In the near future I’ll either be blogging and commenting a lot more, or a lot less. I lost my job today and so will be busy looking for a new one. If things look good and I get some nibbles, it’ll be a bit before I can blog. If things look bad, I may get to post even more often than even Amp cares to read.

It’s actually not as bad as it sounds. I lost my job, yes, but I was planning on leaving in the near future anyway. It’s a mixed blessing: I’ll have the ability to look for a job without having to schedule around the nine-to-five, on the other hand I don’t have a source of income but do have bills. We’ll see.

Just wanted to let you know: Alas’ll either be PDP-free or so-much-PDP-you’ll-be-past-the-legal-limit.

In City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple issues a challenge to his readers:

I have libertarian tendencies, but I don’t go so far as to say that “individual desire is the only thing that counts.” Take the minimum wage, for example: Sally wants to pay Bob $1 an hour to work in Sally’s store. Bob, for whatever reason, genuinely wants to work for $1 an hour. In this case, frustrating their individual desires seems justifiable to me, because having a minimum wage law prevents a “race to the bottom” that would hurt thousands more workers.

But I really can’t see that sort of logic applying to the cannibalism case. It seems to me the desire to eat people must be rare - and the desire to be eaten rarer still. It doesn’t seem likely that we’d be creating any sort of “race to the bottom” by allowing consenting adult meals to be eaten by consenting adult diners.

I suppose one could make a public health argument; I’ve heard that cannibalism is a particularly effective route for transmitting diseases. But, again, it doesn’t seem that banning cannibalism is necessary to prevent this from becoming a major problem, because there are simply too few wannabe meals in our culture.

I do have a problem with the idea of someone consenting to be murdered; there is a good argument to be made that laws against murder need to be enforced with as little slippage as possible. (Otherwise, we might have problems like murder victims being forced to sign consent forms at gunpoint before being killed.) But we could easily get around that by having the meal commit suicide rather than being killed by the eater.

So put me down in the pro-cannibalism column, I guess. If a competent, consenting adult wants to be a meal, and his competent, consenting adult friend wants to be an eater, I wouldn’t want to be invited to the dinner - but nor do I see a need to ban it.

On the other hand, I find that conclusion disturbing enough so I’d welcome anyone coming up with an argument that would change my mind.

Thoughts?

Via Invisable Adjunct.

This nifty flash movie, a well-done parody of “Behind the Music” tracing the career of a font, is a lot more interesting than you’re probably imagining.

From the movie, I wandered onto Mastication is Normal, which (at least in the parts I read) consists mostly of reviews of book-cover designs. Again, nifty.

Via Wanton Deconstruction.

Hey, did you know that a leading cause of infanticide is the Supreme Court? According to RealClearPolitics’ Mark Reinzi:

Mark’s thesis, as I understand it, is that pro-choice laws and attitudes create a culture of permissiveness towards killing babies, which leads to an increase in infanticide. Frankly, I think this theory is too stupid for words - does Mark really imagine that couples sit around saying “Honey, I see the Supreme Court just passed Roe v. Wade. Don’t you think we’d better kill Junior?”

Nonetheless, otherwise intelligent conservatives apparently take this claptrap seriously, so let’s test Mark’s theory against the facts. If Mark’s theory is correct - pro-choice attitudes lead to increased murders of newborns - states that have a (relatively) pro-life culture should therefore have much less infanticide than states with a (relatively) pro-choice culture. (State-by-state statistics are available from the federal government’s WISQUARS database).

First, consider five states with reputations for being strongly pro-life. Let’s look at their infanticide rates:

These statistics are for homicides of children aged 1 or younger for the year 2000. As you can see, infanticide rates are significantly higher among blacks than whites; I’m presenting the data for blacks and white separately because it allows better comparison between states. (Where “n/a” is listed, there were no known infanticides among blacks in that state in 2000).

Now, compare five states with reputations for being relatively pro-choice:

Notice the pattern? It’s the exact opposite of the pattern Mark’s theory would lead us to expect. The states with the strongest pro-choice cultures experience the least infanticide.

It’s clear that Mark’s theory is false. Now, I suppose I could turn around and claim that clearly pro-life attitudes increase infanticide - but that theory doesn’t make sense to me, either. (A couple of pro-choice states, like Hawaii, have very high infanticide rates). The truth is, pro-choice or pro-life laws probably have very little to do with infanticide rates.

