HAVA Problem?

HAVA -- the Help America Vote Act -- was a good idea, in theory. And I don't believe there is any evidence to suggest that the people who wrote it or voted for it had any bad intentions. Florida 2000 was a black-eye for America. NOBODY wanted to hear the words 'hanging chads' or 'butterfly ballot' anywhere but in history classes. It made perfect sense to encourage states to get rid of the sort of voting systems that made them possible. (And while, as a New Yorker, I disagree with the idea of replacing the clunky old mechanical systems that I have voted on all my life, which are messy and 'old-fashioned' but which are also safe and checkable, the company that made them is out of business, and when they break down it is hard to fix them or get replacement parts.)

And these days the first thought is always towards doing something electronically. Touch screens, computer counts, these were the obvious way to go, if done right.

Unfortunately, short-sightedness, stupidity, haste, and the idea to 'get it done fast, and we'll fix it in the implimentation,' as usual, created as much chaos as pure malevolence could have.

The important thing was not just that the systems created should BE efficient, honest, and secure, but that they would APPEAR so as well. After the Florida Follies, nobody wanted a system that was vulnerable, where the only guarantee of integrity was to trust election officials.

There would seem to be some simple basics here that should be musts in any electronic voting system.

There has to be a REAL paper trail -- an honest one that would include a copy for the voter and a copy of each individual vote for a possible recount. (To ensure voter confidentiality, each vote should be numbered, but the numbers should be assigned randomly and secretly, so only the voter would know the number he was assigned.)

The machine operating code should be open to a non-partisan group of computer experts before the machine was accepted, and the machine needs some form of device to that would set off bells, whistles, and alarms at any tampering with the code, rendering the machine unusable.

Some sort of barrier should be in place when individual machines link up to a central counting device -- is one is absolutely needed, so that if, despite precautions, some tampering is done with an individual machine, it can't affect the whole system.

Any operation of the machine has to be done on a hands on basis, with no wireless ports, no internal wireless modem, etc.

States and cities should be provided with money not just to purchase such machines, but to store them securely, so they would be locked away until the night before the election, brought out, a final test would be run, and then they would be distributed to the polling places. If this cosy extra money, again it should be provided.

Finally, despite the expense, I think that each precint should have four voting machines that could be rotated, for example, primary, general, primary, general, with perhaps a fifth for special elections. That way, the machines could be inspected at any time up to two years after a given election if there are allegations of fraud.

(I would have to ask someone more familiar with technology and costs to answer this, but since the danger seems to me to be the greatest when a machine is reprogrammed for a new election, it might actually be possible to create a 'one-time use' machine that could be used for a given election, be unreprogrammable, be unopenable without rendering it useless, and which could then be stored indefinitely for the use of historians and social scientists.)

None of these seem to be brilliant ideas, merely obvious ones, They must be the sort of ideas that are implimented in current electronic voting machines, the ones that are being used in more and more states. Right?

Unfortunately...

It Oughta Be Simple

In a democracy, if you vote for somebody, your vote is counted for that person, right. Oh, sure, there has been a lot of election trickery throughout the years. A lot of cemetery residents have voted more regularly in death than they ever did in life. And a lot of people have been discouraged from voting with long lines, threats, and even legal prohibitions if they were expected to vote the 'wrong way.' And twice a Supreme Court justice has been the decider in a Presidential election -- not just Bush v Gore but in the Hayes-Tilden election where the deciding vote in the Electoral Commission was Justice Davis -- and in both cases most people who have studied it viewed the result as wrong.

But the votes we actually cast have been sacrosanct, if they ever reached the counting table -- ballot boxes have been 'lost'. So, when the DEAD ZONE had its main villain discussing electronic voting machines in June, 2004 as follows:

STILLSON
Let me ask a stupid question.
Does it even matter which one I
pick?
RESUME SCENE
The men laugh.
MAN ONE/TRUAX
Of course it matters. Every vote
counts...
STILLSON
...some just count more than
others.
MAN ONE/TRUAX
In a close election like yours,
it all comes down to margin of
error. The digital equivalent of
a hanging Chad.
STILLSON
And there's no paper trail?
MAN ONE/TRUAX
Only one we generate...
Stillson touches the screen next to his name, registering
a vote for himself. He stares at the screen, transfixed.
MAN TWO
Better than sex isn't it?
Stillson throws a look to Man Two.
STILLSON
You, my friend, need to get out
more.
The men all laugh.

