to see it is a church in Miami, AZ (population < 2,000).

UPDATE (June 29, 2009): The CMI web page contains this statement under the movie poster image: "The Voyage that Shook the World, CMI’s documentary, has atheists ranting and raging. Rather than critique the film, they falsely accuse CMI of deception." This statement itself is dishonest--the accusations of deception are accurate, and the current complaints are not necessarily in lieu of critiquing the film, if it becomes feasible to view it.

UPDATE: John Lynch responds further to CMI, and notes that he has been incorrectly identified as an atheist (he's an agnostic).

SP Times Scientology article on Lisa McPherson

Part two of the three-part series in the St. Petersburg Times on Scientology has been published, and it's a detailed account of the death of Lisa McPherson. Some of the previously unpublished details include that David Miscavige was personally monitoring McPherson's auditing over closed circuit television and deemed her "clear" in 1995, prior to her minor car accident and subsequent death after being held for 17 days in the Fort Harrison hotel and being subjected to the "introspection rundown." This is according to Tom De Vocht and Don Jason, both former high-ranking Scientologists in Clearwater. The Church of Scientology denies that Miscavige was even present in Clearwater.

In December 1999, when a judge ruled that Miscavige could be added as a defendant in the McPherson wrongful death case, he allegedly became more abusive and irrational. The criminal case against the church fell apart when the medical examiner changed her ruling from undetermined cause of death to accidental death. Former Scientologist Marty Rathbun, one of the critics speaking out for this series, agrees with the church on this point that the medical examiner's decision was based on the evidence rather than on blackmail or pressure from the church.

(Previously.)

(Photograph is of a Scientology Sea Org bus near the Fort Harrison Hotel, with a couple members of the Sea Org in uniform, on June 25, 2005. Sea Org members sign billion-year contracts.)