People who do not believe in evolution had some seemingly sound arguments against the theory. Unfortunately, those people now have two fewer legs to stand on. Two arguments commonly used against evolution have now been refuted.
One of the widely known arguments is the watchmaker analogy. It says that the complex inner workings of a watch could only come to be through the act of an intelligent designer. Therefore, as with a watch, the complexity of a given life form could only be created by intelligent design.
It turns out that evolution is a blind watchmaker after all. A doctor of molecular neuroscience wrote a computer program that emulates the process of natural selection using the component parts of a watch. He found that a functioning watch could, in fact, evolve from its independent parts without any intelligent design.
Another argument commonly posited is that no fossil evidence has been discovered that shows one species evolving into another. People who ascribe to this argument postulate that, considering the countless species that have existed on this planet, there must be abundant fossil evidence of this speciation if evolution really occurred. Since there is no such evidence, there has been no evolution.
It was long assumed that man had to look into fossil history for evidence of speciation since written history is too short to observe a species splitting into two separate species. It turns out that mankind need not look back tens of thousands of years for evidence of speciationâthey need only to look to the Galapagos islands. The birth of a new species has now been witnessed by scientists. A husband-and-wife team of biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species of Galapagos finches split into two separate species within what turned out to be a surprisingly short period of time.
Proponents of Intelligent Design now need to postulate two new arguments against evolution.
My friend made a post to his Facebook where he attempted to list every concert he’d been to. He tagged me (and some of his other friends), challenging me to list every one that I had been to. Considering that I’ve been to hundreds of concerts over the span of more than three decades, there’s no possibility that I could list every concert I’ve been to. So instead I decided to post the dozen most notable concert experiences I’ve had.
The Police Approx. 1981 Sunrise Musical Theater The first time I saw The Police in concert was on the ZenyattĂ Mondatta tour. What made this concert particularly memorable was the back seat of my car going up in flames on the drive up to the show. You can read all about the wild ride here. I saw them again over a quarter of a century later when The Police reformed for a reunion tour and you can read about that in We don’t need no stinking badges.
Rolling Stones October 24, 1981 Tangerine Bowl John and I drove all the way from Miami to see The Stones. The Tattoo You tour was the first of about a dozen “farewell tours” The Stones have played. The Stones had a band called Van Halen (Perhaps you’ve heard of them?) open for them. It was the last time Van Halen opened for another band. Personally, I liked Van Halen’s show better than The Stones’. David Lee Roth had even better moves than Jagger.
The US Festival September 3-5, 1982 Glen Helen Regional Park This was the rock festival to rival Woodstock. It was held in an immense natural amphitheater with nothing less than the San Bernardino Mountains and the San Fernando Mountains backdropping a huge stage. It’s impossible to sum up three sunny days with a million people and fifteen major acts in a paragraph. All I can say is, the US Festival will forever remain unequaled as the greatest concert experience of my life. If you can handle the full uncensored story, read My 1982 US Festival Trip.
The Who October 29, 1982 Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum It was just me, Scott, and 100,000+ of our closest friends in the Coliseum with festival seating and The Clash. What, you ask, is so notable about that? The Who headlined! Enough said.
Supertramp September 25, 1983 Irvine Meadows Amphitheater Mike and I were fortunate enough to sit in the twelfth row for this concert. The Meadows was a beautiful, open-air amphitheater built on the side of a hill. Because of this theater’s great sound reinforcement, we could really appreciate the layered vocal harmonies, percussion, and woodwind instruments of a Supertramp show. With a setlist eighteen songs long, they played for hours and their performance was spotless. They seemed to be on an emotional high. During the intermission, we found out why. It turned out to be the last show that founding member Roger Hodgson played with the band, so they presented him with a gold watch.
