The Mormon church found itself under the harsh spotlight of national scrutiny during the 2012 presidential campaign. Most of the scrutiny involved people who were curious and, for the first time in their lives, wanted to know what Mormons believed, why they believed, how they lived, and so on.
Some of the scrutiny came from people who had already made up their minds about the Mormons, and were looking for evidence to support their preconceptions. One of these false notions is the idea that Mormon men hold onto power in the church by keeping the priesthood for themselves and by maintaining a strict hierarchy.
Because the church doesn't have a paid clergy, members serve voluntarily and without pay in leadership positions. Members do not campaign or lobby for positions; rather, they are asked, or "called," to serve in these positions after considerable prayer and meditation by their leaders. They are expected to serve for only a few months or a few years in any given position.
I have served for three years in the leadership councils of our local stake - a collection of congregations, similar to a Catholic diocese. In all the stake councils and meetings that I have attended, I have been constantly impressed at how the focus is always on the individuals in the stake, how the leaders of the stake know them all by name, and how much they love them.
They love these people with the pure love that Christ had for the Samaritan woman at the well, for the woman taken in adultery, for the woman who touched the hem of his robe as he walked by, and for his beloved friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. The leaders of the Mormon church, all these men in their business suits, white shirts and ties, wielding the priesthood of God, are motivated by only one thing: love.
Power has nothing to do with it. Here is an illustration of the love that motivates these men.
In a recent meeting of the local stake, over 1200 people gathered to see a new stake president installed. The night before the meeting, a woman in the stake had her feelings deeply hurt by some other women in the stake.
I'm certain that the offenders did not mean to offend. In fact, I'm certain that they didn't even know that they had hurt this woman. Nobody is to blame; they did not know her situation, and had they known, I'm sure that they would have held their tongues. There is no need to confront them or hold them accountable.
However it happened, this poor sister went home on Saturday night so hurt that she could not bring herself to attend the meeting the next day. She had wanted to participate in the program, to show her honor and love for the outgoing stake president; but instead, she stayed home.
She did not make a big deal out of it. But her absence was noted, a friend made inquiries, and word of her hurt made its way quietly - and confidentially - and swiftly - to the very top of the stake. The leaders made arrangements to quietly visit this woman in her home, and to make sure that she knew firsthand of their love for her.
Do you remember what Jesus said to the woman who touched the hem of Jesus' robe as he walked by? "Daughter, be of good comfort." And do you remember what Jesus said about giving alms to the poor? "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." Without fanfare or publicity, these leaders simply "[go] about doing good," following the example of their Master, Him for whom the church is named.
You see, "Mormon" is just a nickname. The true name of the Mormon church is "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints."
Stay tuned.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
I Can Feel Her Staring at Me!
"I Can Feel Her Staring at Me!" A Scientific Analysis
When I was in high school, there was a girl in the cafeteria who stared at me. Every day. My friends and I would sit at a table at one end of the cafeteria, laughing and joking and eating our lunch, and I would get a creepy feeling that somebody was watching me. Sometimes I would turn around and catch this girl, sitting clear across the cafeteria, eating alone and staring at me. Other times I would point furtively, in the direction the creepy feeling was coming from, and ask my friends if somebody over there was staring at me. They would look in the direction I was pointing and announce that yes, she was staring at me again.
When we would catch her staring, she wouldn't look away, get embarrassed, or deny it. She would just smile, wave and continue staring.
I eventually got over the creepiness. She was a nice kid, and in time we became friends. But I always wondered why I could feel her staring at me, and why I could tell where she was sitting. I think I've finally got it figured out. Here is the scientific reason for why you can feel someone staring at you. It's rather long and involved, and admittedly anticlimactic, but hey, somebody's got to do it.
Everything in the universe radiates energy. You're most familiar with the energy known as "visible light" — you know, ROY G. BIV, the colors of the rainbow. But not all light is visible. If you go past violet light, you find ultraviolet light, then X-rays, and then gamma radiation. On the other end of the rainbow, beyond red light, you have infrared light, then microwaves, and finally radio waves.
You have to get comfortable with the words "radiation" and "light" being synonymous. Normally we think of "light" as the good stuff we can see, that makes our world bright and warm and happy, and "radiation" as the dangerous stuff we can't see, that makes our world dangerous and sunburned and radioactive. In science, all electromagnetic radiation, from gamma rays through visible light and all the way down to radio waves, is called "radiation" — or, in the vernacular, "light." All of it. Scientists use the two terms interchangeably.
Light, or radiation, has different colors, or "wavelengths". Each wavelength has a different amount of energy associated with it. The higher the energy, the more stuff the light can shine through. For example, X-rays have enough energy to shine right through a human body, although they don't shine as well through teeth or bone as through soft tissue. That's why doctors and dentists find them useful. Gamma rays have so much energy that they can only be blocked by several inches of lead, or several feet of concrete. Microwaves have so little energy that they can be contained in a metal box the size of, well, a microwave oven.
What does all this have to do with that girl in the cafeteria? We're getting there. First, let's see what you can do with light.