(It's from Finding Rachel, Pt.1. You can find the script here)

I thought they were 'going over the top' again. (I keep on underestimating the show. For example, when Stillson is involved in a corrupt deal with a lobbyist, it involves Indian casinos -- Hello, Jack Abramoff -- and this one was shown long before any of the scandals broke.) There are security measures obvious even to me -- and I've declared myself 'technologically declined' and my lack of a 'blogroll' keeps proving it -- that could be taken to prevent something like this from happening.

Unfortunately...

Here we go again, better (I hope)

Yes, I'm getting started again. After that last long post on the 'gay gene' -- and my apologies to Kewenay and Mumbo Jumbo for not getting back to them -- I realized I couldn't get through my own posts without falling asleep. Now I'm not the one to judge my own writing, but I KNOW I can write better than that. (I couldn't even write a good cat post.)

So I decided to take a bit of time away from blogging, and see if I wanted to try again -- meanwhile, I've been scattering coments around different blogs.

But I realized that there were a lot of important topics that needed discussion, and maybe if I worked hard and didn't find that my writing skills had left on my 60th Birthday, I might be able to say some things worth saying on them in a way that anyone could listen to.

Most of these are political, as my next few posts will be showing. I think that America is in the greatest danger I've ever seen in my lifetime and my reading of history. The actions of the Bush administration, the reworking of political dialogue by Republican commentators such as Coulter, Malkin, Limbaugh, and others -- combined with the Rovicization of politics -- the recurrence of the truly fascist end of the radical right -- and I use the term 'fascist' VERY sparingly -- all need to be watched. But these aren't new dangers, though they are perhaps more prominent than i can remember.

The really scary one though is the growth of electronic voting devices that are hackable and manipulable. The basis of democracy STARTS with 'the vote you cast gets counted for the person you choose.' But, unless action is taken, legal, political, and in the press, that may no longer be true. And that is why i rank the present time as dangerous for democracy and the ideals that America at its best stands for -- and that George W. Bush has no concept of -- as the Civil War, the Depression, the McCarthy Era, and Vietnam.

I'll be posting on all of these things over the next week or so. And yes, I WILL get back to the 'gay gene' controversy, and even talk about baseball, tv, mystery stories and CATS -- one of mine is looking over my shoulder, hence the capitals.

And I'll always be long-winded -- I have been since the third grade -- but if I get too stuffy, pompous, or boring, yell at me, willya?

My apologies, particularly to Katie

In my post on the 'gay gene' I made a rather flip remark about
"do you turn aside, hope nobody else notices, and write another article on mercury not causing autism..."

I have been somewhat overwhelmed by the number of stories on this, and had been convinced that this was just another altie absurdity that was perhaps being talked to death in the skeptical and medical blogs.

Then I read this on Orac's site, and checking the story, I came across this on Autism Diva's site. I had been unaware of this type of story, and I apologize for the unfeeling tone of my comment.

The 35th Edition of the Skeptical Circle

Is now up at Skeptico's blog. It's one of the biggest episodes so far, and I am honored that my contribution "Born gay or misbegotten studies: 1 Ill-fitting Genes" is included.

For those of you who have never come across this bi-weekly collection of the best of the Skeptical Bloggers, you should check this out, and follow the links to previous editions as well. The discussions range from debunking junk science -- like the supposed link between mercury and autism -- to displaying the latest idiocy of the Creationists (in that guise or in the 'modern clothes' of the Intelligent Design movement) to exposes of some delightful weirdness on the fringes -- you have to check out Mark Chu-Carrol's post on one of the weirder sites dealing with gematria on his "Good Math, Bad Math" site

Other subjects touched on include one of the best demolitions of the "9/11 Conspiracy" Myth on the Daylight Atheism site Holocaust denial is another frequent topic that gets exploded. And writers such as Orac of Respectful Insolence
-- an academic and practicing surgeon -- can always be counted on to blast some passing medical quackery.

(I should explain an in-joke for newcomers in this edition. Recently someone, an Intelligent Designer named Kenesaw Williams, has been using Skeptico's name for posts and as the title of his own blog. This has outraged any number of the Skeptical Community, so Skeptico's framing of the edition -- supposedly as being 'guest-hosted' by Williams -- is his own way of getting his own back.)