The Tubes Approx. 1986 Ceasar’s Tahoe How do you explain a Tubes show to someone who’s never seen one? To say it’s outrageous and over-the-top doesn’t begin to do it justice. The stage was set with over-sized props and beautiful women in skimpy costumes dancing all over. Fee Waybill has an amazing imagination and boundless creativity, so the show was a feast for the eyes. Yet the musicianship of the band is so excellent that the music easily holds its own with the stage production. Not being gamblers, Mike and I went to the show looking for a way to pass the evening at South Lake Tahoe after a day of great snow skiing. We lucked out and were seated almost within an arm’s length of the stage.
Eagles May 29, 1994 Irvine Meadows Amphitheater This show turned out to be opening night of the Hell Freezes Over tourâthe first time the band had played for a paying audience in fourteen years. There was this atmosphere of anticipation and build-up for this show that the band fed off of. Subsequently, the Eagles were in particularly rare form. By this time, I was using a wheelchair but, there under the stars on a beautiful summer night with my bro Jim, the wheelchair-accessible seating had a great view.
Elton John and Billy Joel Approx. 1997 The Forum Elton John and Billy Joel co-headlined on the Face to Face tour. I had previously seen Billy Joel in concert but had not seen Elton live, so Jim and I decided it was again time to see a show together. We were able to get the wheelchair seating near the left side of the stage in the first row of the upper-level, so it’s unobstructed. There was a Jumbotron directly in front of us, PA speakers on either side, and the stage laid out below us. Elton John opened the show with his band, playing a rocking set. Then the crew brought out a second grand piano and Billy Joel joined him on the stage. After another long set, Elton retired backstage and Billy Joel played a set with just his band. Finally, Elton rejoined him for a long encore.
Santana October 14, 2005 Dignity Health Sports Park I had been to numerous soccer games at the Home Depot Center but I was unfamiliar with the wheelchair seating for concerts. When Santana was going to play there, I decided to find out. Imagine my surprise to discover I could sit in the front row and my greater surprise to find out there was still wheelchair-accessible seating available! With seats that close, I had to buy tickets, even though I had already seen Santana live three times previously. Since the soccer field (where the stage is set) is below street level at the Home Depot Center, it turned out the only way to get there in a wheelchair is to take a freight elevator which opens up backstage. From there, Michael and I found our way to the field and over to the wheelchair seating area situated directly in front of the stage. After the show, we had to go backstage again to leave and were fortunate to encounter some of the band members there (although we did not get to meet Carlos).
Roger Waters June 15, 2007 Irvine Meadows Amphitheater For the full story on this show, read When pigs fly!
For every show listed above, I’ve probably seen a dozen other concerts whose story has yet to be written. They include acts like Queen, U2, Simon & Garfunkel, Yes, the Doobie Brothers, Rush, and Steely Danâsome of them numerous times. In fact, I’m sure there are many acts I’ve seen that I don’t even remember. So to keep things simple, I’ll end my list here with just a dozen of the most memorable concerts.
Where is the change President Obama spoke of in his campaign? It certainly is not in the form of the health care reform bills going through congress right now. I still have hope that the bill that finally gets signed into law is real health care reform but things are moving in the wrong direction right now. The problem is that insurance companies are still at the core of the various bills being developed right now.
We are the only advanced country in the world that has chosen to leave health care to the tender mercies of a panoply of for-profit businesses, whose purpose is to maximize income and not to provide health. And that’s exactly what they do.
Dr. Angell was referring to Obama’s position that Americans who do not get health insurance from their employers be mandated to purchase it under the health care reform plan. She says that by so doing, “We’re going to deliver the private insurance companies a captive marketâŠAnd they love that.”
In fact what we need to do is eliminate the marketâat least from the insurance companiesâby creating a single-payer plan. Insurance companies deliver no value to patients or recipients of health care whatsoever in the current health care system. All they do is generate costsâalmost one-third of what Americans are currently paying for health care goes to administration by health insurance companies.
Opponents of a single-payer system say that patients would get no choice in their health care. It would be completed dictated by the government. But the evidence contradicts this assertion. Dr. Angell goes on to point out about this claim:
It’s phony, in the sense that Medicare is a single-payer system, embedded within our larger market-based system. You have totally free choice of a physician in Medicare. You don’t in most employer-sponsored private plans. Canada, totally free choice of doctors. So, this is simply not true.
