Redefining Marriage

From what I am seeing so far of the Supreme Court arguments regarding marriage equality (NY Times live blog), the primary argument being made in favor of Prop 8 and in opposition to same-sex marriage is that marriage is defined by procreation, and the state sanctions marriage because it wants people to procreate. They don't want marriage redefined because procreation is essential to the definition.

The justices inquired about straight couples who want to get married but cannot procreate: sterile couples, elderly couples. By the supposed definition of marriage, these people shouldn't be able to marry either, because they can't procreate.

But what about people like me: a straight person married to another straight person, who has chosen not to have children?

I expect the lawyers would argue that I'm not really analogous to a same-sex couple because I could procreate if I wanted to, unlike the examples the justices raised. But I think that misses the point a bit: many gay couples have chosen to have children--taking advantage of the many means available to straight couples who can't reproduce on their own without assistance or intervention. If a gay couple procreates using a surrogate, or through artificial insemination, how is that couple different from the straight couple that needs those same means to have children?

They're not different. Except that one--the straight couple--is entitled in any state of the union to the not insignificant institutional benefits and protections we as a society have accorded marriage, while the other--the gay couple--isn't. If those benefits and protections exist because we as a society believe in producing and raising children, then the gay couple should be accorded every last one of those, as the logical conclusion of the argument put forth today.

But by that same argument, if procreation is the sole reason for marriage, people like me should not be entitled to those benefits. My husband and I should not be allowed to be married. How is that not redefining marriage?

No one seemed to have a problem with our getting married seventeen years ago. No one checked to make sure I was fertile when I got my marriage license. No one has been protesting on the court steps my right to be married. Why? Because it has nothing to do with procreation. That argument is just so much protective coverage for what is essentially bigotry.

Civil unions have been suggested as the alternative for gay couples. That's just today's version of "separate but equal"--which, you'll recall, wasn't. No one is telling straight couples who want to get married but may be unable or unwilling to have children that they shouldn't get married, they should just file for a civil union. No one is calling home in excitement to tell their parents that their partner asked for their hand in civil union; parents aren't joyfully planning children's civil unions.

Marriage does hold a special place in our society. We acknowledge that emotionally and socially. We acknowledge that financially and legally, in the protections of law that are afforded married couples.

When we deny that special place in our hearts and in our laws to some of our citizens based solely on the sex of the person they want to marry, we deny them equal protection under the law. To argue that that's not true would mean redefining marriage in a way that invalidates marriages (like mine) that have been valid and accepted for many years.

Seems like a pretty clear-cut case to me.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Holy crap, what a roller coaster ride! I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that there are no good guys in this book--the characters range from flawed to dysfunctional to seriously fucked up. What starts as a mystery--and remains that for half the book, with tons of satisfying twists and turns to leave the reader guessing--evolves into a character study of how day-to-day disappointments and compromises can fuel the flames of dysfunction and draw two people into an ever-tightening spiral of codependent hatred and madness and need. I was never quite sure what was coming next, with shifting truths filtered through the lenses of a narcissist and a sociopath--two narrators, both unreliable narrators...though unreliable in the way all of us, no matter how (presumably) sane, are, filtering reality through our own needs, desires, beliefs, and what we would like to believe, especially about ourselves. That is to say, these people in this book are crazy...but sometimes they don't seem any crazier than oneself, and isn't that a little scary? This book is like a drug, a simultaneous adrenalin rush and mindfuck.

Just go read it.



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Blink and You'll Miss the Critical Reading

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Not too long ago Malcolm Gladwell spoke at a professional meeting I attended. When he was done, I turned to a colleague and said, "He just said the same thing I've been saying for years. He just has better anecdotes." While I don't claim to have known everything that is in Blink, there was an awful lot in it that I knew from other sources. He collected it nicely, but in many cases skimmed the surface.

For example, he talks about research showing that a doctor who doesn't interact well with his patients, doesn't hear them out and make them feel well listened to, is more likely to be sued. He concludes that:

Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk, if you have the sense that he isn't listening to you, that he's talking down to you, and that he isn't treating you with respect, listen to that feeling. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting.

While it's likely true that you're not going to have a good relationship with that doctor, that's not what the research Gladwell cited was about: the research was about likelihood of being sued, not quality of care. Never mentioned was the possibility that patients may be making the determination whether to sue or forgive equally (in)competent doctors based on whether they liked the doctor.

Later, Gladwell discusses the IAT, a test that is intended to measure bias by having the subject place things in columns. In the example Gladwell gives, the reader first places things in one of two columns marked "Male or Career" and "Female or Family." Then the reader gets a list with columns labeled "Male or Family" and "Female or Career," which he asserts the reader will complete less quickly, indicating bias about gender roles.

