Raven's Rants

For the last three nights, Crystal and I have been woken up at odd hours in the morning, including once at four o'clock, by a 125 decibel montage of horns honking, sirens wailing and whistles blowing.

However, instead of being treated to an impromptu concert from a bad techno band, we're being startled awake by the car alarm on an late model Honda parked across the street.

This has lead to an inevitable conclusion. If you have and use an audible car alarm on your car or truck, you fit into one of three categories: Idiot, jackass or both.

Whether you think the car alarm is an effective theft deterrent or simply don't care that they are more annoying than a screaming baby in a quiet restaurant, you're out of touch with reality.

The Problem with Car Alarms

The biggest problem with car alarms is that they do nothing to reduce theft. A 1997 study by the insurance industry looked at the claims of over 73 million cars and found that the net effect of audible car alarms was zero.

The reason is two fold. First, no one connects a car alarm with a theft in progress. We're so used to alarms going off for no reason at tall that almost no one takes action when they hear an alarm. Generally, the only times the police are called are when the car alarm has been going on so long that residents wish it would be stolen, in the form of a police impound, or at least the owner be ticketed.

Second, professional thieves, who steal the bulk of cars, can disable an audible alarm in almost no time at all. Though it might be an obstacle to joyriders, the professionals simply do not care.

But this ineffective security comes at a very high price. Car alarms are the number one noise complaint in most cities, including New York, and can result in fines, impounding and other actions. In San Francisco, police are authorized to cut battery cables on a vehicle with a car alarm, New York has impounded some 7000 vehicles for excessive noise and the list of potential repercussions goes on.

The Human Side

Of course, these problems only account for issues faced by car owners. The pubic at large has even more issues to deal with.

Car alarms, and other loud noises, have been related to high blood pressure, stress, sleeplessness, breakdown in civility and countless other physiological and sociological ills.

Some studies have shown that prolonged loud noises can hinder concentration, learning and even reading ability in children. It can also make them less attentive in class and, in some cases, more prone to be disruptive.

To date, no study has found positive benefits to exposure to loud noises. The mind, body and community all suffers when subjected to ongoing high volumes of noise.

Alternatives

This is not to say that you can't take security precautions to protect your vehicle, just that you shouldn't use ineffective, noisy and annoying audible alarms. There are plenty of more effective and less annoying methods to protect your property.

• Immobilizers: Immobilzers are products which prevent cars from being started without the proper key. They work by planting a microchip into the key and, without said chip in the ignition, the car will fail to start. This is dubbed the most effective anti-theft tool and is standard on all Ford and most GM vehicles.
• Steering Wheel/Brake Locks: Though steering wheel locks, such as "The Club", can be somewhat easily beaten by professional thieves, others are more difficult and brake locks, which prevent a thief from depressing the brake and getting the vehicle out of park are considered very effective.
• Silent Pages: Unlike audible alarms, which are easily disabled, do not attract attention and may not alert the owner effectively, silent pagers alert the owner without sounding an audible alarm, are less likely to be disabled and can actually help the owner respond in an effective way.

Conclusions

In the end, there is no reason to use an audible car alarm, let alone buy one. If you're looking into effective ways to protect your investment, save your money for something that does more than just annoy your neighbors.

It's time for the car alarm to be put to bed, so the rest of us can do the same.

The Theory of Evolution has flaws. It is not perfect and no real scientist will claim that it is. Despite this, it has been a very useful scientific tool for analyzing and observing what is going on in our world. Also, thousands of scientists all over the world are working feverishly to either find the missing links of evidence or to find new evidence that modifies the theory. It is a staple of the secular scientific world and, like all good science, is subject to change, updating and clarification.

Nonetheless, Intelligent Design (ID) supporters, many of them former creationists, want to make it clear that the Theory of Evolution isn't perfect and that there are alternatives to it. They want to force disclaimers in the classroom, place stickers on textbooks and make it clear to students that Darwin's theory is not beyond reproach.

While I have no problem with encouraging students to question scientific theories. I am disturbed that supporters of ID are only interested in questioning the Theory of Evolution. After all, quantum physics is a theory, relativity is a theory and most of what we now call modern science is theory.

But the reason we don't see communities rallying against the theory of relativity is that the conversion of energy into matter isn't mentioned anywhere in a religious text that I've read. No one's view of God or their faith in respect to the matter is affected by Albert Einstein's theory. So, despite the flaws and problems with that theory, science teachers can continue talking about it as if it were scientific fact, with no stickers or disclaimers required.

Clearly, this attack on the Theory of Evolution has less to do with good science and more to do with protecting God and putting him back, even if only in a small way, into our science classrooms. If ID supporters were interested in creating good scientists, they would attach their warnings and disclaimers to all theories, not just the one that they view as attacking their religious beliefs.

Thus, even if the ID theory has scientific merit, which is questionable considering the dubious scientific process most of their scientists have used, it is clearly being introduced for the wrong reasons. Furthermore, where the Theory of Evolution had to fight for decades to be accepted, with many good scientists collecting evidence to support it, ID wants to be accepted and integrated into the classroom today, with very little evidence to support it and few mainstream scientists putting stock in it.

Worse still, most of the evidence supporters of ID bring to the table is little more than holes in the existing theories. They offer no proof as to why these holes are explained by the existence of an outside intelligence and only say that they must be. But even as they assume that no other logical explanations are available, other scientists have been offering them while others have worked to test their theories.

This "no other explanation" theory seems to claim that Evolution is a done deal and that the theory is never going to be tweaked, improved or modified. However, all scientific theory is prone to that and nothing is set in stone to a true practitioner of science. After all, nearly every great scientific discovery has been either by accident or someone simply questioning the status quo and proving it wrong.

In the end, the Theory of Evolution is a testament to the very concept thereof. It is evolving rapidly and improving itself to defend against threats. It's an homage to how the scientific method is supposed to work and, though it is imperfect, so is all life and all ideas on the planet.

If supporters of ID want to help science, they should encourage questioning of all theories, not just the ones that fly against their personal and political agenda, and back up their theory with hard facts, not just conjecture and hole-punching.

Finally, they need to be aware that their theory, if it becomes accepted, will be tested and questioned much like how they have tested and questioned evolution. They need to be ready for that inevitability both personally and scientifically.

However, given the personal nature of this war to date, I doubt that they will be. After all, it's hard to be unbiased when you feel that your faith is being challenged. That rage is understandable, but it has no place in the scientific process or the science classroom.

In the United States, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and similar leagues have an uphill battle. State athletic commissions refuse to sanction them, congressmen try to ban them, sponsors refuse to back them and cable/satellite companies refuse to carry their events.

In this country, we look at the caged in ring, the bare knuckles (or small grapple gloves some leagues use), painful submission holds and occasional bloodied face with contempt. To us, such a sport is brutal if not outright barbaric. To further complicate matters, early UFC advertisements, many American’s first exposure to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) action, highly touted the danger to fighters, especially the risk of death.

However, in other nations, there’s no such disgust with MMA fights. In South America and Asia, MMA is a sport on par with soccer or baseball. Major events are televised nationally, sponsors line up and competitors make money on par with other national celebrities. To them, joining a martial arts school is like joining a little league team, it’s just a normal part of growing up.

Much like soccer, MMA is a sport where America is isolated from the world. Though we have many great competitors and are constantly creating new ones, they often have to go overseas to compete, either part time or full time, in order to make the most of their career. UFC is the only large-scale MMA event in the United States and it lags behind other leagues both in talent and reputation.

But unlike soccer, most of America’s problems with MMA stem from misinformation and confusion, not lack of interest. Because no matter what your local politician says, underneath the hype and the sound bytes lies a very serious and very safe sport, one that could easily be many times more popular than it is.

The Myths of MMA

Most people who feel strongly against MMA events base their arguments on one of three pieces of misinformation, each of which contribute to the lack of respect the sport gets in the United States

MMA is Dangerous

As with any contact sport, the risk of injury in MMA is high. However, many steps are taken to ensure that MMA matches are safe for everyone involved. Every element of the setup of an MMA event is done with safety in mind and, overall, MMA has a better safety record than boxing or kickboxing.

In boxing, the leading cause of death is brain damage. Brain damage is usually caused by repeated trauma to the head. Boxing matches can last up to 12 rounds, or thirty-six minutes of fight time, with near-constant blows to the head. Worse still, the padded boxing gloves do little to protect the fighters’ heads but are instead designed to protect the hands of the fighter throwing the punches. This encourages fighters to punch to the temple and side of the head, accelerating the damage done and actually increasing the risk of damage.

MMA matches, by comparison, are much shorter. The average match lasts only a few minutes and some last only a couple of seconds, almost all of that time spent on the ground. If an MMA match goes longer than fifteen minutes, it’s considered a marathon and an oddity. Furthermore, blows to the side and top of the head are actually very rare since hitting with bare knuckles or thin gloves is more likely to injure a hand or wrist than the person receiving the blows. Finally, referees in MMA matches stop fights quickly if a fighter receives too many unanswered blows, even if they’re still on their feet, contrast that with boxing where a knockdown followed by a ten count is usually required to stop a fight.

Another leading cause of injury in boxing is the ropes around the ring. Fighters can fall through the ropes, crashing to the floor below, or they can get backed up against them and take blows to the face, hyper-extending their neck as they arch backwards. Most MMA leagues, by comparison, use a tall cage that prevents such accidents. That’s why, even though we’re taught by Hollywood and professional wrestling that cage matches are brutal, in reality, they’re much safer than the alternative.

The truth is that the most common injuries from MMA matches are broken hands from incorrect punching and broken arms or legs from submission holds not tapped out of in time. Where 2-3 boxers die each year of head injuries, only one MMA fighter has died in recent memory, anywhere in the world, and he showed signs of head injury before he stepped into the ring. Most agree that if the fight had taken place in the United States or Asia (he was fighting in Ukraine), he wouldn’t have been allowed to compete.

In the end, MMA is safer than boxing ever could be and is on par with other full contact sports. Banning it or not sanctioning it on the grounds of safety is both misinformed and hypocritical. There is no way around it.

MMA Isn’t a Sport

A lot of Americans have the impression that MMA matches are just brawls and that leagues like the UFC are little more than fight clubs. While it’s true that most leagues try as hard as they can to closely simulate a street fight, there’s little denying that the matches look nothing like one.

This isn’t something that people just show up for randomly. MMA competitors are professional athletes and train year-around, non-stop, to compete. Unlike most other sports, there’s no “season” or downtime, events are held year around and all over the globe. For most, training is a full-time job as they condition both their bodies and minds to compete.

Second, even though MMA matches are short, that doesn’t mean they aren’t physically draining. A boxer can tell you exactly how tiring one three-minute round of stand-up fighting can be. Combine that with kicking, grappling and submission wrestling and you have a recipe for the most tiring five minutes of your life.

But most important of all, your average MMA match isn’t just a slug fest, it a contest of strength, skill and endurance and you have to know striking, grappling and submission wrestling to succeed. Sure, anyone can get into a fight, much like anyone can play football, but to do it safely and on a professional level requires a very high level of skill that can only come with a lifetime of commitment to the sport.

In the end, it’s no different than any other sport in terms of the athleticism, the strategy and the dedication that is required to succeed. If athletes in football, baseball and basketball deserve our respect, clearly so do MMA competitors.

MMA is Too Violent

As MMA has begun to gain traction in the United States, some people, including many in government, have said that it’s too violent for American TV. Though that definitely seems hypocritical in a country that airs shoot outs, car chases and other horrific scenes on the evening news, it’s a concern that’s made MMA almost impossible to sanction in many states.

