I Speak of Dreams

Things I Didn't Know Before Pastor Anderson Brought Them To My Attention: Eroding Civil Liberties Version

What I have learned thanks to Pastor Anderson:

• The concept of a "Constitution free zone"in the United States
• What a "fusion center" is, and how they threaten our liberties and What's Wrong With Fusion Centers
• That we need a strong ACLU now more than ever

I've never been a "card-carrying member" of ACLU, but I will be now.

 I think that Pastor Anderson and his wife Zsuzssana are creepy, in a fundamentalist, dogmatic,  hate-filled way.

However, Pastor Anderson fell afoul of the law because....

Well, as the ACLU says, Pastor Anderson was in a "Constitution Free Zone". 

He wasn't as compliant as the Border Patrol requires.

As Thomas Elias explained, the  Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952  (which has been found constitutional many times) grants to the Border Patrol  the authority to set up checkpoints and stop traffic anywhere within 100 miles of any U.S. border.  Following 9/11, there's been a huge buildup of manpower by the BP in many reagions across the United States. According to Elias

The bottom line: The Border Patrol's increased manpower means almost anyone can be stopped and searched almost anywhere [within 100 miles of the US Border]. And any agent doing this would most likely be operating entirely within both the law and the patrol's rules.

On the Olympic Peninsula, the Border Patrol has expanded operations, leading to the formation of a local activist group: Border Patrol Free The ACLU of Washington State is planning to sue the Border Patrol for civil rights violations.

ACLU Fact Sheet on U.S. "Constitution Free Zone"

• Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.
• The border, however, has always been an exception. There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.”
• * But what is “the border”? According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States.
• * As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit.
• * Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints inland — on highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona, and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship. Unfortunately, our courts so far have permitted these kinds of checkpoints – legally speaking, they are “administrative” stops that are permitted only for the specific purpose of protecting the nation’s borders. They cannot become general drug-search or other law enforcement efforts.
• * However, these stops by Border Patrol agents are not remaining confined to that border security purpose. On the roads of California and elsewhere in the nation – places far removed from the actual border – agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.
• * The bottom line is that the extraordinary authorities that the government possesses at the border are spilling into regular American streets.

Much of U.S. population affected

• * Many Americans and Washington policymakers believe that this is a problem confined to the San Diego-Tijuana border or the dusty sands of Arizona or Texas, but these powers stretch far inland across the United States.
• * To calculate what proportion of the U.S. population is affected by these powers, the ACLU created a map and spreadsheet showing the population and population centers that lie within 100 miles of any “external boundary” of the United States.
• * The population estimates were calculated by examining the most recent US census numbers for all counties within 100 miles of these borders. Using numbers from the Population Distribution Branch of the US Census Bureau, we were able to estimate both the total number and a state-by-state population breakdown. The custom map was created with help from a map expert at World Sites Atlas.
• * What we found is that fully TWO-THIRDS of the United States’ population lives within this Constitution-free or Constitution-lite Zone. That’s 197.4 million people who live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.
• * Nine of the top 10 largest metropolitan areas as determined by the 2000 census, fall within the Constitution-free Zone. (The only exception is #9, Dallas-Fort Worth.) Some states are considered to lie completely within the zone: Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

Part of a broader problem

• * The spread of border-search powers inland is part of a broad expansion of border powers with the potential to affect the lives of ordinary Americans who have never left their own country.
• * It coincides with the development of numerous border technologies, including watch list and database systems such as the Automated Targeting System (ATS) traveler risk assessment program, identity and tracking systems such as electronic (RFID) passports, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), and intrusive technological schemes such as the Secure Border Initiative Network (SBINet) or “virtual border fence” and unmanned aerial vehicles (aka “drone aircraft”).
• * This illegitimate expansion of the extraordinary powers of agents at the border is also part of a general trend we have seen over the past 8 years of an untrammeled, heedless expansion of police and national security powers without regard to the effect on innocent Americans.
• * This trend is also typical of the Bush Administration’s dragnet approach to law enforcement and national security. Instead of intelligent, competent, targeted efforts to stop terrorism, illegal immigration, and other crimes, what we have been seeing in area after area is an approach that turns us all into suspects. This approach seeks to sift through the entire U.S. population in the hopes of encountering the rare individual whom the authorities have a legitimate interest in.