I did in fact complete the second list more slowly, but I noted as well that I hesitated at one point because the page broke in the middle of the list and I couldn't remember which column was which (the column heads weren't repeated on the verso page) and had to flip back. That serendipity of the print page led me to wonder: what about spatial bias? I know which side "male," for example, was in in the first list; to what degree might I hesitate or be wrong because I want to put things where they were before? There is a body of research on how people place words in space (which I know about through a linguist classmate; thanks to her, I will never be able to watch someone talk with their hands without noting how they use the space around them to position things in space and time). I assume the researchers who developed the IAT are aware of that research and have attempted to control for spatial bias, but Gladwell doesn't address what seemed to me like an obvious question. More obvious, though, was the potential role of priming: that first pair of list sets the expectation for "career" belonging with "male," and Gladwell discussed priming--showing something to the subject that affects his or her expectations and skews how they respond to what follows--earlier in the book. It seems like a massive oversight not to address how the researchers control for that in this test. Gladwell finds the results of the IAT, especially regarding racial bias, shocking and enlightening. If it's accurate, then I do too--but the fact that he doesn't address an issue that seems so obvious in the context of his book just left me wondering whether it was the researchers or Gladwell who overlooked an important flaw.

Toward the end of the book he mentions Gavin de Becker, security consultant and author of the brilliant book The Gift of Fear. He quotes de Becker on how bodyguards react and are trained to react, but doesn't cite the compelling opening anecdote from de Becker's book, or much else from the book, even though de Becker's book, whose premise is that you can protect yourself by listening to your instincts, makes a powerful case for the entire concept of this book. (Especially de Becker's opening story. I defy you to forget that.) I had spent much of the book thinking, "I wonder if he knows about The Gift of Fear." Finally, on page 230, he mentions it in identifying de Becker, but never says a word about what's in de Becker's book. So he knows about the book, but perhaps hasn't read it? When it's so apropos of his own book? Such an odd omission.

Not to say that you shouldn't read Blink--it contains a ton of interesting information and valuable food for thought. But read it with a critical eye, not just a blink.



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Yeah, I've Been Doing Some Reading

For a while it seemed that I was finding little or no time to read; finishing a book took months. This was so alien to who I am--the girl who used to go to the library and take home as many books as she could carry who grew up to be the girl whose most valuable benefit was the employee discount on books--as to be troubling. And in fact it was symptomatic of stress, unhappiness, mild depression. But the corner has been turned, and so has the page. I've been reading like a maniac.

And once started, ebooks make it oh, so easy to continue. See an interesting review? Download a sample chapter right away so I don't forget the book. Finished one book in a series/by an author that I really enjoy? Download the next one and start reading on the spot. Inexplicably awake in the night? No need to go out to get a book. My iPad and/or my Nook live beside the bed at night. I still buy print books (brought home a pile from Wiscon, mostly anthologies) but increasingly, ebooks are becoming a bigger percentage of what I read. All the convenience factors above, and I don't have to find more shelf space.

Anyway, that's why you are seeing my Goodreads reviews here. Not all of them, just some: books I particularly want to recommend, books that made me think about something, and books that disappointed me for a specific reason. Not that this is turning into a book blog; just want to share now that I am reading--and feeling like myself again after a long hiatus from myselfness--again.

You'll Want to Diverge from the Series . . .

Insurgent by Veronica Roth

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I assume the Divergent series is a trilogy, because this book has all sorts of "middle" problems. The plot becomes convoluted and confusing and events seem to be more convenient than realistic. Characters do things that don't make sense because the plot demands it, and the emotional arc is more like a series of mood swings.

The book is also troubled with the same kind of technical errors I cited in my review of Divergent: careless geography and weak world-building. We learn at the end of this book a little more about the world outside Chicago (well, that it exists), which just highlights the fact that no one has asked any questions or mentioned anything about it until this point. Which feels like lazy writing to me. Once again, I want to know where the editor was: under the influence of a simulation in which this book appears better than it is?

I think I'm most disappointed because what started out with an interesting premise and engaging characters has by this point completely fallen apart. I wanted this to be a good book, and I'm peeved that it could have been, but isn't.

Rather than experience my disappointment, go read a better book. Try Unwind or The Testament of Jessie Lamb instead.



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Another Book Review: Divergent

Divergent by Veronica Roth

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Intriguing premise (the reduced population of the city of Chicago is separated into factions, each of which values one quality above all) and an engaging lead character (Tris Prior, raised in the selfless and charitable Abnegation faction but opting to leave her family behind to become Dauntless, who are all about strength and courage) and a reasonable solid story, but marred by carelessness and weak world-building.

Although the author lives in Chicago, according to her bio, she gets basic things about the city wrong: e.g., someone turns south toward the marsh that Lake Michigan has become. (FYI, there is nowhere in the Chicago area where the lake is south; the one thing Chicagoans always say in giving directions is "The lake is always east.") One wonders where the copy editor was on that one. In general, the geography is fuzzy, with a few major landmarks thrown in but the sense of their geographic relationship is unclear and sometimes plain inaccurate.