What do things do with the energy that they absorb? They have to do something with it; it can't just disappear. They turn it into another form of energy. Solar cells take visible light and turn it into electrical energy. Plants use visible and ultraviolet light to power the photosynthesis engines in their cells. (In fact, plants use most of the visible light. The only wavelengths they can't use are yellow and green, so they reflect those colors, which is why we see grass and trees as green.)
Objects also emit, or radiate, their own energy. The sun radiates a mixture of wavelengths which, when combined, appear to our eyes as white light. A hot stove radiates energy in the red and infrared wavelengths. Your eyes can see the red, and your body can feel the heat, or the infrared energy, radiating from the stove top.
Some objects absorb light at one wavelength and re-radiate it at a different wavelength, usually (or always) a lower-energy wavelength. Fluorescent paints or dyes absorb ultraviolet light and re-radiate the energy as various colors of visible light.
Most objects, however, absorb the energy from light, turn it into heat energy, and radiate it as infrared light. This is why a black dog lying in the sun gets so toasty warm. And, going back to our example of the cars, this is the reason why a black car gets hotter sitting in the summer sun than a white car. The white car reflects most of the sun's energy, while the black car soaks it all up, turning it into heat and raising the interior's temperature to unhealthy levels.
The fact that everything radiates energy is why infrared goggles and cameras can "see in the dark." They're not looking for visible light, but for the infrared light that everything radiates.
Now let's talk about eyeballs.
Physicists like to talk about an imaginary object that absorbs all the energy that hits it. Like the black car in our example, which absorbs most visible light, physicists imagine this object painted a black that even absorbs the invisible radiation below red and beyond violet. They call this imaginary object a "black body."
The U. S. Air Force has a few aircraft that are pretty good at absorbing radiation and not reflecting any back, and not radiating very much of their own, either. These Stealth aircraft are painted a dull black on the outside, and they're made from materials that even absorb the radio and microwave energy of radar beams. They have special air channels to cool down the hot exhaust gases of their jet engines. They're practically invisible in the night sky — they are the physicists' "black bodies."
The Holy Grail for these physicists is an "ideal black body" — one that would absorb all wavelengths or energies of electromagnetic radiation that shine upon it, and not reflect or radiate any energy at all. If such an object existed, it would be the purest black you've ever seen. It would have a surface that was a deep, soft black — deeper and softer than black velvet, blacker than the soot on the inside of a chimney.
The problem is that any object you can make — say a black velvet brick, dipped in soot — will still reflect just enough light that you can see its edges, discern its shape. The "ideal black body" would be so perfectly black that, sitting on your kitchen table, it would look like an odd-shaped hole in the fabric of the universe.
(See the end of this article for a cool update about that "odd-shaped hole in the fabric of the universe.")
One of the most useless things I learned in school, I thought, was how to make an ideal black body. Imagine you have a block of coal or charcoal — something really black. Now imagine that there's a bubble inside this block, a spherical cavity near the surface, like the bubbles in a block of Swiss cheese. Now, shave away at the surface of the block, one thin layer at a time, until you just barely break into the bubble. If you shine a flashlight beam — or better yet, a laser pointer — through that pinhole into the bubble, the light will bounce around on the curved inside walls until all of it is absorbed and none of it comes back out the hole. That cavity in the block has all the characteristics of an ideal black body.
When I was in college, I could think of few mental exercises as useless as that ideal black body. I could think of nothing in the world that approximated such a construction. Many years later, looking into the eyes of my newborn son, I found one.
Think of the human eye. It's a spherical shape. It has a pinhole opening in the front — an adjustable pinhole called the "pupil." The pupil admits light into the eye, where it bounces around until most of it is absorbed. The lens behind the pupil ensures that most of the light gets absorbed at the back of the eye, in a remarkable structure called the "retina." The cells of the retina absorb different wavelengths of light, converting the light's energy into electrochemical signals that are sent to the brain and help us perceive light, color, and shapes — red cars and green cars, black dogs and laser pointers.
The eye is not quite an ideal black body: its inner surface is not painted black. If you take a flash picture and the flash is too close to the lens of the camera, then the blood vessels on the inner surface of the eye will reflect red light back to the camera, resulting in the obnoxious "red-eye" effect that has plagued casual photographers since the days of Pocket Instamatic cameras.
Okay, now imagine a room where everything in the room is at the same temperature, so everything is emitting the same wavelength, and mostly the same intensity, of radiation. Through an infrared camera, you would see an even grey (or green) picture — well, not "even," but uniformly random.
Now, imagine that somebody in the room lights up a cigarette, or pulls out one of those hand-warmer packets you see at ski resorts. Using an IR camera, you will see a non-random, bright spot against the uniformly random background. If infrared light were visible light, the sudden appearance of this visible light would draw everyone's attention like a strobe or a flashlight beam.
(Time for a mental detour!
Question: Why does everybody turn in the direction of a flash, a sudden movement, or other changes in their field of vision?