What factors do matter? According to Child Trends Databank:

So why do pro-choice states have lower rates of infanticide? I don’t know for sure, but I have a theory. My bet is, it’s because pro-choice states are mostly liberal states, which provide more support for low-income women. That translates to more prenatal care and more infants born in hospitals, both factors that make it less likely that a newborn infant will be murdered.

Pro-life states, in contrast, tend to be dominated by conservatives and libertarians, who - despite evidence showing that state-provide prenatal care improves outcomes - would rather live with high infanticide rates than pay a higher tax rate.

But what about that increase in infanticide since 1970? That could mean anything. It could mean, for instance, that increased computerization of records and improved medical technology have made it much more likely that infanticides will be detected and statistically recorded. (In other words, the overall rate of infanticide hasn’t changed - just the likelihood of infanticides being detected and recorded). It could reflect demographic or racial shifts. It could reflect the growing influence of conservatives leading to less prenatal care for poor mothers. It could, in short, mean any number of things.

But - given the strong evidence provided by state-by-state data - only a pro-life ideologue could claim that it shows pro-choice attitudes lead people to murdering newborns. I therefore predict that many pro-lifers will continue making this claim, regardless of the evidence against it.

(Link to RealClearPolitics via Diotima, who mistakenly calls the article “worthwhile.”)

TWO AFTERTHOUGHTS: It’s impossible to intelligently discuss infanticide rates in the USA without at least nodding to the racial differences. As I’ve pointed out in the past, blacks in the USA are in effect living in a third world nation, when it comes to infant and maternal mortality.

Secondly, the unsubtle subtext of the RealClearPolitics essay - “pro-choicers are evil monsters who favor murdering children” - has not escaped me. This is, of course, the attitude that leads some pro-life psychos to justify murdering doctors and bombing clinics, and more generally part of the “dehumanize the opposition” approach to the debate which makes discussing abortion in the USA such a pisser. I haven’t responded to this aspect of the RealClearPolitics essay in detail because I consider it beneath reply (and also beneath contempt).

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comments to this post, which include a lot of valuable info added by Alas readers.

Paul Campos argues that Howard Dean “is, socially speaking, practically the same person as the current president.”

Of course, Campos is stretching to make his point - there’s a world of difference between help getting into med school (even if that’s true, passing med school and building a career as a doctor are legitimate accomplishments) and being more-or-less given a baseball team in exchange for family connections. Still, Dean vs. Bush is not exactly a stirring choice for those who dream of a classless society.

Sydney Quinn and Oberon share an interest in sprawling.

By the way, I’m headed off to Florida, to visit my parents and hang out by the pool (it’s a tough life, I know). I expect I’ll be able to keep posting semi-regularly, but if you don’t hear from me for the next week, then that didn’t work out.

In the comments to an earlier post - one which made fun of the idea that by entering a man’s hotel room, a woman has consented to sex - “Rap” wrote:

The thing is, “common sense” doesn’t begin and end with not going to a man’s hotel room alone, does it?

If women avoid doing all the things that they’re supposed to avoid doing in the name of “common sense” measures to avoid rape - if women don’t let themselves ever be alone in a room with a man they don’t know well, if they never walk alone at night or on isolated roads, if they never go to an empty bus station or subway terminal and never ride in an empty train car, and never walk alone in a public garage, never drink in a bar alone, never get drunk at a frat party (actually, better not attend the frat party in the first place!), and of course never wear tight clothing, etc etc…

If a woman actually obeyed all those “common sense” rules, it would be an awful lot like a life lived under house arrest, wouldn’t it?

Suggesting people should avoid walking down murder row is reasonable. Suggesting women should avoid the world - which is what all those “common sense” strategies boil down to - is not reasonable.

(And the wacky punchline to all this? Even if a woman obeys every single rule for avoiding rape, she still might get raped.)

I do think women - like everyone else - should exercise some common sense for self-protection. But in the final analysis, changing women’s behavior isn’t a promising anti-rape strategy. I’d rather discuss ways of changing men’s behavior. Rapists are by and large male, after all.

I haven’t run into Bad Jens before, which is a shame for me. It’s an English-language, Iranian feminist online journal. “Jens” means, roughly, “gender.” Bad means “bad,” and said as one word “badjens” means sly or disreputable.