More critical to the story is that it isn't until near the end of the second book in the series (Insurgent) that there's any intimation of a world beyond downtown Chicago. No one ever mentions it, no one ever discusses or wonders about the past or the outside world; we the readers wonder about how the lake became a marsh and society broke down and whether the factions exist in other cities or just Chicago, and simply what do these people know/believe about the outside world and their history? This rings false to the characters and smacks of an inexperienced author withholding information for the sake of the plot. One wonders where the editor was on that one. I'm not sure overall that the author has even thought through the logistics of her closed society very thoroughly. For example, the Erudite faction builds and uses computer technology; but the raw materials for computers aren't mined in the Chicago area or in some cases in the U.S., so there must be some outside trade, but there's never any indication of it. Or the fact that everyone has all the clothes and shoes they need, but there's no indication where the materials come from or where they are made and by whom. There is cake mix in the Dauntless headquarters and the factionless eat canned food: but the food delivered from the Amity, who are the suppliers of food for everyone, appears to be only fresh produce. Too many things like this that aren't completely thought out make this feel like a first-draft manuscript rather than a finished book.

All that said, I found Tris, though mercurial, an engaging character and the idea of a society divided this way a fascinating idea. The plot (despite certain convenient events) drew me along enough that I wanted to read the second book. (Which I did.)



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Worth Reading: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Unwind by Neal Shusterman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


There's a summer reading flow chart making the rounds online, in which Unwind is listed under "pro-life." I think that misstates the premise of the book and does it a disservice by (potentially) driving off certain readers.

The actual premise is that the two sides on the abortion debate have become so entrenched in their position that the only compromise possible is a ridiculous Solomonic one, in which no babies can be aborted, but at a certain age children can be given up to become organ donors--all their organs are used when the child is "unwound" so that all of him or her "lives" in other people's bodies. Shusterman, like any good science fiction writer, explores the wide range of consequences:
Babies can be dropped on doorsteps and if you find one, you must keep it--leading parents who find an unwanted baby on their doorstep to surreptitiously move it to someone else's doorstep.
A religious cult raises one child in each family specifically to be unwound, a position of honor in the family.
There's an underground resistance that smuggles kids away who are escaping their unwinding.

Shusterman follows a boy whose family is sending him to be unwound--his shock and pain at his parents doing this, his fear and helplessness, and eventually his escape. He meets a boy who was to be unwound as his family's sacrifice and who struggles to return to his unwinding, and a girl who was raised as a ward of the state and was not quite good enough a musician not to be unwound.

Their stories, and those of the other kids they meet, are intense and involving, and the world in which the story takes place is well drawn and eerily plausible. This is a great book for fans of the Hunger Games series--strong, well-drawn characters fighting for their lives, in a world that demands we look a little more closely at our own. Don't let the facile and inaccurate label on the internet flow chart put you off--this is a compelling read no matter what your position on abortion.



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The Real History of the Reagan Administration

(Nod to author Alan Axelrod, author of the Real History series, which has so far not taken on the Reagan years.)

This weekend there has been a great deal of rewriting history in re the Reagan administration. There is nothing wrong with admiring the man or his administration, as long as what you're admiring is what actually happened.

Let's look at a few facts:

• The highest postwar unemployment rate was during the Reagan administration, at 9.7 % in 1982. (It matched 2010's 9.6% in 1983.)
• Federal spending nearly doubled, from $590.9 billion in 1980 to $1.064 trillion in 1988, with an accompanying increase in debt from $711.9 billion (1980) to $2.052 trillion (1988).
• Reagan raised taxes 11 times during his administration.

So those who deify Reagan's fiscal record had best realize they are supporting high unemployment, vast increases in spending and debt, and raising taxes to cover it all.

Rather than look at the Reagan era through the rose-colored glasses of the "morning in America" ad campaign and his warm public persona, how about considering why those things happened during an administration that ostensibly wanted to decrease government and taxation? Rather than laud a myth-shrouded icon, how about analyzing why Reagan actually failed? There's a lot more opportunity in that for learning how to solve our problems than there is in rewriting history to make believe the problems didn't happen.

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Rush to Judgment

Just about the only person failing to show any compassion for the people of Haiti has been Rush Limbaugh, as no doubt you have heard. And that is probably the point: would we all be talking about Rush Limbaugh otherwise?

So I'm not going to say anything more and I encourage others to do the same. Let's make Rush really squirm--by ignoring him.

The Real Measure of Thanksgiving

No, not about doing good for those less fortunate, or being grateful for the food you're gorging yourself on, etc., etc. The real measure is how you consume your cranberries.

Everyone knows the sine qua non is the Jell-O-like stuff that comes in a can. You splort it out onto a plate and slice it up, but if you can't see the ridges in the side from the shape of the can, it's not the real deal. Anything else is just pretense.