Answer: I think it's an instinct that goes back to the days of cavemen, of predator and prey. The ability to notice a change in the wind, the sound of a snapping twig, or a moving shape among the trees, could mean the difference between life and death. Those who noticed subtle changes in their surroundings survived, and those who didn't notice, didn't survive. The instinct remains with us today, being useful on the basketball court, on the battlefield, and in the corporate boardroom.)
Now, imagine the same room as before, and this time somebody has a shoebox with a lid, the inside painted black, and a hole cut in one end. When the hole is turned to face the camera, the IR camera sees the hole as a non-random, black spot against the uniformly random background — just like the cigarette or the hand warmer, but dark instead of light. Why wouldn't everyone's attention be drawn to the sudden appearance of the black hole?
Well, what makes you think that it isn't?
In some creatures, these temperature-sensitive nerve endings are directional. Pit vipers, such as rattlesnakes, have organs in a pair of "pits" on their snout, which they use to "see" heat in three dimensions.
My theory is that the temperature-sensitive nerve endings in your skin are also somewhat directional. When camping in the woods on a cold night, you can close your eyes, hold up your arm, and turn your hand like a vane to find the source of warmth that is the campfire, even from a considerable distance. Try it sometime. You can also use your face, your neck or any other exposed skin to find the campfire.
Now, imagine that you're standing in the center of a ring of campfires, on a cold night, and there's a gap with no campfire. (You may not be able to really try this.) Your brain and all the thermal receptors in your skin will work together to find the direction of that gap in the ring — the absence of radiated heat — even with your eyes closed.
You're sitting in a crowded restaurant. People are milling all around you, minding their own business, nobody looking directly at you. But then the thermal receptors on your ear, your cheek, or the back of your neck detect an anomaly in the uniformly random infrared background — a dark spot, a pinpoint absence of energy.
Two pinpoints, in fact. Someone all the way across the restaurant is staring at you. The pupils in her eyes are the focal points of two ideal black bodies, absorbing instead of emitting infrared radiation.
Your directional, sensory nerves communicate their readings to your brain, which subconsciously processes the anomaly, determines its location, and either sends your motor nerves the instinctive command to turn your head and glance in that direction, or sends the emotional center of your brain a creepy feeling, one that makes you ask your dining companion, "Is somebody staring at me from over there?" while you make furtive gestures over there. If you or your friend look, you may catch the person staring at you.
With any luck, she will flash a radiant white smile at you, which will warm you instantly — and all because two ideal black bodies in her head caused a low-energy anomaly in the random thermal background radiation, which your rattlesnake-like sense of touch detected, all the way across the room.
--
UPDATE, April 17, 2017: The Smithsonian Magazine has written about two black pigments that are so black that they reflect only a miniscule fraction of light. Objects painted with these pigments really do look like "odd-shaped holes in the fabric of the universe." The pigments are not without controversy in the artist world, ironically. Here are the links to read about vantablack and Black 2.0.
© 2013 Zyzmog Galactic Headquarters. If you copy or reprint this, just let me know. That's all. And include the reference in your paper or blog. If you plagiarize, your professor will find out. Both professors and plagiarism detectors read this blog.
When I was in high school, there was a girl in the cafeteria who stared at me. Every day. My friends and I would sit at a table at one end of the cafeteria, laughing and joking and eating our lunch, and I would get a creepy feeling that somebody was watching me. Sometimes I would turn around and catch this girl, sitting clear across the cafeteria, eating alone and staring at me. Other times I would point furtively, in the direction the creepy feeling was coming from, and ask my friends if somebody over there was staring at me. They would look in the direction I was pointing and announce that yes, she was staring at me again.
When we would catch her staring, she wouldn't look away, get embarrassed, or deny it. She would just smile, wave and continue staring.
I eventually got over the creepiness. She was a nice kid, and in time we became friends. But I always wondered why I could feel her staring at me, and why I could tell where she was sitting. I think I've finally got it figured out. Here is the scientific reason for why you can feel someone staring at you. It's rather long and involved, and admittedly anticlimactic, but hey, somebody's got to do it.
The Electromagnetic Spectrum
First, you need to know a few things about the electromagnetic spectrum — the "rainbow."Everything in the universe radiates energy. You're most familiar with the energy known as "visible light" — you know, ROY G. BIV, the colors of the rainbow. But not all light is visible. If you go past violet light, you find ultraviolet light, then X-rays, and then gamma radiation. On the other end of the rainbow, beyond red light, you have infrared light, then microwaves, and finally radio waves.
You have to get comfortable with the words "radiation" and "light" being synonymous. Normally we think of "light" as the good stuff we can see, that makes our world bright and warm and happy, and "radiation" as the dangerous stuff we can't see, that makes our world dangerous and sunburned and radioactive. In science, all electromagnetic radiation, from gamma rays through visible light and all the way down to radio waves, is called "radiation" — or, in the vernacular, "light." All of it. Scientists use the two terms interchangeably.
Light, or radiation, has different colors, or "wavelengths". Each wavelength has a different amount of energy associated with it. The higher the energy, the more stuff the light can shine through. For example, X-rays have enough energy to shine right through a human body, although they don't shine as well through teeth or bone as through soft tissue. That's why doctors and dentists find them useful. Gamma rays have so much energy that they can only be blocked by several inches of lead, or several feet of concrete. Microwaves have so little energy that they can be contained in a metal box the size of, well, a microwave oven.