The two pieces I just read - one an interview with performance artist Rbshapour, one an essay - both focus on the experience of Iranian-American woman living in Iran after spending nearly their whole lives in the United States. From the essay “The Practice of Control” by Nina Farnia (by the way, I suspect these links will go bad as soon as the seventh issue comes out; if the links don’t work for you, just go to the Bad Jens homepage and look in the archive in the sixth edition for these articles):

I came across this article while readnig a Ms. Magazine discussion board thread, provocatively entitled “we might mutilate our breasts and faces, but at least we don’t wear headscarves.” I particularly like Echidne’s comment on that thread:

The interview with Rbshapour was also interesting. Here’s a passage, from near the beginning, in which Rbshapour explains why she decided to move to Iran after spending her entire life since early childhood in the United States.

I keep forgetting to mention: PinkDreamPoppies has been upgraded from “guest blogger” to, well, just plain “blogger.” My only regret is that PDP (like Bean) doesn’t post as often as I’d like to read. Welcome, PDP.

Via Light of Reason, this article describes the way Bush has been forcing members of the U.S. military to serve far beyond what they thought they’d agreed to:

The article argues that this is one of a number of steps which are quietly being taken to reinstate the draft. I’m not that convinced; I don’t think we have to worry about the draft being reinstated secretly. (Some things just can’t be kept secret - sooner or later, someone has to say “you are ordered to report…,” and then the cat’s out of the bag). Nonetheless, the article is interesting, and reports on a lot of stuff that’s escaped the mainstream presses scrutiny.

Myself, I’m struck by yet another example of how much contempt this president exhibits for members of the armed forces. He tries to cut their pay, he cuts their benefits, he takes away their overtime, and now he’s keeping them against their will. I’ve asked it before: When Bush meets a U.S. soldier, does he struggle to keep himself from openly sneering and spitting in the G.I.’s face?

A lot of conservatives have been critical of the “chickenhawk” thing, because they misinterpret it as saying “if you haven’t served in the armed forces, you’re not qualified to have an opinion on military matters.” But that’s not the point at all. It’s about character, not qualifications.

A chickenhawk is “a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person’s youth.” Being a chickenhawk doesn’t make anyone wrong or right in their opinions about war; it just makes them a person of low character.

Amy at The Fifty Minute Hour has written a very sensible post about Clark’s abortion position. Clark has been criticized for an “embarrassing lack of nuance” in his position.

Amy argues:

Amy goes on to criticize “the pro-choice crowd” for not standing as firm as Clark does. She has a point, although I think that for many pro-choicers opposing late-term abortions may be more strategic than emotional. If so, then Clark, if elected president, may wind up changing his position in deference to that strategy. We’ll see.

By the way, I’m finding myself warming a bit to Clark as time goes on. His abortion position, like his position on tax policy, is attractive. Of course, I’d still prefer Kucinich, but of the folks who might actually win Clark’s looking good.

I checked out the finalists in the Bush in Thirty Seconds competition (the winner will be announced late tonight). I thought the first-listed entry - “Child’s Play” - was by far the best of this lot - and it’s beautifully photographed, as well. Check it out.

The “humor ads” catagory wasn’t all that great, but the punchline to the “if parents acted like Bush” ad did get a laugh out of me.

Apparently if a woman visits a man’s hotel room, she’s consented to have sex. Or at least, that’s what National Review Online believes.

Darn those feminists! Thinking that women should have rights and freedoms!

Via Atrios.

UPDATE: Echidne of the Snakes weighs in on this. As does Will Baude.

I’m pretty much used to right-wingers and libertarians being wrong about, well, almost everything. So when I read this over-the-top editorial at Tech Central about DDT, I was pretty confident that a little research would show me that environmental groups are right to oppose DDT use in Africa.

But in this case the Tech Central op-ed is right. DDT is far, far more effective than any of the alternatives for preventing the spread of malaria, especially to children.

Of course, Tech Central wouldn’t be Tech Central if the piece didn’t get significant facts wrong. For instance, many of the groups it claims oppose DDT use are actually neutral on the subject, or even support DDT use to combat maleria (the World Health Organization supports DDT use, for example). As usual, right-wingers feel free to simply make up lies about groups they dislike, knowing that no other right-winger will call them on it.

