Ask the xprt

Gasoline prices have soared an average of 60 cents a gallon in less than a month because suppliers are unable to keep up with demand, a situation that could persist up to three more years, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Sunday...

"Up to three more years" is a nice coincidence, since it will be at most that long before Mr. Bodman (not to be confused with the spray that will make chicks dig you) seeks employment elsewhere. In other words, he's not going to do anything about it. And he's right, because he can't.

But there was an interesting quote from Democratic senate whip Dick Durbin (Demagogue - Ill) in the same article, interesting because as I showed below, big oil already pays or passes $4 in taxes for every $1 it profits: “if you do not tax these corporations ... they will continue to run up the profits to high heavens.”

As usual, to Democrats, the profits are the problem.

But I asked the expert (or rather, the cfdxprt) the odds of more supply coming online, a prospect that Bodman pushes into Hillary's first term. His answer is enlightening:

Increasing the supply, at least in the short-term, is a non-starter. We're not limited by the amount of crude oil we can get into the country, we're limited by the amount of that oil that we can refine into useful products, and we will be for the foreseeable future.

At maximum the industry will run at 92-94% of maximum capacity, mainly because plants do trip and they do have to be shut-down and maintained. Currently we're running at about 85% of refining capacity for a few reasons.

First, there are still refineries that haven't come back after the hurricanes. For at least one of them, the prospects for making it back online this year look dim.

Second, we reached a point where refineries had to be taken off-line for maintenance for 2 reasons: due to clean air standards the refineries are having to switch over to summer gas which means they have to add more oxygen to it (not worth a darn on pollutants from a fuel injected car with a working oxygen sensor, but it's the law).

Also, the decision was made to not take refineries offline for non-critical repairs after the hurricanes, and I'm not pointing fingers on who made the decision or what influence was wielded, but things were done to keep gas artifically low for a while. The non-critical maintenance has now become critical, so they have to take the refineries offline or risk breaking them (read: blowing something up and taking a long time to fix).

Why don't we just build more refineries? It's not that the oil companies aren't willing to put up the money, they're currently building 6-8 large refineries in other parts of the world. The primary reason is that it is almost impossible to get a refinery built and permitted for operation in this country anymore due to environmental regulations. The industry standard for a very long time (adjusted for inflation) is that the refiner gets about 5c for every gallon of gas they produce, so they are keen on producing as much gas as possible, if they could.

So other than maybe getting another 7% capacity back online, we're strapped. The only solution at that point becomes either increase the price and burn all we can or decrease the demand. Now I fit into the bike guy's comments when I chuckle at people putting $100 worth of gas into their Navigators, and a car would have been nice today since I'm still drying out from my morning commute, so every solution has its comprimises. Just don't expect a quick fix coming from the oil industry.

There's no quick fix coming from the oil industry. There's no quick fix coming from the government. The only quick fix that remains is to use less fuel, which is also the long-term fix, yet seems to be the hardest for the individual to accomplish. As for Bodman's three years, perhaps he expects the Chinese will be so kind as to stop growing their economy all that time or refrain from buying more gas with all those depreciating dollars they hold. How do you say, "Pshaw!" in Chinese?

Moron Juries

If there was ever an argument that the jury, as presently constituted, has outlived its usefulness, this is it:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The jury in Zacarias Moussaoui's death penalty trial has finished deliberating for the week without reaching a verdict...

Earlier Friday Judge Leonie Brinkema admonished jurors not to do their own research. The scolding came after the court learned a juror had looked up the meaning of "aggravating."

That word is central to the deliberations. The jury must weigh aggravating and mitigating factors as it decides whether Moussaoui should be executed or sentenced to life in prison for his role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Brinkema decided in a closed hearing that the juror's action wasn't significant enough to stall deliberations further. But she told the jury not to look up words again.

Earlier this week, the judge refused to supply the jury with a dictionary.

It's not just that the jury is deciding a case that hinges on a word that they don't understand, it's that the judge refuses to let the jury gain the knowledge necessary to do the job. Frankly, I don't care if the terrorist bastard hangs or not, but I care very much that his fate is in the hands of people who are incompetent to decide it. Who knows, some day I might need a jury, and I want them to understand what they are doing.

But note I said the jury "as presently constituted" has outlived its usefulness. Juries remain an indispensible cornerstone of our system of justice, and rather than being eliminated (which would put the fate of citizens completely in the hands of often overzealous prosecutors, rather than just mostly as they are today), the system ought to be reformed to be what it was when established: a true jury of peers who have the knowledge, ability, and desire to do the job.

Think about it for a minute: when a person is called for jury duty, what's their first reaction? "Oh, man, not that!" With that kind of an attitude, how can anyone be expected to do a good job? And when a man's life is on the line, how can we consider it justice when we have a dozen uninformed and uninterested people deciding his fate?

Therefore I suggest the following:

Fully-informed juries. Juries should hear ALL the evidence - even evidence gathered unlawfully and evidence the judge does not think is relevant; and yes, this includes prior accusations against the defendant and prior accusations by a witness. The judge may be trained in the law, but he is not the one deciding the case. That people reading the paper know more about witnesses than those deciding a case is ludicrous.

Jury nullification. If the jury finds a statute to be unfair, unclear, or unreasonable, they should acquit the defendant. Actually, they have the power to do so (and have always had that power), but they should be informed of it and be able to excercise it without repercussion. If a law is not good enough that a jury can in good conscience convict, then the defendant should walk. There's no better way to get clear and good law than returning to the people the power to make unclear and bad law unenforceable.

Voluntary juries. The act of punishing people for not taking part in a legal process in which they have no interest delegitimizes the entire process. Juries should not only be made up of any individual who is chosen from a voluntary pool (no exclusions unless a juror is shown to be unable to perform the functions of the job) they should be paid well enough - by both prosecutor and defense - that they want to take part. If the defendant doesn't wish a jury, then that desire should be respected in all cases, civil or criminal.

Elimination of jury resource restrictions. If the jury wants to take notes, research case law, or ask questions of witnesses, they should be able to without any interference from the judge. It's preposterous that juries are expected to rule on laws that in some cases they are not even allowed to read and in many cases do not understand.

The purpose, strange as it may seem, is the make the jury the most powerful force in the courtroom, rather than putty for a defense lawyer, prosecutor or judge to mold according to arcane rules and winking gentleman's agreements. The ritual where people all rise before a magistrate in flowing robes who has the power to tell the jury they can't use a dictionary is a farce. That a jury that doesn't know the meaning of the word 'aggravating' is deciding next week whether a man should die because of it is a travesty.

An inadvertent symbolism

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. (AP) - A professor and six students at Northern Kentucky University were charged with uprooting 400 crosses meant to represent fetuses in an anti-abortion display, prosecutors said...

The crosses were pulled from the ground and thrown in trash cans around campus on April 12.

Big oil and taxes

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress considered billions of dollars in new taxes on oil companies Thursday, looking for ways to punish the cash-rich industry and soothe growing anger over high gasoline prices...