What does all this have to do with that girl in the cafeteria? We're getting there. First, let's see what you can do with light.
Absorption, reflection, and radiation
All material things in the world absorb light. The fact that they absorb different wavelengths of light is what makes the world so colorful. Consider four automobiles: a white car, a red car, a green car, and a black one. The red car absorbs all the light from the sun, except for the red light. It re-radiates, or reflects, the red light away from itself. Your eyes see the red light and perceive the car as red. Likewise, the green car absorbs all but the green light and reflects the green light, which your eyes see. The white car absorbs very little light, reflecting most of it back to your eyes. The black car absorbs most of the sun's light, in every wavelength, reflecting just enough light for you to see the lines of its body.What do things do with the energy that they absorb? They have to do something with it; it can't just disappear. They turn it into another form of energy. Solar cells take visible light and turn it into electrical energy. Plants use visible and ultraviolet light to power the photosynthesis engines in their cells. (In fact, plants use most of the visible light. The only wavelengths they can't use are yellow and green, so they reflect those colors, which is why we see grass and trees as green.)
Objects also emit, or radiate, their own energy. The sun radiates a mixture of wavelengths which, when combined, appear to our eyes as white light. A hot stove radiates energy in the red and infrared wavelengths. Your eyes can see the red, and your body can feel the heat, or the infrared energy, radiating from the stove top.
Some objects absorb light at one wavelength and re-radiate it at a different wavelength, usually (or always) a lower-energy wavelength. Fluorescent paints or dyes absorb ultraviolet light and re-radiate the energy as various colors of visible light.
Most objects, however, absorb the energy from light, turn it into heat energy, and radiate it as infrared light. This is why a black dog lying in the sun gets so toasty warm. And, going back to our example of the cars, this is the reason why a black car gets hotter sitting in the summer sun than a white car. The white car reflects most of the sun's energy, while the black car soaks it all up, turning it into heat and raising the interior's temperature to unhealthy levels.
The fact that everything radiates energy is why infrared goggles and cameras can "see in the dark." They're not looking for visible light, but for the infrared light that everything radiates.
Now let's talk about eyeballs.
Black bodies
The wavelength of light emitted by an object depends on the amount of energy in the object, and the amount of thermal energy stored in an object is determined by its temperature. So theoretically, everything at a given temperature emits the same radiation.Physicists like to talk about an imaginary object that absorbs all the energy that hits it. Like the black car in our example, which absorbs most visible light, physicists imagine this object painted a black that even absorbs the invisible radiation below red and beyond violet. They call this imaginary object a "black body."
The U. S. Air Force has a few aircraft that are pretty good at absorbing radiation and not reflecting any back, and not radiating very much of their own, either. These Stealth aircraft are painted a dull black on the outside, and they're made from materials that even absorb the radio and microwave energy of radar beams. They have special air channels to cool down the hot exhaust gases of their jet engines. They're practically invisible in the night sky — they are the physicists' "black bodies."
The Holy Grail for these physicists is an "ideal black body" — one that would absorb all wavelengths or energies of electromagnetic radiation that shine upon it, and not reflect or radiate any energy at all. If such an object existed, it would be the purest black you've ever seen. It would have a surface that was a deep, soft black — deeper and softer than black velvet, blacker than the soot on the inside of a chimney.
The problem is that any object you can make — say a black velvet brick, dipped in soot — will still reflect just enough light that you can see its edges, discern its shape. The "ideal black body" would be so perfectly black that, sitting on your kitchen table, it would look like an odd-shaped hole in the fabric of the universe.
(See the end of this article for a cool update about that "odd-shaped hole in the fabric of the universe.")
One of the most useless things I learned in school, I thought, was how to make an ideal black body. Imagine you have a block of coal or charcoal — something really black. Now imagine that there's a bubble inside this block, a spherical cavity near the surface, like the bubbles in a block of Swiss cheese. Now, shave away at the surface of the block, one thin layer at a time, until you just barely break into the bubble. If you shine a flashlight beam — or better yet, a laser pointer — through that pinhole into the bubble, the light will bounce around on the curved inside walls until all of it is absorbed and none of it comes back out the hole. That cavity in the block has all the characteristics of an ideal black body.
When I was in college, I could think of few mental exercises as useless as that ideal black body. I could think of nothing in the world that approximated such a construction. Many years later, looking into the eyes of my newborn son, I found one.
Think of the human eye. It's a spherical shape. It has a pinhole opening in the front — an adjustable pinhole called the "pupil." The pupil admits light into the eye, where it bounces around until most of it is absorbed. The lens behind the pupil ensures that most of the light gets absorbed at the back of the eye, in a remarkable structure called the "retina." The cells of the retina absorb different wavelengths of light, converting the light's energy into electrochemical signals that are sent to the brain and help us perceive light, color, and shapes — red cars and green cars, black dogs and laser pointers.
