"Was" vs. "Is" reloaded, revealed. OK, folks, here's today's alert from Friends of America's Past concerning the new stealth amendment to NAGPRA that I wrote about earlier this month:

ALERT: Senate to expand the definition of Native American

S.536 Section 108 (see p. 15)

As early as next week (April 4-8, 2005) the US Senate will vote on S.536. In Section 108 of this bill, the Senate Indian Affairs committee quietly and unanimously voted to amend NAGPRA's definition of Native American. No public hearings were held on this sweeping change.

This expansive definition of Native American sets the stage to overturn the Kennewick Man decisions rendered by the Federal District Court of Oregon and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. More than Kennewick Man is at stake. Unless Section 108 is deleted, public access to the factual understanding of the nation's prehistory shifts to the exclusive control of American Indians.

FAX your concerns to your state's Senators and Senate Majority Leader Frist. Ask them to delete Section 108 from S.536. (US Mail will not reach these offices in time). Every FAX counts.

Voice your concerns - NOW

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Suggested language: (Create your own message but use this subject alert)

Subject: S.536 - DELETE Section 108

Delete Section 108 of S. 536. NAGPRA's definition of Native American should not be amended. In 2004 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in the Kennewick Man lawsuit that the government's interpretation of the definition of Native American yields an absurd result. This flawed interpretation persists with the language added in Section 108. The Senate must not pass any law that yields an absurd result. The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs did not hold public hearings on this matter, nor did it consider the broad implications of this change nor interests of the greater public.

Y'all know the drill.

Related links here. (Yeah, I know the Kennewick page is ugly. I'll get around to prettying it up. Soon.)

Endless Quibblings of our Times, I. I see that the Lancet Article That Will Not Die is back under discussion again. My own minor contribution to all this was here, wherein I tried unsuccessfully to get the tag-team duo of Daniel Davies and Tim Lambert to justify the way in which they were reporting the summary statistics of the piece. (At least, I didn't think they justified it. Discussion starts down towards the bottom of the comment thread.)

Obviously, the proper way to deal with this is for other parties to do follow-up studies - only then will we be able to assess how accurate the initial study was.

My own guess is, "not very". But we shall see.

(By the way, is it true what schoolchildren say -- that if you go into the bathroom, turn off all the lights, look into the mirror and chant "Lancet" over and over, Tim Lambert will appear?)

Dinosaur soft tissue? Now, that would be cool. (I really have no reason to believe it ain't so, but does the guy in the photo accompanying the linked story look like an Onion interviewee, or what?)

Serious clowning.

"Pace Kevin Drum, I sometimes think there are no circuses (”clown show” in Kevin’s formulation) in American media culture, that any story that takes hold does so because it speaks to deep personal concerns and social schisms. Like as not, the collective characterizing of a media phenomenon as a “circus” is a social defense mechanism - we set the lid back on the jar and walk away with a nervous whistle. That civil war was probably sour anyway."

I fear Mr. Henley is wantonly violating the unwritten rules of Schiavo blogging. Not only does he acknowledge that there are myriad, serious issues inhering in the latest "clown show", he's appears, quite scandalously, to have made a start at exploring the tangled underbrush without either the ritual partisan incantations, or half-informed but positive statements regarding matters legal or medical. You call this Schiavo blogging?

I pretty much have the same reservations, and come to the same conclusions, as Jim does, which is - "you got a better idea for settling these things?" So I'm going to slide off a bit to the side here to ruminate on an aspect of these cases that really interests me - how and why we create useful fictions about a patient's intent. One sees the phrase "clear and convincing evidence" solemnly intoned again and again when reading the debates about this case, but, looking over the court documents, I am struck but how much of an airy nothing that "clear and convincing evidence" is. The fact is, absent explicit instructions, we generally really do not know, and cannot know, the preferences of the patient. So we construct "intent" based on hearsay regarding statements that, particularly for a younger person, have as much relation to considered choice as, say, "hope I die before I get old" or "God, I'd kill myself if I got fat". Apparently, this is not peculiar to the Schiavo case, but is the common procedure in such difficult cases. (Anybody who has facts to add to my limited-knowledge speculations here, please feel free to do so.)

My first reaction is to raise an eyebrow at the charade, and ask why it isn't better simply to acknowledge the truth - that we have no friggin' clue, and that digging through the memory archives for offhand comments, re movies-of-the-week or Grandma's demise, will not enlighten us. But this, of course, leads us back to "you got a better way?" (I tend to agree with the "when in doubt, err on the side of life" position, but am not satisfied that this neatly takes care of all situations - including the Schiavo case.)

That's the "how", but what of the "why"? Do we play little games of legal make-believe simply because it's the best of a bad lot of procedural methods, preferring it to the possible practical mess of "best interest" arguments? Or do we have an implicit philosophical preference toward the principles of individual autonomy and freedom of choice, and wish to persuade ourselves that these remain the foundation of our decisions, even when, in reality, this is impossible? (These may be really dumb questions that have long since been answered, or are simply not germane to the actual facts of law. Just let me know.)