...lawmakers scrambled Thursday to put together legislative packages they hoped would - if at times only symbolically - demonstrate their sympathy for the nation's motorists and their willingness to stand up to Big Oil....

Committee members acknowledged that the action was little more than a gesture.

"We are venting our frustration," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

In other words, Congress is floundering around in graceless impotence. But what about big oil? I mean, is it fair that Exxon Mobil alone should make $6 billion dollars in a single quarter? They are on course to earn almost $25 billion dollars this year! How fair is that?

I wondered, so instead of asking CNN, I went to the Security and Exchange Commissions's website and checked out Exxon's annual filing to read their financials. Here's something I haven't seen in the paper:

Taxes, 2005 - $98.6 billion total
Income $23.3 billion, Excise $30.7 billion, other taxes $44.5 billion

Taxes, 2004 - $86.8 billion total
Income $15.9 billion, Excise $27.3 billion, other taxes $43.6 billion

Taxes, 2003 - $75.0 billion total
Income $11.0 billion, Excise $23.9 billion, other taxes $40.1 billion

In short, Exxon Mobil paid or passed to the government $99 billion dollars in taxes last year to earn that $24 billion, more than $4 for every dollar they took home. Obviously, Uncle Sam's not getting his cut; I mean, how fair would it be if you only had to pay $99,000 in taxes to bring home $24,000? Or else obviously, for every cent that 'obscene' profits are raising the price of gas, Congress is already raising the price four cents. Yeah, those are the guys I want solving Energy Crisis II.

Today's Moron Gas News

Relax, America! Your elected officials know what it's like to be you, which is why they have worked their whole lives to be something else. But they slave away on your behalf, 93 days a year, and all they ask in return is a pension fund second to none and fact-finding trips to Jamaica every year. Now they are tanned, rested, and ready to save you from the crisis-du-jour. Today, it's high gas prices:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Every American taxpayer would get a $100 rebate check to offset the pain of higher pump prices for gasoline, under an amendment Senate Republicans hope to bring to a vote Thursday.

I think the fiscally conservative GOP should just drop paper money out of helicopters instead. It's the only fair way to do it. I mean, why should the fact that somebody doesn't pay taxes keep them from getting free money from the government?

BEEVILLE - Spurred by rising gas prices, elected officials in Bee County are urging motorists to boycott fuel pumps in hopes of sparking a state trend...

County officials said they chose Exxon Mobil because it is the largest oil company in the United States. They hope competitors will be motivated to enter into a price war, driving the cost of fuel down.

And you think they came up with that idea all by themselves, right? No way. The idea is a tried-and-true one in Bee County. In fact, the voters boycotted thought during the last election cycle, motivating elected officials to enter an IQ war. The average is down to 72 with no bottom in sight.

"Since George Bush and Dick Cheney took over as president and vice president, gas prices have doubled!" charged Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), standing at an Exxon station on Capitol Hill where regular unleaded hit $3.10. "They are too cozy with the oil industry."

She then hopped in a waiting Chrysler LHS (18 mpg) -- even though her Senate office was only a block away.

Here's a secret: God's a Republican. The GOP kneels next to their bed every night and begs, just begs, for feckless, helpless opponents. And God delivers them Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi.

But the good news for the rest of us is though gas prices are front page news everywhere, CNN.com this morning has three stories (plus video) on Kellie's elimination from American Idol. After all, we have to keep some sense of what's really important.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

David Craft sends along a wonderful bit of liberal spin:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America may still think of itself as the land of opportunity, but the chances of living a rags-to-riches life are a lot lower than elsewhere in the world, according to a new study published on Wednesday.

The likelihood that a child born into a poor family will make it into the top five percent is just one percent, according to "Understanding Mobility in America," a study by economist Tom Hertz from American University.

By contrast, a child born rich had a 22 percent chance of being rich as an adult, he said.

"In other words, the chances of getting rich are about 20 times higher if you are born rich than if you are born in a low-income family," he told an audience at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think-tank sponsoring the work.

I love the stat that a child born rich has a 22% chance of being rich as an adult. Of course, the spin is silly, because if only 22% of the rich were born rich, then 78% of the people who are now rich were not born that way. In other words, more than 3/4 of those who are rich are rich because of their own work. Hardly what one might call lack of opportunity.

Breaking the survey down by race spotlighted this as the next most powerful force to explain why the poor stay poor.

On average, 47 percent of poor families remain poor. But within this, 32 percent of whites stay poor while the figure for blacks is 63 percent.

So more than 2 in 3 poor whites do not remain poor, while just 1 in 3 poor blacks manage to escape poverty. While race does matter, our little factoid above (that 3/4 of the rich are that way because of their own actions) leads us away from the liberal conclusion that race is what primarily matters. Why? Because we must presume that the parents of the new rich were of the same race, therefore race is not a factor in that rise. Why should we primarily suspect race, then, when it comes to those who remain poor? Could there be another factor?

Williams thinks there is:

The Children's Defense Fund and civil rights organizations frequently whine about the number of black children living in poverty. In 1999, the Bureau of the Census reported that 33.1 percent of black children lived in poverty compared with 13.5 percent of white children. It turns out that race per se has little to do with the difference. Instead, it's welfare and single parenthood. When black children are compared to white children living in identical circumstances, mainly in a two-parent household, both children will have the same probability of being poor.

In short, blacks are more likely to be poor because they are more likely to have single-parent families. When one adjusts for the single-parent family, the differences of race disappear.

Not all of us will make it to the top 5%. After all, by definition (and here's a stat for liberals to chew on) no matter what they do, 19 of every 20 Americans will not be there. Does that mean there's no opportunity? Apparently, according to liberal statistics.

But if we put them in charge, they promise, all of our children can be above average. Wow, I can't wait for 2008 when we can all be in the top 5%. Of course, they'll have to raise our taxes because then we'll be evil as well.

Could you survive in a horror movie?

YOU'RE A SURVIVOR!!

You're also very, very boring. You see, horror movies are full of idiot teenagers for a reason. That's the only way they can make slow-lurching zombies, flesh-eating inbred country bumpkins and giant sentient blobs seem frightening. Go back and trip over a few branches or fumble your shotgun shells at a crucial moment or something.

Take this quiz!

When does a just war end?

Near the bottom of the left-side links there's an article called "The Problem of War," which Jozum and Magruder and I have been discussing via email all day. In short, it draws a distinction between Christian war and liberal-humanist war in the ethical thought of CS Lewis. Lewis, being a medievalist, conflated the thought of a number of earlier thinkers in defining what a just war is and why it is the obligation of a Christian to fight one.

But where does it end? Jozum asked the hard question tonight in relation to American armies pursuing just war, "...when do we 'stop protecting the innocent'?"