Opponents also claim that a single-payer system would lead to rationing. But the fact is that it’s our current “free market” system that rations health care by providing it to the insured and denying it to the poor and uninsured. In fact, even middle class families are falling victim to the status quo: sixty percent of bankruptcies are caused by health problems. Dr. Angell says:
If we continue to spend what we do, right now, on health care, but had a system that distributed it according to medical need, there would be no rationing. And if we held it at that cost, there would never be any rationing. So, it’s simply not right. The problem is not the money, it’s the system.
It’s not easy going through life with a disability. Fortunately, people with disabilities get an occasional privilege. One of them is the use of disabled person parking spaces. It helps make one small aspect of life a little easier.
Nonetheless, the privileges need to be respected. When taken for granted, the person doesn’t appreciate the privilege. When a person has a sense of entitlement to privileges, it leads those without them to begrudge the privileged. So even a person with challenges in life and few privileges should take care not to abuse them.
Shatney had just bought a new car, so he did not have his disabled person plates yet. But Shatney also qualifies for a disabled person placard. He could use the placard until the plates arrived. Instead, Shatney felt that having his wheelchair in the back seat and hand controls for driving entitled him to use the disabled person parking space, even though the law said otherwise.
The law says that the disabled person placard must be displayed when parking in a disabled person parking space. In fact, it says that the person must show the registration for the placard when a law officer makes the request. The law does so for a couple of reasons. One is that abuse of disabled person placards is rampant. Another is that many people have “invisible disabilities” where you cannot see that they have a disability by observing them walking from their car parked in a disabled person parking space.
There is no exception in the law for people with wheelchairs or for having hand controls in their car. If there were, some people without a disability would find yet more ways to take advantage of disabled person parking. The law protects the privilege of the driver or passenger with a disability. It should be respected by the beneficiaries of the privilege.
As for Shatney, his citation was canceled. Because he demonstrated that he had the legal right to use disabled person parking, the local police sergeant canceled the citation. That’s fair to Shatney, but it was also fair that he was cited in the first place.
Buying a van adapted for driving from a wheelchair is a costly investment. Depending on the scope of adaptations needed, the price can even run into six-figures. This is obviously not a purchase to take lightly.
Nonetheless, it can be a critical investment for a person with a disability. An adapted vehicle can provide that person with independence most people take for granted but that is otherwise unattainable for someone with a significant mobility impairment.
Considering all this, one would hope that making the purchase would go smoothly. After all, activities of daily living are challenging enough for someone with a major disability. That person would hope that their purchase is sure to be hitch free. Unfortunately, it’s notâeven in the most uneventful of purchases.
First of all, at least for the initial purchase, the driver must undergo a driving evaluation given by a team that includes an occupational therapist and a rehabilitation engineer who specialize in adapted driving before even ordering a vehicle. Secondly, funding is a challenge and most traditional lenders won’t provide a loan for an adapted vehicle because of the high cost relative to the Blue Book value. Finally, the driver must have at least two fittings before delivery just to ensure the van is configured appropriately for the individual.
After all this, my most recent purchase of an adapted van went from a major hassle to my worst nightmare. I chose the same dealer from which I had purchased my prior two adapted vans, ADS Mobility. ADS had been in business for almost thirty years and had a good reputation in the industry. In my prior two purchases, the dealer did its best to provide quality service to me and they fully rectified the one accidental incident that occurred. This last purchase was a different story altogether.
First of all, ADS delayed delivery of my van for months. The owner, Chuck Kutz, fed me excuse after excuse, blaming all the delays on his suppliers. I have since discovered that all of the excuses were lies. I now speculate that what actually happened is ADS probably misappropriated the payment I made for the vehicle and did not use it to purchase the base Honda Odyssey Northstar conversion and all of the additional adapted driving equipment I require. Instead, it was probably used for ADS’s other expenses and then Kutz probably had to wait for sales to later unfortunate customers to use their payments to acquire my van and equipment over the subsequent months.
