The Offending Images

I have tried to upload the Jillands-Posten images here, but it appears that somehow Blogger is censoring them. A good site for these and other images in this controversy is http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/jyllands-posten_cartoons/.

I finally did manged to upload the most famous of the images, the image with the bomb in the turban, by lumping it with the rest of the images here.

Why the fuss? The cartoon shows the Prophet in a viscious guise .. the guise of a holyman who kills for his beliefs. But that is exactly the story of the Quran. M. was not just a prophet on a hill like Jesus or the leader of a fight for freedom like Moses or ML King. The Prophet was the leader of a great army, an army he assembled to conquer Arabi and expel all disbelievers.

This watercolor is from the book on the Prophet by Danish author Kåre Bluitgen. The image shows the story in the Quran of Mohamed's masacre of the Jews of Yathrib for their refusal to side with him in the conflict with the Quraishis from Mecca. Bluitgen's inability to find a cartoonist to draw images like this was the original reason for the Jillands Posten cartoon contest.

The association of M. with violence is hardly limited to the effort by a Dutchman to make the Quran accessible to the West. The fires of hell image is from Muslim Persia, showing the Prophet presiding while demons burn women for showing their hair.

Which of these is most offensive to Islam. You vote.

The War Of the Images

When the furor over the images of Mohamed in Jillands-Posten was active, I decided not to post anything ... thinking that respect for the feelings of Muslims, even misguided feelings, was better than a perhaps meaningless gesture.

My level of tolerance has changed. The cartoon at the left, IMO fairly, makes fun of all deities. It is interesting in who is left out. G-d somehow did not make the cut .. though the Christian version, spelled Je--h did. Maybe there is an advantage in being nameless? Of course Allah means G-d and is not a name> Moreover the anmeless deities of the Muslims and the Jews are not believed to have faces visible to humans. .. so maybe we ... the Mulsims and the Jews,, or at least our shared faceless, namelss Deity. both escaped this humilation.

This sort of idlolatry and idolatry-hatred is nothing new. In the Quran and the Jewish books of the Canaanite wars, Jews and Mulsims kill others over the worship of idols. Though I don't remember any great celebrations of these events in Hebrew school like the celebrations in Afghanistan when the Taliban destroyed the statures of Buddha. Of course, the prophet is celebrated for destroying the Gods of Mecca. Is this different from the French cartoon?

The cartoon of Muhamed is part of a very important book . Danish author Kåre Bluitgen complained that he could not find an artist brave enought to illustrate his upcoming book about Mohammed. Jyllands Posten ran a contest and the result was the furor over the images "disrespect" for the prophet. The book is about to be released and includes this very accurate painting, depicting a well known Quranics story ... painted by an anonyous artist no doubt frightened for her life.

And the cartoons that elicited this hatred?

He Killed The Jews

July 18, 2006. Naveed Afzal Haq, an American Muslim invaded the Jewish Federation of Seattle and shot six people. No doubt he said, Praise be to Allah, as he shot at a pregnant woman. HE KILLED THE JEWS:

(CTV.CA 29 July, 2006) On Friday, a man armed with a large calibre
semi-automatic handgun walked into Seattle's Jewish Federation and opened
fire -- killing one woman and wounding five others before he surrendered to
a SWAT team minutes.

One is dead. One is still pregant and lightly wounded.
The others will bear their wounds and live on, maimed.

My response in words is this: MOHAMED KILLED JEWS.

I have been too quiet about Islam's evil side for too long. I read the Quran more than 30 years ago and have reread parts of it many, many times. The Quran shares much with the Book of Moroni, the Vedas, the Torah, the New Testament, and the Hymns of Zarathrustra... Before science, some guy comes to earth and spreads "truth." The truth has many good things .. often liberating people form oppressive priesthoods while combining moral lessons with cosmological nonsense. And all portray truths that lead to hate if not abetted. Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, have evolved since their revelations. The Hindus have their Bhagvad Gita and Ghandi, the Christians have Luther and Martin Luther King, We Jews have too many teahcers ot mention even a few. Even the Mormons, with their science fiction soap opera of a revelation, have evolved to accept Black folks as humans.