In other words, do we follow the words of Captain Red Legs Terrell and say, "Doin' right ain't got no end" while driving armies all over the world, accepting the destruction and slaughter that entails? Or do we turn a deaf ear to the cries of those who are oppressed and leave them to their fate because we choose to do nothing?

My answer is mixed up and meandering and has little or no basis in scripture, but here it is pending further thought.

Why am I not personally in Rwanda protecting the innocent? Why are you not? If there's a reason, does that reason apply to our government as well? Even if we feel bad for those individuals, we choose not to help...most of us don't spend our lives going overseas looking for monsters to slay. I don't see where our government, which is the aggregation of our collective right to self defense, is any different. Our government exists to protect us. We simply do not have the resources nor the responsibility to invade everywhere there's evil and slay it. And as we found in Iraq, when we try, we often find ourselves in a position where more evil occurs due to our presence.

If we (the US) truly tried to protect all the innocent in every city on the globe, it would mean armies in every land, i.e. continual war. Therefore such is out. Should we do as much as we can? I think that's what we try and it as well means continual war. Do we invade Iran to protect Israel? What if we have to kill a million Iranians to save 800,000 Jews? Is it worth it both in dollars and in blood? What if we have to kill a million Iranians to save 100,000 Americans? Do we get a different answer? Quite possibly, and I need to think through why. It may be no more than that we have a right to self-defense that is greater than our right to defend others, or it may be that we think Americans more valuable than Iranians. But those million who died were not all going to fly planes into buildings, and then who will protect the innocent from us?

That, perhaps, draws the distinction that Lewis might have drawn. Killing a million Iranians in uniforms or carrying box knives is different than killing a million innocent Iranians so 10,000 or 1000 or 100 don't kill some of us. And that might get back to killing the armies only of invaders, i.e. Christian rules on the conduct of war. In other words, a just war is a war of self-defense waged against armies that are killing our civilians. That does not mean killing rulers because they take over but otherwise don't treat people any worse than the people who ruled before, and it does not mean inflicting major war to preclude the possibility of minor war. And 9/11, despite the howling, is minor war.

The major problem I have with Iraq (outside my native isolationism) is that we seem to have the idea that we can protect everyone by forcibly changing the governments of the world, and if that kills a lot of people, well, it'll be worth it in the long run. Maybe it will, but I have my doubts. If Saddam was the threat, then the just war ended when he was no longer a threat. If Radical Islam is the threat, then war will only end when it is eradicated; that means continual war for eventual peace. But if a defense-oriented protection of our innocent is the primary focus no matter the threat, then evil can exist and our government's only job is to ensure that it doesn't cross our borders. And I'm sorry that means that innocents will suffer while America does nothing, but I also think that there are cases and places where there's truly nothing militarily we can do.

The Great Powerbook Scam

It all started with an eBay auction for a new G4 Powerbook. My friend Cory wanted me to sell it for him just days after he bought it. Probably because he realized that, aside from looking cool, he had no real use for it. For the sake of an easy sale, I just pretended to sell it as my own, with a starting price of $1700, and the "Buy It Now" option for $2100...

And it won't be long until the London scammers arrive to buy it...I enjoyed this no little bit.

(Read more)

Starting a price war

"I went to the Shell Service station the other day and asked for five dollars' worth of gas. The clerk farted and gave me a receipt."

If only we could start a price war... if only, if only. The idea, of course, is making its way around the internet and via email that if consumers could just teach the oil companies a lesson, then we could go on using all the gas we want for half the current price. The latest comes from people who have learned a thing or two from pyramid advertising:

Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers.

Of course, five more iterations and we will have reached 300 billion people. Then the war is on!

It's a stupid idea, and I'm amazed people even give it a second look. But just for fun, let's explore the fatal fallacy: If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

Why should they follow suit? Answer that question and I'll admit you're a better man than I.

The only way one company follows another to lower prices is through the threat of loss of business to a lower-priced competitor - in other words, there must exist a market glut (more product than buyers for that product), a situation which does not exist in oil. If Exxon lowered its price but the other stations had more business, they'd raise prices to keep from running out of stock or they would buy more gas from the same suppliers who are now supplying Exxon.

So as is often the case in email economics, the best possible outcome is no change; the probable outcome is higher prices.

To quote Professor Kirke, "What do they teach children in these schools?"

There are only three factors that can move prices in a fungible market: suppy, demand, and the unit of currency in which transactions are measured. Supply is topped out, as all the available boats and pipelines and refineries are going full bore. The unit of currency (oil is priced in dollars) is dying; that continuously ratchets prices against the individual who must use dollars to buy gas.

That leaves demand. The *only* thing the individual can do to lower gas prices is to use less gas; not only does that reduce the price marginally, but it makes high prices more bearable as well. Using 1/3 less gas will save you more than 1/3 on your gas costs, though it might only reduce the price a few percent. The one option that is simply not available is for all of us to use the same amount of gas and halve the price by buying it from a different station.

That's too hard for most, so we'll probably get the fourth option, the one I left out: government price controls. That is always followed by shortages. Always. But hey, at least walking will use up a lot of time we currently use to send email.

Anguish at the pumps, or not

CNN publishes your emails about how the high price of gas affects you:

No effect whatsoever. I drive about 500 miles per year and bicycle the rest. It's fun to see all the agony when I ride past gas stations full of desperate, mortified and angry motorists. Maybe they can go inside and cool down with a nice Slurpee or something. Happy motoring, America! --David Dutra, Tucson, Arizona

OK, so it made me laugh. Amid all the anguish and the boohooing, David's got the right idea. When insanity seems to be growing in leaps and bounds, you might as well find something to enjoy.

The other thing that made me laugh was all the cockamamie economic solutions postulated by CNN's readership. Seems that everyone is an economist:

If everyone would boycott Exxon, then Exxon would have to lower its prices, and others would follow.

Yeah, that's a beauty. Why would Exxon's competitors lower prices when they have more customers than before at the current price? Removing supply has always been a proven price-buster, hasn't it?

Imagine the statement it would make if as many as 1 million angry Americans converged on the Washington Mall or elsewhere, carrying red gas cans?

Color me so not surprised that one came from a law student.

Maybe we should ... just buy $10.00 at a time and let the gas sit in the holding tanks!

Let's imagine everyone bought only $10 (~3 gallons) at a time. Rather than filling up your 15 gallon tank and leaving, you'd get to visit the gas station 5 times for every one you do currently. So would everyone else. Gas lines full of idling vehicles is another proven solution to high gas prices, right?

Hey Congress, get over your bloviating and actually do something. I don't want to hear about 10 years from now, I want to hear about 10 minutes from now.

I just put that one in because it's so funny. Congress should repeal the laws of physics while they're at it so friction doesn't make our tires wear out, too.

While some people had decent ideas (e.g. use less gas, duh) one thing was conspicuous by its absence. The price of *everything* is going up, not just gas. Housing prices are at record highs (the median price of a house in LA is now half a million dollars) commodity prices are at record highs (and oil is just another commodity). What have they in common? They are all measured in dollars.

