The Grand Design, a new book by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, has gained mainstream attention because it contains the statement that it’s not necessary for a supernatural creator being such as the Christian god to exist in order for physics to make sense. Articles about the book have made it seem as if that’s some kind of startling revelation. It’s not. It comes from the book’s review of the philosophy of science, as it developed from Ancient Greece to the modern day. It’s old news.

What’s not such old news is The Grand Design‘s description of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is a concept about a century old, but the ways to communicate quantum reality are still being worked out. This book is the latest iteration of that effort, and includes fairly new insights in the area, such as the concepts of membrane theory.

I’ve known, from previous reading in the subject area, that the quantum world is weird, but The Grand Design has been particularly helpful in revealing how the quantum world can be comprehensible to those of us who live in the macroscopic world. Without getting bogged down in a series of equations, Hawking and Mlodinow communicate how quantum reality fits as a natural part of the reality we know. Their explanation of the way that Planck’s constant makes mass the determinant of unpredictability is the most clear that I’ve ever read. After reading this book, I feel that I almost have the fascinating concept through my thick skull.

Hawking and Mlodinow barely waste a word in their explanations of tiny, profound discoveries. The Grand Design is not a thick book, but it’s well worth the investment of buying a copy in hardcover.

President Obama has been spitting out loads of inspiring rhetoric about his intention to, some time or later, end the discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, which requires the military to kick out highly qualified soldiers just because of their private homosexual activities. It’s not only bigoted – it’s also militarily unwise, taking resources away from the Pentagon just when U.S. forces are stretched particularly thin.

The policy has also been declared unconstitutional, just one week ago, by U.S. District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips. But what is President Obama doing? He’s pushing the Department of Justice to protest against the declaration by Judge Phillips, and file an appeal to ensure that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell discrimination continues!

On top of President Obama’s betrayal in the courtroom comes his refusal to dedicate adequate resources to ensure the passage yesterday of a Senate amendment to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Obama’s lack of attention to the legislation enabled two Democrats, Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln to join the Republicans in voting against the effort to repeal.

GLBT rights organization GetEQUAL isn’t taking President Obama’s neglect of the effort to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell sitting down. The group is organizing protest against Obama, demanding that he keep his earlier promises, and use what political capital he has left to push hard for the end of the policy of discrimination. In an appeal to its members yesterday afternoon, Get Equal wrote,

“Four months ago, we asked the President to stop military discharges while the U.S. Congress haggled over our rights. He didn’t respond, and we’re now seeing the result of this complete lack of Presidential leadership and courage. So we’re taking the fight back to the White House. Will you join us?… We need volunteers to help us hold the President accountable and meet him head-on during this election season, asking him at each campaign stop and at each fundraising party, ‘WHEN WILL THE DISCHARGES END?’”

This should be talked about more than it will be.

Maryland Green Party nominee for the U.S. Senate Natasha Pettigrew was killed today. She wasn’t walking her talk: she was riding it, riding her bicycle as a means of transportation. She was hit and killed by a massive sport utility vehicle driven by someone who says she wasn’t paying enough attention to the road to tell whether she’d hit a dog, a deer, or a person, and so kept on driving for four miles.

The Cadillac Escalade costs as much as a house does in some parts of the country, as much as 415 brand-new bicycles. It has an infinitely higher gas mileage. Cadillac says its SUV has “power and presence” and is “untouchable” on the road. Sadly, Cadillac was right.

Natasha Pettigrew wrote:

We only have one planet. It is a beautiful and strong planet… we should strive to leave Earth in a better state than when we inherited it. Our goal should be the continued existence of humans, flora, and fauna… here, on our Beautiful Blue Planet.

Natasha Pettigrew can’t carry on any longer in the struggle for a cleaner environment and a lower-impact way of life. Ask yourself what you can do today. Ask yourself what you can do tomorrow.

Oh my. Dear me.

Yet another high-profile, pushy Christian fundamentalist preacher against equal rights for gay and lesbian people has been accused of abusing his position of authority to obtain gay sex.

Mercy. Gracious. I am so shocked. Who could have expected such a thing? Not me. That is for sure. What a surprise.