Jews have not wanted to kill idolaters for 2500 years and have become leader of social reform for Marx to Alinskly. Today in the hell of Lebanaon how many Muslim schools teach hatred of the Jews? The teaching of the Quran is that WE betrayed Muhamed by allowing with his enemies to pass through Jewish territories. If only the Jews of Yatherib had joined the anti muslim forces, maybe Islam would have died then and there. Instead, HE KILLED THE JEWS.

Am I evil for reciting this part of the Quran? Do I not see beauty in Islam?

I love much in the Quran. I admoire muslims who submit to G-d, submit to a brotherhood of man where all ahev the same needs and rights to learning and food. I only wish in preaching the Ummaya, the concept of one mankind, there was room in that house for thoise who worhip Krishna or accept the Torah.

I hope I am not Evil, There is no Muslim more proud than I of the eras of Jewish/Muslim collaboration, the era of Harun A Rashid in Baghdad (763-800), Saladin (1138-1193) in Egypt and Jerusalem, and, of course the magnificence of the Andalusian era in Spain. In an era of Christian darkness, Islam’s celebration of the intellect and acceptance of Jews and co-believers in G-d, led to an explosion of knowledge that would not be rivaled until the Enlightenment. Yet, even then Islam failed to reform itself. While the Imans of Harun al Rashid’s Baghdad or Toledo may have studied with Rabbis, they never questioned the evil parts of the Quran.

Islam is today an evil religion. The evil is not confined to primitive madrassa in Pakistan or the bizar goldened robed Wahabi congregations in modern Medina. It is endemic and will be until, one must hope, a new Islam .. a Quaker movement, a movement like Hassidism, or perhaps a return to the too brief teachings of Akbar the Magnificent rule of India.

Until then, I will believe that the term “good muslim” is akin to “good KKK.”

Peace be unto all humans, even if that means those that hate others must die.

Go, Go, Go ... the Sonics

Lets be honest ...

The Seattle pro basketball team, the Sonics, have been sold to some Oklahoma City types who claim they want to keep the team here. Now that is honesty!

Prof sports:

A publicly funded subsidy divided amongst highly talented practitioners.

Problem:

the owners want more and more dollars from the public till to finance the salaries .. the multi million dollar salaries .. of the athletes. Without the subsidy, the players would not be able to demand these obscene salaries.

Solution:

Since prof sports are now a well recognized socialist function of govt, then the practitioners would need to submit competitive bids for the franchises ... just a Boeing and Lockheed bid to build airplanes.

So:

1. Sports would become agencies of govt. ... just like universities and museums and parks.
Cities hosting these teams, should legislate their ownership to make them into utilities .. like a publicly owned electric company. Call it the Enron approach.


2. In order to run a prof sports team, an organization/sponsor would have to bid for the privilege.

The bid would, presumably include a profit. The effect would be to eliminate the tax subsidy associated with athlete depreciation and appreciation of the team's value.

3. If no one bid, the sport would die or find a way of reducing its costs.

Is this too simple?

When Does This End?

Quote from Pete Hoekstra,Republican, Chair of Intelligence Committee.

"I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed. If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies."

The American System seems to lack an enforcer. What soes a President have to do to merit impeachment? Defrauding the public? ..nah!!! Violations of habeus corpus? nahhhh! Murder, nahhh. Treason, nahhhh. Being of the party not in power?

Some years ago I attended a seminar by an Army General. One topic was why the Constitution was impregnable to a putsch. Say it ain't so.

Fort Lewis and the Truth

Today was the 4th. For something a bit different I decided to spend the afternoon at the "Freedom Fest" at Fort Lewis, an Army base about 70 minutes south of here.

Part of my motivation was that KTTH, one of Seattle's two far right conservative radio-talk stations, announced that they were sonsoring the Fest. Sponsor? Far right? On a US Gov. Army Base? This sounded bizar. I figured I would be immersed in great opportunities for outrage.