But on the main point they’re correct; DDT is essential. From The Christian Science Monitor:

The US Agency for International Development is pushing bed nets as an alternative to DDT spraying. Are they insane? Let’s say it was your child, and you’re offered two alternatives to prevent the child from catching this often-fatal disease. One solution works by spraying the walls, which keeps the disease-carrying mosquitoes out of the house. The other solution works by depending on your child to stay obediantly in bed all night and hoping no mosquitos bite during the day.

No American parent would find bed nets an acceptable alternative in that circumstance - not even for a moment. USAID should be ashamed for suggesting it. (Some of USAID’s other anti-malaria programs are more worthwhile).

Like environmentalists, I’m disturbed by all the unknowns about DDT’s effects on humans. But fighting the theoretical harms of DDT should take a back seat to fighting the very real harms of malaria.

Someday, an alternative to DDT that’s as effective may be developed. Until that time, household DDT use in areas facing malaria should not only be “not forbidden,” it should be encouraged and generously funded.

Link to the Tech Central article via The Fifty-Minute Hour. Also, this BBC article has a decent summary of the DDT/malaria issue.

So Maureen Dowd has written a column about Ret. Gen. and Democratic canidate Wesley Clark’s clothing, or, more exactly, his changes of clothing over time in (it’s assumed) a bid to appeal to a different voting group. While I generally get annoyed by clothing critiques in general, no pun intended, because talking about clothing distracts from things like issues, I have to admit a certain degree of schadenfreude.

Already some pundits, all of them male that I’ve seen, have started rolling their eyes, but the first thing I thought of when I read the column was a Doonesbury cartoon I read awhile back. One of the female characters, Alex it may have been, had written a newspaper article about one canidate or another coming into town. She described how the entourage (all male) looked in their suits, how they’d lost weight, how they’d picked the perfect accessories for their complexions. I believe it was Mike Doonesbury who ended the strip by saying, “You’re trying to make a point, aren’t you?”

So while people are rolling their eyes at Ms. Dowd’s column, I can’t help but smirk a little in the same way I always do when males get treated the way that females have for awhile. (An odd sensation to get, my being male and all.) And, yes, I know that this is pretty much a bad thing in the long run, a lose-lose situation, but it still feels good on some level.

My next post on abstinence-only sex ed. is in the works; I hope to post it by Monday, but we’ll have to see.

Part of what’s making me delay that post is that I’m in the middle of writing a graphic novel. You’ll be hearing more about it as the script progresses (and as I continue to completely suck at drawing), but right now I need a bit of help. And since I know that all of you Alas readers are just dying to know what you can do…

One of the characters in the story lived the first eighteen or so years of her life in the foster system, but I don’t know really know all that much about that sort of thing. What I really need is some objective information on the foster care system in addition to a helping of anecdotal evidence. I’ll be busy digging around on the internet for what information there is, but if any of you want to contribute to my research (maybe you went through foster care, or have a friend or significant other or family member who did, or maybe you’ve worked in the foster system) I’d love to have the help.

You can post information in the comments section, or you can e-mail me at listentothecolourofyourdreams - at - hotmail.com. Anything you mail to me will be entirely confidential. So hey, if you wanna help someone work toward getting out of administrative-assistant-hell-world, drop me a note. Thanks!

Actually, I’m going to expand this cry for help a little. I’m most concerned with foster care programs, but if anyone has any experience with or knowledge of girls homes (drug rehab, etc.-type places) I’d like to hear those as well. The extent of my knowledge of such places is the psych. wing at the local hospital, but my dad was hardly a teenager.

I know I’m asking for personal stuff, but like I said: totally confidential, and it would be a big help to me. I’d like to get this stuff right and not Hollywood-ize it.

• In Tennessee, a gay dad is ordered by a court to not expose his son to “the gay lifestyle,” whatever that may be. On the bright side, a lower court’s decision to send the father to jail for coming out to his son has been overturned on appeal. (Thanks to reader Tor for the tip). Boy, those blue states really are more tolorant!