The eye is not quite an ideal black body: its inner surface is not painted black. If you take a flash picture and the flash is too close to the lens of the camera, then the blood vessels on the inner surface of the eye will reflect red light back to the camera, resulting in the obnoxious "red-eye" effect that has plagued casual photographers since the days of Pocket Instamatic cameras.
Okay, now imagine a room where everything in the room is at the same temperature, so everything is emitting the same wavelength, and mostly the same intensity, of radiation. Through an infrared camera, you would see an even grey (or green) picture — well, not "even," but uniformly random.
Now, imagine that somebody in the room lights up a cigarette, or pulls out one of those hand-warmer packets you see at ski resorts. Using an IR camera, you will see a non-random, bright spot against the uniformly random background. If infrared light were visible light, the sudden appearance of this visible light would draw everyone's attention like a strobe or a flashlight beam.
(Time for a mental detour!
Question: Why does everybody turn in the direction of a flash, a sudden movement, or other changes in their field of vision?
Answer: I think it's an instinct that goes back to the days of cavemen, of predator and prey. The ability to notice a change in the wind, the sound of a snapping twig, or a moving shape among the trees, could mean the difference between life and death. Those who noticed subtle changes in their surroundings survived, and those who didn't notice, didn't survive. The instinct remains with us today, being useful on the basketball court, on the battlefield, and in the corporate boardroom.)
Now, imagine the same room as before, and this time somebody has a shoebox with a lid, the inside painted black, and a hole cut in one end. When the hole is turned to face the camera, the IR camera sees the hole as a non-random, black spot against the uniformly random background — just like the cigarette or the hand warmer, but dark instead of light. Why wouldn't everyone's attention be drawn to the sudden appearance of the black hole?
Well, what makes you think that it isn't?
Feeling is believing
We need to change the subject for a moment: let's talk about biology. Your skin has nerve endings just under the surface. These nerve endings give you the sense of touch. Some nerve endings respond to skin temperature: cold, warm and hot. Skin can be warmed or cooled by air, water, rocks, dogs — or light. (Well, warmed by light, not cooled by it. We already talked about that.)In some creatures, these temperature-sensitive nerve endings are directional. Pit vipers, such as rattlesnakes, have organs in a pair of "pits" on their snout, which they use to "see" heat in three dimensions.
My theory is that the temperature-sensitive nerve endings in your skin are also somewhat directional. When camping in the woods on a cold night, you can close your eyes, hold up your arm, and turn your hand like a vane to find the source of warmth that is the campfire, even from a considerable distance. Try it sometime. You can also use your face, your neck or any other exposed skin to find the campfire.
Now, imagine that you're standing in the center of a ring of campfires, on a cold night, and there's a gap with no campfire. (You may not be able to really try this.) Your brain and all the thermal receptors in your skin will work together to find the direction of that gap in the ring — the absence of radiated heat — even with your eyes closed.
Okay, so what about that girl staring at you?
Now you've got all the pieces to answer the question of why you can feel somebody staring at you. It's time to put all the pieces together.You're sitting in a crowded restaurant. People are milling all around you, minding their own business, nobody looking directly at you. But then the thermal receptors on your ear, your cheek, or the back of your neck detect an anomaly in the uniformly random infrared background — a dark spot, a pinpoint absence of energy.
Two pinpoints, in fact. Someone all the way across the restaurant is staring at you. The pupils in her eyes are the focal points of two ideal black bodies, absorbing instead of emitting infrared radiation.
Your directional, sensory nerves communicate their readings to your brain, which subconsciously processes the anomaly, determines its location, and either sends your motor nerves the instinctive command to turn your head and glance in that direction, or sends the emotional center of your brain a creepy feeling, one that makes you ask your dining companion, "Is somebody staring at me from over there?" while you make furtive gestures over there. If you or your friend look, you may catch the person staring at you.
With any luck, she will flash a radiant white smile at you, which will warm you instantly — and all because two ideal black bodies in her head caused a low-energy anomaly in the random thermal background radiation, which your rattlesnake-like sense of touch detected, all the way across the room.
--
UPDATE, April 17, 2017: The Smithsonian Magazine has written about two black pigments that are so black that they reflect only a miniscule fraction of light. Objects painted with these pigments really do look like "odd-shaped holes in the fabric of the universe." The pigments are not without controversy in the artist world, ironically. Here are the links to read about vantablack and Black 2.0.
© 2013 Zyzmog Galactic Headquarters. If you copy or reprint this, just let me know. That's all. And include the reference in your paper or blog. If you plagiarize, your professor will find out. Both professors and plagiarism detectors read this blog.
Friday, May 17, 2013
The IRS "Apologizes"
The news outlets are full of words from IRS officials, saying "we apologize" for targeting certain groups which had applied for non-profit status in the past six years.
Do they "apologize" for all the extra money those groups had to spend to comply with the demands of the IRS? Do they "apologize" for the lost time that those groups had to spend? Do they apologize for, let's be honest, harassing those groups and effectively abridging their freedom of speech?
You know, in a lot of cases, a victim will be charitable and noble and say, "I don't want their money. I don't want them to go to jail. I just want a sincere apology."