I was reading an interesting piece of history today when I was scanning back through old copies of the Congressional Record. In a 1948 volume I found a speech by President Harry S. Truman to a joint session of Congress:

The Defense authorization bill is coming to the Senate floor tomorrow, and we have a policy change within the bill that basically says we are going to change the law that would get rid of racial segregation in units, a policy that has worked very well. We are going to change the law before we ask our men and women in uniform about their opinion? That is a huge mistake…. We should not repeal racial segregation in the military until we get input from our men and women who are serving.

And so President Truman announced that he would implement a policy in which the question of racial segregation would be put up for a vote by soldiers. Only if a majority of soldiers voted to end white-only and black-only units would desegregation proceed.

Oh, wait.

My, what an embarrassment. It seems I mixed up some papers after I spilled a bottle of white-out, and I got the quotation horribly confused. Apparently, this was a speech by Senator Lindsey Graham just yesterday, and the bits of the speech referring to racial discrimination were actually about discrimination according to sexual orientation.

Returning to the original microfiche, I see that Harry S. Truman actually ordered the racial desegregation of the U.S. military against the objection of military officials, on the grounds that discrimination is wrong regardless of soldiers’ personal opinions and prejudices. Well, golly. I guess he wasn’t that much of a True Patriot.

Log Cabin Republicans take note: Not one single Republican member of the United States Senate voted in favor of the amendment to repeal the discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy of kicking well-qualified soldiers out of the military simply because of homosexual activities in their personal time. Lisa Murkowski did not vote on the amendment at all, but that’s hardly a heroic stand. Republican senators are not listening to the Log Cabin Republicans’ decades-long appeal to end the GOP’s association with anti-gay bigotry.

It’s not just Republicans who are to blame for the defeat of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, however. Both of the U.S. Senators from Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, voted against the repeal. The Democratic Party’s continuing support for these two right wing Democrats, in a nod to the party’s pre-sixties history as a bastion of prejudice, has helped anti-gay bigotry to persist.

One final technical note on the vote is called for: Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid voted against the amendment to appeal, but only because he supports the repeal. Thanks to Senators Lincoln and Pryor, Senator Reid could not have cast the deciding vote, and by voting against the repeal, Senator Reid has retained the power to bring the measure back up for a vote at a later time.

A Summary Of The Roll Call Vote

Have you heard the sound
of one President’s silence
while quiet eyes watch?

Today is Peace Day. I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to observe the occasion, however. At my son’s preschool, they’re going to make pinwheels. That’s part of the Pinwheels for Peace program, which I don’t believe can claim any particular peace accomplishments as a result of their glittery creations over the years.

Republican politicians are pushing for more and more war, regardless of war’s failure to create positive change. Democratic politicians are joining the Republicans in promoting record-breaking military spending, but are edging toward a gradual, creeping decrescendo to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So, it’s become unclear for peace activists to know where to apply pressure.

What should a serious peace activist, someone who looks beyond pretty pinwheels, do to observe Peace Day this year?

A couple years ago, I noted the development of a web site called Dreamlines. The site makes new, dynamic, changing visual art using keywords to search out graphics online.

Today, as a refresher about how the results work, I offer you the following visual impression of the campaign of Christine O’Donnell for U.S. Senate.

As stories appear in Catholic and secular newspapers bemoaning the closings of Catholic schools, remember that Catholic organizations chose to spend millions of dollars to preserve legal discrimination in the United States of America. The Catholic group Knights of Columbus spent $1.2 million to outlaw same-sex marriage in California in 2008, making it the biggest contributor to the fight against equal rights in California. The same Knights of Columbus sent “only” $50,200 directly to the anti-equality group Stand for Marriage Maine in its 2009 bid to outlaw marriage equality in the Pine Tree State, but also shunted $1.43 million to the anti-gay Maine effort through the front group called “National Organization for Marriage” (in case you were wondering, the Knights of Columbus classifies this money laundering operation as “charity.”). Add to that sum $1.13 million spent by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland to make marriage equality illegal in the state of Maine, and you can see just how massive the anti-gay effort by Catholic organizations has been.

Why are Catholic schools closing across the country? Part of the answer is that well-endowed Catholic institutions seem to hate gays more than they care about children.

Jason Altmire is a U.S. Representative in Congress. His job is to represent the people of the 4th district of Pennsylvania.