But to get back to "what's the alternative". Jim, remarking the propriety of the legal process, still sighs, "I wish that the court’s decision relied on the testimony of witnesses not named 'Schiavo.'" I have to say that I prefer witnesses named "Schiavo" to witnesses named "Tyler", trailing the credentials of executive director of something called "Georgia Health Discoveries". Spake Tyler:

The testimony of Ms. Beverly Tyler, Executive Director of Georgia Health Discoveries, clearly establishes that the expressions made by Terri Schiavo to these witnesses are those type of expressions made in those types of situations as would be expected by people in this country in that age group at that time. They (statements) reflect underlying values of independence, quality of life, not to be a burden and so forth. "Hooked to a machine" means they do not want life artificially extended when there is not hope of improvement.

Is this supposed to mean something? Am I the only one who, looking over the court documents, had a definite wtf moment at the appearance of Ms. Tyler's expert contribution? It is unfortunate that the best we can do is struggle to a decision from scant or nonexistent information, but, um, what is this person doing here? One doesn't know exactly how much weight this testimony was given, but what genius decided to bring in a profiler, as it were, to "verify" the relatives' best understanding of the individual's intent? (With, one imagines, Power Point presentations of polls and demographic trends. Faith Popcorn, bioethicist!)

These cases will always be hard to settle, but people are rightly leery of the intrusion of non-medical "expertise" into fraught and deeply personal decisions, as medical care becomes more and more bureaucratized. Hog on Ice has a long rant on the Schiavo case, not all of which I'm endorsing, but which does have some interesting observations on the "annoying counselors" and self- or bureaucratically-appointed "moral authorities" who talk to you as if you were the mentally incapacitated party, have certificates in right and wrong and the knowledge of good and evil, and Know More Than You Do about what Grandma would have wanted. Yeah, I know the type, these bullies with bioethics degrees, or whatever it is you acquire to become a professional patronizer. One fears that life and death will become more and more infested with these types as time rolls on. (And yes, I realize Moral Authorities crawl in from both sides. Realistically, though, I don't think I'm more likely to fall afoul of people desperate to keep my broken body creaking along against my wishes.)

I'd prefer to cast my lot with the old next-of-kin (insurance beneficiaries though they be), and I will have to trust them, because I can't see how the "put it in writing now!" advice, chronically administered these last weeks, could solve things for me. Because, even at 47, I have have no idea how I'd want every possible contingency handled. Outside of one or two contingencies, I can't know now what I'd want then. And beginning with the spousal unit, I can't think of any possible next-of-kin who might end up with such an obligation to me, whom I wouldn't trust to Do the Right Thing. If they did decide on something I would not have chosen for myself? Hey, they did their best and stumbled, just as I might. We must trust one another and die. (OK, there're Cousin X and Y I might not want coming 'round, but they're too far down the chain to matter). I realize, of course, that there are some families where it indeed behooves the members to attend to every legal jot and tittle to protect their interests against their, ahem, loved ones. (Guess there are some advantages to being of meager net worth, eh?) Pretty sad, though, when I think about it - to have no one that you could trust implicitly with your life. Well, back to court then...

No steg or bronto, though. I am generally a stickler for tradition when it comes to the observance of holidays. (Tradition meaning, of course, the forms observed in the household wherein I grew up. I only grudgingly tolerate the importation of the exotic Christmas/Easter customs carried into the family by Fleck. I mean, for heaven's sake, those people ate turkey for Christmas dinner.) Even my reactionary heart softened, however, at seeing, among the displays of variously sized and flavored chocolate bunnies, a fine looking chocolate T. rex. Really, is there any occassion involving treats for children at which dinosaurs would not be welcome and appropriate?

Really, really unfortunate quotes that I hope were taken out of context department: From today's Des Moines Register.

"In my opinion, I think Sept. 11 was better for Islam than it was anything else," Manci said. "To spread a message, you need publicity."

Mr. Manci is head of the Iowa Muslim Student Association.

The exquisite British sense of understatement. I wish, oh, I wish I could read things like this in our local paper:

The Earth Centre encapsulated everything that is so wrong-headed about this government and its frizzy-haired, baggy-breasted advisers, huddled together, oblivious to the fact that all their eye-swivellingly daft ideas and initiatives are thousands of light years away from what anyone actually wants.

-Jeremy Clarkson

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(Via Iain Murray.)

On the wearing of the hat - Tractatus Fedoro-Stetsonicus. Time plays cruel tricks on us all, and in my case time has seen fit to slowly push my hairline back, back, so that it's now nearing the tonsure-like bare circle up there at the crown. Putting vanity aside — and I have done a pretty good job of that, if I do say so — there are certain matters of sheerest practicality that the juggernaut of male pattern baldness forces one to consider. The most important is protection from the elements. Those of you enjoying, however temporarily, full, luxuriant heads of hair probably don't appreciate how effective that mop is at keeping warmth in and rain and sunlight out.