Here a cross, there a cross.
Candidate, candidate, gay bashing,
Cigar smoking preachers,
Flags in everything but the burgers ....

None of that. What we saw was a nice, lower middle class, child centric street fair.

Lots of nice folks ... often in the form of nascent families .. Poppa tall and crew cut, two toddlers plus one in the oven. Kids rides run by clean cut soldier boys and gals ... who also ran the busses to the parking lots.

I really liked the non-racism. The Army must be a real meting pot. Every race based in our species seemed to be represented, even the poppas and mommas seemed selected to show of diversity. What a contrast with the usual Seattle street fairs where, somehow, Seattle's fable racelessness holds forth as lilly whilte, pudding yellow, or sable 'n chocolate depending on the neighborhood.

The major commercial endeavour seemd to be credit unions, one in particular touting free 3D glasses for watching the fire works ... to be shown after we left. Then there was loudspeaker, talkng about an opccasional lost and found item and about the raffle. Some soldier's welfare fund was sponsoring the event, the Voice was begging folks to buy raffle tickets ... tickets good for a drill press! or an airplane ticket! 50 cents! I woulda bought one or some, but I never could find their booth.

The Truth ... that is the motto of the rightist talk station, KTTH, but truth be told, their booth was largely empty and never seemed to attract much attention. Seemed like a good opportunity for the liberal bloggers to show up!

Namkung

Images: Upper image is from the river show and the Monson Collection at the Burke. I feel bad about showing it here with the lower image, a wonderful image of grass, just grass, by Johsel Namking. Read on ..............

_______________________________

I hope anyone who reads this will take advantage of the wonderful work of Johsel Namkung now on exhibit at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

I have been so lucky to have known Johsel for 30 years. When I joined the Dept. of Pathology at the UW in the early 70s, Jo was our "scientific photographer." Actually his real job was to do art. The Chairman of the Dept., Earl Benditt, was very much involved in art as well as science and saw Jo has a wonderful addition to a department doing a lot of electron microscopy.

This was a "marriage" blessed by the gods. Jo was far, far better than just a scientific photographer. In effect Earl was playing Medici.

Jo's real work was, and is impossible to describe. He was a member of the small clique sometimes called the Seattle Blue Movement ... Toby, Callahan, Hovaness, Graves, John Cage ... and Johsel Namkung. I suppose a deconstructionist might see something in common ... calligraphy, atonality, muted colors in the mists. I am not so certain.

There always has been something in Jo's work that was .. ordinary. Ordinary things, ordinary beautiful things. Ordinary beautiful things that I probably would not have seen if I were next to Jo with my own camera because they were too ordinary. When he talks about the work there is a lot of reference to the discipline of Ansel Adams,. Adams, besides a romanticism that I find overwhelming and even a bit kitsch, was also a musician and taught how to see photographs in tonal terms .. like notes. This teaching is called the zone system, Yes Jo is a master of the zone system. But, like Adams Jo is also a musician. a wonderful singer of lieder. His images are as much music as they are graphics.

On the past, the orderliness of Jo's images got in the way. But now, with is latest work, he seems to have me to have found a way to play the tunes so we can all hear. I was overwhelmed. For an interview with Johsel, click here.

----------------------------------------

At the same time, the Burke museum has an insipid, boring collection of historic images of rivers .. including the awful image reproduced here. How sad. At one time the Burke championed real art. Unfortunately they made a deal with a rich donor, Monson, and have bought his collection. Truth be told, a lot of it is good but some of this belongs back chez Monson. Worse, the Monsons got a big tax benefit out of donating this stuff. Sad.

The Dems and Their Governor-ess

I am far enough to the left to have worked in the SDS, to read Lenin with interest, treasure a McGovern button, and to donate to Jimmy Carter. However, coronating Gregoire is an example of why our party is failing to convince the public we are ready to return to power,

Here are some facts:

1. Atty General Gregoire’s role in the tobacco negotiation is controversial among leftish lawyers who feel the companies were let off too easily. Yes they paid a settlement, but that cost came out of their raised prices for cigs so the consumer really paid. That might be OK IF the settlement had required an ONGOING penalty, It did not. In effect, Gregoire negotiated as ransom payment that let the companies free to do whatever they wanted in the future. They adapted their advertising technique, maintained their profits.