Here is proof: Every year NPR's Susan Stamberg gives her family recipe for cranberry sauce. It has actual cranberries in it, and it sounds pretty plausible until you get to her secret, special ingredient. This is the dead giveaway that this is nothing more than a prank on the people who listen to NPR because they think it makes them seem more high-toned than if they listened to top-40 or WFAN like they really want to. Stamberg's recipe contains horseradish. Now, come on. If you are not laughing yourself silly at that point in the recipe, the joke is clearly on you.

There are other, less extreme recipes that contain more subtle combinations of ingredients, but those are just for show. You see the more complex versions served in restaurants that are trying to garner attention or justify their prices with quirky methods ("All our food is prepared in a medieval firepit that was discovered in Uzbekistan in 1912 and disassembled and carried over by specially bred llamas") and impossible reservations ("We only serve one person per evening so the chef can give that individual meal his undivided attention; our next available seating is in 2218") rather than really good food. You find the easier versions in the homes of people who buy things all covered with designer names and logos to show their good taste (just so you know: slapping a "designer" logo on something is not the same as good design), and read Gawker.com religiously to find out what they should be fascinated by. (A lot of the people mentioned on Gawker are made up--just more pranks on the unwitting. Most people know this. Less well known is that several of the political figures mentioned on Daily Kos are made up, too, for similar reason.)

The real upper crust--the kind of people who could easily have their cranberries grown in private high-moisture cranberry-growing environments ("bog" is such an unattractive word) and their sugar genetically engineered to their exact palate sensitivity for sweetness on their personal islands--prefer the stuff that's shaped like a can. They may have it served on a plate that cost more than your house, brought to the table by a servant who was retained before birth, having been interviewed and hired in utero and trained from infancy in a private academy on a secret space station to insulate them from bad influences like self-determination and labor laws, and eaten with turkey that has been dusted in uranium (gold is so gauche!) but when it comes to the cranberries, the super-rich are eating the same shaped-like-a-can stuff as the trailer park family.

Because it's good. And good is the ultimately equalizer. We can all be grateful for that.

Bailing Out

I don't want to see the Big Three auto makers fail, not least because of the impact on an already weak economy if their workers and workers at their suppliers lose their jobs, retired workers lose their pensions, etc. Certainly there is merit in doing something to prevent a catastrophic collapse of a major American industry.

However, any help we give must have major strings attached. GM et al. didn't end up in these straits by way of a natural disaster; they made the decisions that led to their current situation. They chose not to be aggressive in improving gas mileage and taking the lead in hybrids and other alternatives; rather, they lobbied against aggressive standards for gas mileage. And they saw their overseas competition seize a growing share of the market as a result. They could easily have foreseen the possibility that gas prices might go up (there's a war on in the mideast, not to mention an ultimately limited supply of oil in the world) but they continued to focus their resources on big vehicles and inefficient manufacturing that isn't nimble enough to shift with the economic climate.

And then they were sufficiently myopic to show up in Washington with hats in hand looking for a bailout--having just arrived on their (separate) private jets. This is the multibillion-dollar equivalent of a streetcorner beggar asking for money for food then spending it on cigarettes and booze while the person who gave it to him is still standing there. 

But unlike the case of the guy on the corner, the "gimme some money, then screw you" demeanor of the Big Three execs isn't just hurting them. If we don't bail them out, the people who suffer will be the bottom o of the org chart, not the top. 

It's essential to provide some kind of interim aid, but it's critical that that help be contingent on a number of things: executives feel the belt-tightening at least as much as the people at the bottom; the companies demonstrate frugality in every aspect of their operations; the use of the funds be closely monitored; and most important, this financial crutch be used not to keep doing business the (failed) way they have been, but to redirect their business toward environmentally friendly vehicles and innovations. Because if they're not going to build reliable, affordable, sustainable cars using innovative technology and methods, they deserve to lose their business to somebody who will.

I Can Only Imagine

Back when I was a little girl, a man spoke of a dream.

One might say it was not my dream. My experience of racism, albeit proximate, was always at second hand: Lying to my grandmother about whose house I was going to, because if she knew it was Paulita, who was black, I might not be allowed to go. My school closing because race riots had broken out at the nearby high school. A friend attempting to justify the Bogan Broads--mothers of Bogan High students--pelting black kindergarten kids with rocks. An old white man sitting next to me on the bus and muttering insults about the black passengers, on the assumption that as a fellow white person, I must agree with him. 

Sure, it hurt me that I couldn't play with who I wanted, or had to lie to do it, that I had friends who sincerely believed that black children were a threat to them, that a stranger would assume by the color of my skin that I was a bigot. But nobody ever barred me from a lunch counter or a ballot box or a seat on a bus; nobody threw those rocks or those words at me. I was not battered by the storms of persecution, to use Dr. King's phrase. We are all diminished by racism, but I can only imagine how it must feel to be the person who experiences it firsthand.