Simply put though, anyone who says MMA is too violent has never watched a full event. Instead, they’ve almost certainly had their information filtered and probably watched nothing but a few short clips, more akin to highlight reels. Based upon that, it’s easy to see how they were led to believe that it’s a veritable bloodsport when, normally, nothing can be further from the truth. Yes, there are some very violent moments, but judging MMA based on those flashes in the pan is akin to judging football or hockey solely on their “hardest hits” reels. It’s unfair and leads to false conclusions.

Any contact sport will have violent moments, be them hard checks, stiff shots or vicious tackles. It doesn’t matter if you play football, hockey, soccer or even baseball, violence happens. However, in all cases, the actual sport winds up looking very different from the highlight reel.

Most MMA contests are fought more like chess matches than brutal bloodbaths. It’s very rare for fighters to simply trade blows and most fights take place on the ground with both competitors seeking a submission ending. Knockouts do happen and blood is sometimes spilled, but both are relatively rare occurrences. Contrast with boxing, where the only way to win is to punch your opponent repeatedly, and one begins to wonder what is more violent, a sport that encourages brain jarring punching or a ground fighting chess match where few punches are thrown and, for the most part, no damage is done.

Given both MMA’s popularity in countries much more squeamish about violence than the United States and the violent content already available both in our movies and on our television, MMA seems very tame, even if one dismisses the boxing comparison.

After all, no one gets shot, blown up, run over by a car, stabbed or beaten with any other kind of weapon. That automatically makes it less violent than your average cartoon.

In the end, MMA has the potential to be the next great American sport but, instead, is stifled by misinformation and hypocrisy. Though the industry does have itself to blame for many of these problems, the time has clearly come for America to wake up and appreciate MMA for what it is, an age old contest played out by trained athletes in a safe environment.

Which, from what I’ve gathered, is the very definition of the word sport.

Every week in the United States, innocent men are sentenced to death, either directly by lethal injection or indirectly by being given prison terms far longer than any human's natural life. Every week in the United States, rapists, murderers and child molesters are set free on technicalities, hung juries and smooth lawyering.

However, for almost every week, no one does anything about it.

The reason is that we have a justice system in place. It is imperfect, as is any system run by human beings, but it is there for a reason and it has a set of rules that it has to follow. Order must be preserved, the rule of law must be followed and, most importantly, everyone must be equal before the eye of the court.

Of course, we all understand that, in reality, not everyone is equal before the court and the recent Terri Schiavo only further illustrates that fact.

Simply put, Mrs. Shiavo's parents have something that no rape victim or innocent death row inmate will ever have, an act of congress to give them one more shot at getting the verdict they want.

For anyone else in the country, the case would be settled. Mrs. Shiavo's parents have had their day in court, many of them in fact, and have consistently lost as judge after judge has found in favor of Mrs. Shiavo's husband. Under current law, the case had gone as far as it could and was, in effect, over.

But Congress, like many Americans, decided it didn't like the verdict and was vocal about it, which is a fundamental right of every American. However Congress, unlike the rest of America, decided that it was going to do something about it and that it had the authority to intervene directly.

In effect, our legislature bent the laws governing the separation of powers and gave Terri's parents a “do over”. More to the point, they kicked the case over to federal court, even after a federal judge had repeatedly said he didn't have jurisdiction over the matter, effectively twisting the judicial system in a bid to get the verdict they want.

Yes, the Shiavo case deals with some difficult issues and, yes, the outcome of it is uneasy, as is any outcome in such a matter. However, that is what judges are for, to listen to the facts, look at the law, consider the best interest of the party involved and make difficult decisions in very charged cases. Not every verdict is loved or even liked, but that is no excuse for people who know little about the facts of the case to step in and undermine the system.

What makes the Shiavo case so different isn't that there was an unpopular verdict, but rather, that it deals with a politically charged issue and has spent so much time in the news. It's no longer about Shiavo, her family or even the right to die, it's about politicians looking good for the voters, even if it means ignoring nation-wide problems, bending constitutional limitations on their power and overruling judges who know far more about the case than they.

Congress' job, supposedly, is to make laws, not enforce them. However, they've sent a clear message that, if they don't get the verdict they like in a controversial case, they'll just keep using their powers until they either get the verdict they like or they run out of judges to put it in front of.

Worse still, the federal judge who gets the case has a clear idea of what verdict Washington D.C. wants and his position is directly appointed by the President with approval from Congress. Like an employee critical of his boss' plan, he has no chance of being impartial because his livelihood is on the line.

But perhaps the greatest injustice of all is that, if Congress is so hell-bent on using its power to manhandle the justice system, there are plenty of cases where justice was clearly denied. Given all of the times the justice system has obviously failed us, a series of Florida judges making unpopular decisions in a very difficult and controversial case seems rather minor.

In the end, this is an abuse of power in the worst possible way. It's a bending of the constitution, a trampling of our judicial system and a thumb to the eye of every citizen denied justice. All for a case with no easy answer and no hope for a happy ending.

No one can find justice when the judicial system is undermined and those who undermine it have forsaken the ideals it was founded upon. However, that's exactly the situation we're heading for if this type of bullying is allowed to continue.

Because, as imperfect as our justice system is, we have to let it work. Piecemeal justice means justice for none but those who are somehow deemed worthy. There's no way for everyone to be equal in such an environment and equality, supposedly, is our most cherished value of all.

The RavenSpeak column has become one of the most popular sections of Raven's Rants. Despite initial fears of not "fitting in" with the rest of the site, the column has gained a great deal of popularity and sparked some powerful and interesting debates.

In that regard, I consider it a smashing success.

However, what I've found most interesting is watching how people respond to my opinions. Through comments and email, I hear, pretty much every day, what others think about my work and my opinions. I hear the good, the bad and the ugly loud and clear.

Some of the comments praise my thoughts, others criticize them, some defend me, and some threaten to kill me. However, a select few point out issues that I missed or make me realize that there's a need for clarification on a point.

Though, to date, I haven't reversed my opinion on any of the subjects, there have been a few I wish I could revisit in light of the feedback I've gotten. So, rather than create a series of sequel columns, I'm answering some of the charges and questions here.

So, with no further ado, I'll get into the columns in question.

No "Fat Chicks" Allowed (link)

I've heard more back about this column than any other. Though it lags way behind in terms of comments, the bevy of email I've gotten regarding it has blown me away.

However, there's been a constant criticism based on the theory that I'm completely ignoring America's obesity problem and that I am somehow encouraging unhealthy behavior.

I grant, I didn't make this very clear and I didn't come right out and say as such (I didn't think it was needed) but I do believe that obesity is a major problem, especially in the United States.

However, look at the very first sentence of the piece, the average dress size, pretty much all over the industrialized world, including nations without major obesity problems, is fourteen.

That's a bitter pill to swallow, especially for people who have starved themselves and worked out to fit the American standard of beauty, which is in the low single digits, but it is true and it's a figure that stands in nations that are practically devoid of obesity AND eating disorders.

The truth is that, by birth, every woman is different and some women, no matter what, will never be "thin". Medicine is growing to accept the idea of different body types; it's the world that lags behind.

If you need proof, someone very close to me had a battle with anorexia when she was a teenager. She starved herself so much she made herself ill and was almost put into a hospital. It's one of the saddest stories I know, but even at the lowest point in her disease, she never dropped below a size 12.

Now, are you going to tell this girl that she should aspire to be "thin"? That she's not healthier at a size fourteen or sixteen than she would be at an eight or a six?

If I'm insensitive to the obesity problem it's because I'm very sensitive to the psychological and physical damage a bad body image can do to someone. Yes, obesity comes with medical problems, but so do depression, anorexia, bulimia, social anxiety and all of the other side effects from a negative self image.

Yes, everyone should strive to be healthy, but some women will never be thin and telling everyone that they should aspire to be as such nothing short of a psychological browbeating on a nation-wide scale. These women need to know the truth that they are beautiful and society needs to accept that.

Because, until it does, we're not going to fix ANY of our weight problems…

The Legalization of Marijuana (link)

Very few people have said anything negative about this piece.

However, those who have have never been able to attack my logic. My fundamental argument, which is that keeping marijuana illegal while cigarettes and alcohol remain available is hypocritical, has never been attacked.

Instead, in my opinion, the biggest threat to my argument has come from my fellow supporters. One of the biggest problems the marijuana community faces is a public perception that it's filled stupid, disrespectful and foul-mouthed youths who lack morals, ambition or intellect.

Yet, if you read the comments to the piece, they go to great lengths to further that image. A vast majority offer little of value, many contain obscenities and several promote risky or just plain asinine behavior. Though there are many great and thought-provoking comments to the piece there, they are drowned quickly in a sea of all caps and obscenities.

In the end, I feel as if I've done the marijuana community a great disservice. Though my arguments are valid and I stand by them, I also gave a forum that furthered the negative images others have of pot smokers. Though I initially deleted these comments, I realized that it violated my own TOS to do so and now no comment that doesn't outright violate my TOS isn't removed, even if drives another nail into my argument.

Still though, I always cringe when I get another comment for this piece in my inbox. It's rarely pretty and even now, following my TOS strictly, I have to delete many of them.

Sometimes, what you see is only the tip of the iceberg.

Why Telemarketers Are Evil… (link)

This one hasn't generated a lot of comments nor has it carried much weight in my inbox. However, it did get me the one letter that has stood out in my mind the most.

Many weeks after posting it and just a few days before the do not call list was to take effect. I got a scathing three-page letter from the wife of an owner of a major telemarketing company.

The letter, by in large, failed to address my arguments at all. Instead, the main thrust of her letter was spent accusing me of taking food off her family's table and detailing her celebration for when the "Do Not Call" list was stricken down in court.

Luckily, she was very wrong.

The one comment she did make that stuck was her accusation that I was betraying the notion of free speech. In her mind, my support of this restriction was tantamount to treason against free press.

I do have to admit that, as a Libertarian, this is a bit against my principles. After all, I consider myself a true freedom fighter and I oppose government regulation whenever it can be avoided.

However, a free society depends on personal responsibility. Telemarketers have shown a great deal of irresponsibility not only to their advertisers by wasting precious dollars on people who don't want to hear any messages from them, but also to the populace.

Furthermore, where we can avoid other forms of advertising by not picking up the magazine, driving a different way to work or turning off the TV, telemarketing calls are intrusive, reaching into our homes, and can not be avoided.

Nonetheless, if telemarketers would have honored their own lists, like the one published by the DMA, I never would have supported this initiative. But despite being on the DMA’s list for years, I still received telemarketing calls almost daily and it was painfully clear that self-regulation wasn't going to be enough.

Because when you're dealing with an industry that has no respect for the advertisers it serves or the populace it's trying to reach, government interaction becomes a necessary evil. All I'm doing is choosing the lesser of the two injustices.

There's nothing complicated about that.

Every campaign season, I watch as politicians carry on about whatever issues are hot at the moment, trying to scrape together the last of the key undecided votes and build momentum toward election day. Every time, without fail, what starts as big ideas and dreams deteriorates into meaningless pandering and mudslinging.

But, at the same time, something always gets ignored and it leaves me uncomfortable. In the middle of the issues, strategies, stump speeches and outright lies, what I consider the most important question never gets asked. So, I ask it now.

Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry, why do you want to be President?