2. Atty General Gregoire was unsuccessful in convincing the legislature to use these funds for tobacco related issues. The settlement in this state has mainly gone into the general fund. The reported 350 mill for research is welcome (I am a scientist) but the allocation has let the legislature off of what might otherwise be pressure to support the development of the biotech industry in our state. 350 mi is tiny $$ compared to the funds being spent to support biotech initiatives in North Carolina, Massachusetts or Michigan. W State, despite the strength of the UW and a lot of hype, is not competing well in attracting new biotech $$.

3. As the official UW attorney, Attny Gregoire presided over horrible legal messes, including the huge fines the medical school received. Legal experts I know feel the case was bungled by the attorneys representing her in court. The there was that mess with the football coach and the mess in her own office.

4. Under her aegis (and, to be fair, continuing with the current amateur lawyers), the UW has developed a prolix and fragile legal apparatus of non-attorneys who have greatly complicated and raised the costs of education at the UW.

5. On critical issues … immigration for one, the National Guard for another, Gov. Gregoire is feckless. Or maybe we are not a border state with lots of immigrant farm workers?

6. Candidate Gregoire ran dirty campaigns against Sims and then Rossi. Her charges against Rossi for his religious beliefs turned a lot of voters off … YAY for Washington State voters.

7. As governor, Ms. Gregoire gave one of the most sexist speeches I have ever heard, extolling our state for electing three women …as opposed to electing equally competent vagina deprived males? WADR, we should be long beyond gender identification as a criteria for office … unless you want Anne Coulter as your next President.

Trackbacks

I am not sure this works, but Andrew Sullivan, my favorite blogger, says this link will create a link to my blog from his page. Ya never know.

Scientific Societies Oppose Immediate Net Publishing

This story is so amazing. Science is about communication .. #1, #2m and #3. Arguing that the needs of professional societies come first is akin to the arguement that the Church had the right to censor Galileo in the interest of "society." The Church, the government, the professional societiers should never partake of inhibiting scioence form communication ... leave thaty to the for-profits.

By and large these societies are the residual of an era when science was more fragmented ... they are clubs like yacht clubs, golf clubs or more aptly athletic clubs. Why atheltic clubs? Well, these began as a place where the business elite could meet, steam and talk. Well maybe I am being severe, but at least the Seattle Athletic Club attracts the CEOs form our elite firms. The lack of particpation of major investigators in professional societies is telling.

Why do the societies still exist? a. to organize national meetings. b. to publish journals. The cost of publishing journals is now very little ... tx to the web. The meetings, they are still importnat but why should the journal subsidize the meetings? One answer maybe the numbe rof meetings in posh resorts .. Keystone ski resort is the rpime example.

OK, I admit to likng some monasticism in science. I prefer the Gordon Conferences use of small schools and cheap motels.

Scientific Courage as Pogo Sees It

The editor of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Andrew R. Marks, recently wrote a provocative editorial complaining about the effects of the Bush budget on biomedical funding. Instead of blaming the Bush debacle, radical Republicans, and cowardly Democrats, Dr. Marks focused his ire:

"The current state of the NIH prompts me to say to its director, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, "Obviously you are not a scientist." "

Insulting Zerhouni, previously an accomplished admin at a very successful J Hopkins, serves no purpose. As for other comments he made disparaging "translational medicine" as a mumbo jumbo, of course I agree with Dr. Marks BUT I also do not know how this Mad Ave term has affected real funding. Congress may be more interested in mumbo jumbo than is Dr. Marks and Dr. Zerhouni just might understand the Congress better than we do.

The effects of the Bush budget on NIH are terrible, amounting to a cut of 5-10% each year in a field that is literally exploding the rate of discovery in the US and around the world. These changes are drastic in an area just emerging from a period of doubling the finding over 5 years under Clinton. Dr. Marks' scapegoat for all this, however, was not President Bush but Elias A. Zerhouni, the Bush appointed Director of NIH. I think Dr. Marks wasted an important opportunity.

