Go, You Saudi Girls, Go

The Saudis are apparently toying with the idea of letting women drive. I'm very prepared to be culturally sensitive to their ... what shall we call it? Hang-up about women? Especially women who have the wherewithal to start a car and drive it straight out of the country and away from constant male surveillance?

I don't want to be a Western imperialist, after all. Yet, I applaud this trend toward liberality. The photo to the right is from a popular Saudi television series about a young woman who was forced, by the death of her father, to don a disguise and go to work as a cab driver. Of course she doesn't look in the least like a man. Maybe it's the salon-styled eyebrows and dewy skin. But I say, go girl. Go, and go, and go.

(If you don't know much about Saudi culture, go to Carmen bin Laden's autobiography Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia. I got more about the real lives of Saudi women from this book than from any other source.)

Biofuels. Let's Get Serious.

From Grist, the environmental blog. This is worth reading.

Biofuel: Is it a greenhouse gas, gas, gas?

By all accounts, biofuels deliver startlingly modest reductions in greenhouse gases. In a relatively generous assessment of the environmental benefits of ethanol and biodiesel released last year, University of Minnesota researchers credited corn-based ethanol with 12 percent less net greenhouse-gas emissions than gasoline, while finding that soy-based biodiesel emits 41 percent less.

But here's the catch: It takes so much corn to produce a gallon of ethanol, and so much soy to produce a gallon of biodiesel, that the net GHG advantages are likely to be almost nil.

And that's just what we already knew. Now comes a new study that says that simply growing the crops that become biofuel is dangerous - more dangerous than using gasoline in the first place.

(The study) claims that biofuel production emits far more nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas some 296 times more potent than carbon dioxide, than has normally been assumed. The source is artificial fertilizer, a potent source of nitrogen. When farmers apply it to soil, a certain amount of it -- between 3 percent and 5 percent, according to the study -- enters the atmosphere as nitrous oxide.

But despite all this, corn farms are going gangbusters, getting top dollar from the market, which seems to think biofuel is going to the great and profitable environmental savior, and from the government, through automatic annual subsidies to farmers. To feel sort of sick about the whole thing, read this article from today's Washington Post.

So where are we in our lackluster quest to save our planet as painlessly as possible? Nowhere, it appears. Maybe we're like alcoholics who have to hit bottom before we realize that, hey, there's really no easy way out of the mess we've made. We're going to have suffer, a little or maybe a lot. We're going to have to give up some stuff. Is there anything idea in the world that Americans resist more vigorously? Without real, evangelizing leadership, we're doomed.

Spam Lines: 'Your Insatiable Chick Will Be Full of Pleasure'

Oh, it's a time of high and low news. Hillary is a shoo-in (let the rabid haters of this woman commence their attacks!) and Jan and Marcia (oh no!) were lesbian lovers. Maybe. Whatever.

But I'm thinking about something else. It's spam, and the voluminous amounts I receive, mostly having to do with the male desire to, ah, please. I've gotten so much of it recently that I'm saving my best subject lines. My starter-list is below, though I intend to add to it on a daily basis. Send yours, too. In the end, we can submit them, papier mache'd,on a giant inflated penis, to Congress. For their legislative consideration, I'm thinking.


Subject: are you the next man in the world to get super sized in the pants?

Subject: attract more ladies with a huge trouser snake

Subject: life is too short to be small

Subject: Your problems with cock size will become history

Subject: Your insatiable chick will be full of pleasure

Subject: I went from being "mr little" too "mr big boy" within 6 months = )

Subject: Does your penis size ruin your life? Our product will stop that!

Subject: Increase your sperm and pleasure.

Subject: New size for Men especially for new feelings of women at once

Subject: my girl loves the new me.

Subject: Our penis growth pills will give you the results you need to make your intimate ...

Subject: Tired of being ashamed of your penis size? Leave it for losers!

Subject: Get personal pussy available on your command any time of the night or day.

Subject: 72% of all women need a larger and thicker penis to reach sexual orgasm

Subject: Take Megadik and enjoy the reflection of your penis in the mirror!

Subject: We provide for you a real advantage to turn her on!

Subject: Penis enlargement was never so easy before! Now there is MegaDik!

Subject: Thank you, a girl to be yours in here found!

Subject: My banger is HUGE now thanks to these guys..

Subject: The guys get jealous now when they see me in the bathroom

Subject: Customers alert, new pharma site is realised!

Subject: Men all over the world are going to love this product...

Subject: No more being shy of your manhood

Subject: Making your woman happy is very important for repeated sexual encounters

And finally this, from the probably-not-pseudonymous 'Maureen Dickerson':

Subject: i got no probs taking the girls home now

MoveOn, Stop Being Obnoxious

Memo to MoveOn.org:

Re: your recent email, "Republicans vs. our kids": stop being so divisive. You're becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And this from somebody who's essentially on your side.

