Pedo-Foley

There are few things that sicken me as much as the knowledge that men in power exploit it to fulfill their own twisted sexual fantasies. Honestly, how many more religious leader pedophiles, “family values” closet homosexuals, and “strong, tight-knit family” divorcee’s/wife-beaters/drug-addicts are we going to find in the positions of power?

Well, just recently, there’s another one, (former) Florida Representative Foley (might I add that he’s a Republican?). I usually don’t do this, but I am so outraged to the point where I think I will just make a long ranty post, so please forgive the biting sarcasm:

Six-term Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned yesterday amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit Internet messages to at least one underage male former page.

Foley, who was considered likely to win reelection this fall, said in a three-sentence letter of resignation: “I am deeply sorry and I apologize for letting down my family and the people of Florida I have had the privilege to represent.”

I can’t believe he acts like he has any sort of moral bearing to be able to make that speech or that apology. Hell, where is his apology to the boy, or HIS family?

The resignation rocked the Capitol, and especially Foley’s GOP colleagues, as lawmakers were rushing to adjourn for at least six weeks. House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told The Washington Post last night that he had learned this spring of inappropriate “contact” between Foley and a 16-year-old page. Boehner said he then told House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Boehner later contacted The Post and said he could not remember whether he talked to Hastert.

It was not immediately clear what actions Hastert took. His spokesman had said earlier that the speaker did not know of the sexually charged online exchanges between Foley and the boy.

So… you heard about this, but now:

1. You don’t remember having discussed it? I guess this sort of conversation must come up all the time with you, doesn’t it?
2. It seems like you didn’t do anything for… let’s see Spring was oh.. HALF A YEAR AGO!?

Please tell me a Democrat at least tried to capitalize on this? Nancy Pelosi?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took the House floor last night to demand an investigation into the Foley matter. But Boehner headed her off, calling on the House to refer the matter to the ethics committee, which the House promptly voted unanimously to do.

I’m almost shocked that the House actually voted to do something about it… at least it wasnt’ the Senate, I’m sure someone would just filibuster the damn thing…

At the Capitol Hill signing ceremony for the commissions bill, a GOP campaign priority, reporters asked Hastert only about Foley. “He’s done the right thing,” Hastert replied. “I’ve asked John Shimkus [R-Ill.], who is head of the Page Board, to look into this issue regarding Congressman Foley. We want to make sure that all of our pages are safe and our page system is safe. None of us are happy about it.”

Oh, I’m sure Mr. Foley resigned because it was the right thing to do, he’s such a man of morals, isn’t he?

ABC News reported yesterday that it had interviewed Foley, 52, about excerpts of instant messages provided by current and former pages under the age of 18. ABC reported that Foley, under the AOL Instant Messenger screen name Maf54, made repeated references to sexual acts and body parts. Foley’s spokesman did not respond to a Washington Post request for comment on the ABC report.

Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), who sponsored the page from his district, said he had learned of some of the online exchanges from a reporter some months ago and passed on the information to Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Republican campaign organization, the Associated Press reported. Alexander said he did not pursue the matter further because “his parents said they didn’t want me to do anything.”

Shimkus said in a statement last night, “in late 2005, I was notified by the then Clerk of the House,” that Alexander had told the Clerk “about an email exchange between Congressman Foley and a former House Page. I took immediate action to investigate the matter.”

In the e-mail, “Foley asked about the former Page’s well-being after Hurricane Katrina and requested a photograph,” Shimkus said. He said Foley assured him it was an innocent exchange, but “nevertheless, we ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact” with the boy and to respect all pages. “Only now have I learned that Congressman Foley was not honest about his conduct,” Shimkus said.

So… this is even worse. Not only did someone know about this BEFORE this Spring, someone knew about it “late 2005″!?!?! I love how the Representative from Louisiana (bastion of good ol’ fashioned Confederate morality that place is) decided tahtt he best person to talk to wasn’t the police but … “the chairman of the House Republican campaign organization” — it’s good that he checks in with his party before he acts on that pesky conscience of his.

Foley’s resignation was startlingly sudden. He was a respected House member cruising toward a seventh term when ABC News reported Thursday that he had sent brief, chatty e-mails last year to a boy, then 16, who had been a House page. In them, Foley asked the boy’s age and what he wanted for his birthday. He requested a picture of the boy and told him that he had just finished a long bike ride and was going to the gym. ABC reported that the boy forwarded the photo-request e-mail to an unidentified congressional staffer and wrote that the message was “sick sick sick sick sick.”

Those last five words say it all. So, at this point, I’m curious — what kind of bills did (ex)-Congressman Foley back?

Foley chaired the House caucus on missing and exploited children and was credited with writing the sexual-predator provisions of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which Bush signed in July. A photo on the White House Web site shows Foley among those attending the signing ceremony.

And in case anyone is wondering what pages are — and just how “choir-boy” like their job is:

Congressional pages are teenagers who live in a Capitol Hill dorm and attend a special school while serving in the House and Senate. The program generally is trouble-free, but in July 1983 the House censured Reps. Daniel B. Crane (R-Ill.) and Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.) for sexual misconduct with House pages.

Some of my female friends have joked that this country would be run better with women in charge. When stuff like this happens, I’m almost inclined to agree…

Oprah and RSS

We need more politicians and scientists and economists who can explain important, complex things in terms of language that everyone can understand.

Like, Oprah explaining RSS. And by RSS, I don’t of course mean the yucky “Really Simple Syndication”, nooo… I mean “i’m Ready for Some Stories”

Are the Eldest Siblings the Smartest?

