Interesting insights

University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt notes in his bestseller Freakonomics, after the Roe v Wade decision in 1973,

“Conceptions rose by nearly 30 percent, but births actually fell by 6 percent …”

It would seem that the most significant impact that Roe v Wade had on the American populace is that unrestricted abortion encouraged sexual promiscuity -- and unprotected sexual promiscuity at that. Of course, the real winners in Roe v Wade were the kind men of who wanted permission to view women as sexual objects to whom men have no responsibility.

Charles Schummer cell phone warrior

The Senator from New York, the one who is not "married" to Bill Clinton, was reported to be plotting for "war" against President Bush's Supreme Court nominees. Now his plot is a general one. He just wants to make sure the President cannot shape the make-up of the Supreme Court. In other words, he does not want the PResident to do what the Constitution empowers him to do. For Charles Schummer, "advice and consent of the Senate" means gamemanship and obstruction by minority Senators.

Read the Drudge Report here.

Protesters at the G8 Summit in Scotland reveal their violent ways

So, the protesters at the G8 summit are in favor of ...................What exactly? They want things to be different inthe world...................but how? They want ...........what .............peace?, justice?, equality?

No, these protesters want to complain like children who don't have any solutions, just tantrums.

Read here about their attacks on the police who last time I checked, were not members of the G8 cabal of leaders. From the protesters point of view, they should be considered victims of the G8 powers as much as anyone. But these protesters are not really protesters, they are anarchists who despise everything except themselves.

Food for thought about the origins of the universe and the human race

Read this article by Paul Johnson. It is quite good and thought provoking.

Barbara Boxer reveals the "litmus test" for the Supreme Court

And surprise -- its abortion

Demands to close Gitmo detention center

HERE is the report of protesters calling for the detention centers for terrorists to be closed.

NEW YORK - Feminist author Gloria Steinem on Monday joined about 200 protesters to demand the closure of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, saying holding prisoners indefinitely without charging them violates the values upon which the United States was founded.

Now, a couple of questions. What are we to do with these persons? Do we put them into the general population of our current prisons, further taxing the resources there?

Do the protesters really understand that these persons are not criminals, but deadly enemies of our culture? Since prisoners at Gitmo have been released in the past, perhaps there is a different kind of due process that is at work.

Those who call for due process for terrorists are guilty of confusing the nature of the terror network. Terror is not a criminal act, simply. It is, instead, a political act of war declared by those who have no legal standing in the world.

Without being combatants of a legal country and without status as citizens or resident aliens, a terrorist has placed himself or herself into a murky category. They have human rights, but their legal status is quite suspect, because of the status they have placed themselves in.

A better approach is to keep insisting that the military continue to be accountable to the public for the treatment of the terrorists. But that does not mean recognizing them as having the same kind of legal status that we afford criminals.

New Report suggests "bi-sexuality" is not a real "orientation"

The New York Times reports that recent studies are raising doubts about the claims of many to be bixexual.

People who claim bisexuality, according to these critics, are usually homosexual, but are ambivalent about their homosexuality or simply closeted. "You're either gay, straight or lying," as some gay men have put it.

In the new study, a team of psychologists directly measured genital arousal patterns in response to images of men and women. The psychologists found that men who identified themselves as bisexual were in fact exclusively aroused by either one sex or the other, usually by other men.

The study is the largest of several small reports suggesting that the estimated 1.7 percent of men who identify themselves as bisexual show physical attraction patterns that differ substantially from their professed desires.

"Research on sexual orientation has been based almost entirely on self-reports, and this is one of the few good studies using physiological measures," said Dr. Lisa Diamond, an associate professor of psychology and gender identity at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the study.

The discrepancy between what is happening in people's minds and what is going on in their bodies, she said, presents a puzzle "that the field now has to crack, and it raises this question about what we mean when we talk about desire."

"We have assumed that everyone means the same thing," she added, "but here we have evidence that that is not the case."

Bisexual desires are sometimes transient and they are still poorly understood. Men and women also appear to differ in the frequency of bisexual attractions. "The last thing you want," said Dr. Randall Sell, an assistant professor of clinical socio-medical sciences at Columbia University, "is for some therapists to see this study and start telling bisexual people that they're wrong, that they're really on their way to homosexuality."

He added, "We don't know nearly enough about sexual orientation and identity" to jump to these conclusions.