Anyway, enjoy, and come back here soon, getting included has resparked my blogging engine and I will actually get part 2 up for the next edition.

Born gay or misbegotten studies: 1 Ill-fitting Genes

Skepticism can be very satisfying. The targets are usually so deserving, and there's a special pleasure in displaying the stupidity, illogic, and con games of the preachers, creationists, psychics, quacks, and charlatans. (And there can't be many greater intellectual/emotional pleasures than demolishing the arguments of the bigoted scum that are holocaust deniers.)

But sometimes you recognize logical fallacies, bad science, and wishful thinking disguised as reasoning, and realize it is coming from one of the 'good guys,' a group you agree with, support, are even a member of. What do you do then? Do you use the familiar tools on them, even though you know some of your hearers will think you're attacking the position rather than the arguments? What if you give a potential weapon to the ‘other side,’ when the other side are frequently bigots? Do you go ahead, or do you turn aside, hope nobody else notices, and write another article on mercury not causing autism, or that exposes John Edward and James Van Pragh yet again?

Well, if we believe in anything, it is that truth matters. (See my post below on Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Truth MATTERS.) So...

I am bisexual, and have been open about this all my adult life. (At one job, when a company VP stopped by and I was being unusually quiet, my boss said "Jim, don't you know everybody in the company knows you’re a pot-smoking bisexual?" I've been a believer in, and in my own small way, a fighter for gay rights since I first heard WBAI reporting on Stonewall. (I haven't been to many marches, but that's mostly been a matter of bad legs, lack of cash, or other commitments.)

And I have another reason for supporting gay rights, and gay pride, and gay love and marriage -- even though I've been in a heterosexual marriage for 15 years now. I was raised in a lesbian household. Yes, they existed even in the 50’s of Ozzie and Harriet, even in suburban New Jersey; and no, this didn't influence my own sexuality. I had realized I was bisexual and had experienced sex with both sexes before I realized what Claire and Billie's actual relationship was. (Precocious and naive, that was me.) Claire died before the marches started and Billie a few years after that. They never had the chance to walk down 5th Avenue, holding hands and celebrating their 30+ years together, never had a chance to consider making their relationship into a marriage. I don't want other couples to be deprived of that chance.

But truth matters, and bad science is bad science even in a good cause. I don't remember the first time I heard talk about 'gay genes' and other 'biological determinants of homosexuality,' when I first heard people saying that being gay is 'something you are born with.' When I heard it, though, I had two immediate responses.

The first was political. "Are they NUTS? We've been marching for years under the banner of Gay PRIDE, and here we have people arguing, no, whining, 'Don't hate us, we CAN'T HELP it.' The argument stinks. It plays right into the bigots' hands. It implies that we are somehow unnatural freaks, genetic abnormalities against the ‘norm’ of heterosexuality. And it plays into all the meek, week, ‘girlish’ -- in the bad and bigoted sense -- stereotypes of gay men." (It was mostly gay men saying it, not lesbians.) I even heard, with disgust, the argument 'With all the persecution we have to suffer, would anybody choose to be gay if he could help it?' (As a bisexual, my answer to that was, “Well, yes.”)

[I have to say that, so far, I seem to have been wrong about this. A lot of people have said publicly that they opposed anti-gay discrimination on the grounds that people who are gay are ‘born that way.’ And it has done wonders in fighting the ‘NARTH-types’ (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals, who think of homosexuality as something that can and should be ‘cured.’ -- As I’ll discuss later, I think that this is simply nonsense on both forks of the statement.) But while most of the homophobes are simply arguing -- sadly, correctly -- that the science is weak, some are arguing that if gayness is genetic, then it can be ‘cured’ through some form of genetic ‘therapy.’ Some -- not all homophobes are radically religious -- have even brought up the idea of eliminating it by prenatal ‘gene testing’ and not having a baby that might turn out to be *shudder* gay. And one prime all-purpose bigot who will appear later in an interesting context, Steve Sailer, has suggested that instead of a ‘gay gene’ there might be a ’gay germ.’]