The real enemy, to quote Pogo, is us.

When the funds were flowing at an impossible doubling rate, we allowed the NIH to fund grants for 1 yr at a time and an impossible to sustain funding rate,

When the MFD foundations (my favorite disease) distorted the NIH funding by great lobbying, we sat back and said little.

When the gene therapy fiasco went way beyond what made sense, the few critics of premature clinical trials were quickly silenced .... a phenom that afflicts the stem cell world now. Is the weekly stem cell hyp any more rational than the metered injections of funds to feed translational medicine?

Does ANYBODY outside of Bethesda think that the intramural program is still justified?

We accept the anti-intellectual copyright policies of the biggie journals rather than boycotting journals that deny public access to work the public paid for.

Oh yeah ... how many of us have been ACTIVE vs. the creationist foe?

I agree with Marks on one thing. Zerhouni's emphasis on translational medicine is a phony effort to curry favor with the congress. However, would Marks complain if Zerhouni's marketing resulted in increased NIH funding? Does Marks have real data on diversion of funds from basic science because of Zerhouni's effort?

The bottom line is that the Scientific Community in the US is complicit in its own problems. We need a few good, vocal leaders. We need a media that truly speaks for our community.

SeattleJew on the Bush Brain

Seattle Jew

All I understand about Mr. Bush's brain is in this post.

The Next Big Thing

First it was Ron Sims, our County Executive, now it is David Brewster, Founder of the Seattle Weekly and the Town Hall forum. "We need to fix Seattle Center.!"
Sighhh!!!!!!! This confuses me. Both Sims and Brewster are smart and liberal. Both value the Seattle style of life. Both have achieved a lot in their respective domains as public citizens. So there must be something to this new cause more than another effort to add more tasteless, ticky tacky high rise condos to the north end of the Seattle Peninsula while enriching Paul Alan.

Sims and Brewster are, of course correct, that the Center is not a great place. In a city built on in spectacular views, the Center sits in a sort of shallow pit under downtown's towers. Queen Anne Hill and even the Manhattan Westside redux of the Denny regrade all throw shadows on the remnants of the 64 World's Fair. I have wondered whether a good rainstorm might not overfill lake Union and turn the Center into a lovely lagoon? No wonder the seers of the sixties found this underused land as an ideal spot for a World's Fair.

Like most World Fairs, Seattle's fair was based on build it cheap fantasy pavilions. Little remains of that era except the USA pavilion by Yamasaki .. today's mediocre science museum. Otherwise the grounds are a pastiche of left over tiny rooms, an old armory, an aging sports arena and a retired armory now filled with the same food chains as the food court at the Bellevue Mall.

Sims complains that the assemblage of small rooms provide a too cheap venue for impecunious groups wanting a meeting place. "Too cheap?" from a liberal? Ron needs a lesson in his own origins and perhaps the Center's inexpensive venue need publicity of it is available for so little.

The reasons for the Center's underuse are, at least to me , obvious. In its early days the Center grounds house a while lot of small town functions appropriate for what was a lot more small town-ish city. As Seattle grew, the Center became ringed by venues for the performing arts, at least on the North side but all of these have their front entrances OUTSIDE the Center ,,, mainly on Mercer. The Center grounds are a sort of underused backyard to the begowned opera goers. The to the East we have the Arena, home to the basketball team. The main entrance, once again, is outside ... You can come and cheer the team and never see the International Fountain.


So ... you do need to walk on the grounds to get to the IMAX or the science museum or the diminutive Children's Museum but the main reason for walking on the grounds is the weekly ethnic festivals. If it is February, it must be time for the Macedonian Dance Festival! Actually, this is one of the most charming things in Seattle and the admin activity ever weekend at the Center ... Greeks, Jews, Manchu and people-named-Kelly. I think there may be more than a glimmer of hope for building these weekly folk festivals into something much more attractive and permanent .. see below.