I’ve tended to notice that Harvard classes are dominated by people who are the eldest born. (You can do a survey and at any point in any upper-echelon school system, you’ll get two-thirds be eldest children)

Does that mean that the eldest siblings are the smarter ones? As much as I wish that were true (I am an eldest son), this post from EconLog points out why that is faulty logic (and another why correlation does not equate to causation):

If you regress real income on birth order, you get the same pattern as my wife’s law school class. The first-born averages $1900 more than the second-born, who averages $1900 more than the third-born, and so on.

However, if you regress real income on birth order AND family size, you get a totally different picture. Birth order makes essentially no difference (in fact, the sign reverses), but average income falls by about $2400/child in your family. First-born only child? You’ll make more than average. First-child child in a big family? You’ll do no better than the fifth-born child – maybe a little worse!

Does this show that big families hurt incomes? Possibly, but the simpler story is more plausible: Poor people have more kids, and kids of poor people tend to be poor themselves.

Rock, Papers, Scissors

You’re in charge of a business.

You get two offers that sound equally good.

What do you do?

Play rock, paper, scissors.

1-800-what?

Ever wanted to know what your phone number spells as an easier way to get people to remember your number?

Well, look no further than PhoneSpell. Sadly, my number doesn’t really spell anything , hopefully your’s will have better luck.

Classes

Thus begins my final year at Harvard…

1. Biochemical Sciences 99 – Thesis Research - (time variable) - Yup, getting credit for thesis research. I decided I would only take 4 classes this semester so I could spend a huge chunk of time in lab making up for the utter lack of progress this summer …
2. Biochemical Sciences 91R - Independent Research - (time variable) – I posted earlier about Professor Michael Brenner being one of the best lecturers I’ve ever had, and also being one of the most unique. I approached him earlier about whether or not he’d be willing to do an independent study project with me, as my first real jump into mathematical biology. The trouble with these is that, although I am very enthusiastic about working with Brenner on what looks like a very “deep”, theoretical question, I am just worried about making a fool of myself in front of someone that I respect and admire.
3. Moral Reasoning 33 - Issues in Ethics – TTh 10-11 + 1 Section – Don’t even get me started on the strangeness of the idea of teaching a course on “moral reasoning”. This class is taught by Thomas Scanlon, which probably doesn’t mean anything to a lot of people, but I do recall reading stuff by him on rights theory back when I was doing debate. Scanlon isn’t the best of lecturers, but he’s picked very interesting topics to cover, and the reading seems to be a bit on the light side and a bit on the more interesting side (as opposed to reading Plato’s Republic or Hobbes’ Leviathan all semester :-X for Harvey Mansfield’s class). We’ll be talking about the ethics of assisted suicide, the trolley problem (is it moral to divert a trolley about to kill 10 people on a path to kill 5 people?), whether or not international aid is an obligation, etc.
4. Mathematics 153 – Evolutionary Dynamics – TTh 1-2:30 – Martin Nowak, the professor, is the head of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard and has written a very approachable (and nice-looking!) book on the subject of Evolutionary Dynamics which is the fundamental basis of mathematical biology. I’m a little concerned about the difficulty of the course, as the first lecture moved rather swiftly and the class is populated by no shortage of Math/Ec, Math, and Physics people — and I know nowhere near the amount of math people like they do. Luckily, I think I was partly the reason that Eric decided to take this course, so worse case, I can just “ask him for help” (translation: copy his homework). We’ll be talking about the basic population genetics stuff plus some evolutionary game theory (ie the evolution of selfishness and cooperation), the basics of neutral genetic drift, and even the acquisition of language by babies.

And yes, that does mean that I only have 2 classes on Tuesday and Thursday (plus one section, which I will probably arrange to be on Tuesday or Thursday) and the rest is dedicated to… “independent study” .

Yahoo vs Google

I’ve previously made a comparison between Yahoo and Google services. What about their search engine? Which is better, Google or Yahoo? Or, more appropriately, how closely do their results line up?

Yahoo vs Google allows you to do a search string and then see how their results match up on a Flash interface.
GahooYoogle.com splits your screen in half and performs a Google search in one half and a Yahoo search in the other.

The results are actually very interesting.

Jay-Z Meets Comics

What do you do if you’re a “retired” (right… like they ever REALLY retire) rapper who wants to come back?

Well if you’re Jay-Z, you find a comic book, where Superman … returns (sorry movie fans, that plot has ACTUALLY been done before). His new album, Kingdom Come, is named after a great graphic novel of the same name, published by DC comics, written by the talented Mark Waid, and painted by the amazingly gifted Alex Ross. It’s a story of a dystopic future (aren’t they all?) where the conscience of the superhero community disappeared when Superman, sickened by the world he lived in, went into retirement. It’s a story of Superman’s return following a horrific accident in order to restore the world — and the struggles that he faces.

From Jay-Z’s title track:
Take off the blazer
Loosen up the tie
Step inside the booth
Superman is alive!

Interestingly, I’m positive Jay-Z did not read the entirety of the graphic novel, as Superman’s return is not the panacea that everyone had hoped for. Instead, it splinters the hero community and brings the world on the verge of apocalypse…

Unless… that was Jay-Z’s intention

Addicted to Crackberry

http://www.nysun.com/article/39212

I don’t know if this is funny or just plain sad. I know that everytime I get an email from someone that has the line at the bottom “this email was sent by my blackberry”, I think to myself “loser” or how lucky I am that, although email is a big big part of my life, I am not so tied to my email that I need one of those…

If You Get This, You Are Hardcore Nerd

http://xkcd.com/c156.html

I don’t know which is winning right now, my pride at understanding the joke or my shame…