And yet tonight I shrieked with joy, and tears streamed down my cheeks--still are, two hours later. I am so proud of my country, not because we elected a black man president, but because people looked past the color of his skin to vote for Barack Obama because he is a smart, thoughtful, capable person whose priorities and ideas are in tune with their own. And looking back over the past year: the two leading candidates of a major party were a black man and a woman, both of whose candidacies would have been unlikely if not impossible not very long ago.

A man had a dream about his children being judged by the content of their character. Today that dream is real.

There was a teenage first-time voter in line in front of me at the poll, a kid who beamed with pride after he pulled that lever. I didn't have to wait long to vote, but a lot of people did, waited hours. For too many years, there's been cynicism, apathy, around the political process. Not today. Today there was passion: people clamored to vote, wanted to make a difference (whomever they voted for); they gave a damn. Dr. King opened his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by  calling it "what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation." Until now. The greatest demonstration for freedom took place today anywhere people cast their ballots. 

The theme of Dr. King's speech was hope: hope for a better tomorrow: "let us not wallow in the valley of despair." Hope was a theme of President-elect Obama's campaign, and he harkened back to Dr. King more explicitly in his speech tonight. Today we have realized yesterday's hope. Tomorrow we can realize the dreams of today.

Dreams often fall by the wayside as you get older. But when old dreams come true, they give birth to new idealism. And out of that hope can arise greatness.

I started the night looking back, feeling old because I remember when bigotry was institutionalized in the form of segregation. But I end the night looking to the future. We may not all get there together, there will be disappointments and setbacks and hard work, but I go to sleep tonight confident of a bright new day.

In the morning I'll go to work at my same job, where the first thing I have to do is finalize two books we're publishing that are ready to go to press, but were awaiting the outcome of tonight's election so we could know what to put on the last page. Meantime, we as a people will begin to write the first chapter of the next volume.

Not Clear on the Concept

Speaking of risk (as we were not too far down the page): the health insurance system is broken, and getting more broken every day. Here, in an article by Gina Kolata (one of the best writers on health and medicine ever, IMHO), is an example: Several insurers have changed the system so they are covering only a tiny fraction of the cost of more expensive drugs--not elective-type drugs that a person could easily live without or replace with a cheaper alternative, but life-saving drugs for diseases such as cancer and MS--leaving sick people with monthly bills in the thousands of dollars, in some cases, for their meds.

[T]he new system sticks seriously ill people with huge bills, said James Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is very unfortunate social policy,” Dr. Robinson said. “The more the sick person pays, the less the healthy person pays.”

Traditionally, the idea of insurance was to spread the costs of paying for the sick.

“This is an erosion of the traditional concept of insurance,” [Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health] said. “Those beneficiaries who bear the burden of illness are also bearing the burden of cost.”

Exactly. The whole idea for the insured person of having insurance is to be sheltered from ruinous expense in the event of serious illness or injury. 

The idea of insurance is to spread the risk around. Unfortunately, while spreading the risk around is ultimately a good arrangement for everyone in the risk pool (everybody gets sick sometime), it's ultimately a socialist enterprise. (Ooh, I said the bad word!) But insurance companies are capitalist enterprises--they exist to make a profit. And the way to maximize profit is to avoid paying out. So, you make it hard for sick people to get insurance, and you penalize insured people if they get sick. Basically, the money-making model is to get people to pay in, but get rid of them if you have to pay out. Which is the opposite of the concept most of us are looking for in a health insurance plan. It insures not much of anything.

The obvious solution, then, is a single-payer system that operates to spread the risk across the pool, but not to make a profit. 

What won't be a solution is mandating insurance for everyone without regulating exclusions, increases in premiums or copays, decreases in coverage, etc. This can't be fixed one step at a time. The broken system requires a complete overhaul, and anything less will only exacerbate the problem. Let's hope our new Democratic Congress has the vision to see that clearly.

Risk Reverse

You may have heard about the woman who let her nine-year-old find his own way home on the subway, wrote about it here, and is taking a lot of flak about it. I got involved in the discussion about it on Boingboing. The point I made there and will reiterate here:

There's a book about to come out (full disclosure: I work for the publisher) called Flirting with Disaster, which is about how disasters and their consequences come to occur and can be avoided. In one of the opening chapters, the author talks about perception of risk versus actual risk, and how pervasive media--much more access to much more information--is one of the factors that skews our perception of risk. This is certainly a case in point. Of course we've all heard about every abducted, molested, or murdered child, because we have a zillion channels, 24-hour news networks, the internet, etc. But we don't hear about every car accident that happens, because they're a common, everyday occurrence. Statistically, your kid is probably safer taking the subway than being driven around everywhere. But many people's perception of the relative risk is just the opposite, because it's the unusual that gets the attention, not the commonplace.

So anyway, I decided to do the math and find out exactly how the risks compared.

The most recent year for which I could easily locate both murder rates and vehicle accident death rates was 2006. Rates broken down by age (as well as sex and race) are available on the FBI's site. The Fatality Analysis Reporting System (a joint venture of several government entities) has a neat system that permits you to query their databases to get whatever data you need (click Query and it'll walk you through it).