FEC data show that on October 23, 2009, Jason Altmire received a $1,000 check from the Tenet Healthcare Corporation PAC. Tenet is a for-profit corporation based in Dallas, Texas.

On March 19 2010, Jason Altmire received another $1,000 check from the Tenet Healthcare Corporation PAC of Dallas, Texas.

On June 21 2010, Jason Altmire received four checks from Tenet COO Stephen Newman, Tenet communications executive Jeff Eller, Tenet lobbyist Daniel Waldmann, and Tenet Senior Director of Government Relations Teresa Huskey. Stephen Newman lives in Dallas, Texas. Daniel Waldmann lives in Dallas, Texas. To be upfront, neither Teresa Huskey nor Jeff Eller lives in Dallas, Texas. Eller lives in Austin and Huskey lives in Fort Worth.

On June 30 2010, Jason Altmire received yet another check from the Tenet Healthcare Corporation PAC of Dallas, Texas.

Also on June 30 2010, Jason Altmire received still another check, this time from one Melissa Fetter of Dallas, Texas. Do you think that Ms. Fetter had caught news of the fine works of Jason Altmire as it spread on the wind? Probably not. It turns out that Melissa Fetter used to work for Tenet Healthcare and is married to Trevor Fetter, the President and CEO of Tenet Healthcare.

Why is a health care corporation from Dallas, Texas sending checks to a representative of the 4th District of Pennsylvania? You might think that perhaps the Tenet Healthcare Corporation does some business in Altmire’s district. But that’s not true. Tenet Healthcare, which has endured a number of ethics scandals in the past, runs two hospitals in the Philadelphia area, but Altmire doesn’t represent the Philadelphia area. Altmire is elected from District 4, which starts in Pittsburgh (across the state from Philadelphia) and heads westward from there. Tenet Healthcare does no business in or near the 4th District.

But did you know that before he was elected to Congress, Jason Altmire spent a number of years as a paid lobbyist for the Federation of American Hospitals? It’s true. It’s also true that the Federation of American Hospitals PAC, which is so fond of Jason Altmire that it’s sent him four of its own checks over the past year, counts Tenet Healthcare as one of its corporate members. Did you know that Trevor Fetter is Chairman of the Federation of American Hospitals? It’s a small world.

Did you know that Jason Altmire sits on the Subcommittee on Regulations and Health Care of the House Small Business Committee?

Did you know that the Federation of American Hospitals testified before Congress against Democrats’ plans for health care reform in 2009 on the basis of “cost containment”?

Did you know that Tenet Healthcare has issued its own declarations that the health care reform bill may reduce its profits because of problems with cost containment?

Did you know that right in the middle of receiving all these checks from Tenet Healthcare Corporation and the Federation of American Hospitals, Jason Altmire declared that he would vote against the health care reform bill because “you just can’t leave out cost containment”?

The Deepwater Horizon drill site in the Gulf of Mexico, which spewed untold barrels of crude oil earlier this year, has finally been permanently plugged. So, has the oil spill crisis stopped? Not by a longshot. Oil spills continue to take place all the time, even if they aren’t reported by your familiar TV anchors. Recent oil spills include a burst pipeline run by a government-operated oil company in Venezuela. The company has had three fires at its oil refineries over the last two weeks. This morning, a black slick of oil washed up onto Canvey Island at the mouth of the Thames River in England. There was also a diesel spill in Utah, which suffered from a large oil spill in a waterway leading to the Great Salt Lake this summer.

In this year’s congressional election in Ohio’s 7th congressional district, incumbent Republican Steve Austria is facing only extremely anemic opposition from Democratic Party candidate Bill Conner. Nonetheless, Congressman Austria is taking large amounts of money from corporate political action committees.

Bill Conner has raised only $1,846, with no donations from PACs at all. So why is it, then, that Representative Austria has taken payments from the AFLAC insurance company PAC, a payment from the Altria tobacco PAC, multiple payments from the American Bankers Association PAC, money from the American Health Care Association PAC, and many payments from many other PACs aligned with the medical industry?

Why has Austria accepted money from these other PACs?