But the good thing is that the government is creating so many new dollars for us to spend. Or is that the bad thing? Economics is soooooo confusing...

The Adventures of President Girley

I dunno, I thought it was funny...

In other news, copper is up 5% today to a new all time high, several East Coast states are experiencing gas shortages, oil hit $75 a barrel, the President's approval rating is at 33%, and the feds released all those illegal aliens they rounded up yesterday while making them promise to come back for a court hearing.

Read President Girley. You'll feel better.

Behold my hands

The image of the crucifixion, one of the most powerful emblems of Christianity, may be quite erroneous, according to a study which says there is no evidence to prove Jesus was crucified in this manner.

Around the world, in churches, on the walls of Christian homes, on crucifixes worn as pendants, in innumerable books, paintings and movies, Jesus Christ is seen nailed to the cross by his hands and feet, with his head upwards and arms outstretched.

But a paper published by Britain's prestigious Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) says this image has never been substantiated in fact...

Given the uncertainty as to exactly how he was crucified, the answer may only ever come if some new archaeological evidence or piece of writing emerges from the shadows of the past, it says.

It's rather a funny study, in that they found absolutely nothing. So while it's true that they found that the symbol "may be quite erroneous," they found no evidence that it was quite erroneous. I guess that will demand another government grant.

Actually, the symbol probably *is* erroneous if that symbol contains nails through the hands rather than through the wrists. The argument is often made based on tests done with corpses that a nail through the hand would not support the weight of a crucified body, but that it would tear through the top of the hand causing the person to fall off the cross. The few archaeological finds of historical crucifixions seems to support this conclusion.

This argument is quite correct, in my opinion. Roman executioners, doing multitudes of crucifixions, most certainly had an established way of going about it, and that presumably included proper placement of nails so the victim would stay affixed to the cross or tree.

What are we to then do with John 20:27 (the 'Thomas' verse from last week) which says, Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing,' which seems to claim that in Jesus’ case the crucifixion was done through the hands?

A little word study/comparison is in order.

Acts 12:7 reads (NIV) Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. "Quick, get up!" he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.

Which reads in the KJV: And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands.

The word translated "hands" (KJV) and "wrists" (NIV) is ‘cheir’, precisely the same used here in John 20:27. In fact, it is used twice in John 20:27, one time unambiguously as ‘hand’ since no one would ‘reach hither thy wrist’.

Now, since in Acts, there is little doubt that the chains were on Peter’s wrists, and in Jn 20:27 there is no doubt that Thomas reached forth his hand, and they use the same word, then the Greek word ‘cheir’ must be used for both wrist and hand (the translators of the KJV used ‘hands’ for both translations, the NIV used ‘hands’ in John and ‘wrists’ in Acts for the same word).

From which it follows that the nail may have been through either Jesus’ wrists or hands, and the Greek word ‘cheir’ would not necessarily make the distinction (we might get the same effect in English when we use the phrase ’my hands are tied’, when in fact we mean our wrists are what is bound).

This verse, then, does not support either hands or wrists, since the Greek upon which it is based does not apparently make a distinction between the two.

A good scientific study might have concluded that Jesus was probably crucified through the wrists, but then there might have been no need for another study, I suppose.

UPDATE: In relation to the study itself, I guess I ought to take a saw out on this limb here and say that the fact that imagery of Jesus on the cross has unanimously pictured Jesus crucified upright on a cross has a certain historical value that the studiers forgot to account for. Since the church was founded by eyewitnesses and peopled originally by individuals who were familiar with crucifixion (both Jews and Romans) it's most likely that the reason Jesus is always pictured upright on a cross is because that's exactly how it happened.

And yes, early Christians knew that the Romans did not always crucify people that way. One tradition of Peter's crucifixion says that he was affixed to his own cross upside down.

It's easy to tell the fakes

DANVILLE — A fake Easter bunny and three of his friends terrorized a group of teenagers Sunday night, according to police.

A car containing four people, with the front passenger dressed as the Easter bunny, drove down Continental Boulevard and flashed a gun to several teenagers at about 9:30 p.m., authorities said. Someone in the car allegedly had a video camera as well.

Yeah, the *real* Easter Bunny would never pull a stunt like that.

Going Mainstream

I know I've been noising on it for a year and you're tired of it. But now Bloomberg financial press has taken up the chant:

April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Gold rose above $620 an ounce, the highest since 1980, as record oil prices and a drop in the dollar prompted some investors to buy bullion seeking a hedge against inflation...

"The strength in gold is revealing the general weakness in the dollar,'' said Peter Schiff, chief executive officer of Darien, Connecticut-based brokerage Euro Pacific Capital...

"A lot of demand for commodities is purely inflationary,'' Schiff said. "Money is losing value. It's not just the dollar. It's the euro. It's the yen. All these currencies are being debased.''

Paper money is losing value, and at an increasing rate. According to coinflation, your pre-1982 pennies are now officially worth twice their face value when melted down. Zinc is up 50% in 3 weeks. Gas is closing in on $3. Oil settled at $71, a new record (when it hits $90, look out). Silver was up a buck today, the first time that has happened in a quarter century. You will never see cheap gas again, maybe cheap anything again. I'm sorry.

I probably won't post on it again until the cent is worth triple its face value (gotta love milestones) but if you've been reading my noise you know why Chuckie Schumer's little price-fixing investigation is going to find the wrong answer. He'll blame big oil. The real blame belongs to GWB and his captive GOP who had the chance, the once in a lifetime chance, to save the dollar, but decided instead to print it into obscurity by spending us all rich.

Take a look at a gas pump. That is the beginning of obscurity. The end of it says, "Gas $30/gallon. $.25 in silver."

Hey buddy, get a horse.

Might as well jump

PONTIAC, Mich. - A 24-year-old college student was ordered to spend the weekend in jail after skipping out on jury duty.

Ilya Kluzner, a student at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, must also write a five-page essay on the historical perspective of the American dream and why jury duty is crucial, under the sentence imposed by Oakland County Circuit Judge Fred Mester...

The student initially faced up to 30 days in jail. His lawyer asked for leniency and his mother apologized for her son's behavior.

I'm not a big fan of compulsory jury duty (read: indentured servitude), much prefering the Heinlein approach of hired juries who voluntarily agree to be there and are paid by both the prosecution and defense. The way our current system is designed guarantees morons will be pressed into deciding life and death situations for others.

But that's not important right now. What's important is a little advice: if you're 24, and still in college, and skip jury duty, and get in trouble, and your mommy comes to your rescue and apologizes to the judge on your behalf...dude, it's time to leave the nest. Go ahead, jump. Seriously.

It won't hurt a bit, I promise.

It's still one of my favourite movies

Even after this...

In Defense of Thomas

It was that very evening and the disciples were together behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jews. Jesus came and stood in the middle of them saying, "Peace be with you." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side...