Iraq, the Documentary

So last night at 8 pm I was curled up on my cozy couch watching the Ken Burns' documentary on World War II. Whether you think Burns is a great filmmaker or not, it was hard not to be impressed by at least one aspect of the show: the relentless scenes of carnage that began in the first seconds and no doubt continued long after I'd slunk away. The personal stories Burns wanted to tell were already being ground under the weight of the nonstop death, burning buildings, blown-away faces, drowned corpses, emacitated prisoners of war, and howling children. It's a punishing thing to watch such audacious images of rat-a-tat-tat horror. But how much worse to have lived it?

But wait ... we are living it, aren't we? Rather than alternately wallowing and glorying in scenes of shocking 60-year-old violence, we might create more happiness in the world by considering the scenes of current violence being perpetrated, and counterperpetrated, this very day, in Iraq. What a wet blanket I am. You know, maybe I'll just skip the rest of the Iraq thing and wait for the documentary. Ken Burns will do a fabulous job with it. I just know it.

It's Too Late for Sorries

So Sandra Day O'Connor regrets that she helped put George Bush in office. (Are we to believe that, if he had turned out more to her liking - had been a better representative of her "beloved Republican Party" - she wouldn't have regretted it? So much for judicial impartiality.) Never has a single person's political bias been so inappropriately applied, and to worse effect, than in her deciding vote in Bush v. Gore.

In "The Nines," Jeffrey Toobin says that while O'Connor would never say so publicly, she's suffering over it now - she's dreadfully sorry about her role in handing over power to the wrong man. It turned out Bush is "arrogant, lawless, incompetent and extreme," she says. Drat! If only she'd known ahead of time, it would presumably all have been different.

Well, I'm here to say that it's too late for an apology. Given everything that's happened since 2000, it's much too late. O'Connor will have to live with the mess she's made, and far more importantly, so will we.

For those who haven't read it, here's a paragraph from the NY Times review:

The story of Justice O’Connor, who helped tip the Bush v. Gore case in favor of President Bush and whose 2005 decision to retire (to spend more time with her ailing husband) would give the president a crucial seat to fill, is in many ways Shakespearean. Mr. Toobin writes that “the hiring of John Ashcroft, the politicized response to the affirmative action case, the lawless approach to the war on terror, and the accelerating disaster of the war in Iraq all appalled O’Connor.” He says she regarded the Terry Schiavo case as “the latest outrage from the extremists who she believed had hijacked her beloved Republican Party” and adds that she was deeply distressed over the administration’s efforts to undermine judicial independence.

Fasting in a Country that's Protest-Proof

From USA Today:

No Child Left Behind is "wreaking havoc in our inner-city schools," alleges education author Jonathan Kozol, 71, who today begins the 75th day of a partial hunger strike to protest the law.

Congress passed the education reform law with bipartisan support in 2001, and lawmakers this month are preparing to reauthorize it. The law seeks to get all students reading and doing math at grade level by 2014, mandating annual math and reading tests for about half of all children and sanctioning schools that don't keep improving.

Kozol on Monday said the law effectively has dumbed down school for poor, urban kids, creating "a parallel curriculum that would be rejected out-of-hand" in the suburbs.

Apparantly Kozol believes that poor kids are being subjected to a rote, mechanical style of teaching that crushes creativity and any sense that learning can be fun.

It's sort of sweet to know that anybody is still willing to engage in '60s-style protest theatrics, but this particular case is more than strange. One, it's over No Child Left Behind, not a hill you'd think anyone would care to die on. (Is NCLB good or bad? Don't ask me, and my son just spent six years enduring it.) Two, Jonathan Kozol, that passionate champion of poor children, is undertaking a partial fast because doctors have warned him a full-blown one might damage his heart? Well, what's the point of a fast if not to positively beckon death to your door? Isn't your own imminent demise a necessary part of the equation?

Kozol has lost 29 pounds, and he can ill afford even that. I wish he hadn't lost a single one - not for this cause. But still, if you're going to go down in a blaze of glory, you might as well really go down.

But more to the point: Jonathan, you're in the wrong country for this type of thing. Personal gestures of protest don't get Americans anywhere with their politicians; indeed, in many cases, it only strengthens their resolve. Case in point: our current president and his war. His aversion to Vietnam War-style demonstrations is so strong that a flotilla of burning monks would only stiffen his spine. Which is too bad, since the usual mechanisms of democracy don't seem to be getting us anywhere.

But perhaps that's another story.

Right now, here's my message: Eat, Jonathan, eat. No one cares.