The Center also houses two big festivals each year ... as summer begins and ends. But, other than these tiny ethic affairs, the Center lacks magnets ... what entrepreneurs call anchors or destination attractions. The center is pretty and green but it lacks the museums, shops, or activities that might entice the Seattle Rep theater member to venture for a pre-Ibsen walk, maybe with a beer and a sandwich.

Unfortunately, there is a history here. The Seattle Art Museum once had a great modern art gallery here .. since closed for the venue downtown with its JC Penney-esque design by Venturi. What a shame. The SAM is an ugly building, a tribute to bad taste but it is near the dollars of down town business types. Obviously their clout overcame any good sense one might hope a City would show. Next came the Conventions Center. Seattle's hoteliers insisted that NO city could have its Convention Center remote from the bedrooms ... even a short monorail ride away. Thus we now have all these cheap meeting rooms Mr. Sims' derides.

The pattern of not using the Center goes on and on. What else? Headquarters for the Seattle Public Schools ... in an industrial district to the south of Seattle, African American Museum ... in a wrecked and now remote unused school building. Is there a message here?

Why can't the City make the Center the default location for attractions .. esp small museums? Why not begin by moving the Burke museum from the UW Campus to the Center? The Burke is a messy museum .. confused between three roles .. dinosaurs, Pacific Peoples, and our indigenous culture ..the coastal people who gave us this City and its great artistic heritage. Move it, split it into three! The pacific peoples and indigenous collections could begin a new role for the Center as a home for Seattle's cultures. Perhaps the African American community would give up the Coleman School? Imagine museums to honor the descendents of Maimonides who led the Island of Rhodes Jews to Seattle almost a hundred years ago or the Japanese Americans with their WWII history. Or how about our "new" Seattlites ... the Thai and the Hmong? Seattle could have something quite unique, a center of gravity reflecting our wonderful diversity.



Or ... we could spiff the place up, make beer drinking in public legal, and offer free rent to the old clothes shops and petit bourgeois art shops being forced out of Fremont as that neighborhood moves upscale.

Or ... we could ask Mr. Disney what ideas he has.

Rioting over the Prophet Muhammad

Somehow, some when people will recognize that religions can be just as evil as any other undertakings of men. The only just reaction to the riotng and destruction in rsponse to the cartoons-is to criticize Islam itself for being intolernat and hate filled toward others. The intolerance towrd other criticism would be unacceptable in a government, a corporation or a Garden club. It is less acceptable in a religion that cliams to define the meaning of life for 1/3 of the world.

This is not a criticism of what Islam can be but of what it has become. My family benefited from the greatness of Islam. I am proud to call myself an Andalusian. We lived under Islamic rule in an era of Moslem/Christian/Jewish collaboration, under the flag of Islam. That era was one of the highest civilizations are species ever seen. But the Islam we see today is odious.

Islam suffers, along with Christianity, for an inability to be wrong. The cartoons accurately depict the teachings of the Prophet as read by millions today. The same Prophet who brought his followers and a very modern concept of equality also brought with him intolerance of those who were worship statues of deities. Others with partial truth, Jews and Christians, were to be tolerated as long as they lived modestly, and accepted Muslim rule. For in those whose ancestral homes were Arabia the Prophet had a worse message. In this way he was no better and no worse than his predecessors from more than a millennium before, the Jews described as conquering the odlaters of Cannan. So tdoes the Koran celebrate the Prophet's conquest of Medina, a Jewish city. For the crime of resisting the Prophet's claim to be a true prophet of the Jewish God, the citizens of Medina were killed or enslaved. Jews elsewhere were expelled from their homes in Arabia.

A tolerant person should see the story of Canaan as an artifact of the early days of Islam. One hopes that progress been made in the last 1400 years.

It is in this spirit and, with no disrespect to the Prophet, I'm including in this blog one of the supposedly hateful cartoons. This cartoon shows the Prophet dressed not in Arabic robes but in the rooms of Persia or Indian. Embedded in the Prophet's turban is a bomb. That's offensive if you believe that any image of the Prophet is forbidden. But why were images of the profit from mde taboo? As I understand, the intent was to prevent his followers from worshiping the man as if you were a god. The Prophet wished to avoid the mistake, made by Chrsitans when they deified the prohet Jesus.. The only intent of the Danish newspaper she is to criticize Mohammed, certainly not to deify the man.

