Russell's Teapot

How can anyone deny the power of the Lucky Atheist Horseshoe? You'd have to be BLIND not to see the plain-as-day manifestation of its power. Just the other day I asked the L.A.S. for a very specific thing and yesterday *blamo* its benevolent magic took hold and shook the very foundation of reality itself.

There are no disbelievers in the L.A.S, there are only fools.

In the late 1700s some people wanted democratic rule. Conservative elements of the church pointed to the Bible and said it proved that the king ruled by God's will.

In the mid 1800s some people wanted to end slavery. Conservative elements of the church pointed to the Bible and said it proved that God approved of slavery.

In the early 1900s some people wanted to give women the vote. Conservative elements of the church pointed to the Bible and said it proved that God made women inferior to men.

In the mid 1900s some people wanted to end segregation. Conservative elements of the church pointed to the Bible and said it proved God wanted to keep the races separate.

When you look back at how your parents and grandparents dealt with these things, are you ashamed or proud?

Now some people want to allow gay marriage. Conservative elements of the church are pointing to the Bible and saying it proves God hates homosexuality.

When your children and grandchildren look back at how you deal with this, will they be ashamed or proud?

Fun Fact: The amount of time it takes me to smoke a cigarette is exactly equal to the amount of time it takes me to walk one NYC cross-town block. Lighter to butt, avenue to avenue.

I’m writing this from LaGuardia Airport, waiting for the plane that will bring me back to Cleveland. I know the phrase is overused (and trademarked) but goddamnit, I love New York. I have been here dozens of times and can honestly say that I love it like I’ve never loved any place in my life. There is nowhere on the planet where I feel more at home than in Manhattan. The outright joy and comfort I feel every time I arrive here and the sick emptiness I feel when its time to leave are emotions strictly reserved for this city. And I can’t explain why. I’m not even sure I understand why.

The people I’ve met who find New York repulsive, the ones who can’t understand why anyone would pay $2,500 a month for an efficiency suite, the ones who have been defending Cleveland for the last 30 years as “a come-back city”, the ones who define their daughter’s second grade class as “ethnically diverse” because (based on his looks) one of the boys is most likely Jewish, they don’t bother me one bit. Because when Jen and I move here, they’re the ones who I’ll joyfully be leaving behind. The city has a wonderful quality of repelling exactly the right people. One day Jen and I will live here; we have promised each other that. And one day, if I’m lucky, I’ll be old and I’ll die here.

Goodbye, Twinsburg. So long, Brunswick. Adios, Bay fucking Village. May you suffocate under the weight of your franchise family restaurants, your beige vinyl siding and your pearl wearing, mini-van driving soccer-moms. Yes, I’m looking at you, Solon.

This week’s New Scientist magazine cover story is about what medical progress has revealed about alcohol and the chemistry behind its effects on the brain. According to the article:

 “There's already a drug that can sober up a drunken rat in 2 minutes flat, and researchers are busy searching for compounds to do the same in humans.”  

 Not only that, the article explains that specific side effects of alcohol consumption have been connected to receptors in the brain and scientists can isolate and block the chemicals in order to completely nullify the negative side-effects of a hard night’s drinking. The legal issues around such a drug becoming widely available aside, the fact that such a drug even exists raises some very interesting questions.

 Taking a pill to instantly sober-up, thereby avoiding the consequences of drinking too much, in reality only solves half of the problem. Most alcoholics who put down the bottle and pledge a life of sobriety do it because they can no longer tolerate the emotional, financial and “spiritual” damage that alcohol addiction brings with it. In the world of AA, this is known as “hitting bottom”. However, even if one had the ability to avoid all the ugliness of being drunk by medically getting instantly “un-drunk” after a binge, the physical effects of alcohol to one’s liver, etc. would still remain.

 But what if an alcoholic took the pill before drinking? I assume it would completely nullify the effects of alcohol and completely prevent intoxication. And make no mistake; it is intoxication, not alcohol itself, to which alcoholics become addicted.

 Some quick backgroud info for those who don't know: I haven’t had a drink in almost 19 years. When I was seventeen it became clear to me that I was incapable of moderation and that drugs and alcohol would kill me if I continued using. Am I an alcoholic? Probably… but maybe not. Frankly, it never made a difference to me whether I am or am not, I just knew that it was time to stop. I would suspect that most teens who use drugs and alcohol don’t exhibit a tremendous amount of moderation, if any at all, so although my behavior was certainly unhealthy to the extreme, the medical diagnosis of “alcoholic” may be inaccurate.  Nevertheless, I attended several Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every week for the first 10 years of my sobriety.