Now, before anyone answers this seemingly simple question, let me clarify it. I'm asking this question in the exact same way a job interviewer would ask an applicant. Why do you want to work at my company? Why do you want this position? Etc. I need to know this so I can decide if I want to "hire" one of them, which is fundamentally what voting does.

You can't answer this question by going back to the issues. Saying that you want to be president to win the war on terror, fix health care or whatever simply doesn't make sense and it's more pandering, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. This is a personal question and it needs a personal answer.

Also, you can't answer the question by saying anything like "To serve the American people" or "To serve the country I love." There's countless ways to serve your country without becoming President. If you want to serve your country, you can do charity work for the rest of your life. Soup kitchens and Red Crosses all over the country would love to have you, no mudslinging required.

Third, don't tell me that it's been a dream of yours since you were a child, if anything, tell me why it was a dream. My dream when I was little was to be a paleontologist, I loved dinosaurs and I loved playing in the dirt, it seemed a natural combination. Tell me what made you seek out the Presidency, not when you first felt that way.

Finally, no sob stories about meeting President so and so in person and feeling inspired. Those are great stories, very touching, but they're hardly reasons for going through a year-long campaign. I'm after practical, real life reasons for wanting the job.

You see, the way I look at it, the Presidency is a job almost no one should want. How many jobs do you know of require one year of daily interviewing, background checks are performed constantly by the snoopiest reporters and the other candidates of the job will spend nearly a year picking you apart with both television and print ads with no consideration of your feelings or needs.

Then consider that the job itself, if you can survive the "interview", pays only $100,000 a year for CEO level work, is a 24/7 job with no real vacations, subjects you to constant attacks during your four-year term and has the stress of making life and death decisions, not just for a few people, but a whole nation of three hundred million.

Between the campaigning, the hours, the stress and the constant barrage of attacks I can only see one reason for taking this job and that is the power that comes with being the leader of the world's only superpower.

If I'm to believe that, then only power hungry lunatics would every put themselves through the paces of this grueling job. Thus, I have a tremendous distrust of anyone who makes it their mission to become the President of the United States and, for a candidate to gain my trust, they need to answer that one question to my satisfaction.

Of course, with this election, I really don't have to ask it. The obvious corporate backing on both sides makes it painfully clear that, like it or not, this is an election about power. One powerful man wants more, the other wants to maintain his.

It might be scary to think of the American citizens as mere pawns in a global game of power, but that's what we are. Like it or not, democracy gives us the power to hire and fire those who will lead us. However, it also creates positions that only the most rich and powerful will be able to obtain and only the most power-hungry will have the stomach to shoot for it.

Until we get a President who needs the job to feed his family or to get insurance on his kids, we're never going to be able to trust the motives of a Presidential candidate.

Instead, all we can do is sit back and hope that their motives are not too sinister and that America survives another four years of greed.

Which is amusing because, right now, I honestly feel that greed is the only thing keeping this country going. After all, without it, no one would want to become President.

Would you?

I’m not a sports fan. I feel I should make the clear up front. I’m not the type to obsess over what season it is or isn’t, I don’t play fantasy sports and I don’t follow any teams, college or pro, with any zeal.

In fact, I can’t say that I took any real interest in the Olympics. I checked the medal counter from time to time, I watched the headlines as they’ve come up and caught, at most an hour or two of coverage. It, like most other sports, held little draw to me and don’t seem to fulfill my personal life in any way.

However, I do recognize that sports, due to their significance to others, has a tremendous impact on the world around us and play a surprisingly large role in international politics and the global community. As anyone who read about the recent Japan/China soccer match knows, sports can raise tensions between nations, symbolize a budding friendship between countries or serve as an olive branch between feuding lands.

On that note, the Olympics are supposed to be the ultimate olive branch. It’s a place where all of the nations of the world can meet on the field of athletic competition and interact not as enemies, allies, superpowers or conquered lands, but as individuals and athletes.

So grand is this notion that, during the ancient Olympic games in Greece, any wars that were ongoing were stopped for the Olympics and athletes were given safe passage to the games.

Though no one expects quite that level of chivalry in these modern times, it would be nice if the games still hearkened back to the idea that they are the athletic olive branch and that they have a role in creating global harmony.

But to do that, they must first take a radical step, eliminate all events that are decided entirely or largely by judges. Period. If a competition can’t be one by being faster, stronger, scoring more points or some other tangible, measurable attribute, it needs to be tossed.

Simply put, by allowing events that are decided by judges, the Olympics are leaving competitions open not only to controversy, but to personal preference, bias, whims, political dispositions and a million other factors that have nothing to do with athletics at all.

Think about it, even if we ignore the recent spate of judging errors and other controversies, judging an event, especially something like gymnastics or diving, is a purely subjective thing. How can we expect, in events where the margin of victory is 1/100 or even 1/1000 of a point, that a judge’s personal bias, political or personal, doesn’t make the difference between silver and gold.

As long as judges are humans making subjective calls, they’re going to make them for odd reasons, especially in “toss up” situations. It doesn’t matter if the judge likes or dislikes the athlete’s country, political ideology or their outfit. These are all elements that should never have a bearing on their score but very likely will.

What’s the result of all of this subjectivity? First off, voting blocs are formed. As the recent ice skating scandal proved, Olympic judges are not above working with other judges to give their country an edge. Given human nature and patriotism, we should have expected this behavior and I’m sure the 2002 games wasn’t the first time it happened, just the first time it was exposed.

Second, it opens the door for controversy. Is Hamm really the Olympic gold medallist? Should a second medal be awarded to the Koreans? What about the Americans who had their routine reduced to 9.9 starting value afterward? And what about the Russian gymnast who got his score changed after the crowd expressed extreme disapproval? Judges make it so that we have champions no one is really sure are champions and losers that, on another day with the exact same routines, could have won just as easily.

Finally, and worst of all, it creates disharmony between nations. Since there is no “Switzerland” of international competition, judges to come from competing nations and, as such, it’s inevitable that, at some point, a judge will vote high on his own country or low on an opposing one and cause an international incident.

Because even though sports, in the big picture of politics and global relations, are minor and insignificant, emotions do run high around them for both athletes and spectators. Like it or not, feuds and even wars have started over sport and the Olympics opening the door to such high controversy in such a tense, global, environment is not just dangerous, it’s borderline irresponsible.

After all, we don’t want the olive branch of sports to become a flashpoint for world tension. There’s enough hazard in that without adding the element of human judges to the mix. We need to minimize the role of third party participants as much as possible and make the playing field as fair and unbiased as we can.

It’s not only in the best interest of the Olympics and the notion of fair play, but in the best interest of world harmony.

If anyone was surprised when Kerry picked Edwards to be his running mate, I feel sorry for them. Edwards had been the top choice ever since the primaries and never got knocked down from the top of the list, even as other, bigger names were kicked around.

But more important than being the top choice since Kerry locked the democratic nomination is the fact that Edwards was by far the safest choice. Controversy, at least in a major way, has not found Mr. Edwards, the American public has little, if any, preconceived notions about the first term senator and he's a lukewarm add on to an already lukewarm ticket.

After all, there's little denying that John Kerry has done everything he can to play it safe this election. He's avoided serious controversy, has not taken a serious stance on any major issue and, despite repeatedly claiming that America is headed in the wrong direction, has yet to take a firm stance against any of Bush's popular policies. Instead, he's focused on the problems America faces (Economy, health care, terrorism, etc.) which are painfully obvious and not up for debate.

All of this has earned Kerry a reputation of being a waffler, of straddling the issues. A very fair criticism of both his recent voting on the senate floor and his various and often conflicting public stances on the issues.

There's little doubt that Kerry and Edwards are running the Ho-Hum ticket, an uninspiring, safe, lukewarm campaign that's as much interested in avoiding controversy and public hatred as it ever was in actually recruiting voters.

The question is, instead, whether or not this is actually a bad idea.

The Kerry strategists probably realized a long time ago that this isn't an election about John Kerry. It's about George W. Bush who, despite his initial promises to be a uniter and not a divider, has become one of the most divisive political figures in the history of the nation.

With Bush's approval ratings hovering just above 40% and the entire nation polarized either for or against the sitting president, (a fire further flamed by Michael Moore's latest flick, Fahrenheit 9/11) it seems all Kerry has to do is stand over to the side, look like a plausible alternative to Bush and not tick off anyone between now and November.

If this is true, the the Ho-Hum ticket, as bizarre as it is, might just be the best one to ride on. Saying little, avoiding controversy and letting Bush sink himself could turn out to be an effective campaign strategy.

This wouldn't be the first time such a strategy had been used successfully. In my home state of South Carolina, in 1998, James Hodges, a democrat in a very Republican state, unseated the extremely unpopular governor David Beasley by simply harping on what everyone agreed was wrong and offering little in the way of agendas or policies for correcting them.

Though the strategy worked wonderfully and gave Hodges the historic win, Hodges turned out to be a weak and ineffective governor and he himself was voted out four years later by Republican Mark Sanford, a charismatic "nice guy" that won popular support not so much for his policies as his likability.

If this is accurate and Kerry is intentionally running on the Ho Hum ticket, he'd do well to learn the lessons of former Governor Hodges. If elected, he can't let his intentionally weak campaign translate into being a weak leader and he needs to realize that, though playing it safe is great for unseating unpopular leaders, it doesn't work well in the face of a real challenge.

Still though, in the short run and depending on what happens to President Bush between now and November, it could be a winning strategy for 2004. As the Detroit Pistons learned earlier this year, sometimes the best way to win a battle is to let your opponent unravel themselves and, for all appearances, that seems to be what's happening.

It'll be interesting to see if that holds and, if it does, what happens to the Kerry presidency. Future political strategists and history book authors will be watching with baited breath.

When the photographs of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners came out, I wasn’t shocked. I was heartbroken, sad and even a bit bitter, but not shocked. Simply put, I understood going into this war that these types of things happen in war and that, no matter how many conventions you hold, no matter how much you try to civilize war or how much you try to humanize the enemy, war, fundamentally, is a brutal struggle that invariably brings out the worst in mankind.

Instead, what I’ve found shocking is the surprise from the rest of the country. More than any prisoner abuse scandal, I find the naivete of my fellow Americans far more surprising. It’s become painfully obvious that, most of those who were in support of the war, felt we were going in to fight a John Wayne war where we would liberate the people of Iraq, kill the bad guys, be lauded for our efforts and go home heroes.

If that’s the case, then clearly America has a very short memory.

After all, if Korea and Vietnam hold any lessons for us, it’s that our past attempts to “liberate” other nations by force always wind up becoming a mutual contest of disturbing behavior that shows exactly how low people can sink when their lives are on the line. Be it throwing a grenade into a schoolhouse or torturing Iraqi prisoners with electrodes in hopes of extracting information, the concept is the same, survival at any cost.

On a related note, I’ve also observed, but am not shocked by, the lack of outrage from the Arab world over the brutal deaths of Mr. Berg and other Americans killed in Iraq, even though the American abuse of Iraqi prisoners had made headlines across the globe. Though the lack of condemnation and outrage is regrettable, it isn’t shocking either.

After all, what else should we have expected when we go alone to invade an Arab country, overthrow its leaders and then fail to find proof of justification for that war. No one, Arab or otherwise is saying that Saddam was a great man, but those much harped-on WMDs never turned up and the entire justification for this brutal war fell through.

Instead, what’s become painfully obvious to me is that America was not prepared for this war. Our gung-ho mentality, especially among our leaders, hid the fact that we had long since forgotten what actually goes on inside a real war. Perhaps the first Persian Gulf War with its speed and multinational support had softened us to the harsh realities of an ongoing conflict, perhaps we, as a nation, gave in too easily to the Bush administration’s propaganda or most likely, we’re just a nation with a real short memory, especially when it comes to our human flaws.