But I had a bigger problem with the argument. It just didn't make sense to me. I'd see the articles about the studies, glance through them, and shake my head. They went against common sense, my own experience, and the lives of the people I knew. Could these possibly be good science?

So far, the answer is no. Admittedly there have been new studies that I don’t have access to including a couple by the Dean Hamer group -- the guy keeps on trying -- as well as a book BORN GAY? which my library didn‘t have yet. My budget doesn’t let me purchase many new books or pay $10 or more for article reprints. So anyone who can email me copies of the studies will be thanked and I’ll do a follow-up on them.

But the studies I have seen are some of the most astoundingly bad science I have seen this side of the worst alties and woo-woos. Too small samples, self-selected participants, no controls, no use of blind testing, and so far, no replications of results. (And an even more important flaw that I will discuss in considerable detail later. No definition or discussion of what the researchers mean by ‘homosexual.’)

Let's look at the famous study by Simon LeVay, showing a 'difference' in the brains of homosexual men. To quote from his report:
"Specifically, I hypothesized that INAH 2 or INAH 3 is large in individuals sexually oriented toward women (heterosexual men and homosexual women) and small in individuals sexually oriented toward men (heterosexual women and homosexual men)."

(You really should read the whole paper, available here)

Unfortunately, he was unable to obtain brain tissue from homosexual women, so he couldn't test that part of the theory. Or that's how he describes it. You see, he got his tissue from routine autopsies, all 41 different samples. And you can't ask a corpse its sexual orientation. So he followed a simple rule. If he knew a man was gay (19 examples), he classified him as gay. (If the man was known to be bisexual, as one man was, what the hell, call him gay too.) But there were 16 men and six women whose sexual orientation he didn't know. (I have no idea what investigation he did on these people, or if he simply took hospital records. All the gay men died of AIDS -- this was 1993. But so did 6 of the other men and one of the women.)

I can only quote him.
"Two of these subjects (both AIDS patients) had denied homosexual activity. The records of the remaining 14 patients contained no information about their sexual orientation; they are assumed to be heterosexual."

So, given the small size of the sample, and the assumptions, the evidence must be pretty strong to get the amount of publicity. He obviously ruled out the possibility that AIDS could affect the brain, right? Well...

"there is the possibility that the small size of INAH 3 in the homosexual men is the result of AIDS or its complications and is not related to the men's sexual orientation. This does not seem to be the case because (i) the size difference in INAH 3 was apparent even when comparing the homosexual men with heterosexual AIDS patients..." Except that the six 'heterosexual' AIDS patients were only 'presumed' heterosexual -- two of them denied being gay, and of course a homosexual will always admit he is gay when he enters a hospital, right, and there was no information on the other four.

But at least the results were all consistent with the theory. Uh-oh! "The existence of "exceptions" in the present sample (that is, presumed heterosexual men with small INAH 3 nuclei, and homosexual men with large ones) hints at the possibility that sexual orientation, although an important variable, may not be the sole determinant of INAH 3 size. It is also possible, however, that these exceptions are due to technical shortcomings or to misassignment of subjects to their subject groups."

But despite these minor shortcomings, his next sentence reads: "The discovery that the nucleus differs in size between heterosexual and homosexual men illustrates that sexual orientation in humans is amenable to study at the biological level, and this discovery opens the door to studies of neurotransmitters or receptors that might be involved in regulating this aspect of personality."

Okay, now that we have some spare scrap paper, let's look at another study. This is the famous "Gay Gene Study" by Dean Hamer. The study that Carl Zimmer described, in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN as follows: "In 1993, for example, a scientist reported a genetic link to male homosexuality in a region of the X chromosome. The report brought a huge media fanfare, but other scientists who tried to replicate the study failed. The scientist's name was Dean Hamer." (This was in a discussion of Hamer's newest 'sensation,' The "God Gene.")

First, let’s look at Dean Hamer. While he’s done other work on several topics, the studies that have brought him into public notice have been his studies on Behavioral Genetics. The ‘Gay Gene’ was the first to make him well-known, later to be followed by the ‘God Gene’ but he has investigated the possible genetic ‘cause’ of such things as optimism, anxiety, and cigarette smoking. (In fact it was while he was studying cigarette smoking that he ‘discovered’ the ‘God Gene.’)

