Tales of the Heliosphere

California's Supreme Court heard arguments today on whether the California voters' decision to pass Proposition 8 and limit marriage to opposite sex couples would be allowed to stand. The argument was televised on the State of California's government channel.

Judging from the direction of the arguments, it appears the Court will uphold Proposition 8 and rule that the voters had the right to limit marriage to opposite sex couples. The Court's ruling will be extremely limited to holding that Proposition 8 merely affected nomenclature. The Court will rule that Proposition 8 changed nothing else with respect to the rights of same-sex couples.

The Court already found in The Marriage Cases last year that same-sex couples under California's Domestic Partnership law enjoy nearly all the same rights as those enjoyed by opposite-sex marriage partners. The argument today, and concessions by the attorney supporting Proposition 8, made it clear that Proposition 8 in no way changed any other part of the Supreme Court's ruling in The Marriage Cases. The argument today further clarified that California could expand the definition of Domestic Partnerships so that such partnerships would be marriages in all but name, and that expanded definition would not run afoul of Proposition 8's limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples alone.

The course same-sex marriage advocates could follow after Proposition 8 is upheld is to seek to marginalize marriage and make domestic partnerships the norm. Use the arguments made at the Court to urge California's legislature to make domestic partnerships available to opposite-sex couples, to have California continue to issue marriage certificates to opposite-sex couples but also register every opposite-sex married couple as a domestic partnership, have California recognize domestic partnerships transacted in other states as valid in California when the partners move to California, and in every way possible change domestic partnerships so that legally they are identical to marriage.

-tdr

Labels: America, California, Law, Society

Millenia ago humans went from a hunter gatherer society to one that relies on agriculture for food. This dramatic change led to villages, towns, cities, and civilization. Civilized humans would never think of relying on hunter-gatherers to feed society. Well, on land, anyway. On the seas, hunter-gathering still dominates.

The oceans are an aquatic wilderness. Food from the sea mostly comes from fishing boats that take to the waters to hunt for schools of wild fish, gather them in nets, and bring them back to market.

Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has a story on an aquaculture experiment proposed by Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute for the deep waters off San Diego that would change all that.

"Hubbs' operation would cover about 30 football fields' worth of the ocean's surface in water that's approximately 300 feet deep.

"At first, the institute would deploy eight circular nets – each large enough to hold about 125,000 fish. The nets would be anchored to the sea floor and stocked with striped bass, a fish that was introduced to California more than 100 years ago. The captive bass would grow for about two years until they top 2 pounds each, at which point they would be collected in batches and sold to seafood wholesalers.

"The species was chosen for several reasons, including the availability of juveniles for rearing and what Hubbs researchers said were slim chances that any escaped fish would disrupt the native food chain.

"Over five years, Hubbs would install 24 pens and produce 3,000 metric tons of fish annually – about three times the current commercial fish harvest brought ashore in San Diego County.

"That would provide a dramatic boost to the state's aquaculture industry, which generates about $100 million in revenue each year for seafood producers. At full capacity, Hubbs officials said, they could raise about 3 million fish per year worth $21 million." (Here.)

Before Hubbs can go forward with its proposal it needs to convince environmentalists and fishing interests of its value, and obtain permits from the federal government. But Hubbs is on the right track.

Imagine if food from land were produced the same way that most sea food is produced. Hunters would leave the city every day to roam the wilderness in search of wild game to bring back to market. Long ago, humans figured out that hunter-gathering was inefficient and unreliable and we turned to agriculture. It's time to bring the production of sea food out of the pre-civilized era and into the modern world.

-tdr

Labels: Agriculture, America, Aquaculture, Civilization, Food, Science, Society

When George W. Bush was President, his opponents were beside themselves with fear over the Imperial Presidency. There was hyperventilation over the so-called unitary executive and alleged suppression of speech and dissent. Fear-driven opponents of President Bush took to calling him names, Bushitler, for example.

Even government officials were not immune. Lawrence Wilkerson, an aide to Colin Powell, once accused President Bush and Vice-President Cheney of running a "cabal" that had hijacked America's foreign policy. (Here at my former blog.) Think about that. The only two nationally elected officials in the United States government were accused of hijacking foreign policy. But that's what elections are about. In a democracy, if we don't like what the present government is doing, we elect new leaders to take charge and do things differently.