 Without a doubt, getting sober saved my life, however I'm not in the least bit a fan of AA. My biggest problem with AA (will most likely come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog) is the very basis for the program itself . AA hammers in to all who come to them for help that the only way to get and remain sober is through belief in a higher power. Essentially, God, though depending on who you’re talking to in the program, the definition of God will vary, but it's God that will get and keep you sober. This is the central tenant upon which AA is constructed. The 12 steps all focus on personal powerlessness and a relationship with God as being the only escape from a life of alcoholic misery. (Some other time I’ll rant about my disgust with judges who make AA meetings mandatory for drunk drivers and how I feel that court enforced religious attendance is a gross violation of one’s first amendment rights, but that's a whole different kettle-o-fish.) The reality is that AA’s success rate is less than divine.

 According to Alcoholics Anonymous’ own central office, only between 7% - 12% of those who attend meetings remain sober for more than 5 years. Obviously, the concept of anonymity prevents a more accurate number and I don’t know if their stats include those who come back to AA after leaving.  Nonetheless, a 7% - 12% success rate isn’t much to brag about. In fact, it matches the success rate of every other mechanism of “treatment” for alcoholics to get and stay sober. Hypnosis, acupuncture, religion, even cold turkey all have long term sobriety success rates of between 7% - 12% for recovering alcoholics. I’m no statistician, but maybe that’s just the survival rate for the disease, no matter what you do.

 For the ten years I attended meetings I saw countless people come into the program and leave again. Each of them were told over and over again that God would get and keep them sober if they would just turn their lives and their will over to Him. But the fact is that every single one of them went back out to drink because they chose to. Without exception, the people who wanted to drink left and drank and the people who didn’t want to drink stayed and didn’t. To me, this is a classic case of the power of human will, not God’s will.

For me AA served as a good place to remember why drinking and drugs are not a good thing. The misery of the newly sober person made me never want to be newly sober again. But those memories just served as a reinforcement of my will not to drink. Not for one second did I believe that God gave a flying fig whether I drank or not, but I cared. And that’s why I’m still sober today.

I see the biggest question about a drug that can remove the intoxication factor from alcohol as: how will AA address the issue with its members? How will an organization, whose primary message is that the ONLY way to stay sober is through a higher-power, come to terms with a drug that will inevitably have a success rate that blows theirs away?

 This is yet another battlefield in the ongoing war between science and religion, between reason and faith.

 Personally, I’m excited to see how it plays out.

Lately I've been reading a ton of right-wing editorials which all seem to be rich with (rhetorical?) questions. As a service to them, nay, to MANKIND, I will now provide answers to these, the issues that truly plague our conservative brethren.

Jeff Emanuel, Editor, Georgia Conservative Statesman:

Q: “UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called the Iraq war ‘illegal,’ and John Pace, former UN chief of Human Rights for Iraq, has said that human rights conditions are ‘as bad now as they were under Saddam,’ but was it America that filled mass graves with hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqi civilians?”

A: Yes.

Dennis Prager, radio talk show host

Q: "Observers of contemporary society will surely have noted that a liberal is far more likely to fear global warming than a conservative. Why is this?"

A: Because they’re better educated.

Kathleen Parker, syndicated columnist

Q: “Given that Haditha is dense with insurgents whose tactics do not come from the Marine Corps playbook, is it possible that they, not we, killed the civilians, or that they used them as human shields?”

A: Ha ha. No.

George Will, syndicated columnist:

Q: " ‘Military engineers recently cleared garbage from a field in Fallujah, resurfaced it with dirt and put up goal posts to create an instant soccer field. A day later, the goal posts were stolen and all the dirt had been scraped from the field. Garbage began to pile up again.’ An Army captain asked, 'What kind of people loot dirt?' ''

A: People who can't afford dirt.

Ann Coulter, hideous ignorant bitch:

Q: “[I]f gays can’t change, why do liberals think child-molesters can?”

A: They don’t.

If you haven’t read Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens’ (R-Alaska) explanation for his opposition to net neutrality, you’re missing out on a deeply disconcerting perspective. He asked, for example, “what happens to your own personal internet” when someone else tried to download 10 movies at the same time.

“I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially. […]

“They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck. It’s a series of tubes.”

Also, here's The Daily Show on some of Ted's previous senate hijinks..

Check out the above url*. Amazingly enough, the Christ Community Church burns the same books as the Vietnam Communists.

"Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men and they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." Acts 19:19-20