The data isn't terribly specific: the murder rates don't tell us how the children were killed or by whom--that is to say, not all the child victims were kids on their own being abducted and murdered by strangers. But for the sake of this argument, let's assume they all were. This will yield a higher-than-actual risk of a kid on the subway alone being killed. The auto accident data is a slightly more precise: we can't assume all the kids who died in traffic accidents were being driven somewhere by their parents, but we do know they were all riding in cars at the time, which is to say, being driven somewhere by someone. (Pedestrian victims are a separate category in the FARS data, so those aren't mucking up these figures--the fatalities were all definitely in vehicles.)

I chose ages 5 to 12 years because the murder data groups children in age ranges, and I felt that was the range that took in the ages most likely to be able to go somewhere (not just by subway--could be walking in the neighborhood) on their own. For the traffic accident data, as noted above, pedestrian victims are excluded, and I was able to limit the data to passengers (not that I expect there would be many children age 5 to 12 operating cars--but if there were any, they're excluded here).

Okay, let's do the numbers.

Murder victims age 5 to 12 in the US in 2006:
178
(Interestingly, kids in these age ranges are the least murdered--lots more victims in the younger and older age groups.)

Vehicle passenger deaths age 5 to 12 in the US in 2006:
3,561

So . . . more than 20 times as many kids died being driven somewhere as were murdered by someone. Given that some of those children were murdered by people they knew or were related to, the relative risk of putting a kid in a car is probably even higher.

Well, one might argue, the reason so few children were murdered in 2006 is that parents have become more protective: fewer kids are out of their parents' sight than were in the past. That is to say, overprotectiveness is working. But you can go here to download the same FBI data for 1996, and you'll see the number of murder victims age 5 to 12 ten years earlier was 182--not appreciably different ten years ago. The Department of Justice has a chart showing the homicide victimization rate by age from 1975 to 2005; rate for ages 14 and under has remained flat throughout that thirty-year period.

Certainly one can do a more rigorous analysis than I've done here with a little clicking around, but the bottom line will be much the same: The actual risk to so-called free-range kids is very small. The horror stories on the news and in the papers are the exceptions, not the rules (that's why they are news), and parents would be well advised to worry less about those exceptions and more about vastly more common hazards--so common they seldom make the news.

And isn't a kid who has developed a little independence and problem-solving experience on his or her own better equipped to cope with one of those everyday risks when they occur?

Nothing Can Convey the Horror More Effectively Than the Actual Horror

In America, our movies can be as violent as possible, but real violence is sanitized for our protection. Our peace of mind. Things in real life that are violent--like, oh, war, for one--should upset our peace of mind, because if they don't, we continue to live in a land of make-believe where the only threats to our safety we fear are the ones that are manipulated for the benefit of others and control over us. In reality, we are most of us pretty safe and comfortable. Do we appreciate that?

Wonkette took a break from the snark today to give some very graphic perspective. All over the news today we are seeing reaction shots from the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the associated deaths of a number of her followers--photos of angst, ash, maybe a little blood. Wonkette posted the graphic, horrifying, uncropped photos of the carnage.

[T]he news tonight will likely focus on the implications for us as a country and on the campaign and blah blah blah, yes, it’s all really important. But, also, a lot of regular people died today, too. Some of them were poor, some were old, and they died taking advantage of their (current) right of free assembly, which most of us probably take for granted. They died and were horrifically injured participating in the political process of their country, even knowing that in the end it might not make any difference because they might still end up under the thumb of a dictator. And every single person in the pictures below is brown, and likely all of them are Muslim. These are the people that some people would like to send back “to their caves”, these are some of the people we mock as poor cab drivers or accuse of taking “our” jobs or simply overlook even when they are in front of us. They had families and lives and probably jobs when they left their houses this morning to see a political candidate speak who probably half-suspected she wouldn’t make it to the election alive but ran anyway. And it makes all the backstabbing and machinations of our candidates trying to plant stupid rumors about drug use and out-of-wedlock babies and all the rest of it seem that much more nauseating and petty to me today.

If nothing else, the photos will make it clear why the number of dead has been given as anywhere from 12 to 20; counting the dead is not a simple matter when they are blown to bits. These dozen or two dozen, added to the hundred-plus killed in an earlier attempt on Bhutto's life. Nothing like that happened in Iowa today.

A few days ago, my friend Laurie Kahn died (suddenly, but not through violence) so she's been much on my mind. Laurie was a great and vocal champion of civil liberties. She often expressed frustration that Americans could so easily sit by and let their hard-won freedoms be taken away. As a nation, the U.S. touts itself as the great champion of democracy. Yet many of us have, as Laurie said, let fear govern us and given up freedoms in return for that peace of mind I mentioned. Meantime, in Pakistan, people want their freedom badly enough that thousands of them went out to campaign for it, knowing full well that someone's gunning for them and scores before them have been blown up for doing just what they're doing. They knew that they could come to the horrific end you saw if you clicked through the photos (go ahead, do it now if you haven't), but they went anyway. They were regular people who didn't shrug off responsibility for their rights as someone more important's job, they didn't stay home and cower in fear. We don't face these kind of risks in the exercise of our rights. We have our peace of mind. If we want to be the real champions of democracy, we will honor the sacrifice of the people in Pakistan, help them in their fight for their rights, and above all treat our own rights and our own democracy with more of the respect it deserves.

