Biology 101: We are what we are.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that family members usually, though not always, tend to bear some physical resemblance to one another. Skin tone, eye and hair color, facial features, height, and even more abstract characteristics such as personal interests or intelligence can contribute to recognizable family traits.

 

A close friend had chuckled when she saw a home movie of my father, whom she had never met, walking on the beach in his swim trunks. My friend found it amusing that I walked with the same rolling, slightly bowlegged gait that my father had. As it was, I was pleased by this connection to my Dad, who had died while I was still a teenager.

Thinking about this link made me realize something else. Since my father had never insisted that I should specifically imitate his walk, I recognized that my body structure—bones and muscles, their particular lengths, shapes and placement—were traits that I’d inherited from my father and caused me to move in a similar fashion.

What I learned from all this was that my resemblance to and variation from other people were due to very definite physical attributes, inherited, not learned. For example, one can not teach a child to change his or her eye color. While this may appear mundane and obvious, there are more subtle applications with much greater relevance that I’ll demonstrate as we go along.

Years later, when I was working in mental health, I had occasion to study brain trauma and its effects. I learned that certain behavioral patterns, called “risk-taking” behaviors, were associated with a higher incidence of brain trauma. In other words, folks who, for instance, liked to drive fast, more often found themselves in head-crashing accidents.

I also read that researchers had identified a genetic marker that is associated with such risk-taking behavior.

That information, coupled with some reading from the extraordinary amount of brain research that had been done world-wide in the 1990s, helped me understand that human brains are as subject to physical and functional similarities and differences as any other body part. Moreover, it was obvious these differences and similarities are largely responsible for normal or anomalous behavior as well.

More specifically, people feel and behave in different ways for the most part because their brains are different.

That has some very significant ramifications. Think about it.

Easy for you to say

Call it global warming, or climate change or a big hoax. It really doesn’t matter.

But two things are absolutely certain:

1

No matter how much it costs to deal with it now, the cost is only going up—exponentially.

2

We are betting the quality of life—and many actual lives—of our children and grandchildren on the outcome.

Don’t get me started: What unfair competition?

I’m giving the gray matter a rest this week and figured I’d rant on another issue that ticks me off whenever I hear it suggested: it’s unfair competition when the government enters the business arena.

Talk about a no-brainer. I have several ways to answer this. I'll open with the most sarcastic.

• Wah-wah-wah! Quit your whining! Didn’t your mother ever tell you that life isn’t fair?

• I thought you said that business ran things so much better than government. So what are you afraid of?

• But finally—so what?

If we, the people, decide something is better done by us, then that’s really all there is to it. I mean, have you read the Constitution? Does it say that our purpose is to coddle businesses and corporations? Are they even mentioned anywhere, other than being subject to regulation?

Want to know what the Constitution is about, what our government is about? Then just read the preamble, because it’s stated clearly: we, the people, intend to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Private businesses and corporations are privileged to operate within those purposes. That whole “fairness” issue is a hot crock of monkey snot!

Publishing Note

UGOB is having trouble with my ethernet drivers and I've been unable to maintain a dependable net connection. This has interrupted the publishing schedule I attempt to keep. I'm working on it.

But here's an interesting dilemma: most of the recommended repair strategies require net access.

Free Speech! Offer Ends Soon!

As previously noted (Free speech isn’t free, June 9, 2010)

In every way, the first major problem with politics is money.

Primarily, our elected federal officials (we’ll stick to discussing the federal system for now) need considerable money for their election and re-election campaigns. In many cases, this means millions upon millions of dollars. In almost all campaigns, this money is donated by individuals and groups concerned with—and now invested in—the outcome of the election.

Two questions come to mind:

• What do the donors expect as a result of their contributions?

• What is the candidate willing to do to attract more donations?

Let’s see now, shall we take the high road or the low road?

Tell you what—I’m willing to bet that you can imagine the scenery along either route, so let’s just skip a bunch of superfluous prose. But I will put some spin on it:

Basically, what we uphold for our elected federal officials is a system of legalized bribery.

It is, perhaps, the fairest, most regulated, openly divested bribery system that humankind has yet devised—but it is still bribery. We have proudly institutionalized corruption and venality. (Aren’t we just the greatest country in the world?)

Unhappily, under a Constitution designed to guarantee rule by law and a one person-one vote system, this muddies things up considerably. The entire elective structure appears to be influenced by that freakish derangement of the Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rules.

Our toleration of this system says all that needs to be said about our political ideals and social morals.

So here’s what I propose —

 UGOB EDIT NOTE: The finance system that I had intended to outline here, having relevant similarities to the one mentioned below, appears to have been made moot by a federal appeals court decision this past Tuesday. The following excerpt from a Wednesday New York Times article summarizes the situation.

The Connecticut decision, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, struck down the “trigger provision” of the state’s campaign finance system, which allowed extra public funds for candidates running against opponents who do not participate in the system and who spend more than the system’s limits. The more the rich candidate spends, the more public money his or her opponent gets. Though the playing field is hardly even, the law does give nonwealthy candidates a fighting chance to compete.

The appeals court found that the campaign finance system violated the First Amendment rights of wealthy candidates. Never mind that nothing in the system prohibited such candidates from speaking or spending all they want; the court said that by awarding additional funds to opponents, the system caused a self-financed candidate to “shoulder a special and potentially significant burden if she chooses to exercise her First Amendment right to spend personal funds on her campaign.”

Here is the lesson I take from this: the First Amendment guarantees free speech, not equal speech. Or something. Maybe this will be appealed to the Supreme Court. Even so ...

Back to the drawing board.