Basically, anyone who supported the war in Iraq but now decries the prisoner abuse needs to ask themselves a hard question, “What did you expect?” If you beat the war drums, but didn’t expect things like prisoner abuse, outrage from the Arab world and atrocities on both sides, you went into it blind. There’s no way around it, especially in light of recent events.

As a nation, we should have expected this. We should have known that there’s no other outcome of war than inhumanity and cruelty. I’m not a peace-loving pacifist by any stretch, I realize that war has its place and can be very necessary, but these are simple truths about war that should be weighed before going into battle, not regretted afterward.

Personally, I was against this war from the beginning and the reasons above were among the ones I gave. I couldn’t understand how so many others could favor such a needless war, but now, I believe I see the problem. In short, we, as a country, let our naivete and idealism get in the way of our better judgment and memories of wars gone by.

As a result of that error in judgment, we’ve lost the moral high ground in Iraq (if we ever had it in the first place), we’ve stoked the fires of Muslim terrorism in a way Bin Laden had only dreamed of and done so much damage to our reputation as a nation than it will take decades, if not centuries, to even begin a repair.

Therefore, all that I can hope for is that, as a nation, this embarrassment teaches us something and that this time the lesson sticks with us. Yes, war can be necessary, justified and good, but getting ourselves into senseless and needless wars only brings about pain, suffering and more problems than ever could have been solved by the actual conflict.

In short, war is a last resort, not a tool to achieve an end, and any other use of it is going to spread only misery, not freedom, wherever we go.

A lesson now learned not in history books, but on the news.

When Janet Jackson stood there on the stage of the Super Bowl Halftime Show, for that split-second where her right breast was exposed to the world, she probably wasn't thinking about the controversy it would cause and, if she was, she certainly didn't realize how long it would carry on.

There's no way that she could have predicted that, weeks after the incident, that the media would still be hounding her about her overexposure, that the legal and political ripple effect would be continuing or that pictures of it would still be gracing the covers of newspapers, Web sites and magazines.

The reason for this is because, if you strip away the politicians pounding the table for tougher indecency laws, the lawsuit filed against her and subsequently dropped, the tearful apologies and the ongoing question of “Was it an accident?”, you have one thing and one thing alone left, a breast. Or rather, a brief one-second image of a breast shown on national TV.

It's sad to say, but the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the world has been brought to a screeching halt by the appearance of a woman's breast. A simple piece of human flesh has taken headlines away from the ongoing conflict in Iraq, the emerging election year and countless other real news stories. It's caused politicians to turn their attention away from running the country and focus on how to best prevent another breast from getting on television.

If this doesn't make you feel silly, nothing will.

It's so ridiculous and so inane that it's not worth writing a column over. However, it's not worth any of the other coverage it's gotten either and that is the problem. Not that Janet Jackson may have intentionally shown her breast on national TV, or that we need stricter standards for television broadcasts, but that we're now a nation so deeply offended by a glimpse of a partially nude body that, when one appears at Halftime on the Super Bowl, we shut down.

No other industrialized nation has such an extreme fear of the nude human body. In Japan, topless women frequently adorn prime time television, in Europe, full frontal nudity is allowed on many time slots and partial is acceptable in most others. No one in those countries seems to be offended by it and, if anyone is, they've employed a tried and true tactic of turning off the TV.

However, in America, supposedly the leaders of the free world, we go into an uproar over a male butt on NYPD Blue or a brief flash of a female breast on the Super Bowl halftime show. The only other nations with stricter views of decency on television are Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran and I seriously doubt we want to pattern our concept of free speech and expression after countries with only state-run television stations.

The bitter truth is that, for some reason, in America, we're easily offended by the human body. Though much of this stems from the uniquely American idea that sex is, for some reason, taboo, it also stems from the notion that we should be offended by anything we don't approve of and that we should make television as safe and as non-offensive of an environment as possible.

The result of all of that is some pretty funny rules about what can and can not be shown on television. Scenes involving violence, harsh language and even clothed (or blurred) sexuality have been permitted, but nudity, even non-sexual nudity such as the showing of an elderly woman's breasts on ER, has been blocked with only a few notable exceptions.

The problem with this, as I've stated in other essays, is that we've got our priorities backwards. While gun battles, fistfights and acts of physical abuse are available for daily consumption, a brief glimpse of a woman's breast is enough to get your congressman worked up.

Say what you want about Janet Jackson's motivations or intentions, you still have to admit that the whole thing is not just silly, but downright mindless.

If we're going to progress culturally, as a society, we have to get over some of our odd hangups about sex and the human body. Perhaps the reason our televisions are filled with a mindless dribble of sitcoms , “reality shows” and action shows is that, basically, that's all we can run. When honest storytelling, or even just good fun, is hampered by the ill-conceived notion that the human form is offensive, more than just television suffers.

Indeed, this is a notion that doesn't just affect what we watch on TV, but it affects the quality of life we have in every way. It goes beyond the TV and into every aspect of our lives, our government and even our art.

And that's why we can't let this backwards mentality stand. Not only is it an embarrassment to the United States and it's notion of freedom, especially after something like Janet Jackson's “showcase” creates such an uproar, but it's a very poor reflection on our priorities as a nation and our ideals as a people and as individuals.

After all, when a breast can shut down the nation, one has to wonder how we're going to deal with real problems and real issues. And frankly, I don't think there are any answers to that, at least not any good ones.

I've been called a lot of nasty names in my life, but misogynist isn't on the list, at least it's not one of the names I hear regularly from relatively well-informed people.

The truth is that I've always considered myself a male feminist and I've worked hard to that end. But, at the same time, I've found myself at odds with the traditional feminist movement and I've even grown to fear that feminism may be the very thing holding a lot of women back.

You see, I'm a feminist in that I'm an egalitarian. I believe that all people, regardless of race, sex, religion, etc. should have equal protection under law and equal opportunities in society.

With that in mind, it's hard to deny that women have been treated unfairly and, in many ways, continue to be treated unfairly today. I feel that it's important to support the notion that women, like everyone else, deserve a fair chance at life. I wholeheartedly support initiatives such as equal pay for equal work, equal access to education and other pillars of feminism that aim to expand the options and opportunities women have to further their happiness.

My problem comes when women's organizations try to decide what women can and can't do with that freedom, usually by taking up initiatives and objectives that have nothing to do with equality or fair play, but instead, personal choice.

For example, many feminist organizations frown upon “traditional” roles of women, including the role of the stay at home mother. Homemakers are frequently told that they should be out in the workforce earning money and building a career of their own and that, if they fail to do that, then they're dragging the feminist movement down and disrespecting those that are fighting for their right to do so.

The problem with this is that, just because a woman has a right and the capability to enter the workforce, that doesn't necessarily mean that she wants to. In fact, many women, and men for that matter, find that being a full-time parent is a very rewarding and challenging career. To deny them the right to be a full-time parent, or to even hint that what they're doing is wrong, even if it makes them happy, is no different than forcing women into the role.

A similar problem arises in the porn industry and adult entertainment at large. Feminists have long slammed the sex industry as being demeaning toward women and it's taken its aggression out largely on the women that participate including actresses, strippers and those that work in the business in non-sexual capacities.

Though the logic of “porn degrades women” is flawed on several levels, feminists have tried, often with reckless abandon, to regulate and hinder the sex industry. Though it's true some of the women that wound up in the field were forced into it, this is an issue for law enforcement and not raging political activism. Most of the women who get on stage or in front of the camera do so willingly and to deny them their profession because of a general fear that it “demeans women” is very telling of the feminist movement.

Basically, what it shows is that many, if not most, modern feminists have no interest in erasing gender stereotypes. Instead, they want to carve out a new one that mirrors the traditional male roles. They conclude, quite erroneously, that the true path to equality with men is to place as many women as possible in traditional male roles, even if it requires some degree of force.

Personally, I see equality and freedom as going hand-in-hand. Unless there's freedom, someone is being subjected and as long as someone is being subjected, there's never true equality.

If feminists want to center their movement around the idea of pushing women down paths they don't want to go, that's their prerogative. But while they might achieve equality in the eyes of the law and the workplace, they'll have done nothing to secure true freedom for women and will have only replaced one type of sexism for another. Worst of all, they'll have done very little, if anything, to further the overall happiness and richness of women's lives because they'll be denying many women the path that is right for them.

In the end, the only true way to embrace the idea of feminism, or any movement that is pressing for equality, is to first embrace the idea of personal choice. Because the minute we start telling people what they can and cannot do with their life, we find ourselves replacing one type of oppression for another, thus creating a “chasing the tail” scenario by which little is gained and nothing significant is accomplished.

That's something that we can't risk allowing to happen, equality and fair treatment is something that is too important to jeopardize over personal disagreements. At some point, we have to realize that freedom means people sometimes doing things we don't like (though, personally, I have no problem with either stay at home mothers or the sex industry) and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Basically, there needs to be a realization that feminism can't be about the vision of utopia shared by a few, but instead, about the freedom of all. That's the only way real progress can be made and any idea of fairness can be reached.

And, in the end, isn't fairness what feminism is supposed to be about?

In the advertising world, "targeting" is a buzz word. Everyone is talking about how they can better target their advertising and streamline their message. Of course, in advertising, targeting makes sense, if you can focus your message only on those most interested in hearing it, not only do you save money by not blasting your message to deaf ears, but you can repeat your message more often to those who might actually buy the product. So, targeting not only makes good business sense, but good advertising sense.

This trend of targeting can be found all around you. Speciality newspapers, cable television channels, trade publications and sectionalized Web sites are all examples of media producers targeting their content so advertisers can better target theirs.

In fact, every major vehicle of advertising has caught on to the idea of targeting. Even junk mailers have learned to target by zip code. In fact, the only major form of advertising not the least bit interested in targeting is, you guessed it, telemarketing.

Telemarketing has traditionally, and continues to largely, be content to call everyone in the phone book. In fact, in an attempt to make sure they don't miss anyone, telemarketers will start calling exchanges starting XXX-0000 and working their way through XXX-9999, hawking their wares every step of the way ignoring busy signals, hang ups and disconects as they go.

In fact, where other forms of advertising have invested a great deal of money to improve their targeting, telemarketing has invested money to fight it.

The first great example of this came with the invention of the telezapper. The wildly popular device, which retailed for about fifty dollars, tricked telemarketing computers into thinking that the number was deactivated. So, when telemarketing firms found out that millions of Americans didn't want their message so bad they were willing to invest fifty dollars of their hard-earned money to block it, did they realize that these people weren't good prospects and move on? No. They dumped millions into inventing a means to work around the telezapper and continue harassing the very people that wanted to hear from them the absolute least.

More recently, the telemarketing industry has sued, apparently successfully, to halt the federal "Do Not Call" list, for which some 50 million numbers were registered. The list, which industry leaders said would cost millions of dollars and thousands of jobs, provided stiff penalties to corporations that "cold called" numbers placed on the list.

While I can certainly understand the industry's desire to be free of unnecessary government legislation, as an advertising man, the question becomes clear, "What's the big deal? Why do you want to call these people in the first place? And what advertiser in his right mind would want to spend money contacting people that are going to be angry to hear from them?"

It's simple, no one would. All that doing that would achieve is creating a great deal of animosity toward the product and perhaps turn a lot of people away from it, people that otherwise might have considered it. There's simply no reason why calling "Do Not Call" subscribers is in the best interest of the advertiser.