Just to be sure that I balance this blog , I'm also including images of the covers of editions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion published recently by Syria and Egypt. This odious book is not being published by some extreme newspaper in those countries. It is published and supported by most Muslim government. It is presented as truth to people among the Moslem world. Which is worse, the cartoon suggesting that the profit may be being misused or a book claiming that Jews are not human?

As an American, as a grateful recipient of the freedoms created by Jefferson and Madison, I claim my right to side with the Danish newspaper and criticize Islam just as I would claim the right to criticize General Motors, Enron, or... even Israel.

McGavick will Win ...

Just a prediction. Our state is headed by 3 women, one of whom (the Guv) brags about her gender as if a vagina or a penis was of great interest to the voters. To use a Yiddishism ... Pfehh!

In the last election Dino Rossi tied with the guv, despite being conservative and Republican while the dems took the Presidency by a broad margin here. Rossi, like McG, is bright, competent, business like, and .. not likely to wave his genitalia in an election. She got in, but her popularity is lousy and, IMO, will remain so unless she emerges from the fanatsy that gender is a critical issue (I managed to avoid the obvious typo!).

The Senate race will be between Mike McGavick ... a moderate Republican, very successfull excecutive vs. Maria Cantwell, a nearly invisible freshman Senator. So far her early campaign has focused on McG's being (ready for this?) a Republican! As CEO of a failing isurance company he actuallyfired people, cut benefits and was (shock) paid for this!

Yes, she did oppose Ted Stevens on Anwar and .. sort of ... won. Two gold stars BUT I suspect that McG will just agree with her stance and point out how much more effective he will be because he will be in the majority AND has better business skills.

All the while, Cantwell is invisible on the issues that matter to us all ... NSA. New Orleans, national debt, health care, outsourcing, etc etc. McG just needs to paint a "forward looking" agenda with some teeth and he will win.

The other Senator, who ran as a Mom in Tennis Shoes, is Patty Murry. Well meaning lady who is widely credited with being unsuccessful as Senate campaign organizer last time around. Increasingly she is een as a knee jerk liveral and senator form Boeing. Not bad .. sort of like an old (Tennis) shoe. But, if I am correct, she will be running next time in a state that has elected a Repubican Guv and Senator. If nothing else she should throttle the Guv's talk about a vagina trilogy. Better yet .. TAKE SOME STANDS ...act like a leader.

Ms. Cantwell (D), Ms. Murry (D), and Ms. Gregoire (D), better wake up or they will be replace d by (R),(R), (R) ... and gender will NOT be the issue!.

Another blog?

I am also leading a photography blog/gallery over at Blogger. Take a look at the AA Gallery.

An American, a Christian, a Hero

What a wonderful story of heroism:

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/main_article.php?artnum=20051002

Ian Fishback a soldier, writes to McCain abut torture:

"If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is 'America.'"

Holocaust

Feeling afraid.

I support the occupation of Iraq, but the leadership of Forest Gump is scary at timer like this.

El Baradei: Iran only months away from a bomb
5 Dec. 2005 Jerusalem Post

IAEA chairman Muhammad ElBaradei on Monday confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb.

If Teheran indeed resumed its uranium enrichment in other plants, as threatened, it will take it only "a few months" to produce a nuclear bomb, El-Baradei told The Independent.

On the other hand, he warned, any attempt to resolve the crisis by non-diplomatic means would "open a Pandora's box. There would be efforts to isolate Iran; Iran would retaliate; and at the end of the day you have to go back to the negotiating table to find the solution."

Bayesian Reasoning

Currently, I am trying to understand a form of reasoning called "Bayesian logic." this is important to me because I'm trying to understand the work of a scientist named Eric Schadt. Eric has developed a very important new way of correlating mRNA expression data with the genes responsible for controlling patterns of mRNA expression.