Hamer seems to be someone who, if there is evidence for a genetic cause for a behavior, By God, he’ll find it. And if there isn’t any evidence, By God, he’ll find it anyway. (The “By God’s” are interjections, not a reference to his religious faith, if any.) Unfortunately, no one else seems to be able to find what he finds.

(I have to mention, in that context, that he was the subject of an investigation by the federal Office of Research Integrity for possible scientific misconduct, because one of the study collaborators alleges that Hamer suppressed data that would have reduced the statistical significance of the reported results. I have been unable to find any final resolution of this investigation, and it seems to have been dropped without a finding either way.)

I am expecting any day now that he will release a study showing genetic causes for the differences between Yankee fans and Mets fans. And that’s not that far-fetched. If anxiety, risk-taking, and optimism, not to mention ‘self-transcendence’ are studiable, then why shouldn’t the ‘dimorphism’ between ‘front-runners’ and ‘underdog-supporters’ be? And anyone who follows baseball could match these with Yankee and Mets fans. All he has to do is to find families with more than one fan of a given team, analyze the relatives of these people to see if they skew more to the paternal or maternal side, and then run an analysis on the relevant Y or X gene. Find one gene marker that is ‘over-represented’ in the group he’s studying -- making sure NOT to study the other group for the marker, and bingo! (Ignoring the fact that, especially if the sample is small enough, pure chance will almost guarantee that one or another marker will be over-represented. If you start by looking at a particular gene marker and find it over-represented, then the argument that this is not attributable to chance is valid, but that‘s different from saying that there is one marker that is skewed of the whole universe of possibilities.)

Sound ridiculous? That is the way he ‘discovered’ the gay gene. And he keeps insisting he did discover it, and redoing his studies every time someone finds flaws in his research.

And flaws there are. To quote the Council for Responsible Genetics -- I have asked for information about the organization but have yet to receive any, so I can only judge them by seeing how the article I am quoting “DO GENES DETERMINE WHETHER WE ARE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, OR STRAIGHT?” matches other knowledge I have, and so far I have no reason to question them -- “But even more significant for Hamer’s studies is the definition of who is gay. Hamer uses the extremely conservative estimate of two percent for the prevalence of homosexuality among American men. Increasing this value to the usually accepted values of five to ten percent reduces or even eliminates the statistical significance of his results. The reason Hamer gives for his unusually low estimate is that he wants to work only with "real" gay men, that is, men who have essentially never veered from their preference for men in their sexual fantasies or activities.”

However, in his study, he does not seem to have limited his subjects to those who meet this criterion -- particularly in the relatives he studies. That isn’t that surprising. Many of us might know a relative is ‘gay’ without knowing the details of his sexual -- or fantasy -- life. However, the statistical problems become real if this factor is ignored.

In fact, the entire basis of his insistence on the gene being maternally transmitted seems to have come from the following fact. In his study, he found that 2 of 119 paternal uncles were ‘gay’ (I am not sure how he defined the term) and 7 of 96 maternal uncles. THAT -- and that alone, since there were 6 of 103 maternal cousins and 6 of 140 paternal cousins that were gay -- was what convinced him that the gay gene HAD to be maternally transmitted. (If you are wondering about lesbians, he ignored them. To quote a paper from Eric Wethy that discusses the study: “Hamer mailed out letters to members of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), but ended up with too many families that didn't fit into what was considered the "normal" gay family. For example, one family had both gay brothers and lesbian sisters. From what Hamer knew of homosexuality running in families, he knew that it wasn't common for both males and females to be gay. Any family that wasn't typical wouldn't provide valid information to his research. “) (http://www.msu.edu/user/wethyeri/gaygene.htm)

Hamer and researchers associated with him have produced further research on this. So far I am unaware of any study that confirms any of his work.

And one final comment about Hamer. The following is a quote from the abstract of an article produced by his group on the relationship between sexual orientation and ‘handedness:
“As expected from population-based studies, heterosexual men were, on average, more left-handed than heterosexual women. By contrast, gay men were more right-handed than lesbians or heterosexual men, and lesbians were more left-handed than gay men or heterosexual women. This crossover interaction suggests that a common variable influences sex, sexual orientation, and hand preference.”
(A crossover interaction between sex, sexual orientation, and handedness.Pattatucci AM, Patterson C, Benjamin J, Hamer DH. Laterality. 1998 Oct;3(4):331-42.)

