Prometheus 6

Debtor Nation
An angry hacker complains that debt-saddled Americans don t have identities worth stealing.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Andy Borowitz

April 26 - An identity thief who has stolen over half a million identities over the past two years returned all but four of them today, declaring the identities "totally worthless" and "an enormous waste of my time and hard work."

The computer hacker, who spoke to reporters via conference call today, said that "in all my years of stealing identities, I have never come across a bigger collection of losers."

He said that he had spent months hacking through the security firewall of one of the nation's largest financial institutions, hoping to reap billions of dollars for his efforts, but after sifting through the stolen identities he found that they were "little more than a garbage dump of unpaid college loans and overdue Blockbuster bills."

"Everybody's running around worried about identity theft these days," he added. "All I can say is,  Don't flatter yourself by thinking you have an identity that's worth my time. "

Quote of note:

Today's religious extremists are not only trying to use the state, with all its power, as religious proselytizer. They oppose science when it happens to conflict with their version of revealed truth. They twist history to claim that the Republic's freethinking Founders, like Jefferson, Adams, and Madison, were really theocrats like themselves. They long for the predemocratic world of absolutes circa 1500.

Whose nation under God?
By Robert Kuttner  |  April 27, 2005

WHEN John Kennedy was running for president and passions were running high about whether a Catholic could serve both the American citizenry and Rome, a joke made the rounds about a priest and a minister whose friendship nearly came to blows. Finally the priest phoned his old friend. ''What a pity," he said. ''Here we are, both men of the cloth, fighting over politics." ''It's true," said the minister. ''We're both Christians. We both worship the same God -- you in your way, and I in His."

Doctors Influenced By Mention Of Drug Ads
Offbeat Study Finds Familiar Brand Name Can Evoke Diagnosis
By Shankar Vedantam and Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 27, 2005; A01

Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant Paxil, according an unusual study being published today.

The study employed an elaborate ruse -- sending actors with fake symptoms into 152 doctors' offices to see whether they would get prescriptions. Most who did not report symptoms of depression were not given medications, but when they asked for Paxil, 55 percent were given prescriptions, and 50 percent received diagnoses of depression.

Florida Expands Right to Use Deadly Force in Self-Defense
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, April 26 - Gov. Jeb Bush signed a bill on Tuesday giving Florida citizens more leeway to use deadly force in their homes and in public, a move that gun-control groups and several urban police chiefs warned would give rise to needless deaths.

The measure, known as the "stand your ground" bill, lets people use guns or other deadly force to defend themselves in public places without first trying to escape.

Floridians already had the right to defend themselves against home intruders under what is known as the castle doctrine, but until now, they could not do so in public.

"Many Americans are potentially open to scams because they don't understand the purpose of the financial markets," he said yesterday.

The Republican economic plan, in a nutshell. From the very beginning of their push for private accounts it has been obvious they've been counting on the public's lack of knowledge.

This is not unusual, by the way.

A "free market" will work the way economists project if all players have perfect knowledge of the market...if you know the relative value (effectiveness and cost) of all your options. But no one has that, and frankly the continued emphasis on choice means you'll be ever less likely to have it. We manipulate the mental environment to invoke desire and manipulate the information environment to imply difference where there is none, to imply effectiveness where there is none...there's simply no intent to provide the level of information necessary for a true free market.

Quote of note:

"Many Americans are potentially open to scams because they don't understand the purpose of the financial markets," he said yesterday.

Other analysts said they thought that the findings added to a growing body of evidence that the typical American is poorly equipped to take advantage of what proponents call the ownership society: a future in which individuals are free to invest their own retirement money, rather than having to accept the returns offered by the Social Security program or a group retirement program at work, like a pension plan. Many surveys have shown the public has doubts about the Social Security program, with young people, in particular, confident that they could do better by investing on their own.

Yet even their concern is poorly informed, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute, a nonpartisan research organization that is financed by companies and labor unions. The institute's own research showed that fewer than 20 percent of workers thought that Social Security would be their primary source of income in retirement, even though Social Security is currently the primary income source for more than two-thirds of retirees.