That's what happened in 2008 and the country chose Barack Obama to take over and do things differently. One change that hasn't come to America, however, is cutting back on the power of the Imperial Presidency. On foreign policy, President Obama is following a similar path to that walked by President Bush. The new President has appointed special envoys, George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke, answerable directly to him, to handle the Middle East and Afghanistan, respectively. This tactic allows the new President to bypass Congress because neither envoy requires Senate approval. This tactic also allows the new President to bypass the State Department, run by his former rival, Hillary Clinton. This tactic ultimately allows the new President to have direct control over these foreign policy matters.

I have no problem with this. I believe in the oh-so-scary unitary executive theory. All that theory holds is that the entire executive power defined by the Constitution is granted to the President. (Here.) It's not granted in pieces to lesser officials in the Executive Branch. Whatever authority lesser officials in the Executive Branch may have comes to them through the President from the Constitution. So, if the new President wants to retain direct hands-on control over foreign policy by appointing special envoys and bypassing the Cabinet, well, that's his prerogative.

The Politico.com has a very good analysis of President Obama's executive power play. (Here.) He's not just bypassing the Cabinet in foreign policy. Every issue that matters to him has a policy czar in the White House.

But don't hold your breath waiting for the brave dissidents against Bush's presidency to start accusing the new President of executive overreach. Their tasks today are to disparage Congressional Republicans for not supporting the President, and to demonize talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. From 2001 to 2008, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. In the new era of hope and change, it's now the lowest.

The more things change ...

-tdr

Labels: America, Elections, Obama, Politics, Society

What-if speculation is at the heart of science fiction. For instance, look at this 1613 map of the moon drawn by English astronomer, Thomas Harriot. (Credit Lord Egremont and the Royal Astronomical Society here.) The Moon looks like it has Earth-like features. What if it did? What if our closest neighbor in space were a planet similar to ours, with breathable atmosphere, an ocean, a continent and islands? What difference would that have made to our history?

-tdr

Labels: Astronomy, Science Fiction, Society

Before 2008, California, much like the rest of the United States, limited marriage to different-sex partners. California followed much of human history in that regard. Marriage may have included multiple partners in some societies but its normative characteristic throughout history has been its heterosexual nature.

But earlier this year four California Supreme Court justices outvoted three other justices and held that it violates the California Constitution to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. Last month, 52 percent of California's voters passed Proposition 8, which overturned the decision of the four justices, and amended the Constitution to reinstate the normative definition of marriage as being a relationship between different-sex partners.

Because of the type of society we live in today, California's voters might not have the last word on the matter. The California Supreme Court will decide a case next year brought by same-sex marriage supporters who believe it violated the California Constitution to let the voters decide what marriage is.

Although California's Supreme Court has not been asked to decide this issue, some believe the vote violated the principle of freedom from the establishment of religion. For instance, University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone:

"Proposition 8 was enacted by a vote of 52% to 48%. Those identifying themselves as Evangelicals, however, supported Proposition 8 by a margin of 81% to 19%, and those who say they attend church services weekly supported Proposition 8 by a vote of 84% to 16%. Non-Christians, by the way, opposed Proposition 8 by a margin 85% to 15% and those who do not attend church regularly opposed Proposition 8 by a vote of 83% to 17%.

"What this tells us, quite strikingly, is that Proposition 8 was a highly successful effort of a particular religious group to conscript the power of the state to impose their religious beliefs on their fellow citizens, whether or not those citizens share those beliefs. This is a serious threat to a free society committed to the principle of separation of church and state." (Here.)

That's right. The decision of the voters in California to return marriage to its normative definition as a relationship involving different-sex partners is a threat to a free society. Letting four judges change the definition of marriage for 37 million Californians? No threat to a free society at all. Let's hear it for the wisdom of higher education.

Rather than seeking to impose their religious views on others, it's more likely that California's voters decided marriage should reflect certain biological facts about human reproduction and childood development. Humans reproduce sexually and children are dependent on their parents for years. Marriage helps to ensure that a child's family will, in most circumstances, include his or her mother and father by binding the parents to each other and their children through a public, legal commitment.