Part of the equipment that ADS contracted to install in my van was an AEVIT L Series system. This system costs well into five-figures all by itself plus thousands of dollars more to install. When I finally received my van, it had a used EGB SS electronic gas and brake system installed instead. This is an obsolete (albeit reliable) predecessor to the AEVIT system that hasn’t been manufactured since 2001 and which the manufacturer doesn’t support anymore.
The reason why ADS mangled my transaction has now come to light. The dealership went out of business and closed up shop. No other address or phone number was given to any customers for any kind of follow-up service on undelivered purchases, which happened to be the state of mine at the time. The owner has gone into hiding and is incommunicado. Fortunately (sort of), my van was abandoned at a distant Honda dealer, so I was able to retrieve it.
The van had the temporary registration vehicles have when first delivered by dealers. I checked with the Department of Motor Vehicles to determine when they would send me my permanent plates and discovered that ADS had neither processed my registration nor paid the taxes and fees. Of course, I had already paid ADS thousands of dollars to do so. Unfortunately, ADS left it up to me to process the registration and pay the taxes and feesâyet again!
Is this tale over? I hope so but it might not be. Other people who recently bought adapted vans from ADS have actually had their vans repossessed by ADS’s supplier. It turns out ADS didn’t pay its supplier for a fleet of vans and Kutz absconded with the unfortunate buyers’ monies.
ADS Mobility was QAP Accredited by the National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association (NMEDA). This Quality Assurance Program (QAP) accredited what, in this case, turned out to be a very low quality and crooked dealership. In all fairness, the QAP is a well designed program and is a strong indicator that an accredited dealer can be relied on to deal in good faith with its customers. Nonetheless, a dealer bent on ripping off its customers can still become QAP Accredited by defrauding the NMEDA, just as it does its customers.
Buyers of adapted vehicles should not rely solely on any such indicator that their dealer will take care of them. Let this tale be a warning to act with great caution when purchasing such an expensive and critical vehicle. Before paying the dealer, try to determine what comprises the dealer’s inventory of vehicles and equipment. Try to identify your own vehicle as early as possible and verify that no suppliers have a lien on its title. And whatever you do, avoid dealing with Chuck Kutz like the plague!
The decline in home values is hurting millions of Americans. After all, many had built up a great deal of equity in their homes by the time values had reached their peaks. Now the rates are resetting on many homeownersâ ARMs and the monthly payments are increasing to the point of unaffordability. In the meantime, their equity has evaporated and they are underwater with their mortgages. The only option left if they canât afford to service their debt is a short sale or foreclosure.
The obvious course of action is to reverse the direction of the trend in home values, right? Wrong! Declining home values are not the disease, theyâre the symptom, so turning them around is not the cure. Or as Alan Reynolds, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and the author of Income and Wealth put it, âFalling home prices are not the problem, they’re the solution.â The cure for home values is some homeopathic medicineâthat is, the feds keeping their hands off the housing market and letting homes return to their intrinsic values.
In the end, all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis. And all of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to continue to deepenâa crisis which is unraveling home ownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself. But if we act boldly and swiftly to arrest this downward spiral, then every American will benefit.
His solution is the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan. His plan has four key elements:
financing help for four- to five-million homeowners who receive their mortgages through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac
new incentives for lenders to modify the terms of sub-prime loans at risk of default and foreclosure
steps to keep mortgage rates low for millions of middle class families looking to secure new mortgages
additional reforms designed to help families stay in their homes
Few would refute that this plan will cost much more than $75-billion Obama has dedicated to it. Responsible taxpayers who chose not to buy homes they could not afford will subsidize others who couldnât resist jumping onto the home-as-the-breadwinner bandwagon. Those of us who resisted the lure of âcreative financingâ knew that home prices could not continue rising forever. Instead we will bail out the countless HELOC abusers who have cashed out their homes under Obamaâs plan.