• Trish Wilson points out that folks in bible-belt states are just as likely to get divorced as anyone else. Kinda pokes a hole in the theory that divorce would go down if only more people were fervently anti-divorce.
• Tim Wise makes a convincing case that Marcus Dixon, who is black, is in prison for having consensual sex with his white girlfriend. Wise argues that this reflects badly on cross-racial adoption, because white parents can’t teach their black children enough fear and distrust of the justice system to prevent those children from being railroaded. (My summary is an oversimplification; I recommend reading the whole thing.)
  Don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggesting the Joneses were wrong to take Marcus in. Nor am I saying that white parents should never adopt or become guardians for black children or other children of color. I am only saying that before white parents decide to “rescue” black and brown children from homes they consider dysfunctional (and which may well be), perhaps they could take a moment to consider their own dysfunction: the kind that doesn?t manifest itself in terms of poverty or daily neighborhood violence perhaps, but which manifests as ignorance, as a Pollyanna-like optimism about the power of love alone, and an uncritical trust in America - the kind most people of color long ago learned to temper with caution.

  For while Marcus Dixon is first and foremost a victim of an overzealous prosecutor playing to white fears, and a racist father of the girl with whom he had sex, he is also the victim of white naivet’ and good intentions.

  Well, maybe. It’s an interesting point. But then again, I can’t help but notice that black children of black parents get railroaded by the cops and DAs all the time, too.

• Sara at Diotima is the last person I’d expect to launch a defense of Martha Burke, which just goes to show that the world is full of surprises. Amy Philips had taken offense because Burke wrote that “some women” don’t recognize the discrimination they experience. Burke, Amy wrote, “doesn’t speak for me, and that I’d feel much less oppressed if she’d shut up and let me speak for myself.” Sara responds:
  But if one allowed the truth about women to be defined merely by adding up women’s subjective experiences, you could never make any judgments about when things are bad for women. After all, women also fought suffrage and other legal changes that brought equality to women; their personal experiences shouldn’t have been allowed to paralyze the women’s movement because they were just wrong. So while I remain in more or less complete disagreement with Martha Burk’s specific agenda, I don’t really find anything objectionable in the principle that there are women who are unaware of the problems that women face.
• This Armed Liberal post on gay marriage - “Why I Support Gay Marriage, and Why I Will Never Be Angry at Those Who Do Not” - is excellent, both for its plea for mutual civility and for his real-life-based explanation of why “gays should just rely on private contracts” isn’t an answer.
• Mad Magazine makes fun of George Bush. Hey, I’d buy one. Via Marshmallows & Bile.
• Carpe Datum has a good so-called-liberal-press post, pointing out that this opening paragraph would never, ever appear in the mainstream press:
  For a brief time during his speech on Sunday, President Bush seemed to be hewing to a New Year’s resolution to stick more carefully to the facts on taxes, the budget and more. But old habits die hard.

  Yet virtually the same paragraph opens an AP news story about Democrats and no one blinks.

• Here’s an interesting article in Haaretz about American feministJudith Butler in Israel. Butler is best known as a gender theorist - both for her theory that gender is created by everyone doing drag, and for her famously inaccessible writing style - but I hadn’t realized she was also an active critic of Israel.
• Echidne of the Snakes has been rockin’ lately. Two of my recent favorites: her discussion of college admissions (why are folks who oppose affirmative action for minorities okay with affirmative action for whites legacy admissions?), and her post about the wage gap.
• So I was reading an Expository Magazine review of a quilting exhibition, which thankfully included lots of pictures. I was particularly impressed by “Improvisation,” by Judith Reilly (who I assume is not the same Judith Reilly who starred in Night of the Living Dead).

  

  A bit of searching turned up Reilly’s website, which has many more quilt reproductions. All of them are too darned small, however.