Value

There's an article in the New York Times about recent discoveries in DNA research and how those might be applied and misapplied:

Scientists, for instance, have recently identified small changes in DNA that account for the pale skin of Europeans, the tendency of Asians to sweat less and West Africans’ resistance to certain diseases.

At the same time, genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life, carrying with it the inescapable message that people of different races have different DNA. Ancestry tests tell customers what percentage of their genes are from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The heart-disease drug BiDil is marketed exclusively to African-Americans, who seem genetically predisposed to respond to it. Jews are offered prenatal tests for genetic disorders rarely found in other ethnic groups.

DNA markers and racial difference came up a few weeks ago when James Watson, co-Nobel laureate for the identification of the structure of DNA, was interviewed by the UK's Sunday Times:

[Watson] says that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours-–whereas all the testing says not really," and I know that this "hot potato" is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true." He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because "there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level." He writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Watson's conclusions about intelligence were soundly debunked by researchers in the field of intelligence (nice summary with links here), who point out that, unlike pale skin or the presence of specific diseases, native intelligence is difficult to measure, and most of our attempts are hindered by socioeconomic and environmental factors; when these are controlled for, racial differences dissipate. Shortly after these remarks, Watson retired from his post at the Cold Spring Harbor Lab on Long Island. Watson's remarks were a (characteristically, for him--more below) extreme response, but the New York Times article goes on to suggest that there is still reason for concern:

Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.

But it's a not question of racial difference (or ethnic, or whatever), but of our fundamental values as a people. We may want, as Watson says, to value everyone equally in our society--and why shouldn't we? The fact of genetic and biological difference, if it exists (and it does--men and women are biologically distinct, and no one would argue otherwise, but the fact that certain of my genes and working parts differ from a man's has little to do with my test scores or aspirations or how good I am at my job), doesn't matter unless we decide it does.

Come on, we all know stupid people. And some of them are people we value and love. Does lack of academic ability or of the facility to quickly reason and resolve a complex problem (the kind of things we tend to think of when we use the nebulous term "intelligence") make a person inherently worthless? Of course not. Someone who can't get a decent score on a standardized test may be a hard worker or a compassionate person, may have many other skills and talents, and can contribute to the society and the community just as much as the "smart" people. If we drew an IQ line--even if that measure as it exists today weren't so fatally flawed--what would we as a society lose by excluding those below it? A great deal. That's why we don't do it. We have acknowledged that the constellation of valuable things in a person is varied, complex, and possible infinite, and the way to recognize that is to value all persons.

Those who point at the possibility of racial differences in the measure of intelligence are just looking for support for a prejudice they already harbor, an easy excuse to exclude by race; if they weren't, they'd be lobbying instead to exclude all people below a certain IQ line, regardless of race. (As an aside, Watson in earlier comments also suggested breeding out stupidity. To my mind, it's pretty stupid to cull people based on a single measure, as though no other thing had value. He also suggested genetic selection to make all women beautiful--I guess he gets to decide what constitutes beauty, and bad news for you if you're not his type--and giving mothers the option of aborting fetuses that carried a hypothetical genetic marker for homosexuality. Because apparently being pretty and straight and doing well on IQ tests is what you really need to get every job done.) The debate would be about where exactly that dividing line should rest, not the color of the people on one side or the other.

Here's a measure that is not genetic but is clearly and unequivocally linked with better health and survival, higher standardized test scores, greater access to education and other resources, and a more prominent and influential role in the society: money. Many societies through history have recognized this marker, and explicitly valued those born into better economic circumstances above those born into poverty: for example, societies in which a vote or other political influence is tied to ownership of property.

But we as Americans have chosen to value individuals in our political system without regard to the economic circumstances of their birth: everyone gets the same vote. We believe in access to education for all, and that the opportunity to gain money shouldn't be restricted by how much you're born with--you should have the chance to rise from poverty, you should have the chance even to become rich. But why? After all, it's proven that people born into a higher socioeconomic class are likely to do better overall . . .

It's a matter of what we choose to value, how we have chosen to define justice.

We've made the choice to value more than one thing in a person, in fact to value many things, by attempting to treat everyone equally. (In practice, this needs some work. But that's several other conversations.) In that scenario, what DNA research may show about racial difference in any particular respect is immaterial.

And that is something I value very highly.