If the current generation of Americans does not challenge this creeping (and sometimes galloping) expansion of federal powers over the individual through the rationale of “border protection,” we are not doing our part to keep alive the rights and freedoms that we inherited, and will soon find that we have lost some or all of their right to go about their business, and travel around inside their own country, without interference from the authorities.

Marginal Revolution: Time travel back to 1000 A.D.: Survival tips

I have a low taste for alternate history novels. This tickled my interest: Marginal Revolution: Time travel back to 1000 A.D.: Survival tips.

I hope you have an expensive gold wedding band but otherwise start off by keeping your mouth shut. Find someone who will take care of you for a few days or weeks and then look for employment in the local church. Your marginal product is quite low, even once you have learned the local language. You might think that knowing economics, or perhaps quantum mechanics, will do you some good but in reality people won't even think your jokes are funny. Even if you can prove Euler's Theorem from memory no one will understand your notation. I hope you have a strong back and an up to date smallpox vaccination.

Readers, do you have any other tips? Is there any way that Londenio can leverage his knowledge of modernity (he is, by the way, a marketing professor) into socially valuable outputs? Would prattling on about sanitation and communicable diseases do him any good?

I think the comments are particularly good.

A Short article on Dyscalculia

Why some people can't put two and two together - science-in-society - 24 January 2009 - New Scientist.

Why some people can't put two and two together JILL, 19, from Michigan, wants to go to university to read political science. There is just one problem: she keeps failing the mathematics requirement. "I am an exceptional student in all other subjects, so my consistent failure at math made me feel very stupid," she says. In fact, she stopped going to her college mathematics class after a while because, she says, "I couldn't take the daily reminder of what an idiot I was."

Last November, Jill got herself screened for learning disabilities. She found that while her IQ is above average, her numerical ability is equivalent to that of an 11-year-old because she has something called dyscalculia. The diagnosis came partly as a relief, because it explained a lot of difficulties she had in her day-to-day life. She can't easily read a traditional, analogue clock, for example, and always arrives 20 minutes early for fear of being late. When it comes to paying in shops or restaurants, she hands her wallet to a friend and asks them to do the calculation, knowing that she is likely to get it wrong.

Why Snake Oil Cures Still Sell (And Anti-vax Lies Spread)

Back in April, Chris Lee wrote an article for Ars Technica, Why snake oil cures sell - Ars Technica, on the PLOSOne article From Traditional Medicine to Witchcraft: Why Medical Treatments Are Not Always Efficacious

Complementary medicines, traditional remedies and home cures for medical ailments are used extensively world-wide, representing more than US$60 billion sales in the global market. With serious doubts about the efficacy and safety of many treatments, the industry remains steeped in controversy. Little is known about factors affecting the prevalence of efficacious and non-efficacious self-medicative treatments. Here we develop mathematical models which reveal that the most efficacious treatments are not necessarily those most likely to spread. Indeed, purely superstitious remedies, or even maladaptive practices, spread more readily than efficacious treatments under specified circumstances. Low-efficacy practices sometimes spread because their very ineffectiveness results in longer, more salient demonstration and a larger number of converts, which more than compensates for greater rates of abandonment. These models also illuminate a broader range of phenomena, including the spread of innovations, medical treatment of animals, foraging behaviour, and self-medication in non-human primates.

Money quote from Chris Lee:

It also helps me understand why the meme of vaccine damage has spread. There are literally no demonstrators for the effectiveness of vaccination, making social learning difficult.

Dorothy Bishop: Evaluating Alternative Solutions for Dyslexia

Link below takes you to a 36-minute talk on dyslexia, how it is remediated, and how to evaluate solutions or treatments (other than direct, explicit, multi-sensory instruction in reading). dysTalk - Talks - Evaluating Alternative Solutions For Dyslexia.