"It is abundantly clear that there are a large number of Americans who are completely unprepared to make these decisions," said Steve Blakely, the institute's editor and communications director.

Survey Finds Many Have Poor Grasp of Basic Economics
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Celera to Quit Selling Genome Information
By ANDREW POLLACK

Celera Genomics, which raced with the publicly financed Human Genome Project to decipher the human DNA sequence, has decided to abandon the business of selling genetic information. The company said yesterday that it was discontinuing its genome database subscription business and putting the information into the public domain.

Celera succeeded in signing up some subscribers to its genome database, but the company is still losing money and it never quite calmed critics who argued that fundamental information about basic human biology should be openly available to all.

Quote of note:

"We fumbled the ball badly," said one senior Republican official who spoke anonymously because he did not want to be viewed as critical of the leadership.

Do you know how sad it is that such a statement would be viewed as "critical of the leadership?" DO you know how sad it is that someone would have to consider such a thing when making a blatantly obvious statement?

House Republicans Weigh Vote on Ethics Changes
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, April 26 - House Republican leaders on Tuesday moved toward reversing rules changes that have paralyzed the ethics committee, a decision that could clear the way to an investigation of the overseas travel of Representative Tom DeLay, the majority leader, and other House members.

Since a real understanding of what actually happened is so useful in keeping Black folks sane and centered in the midst of everything from Thug Life to Black Republicans, I thought it might be interesting to apply the same technique to the most widespread delusion amongst white folks...Conservative White Americans, to be specific. That delusion is that America's Founding Fathers built some special reverence for religion into the Constitution.

Let's start with an obvious fact. The North American colonies were a military and economic venture (the two thoroughly interpenetrated each other at the time). Religious colonies were established after the economic and military base was established. Everything built on that base, including the religious colonies.

The National Humanities Center maintains a site called TeacherServe that has a section called Divining America: Religion and the National Culture. (I'm giving you all these links because they're all useful). I want to start with a brief excerpt from The Middle Colonies as the Birthplace of American Religious Pluralism by Patricia U. Bonomi, Professor Emeritus, New York University:

Texas Officials Shrug Off Fine Over Bush Law

By SAM DILLON

The authorities in Texas yesterday shrugged off a fine that the federal Department of Education has imposed on the state because it was late last year in notifying schools and districts whether they had reached student achievement benchmarks under President Bush's No Child Left Behind law.

While promising to notify schools in a timely fashion this year, the education commissioner of Texas, Shirley Neeley, said, "Classrooms and teachers will not be harmed by this fine."

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings announced the $444,282 fine on Friday. It appears to be the largest fine imposed on any state since Mr. Bush signed the federal law in 2002.

via Slashdot:

Aglassis writes

"It appears that NASA is not backing down from their nuclear space initiative. Project Prometheus has recently started a new web page (under JPL) and NASA is finishing up a period of public comment (last session today). Currently Northrop Grumman is contracted to begin preliminary design of the spacecraft until 2008 for NASA (the reactor will be built by the Department of Energy's Division of Naval Reactors--the folks who control all US submarine and aircraft carrier nuclear reactors). Early specs are that it will be 60 meters long, have a 30,000 kg mass, use a 100 KW reactor using Brayton cycle gas turbines, be powered by ion thrusters with a 7000 second specific impulse, and have a science payload of 1500 kg. Early mission plans for Prometheus 1 (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter) indicate that the spacecraft would orbit Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa individually, and perhaps have a lifespan of about 20 years."

Suppose you owned a factory. You make world-class widgets as a step in manufacturing a product for a market you've dominated years.

Suppose someone else also makes widgets for their product in a different market. Their widgets are aren't as good as yours, but they're made by a different process at significantly less cost.

Do you adapt their widget technology, maybe putting a little more expense in to bring it up to your quality standards? Do you buy widgets from them?

Suppose the widgets are people?