As to whether the decision of California's voters to return marriage to its normative definition is a threat to a free society, Abraham Lincoln's words from 147 years ago about letting the Supreme Court decide certain policy matters have resonance today.

"At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." (Here.)

-tdr

Republished twice (a record!) to fix typos: missing words.

Labels: America, California, Elections, Law, Sex, Society

Science says second-hand smoke (SHS) won't kill you. It'll just annoy you and make your clothes smell bad. Or so says this article.

"In 2003 a definitive paper on SHS and lung cancer mortality was published in the British Medical Journal. It is the largest and most detailed study ever reported. The authors studied more than 35,000 California never-smokers over a 39-year period and found no statistically significant association between exposure to SHS and lung cancer mortality." (Here.)

So, smoke with abandon everybody.

-tdr

Labels: Good News, Science, Society

So much for a presidential election devoid of cultural issues. Or in Obama-speak, "distractions." Apropos of yesterday's California Supreme Court decree overturning the definition of marriage that was enacted into law by California's voters, here's Abraham Lincoln on how judicial overreach undermines democratic self-rule.

At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. (Here.)

Come November, we'll see whether the people of California have ceded self-rule to four Supreme Court Justices. (Here.)

-tdr

Labels: America, Law, Politics, Society

The other day Leigh Robbins asked, "How can you overreact when it's your children?" She had overreacted at the presence of Arabic-speaking passengers who turned out to be consultants for the US Marines in the war. (Here.)

Today brings another example of the myriad ways in which America's parents overreact to protect children. San Diegan Anne Greenstone is upset at the new Carl's Jr. television commercial featuring a hot, hot teacher, dancing and gyrating on her desk to a rap tune, "I Like Flat Buns." Greenstone complains that the commercial promotes teacher misbehavior and sex with underage boys. "All to sell a stupid hamburger, as she eloquently puts it." (Here.) Actually, it's a patty melt.

You can see the Carl's Jr's ad on You Tube. (Here.) There is something to be said for flat buns.

-tdr

Technorati: children, Carl's Jr..

Labels: America, Loco Parents, Society

A passenger on a plane out of San Diego is apologizing for crying "wolf" over a group of Arabic-speaking passengers on her flight. She was frightened by the behavior of the men and demanded to be let off the plane. It turns out the men were leaving San Diego after helping United States Marines learn to fight the enemy in Iraq. Here's what one of the men, David Al Watan, 30, had to say about being singled out for suspicion: "While they sit in their air conditioning, I was out in the desert helping to save Marines' lives. I am an American. I love this country. I would die for it." (Here.)

The woman, who was traveling with her children, is apologetic but defensive. Figuratively hiding behind her children, she defends her actions as those of a concerned mom trying to protect her kids. She asks, "How can you overreact when it's your children?"

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country in Connecticut, "A lawyer who stabbed his neighbor to death because he thought the man had molested his 2-year old daughter was sentenced yesterday to 12 years in prison for first-degree manslaughter." (Here.)

That's two.

-tdr

Technorati: children, Iraq, terrorism.

Labels: America, Loco Parents, Society, War on Jihad

The New York Times has an annoying policy of putting their opinion content behind a firewall. Even when a columnist is published in a local paper, the column is not available online without cost. Today, the San Diego Union-Tribune published a column by Times writer David Brooks about the cultural divide in America today.

Brooks sees the divide as being between those who went to university and those who didn't. And it's not liberal versus conservative. As he explains:

"Liberal members of the educated class celebrated the cultural individualism of the 1960s. Conservative members celebrated the economic individualism of the 1980s. But they all celebrated individualism. They all valued diversity and embraced a sense of national identity that rested on openness and global integration."

His thumbnail description of the clash is this. "People with university values favor intermingling. People with neighborhood values favor assimilation."

Like all dichotomies Brooks's analysis is a bit false. People rarely choose so neatly between competing philosophies; ideologues may but most people, I think, tend to run back and forth between the extremes. Few people favor a total lack of assimilation just as few favor allowing for no diversity at all.

Still, Brooks seems to have hit on something and he has put his finger on one reason today's culture clash is so heated.