On the other hand (sorry about that) RA Lippa reports:
For men and women combined, homosexual participants had 50% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual participants, a statistically significant difference. Homosexual men had 82% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual men, a statistically significant difference, whereas homosexual women had 22% greater odds of being non-right-handed than heterosexual women, a nonsignificant difference. … Rates of non-right-handedness were virtually identical for heterosexual men and women, suggesting that sex differences in handedness may result from higher rates of homosexuality in men.
(Handedness, sexual orientation, and gender-related personality traits in men and women. Arch Sex Behav. 2003 Apr;32(2):103-14.)

I won’t quote the abstract here, but a study of the ‘non-delinquent’ subjects of the Kinsey report showed (with over 6500 subjects) NO significant difference between heterosexual and homosexual men as far as ‘non-right-handedness’ went.

I will discuss the third study, the ‘twin studies’ -- and the unexpected return of Steve Sailer -- my reason for claiming that these studies are all useless because they neither describe, define, nor take a realistic view of homosexuality, and finally give my own ideas -- hopefully testable -- about the whole subject in the second part of this article. I’ll end this already lengthy piece with a suggested -- admittedly expensive and still imperfect -- experiment that might answer some of the questions. At least it would be something that seems like ‘real science’ to me, unlike the LeVay and Hamer ‘discoveries.’

There should be somewhere between 1000 and 10,000 subjects, evenly divided between men and women, and selected in such a way that sexual orientation is irrelevant, or reasonably so. (Not at a Church convention or a gay march, for example.) The subjects should be told they will need to discuss their sex lives, which will skew the sample slightly, but probably increase the honesty of the responses.

Each subject should be given a 16 digit number, in four groups of four digits. Each subject would be given four examinations by four independent groups of examiners. Each group would know only one of the four number groups corresponding to the examination.

I: a complete sexual history would be taken. Probably the subject would be encouraged to narrate it, guided to certain aspects by the examiner rather than answering a series of questions. It would include fantasies, early sexual experiences, early ‘crushes,’ time of learning sexual matters, early masturbation, but would go up to the present. The examiners would have to be specially trained at making the subjects comfortable discussing anything and guarantee confidentiality, even in relation to technically illegal events.

II: a life history, stressing the earliest period, would be taken, including as many influences, personal, educational, familial, including early books, tv, movies, etc, neighbors, religious education, etc. Again, probably in narrative form.

III: a complete physical description would be taken, stressing anatomical features. Possibly full-body MRIs could be included. (I am not sure if a full medical history would be needed or desirable, but certainly there should be a listing of STDs and any other even tangential matters -- for example, to mention a personal experience, I once contracted severe poison ivy on my genitals.)

IV: a full DNA work-up should be done.

Once the information was collected, then it could be collated and statistical correlations could be done. (To insure the elimination of bias, the program to create the correlation should be prepared in advance and -- if this wasn’t over-caution -- the inputting could be by a fifth group. Certainly the people inputting any specific data should know only the four digit number corresponding to that examination, and not have any way of putting the groups together to isolate any specific individual.)

That -- am I naïve -- strikes me as being the scientific way of doing such an investigation.

And one final note. I’ll explain more fully in the next part of this, but my argument here should not be taken to imply any belief in the possibility of changing someone from gay to straight, or vice versa. I have a somewhat different way of seeing the situation, but I’ll lay that out, along with -- as I said -- a discussion of the ‘twin study’ and the inherent problem with all these studies. Hopefully that part will be finished very shortly, certainly within the next few weeks.

And if anyone has any further studies or data I am unaware of, please e-mail it to me. It is at least conceivable that some recent work is less absurd than the ‘classic’ studies.

No Longer a Hero

Early in my blogging a I wrote a post entitled "A new hero" about a woman named Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose story, and her heroism touched me. She is the woman who wrote the movie that Theo Van Gogh directed that got him killed -- and that achievement remains untarnished. She also had fled to the Netherlands from Somalia, getting off the plane in Germany and seeking asylum as she escaped from her family and an arranged marriage. Except, it now turns out, she didn't. She'd left Somalia years before, had lived in Kenya and then in Germany, and finally chose to move to the Netherlands. And, as she states blithely on her website
"Hirsi Ali repeated on the TV documentary that when she arrived in 1992 she changed her name from Hirsi Magan and her birth date on her asylum application and did not tell the authorities that she had lived in three different countries since leaving Somalia.