NOT IN THIS CASE.
The IRS is in the business of taking our money. That's their mission. If they don't get the money they're due, they will fine you, garnish your wages, shut down your business, throw you in jail, and commit all sorts of other legally-sanctioned nasty things.
THIS TIME, WE WANT THEIR HEADS.
We want to see the IRS treated the same way, when they abuse tax law, as the rest of us are treated when we abuse tax law. And more, because they acted from a position of ultimate power.
We want to see heads roll. We want to see people fired. We want to see people forbidden from ever having another job that includes handling other peoples' money. We want to see them reduced to WalMart greeters and lawnmower operators.
Moreover, we want to see the guilty parties jailed. From the minions all the way up to the directors, we want to see everyone in the chain of command, who knew about this or should have known about it, and who could have done something to stop it but didn't - we want them to serve jail time.
And we want to see financial restitution. That's right: we want to see the IRS financially penalized for their evil behavior. Hit 'em where it counts, just like they do to us. It would be really nice to see the money distributed among their victims.
But none of this will happen. A few people will get fired, but not very many, and certainly not the guilty ones. After six weeks or less, we'll be back to business as usual. That's the way Washington works.
Do they "apologize" for all the extra money those groups had to spend to comply with the demands of the IRS? Do they "apologize" for the lost time that those groups had to spend? Do they apologize for, let's be honest, harassing those groups and effectively abridging their freedom of speech?
You know, in a lot of cases, a victim will be charitable and noble and say, "I don't want their money. I don't want them to go to jail. I just want a sincere apology."
NOT IN THIS CASE.
The IRS is in the business of taking our money. That's their mission. If they don't get the money they're due, they will fine you, garnish your wages, shut down your business, throw you in jail, and commit all sorts of other legally-sanctioned nasty things.
THIS TIME, WE WANT THEIR HEADS.
We want to see the IRS treated the same way, when they abuse tax law, as the rest of us are treated when we abuse tax law. And more, because they acted from a position of ultimate power.
We want to see heads roll. We want to see people fired. We want to see people forbidden from ever having another job that includes handling other peoples' money. We want to see them reduced to WalMart greeters and lawnmower operators.
Moreover, we want to see the guilty parties jailed. From the minions all the way up to the directors, we want to see everyone in the chain of command, who knew about this or should have known about it, and who could have done something to stop it but didn't - we want them to serve jail time.
And we want to see financial restitution. That's right: we want to see the IRS financially penalized for their evil behavior. Hit 'em where it counts, just like they do to us. It would be really nice to see the money distributed among their victims.
But none of this will happen. A few people will get fired, but not very many, and certainly not the guilty ones. After six weeks or less, we'll be back to business as usual. That's the way Washington works.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
From 'Sideshow' to Three-Ring Circus
Yesterday I posted a short article, rebutting the Obama administration's assertion that the Benghazi affair was just a 'sideshow.' Boy, how things have changed overnight.
It turns out that the Obama administration is engaged in a full-blown three-ring circus. After last night's bombshell about the Associated Press, we have the following three scandals involving the Executive Branch. And if they weren't scandals before, they are now — or will be soon.
1. Benghazi. It is now clear that the State Department never told us the truth about what happened in Benghazi. Secretary of State Clinton's "What difference does it make?" dismissal of some of the important facts will come back to haunt her next year, should she decide to run for President.
2. The IRS. It is now clear that the Department of the Treasury was using the IRS as a tool to hound and harass non-profit groups with a clear political agenda — in short, abridging their freedom of speech. It is also clear that higher-ups in both the IRS and the Executive Branch were aware of this practice long before they said they were, and that they allowed it to continue. One could even accuse them of ordering it or mandating it. The IRS and the Treasury Dept. stomped on Americans' constitutional right to free speech.
3. The AP phone records grab. This is brand-new news, and it is developing even as I write this blog entry. But it is already clear that the Justice Department secretly and illegally stole two months' worth of telephone records from Associated Press reporters. DOJ's excuse for doing this was that they were trying to stop an unauthorized leak from inside the White House (as opposed to an "authorized leak"? what a bunch of clumsy idiots!) , but they totally flouted the law to do this, acting imperiously, maybe even dictatorially, and having a potentially chilling effect on the AP's ability to investigate and report the news. This time it was DOJ that stomped on Americans' constitutional right to free speech, to due process, and to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
That's the three-ring circus, folks. And I hear that other acts are waiting for their turn in the ring.
I didn't start out anti-Obama. I was one of the independents who said, "Give the guy a chance." I note with chagrin that presidents Reagan, Carter and (Bill) Clinton had similar problems during their terms in office. Reagan was completely oblivious to what his staff was doing, Carter was too trusting of everyone, and Clinton's staff were merely following the boss's dishonest and conniving example. I don't know what Obama's excuse is.
But we've heard enough of the president and his staff dismissing all of this as partisan bickering, Republican grandstanding, and so on. They have acted unethically, if not illegally, they have used terribly poor judgement, and they have attempted to cover their tracks or to shift the blame to other, innocent parties. It's time for them to stand up and be accountable for what they have done.