About this talk: Professor Dorothy Bishop provides an insight into what parents should look out for and what to consider when evaluating if alternative solutions for dyslexia will be effective. About the speaker: Dorothy Bishop is Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology and a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow at the Department of Experimental Psychology in Oxford and Adjunct Professor at The University of Western Australia, Perth. She is a leading expert on dyslexia and developmental langauge disorders.

A New National Anthem and Liberty Pledge

OK, it is well after the 4th of July -- but isn't every day a good day for thinking about civics?

On 4th of July, Jesse Walker at Reason asked the perennial question: what would you suggest for  Alternative Anthems? . Today, I'd vote for This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land.

I'm fond of the 1986 Los Lobos / Bob Weir / Gerry Garcia version on YouTube, and Arlo Guthrie & friends singing verses (also on Youtube).

Here it is sung in a choral version by a high-school choir (YouTube) -- poor acoustics and I am not wild about the choral arrangement.

Here's a herd of preschoolers (or kindergarteners) singing (YouTube)

And 1,803 guitarists and singers ( YouTube -- sorry, the audio is terrible)

Here's a concert-hall version from the gospel group the Talley Trio (YouTube)

On to replacing the Pledge of Allegiance, which only dates back to 1892, and the "under God" phrase was only officially added in 1952.  Shannon Love at the Chicago Boyz suggests replacing the Pledge with a recitation of the Preamble:

We hold these truths to be self-evident,

that all men are created equal,

that they are endowed by their Creator

with certain unalienable Rights,

that among these are

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights,

Governments are instituted among Men,

deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

So say we all!

One of her commenters suggests The American's Creed:

by William Tyler Page

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed, a democracy in a republic, a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

–Written 1917, accepted by the United States House of Representatives on April 3, 1918.

Vicki Forman Reading & Booksigning in Corte Madera in August

I got to know Vicki through her blog, Speak Softly...And Carry the Proverbial Baton Grande.  I met her in person at BlogHer, most notably in 2008 when she was on the "Special Needs Mommy" panel.

Her son, Evan David Kamida, died unexpectly the next week.  She had submitted the manuscript of This Lovely Life in November, 2007.  It was published earlier this year.  Here's an opportunity for you:

Vicki Forman talks about her memoir "This Lovely Life: A Memoir of Premature Motherhood." Forman writes, with brilliant intensity, of her family’s experience after the birth of their severely premature twins, the harrowing medical interventions and ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death

Where: BookPassage, 1 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera, CA 94925
When: Thursday, August 6, 2009, 7:00pm - 8:00pm

More: Facebook Group, Twitter.

Risk Management for Autism Families

Tanya Savko writes the Teen Autism blog and has a two-part story on a Dennis Debbaubt seminar.

Science-Based Medicine » Train Your Brain

Science-Based Medicine » Train Your Brain.

Although not addressed by this study, it is also common for companies to specifically claim that their brain-training exercises alter the brain waves. This is just an added layer of pseudoscience used for marketing. Any company that claims they can improve your brain waves is engaging in pure quackery. Some companies even claim to do this passively, just by listening to their tapes, for example. This would actually be counter productive, as it is active participation in any mental activity that seems to be important for improving mental function.

The market for brain training products this year is estimated at $225 million. This is not all necessarily waste - many may find Brain Age or other such games to be fun in their own right. Just don’t buy the hype.

Skeptics' Circle 114 is Up at Homologous Legs

On the Tendency of Skeptics to form Circles; and on the Perpetuation of Circles and Skeptics by Natural Means of Selection (Skeptics' Circle 114) | Homologous Legs.

It is clear to any naturalist involved in the field of skeptical study that there are more thoughts in a skeptic’s mind at any one point than can ever be written about, with the aid of a blog or not, as evidenced by the apparent ability for a skeptic to write about two completely different topics: perpetual motion and Cap-and-Trade. As such, only a few of the topics that a skeptic wants to write about ever will be. Hence, there is a clear bias in the reproductive nature of writing about science and critical thinking. But what determines which topics are chosen? And how is the medium of the writing affected by this bias?