"What has made the clashes so poisonous is that many members of the educated class do not even recognize that they are facing a rival philosophy. Many of them assume that anybody who disagrees with them on immigration must be driven by racism, insecurity, or some primitive nativism. This smug attitude sends members of the communal, nationalistic side into fits of alienation and prickly defensiveness. It is what makes many of them, in turn, so unpleasant."

He's right about that but only partly. Anyone who has listened to Laura Ingram or watched Lou Dobbs or read Patrick Buchanan, or in Southern California tuned in to Rick Roberts in San Diego or John and Ken in Los Angeles, knows just how unpleasant the neighborhood values set can be.

That unpleasantness can't all be attributed to an angry reaction at being looked down on by smug university values people. For instance, I've heard San Diego's KFMB Radio talk show host Roberts run promotions for his show in which he rants that once we are done in Iraq and Afghanistan, we do something about Mexico. And I don't think he had in mind asking Mexico to please, pretty please do something about the border. Other promotions he's run have had him crowing about how he's warned us all before that one day we'd wake up and there'd be a Mariachi band in the front yard, and then taunting us to do something about it. He wants his country back, you see.

Another thing Brooks doesn't acknowledge is how much those on the nationalistic side of the immigration debate discredit the motives of those on the other side. To many of them, pro-immigrationists have all sold out America to corporations or foreign governments, Mexico especially, and are willingly paving the way for the destruction of America's sovereignty and the replacement of our country with an international union of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The thought that maybe the pro-immigrationists also love America never seems to cross their minds.

-tdr

Technorati: politics, immigration.

Labels: Immigration, Politics, Society

Debra Saunders, writing about the lesbian lawsuit against eHarmony, hits on the problem with diversity advocates who seek to make every institution "look like America." (Here.) There is no diversity in that and not much freedom, either.

-tdr

Technorati: law, eHarmony.

Labels: Diversity, Law, Society

Popular Mechanics did a great service after 9/11 when it released its own report busting the conspiracy theory myths that claim the US government had a hand in bringing down the World Trade Center towers and attacking the Pentagon. (Here.) Too bad Rosie O'Donnell didn't read the report before spouting off. The magazine responds to O'Donnell's outrageous claims at its blog. (Here)

I don't dispute O'Donnell's right to express herself and to believe whatever she wants to believe. It's a free country. That freedom gives me the right to call her an uninformed ignoramus for those views. And in this case, I wouldn't need to rely on the public figure defense in a libel suit because truth is an absolute defense. What a country!

-tdr

Technorati: Rosie O'Donnell, terrorism, 9-11.

Labels: Politics, Society, War on Jihad

Environmentalism is an all-encompassing ideology that pushes its adherents to change every aspect of their own lives, and everybody else's too. It's a young and confident religion unabashed about proselytizing.

So it should come as no surprise that environmentalists hope to change how we dispose of human remains. The website Terra Daily tells of a move in Sweden to freeze dry corpses and turn the remains into compost.

"The freeze-drying method offers an environmentally friendly burial transforming corpses into organic compost. Traditional burials and cremations hurt the environment by polluting air and water, as a corpse buried in a coffin will take many years to decompose completely." (Here.)

What is surprising is the organization advocating the change: The Lutheran Church of Sweden. It's strange to see a Christian church promoting such dehumanizing treatment of human remains. Freeze-drying the corpse is significantly different than typical burial or cremation. In traditional burial or cremation, disposal of the body is done as an end in itself. Freeze drying, on the other hand, treats the corpse as mere raw material for plant food.

Perhaps the Lutheran Church of Sweden's involvement is not that surprising. The church is part owner of Promessa, the company that has developed the freeze-drying burial. This is what the Terra Daily story says about Promessa's plans. "Promessa has promoted the idea of using the human remains, like compost, to feed plants and shrubs." Where's Charlton Heston when you need him? (Here.)

-tdr

Republished once to correct a noticed punctuation error. Whatever unnoticed errors there are remain.

Technorati: environment, religion, Sweden.

Labels: Environment, Religion, Society

San Diego Union-Trbune columnist Gerry Braun writes about the city's no-smoking policy in Balboa Park. That's no smoking anywhere in the park, indoors or outdoors.

No surprise but smokers are sneaking cigarettes where they can. Don't expect the policy to change to make reasonable accommodations by allowing outdoor smoking areas, however. San Diego mayoral spokesman Fred Sainz says,

"'Creating smoking areas in an outdoor environment is laughable. It's no different than creating them on an airplane. There's nothing to stop the smoke.'" (Here.)