But one of the twelve, Thomas called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples told him they had seen the Lord, but he told them, "Unless I myself see and touch the print of the nails in his hands, and thrust my own hand into his side, I will not believe."

Eight days later the disciples were inside again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were shut and Jesus came again saying, "Peace be with you."

Then he turned to Thomas, "touch here with your finger and examine my hands, reach your hand into my side. Do not be faithless, but believing."

And Thomas answered, "My Lord and my God."

Jesus told him, "Thomas, because you have seen, you believed. Blessed are those that have not seen and still believed."
-- John 20ish

I always thought "Doubting" Thomas got a bad rap. I mean, if someone told me that a friend of mine who had been murdered was back from the dead, the Lord of Life, and had appeared to my whole gang but me, bet your butt I'd figure they had either flipped or were playing some tasteless and morbid joke. Dead men have a pretty consistent habit of staying dead. Thomas' attitude was not the least unreasonable, I don't think, though Jesus was probably disappointed that His teaching didn't sink in a little better over the course of three years. I can't imagine I would have acted any differently than Thomas.

But notice Jesus' reaction. I've said before that Jesus doesn't "trick monkey" miracles. If someone wanted to see a miracle, you could bet dimes to dollars they weren't going to see one because they were usually just asking to be entertained. He was no one's court jester.

Thomas - probably my favorite disciple - was different than those other proof seekers. He knew Jesus and his power. He certainly wanted to believe in his heart of hearts that Jesus, whom he had voluntarily followed for three long years, was alive. But he couldn't, not without seeing. That's the kind of situation where Jesus gave him proof upon which to base his faith.

Yes, more blessed are those who have not personally seen and yet believe. But that doesn't mean the skeptical are outside his grace. If they ask with the right attitude, they shall receive.

He is risen; he is not here. Come see the place where they laid him.

Catching on, but mostly overseas

BBC News:

Rising metal prices could mean that United States one cent coins become worth more as metal than for their face value.

The Australian:

IT could soon be worthwhile for Americans to melt down their pennies for scrap, if zinc and copper prices continue their current rate of increase.

Copper prices have risen 30 per cent this year, and zinc is up 55 per cent - a rise of about $US550 a tonne in a little more than three weeks.

Another rise of the same magnitude would make the metal content in the US 1c coin worth more than its face value.

Going, going, gone: according to coinflation.com, the metal value of a pre-1982 cent is already 182% of its face value, the nickel 90%, and the post-1982 cent (what both the above articles are talking about) 78%. But it's not the metal that that's becoming more valuable; it's the dollar that's going to nothing.

We believe in free speech

but not here and not for you:

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - A professor at Northern Kentucky University said she invited students in one of her classes to destroy an anti-abortion display on campus Wednesday evening...

Witnesses reported "a group of females of various ages" committing the vandalism about 5:30 p.m., said Dave Tobertge, administrative sergeant with the campus police.

Sally Jacobsen, a longtime professor in NKU's literature and language department, said the display was dismantled by about nine students in one of her graduate-level classes.

"I did, outside of class during the break, invite students to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy the display if they wished to," Jacobsen said...

"Any violence perpetrated against that silly display was minor compared to how I felt when I saw it. Some of my students felt the same way, just outraged," Jacobsen said.

Something tells me that freedom of speech is really considered a one-way street among many on the left. "Outrage" is trump: so long as you're feeling offended, no symbolic lashing out is to be foregone, especially when you can get your graduate level termagants to do the dirty work.

In that I guess they share something in common with the Muslim rioters who loot and destroy the property of others because something is said that they don't like. It's going to be a glorious day if and when those two totalitarian philosophies go head-to-head. Perhaps it can only happen when the last vestiges of freedom and property rights are stomped out, but it sure would be nice to see in a Celebrity Death Match sort of way.

I wonder how feminista professors who use tenure to protect themselves from the consequences of hysterical outrage will look in burkhas.

Everything I need to know about history I learned from Iron Maiden

Dear Principal Stevens:

I am writing this letter in protest of the perverse travesty I have suffered at the hands of Mr. Bradley in the form of the horribly unjust "F" grade he has given me for last semester in his complete fraud of a class, World History 101. It calls into question the academic standards of this institution, and my Mom is totally going to kick my ass when she sees it.

I suspect that perhaps Mr. Bradley just feels threatened that I know more about the subject he teaches than he does. It's not exactly a secret that I've seen the band Iron Maiden in concert 47 times, and that I own every album they've ever released. This background has provided me with valuable insight well worth the costs of chronic hearing loss and bouts of epilepsy from prolonged exposure to stage pyrotechnics that have come with it. ...

Don't believe that Maiden has taught me all I need to know to pass that bullshit class? Then come rock with me on a balls-out, historically enlightening journey through time - courtesy of the world's foremost headbanging historians...

I thought this was extremely funny, especially considering that my lovely wife last night brought home to me a copy of Maiden's "Number of the Beast." Of course, as a time machine it didn't take me back very far... just to high school. But I did fall asleep with "Hallowed be thy Name" galloping through my head...

But now that history is covered, we ought to look forward to "Everything I need to know about literature I learned from Iron Maiden" as well. After all, they did musical versions of "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (quite possibly their best song ever), "Murders in the Rue Morgue," "Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" and "Stranger in a Strange Land" among others.

In the words of noted historians Bill S. Preston, esq. and "Ted" Theodore Logan, "Iron Maiden? Excellent!"

Five things I learned from watching South Park this week

1. No one really, really believes that Christians are scary.

2. No one really, really believes that Christians and Muslims are the same.

3. Networks never do anything out of principle.

4. Every show featuring children will eventually jump the shark.

5. Carlos Mencia is the funniest thing on Comedy Central, followed by Jon Stewart.

How to Enjoy Sushi

You know, after viewing this, I'm pretty sure that being Japanese can't possibly be worth the bother.

Besides, if you dress like a ninja, the feds are liable to take you down.

So much for Conspiracy

flight93crash.com makes a simple mistake:

I have to ask: Why not release the Flight Data Recorder info? There is nothing horrific on it.

There is nothing there that will aid and abed (sic) terrorists. There is nothing that will jeopardize a trial. And it's data that usually get's (sic) released at some point. It's simply data about the aircraft as it flew and crashed.

There's only one reason not to release it. Because it shows the plane depressurizing, losing an engine, flipping upside down and crashing in a way that they don't care to explain.

The mistake they make is one that conspiracy theorists often make: because *they* can only think of one reason, they conclude that their reason must be the correct one: the government won't release the tape, therefore Flight 93 was shot down. With the release of the transcript and the playing of the tape as part of the Moussaoui sentencing hearing, it becomes obvious that the "depressurizing, losing an engine, flipping upside down and crashing in a way that they don't care to explain" never occurred. Instead what happened was what the government said happened: the flight was crashed on purpose when a group of heroes tried to re-take the plane.