Trade Gap

The Gap has learned that an Indian factory it buys clothing from uses child labor, a practice the company has made an effort to avoid, by monitoring vendors' factories to whatever degree they can from a distance. The company's reaction:

The smock blouse will not be offered for sale in the company's 3,000 stores around the world, Gap said, and instead will be destroyed.

Pulling the child-made item from their stores and thereby refusing to profit from exploitation of children: right move. Destroying perfectly serviceable clothing: wrong move. Rather than adding them to landfill, how about donating the blouses to needy kids in India? Let some small good come out of this. How about it, Gap?

War Heroes

About a week ago, a group of veterans of World War II got together. These were the men who, in so much secret that few have spoken of their work in the half-century since, interrogated Nazi prisoners. They were able to obtain the secrets that were critical to our victory over Hitler. Bound to have useful advice for our current leaders about how to wrench information from prisoners in our current war, one would think. But clearly, they've not been asked. Because at their reunion, here's the kind of thing they had to say:

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

Our current interrogators can't say the same, a fact that did not go unremarked by these men:

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

"I feel like the military is using us to say, 'We did spooky stuff then, so it's okay to do it now,' " said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University.

When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece.

"I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war," said Weiss.

What's to be learned from these veterans? Of course, that the methods of torture that our current government has claimed are the only way to prise information out of prisoners--well, they aren't the only ways. These guys managed to do a pretty good job without waterboarding anybody. The values that they fought to preserve were the values they managed to retain even in the interrogation of the enemy.

These men are heroes. By sacrificing the values that these men stood for and continue to hold dear, by taking instead the course that the Nazis themselves took, the Bush administration is betraying them and betraying us.

Today, Which Is Tuesday

It is good that it is raining today. There have been five other 9/11s since the one that counts, but this is the first one to fall on a Tuesday. Stephen King wrote a story for an anthology a couple years ago in which his entire plot hinged on the attacks having occurred on a sunny--that part was right--Monday; as the copy editor I flagged it, marveling as I did how anyone could fail to remember that it had been a Tuesday, that the sky was a perfect shade of blue, what shoes they were wearing and what they held in their hands or passed in the street, what words were being spoken at the moment a building collapsed to dust--it seemed ludicrous, implausible, impossible that something so simple as that it was Tuesday might not be seared in the memory as deeply as every other detail of the day, and the ones that followed. This is what I wrote at the time.

People will be born today, others will die--from violence, war, sickness, injury, old age. Some will marry, divorce, get new jobs, win prizes, lose money. This date will carry a different meaning for them and their loved ones than it does in the larger American mind.

The question has arisen at what point do we let go. The short answer is never: memory may fade, but the changes wrought by the events are immutable and, like all of history, what we fail to recall we are doomed to relive. So rather than looking back at what happened in those 102 minutes of a sunny Tuesday morning in September six years ago, let us look instead at where we are today as a result.

More than 3000 people perished on this date six years ago as a result of the attacks; since then nearer to 4000 American servicepeople, and untold thousands of Iraqi people, have died in a war that was launched under false pretenses that revolve around the events of this date. On the train on which I am writing this, they make an announcement every day that our bags and
packages are subject to random--i.e., without showing due cause, as the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution calls for--search. We routinely submit to searches when entering buildings and ballparks and to games of TSA freeze tag; when asked, the majority say its for our own safety--they admit they are so terrified that they are willing to yield the rights that the founders fought and died for. Our government claims we are not patriotic if we protest this abrogation of our fundamental freedoms, and Rudy Giuliani, the fearmongers' heir apparent, is basing a presidential campaign on reminding people to look back and be afraid. If the purpose of terrorism is to spread terror among the populace so that actions are ruled by fear rather than reason . . . well, they did a good job of it. And we helped.

But you know all that.

How has my life changed in the microcosm? I never leave home without a flashlight and radio, and comfortable walking shoes. I never cross the 59th Street bridge without looking across at the animated advertising billboard over near the Long Island Expressway and being grateful to the wise person who changed it that day to read, simply, "Peace." I always leave my cats too much food, so they won't go hungry before someone comes for them if I don't make it home one day, and I prefer to travel before or after the height of rush hour. On my way to work as I pass the ribbons that wave from the Marble Church railings--yellow ones tagged with the names and ages of American soldiers dead in this war; blue and green for the uncounted Iraqi dead and the equally innumerable prayers for peace--I say my own silent prayer and wonder if we all had fought harder at the outset whether we might have slowed or stopped the juggernaut toward quagmire. (We didn't, I think, because we never believed it would happen so easily.) And I think how good our lives are by comparison to those who live with the daily reality of car bombs or starvation or painful death, and wonder how they find the strength.

It is well and good and necessary to build a memorial to what happened six years ago today, and to mark the anniversary, lest we forget this turning point in our history. Have we learned from it? I'm not sure we have. Maybe too little time has passed. Even six years later, the wounds are still open, at least here in New York. But if we're ever to heal, we must begin to examine what and whom we as a nation and individuals have become, and use that knowledge to serve the greater good.