Eric's work allows one to look for patterns of gene expression and compute the site in the genome that might control specific patterns. If a specific pattern appears in a population of people, the obvious question is whether a site in the genome can explain the variations in the pattern. If the variations in pattern correlate with some disease pattern associated with a specific subset of people, the implication is very strong that a mutation is present at the indicated site in the genome.

Eric's contribution is to use Bayesian logic to connect gene expression patterns to specific sites in the genome. The concept is very simple. (How many times have you heard that before?) Nowadays we have strains of inbred mice. We also have a map all the locations all of the genes in all these mice. So if we look at several strains of mice and find that these mice all have the same pattern of gene expression for some specific group of genes, and that these mice all have the same set of genes in a specific location, it is likely that genes in that location are controlling the expression pattern! This probability can be strengthened if we know something about the rules regulating the control of expression of mRNAs by specific genes. Those rules, of course, depend on the metabolic pathways leading from a gene to its products to the interactions of those products to the influences of the gene products on each other and finally back to the effects of the gene products on the genes responsible for expressing the mRNAs seen in the expression patterns.

Of course each of these interactions between gene products is probabilistic. The mathematical models developed by Eric and his colleagues allow them to create a network of such probabilities.

I am still trying to understand the most basic concept that is the concept of a Bayesian relationship itself. So here is my first attempt based on an explanation I found on the web. The idea is that I have green and red marbles. While blindfolded I dropped three of them into a bucket. I can't see inside the bucket. So I reach in three times and each time pull ot of on marble. Each time I pull out a red marble. The question is can I quantify the probability that all three marbles are red?

Bayes' Theorem, as shown here, allows me to do this. p(AB) is the probability that all three marbles or read given that I found a red marble three times. P(B), is simply the probability that all three marbles will be read by chance without any evidential data at all. p(A+B) is the probability that all balls are red and that all the selections will be red I must admit I find this last formula less than intuitive. I think it means the total of all conditions where the selected balls will be red and all the balls are red is only 1/2 of all the events where all the selections are RED.

p(AB)= (the probability that all of the balls are RED and our experiments come out RED/ the probability that all the balls are RED).

Put another way: the probability that something is true based on the available evidence= the probability that we would expect to see it as true assuming it is true /divided by the probability that it is true.

Natural Law

This post began as a response to a discussion on an orthodox Jewish web site, Hashkafah. I had suggested that the similarity between legal systems around the world implies that there is an underlying natural law.

One objection to the idea of natural law is that laws regulating human behavior are not really the same thing as physical laws. After all, we derive physical laws from observing the physical world and can not legislate physical laws to tell the planets how to move. I would point out however, the physical law itself comes in many different kinds and we do use a variation of these laws to regulate how we manipulate the natural world. Engineers, for example, determine how to build bridges by using laws derived from Newtonian physics. Similarly, the laws of evolution, for example, while explaining the origins of diversity in living beings, can be used to formulate civil laws as to how we should behave if we wish to preserve our species.

This argument requires understanding that laws can be very different from each other because the realities underlying different sorts of law are themsleves very different. For example, the laws we call quantum mechanics are based on statistics because at the level of fundamental particles there are no certainties only probabilities for such things as to where a particle is or how fast it is moving. Engineers building electronic devices have to use laws that make the desired result very probable, but never certain. In contrast, at a level of mechanical function, engineers can rely on the absolute prediction of Newton's laws.

Skinner posited laws of behavior from watching animals respond to their environment. These laws can and have been used to design educational systems. Skinner, however, went further and suggested that we could derive laws of human behavior, that is laws as to how we should behave, from scientific observations of how humans behave.

While Skinner, along with Marx and other utopians, may hae been overly arrogant, it seems to me that succssful efforts may have already been made. Anthropologists have been studying human societies now for a number of centuries. Wouldn't it be reasonable to argue that the similarity of laws governing human behavior around reflects a collective effort of engineers to optimize human behavior. Does the similarity of these laws imply that there is some kind of underlying reality to human behavior and that we can use that reality or derive better laws about how we should behave?