So why didn't the government release it before? I don't know. The answer may be as simple as they don't really believe in the public's right to know everything we wish to know, or it could be as complicated as that it took this long to fake up a black-box recording. Take your pick. Conspiracies happen, but if one is going to promote one it should rely on conspiracy facts rather than theories, because theories have a way of exploding in the face of facts.

But the acts aboard Flight 93 are the reason that I think all this patting down of old ladies in airports is completely unnessecary. On 9/11 America changed, and that change was reflected in the acts of the passengers aboard that flight. The first three flights thought that if they remained calm all would be well, because that was America's experience. They believed that until they died. But once it became clear to the passengers and to America that action was necessary, action was taken. It cost those passengers their lives, but it also saved lives I would bet those passengers would save again given another chance.

When the next terrorist attack comes - and it will - it will not be because Arabs flew planes into a building. Once Americans knew there was no resolution by sitting, they acted, even as they died. They will act - they will die - willfully, to ensure 9/11 never happens that way again.

This blog sucks

At least according to Merciless Minx:

Funny this person should choose to use Sauron’s all-seeing evil eye in the header when the blog says it’s myopic. Maybe it’s evil addition to being myopic?

The template is average. Not offensive, not pretty. Better than the first blog in this bunch, but eh. At first I thought it was a guy’s blog, but then I saw the Mary Kay button in the sidebar. It looks strangely out of place.

There are no dates for any of the posts, so you can’t tell when they were written or how often they post. There doesn’t seem to be an archive link. It’s just weird, like a hodgepodge of random writing. The article about the old lady getting a ticket for blocking traffic was interesting. The rest of the posts are not. At all. The little comic strips they post are not the slightest bit funny. This blog sucks.

Wealth moves West to East

A re-telling of the Book of Second Opinions, a modern parable...

(MENAFN) The chief of the Central Bank of France said that the bank has sold 161 tonnes of gold in 2005, for a value of $2.30 billion, Reuters reported.

Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer declined to comment on the pace at which the central bank would sell gold in 2006, saying only it would depend on market conditions and take place in conformity with an accord by central banks...

The official said that the central bank would use revenues generated from its gold sales to invest in foreign exchange.

In 1999, I wrote the Book of Second Opinions while envisioning the above paragraph. The West sells off its gold and invests its money in the paper wealth of other nations - "foreign exchange" means "government bonds". Sovereign debt. The East buys up that gold with the profits from trade. They win.

The gold market in 1999 was dead. With gold around $250/oz and unanimously expected to go lower, Western central banks were leasing gold into the markets to make their currency shenanigans look like genius. And it did, for a while. The dollar was strong, no one cared about gold, miners were losing money hand over fist, and one could get mining and oil stocks that sell for dollars today for dimes. It was the best of times for central bankers. The Bank of England sold several hundred tons of gold at the absolute bottom, showing their confidence that government debt was the safest place for money, and that the market which had punished gold investors for a generation would never change. But it had to change, because you cannot print money forever without it going broke.

When I wrote Second Opinions, I wrote it to a downtrodden audience of gold investors who knew the nomenclature and perceived the parable. I'm going to re-publish a few of the articles here, because what was then in the future is now: with gold crossing $600 today and silver just under $13 we are on the cusp of complete monetary chaos. All it will take is oil at $90 (it's at $70) and a US dollar under 80 on the USD index (it's at 89 today), and we are in some serious do-do. GWB had a chance to change our fate five years ago. Now I truly believe it is sealed: only time stands between us and a Weimar-style inflationary depression. Therefore I present to you "The Book of Second Opinions" with interpretation. If I'm wrong, I at least hope to be interesting.

The word of gold cometh unto Minerkiah, saying, 'Minerkiah, take thee a match and some fluid of burning and set aflame the undergarments of MoneyChangeriah.' So Minerkiah taketh a book of matches, and did douse the undergarments of MoneyChangeriah with the fliud and did alight them as gold had instructed him. And the shorts did burn, and the smoke of their burning did rise into the night.

Minerkiah is a poor gold miner, a working class stiff who only wants a day's pay for a day's work. MoneyChangeriah is a bullion bank, a trader in the market who has borrowed gold from the central banks at 1% interest and sold (shorted) it, investing the money in government bonds and living off the spread. Yes, that was done with billions' of dollars and up to 1/3 of the world's gold reserves.

To 'burn the shorts" is trading lingo for catching someone who is short (who owes) the market in a bind. If they owe and the price of what they owe rises, they lose their ass (donkey). When MoneyChangeriah shorted so much gold that it sunk the market, he was desitned to get caught in a "short squeeze."

Then MoneyChangeriah smelleth smoke, and he lookest about himself, and seeth Minerkiah with a match, and fluid of burning, and a wide and cheesy grin upon his face. And MoneyChangeriah saith unto him, 'Minerkiah, what doest thou?' And Minerkiah answerest, 'Gold hast set alight thine undergarments. Look to see that it is so. And the people now demand gold, for thy balances are unjust.'

And MoneyChangeriah looketh down, and Lo! smoke ariseth from his trousers, for his shorts were aflame with great burning. And MoneyChangeriah wetteth himself, and the wet did crackle and boil, and much steam escapeth from his trousers, both from the legs and from the holes in his seat, but the flame was none diminished.

A surfeit of debt will eventually drive people to demand real value, true wealth preservation. Because we cannot get rich selling one another our houses and because only so much debt can be serviced, eventually the debt money must sink in value and people will bid up the price of unencumbered wealth (like gold). Paper money is an 'unjust balance.' It will eventually fail like it always has.

And Minerkiah looketh, and a wise man arriveth from the East with a rickshaw, and Lo! it was very great. And the man sayeth unto Moneychangeriah, 'I see that thine undergarments are alight with a great flame. Too bad for thee. Now loadest thou mine soft gold into the rickshaw, and takest thou the plastic Pokemon toys which thou didst purchase to bemuse the huddled masses.'

And MoneyChangeriah's face did fall, for he seest the error of his ways, but Minerkiah's face was alight with great brilliance. And the wise man from the East sayeth unto Minerkiah, 'Go in peace, thy foresight hast served thee well.' Then he taketh his rickshaw full of soft gold and disappeareth into the sunrise.

And MoneyChangeriah sayeth unto Minerkiah, 'Tradest thou some more of thine soft gold, for I have none left in my vault.' But Minerkiah laughed him to scorn.

What are the Chinese going to do with all the dollars they receive from our obscene trade deficits? They are a lot of things, but stupid is not among them. Therefore over the past few years they have been 'diversifying,' which is a nice way of saying "selling those dollars for other things, like gold." Russia is buying gold, OPEC is buying gold. Western nations are selling it and investing the money in each others' debt (selling their houses to each other). But gold can only be sold once. When the accumulation of 2 millennia of wealth production is finally locked away in a Chinese vault, they win.

Then MoneyChangeriah, his undergarments still aflame, seeth CentralBankeriah coming up the road, and Lo! his face was very red.