Robert Scheer in the LA Times

We need to put such gargantuan numbers in some perspective. The emergency funding that the Senate passed 99 to 0 last week gives the military roughly $80 billion and pays for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan only through September. That is twice what President Bush insists he needs to cut from the federal support for Medicaid over the next decade.

Already the red state of Missouri is set to end its Medicaid program entirely within the next three years because of a lack of funds. As the Los Angeles Times reported, that will save the state $5 billion, but at the cost of ending healthcare for the more than 1 million Missourians enrolled in the program. That sum is less than half of what Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, alone has been paid for reconstruction efforts in Iraq, without much to show for it in terms of improving the Iraqis' quality of life.

Similarly, with roughly 10% of what we've spent in Iraq, we could make up the $27-billion federal funding shortfall in paying for Bush's controversial No Child Left Behind Act, which tells public schools that they will be all but scrapped if they don't improve  — yet it doesn't provide the means to do so. This number comes from a lawsuit filed by school districts in Texas, Michigan and Vermont and the National Education Assn., the nation's largest teachers organization.

Sadly, these domestic failures provide a far greater long-term threat to our nation's security than the hyped-up claims surrounding our foreign adventures. Abroad, we must "support our troops" at all costs —  even if the cost is their lives —  while at home, the nation's leaders are all about tough love.

Faith 'War' Rages in U.S., Judge Says
A Bush nominee central to the Senate's judicial controversy criticizes secular humanists.
By Peter Wallsten
Times Staff Writer
April 26, 2005

WASHINGTON   Just days after a bitterly divided Senate committee voted along party lines to approve her nomination as a federal appellate court judge, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown told an audience Sunday that people of faith were embroiled in a "war" against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots, according to a newspaper account of the speech.

Brown's remarks come as a partisan battle over judges has evolved into a national debate over the proper mix of God and government and as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) ponders changing the chamber's rules to prevent Democrats from using procedural moves to block confirmation of conservative jurists such as Brown.

"Wait until you meet Jim."

LIP-SERVICE PUSH FOR OIL
By DEBORAH ORIN

WASHINGTON   President Bush yesterday held hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and took him on a stroll through a field of bluebonnet flowers at his Texas ranch in a pitch to get the Saudis to pump more oil.

They embraced and traded air kisses on both cheeks after the prince, clad in flowing robes, arrived nearly 30 minutes late for his second visit to the Bush ranch in Crawford.

The president firmly held the hand of his guest, who's in his 80s, and guided the Saudi ruler through the field of blooming bluebonnets as they headed to an office for a few hours of meetings.

Nation's Inmate Population Increased 2.3 Percent Last Year
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON, April 24 (AP) - The nation's prisons and jails held 2.1 million people in mid-2004, 2.3 percent more than the year before, the government reported on Sunday.

The inmate population increased by slightly more than 48,000 from mid-2003 to mid-2004, a growth of about 900 inmates each week, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The total inmate population has hovered around two million for the last few years: It was 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.

Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought

By NICHOLAS WADE

By peering not into the eyes but into the brain, an improved scanning technique has enabled scientists to figure out what people are looking at - even, in some cases, when they are not aware of what they have seen.

The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind.

The scanning technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, is a more powerful version of a technique widely used in hospitals. It can show which regions of the brain are actively performing some task, but until now has lacked the resolution to track specific groups of neurons, as the functional units of the brain are called.

In the Today's News section of their web site, which is only accessible to subscribers, is this:

In response to hate mail, college temporarily moves minority students off campus

That's some shit I want to read.

LATER: Details here, courtesy of EG in the comments.

Quote of note:

The point is that people sense, correctly, that Mr. Bush doesn't understand their concerns. He was sold on privatization by people who have made their careers in the self-referential, corporate-sponsored world of conservative think tanks. And he himself has no personal experience with the risks that working families face. He's probably never imagined what it would be like to be destitute in his old age, with no guaranteed income.

Oh, hell, here's another. I feel generous...

Over the past three years, wage and salary income grew less than in any other postwar recovery - less than a tenth as fast as profits. But wage-earning Americans aren't part of the base.

The Oblivious Right
By PAUL KRUGMAN