And we need to make sure that the former Secretary of State, who once said she would "do whatever it takes" to get elected president, doesn't get that chance in 2016.
It turns out that the Obama administration is engaged in a full-blown three-ring circus. After last night's bombshell about the Associated Press, we have the following three scandals involving the Executive Branch. And if they weren't scandals before, they are now — or will be soon.
1. Benghazi. It is now clear that the State Department never told us the truth about what happened in Benghazi. Secretary of State Clinton's "What difference does it make?" dismissal of some of the important facts will come back to haunt her next year, should she decide to run for President.
2. The IRS. It is now clear that the Department of the Treasury was using the IRS as a tool to hound and harass non-profit groups with a clear political agenda — in short, abridging their freedom of speech. It is also clear that higher-ups in both the IRS and the Executive Branch were aware of this practice long before they said they were, and that they allowed it to continue. One could even accuse them of ordering it or mandating it. The IRS and the Treasury Dept. stomped on Americans' constitutional right to free speech.
3. The AP phone records grab. This is brand-new news, and it is developing even as I write this blog entry. But it is already clear that the Justice Department secretly and illegally stole two months' worth of telephone records from Associated Press reporters. DOJ's excuse for doing this was that they were trying to stop an unauthorized leak from inside the White House (as opposed to an "authorized leak"? what a bunch of clumsy idiots!) , but they totally flouted the law to do this, acting imperiously, maybe even dictatorially, and having a potentially chilling effect on the AP's ability to investigate and report the news. This time it was DOJ that stomped on Americans' constitutional right to free speech, to due process, and to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
That's the three-ring circus, folks. And I hear that other acts are waiting for their turn in the ring.
I didn't start out anti-Obama. I was one of the independents who said, "Give the guy a chance." I note with chagrin that presidents Reagan, Carter and (Bill) Clinton had similar problems during their terms in office. Reagan was completely oblivious to what his staff was doing, Carter was too trusting of everyone, and Clinton's staff were merely following the boss's dishonest and conniving example. I don't know what Obama's excuse is.
But we've heard enough of the president and his staff dismissing all of this as partisan bickering, Republican grandstanding, and so on. They have acted unethically, if not illegally, they have used terribly poor judgement, and they have attempted to cover their tracks or to shift the blame to other, innocent parties. It's time for them to stand up and be accountable for what they have done.
And we need to make sure that the former Secretary of State, who once said she would "do whatever it takes" to get elected president, doesn't get that chance in 2016.
(Image copied from Townhall.com. I would ask for permission to repost this if I could contact them. I hope that this attribution/credit will be enough for them.)
Monday, May 13, 2013
Obama calls Benghazi controversy a 'sideshow'
(Title copied from a FoxNews.com article published May 13.)
No, Mr. Obama, the Benghazi controversy is not a 'sideshow.' The birth-certificate controversy was a sideshow. It came complete with its own clown, the bewigged Donald Trump.
But this, the Benghazi affair, is the main event. It's in the center ring right now. And, to mix metaphors, it's going to keep creeping out from under the rug no matter how many times Obama or his staff try to sweep it back under there. It won't go away until the President or the State Department face it head-on and give a full accounting for their actions or inactions.
This IRS scandal, where it turns out that the IRS was using its power to attempt to abridge the free speech of some political groups, is something else that bears watching. Right now is not a good time to be an unelected official or bureaucrat in the Executive Branch. (Since the Executive Branch has only two elected officials, that covers just about everybody. And the two elected officials aren't too comfortable right now either.)
On the other hand, now is a good time to be an elected member of the Legislative Branch. As long as the spotlight shines on the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury, it's not shining on the inaction and dysfunction of the Congress of the United States. In fact, this is the Congress' time to come looking like a collection of heroes and defenders of the American Way.
UPDATE: The sideshow got bigger overnight. Check out my next article, "From 'Sideshow' to Three-Ring Circus."
No, Mr. Obama, the Benghazi controversy is not a 'sideshow.' The birth-certificate controversy was a sideshow. It came complete with its own clown, the bewigged Donald Trump.
But this, the Benghazi affair, is the main event. It's in the center ring right now. And, to mix metaphors, it's going to keep creeping out from under the rug no matter how many times Obama or his staff try to sweep it back under there. It won't go away until the President or the State Department face it head-on and give a full accounting for their actions or inactions.
This IRS scandal, where it turns out that the IRS was using its power to attempt to abridge the free speech of some political groups, is something else that bears watching. Right now is not a good time to be an unelected official or bureaucrat in the Executive Branch. (Since the Executive Branch has only two elected officials, that covers just about everybody. And the two elected officials aren't too comfortable right now either.)
On the other hand, now is a good time to be an elected member of the Legislative Branch. As long as the spotlight shines on the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury, it's not shining on the inaction and dysfunction of the Congress of the United States. In fact, this is the Congress' time to come looking like a collection of heroes and defenders of the American Way.
UPDATE: The sideshow got bigger overnight. Check out my next article, "From 'Sideshow' to Three-Ring Circus."