And MoneyChangeriah did tremble and shake, and a small coin of gold falleth out of his trousers. CentralBankeriah picketh up the coin, and sayeth, "MoneyChangeriah, where is all the soft gold which I lent unto thee?" And MoneyChangeriah replieth, "A wise man from the East arriveth with a large rickshaw and carryeth it all away, except for one coin, and leaveth me with naught but these plastic Pokemon toys with which to bemuse the huddled masses.'

Then CentralBankeriah produceth from his pocket a scroll, and asketh, 'Whose signature is upon this scroll?'

And Moneychangeriah sayeth, 'It is mine signature upon the contract.'

'Knowest thou what the contract sayeth? It demandeth that all the soft gold be returned to me by month end, and Lo! the time is at hand.'

'It is,' replieth Moneychangeriah, 'But I have not the soft gold to return, for a wise man from the East carteth it all away, and Minerkiah has set alight mine undergarments with a great flame. I have nothing wherewith to pay thee.'

'Then according to the contract,' begineth CentralBankeriah (and lo! He was pompous), 'Thy children are to be sold, and thou shalt be placed in a prison, until thou canst return all the soft gold which thou borrowest and foolishly squandereth.'

'Wait!' pleadeth MoneyChangeriah, 'I have many bonds, debts of the king, which I can sell to return thy soft gold unto thee. Give me a month, and I shall repay it all.'

The Central Bankers who lent their gold to the bullion banks still have it on their books. They want to have their cake and eat it too. While it is suspected that many central bank sales are actually a process whereby the banks let the shorts off the hook (knowing they cannot be repaid) eventually the nations will get suspicious and want to ensure that the gold is returned. It is on that day that the whole fraudulent scheme will be laid bare: the gold is gone and no one can afford to replace gold they borrowed at sub-$300 prices with $600 or higher gold. Moneychangeriah is stuck. His only hope comes from the government bailing him out as it has so many other fools.

Then cometh MoneyChangeriah, his undergarments still aflame with a great burning, with many scrolls under his arm, unto the house of the King. And he was led to the inner chamber, where he was greeted warmly.

"Live forever, O King," sayeth MoneyChangeriah.

"Ask," replieth the King, "and it shall be yours, even up to half of my kingdom."

"O King (live forever) , remeberest thou when thou didst borrow much gold from me, and giveth me these scrolls which represent the borrowing? These bonds are your debt, and I have come to redeem them, for CentralBankeriah cometh unto me and demand that I repay him, and I have not wherewith to pay, because a wise man from the east with a large rickshaw cartest away my gold, and Minerkiah did set aflame my shorts..."

"Yes, yes," interrupteth the king (for lo! he had little patience for MoneyChangeriah, nor did anyone else) .

"So, O king (live forever) , please redeem the bonds, so that I may have mine own money back."

The king then inquireth, "How much are the bonds for?"

"One million utils of gold", replieth MoneyChangeriah, for all in this land had taken economics and knew what a Util was.

"Indeed, that is very much", replieth the king, and he taketh out ANOTHER scroll and writeth upon it: "One Million Utils. This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private." And he handeth the note to MoneyChangeriah, and taketh away the bonds.

And the face of MoneyChangeriah becometh puzzled, and his mouth was agape, and he saith unto the King, "I gave unto thee gold, whyfore dost thou give me paper?"

"Paper for Paper," replieth the king. The gold which thou giveth me in exchange for the bond I lent to CentralBankeriah, who lent it back to you, who sold it to a wise man from the east with a large rickshaw, and so we have no more gold, but paper. Now take thy paper, and begone."

And MoneyChangeriah looketh at the new note, and the face of FDRiah was upon it, and he was not at all surprized."

The governments gave their gold to their central banks, who lent it to the bullion banks, who sold it into the market for bonds. Government spent the money, the Chinese have the gold, the bullion banks have government bonds. What assets have the government to save the financial system? Only paper. When money is debt, only more debt can be created; wealth can never be printed.

Checkmate.

We Westerners have played the fool since FDR, thinking that our paper money represented wealth, when in fact, it was only debt. That debt we issued in exchange for toys and trinkets, while the producers accumulated wealth. When the dollar goes broke, those who have saved dollars - from the American pensioner to the French central bank - go broke with it. Wealth - and from that, power - move from West to East.

TAANSTAAFL. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. The dessert course is over. The bill is coming.

Got gold?

Missing the Point

When University of Chicago researchers set out to discover which religious denominations have the best sex, they learned that the faithful don't do all their shouting in church.

Conservative Protestant women, their 1994 survey found, report by far the most orgasms: Thirty-two percent say they achieve orgasm every time they make love.

Mainline Protestants and Catholics lagged five points behind. Those with no religious affiliation were at 22 percent. (Unitarians may not wish to read any further.)

The article's a little old - I just never saw it until last week - but it's a perfect example of writing that is well-researched, entertaining, enlightening...and masterfully successful in missing the point. While reviewing the Christian sex-and-lovemaking books market, Slate goes out of its way to point out all the things that Christians teach that science finds wrong - and even manages to conclude that Christians have better sex because they are uneducated - yet manages to almost completely ignore the one thing that all Christian books teach that is borne out by the experience of better sex: sex is best in marriage.

Jesus said once that we ought to seek first the Kingdom of God, then all things would be added to us. It's a wonderful principle that has application in having better sex as well as having better everything else. Sex is not about technique, it's not about science, it's not about studying orgasm. It's about experiencing oneness, the oneness that is best expressed through two people joined emotionally and spiritually as well as physically. In seeking to do things right, we will find that we do them better, because we're using things as they ought to be used. It should not surprise us that tools work best when employed for the right purpose.

Well, thanks for the help

Mayvis Coyle, 82, was shuffling with her cane across busy Foothill Boulevard while a traffic police officer watched and waited. And watched and waited.

Even before Coyle finished crossing the intersection at Woodward Avenue, he had scribbled a $114 ticket for crossing against a don't-walk signal.

"I entered the crosswalk, it was green," said Coyle, of Sunland, who is fighting the infraction issued Feb. 15. "It turned red before I could get over. There he was, waiting, the motorcycle cop.

"He said, `You're obstructing the flow of traffic."'

I wonder if he had one of those little stickers that said, "To Protect and Serve" on the side of his scooter...

An Appalling Theological Ignorance

After following the "Gospel of Judas" kerfuffle for the past week, I wanted to do a piece on how the nearly complete theological ignorance of the press affects their coverage (i.e. since they don't understand Christianity, they have no idea what's important to it and are therefore consistently exactly wrong about what matters and how much - in the case of Judas: not so much). I started it twice and deleted it. Boringboringboring. But the point is important, so I figured I'd just publish a rerun instead:

In thirty years in the writing trades, I’ve covered a lot of things, but three in particular: The military, the sciences, and the police. For years I had a military column syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate and later carried by the Army Times papers until I was fired for political incorrectness. For half a dozen years I rode with the cops all around the country for my police column in the Washington Times. And I’ve written tech columns and pieces for technical mags like Signal forever.