Amerigroup Corporation PAC
Ameriprise Financial Inc. PAC
AmerisourceBergen Corporation PAC
AT&T Federal PAC
Automotive Free International Trade PAC
Babcock & Wilcox Company PAC
BAE Systems Inc. PAC
Ball Corporation PAC
Boehringer Ingelheim USA Corporation PAC
Boeing Company PAC
Comcast Corporation PAC
Community Bankers Association of Ohio PAC
Dayton Power and Light Company PAC
National Automotive Dealers Association PAC
Deloitte Federal PAC
Dominion PAC
DRS Technologies PAC
Duke Energy PAC
Eastman Kodak PAC
Eli Lilly and Company PAC
Northrup Grumman Corporation PAC
Exxon Mobil Corporation PAC
FirstEnergy Corporation PAC
General Dynamics PAC

… and on and on. I’m only picking out a few of the corporate PACS as I go forward through an alphabetical list, but I’m plum tuckered out from counting all the corporate political action committees that Steve Austria has taken money from for the 2010 election. There’s even more money that isn’t counted as PAC money that Congressman Austria has taken from corporate lobbyists.

Why? So that he can defeat a $1,846 campaign from the Democratic candidate?

Strategically and ethically, this flow of big amounts of money into Steve Austria’s campaign accounts doesn’t add up.

Congressman Earl Pomeroy currently represents the entire state of North Dakota in the U.S. House of Representatives, but if current political trends continue, he may not remain in Washington D.C. for very long. According the Center for Responsive Politics, Representative Pomeroy has raised over twice as much money as his Republican challenger, Rick Berg, but Election Projection predicts a narrow victory by Berg nonetheless.

Why is Pomeroy in political trouble? As a right-leaning Blue Dog Democrat, Earl Pomeroy is positioned to satisfy few groups of voters very well. Liberal Democrats are upset at Pomeroy’s frequent collaboration with Republicans in Congress, but Republicans don’t give Pomeroy much credit for these maneuvers to the right because Pomeroy remains a Democrat.

Rick Berg, on the other hand, is unambiguous in his political ideology. He’s a Republican, with a strongly regressive agenda. Berg will never gain liberal votes, but he has a strong hold on right wing voters in North Dakota, and motivates them to participate in the political process in a way that Pomeroy cannot.

Part of Berg’s plan is to use his power as a member of Congress to promote some religions over others. Specifically, Berg pledges to dedicate himself to bringing governmental resources to the defense of Judaism and Christianity, while leaving other religions in the lurch. Berg writes of himself, “Rick is a strong social conservative and will protect traditional Judeo-Christian values which have made this country strong.”

There seems, upon initial consideration, to be at least some religious diversity in Berg’s religious constituency: Berg may reject the notion that all religions are equally entitled to the protection of the U.S. Congress, but at least Berg is attempting to appeal to both Christians and Jews. That gesture toward plurality doesn’t go very far, however. Judaism is included in the phrase Judeo-Christian merely because Christians consider Judaism to be the foundation of their own religion. Besides that, in North Dakota, Jews consist of just one tenth of one percent of the population – and many of them aren’t practicing religious Judaism. When Rick Berg speaks of representing “Judeo-Christian” values from North Dakota, he is strategically aiming for Christian support alone.

The religious group targeted by Berg’s congressional campaign isn’t really even as large as Christianity as a whole. Notice that Berg speaks of protecting what he regards as “traditional” Christianity. Liberal and moderate Christianity aren’t going to be served by Berg if he gets to Congress. Berg is signaling his intention to work from Congress to assist particular sects of Christianity over their Christian rivals.

In practice, when Berg promises to use the powers of Congress to protect certain forms of Christianity, and not other religions, he’s also making a promise to violate the Constitution. After all, the Constitution makes it very clear that Congress is not to meddle in religious affairs. The very first line of the First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

It’s not the job of any member of Congress to protect any particular religion, or even to protect religion in general. Even before he reaches Capitol Hill, however, Rick Berg has signaled that doesn’t intend to respect the boundaries that are legally established for Congress.

If North Dakota had a Democratic candidate with more backbone than Earl Pomeroy, there might be a reasonable chance that Berg’s radical rejection of constitutional law might become enough of a viable election issue to prevent Berg from gaining the power to abuse a seat in Congress as he has pledged to do. As it is, the only counter to Berg’s extremism is a wispy cloud of blue fog in the shape of a cowering dog.