Monday, April 22, 2013
What Dear Abby should have said
I don't often disagree with Dear Abby, but I think she missed a golden opportunity on this one.
This was in her April 20, 2013 column:
This was Dear Abby's response. She put the blame, rather unfairly, on the girl's mother.
Here's what Dear Zyzmog would have written:
DEAR DESPERATE: Let's back up this train, all the way to the station. You say that your boyfriend comes over for sleepovers on the weekend. When you say you are "serious in your relationship," I assume that means he's not sleeping on the couch, and you two aren't keeping your foot jammies on all night long.
Then you say that you feel uncomfortable about your mother running around in her underwear while Adam is there, and that she makes "inappropriate" and flirtatious comments.
Don't you see the (logical or moral) inconsistency here?
If you don't feel that it's "inappropriate" for your boyfriend to shack up with you on the weekends, in your mother's house, then you have no right to feel that it's "inappropriate" for your mother to run around in her own house in her skivvies. At least she's wearing skivvies. You two aren't.
You say that you are young, but your mother is 47. That makes you about 20, I would guess. Sweetie, where I come from, 20 isn't young; it's about two years past voting age and deep into "old enough to know better." And if you're old enough to sleep with Adam, then you're old enough to live on your own.
Are you really desperate enough to try anything? Then try this.
Move out of your mother's house, so she can run around in her underwear all she wants. Get a place of your own, so she doesn't have to carry your freeloading weight anymore, and so your boyfriend won't see her when he comes over. You're a grown-up. Try acting like one.
This was in her April 20, 2013 column:
DEAR ABBY: I have been dating my boyfriend, "Adam," for three years. Although we are young, we are serious about our relationship. Not too long after we started dating, Adam began staying over at my house on most weekends. I live with my mom, who is 47.
For the past year when Adam comes to visit, my mom has been coming out of her bedroom in her bra and panties, for the most part exposed. She also makes flirtatious comments to Adam that I feel are completely inappropriate.
I have tried talking to her about it, letting her know how uncomfortable Adam and I and some of my friends are about it. I hoped she would understand, but she continues with the flirting and underdressing. What can I do about this? I'm desperate to try anything. -- DESPERATE IN MAINE
This was Dear Abby's response. She put the blame, rather unfairly, on the girl's mother.
DEAR DESPERATE: You may be desperate, but not as desperate as it appears your mother is for attention. Because talking to her hasn't helped, accept that she is not going to change her behavior. Have Adam stay over less often. When you meet with your friends, do it at someone else's house. And if you can afford to move elsewhere, you should consider it.
Here's what Dear Zyzmog would have written:
DEAR DESPERATE: Let's back up this train, all the way to the station. You say that your boyfriend comes over for sleepovers on the weekend. When you say you are "serious in your relationship," I assume that means he's not sleeping on the couch, and you two aren't keeping your foot jammies on all night long.
Then you say that you feel uncomfortable about your mother running around in her underwear while Adam is there, and that she makes "inappropriate" and flirtatious comments.
Don't you see the (logical or moral) inconsistency here?
If you don't feel that it's "inappropriate" for your boyfriend to shack up with you on the weekends, in your mother's house, then you have no right to feel that it's "inappropriate" for your mother to run around in her own house in her skivvies. At least she's wearing skivvies. You two aren't.
You say that you are young, but your mother is 47. That makes you about 20, I would guess. Sweetie, where I come from, 20 isn't young; it's about two years past voting age and deep into "old enough to know better." And if you're old enough to sleep with Adam, then you're old enough to live on your own.
Are you really desperate enough to try anything? Then try this.
Move out of your mother's house, so she can run around in her underwear all she wants. Get a place of your own, so she doesn't have to carry your freeloading weight anymore, and so your boyfriend won't see her when he comes over. You're a grown-up. Try acting like one.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Why would you want to be a teacher in today's system?
How many more teachers' careers will be ruined before the states realize that standardized testing, as it is currently administered, is ineffective and counterproductive? And when the states finally discontinue standardized testing, who is going to apologize to those teachers and make amends for ruining their careers and taking away their dignity?
Standardized testing today has nothing to do with education. It is nothing but a well-intentioned but tragically misguided fad. It is a myth that the educational establishment has bought into - everyone except teachers, that is. It has turned our schools into factories, our administrators into frightened cowards, unwilling and unable to act for themselves, and our teachers into disposable assets, to be used up and then thrown away when they break or wear out.
Why doesn't anybody listen to the teachers? Why, instead, do they "discipline" the teachers? Why would anybody want to be a professional teacher in today's hostile environment?
Standardized testing today has nothing to do with education. It is nothing but a well-intentioned but tragically misguided fad. It is a myth that the educational establishment has bought into - everyone except teachers, that is. It has turned our schools into factories, our administrators into frightened cowards, unwilling and unable to act for themselves, and our teachers into disposable assets, to be used up and then thrown away when they break or wear out.
Why doesn't anybody listen to the teachers? Why, instead, do they "discipline" the teachers? Why would anybody want to be a professional teacher in today's hostile environment?
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