"I invented a story that would be consistent with the conditions for asylum," she told The Associated Press."

Apparently she had admitted the change of name and age a long time previously, when she first ran for Parliament. But on the same website she is still being referred to as 'a refugee from an arranged marraige,' also now brought into question.

I condemned, rightfully so, George Deutsch for lying on his White House application -- and he merely claimed he had graduated from college when apparently he had done the course work but got so caught up in political work he never returned to graduate.

I can not forgive her for these lies, not merely because of her casual comments quoted above, but because her dishonesty in this casts a shadow on all her important work for human rights, women's rights, and against the worst problems in Islam. Her continuing to post mentions of the arranged marraige, plus a poll, supposedly of her readership that says that 98% of them 'do not think less of her because of these lies' (I have rarely seen an honest poll of anything that gets a 98% vote on one side) give her enemies ready made ammunition to dismiss anything else she says, and even worse to link other female critics of Islam to her and discount their statements as well.

(It is particularly ironic that she should post a story admitting her lies directly above one that awarded her a 'moral courage award.")

She is no longer a 'hero of mine.' She will be, however, a fellow countryman, since she is coming here, apparently to work at the American Enterprise Institute, an extremely conservative think tank that was willing to accept her. (That she simultaneously attempted to apply to the Brookings Institution and Johns Hopkins University may be merely an act of desperation, and not hypocrisy, though I wonder how many other people in history have applied to both Brookings and AEI at once.)

I have spoken in her favor on several blogs. I wish to apologize to any reader who read my comments. Truth matters. If it doesn't, what are we fighting for?

UPDATE on the poll:
Apparently it was the readers of LGF that slanted the poll so strongly. Originally the division was about 3 to 1 AGAINST her, 122 saying they thought less of her, only 27 in her favor. LGF published these results and said (do I hear echoes of Limbaugh) 'you know what to do.' The poll wound up 8276 in her favor, 133 against, a fact she doesn't mention when she quotes the results.

Another distraction - like I needed one

Well, I will be trying to get back to this blog as well as "100 Camels" but there's a lot going on. The examination of the Qur'an IS important, doctor trips and the Mets are intervening, and there are a lot of tv shows to watch. (I STILL haven't discussed DR. WHO. I'll get to it, but the difference in the improvement in this and that in the reworked BATTLESTAR is that the original BATTLESTAR was a LOUSY show. DR. WHO was, despite the chessiness of the effects, a very good one. But both are so much better in the new versions that they are major shows on the 'must watch' category.) Then there are all the blogs with discussions so interesting that I have to put my 3 1/2 cents worth in. (Not conceit, inflation.)

So the last thing I needed to do was visit the branch of the Brooklyn Public Library over by my doctor's office on my way to visit him. The BPL has a book sale in every branch, and the prices are usually great, $1.00 for hardbacks, $.50 for paperbacks -- even large sized ones. Every so often, especially at that branch, they have a super-sale, with hardcovers at $.25 and pbs at $.10. And when I stop by the pile has been picked through enough that I frequently leave with nothing but thanks from my wife for not adding to the clutter and chaos that already fills the house. (3,000 books take up a lot of space, and no, I'm not the best at getting things reshelved.)

This time I was early enough. I only spent $2.55, but that meant 5 hardbacks and 13 pbs. Well, it does mean I'll finally be adding mystery reviews to this.

Sleep, what's sleep?

Baseball: No Soda in April

But the Mets are "7 UP" over both the Braves and the Phillies as of April 30th. Some of my other predictions are, well, needing of revision -- I didn't think the Pirates were still this bad, and it looks like the Reds finally got pitching and may be a factor in the race (but I still think the Giants will collapse of old age and too much investment in crooked Bonds). The real race seems to be in the American League East. All five teams are good ones, none are outstanding, and we'll have to see what happens when they start playing more out of division.

BUT THE METS FINALLY HAVE THE MAGIC AGAIN. AMAZIN' AND I DO BELIEVE. (They may even be better than 86, the only year when their pennant was not more or less a fluke.)