• A CNN story, “Where Do Cancelled TV Shows Go?” I was particularly struck by the last paragraph, about a creator whose grateful for “pirating,” since without illegal copies the network would prevent his work from ever being seen by anyone. Thank goodness creators are protected by copyright law!
• Amptoons comments alumni John Isbell is posting on Open Source Politics again: A brief discussion of the second amendment, and a poem about experiences of racism. Check ‘em out.
• Amy at The Fifty Minute Hour has an excellent post about the Drug War and U.S. foreign policy (the specific example she’s using is Ghana).
  In the end, the problem is that we’ve set up a situation where Ghana and other countries like it can’t win. They have little choice but to take our money, because their only alternative is to keep scraping by and never have the chance to improve their country. But we’ve given them no viable, sustainable alternative to drug production to keep them going in the long term. We’re asking them to give up their most profitable export, but we’ve cut off most other options for trade. We flood markets, both in Ghana and in nations who might trade with them, with subsidized agricultural staples, making farming a profitless option. We refuse to support infrastructure development, because new roads and faster transportation make drug trading easier too, and our first priority is to stop marijuana production, not to make Ghana better off. If we were to focus on bringing Ghana and other African nations into the global economy, growing pot would become less attractive, but we’re not willing to make our primary goal ancillary, even if it would work better in the long run. After all, we have to take a “hard line” against a plant that has never killed anyone and has kept its producers from being stuck in poverty forever. We’re sacrificing real principles, like helping the poor and improving the quality of life for millions of people, in favor of made up principles, like stopping people from ingesting psychotropic substances. Ghana will get its money, but that money will never help the people of Ghana so long as the government has to use it to destroy what may be their best chance at escaping poverty.

  Read the whole thing.

• The Village Voice has an article about the lack of female writers (both reviewed and reviewing) at the New York Times Book Review. What’s sad is the Times is apparently much better than its peers (although the Voice article doesn’t mention this). The Times Book Review apparently has 33% female bylines; other liberal intellectual mags, like The New York Review of Books and the New Yorker, would have to increase female bylines enormously to reach a one-third level. (Via Intl-News.com).
• I don’t normally respond to emailed requests for links, but Intl-News.com is actually doing a good job collecting and updating news story links. Check it out.
• Ironic headline of the month: A pro-life news website complains that “Biased reporting on Abortion-Breast Cancer Link Still A Problem.” In other news, O.J. complains that the murder rate is too high. Via After Abortion.
• Just when you thought there was nothing to like about Joe Lieberman, he goes and proposes improvements to US Domestic Violence law. I particularly like his proposals for making restraining orders more available and effective, and for helping abused women financially. Via Diotima, who is suspicious of Lieberman’s motives.

While researching something else, I came across a magazine article from 1844 which had one of those “this is masculine, this is feminine” lists. A few of the dichotomies were ones that still seem pretty familiar today - masculine intellect versus feminine understanding, masculine justice versus feminine mercy, etc.

Many of the other “masculine/feminine” dichotomies seem positively dadaesque today, however.

Remember, folks - men might be talented, but women are geniuses. After all, what’s “feminine” and “masculine” is immutable biology, and never, ever changes over time or culture.

Well, I was going to post a lot more today, but then Phil suggested that we go see Big Fish instead.

Since I’m slacking off and not providing you with links to follow, I suggest that you go visit Wampum’s post listing the 2003 Koufax Awards Best Post Nominations. Every nomination includes a link to the post in question, and man, there’s a lot of great reading there. (I’m happy to say that four Alas posts - one each by Bean and PinkDreamPoppies and two by me - are included on the list).

(The other thing that kept me from posting more today was water on the floor seeping out from the furnace room, which turned out to be due to frozen water in the water-dumping tube attached to the smaller furnace. I know I’m a homeowner because my first thought, on finding out where the water was coming from, was: “Great! That’s under warrenty!”)

Last week, I blogged a link to Jordan Barab’s excellent worker-safety blog Confined Space, and also to a New York Times series of articles, “When Workers Die,” that Jordan had recommended.

I also emailed a head’s-up to men’s rights activist and radio host Glenn Sacks. As I’ve said about Glenn in the past, I think his inability to view men as anything but victims (not to mention his knee-jerk anti-feminism) are mistaken. Nonetheless, I’ve debated him online and in email enough to know he’s a nice guy, capable of civil disagreement, and worker deaths are one of the few issues he and I (sort of) agree on.

Anyhow, Glenn was interested enough to have Jordan as a guest on his show. If you’d like to listen, the show can be heard online here. With all due respect to Glenn, it sounds like he has some technical problems - Glenn’s voice is waaaaay too loud relative to Jordan’s, so I kept having to fiddle with the volume. Nonetheless, there’s some interesting stuff there. If you don’t have time to listen to the whole show, Jordan first appears at 12:20, and what I thought was the most interesting segment begins at 39:10.

Also, speaking of Jordan, be sure to read his post describing “The Top Fourteen Health and Safety Stories of the Year.” And congratulations to Jordan for Confined Space’s richly-deserved nomination for a best single-issue blog Koufax award.