For those of us not so fortunate, hats become more and more of a necessity. But how do you find the right hat? (Okay, I guess vanity does creep in here.) As a recent learned treatise pointed out, hats are highly personal things - a hat that looks natural, even necessary on one man looks like a stupid affectation on another. On my own personal head, back when I did lots of field work I used to wear your standard cloth broad-brimmed hat for sun protection, but that just won't do indoors, or in cold weather, especially after several years of being rained on and dropped in mud and dirt. Baseball caps - make me look like a 40-year-old teenager. 'Nuff said. Knit caps - warm and functional, true, but face it - not snappy. Make me look like a 40-year-old street person, no matter how many spatial dimensions are involved^[1]. Also, I keep losing the damned things.
My own quirky-but-exacting standards of dress constrained me, therefore, to the same outcome as The Manolo - a wool ascot cap. Warm, but not sloppy. And, most importantly, actually available in town, after only about a week's search (apparently we should all be in the market for swimwear about now). My search eventually lead me to a navy blue wool Kangol 504 - at least, the inside says it's a Kangol, even though there's no little kangaroo on it, or any external branding, which is just fine by me.

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^[1]Via Angie Schultz, who is blogging about far less trivial things than hats.

Bootstrapping* ourselves to riches. Iowa, as a relatively rural state, tends to have a lot of lower-paying jobs. Nationwide, it ranks 35th in terms of average personal income. Not surprisingly, many people in the state feel compelled to try to do something about this state of affairs:

Philip Sanchez, political officer for the PACE Workers union in Mason City and an employee of Holcim Cement, thinks the issue is far bigger than dollars and cents.

"I look at wages as a human rights issue," he said. "Better wages means better living. Better living means better health care, better buying power, better everything."

And the way to ensure better wages is (drumroll please)...

"I'd like to see city councils and economic development boards establish `living wage' standards for new companies and even offer incentives to help them meet the living wage level," said Sanchez.

Ah, yes, how stupid not to have thought of that. If we just order businesses to pay people more, prosperity will hop into our waiting arms. And on the unlikely chance that some company can't afford to pay people more, we'll just take more money from other businesses and taxpayers instead.

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* In the original Munchausian sense, that is.

"Was" vs. "Is", reloaded. No details yet, but John McCain (I'm so surprised) is introducing yet another attempt (check under the "NAGPRA" heading for updates) to amend NAGPRA to prevent legitimate scientific inquiry into the North American past. The text of the bill has not yet been posted on the web, but word is that it's a replay of S.2843, which expired in last year's congressional session.

Excuse me while I look around for a concrete block to which to apply my forehead repeatedly.

Literary interlude (part the second). Moira brought home her usual armful of books from the library, including Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon", which I diverted to my own use. All I'd ever read of Stephenson before was a little bit of "In the beginning was the command line", which I was fairly sympatico with, so I figured this might be interesting.

Hmmm... how to describe it? I was, in truth, disappointed. A mixture of Tom Clancy and a couple of issues of Linux Journal, with a little bit of Das Boot and Essential System Administration^[1] thrown in as well. Is that fair? An awful lot of people seem to really like this book, and I think it would be fine'n'dandy as action-packed, thought-free vacation reading, but the characterizations are pretty thin, the coincidences too outlandish, the plot lacunae too great. Stephenson gets off some great passages now and again — I can certainly get down with his sticking-it-to-academia riffs — but they are rare fruit in this 900+ page jello salad. And after getting all the characters and plotlines to converge for the book's finale, Stephenson doesn't seem to know what to do with it all. The book peters out, leaving me with a whole lot of unanswered questions, many having to do with the implausibility of various characters repeatedly running into each other over a 45-year time span.

(Is it just me? I notice this a lot with modern fiction. Well, the small amount of modern fiction that I read. The author assembles the cast and themes and ideas together for the big finish, and apparently forgets what he was going to do. Some minor events occur, and the cast members wander off in random directions. The author looks around, frantically - See, reader? See how these minor events and random walks exemplify the deep themes of this story?! Well, they do! The End.)

Some things I did like about the book: the attention given to the southwest Pacific (this is probably the only bestselling novel that mentions calamansi); the descriptions of cryptographic techniques.

Anyway, I'd be curious to see what M.'s reaction to this book is - it strikes me very much as a guy book, specifically a young guy book. (Perhaps I am simply too old-at-heart to enjoy it properly.)

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^[1]A truly great, can't-put-it-down book.

Local color. As recently-arrived residents in town, local history is mostly a big blank space for us. Slowly, details and incidents trickle down, filling in the space. Sometimes the details can be alarming; good thing, for instance, our house isn't anywhere near this intersection (one of the principal ones in town leading to the U.'s campus) - and I never would have suspected that somebody tried to blow up City Hall. (There seems to be tantalizingly little Googleable information on this latter incident - I suppose I could actually drag myself to the library and pore through the dead-tree archives.)

Moving right along... It transpires that our cable company committed an upgrade in our region a couple of days ago...and you know what that means, of course. Our connectivity has been fubar for the last 48 hours, and they don't have any particular timetable for when the problem might be resolved. We may end up needing to make friends with the DSL provider - but we'll be back!