However, it's clearly in the best interest of the telemarketer.

Telemarketing companies are paid by advertisers to promote a product. However, the company doesn't simply sign over a check to the company and hope for the best, they want something in return. That's why advertisers pay telemarketing firms on a combination of comission fees and per-call fees.

Years ago, comission fees were the bread and butter of telemarketing firms. The pennies made per call seemed like peanuts compared to the dollars that can be made from every sale. But, while this resulted in some high-pressure tactics being employed, it kept call volumes relatively low. There simply wasn't much benefit in calling people randomly and much of the focus was placed on previous customers, by far the best target for a sales pitch.

However as telemarketing became more common it became more irritating and fewer and fewer people started buying from the phones. In fact, a recent CNN poll found that less than 1% of people even considred buying things from telemarketers. Furthermore, companies not selling products over the phone, but rather, just promotising existing ones, began to join the fray. The result, comissions began to slip and that "per call" fee became more and more appealing.

Over time, the goal of telemarketing changed from trying to call a few people and make a lot of sales to calling a lot of people and treating comissions like bonuses. Where once the people making the calls were paid more or less on comission alone, now many, if not most, get paid per call with a comission bonus.

But while the pay-per-call system makes more sense for telemarking firms, after all, they don't want to go broke trying to earn comissions on a product no one wants, it makes very little sense for marketers. It's similar to running an ad on every television station in the nation when you only need to target a small market. But what it means is that well-meaning advertisers pay good money for a message to fall on deaf ears, ears that the telemarketers know don't want to hear what they have to say.

So basically, not only do telemarketers not care if they're interrupting you while you are eating dinner, doing work, taking a shower or a million other private activities, but they don't care if advertisers that support them get a bum wrap. All they want is a hearty check.

That's why, as bad as I feel for myself and the throngs of masses that have to endure the annoying phone calls, I feel almost as bad for the advertisers shelling out money. Most advertisers are small-business owners that just want an inexpensive way to promote their products to a lot of local citizens. This is why calls for vinyl siding, landscaping and gutter repair are so common.

These businessmen, while often very talented in their trade, lack the advertising knowledge to understand the pitfalls of direct marketing and they also lack the money to hire a regular ad agency or use more traditional advertising effectively. After all, for the same price as a few low-budget local TV ads that will only reach a small percentage of the target audience, telemarketers can call almost everyone in the area. To an inexperienced advertiser, this is very tempting.

And, on the surface, it can seem to work. It will, invariably, move some product and seem to pay for itself. However, when others refuse to try the product/service simply becuase they first heard about it via telemarketer or the company lacks the funds to move onto traditional advertising, growth is stiffled and the advertiser has to return to the telemarketer again and again to sustain sales, constantly targeting that 1% that buys over the phone while irritating the 99% that don't.

In their defence, some telemarketers have realized this fact and made some attempt to weed out people that don't want their calls. The Direct Marketing Association (The DMA), a trade group for telemarkters and direct mailers, has run their own version of the Do-Not-Call list for several years. While being on the list has definitely reduced the number of calls I have gotten, since it only applies to members of the DMA, which many telemarkters, especially local ones, aren't, it hasn't kept the phones silent. I still receive several calls per week despite being on the list and taking full advantage of current "do Not Call" legislaiton. Simply put, their efforts at self-regulation have proven ineffective and furthermore, since they're a plaintiff in the lawsuit to stop the federal list, their gestures now seem very hollow.

Simply put, telemarketing should have gone the way of the dodo years ago. Much like door-to-door salesmen, it's an ineffective form of promotion that is intrusive and irritating. The only thing keeping it alive at all is the throngs of telemarketers that are far better at promoting their own services than other people's products. The proof of that is in their approach and the companies that engage in it.

After all, you don't see Microsoft or IBM promoting via the phone. If it was truly the best way to push their wares, don't you think they would?

Give that some thought the next time you hang up the telephone on another annoying call. After all, odds are you're not the only one getting a bad deal out of telemarketing. In fact, I doubt you're even getting the worst.

Here's a statistic that you probably didn't know and almost certainly won't believe: The average dress size for a woman in the United States (and most of the world for that matter) is a fourteen.

If this shocks you or surprises you, you're not alone. I was shocked by it and nearly everyone I've talked to about it can't believe it either. It seems completely impossible that the average woman could have a dress size in the double digits, not in a country that values bikini-butts, grapefruit diets and Calvin Klien models.

But guess what, it's true, 100% undeniably true.

However, while this is great news to “bigger” women who just realized that they are either at, below or slightly above the statistical average, it does nothing at all to explain how we got such a warped notion of what “normal” really is. After all, most people, especially men, seem to think that a “normal” woman should have a dress size that could be counted on one hand.

To answer that question though, all you have to do is go to a movie, visit a store or simply stick your nose in a magazine. In no time at all you'll be surrounded by images of women with unnaturally small waists and dress sizes that barely break positive digits.

Yes, these women are beautiful, there's no denying that, that's why they're in our movies, on our television, in our magazines and modeling our clothes. But still, the question is begged, “Where are the beautiful women with more normal figures?” After all, I've seen plenty of those walking around the streets, just not on my television.

Beats me.

But outside of the occasional one that either slips by or is thrown in to appease feminists that have, quite justly, been harping on this issue for years, you'll be lucky to spot any girl larger than a size 10 in a role where she's viewed as attractive, popular and sexy. In fact, on a recent edition of MTV's Beach House, Crystal and I could spot only one, one girl out of over 200, that had a figure large enough to be considered normal. To make matters worse, she had traded in the typical bikini for a tank top and shorts, an obvious attempt to hide her nonconformity.

However, none of this is news. We're pretty much all aware that the media skews its model base to unnaturally thin girls and that only 2% of all women naturally have the figure of a model (which, for the record, is usually between a dress size -2 and 2). We've all heard how this causes misconceptions about what a woman is supposed to look like and created problems such as anorexia, bulimia and other eating disorders in young girls and teens.

But what we don't hear about is how unbelievably sexist this is and how this fear is used to generate billions in revenue.

If you go to a large department store, you'll probably find the women's section divided into two parts, regulars and pluses. However, at most stores, any woman over a size 12 is considered a “plus” and as such is forced to swallow her pride and “cross the line” into the plus side just to find clothes that fit her. This might not seem like a big deal, but the message it sends is very clear, “You're fat, you're not normal and you need a special section just for you.” It doesn't matter that many of these women are actually below the national average, corporate America is telling them that they're overweight.

However, in the same department store, if you pay a visit to the men's section, odds are you won't find any separation at all. You'll be able to find all sizes, from a 28 waist to well over a 50 in the same section, often on the same rack. Even the largest of men can go their entire lives without “crossing the line” or being called a “plus”. The worst men will ever hear is that they're a “big and tall” which makes being large sound like being tall, a genetic predisposition that's not the guy's fault at all.

If this isn't sexist, I don't know what is. But it's a trend that doesn't stop at just the clothes rack, it continues on into how we view our celebrities. The same media that has hounded Anna Nichole Smith and even Madonna about their weight has made hardly a mention about male celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Johnny Popper, and even American Idol winner Ruben Studdard. In fact, many larger male celebrities wind up becoming sex symbols while female ones become the butt of jokes almost overnight.

Though I hesitate to use the words “misogynistic conspiracy”, they seem to be the only words that come close to describing this injustice. But who's to blame for it? Is it men for continuing to judge women based on their looks? At least in part, after all, if women were judged by more internal attributes, this whole argument would be moot, but if men had a reasonable vision of what an average woman looked like, the world would be a much better place.

Is it the media for skewing the types of women it shows in order to get better ratings? Once again, partly, but once again there are beautiful women of all sizes and if we could change our image of what's normal I doubt that thinner would consistently get better ratings.

Is it companies trying to make money off of the fears of the female population? Bingo.

Think about it a second, women have an inherent understanding that, rightly or wrongly, they're going to be judged based upon their looks. This understanding drives women to want to be beautiful the same as it drives men (although to a somewhat lesser degree). However, if a woman is convinced that she's beautiful, she doesn't spend nearly as much keeping herself that way as she would trying to make herself beautiful if she's convinced she's unattractive. In short, if you show a picture of a beautiful woman and every female consumer that sees the ad says, “Hey, I look like that already!” they don't buy the product, there's no need.

Now, when you consider all of the products sold on the idea of beauty (diet aids, foods, clothes, makeup, hair products, even vacations and cars just to name a few) there's a LOT of money to be made by convincing the vast majority of women that they're not up to the standards of beauty.

This all relates back to something that advertisers call “need creation”. It's a broad term that refers to the techniques advertisers use to take products you never needed before and convince you that you can't live without them. You might never have needed a microwave oven, a cell phone or even a computer fifty years ago, but through clever marketing and adapting to societal changes, advertisers got more than enough people to adopt these products that now they are all but essential.

The same thing has happened with diet and beauty products. Most women don't truly need these items but through need creation, largely through the use of imagery beautiful and skinny women, have gotten enough people to adopt that almost every woman feels the need to diet, wear make up and dress in the best clothes. So good was the act that they even got men sold on the idea along the way, even though the women they love and cherish usually look nothing like the image that's being presented.

Inevitably, these images seeped out from the advertising pages and into the content pages. Models and celebrities got thinner and thinner over the years. “Twiggy” the 60's model famous for her extremely thin figure, is now put to shame by just the everyday runway model. Twiggy, who weighed 91 pounds when she first became famous, even said she felt fat compared to the other models she saw at a recent comeback fashion show she did.

This, in turn has seeped into department stores and our everyday lives. In fact, where in the 50's the average store mannequin had a waist 34 inches around, now it's only 31 (for the record, average waist size is around 37 inches). In some parts of California, only 10% of all stores even carry sizes 14 and above and more and more stores have the unreasonable expectation that women the majority of women are unnaturally thin.

I'm not falling for it and neither should you. If Marilyn Monroe can have a dress size between 12 and 16 (which she did in the sixties), so should any other woman in the nation and she shouldn't be forced to feel guilty about it, shop only in plus sized stores or to diet in order to fix her "condition". We don't treat men that way and to continue holding such unreasonable expectations of women we, as a society, are not only being cruel but also hypocritical.

But what can we do to stop it? After all, the problem seems to be all around us and there's millions of dollars invested in keeping the status quo. Between diet gurus and fashion magazines, no one causing the problem seems to be ready to relent on the issue. After all, when your family fortune is made by convincing women they're fat, you're not about to shut your doors and tell them the truth. That would just be stupid.

But we as individuals do have a lot of power. First and foremost, we can avoid falling for the lie and avoid giving into these dangerous stereotypes. It might not be easy, especially for those of us that had these images and these ideals beat into us from an early age, but it can be done. After all, everyone has their own idea of what beauty is, all we have to do is learn to listen to it instead of what others have been telling us all along.

Second, we can put different, more realistic images out there. Though magazines may not run your photos, the Internet is a great means of distribution. Services such as Kazaa and Morpheus allow people to swap pictures without ever seeing one another. While most of these photos are pornographic in nature, it doesn't mean you can't use the channel to get your message across.

In short, take a photo of yourself, it doesn't have to be a nude one or even a very sexy one, a school picture will do, and put it out there with a nondescript name such as “Pretty girl” so that it will be downloaded. Trust me, people will see it and even though this would never be able to outnumber the images forced down everyone's throat by the media, it only takes a few instances to plant the seeds of doubt and doubt in the myth is what needs to be raised.