This isn’t my first rodeo.

In each case the reporters I met were, with very few exceptions, pig ignorant.
-- Fred Reed, "The Media in One Lesson"

Until December of last year [2003 - El B], I was the Voice of Sauron. I worked as a Public Information Officer for a statewide office-holding politician, meaning that I sat in meetings where news was discussed before it hit the papers and decided what facts would be given out, how they would be presented, and what the message ought to be. I also wrote a weekly newspaper column under the name of the officeholder that was carried in more than a dozen papers (150,000 readers), wrote dozens of press releases, and did daily radio and TV interviews talking about the events, cases, and policies that impacted peoples' lives.

My experience with the press is the same as Fred Reed's.

The problem was not that I was a conservative (the office was conservative, I am a Libertarian) dealing with the "liberal media," a hostile force looking for a slip upon which they could pounce to spin it in an unfavorable direction. While that was a concern it was never really a problem, for in hundreds of interviews I was never embarassingly misquoted, though I was misquoted more than once.

No, the problem I saw, and what makes me doubt the veracity and completeness of nearly everything I read, was the fact that sitting in a place where I knew the relevant facts, I read in the papers every day many simple misstatements of those facts - facts that were at the disposal of the reporter but which became gummed up between my writing/speaking and the reporter's story or between the reporter's story and the finished product. Sometimes even simple errors I made (and I made plenty) like misspelling a victim's name appeared in the paper due to lack of cross-checking on the reporter's part. I don't recall receiving a single followup where a reporter said, "You have 'John Doen' in your press release, but the court records have the name as 'John Doe'. Which is it?" When I erred as a news provider, most often the reporter simply ran with it, failing to make even the most cursory checking of my facts.

After seeing scores of stories that had 2 or 3 serious errors that I knew of, I wondered how many others there were in stories where I didn't know the relevant facts. And I also wondered what it was about the press that made these kinds of errors so common.

The answer to the first question is obviously unknowable but I think it's reasonable to assume that there are as many errors in stories I could not independently verify. That means that a plurality if not a majority of press stories have at least one error which seriously impacts the truth of the story, enough to make me doubt the veracity of most of what I read.

The answer to the second question is complicated, but possibly not as complicated as Reed makes out - though he's doubtless right in many instances. My immediate boss, who in the past had been a press agent for Johnny Cash as well as being the "face" of a number of prominent people in and out of politics, told me when I started, "In six months, you'll hate the press." I didn't hate them (in fact, I found that most of them are darned nice people) but I did come to agree with his most notable conclusion concerning them: members of the press are, by and large, both ignorant and lazy.

There are several ways in which they are lazy, the biggest of which is that they fail to cross-check facts. Part of this is a function of deadlines - no one has time to cross-check everything - but most of it lies in the fact that much of the media are not fact-gatherers as much as story tellers. They simply take what is given them from whatever soucre (politicians, for example) and make it into a story. Successful reporters are good storytellers. Ones who are both accurate and good are rare as hen's teeth.

A second bit of laziness is not so much the reporters, but editors. I saw many times whole paragraphs that I had written appear in a story. In fact, several times I saw press releases, in toto, appear under a byline with my name on it as if I were a reporter for that paper. And remember, I was the guy who sat in a meeting deciding, for many reasons, what facts were relevant, what would lead, and what would be excluded. If you read those articles as an objective and complete account of what occured, you were woefully misled. You did not have all the news that was fit to print; you only had the facts that I thought you should have. It wasn't even a matter of a politician hiding facts but the simple truth that we couldn't provide all the facts and by law we could not release many of the facts. For political reasons we did not volunteer some of the facts, and sometimes we chose which facts to release based on nothing more than that we didn't have time to answer questions on facts that were too complicated to explain easily.

The second, and probably most crucial area you are misled, however, lies in the "why" of a column. Reporters seek to offer reasons why something occured, even if they don't know, and much of the time they are simply making it up. This is most obvious in financial stories, where millions of investors' decisions are summarized in a pithy little phrase such as "Technology stocks closed lower Thursday, as investors chewed on worker-productivity figures and worried Friday's employment report may spur the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates sooner" (from a WSJ/Quicken story this week).

Now, needless to say not all investors, and maybe not even a significant minority of investors, took note of worker productivity figures of all the day's news, calculated the likelihood that rates would rise in the future (there's a 99% likelihood, btw), calculated the effects of that rise on their portfolios, and made investment decisions concerning specific stocks primarily on that. The fact is that the Fed meeting was not known only Thursday (it was not "news") but for weeks and months ahead of time. Everyone also knew ahead of time that the labor report would be released Friday (it was not "news") and no one knew what it would say (it was not "news") or what the effect might be on the Fed. But some stocks in the tech market went down Thursday and some went up, and no one, especially not the reporter who wrote this, knows if there is a causal link between any of the above. Rather than not saying anything the reporter filled in the blanks and passed it off as a fact. It's not a fact. It's a nothing written into a story to become a something that fills the story up.

Getting back to Reed's contention that the press is, in addition to being lazy, Pig Ignorant, there's a little story I made up to explain this to the person who took my place when I left. Each member of the press, each day, comes into an office that is empty but for a dart board and a dart. The dartboard says, "Today I am an expert on..." and has divided areas noted with such titles as "the inverse relationship between interest rates and bond prices", "the specific people involved in intra-party power plays and the effects of those on primary elections", "14th century Roman Catholicism", and "the effects of digital photography growth in China on the recycling market for silver." The reporter then throws the dart and is off to write about his new-found expertise.

In other words, press stories deal with specialties that no press person (given that their education is seldom in any of these areas) can possibly master, and even the generalities are foreign to many of them. More than once I had to explain that the laws of Kansas do not apply in Canada or South Korea, that a felony conviction does not mean automatic prison, or that local law enforcement officials have no say over what the Supreme Court of the US decides. I had an army of attorneys to help me and I still could not answer many of the questions; most of the press had nothing but me and their own pencil to answer them. But they still answer them.

No person can possibly be an expert or an authority on all of the literally thousands of subjects upon which the reporter must write, and the reporter is demonstrably not an expert in many of the basic things we assume they are when we take a press story as authoritative. So many stories in the press are written by people who do not really know the subject matter, do not cross-check facts which are given to them by people with an agenda, and fill in the blanks with made-up commentary to try to make sense of it all. Add in Reed's contention of political and corporate correctness, less than stellar intellectual capabilities, and the vested interest the reporter has in keeping on the good side of his meal ticket, and you'll find that much of what passes for news is not only not news, it's not even true in the specifics and is probably misleading in the generalities as well.

When people ask me why I don't bother to get the paper or watch network news or why I don't have up-to-the-minute knowledge on many of the events of the day, the answer is obvious: I'm afraid I would believe what I read.

...and to petition the government for a redress of grievances