Hold that thought. Let it linger in your brain the way you would hold a puff of delicious cigar or pipe smoke in your mouth. Savor the delicious lunacy of the statement. A smoking area in an outdoor park is the same as a smoking area in an airplane. In other words, the environment inside an airplane is the same as a park's. Now that's laughable.

What isn't laughable is the level of anti-smoking zealotry in the formerly free state of California. Anti-smokers started out reasonably enough with bans in restaurants, workplaces, and bars. In other words, indoor locations.

Lately, however, anti-smokers have taken their abolitionist crusade to the great outdoors. Sometimes they dress up their proposals with health reasons. Every whiff of second-hand smoke will kill you, don't you know. Other times they propose bans so that children won't be exposed to seeing adults smoke. The horror.

But the real motivation behind anti-smoking zealotry comes out in Braun's column when Sainz describes the need to protect the public from second-hand smoke as "a moral imperative." This is what the anti-smoking campaign is about. It's a moral crusade. Smoking is a sin and smokers are sinners.

-tdr

Republished once to fix label.

Technorati: smoking, smokers, tobacco.

Labels: Health Puritanism, San Diego, Society

A recent survey by Pew Internet tested attitudes about digital technology, computers, cellphones, PDAs, the internet, and the like. The survey results divide people into categories from heavy to light users. Hightech heavy users are further subdivided into four categories.

"• 'Omnivores,' who fully embrace technology and express themselves creatively through blogs and personal Web pages.

• 'Connectors,' who see the Internet and cell phones as communications tools.

• 'Productivity enhancers,' who consider technology as largely ways to better keep up with their jobs and daily lives.

• 'Lackluster veterans,' those who use technology frequently but aren't thrilled by it." (Here.)

You can take the survey here.

I'm a Connector. (Here.) But I knew that already as I sit here at home on a beautiful Sunday in San Diego using one of my two laptops, watching TV, wearing a cellphone on my belt, with a landline phone sitting just 3 feet away.

-tdr

Republished once to add a link.

Technorati: Technology, internet.

Labels: Society, Technology

Don Imus will not be going quietly into the night. Legal action appears to be in the offing with Imus claiming breach of contract over his firing by CBS. The former shock jock's lawyer is quoted as saying, " ... CBS and MSNBC both knew the language that was going out, and both knew the language complied with (Imus') contract. ... It was consistent with many of the things he had done, ..." (Here.)

Perhaps that's true. A report on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 today states the CBS/Imus contract has a clause specifically laying out the parties' expectations that Imus's show will be controversial and provocative. No surprise that.

But it would surprise if the contract sanctions what could be actionable as slander. Falsely calling a group of women a slang term for prostitute on a national radio show arguably is slanderous.

It would be sweet if the Rutgers basketball players were to make things more interesting by threatening their own lawsuits. They could mix things up a bit because both CBS and Imus could be named as co-defendants. O yeah, and Imus's sidekick, too, whatever his name.

I wish the players would sue. They are the only truly innocent parties in this whole offensive mess.

-tdr

Technorati: Imus.

Labels: Law, Media, Society

The new movie Year of the Dog is causing discomfort to some reviewers. (Here.) The movie is about a single woman and how she deals with the aftermath of her cherished dog's death. Not well, apparently. "The death of a cherished pet is not easy for anyone, but this woman goes ballistic, first taking in an unruly German shepherd (time for the 'Dog Whisperer' again), then adding another dozen or so pooches."

I predict the movie will bomb because its target audience will find the movie a too harsh look into the mirror. The movie's subject matter touches on a prevalent societal trend in America today. Namely, the turning of pets into children, especially by single women. There's even a neologism for the pet/child: "furkid." You can decide for yourself why one particular demographic leads this trend.

A revealing look can be seen in A Dog's Life: A Dogamentary. (Here.) Available from Netflix, this short film is painful to watch as the clueless filmmaker takes us along on her quest to find a man who will accept her and her dog. The most significant line flies right by her when a therapist asks, "When did you start thinking of your dog as a child?"

-tdr

Technorati: Pets, Movies.

Labels: Animals, Movies, Society