Finally, stop supporting products that engage in this “need creation”. It should be pretty obvious who's doing what and by simply not doing business with these companies, you're sending a strong message. Companies take notice of even slight drop offs in product sales and, if you combine your boycott with a few well-written letters, they might be willing to actually listen to what you have to say.

After all, this whole issue started with the almighty dollar, it will probably have to end there as well.

In the meantime though, I encourage everyone to stop this charade and open your eyes to the not-so-bitter truth. There are beautiful people of all shapes, sizes and colors. The quicker we can all see that, the happier and better of we'll be as a society because we'll stop tormenting people based upon their appearance, and we'll stop setting a self-destructive double-standard.

In fact, putting an end to this gender/size warfare could be the biggest peace movement in the history of the modern world…

Over the past few days, I've seen a series of smug articles from war hawks asking the question "Where have all of the war protesters have gone since the American troops were welcomed in Baghdad?" After all, with France seeming to soften its anti-war line and many of the doves in Congress oddly silent, it seems that the anti-war crowd lost their fight.

Well, I can only speak for myself and those around me, but for us, the war did not magically become "all right", in fact, I can think of ten very good reasons why the hawks shouldn't be so smug about their "victory".

(Note: All of this information is accurate as of 4-27-2003)

1. No Weapons of Mass Destruction – In the few days since the American occupation of Baghdad and the complete fall of Iraq, exactly zero weapons of mass destruction have turned up. Though I've counted four false alarms including a supposed sarin-tipped missile (further tests came back negative), an active nuclear program that turned out to be using legitimate low-grade uranium (not fit for weapons use) and those famed mobile laboratories which, apparently, were used only for conventional weapons. Supposedly, this was a war about disarming Iraq, a feat that's yet to be accomplished since nothing to disarm has been found.
2. No Terrorists – Also in the days since the fall of Iraq, exactly one terrorist arrest has been made in the country. However, the man in question Abu Abbas has no connection to Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Sept. 11 or anything else to do with terrorism in the United States. Instead, he was the mastermind of a 1985 hijacking of an Italian cruise ship, an attack in which one passenger died. While it's nice to have him in custody, it's not exactly the kind of terrorist find the hawks were touting.
3. The financial toll – Some estimates of the cost of war and reconstruction put it at around 200 billion dollars. As one democratic senator pointed out, for that amount of money, the United States could insure every individual under the age of eighteen. This, of course, begs the question, which is a greater threat to America's youth, their inability to get adequate healthcare or a nation that lacks weapons capable of reaching our shores?
4. The Iraqi toll – How many Iraqi lives were lost in this affair? Sure, there were less than 150 coalition fatalities, but don't the Iraqis who died, civilian and military, count for something? Conservative estimates for Iraqi losses put them at over 1,000 civilian deaths and potentially over 10,000 military. Though loss of life is part of any war, to smugly tout the relatively minor loss of life on the coalition side without mentioning the other is to say that their lives were meaningless.
5. The Looting – Iraqis in Baghdad have taken to the street looting their city. While no one can blame them for looting from the regime that stole from them so long. Among the buildings that were looted, while the United States was supposedly in control of the city, are the Baghdad museum, including several artifacts from the dawn of civilization, all but one of the hospitals in the city and homes of several hard-working Iraqi citizens. In short, it's pretty obvious that cheering wasn't the only thing the citizens of Baghdad were doing.
6. The Ignoring of Bigger Threats – One television commentator said it best, if you want to find terrorists, you go to Western Pakistan, you want to find a nation that's a threat to the United States, you go to North Korea. We're spending billions of dollars to invade a poverty-stricken nation with few terrorists and no weapons capable of reaching us while terrorists elsewhere are plotting their next attack against us and rogue nations with missiles capable of reaching the United States are developing nuclear weapons. I'm not the only one that thinks this is backward.
7. Weak Saddam/Osama Link – The much sought-after and never-discovered Saddam/Osama link hasn't materialized as many hawks had promised it would. In fact, the only evidence of any Al Qaeda/Iraq link involves a meeting their respective leaderships had in 1998. No evidence of logistical or financial support has been found. In fact, since the war started with many Muslim fundamentalists actually found themselves HELPING the United States overthrow Saddam's secular regime and some have, since the fighting ended, declared themselves mayors of many of Iraq's major cities. One would think that if the Saddam/Osama link held any water that these people would have rallied to fight and die in order to kill the Americans, not aid them. However, it might be interesting to see if any new evidence comes up over the next few weeks.
8. Geopolitical Problems – Thanks to this war, NATO is in tatters, the United Nations is furious at us and the world sees us as a global bully. Then again, this is hardly surprising considering that our "Coalition of the Willing" is comprised mostly of nations like the Albania, Liechtenstein, Eritrea, and Macedonia (nations that provided no military and can offer little political support) is it any shock that the world is laughing at our "coalition". Saying that it's bigger than the one in the first gulf war because it has more nations is like saying 40 pennies are larger than 30 dimes because there are more of them. However, even with 40 nations in the coalition that leaves over 140 that aren't and, considering how desperate we were for members, I think it's safe to say that those who aren't in the coalition did not support this war.
9. Protests in Baghdad – While it's very true that many of the oppressed Shiite Muslims celebrated and rejoiced as American tanks poured into Baghdad, those same people are already, after barely a week and a half of occupation, turning to protest our continued presence. Even as we send people over to take control of the country, thousands of Iraqis are protesting daily against our presence and our plans for an interim government. The situation has been made worse by a weapons explosion that killed six Iraqi civilians. While some might call the Iraqi citizens ungrateful, something I have to at least partially agree with, it shows that A) We weren't as welcome as we originally thought and B) The Iraqis have a desire to set up their own government and C) They don't want our help or our influence in making it happen.
10. No Saddam Hussein – Once again, the United States finds itself playing the "Is he dead? Is he alive? Does it matter?" game with another leader. But instead of Osama, we now can't find Saddam. Though Bin Laden proved how hard it can be to find a single person, the fact that we haven't been able to even figure out if Saddam is alive or dead is yet another black eye to American military intelligence and to the "War on Terrorism"

The truth is that no one liked Saddam, even the war protestors, it's just that many felt it wasn't worth overthrowing him with unilateral action, especially at the expense of ignoring bigger threats and larger problems, a point that still remains very much valid. The war protests didn't stop because seeing some of the oppressed Iraqis embrace the American troops made everything fine and dandy, but because the war was over and protesting a war after it's finished is beyond stupid. After all, even the protests against the Vietnam War ended after the United States pulled out.

But the main thing to remember is this; the fact that the war is over doesn't mean that it's also justified. While I think everyone is glad that the loss of American life has been kept to a minimum and our soldiers will be returning home soon, the question about whether or not this is a justified war is a question that's still being answered and will continue to be answered for sometime.

However, judging from the early indications, I'd say it's the hawks that have the most to be embarrassed about. One might even say that the silence of the doves comes more from the feeling of sweet satisfaction than bitter shame. Because, unless something big turns up and quick, it's the case of the doves that will get the biggest bolstering in the aftermath of the war, not the hawks and, when the history books are finally written, they won't be speaking too favorably about our actions

I was once told that you could tell a lot about a political agenda by the people that supported it, that the types of people who support an agenda say almost as much about it as the issues themselves. Well, if that's the case, then what I've learned this past week is that the saber-rattlers and the people pushing forward the agenda for war are a bunch of immature children who can't let people disagree with them, especially other countries.

The first sign of this came on Wednesday, March 12, when two Republican lawmakers announced that they had successfully changed the name of "French Fries" and "French Toast" in the House cafeteria to "Freedom Fries" and "Freedom Toast" respectively. This change seems to indicate that these lawmakers and the people that helped them push their agenda were so fed up with France's anti-war stance that they couldn't stomach the idea of eating a food with the word "French" in the title.

But, needless to say, that's not where it stops. The very next day, on March 13, another Republican Representative proposed legislation that would have the state foot the bill for helping families of those who died in France during the two World Wars move their loved one's remains back to the United States. What's the reason for this? Well, the representative said that France does not "appreciate the sacrifices men and women in uniform have made to defend the freedom that the French enjoy today." However, this legislation faces a much more uncertain future than "Freedom Toast."

But don't get comfortable thinking that our government is the only one being immature, every day people have been doing it just as effectively. Also within the past week, Sofitel Hotels, a French company, had to pull the French flags off of their buildings citing threats that they'd received against the security of their employees and their guests. Other French products have been getting similar treatment, including French wines and cheeses.

Finally, don't think you have to be Frenchman or the French government to find yourself a victim of immature and brash treatment, all you have to be is against the war with Iraq. One San Diego Man, after flying home after a trip to Seattle found a handwritten note on the top of his "Notification of Baggage Inspection" card (it's a printed card they slide in if they open your checked baggage at an airport) that read "Don't appreciate your Anti-American attitude!" His crime, carrying two "No Iraq War" signs home with him in his suitcase.

Transportation Security Administration officials said they are looking into the matter.

Needless to say, all of these random acts of adolescence are uncalled for. They not only reflect very poorly on those that support the war, but on Americans in general. After all, we're supposed to be the nation where people are free to disagree on political issues. Republicans don't (usually) call Democrats "Anti-American" and Democrats haven't tried to rename "Banana Republic" t-shirts "Banana Freedom" because we realize on some fundamental level that even though we disagree on how to get things done, we're on the same side and none of the disagreements are to be taken personally.

But that's exactly what's happened to the war with Iraq, some people, mostly those in favor of going to war, have taken the issue personally and anyone or anything that doesn't agree is clearly anti-American and is a sign that they aren't patriotic, that they don't appreciate their freedoms and that they secretly want to see more people die and the Western societies crumble to pieces.

It's an attitude that's nothing more than a figment of their insecurities and sane people on both sides of the issue can see that plainly.

A lot of bright, intelligent and very appreciative people don't think that war is the best solution. Just because someone doesn't think that bombing a country halfway across the world will accomplish anything, doesn't mean they aren't grateful for their freedoms or that they're Anti-American. They just disagree with others about the best way to secure our nation and our way of life.

I really think everyone needs to take a deep breath and realize that this is just a political issue; we can disagree on it and still be on the same team. On an issue a serious as this there's a need for rational, intelligent discussion of the issues and there's no room for name-calling, threats or any other immature behavior. After all, that does more to cloud the issue than it does to bring it to a conclusion.

Because, at the end of the day, no one wants to see another September 11, no one wants to see another human tragedy, it's just that some people don't think war is the best way to avert another one and, if you think about it, it's not that outrageous of a position.

So, can we have some maturity please?

The entire nation is buzzing about President Bush's upcoming plan to revitalize the economy. The media, in particular CNN, has been ranking it as his number one challenge of 2003, the democrats have already begun slamming it as being targeted at the most wealthy Americans and the only thing that's clear is that everyone wants relief and everyone is looking for Washington to bring it.

To me, this is just proof at exactly how naïve the nation has become.

One thing that both Democrats and Republicans miss, or rather, falsely assume, is that the government doesn't control the economy. In all of the bickering about who's to blame for the economic downfall (Bush blames Clinton and the Democrats blame Bush), it seems like both sides assume that the President, or at least the federal government, is a giant wizard waving a magic wand controlling the economy at will.

I'm very certain that all of the past presidents wish they had had that power, but the simple truth is that they don't, never did and never will. Anyone who believes otherwise is either a very naïve or a very wishful human being.