In the experiment, psychologists at Northwestern University and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto used advertisements in gay and alternative newspapers to recruit 101 young adult men. Thirty-three of the men identified themselves as bisexual, 30 as straight and 38 as homosexual.

The researchers asked the men about their sexual desires and rated them on a scale from 0 to 6 on sexual orientation, with 0 to 1 indicating heterosexuality, and 5 to 6 indicating homosexuality. Bisexuality was measured by scores in the middle range.

Seated alone in a laboratory room, the men then watched a series of erotic movies, some involving only women, others involving only men.

Using a sensor to monitor sexual arousal, the researchers found what they expected: gay men showed arousal to images of men and little arousal to images of women, and heterosexual men showed arousal to women but not to men.

But the men in the study who described themselves as bisexual did not have patterns of arousal that were consistent with their stated attraction to men and to women. Instead, about three-quarters of the group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.

"Regardless of whether the men were gay, straight or bisexual, they showed about four times more arousal" to one sex or the other, said Gerulf Rieger, a graduate psychology student at Northwestern and the study's lead author.

Although about a third of the men in each group showed no significant arousal watching the movies, their lack of response did not change the overall findings

The thing about the study that one must be careful about is the attitude expressed in the statement above:

The discrepancy between what is happening in people's minds and what is going on in their bodies, she said, presents a puzzle "that the field now has to crack, and it raises this question about what we mean when we talk about desire."

"We have assumed that everyone means the same thing," she added, "but here we have evidence that that is not the case."

Desire is not simply a biological reaction nor a mental phenomenon. Rather, sexuality is a profoundly difficult thing to understand, because human beings are difficult to understand. So, the questions about sexuality are not merely scientific, but moral and spiritual, as well. But, maybe this study can clear the air a bit and we can return to a better dialogue about the nature of sexual affection and activity. The whole "bi-sexuality" thing is simply a way of saying -- WHAT I WANT IS WHAT I WANT, SO SHUT-UP AND DON'T BOTHER ME WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT OR APPROPRIATE OR NATURAL. When people take that attitude about sexuality, they have already adopted a moral position on the question. IT's the position that dismisses all other considerations.

The plan might be working.....?

We hear so much about how their is NO PLAN win the Iraq conflict. GWB keeps insisting that the plan is to establish democratic institutions, engender pluralism, and train an Iraqi security force. THIS REPORT suggest that even the last of those aims might be beginning to take shape.

It tells us how the Iraqi forces have captured a top Zarqawi aid. Some people will no doubt be nay-sayers and suggest that this is no progress at all. Yet, even if Zarqawi was himself captured the nay-sayers would be nay-sayers, because any good news is bad news for those who are opposed to the war on principle.


UPDATE: More good news.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Security forces killed Al Qaeda's leader in Saudi Arabia, who topped the nation's list of most-wanted militants, during a fierce gunbattle Sunday, an Interior Ministry official said.

Younis Mohammed Ibrahim al-Hayari, a Moroccan, was killed during a dawn raid by security forces on an area in the capital where suspected militants were hiding, the official was quoted by the official Saudi Press Agency as saying.

Three other unidentified suspects were arrested, and weapons, ammunition, computers and documents were seized, he said.

The clashes took place in the Rawdah district, an upscale neighborhood in eastern Riyadh, Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Mansour al-Turki said.

The unidentified official quoted by SPA said al-Hayari headed Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network in the kingdom, which has been ravaged by terrorist attacks during more than two years of violence.

Live 8 --- RAising consciousness or moral preening?

I am very glad, personally, for the efforts by many of the Rock and Roll bands that performed in the Live 8 concerts. Anytime celebrities use their fame for a noble cause we ought to be glad. However, such "reviews" as these reveal that the end result may be less about the poor and more focus on the celebrites themselves.

Release the hounds.............. Let the games begin

Sandra O'Conner has announced her retirement.

Well, we shall see what PResident Bush is made of. Get ready for the blood to flow.

Politicians and their wackiness

Peggy Noonan smacks a home run. In here article in WSJ Online she dresses down our politicians for their sense of self importance.

Hello

Starting a blog is maybe an exercise in futility or the actions of a person who thinks too highly of himself or an enjoyable way to enter the fray in the world of ideas. Only time will tell about this humble endeavor.

I'll be seeing you.