The plain truth is that the economy, on a national scale, is an infinitely complex system with literally millions of variables, of which government is but one. While there are things our leaders can certainly do to stimulate the economy (cut taxes, lower interest rates, etc.), if the countless other factors point south, you can rest assured the economy will be going straight down the toilet no matter what incentives your friendly politician might throw out.

In fact, most economists agree that looking at the economy on a national level is usually very misleading. It's possible for some parts of the nation to be doing well while others suffer. All a national readout of figures can do is give you a statistical average of what's going on all over the nation, an average that may or may not apply to half of the people it supposedly represents.

But it shouldn't come as a shock to most of us that the economy is on the government's mind right now. With campaigns less than a year away, most politicians know that, their job depends on the happiness of their constituents and that happiness is largely determined by how well clothed, fed and entertained they are, all variables controlled by the economy.

So, even though issues like Iraq, the War on Terrorism and North Korea have been the highlights of this four-year cycle, it shouldn't shock anyone that it could very easily end discussing the economy. Politicians know very well that, even though they don't have much control over it, if they don't fix they won't be around for another term and, at the end of the day, that's what matters most to any successful politician, their job.

It's truly as simple as that.

Imagine for a second that you had fallen asleep on Nov. 4th and just woke up today. You would have missed the Nov. 5th elections, the Republican Party's victories, the media blitz, the subsequent change of leadership in the Democratic Party and the windfall of predictions and speculations about what it all means. Basically, you would have woken up in the exact same country your lazy ass fell asleep in a week ago.

Because no matter how much the media hypes up the victories, no matter, what the GOP says it means and no matter how much finger pointing the Democrats do, this election, in the grand scheme of modern politics, means exceptionally little.

First of all, let's take a real hard look at what was actually gained and lost in this election. In the 100-member Senate, the Republicans managed to gain two seats, which in turn gave them a statistical majority with 51 seats. In the 435-member house of representatives, the Republicans gained very little and, depending on the outcomes of some elections that are too close to call, they could gain anywhere from six seats to nothing. Finally, in the various races for State governor, the Democrats were the ones to pull out ahead bringing in three seats while the Republicans actually lost control of one state house (Independents Governorships that changed hands made up the difference).

So as anyone with a calculator handy can see, this so-called Republican thrashing, sweep or trouncing, is really little more than a statistical blip on the radar. Simple math reveals that the Republicans did not gain more than 2% of anything and, in fact, it was the Democrats that took over 6% of the Governorships across the nation. Clearly, a more significant percentage.

"But wait! What about the new Republican majority in the Senate?"

What about it? Sure, the GOP might have racked up a statistical majority in the Senate, but the closest vote in recent Senate legislation was passed with a margin of well over 20. In fact, most important legislation (including many of the anti-terrorism bills) requires a 3/5 margin to pass, not a simple majority. This means, to get anything done, the Republicans are still going to have to reach across the aisle and lure Democrats to their cause.

Also, while it's completely true that if the Republicans could stick together that they would hold a majority, the simple truth is that it isn't likely to happen. With the movement toward centrism, the line between Republican and Democrat has been hopelessly blurred and any realist understands that getting 51 Senators to agree on anything, even if they're all Republicans, is a very difficult job.

Basically, if you're worried or excited about the possibilities of a GOP Senate, you should probably calm down. This isn't the first time America has made a slight shift to the right (or to the left for that matter) and history has shown us that these shifts rarely produce any real results, good or bad. In fact, the very idea of American democracy is designed to prevent radical change from happening overnight (you want radical change, move to Israel) and to bring about any long-term benefits, or long-term damage, the trend would have to continue for several more elections.

And trust me, the next four to six years is plenty of time for the pendulum to swing back the other way…

I don't smoke pot. It's something that's never had a place in my life and I've always seen drugs, even alcohol, as a potential hindrance to my goals in life. That's why I've always been very careful about where I tread, what I take and when I take it. But despite this goodie-two-shoes approach to all things potentially addictive, I'm probably one of the few human beings that's genuinely outraged that marijuana is illegal.

You see, I'm a libertarian at heart and being a libertarian means you have one simple, fundamental rule when it comes to government, "The government's job is to protect me from others, but I'm the only person who's responsible for protecting me from myself." This means that if there's no victim outside of the perpetrator, there is no crime. Period.

However, I'm also a realist and I understand that I live in a society that's hell-bent enforcing morals through laws and watching over people's shoulders to make sure they're doing what's right, even when it doesn't affect anyone else. But even under such a restrictive government, the hypocrisy of making marijuana illegal is dumbfounding and, to a libertarian such as myself, is infuriating.

First of all, marijuana as a substance is less harmful and less addictive than cigarettes, less intoxicating than alcohol and the only illegal drug that has not killed a single person in recorded history. In fact, much to my shame, some studies indicate that caffeine, my drug of choice, comes with more harmful side effects than marijuana does.

Now let's take a quick moment to contrast marijuana to each of these other, completely legal, drugs.

Cigarettes have an absolutely abominable record when it comes to public safety. Not only do 400,000 people die each year from smoking-related illnesses, but also the nicotine found in cigarettes has been tested as being the most addictive drug that's widely used, up to five times more addictive than cocaine. Meanwhile, just a few years ago, tobacco executives were swearing that nicotine wasn't addictive and that people were smoking cigarettes purely for personal enjoyment. It's a sad spectacle to say the least. However, tobacco, in all its forms, remains completely legal to anyone over the age of 18.

However, alcohol isn't doing much better. Another highly addictive substance, upwards of 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning (this doesn't count drunk driving, other accidents, liver disease or kidney failure). To make matters worse, alcohol is implicated in over half of all domestic violence and rape cases, up to 2/3 of all assaults and a quarter of all suicides. Yet despite this tremendous societal impact, alcohol remains completely legal for anyone over the age of 21 who isn't operating a motor vehicle.

Caffeine, however, is much more innocent. But it too rings in as one of the most addictive substances available, ahead of PCP, and the negative health consequences of caffeine, including lost sleep, jitters and ulcers are well documented.

Compared to these three, marijuana, a drug with no physical dependency and one of the lowest overall addictiveness ratings, seems rather tame. While taking smoke into your lungs is never a good thing and some of the side effects of marijuana, including mental impairment and sexual dysfunction, are undeniable, it's no more dangerous than many over-the-counter medications. Combine that with the complete lack of a body count and marijuana becomes one of the safest things to breathe in a society surrounded by gas fumes and wet paint. Even the hardest skeptics of the drug have to admit, it's better for you than cigarettes and less of a societal problem than alcohol.

Despite this, the government has fought tooth and nail to keep marijuana illegal, including taking states that try to decriminalize the drug to court. But while the federal government ignores the obvious, nearly 750,000 people each year are arrested for mere marijuana possession costing taxpayers an estimated $10 billion. This number dwarfs the number of violent criminals arrested and most law enforcement experts agree that the "war on pot" has become nothing but a huge burden on the nation's police force.

But then comes the big question, why is it illegal in the first place? I've read about a dozen theories on the issue, but as I see it, it boils down to one critical factor, the users. The people who smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol come from all walks of life and any attempt to criminalize those two drugs would be resisted by A) powerful lobby groups and B) the wealthy and middle-class users of the products. However, pot smokers tend to be younger, less politically involved and smaller in number than any of the other groups in question. So while speaking out against cigarettes or alcohol is political suicide, it's completely safe to pick on marijuana users and, in fact, with the public crying for a "war on drugs" it's a very, very smart move.

Now, on an aside note, a lot of people have taken to calling pot a "gateway drug" to justify maintaining its criminal status. But the term "gateway drug", while it seems to implicate marijuana in causing more serious addictions, is actually a term that means very little for the simple reason that any drug can be a gateway drug. While there's a strong correlation between people who use pot and then move onto other things, a similar correlation exists for both alcohol and caffeine. The truth is, a lot of people who use marijuana never move onto harder drugs just like light drinkers don't always become raging alcoholics. In the end, it's just a convenient statistic to justify an unjustifiable law.

But there is hope. Several states and many nations are moving to decriminalize marijuana. By one estimate, 30% of the United States population lives under some form of decriminalization and in those states there's been no reported increase of marijuana use. Other states, like Nevada, are pushing legislation through to decriminalize marijuana possession despite the federal governments legal maneuvering to get the laws repealed.

What needs to happen is more political activism on the part of pot smokers. More than just protests and publicity stunts, there needs to be a serious push not just for the legalization of marijuana, but to promote the responsible use of it. Rather than simply fighting to lift the ban, there needs to be an understanding that any legalization of it is going to come with restrictions and the consensus among the current marijuana lobbyists is that the restrictions should be similar to those placed on alcohol (age, location of consumption, driving, etc.).

But most importantly, pot smokers needs to shake their image of being stupid, lazy and useless. Being politically active and promoting responsible use is one of the best ways to do that, but also important is being a productive member of the community, a law-abiding citizen (marijuana use aside) and a contributor to government both as a taxpayer and as a voter.

Perhaps then marijuana users and marijuana supporters will be able to show the people the error of the existing laws and take their case to government in a way that will earn them respect and, justice willing, a victory.

Yes, Florida has done it again. After the election controversy in 2000, spending millions on election reforms and promising endlessly to improve the quality of the voting process in the state, Florida has managed to create yet another controversy, this one perhaps worse than the first.

This time, in addition to there being a very close race for the democratic gubernatorial primary, there's reports of ballots being torn in the automatic readers, computer equipment not being installed properly, people being handed the wrong ballots, election workers not showing up and some polling stations not even opening until one in the afternoon. Even one of the candidates, Janet Reno, had to wait over one hour to cast her vote because her assigned polling station was delayed in opening due to these "technical difficulties."

I only have one question for Florida and its election officials, "How hard is it to run an election? Really?"

Let's think about this for a second, the other 49 (save Louisiana, which had dead people voting in the late 90's) states manage to hold elections every two years without a glitch. I myself have voted three times and never been confronted with a confusing ballot, a late-to-open polling station or rude/unhelpful workers (though the candidates are another issue) and I'm from South Carolina, supposedly one of the poorest and dumbest states in the nation.

I will grant that we, as a nation, have been very hard on Florida because they were the deciding factor in the last presidential election. But while the race was close and the presidency was decided by less than 1,000 votes, Florida's problems didn't exactly help instill faith in the legitimacy of our new President and when you throw in the fact that his brother is governor of the state, the cat calls of "Hail to the Thief" seem quite understandable.

But then there's this. From the looks of things, even when the nation's spotlight isn't on Florida, the election is much smaller and the results much less important, things STILL fall apart. I mean, if you can't get a simple primary election right, how am I supposed to have any confidence in your presidential results?

The truth is that I can't and as a voter I've never felt more angry and disenfranchised from the whole election process as I do right now. I'll forgive the fact we have our Presidents decided by an electoral college and not by popular vote (otherwise, Gore would be our President). I'll ignore the fact we have only two parties when most feel a four or five-party system would be more fair. But the fact some yahoos in Florida can't even count their votes right, really casts doubts on the whole idea of democracy in America.

But this whole thing also raises some pretty mind-boggling questions for the nation.

First, how can we have any faith in an electoral college when big, election-deciding states like Florida seem to have a real problem collecting votes? How do we as Americans feel about the arbitrariness that our greatest right, the right to vote, is being handled with? Finally, the big one, why hasn't our election process been brought into the 21st century?

Think about it, my computer, as slow and old as it is, has the needed processing power to tally all of the results for the entire nation. It's nothing more than simple addition. The only things that would be needed to make this happen would be a standard electronic voting system that would tally the results instantly as they are received and a nation-wide intranet that would connect counties to states and states to a central point thus allowing the results to be compiled and figured.

The advantages of this are obvious, no more "with 90% of precincts reporting", no more room for human error and the only votes that wouldn't be counted as they were sent in would be absentee ballots. Beyond that, the minutes the polls closed, you'd know who won or lost, but of course, in nation-wide elections you would withhold those results until all the polls across the nation closed down.

Would this system be expensive? Yes. Would it pose security problems? Yes. But both of these items can be overcome and given the importance of voting to our way of life and the rights we hold dear, I think the risks of not stepping forward outweigh the risks of doing so.

Because unless we do, situations like the one in Florida are going to be more and more common and it's likely further elections could be marred by controversial results and polling difficulties, two items which can so easily be avoided.

But while this is something we must do as a nation, at best, such a solution is many years down the road due to the sheer size of such a project. So in the meantime, Florida, get it right in November. Ok.

I don 't think I or the voters are asking too much of you, just what we were promised in the constitution…

When it comes to foreign policy, I don't have many rules, but one of the critical ones I do have is "If you can avoid it, don't start a fight." While I think every country, the same as every individual, has the right to defend themselves against aggression, if it is at all avoidable, it's unwise to be the aggressor.

However, that's exactly what George W. Bush and roughly fifty percent of all Americans want to do, launch a full-scale attack on Iraq in order to overthrow Saddam Hussein and they're willing to accept the heavy casualties and global outrage that will likely come from it.

Why do they want to do this? Why are they willing to sacrifice so much and turn this supposed peace-loving nation into a global bully? Well, they can't decide either.

The most commonly given reason is that Iraq is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and is thus a threat to both the region and even the United States itself. This is no secret, we've known that since the end of the Persian Gulf War when Saddam started playing cat-and-mouse with U.N. Inspectors. That's why Iraq is currently under harsh U.N. sanctions and most Iraqi citizens are living in total squalor.

I will grant that Saddam's record with weapons of mass destruction is very poor, especially when you include the fact he gassed his own people following the Persian Gulf War after they rebelled against him. But if we're going to invade an enemy state for building and stockpiling such weapons, we can't show bias toward Iraq, we need to invade them all including North Korea, Cuba and China.

After all, North Korea's nuclear program is clearly a greater threat to the United States than Iraq's puny chemical plants. If we're going to invade anyone for developing weapons of mass destruction, it should at least be someone capable of using those weapons against us with disastrous results, not someone who can barely scrape together the knowledge and materials to build a modest stockpile of outdated chemical weapons.

The second most common reason given is that Iraq supports terror and probably had something to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.

This simply isn't true. The CIA searched very hard to find a connection between Saddam and Bin Laden, any connection at all, and it found none. Every reported meeting between an Iraqi official and an Al Qaeda one were quickly debunked and remarkably enough it seems Saddam's hands are completely clean when it comes to those attacks.

The truth is that Saddam's secular regime directly conflicts with Bin Laden's mission to create Muslim governments. The only thing the two seem to agree on is their hatred for the United States and while that's kept them from killing each other, it doesn't really inspire cooperation.

Another reason commonly given is that Saddam is a danger to his own people. That he's already used chemical warfare on them, that he is a brutal dictator and uses lethal force to squelch political dissidents.

While all of these reasons are definitely valid, all of these behaviors can be found elsewhere in the world and if America intervenes for that reason, we'll be making a historical exception as well. Think about it, we stood by when Hitler slaughtered the Jews, when Stalin massacred the Ukrainians, when Pol Pot decimated Cambodia and when Xiaoping butchered protesters in China.

Suddenly Saddam's behavior falls into focus, if someone reaches for this when justifying an attack on Iraq, they've officially hit the bottom of the excuse barrel. Not only have we ignored worse in the past, but we're also ignoring worse now. There are no American plans to invade China or North Korea and even our greatest ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, which is known for its harsh Islamic law.

The best sincere reason that can be given for attacking Iraq is "We don't like them and they don't like us." The truth is that they pose little threat to the United States and with the sizable United States force in Saudi Arabia, little threat to the region.

Saddam knows what happens when he invades another country unprovoked, he watches his army get routed and his air force destroyed before they can get off the ground. He knows that he's lucky to have survived his first battle with the United States and will do what he can to avoid another while getting his way as much as possible, even if it means starving his own people.

To make matters worse for the war hawks, our strongest European allies, including the United Kingdom and France, are very unsure about this attack both in its principle and its chances of success. Tony Blair, who first gave resounding support for the attack, has since wavered and many in the British parliament have already openly condemned it. Even legislators on our own Capitol Hill are very skeptical about this attack with many wondering what has gotten into our President.

Even Bush himself isn't quite sure what to do. Every week he seems to waver on the issue going frequently from calling the attack "imminent" to wondering if Americans "are ready for the casualties." He's gone on the record as saying that "there's no immediate plans" to attack Iraq, even though the New York Times has already uncovered and printed tactical plans for just such an invasion.

It really makes you wonder about the competency of our leadership.

But the bottom line is that with our allies unsure, Congress torn, the people divided and even the President uneasy, why are we even considering such a dangerous and costly action? There is no proof that Iraq is any threat to the United States or even a significant threat to the region and it's simply not worth incurring the wrath of the Arab world, the distrust of our allies and the heavy loss of life to engage in an offensive that no one can explain and almost no one is sure about.

Perhaps it's time for us as a nation to step back and think about what we're doing. Before we risk thousands of lives and forcing America to stand alone in the world, we should at least take a moment to think about what we hope to gain.

Something that I think most people will agree simply isn't worth the potential price…

Every once in a while, I get one right.

A study conducted by University of Connecticut psychology professor found the anti-depressant drugs (Prozac, Paxil, etc.) work only marginally better than a placebo in treating depression. The drugs, designed to correct chemical imbalances in the brain, did have a high number of successes in treating those who took it, but the number was almost equal to those who took the placebo.

While the difference was statistically significant, the narrow margin has caused many to wonder of these miracle drugs, now used to treat everything from PMS to general anxiety, are really that effective at all, something that should have been asked years ago.

You see, as a society we've begun doping ourselves to cure our blues without pondering if it was the right approach. After all, the pill is the scientific method of curing everything and that blind faith in physical medicine caused us to overlook one critical fact, that these drugs were designed to treat people with a chemical imbalance in the brain while most people with depression have an imbalance in their lives.

While some people are indeed depressed due to biological factors, I'd venture that the number is much lower than most would have you believe. Simply put, most people who are depressed are depressed for a damn good reason and giving them a pill to fix a chemical imbalance that isn't there will do nothing but bring on nasty side effects.

But this hasn't stopped psychiatrists across the world from having a blind faith in the abilities of these drugs. If you go into a psychiatrist office today with a case of depression, most likely, one of the first things he/she will do is give you a prescription, regardless of your reasons for being there. It doesn't matter if you lost your job, your mother died or if you're getting beat up everyday at school, Prozac is the miracle solution and if that doesn't work try Zoloft or Paxil, one of them has to work.

But the fact is, they don't. All they do in most cases is turn smart, intelligent people into zombies. These drugs strip away peoples natural defenses at a time in which they need all of their faculties to survive all the while doing nothing to address the real problem.

Now I don't think psychiatrists are bad people for doing this. The allure of a miracle cure for a disease as complicated and as devastating as depression is very great. But the fact is that there is no miracle cure and even the most gung-ho about the power of these pills has come to realize that they aren't completely effective.

I'm also not about to say that there isn't a place for these pills in modern medicine. They clearly do their job well and in some cases are quite useful. But while I'm no medical expert, they should be used as a last resort, something to try when traditional therapy has failed. They should never be used to treat depression when the cause hasn't been established, even if it's a part of the double-barrel approach (medicine and therapy) that many psychiatrists tout.

Prescribing medicine without good cause, especially medicine that alters the mind, is not just a waste of money, but potentially dangerous. I wouldn't tell anyone to have open-heart surgery just because they have chest pains (it could be gas after all) I'd at least want to check their pulse before tinkering with their insides and such is the case with these drugs.

So I hope that psychiatrists take this study to heart. The effectiveness of these pills have for a long time been in serious doubt and this study only furthers it. There are so many variables at play when it comes to depression and without addressing the right one or the right combination thereof, you're never going to solve anything. If doctors continue blindly prescribing these pills, they'll find themselves doing more harm than good for a majority of patients and many of those lost souls, already suffering from a terrible disease, can't afford to take another hit.

It's time for us as a society to take another look at the way we use the pills and think long and hard about what we hope to accomplish with them. We need to remember that one man's salvation is another's damnation and that without carefully considering what we're doing, we could be condemning those who need help to a fate far worse than the one they started with.

It's a brutal truth, but one we need to accept.

When the Marines in Afghanistan took custody of John Walker, they knew they had a lot more than just another POW; they had a media event. As an American fighting for the Taliban, he has become the source of not only a lot of media attention, but also controversy.

Essentially, two choruses have erupted, one calling for us to spare the young Walker and another demanding his head on a platter. One group calls him a "misguided youth," the other calls him a "traitor to the nation" and both are demanding justice.

But the solution is painfully simple; let the legal system handle it.

You see, the very point of a legal system is to create a definition of right vs. wrong for a group of people and establish punishments for offenses. Our legal system has been molded over hundreds of years to do exactly that and, while definitely flawed, is a system created by this nation to deal with questions of what is and is not a crime.

But does this mean that John Walker, a "good kid" from California, could possibly be executed for the crime of high treason? Of course. But then again thousands of "good kids" are put in prison each day and hundreds are sentenced to die each year without the world or the media lifting an eyebrow.

Could this also mean that Mr. Walker, a "murder and a traitor," could be treated as just another POW and outright released when the conflict is over? Of course. But once again, murders and rapists get set free everyday on technicalities and no one cares.

The fact is that it's easy to let the justice system go about making it's mistakes and passing judgment on countless lives when the defendants are nameless and faceless. But we all know Mr. Walker's name and we have all seen his face on the news. It now hits home, like it or not. No matter if you're "Free Walker" or "Kill Walker" the only reason you probably care is because of how high profile his case is.

So if we're going to go easy or hard on him; we need to change the law to do so. That way, we can re-apply the law to others who come later. After all, justice is blind and we are all supposed to be equal on her scales. If we make an exception for Mr. Walker and don't apply it to everyone else, then we crack the very foundation of our legal system and risk toppling our entire concept of justice.

For example, if you think we should go easy on him because "he was raised better than that" or that "he got mixed up in the wrong crowd," then every teen who does a drive-by shooting deserves to get off easy. The only thing he has to prove is that his mother told him otherwise and he just happened to fall in with the local gang.

Also, if you think we should throw a heavier book at him because he "joined an organization that is against everything America stands for," then everyone who joins an organization that doesn't like America, no matter how peaceful they are, should be convicted of a crime or have their offenses punished more sternly.

I can't think of a single reason to make an exception for John Walker that I am willing to apply to the rest of the nation. If the rules some seek to change for him were changed for all, then the entire nation would be thrown into chaos and the very reason this country came into being will be tossed out the window.

So let's kick back collectively and let the system that is in place deal with Mr. Walker. It may take a long time to get results and many people may not appreciate the outcome. But it's the system we've designed and no matter what you think about it, we have to let it do its job.

In a free a free country equal protection under the law isn't just a right, but also an obligation. And it's an obligation that we owe Mr. John Walker whether we like it or not.