Professor Robert Shiller is an economist from Yale who saw the burst of the housing bubble coming at least two years before the market hit its peak. He performed a study of historical home values that clearly illustrated where the housing market is headed:
CaseâShiller home price index data, 1890â2012
All Obamaâs plan will do is postpone the inevitableâŠand cost America a price tag that will reach into trillions of dollars if Americans donât put a stop to it. Anyone who has studied economics knows that all markets return to a state of equilibrium. No matter how much of our treasury we throw at the declining housing market, we will not be able to prevent a drop of another twenty percent in median home values and much more than that in some hyper-inflated regions.
The cure to the housing market is some homeopathic medicine. The idea of homeopathy is to treat disease with a dose of medicine that would produce in a healthy person symptoms similar to those of the disease. In the case of our diseased housing market, the medicine is lower home values. Lower home values would make home ownership more affordable to average Americans. It would make for healthier mortgages. And it would loosen up the credit market because home loans would be much less risky to lenders.
According to NORML, thirteen states have active medical marijuana programs. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that residents of those states can use marijuana to treat medical conditions without risk. Even though the people of those states democratically legalized such use, the Supreme Court demonstrated that it has no compassion for the chronically ill. The Federal government outranks the state government.
This is not the only medical condition that marijuana can treat. Because of the variety of ailments that can be treated with it, marijuana could improve the quality of life of countless Americans if the Feds would just lighten up. The emerging clinical applications for cannabis & cannabinoids range from Alzheimer’s disease to Tourette’s Syndrome:
How is it possible that congress did not recognize something even more important? HR 847 is unquestionably a direct violation of the Constitution. The very first amendment of the Bill of Rights says unequivocally that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.? Yet HR 847 does just that, establishing the “Christian faith.”
And where does this leave Muslim and Jewish Americans or, for that matter, any American of any faith other than Christianity? Congress is implying that they’re unimportant.
Then there are atheist Americans: since atheism is the absence of any faith, including Christianity, should they infer that they, too, are unimportant to congress? Ironically, many atheists ‘celebrate’ Christmas, albeit secularly. Since HR 847 also establishes the importance of Christmas, does that mean congress considers atheists who observe Christmas halfway important?
My twentieth anniversary of being quadriplegic came last week and I never realized I passed it by until it was in the rear-view mirror. On the afternoon of December 3rd, 1987, I was a fit, talented athlete cross-training for the ski season with some cycling. Before the end of the ride, my body was paralyzed below the shoulders. I haven’t walked since then and my power wheelchair is the only wheeled vehicle I ride anymore.
What was once totally foreign to me has now become commonplace. Even a year or two after sustaining a complete spinal cord injury, I would still frequently wonder why such a catastrophic injury would happen to me as I would observe in wonder at the surreal circumstances I was in. In the blink of an eye, I went from a life focused on sports and other physical activities to one devoid of athletic endeavors and reliant on intellectual or professional pursuits for achievement. I had to instantaneously change my lifestyle 180 degrees to find fulfillment.
After twenty years, this lifestyle must not be so novel to me anymore. Otherwise, how could this milestone anniversary have come and gone without me taking notice? Where being quadriplegic once was something that happens to other people, I now am that other person. I’ve become so accustomed to dealing with quadriplegia that it is no longer something I must dwell on just to get through my activities of daily living.
That’s not to say life is without struggle for me. On the contraryâI face countless challenges daily just trying to do those everyday things that able-bodied people take for granted (I know this because I, too, used to take them for granted). The difference is that I now face those struggles trying to realize self-actualization whereas the struggles were then just trying to achieve the physiological and safety needs from Maslow’s hierarchy. I guess I’ve discovered that dwelling on what I cannot do only gets in the way of achieving that which I can.
In the early years of my disability, I never would have risen above the barriers I faced to become a productive member of society without the strength, support, and love of my mother. To this day, she is still my foundation and has never failed to give of anything she can to continue supporting me. The rest of my tight-knit family has given me whatever other support I have needed to fully engage in an active and fulfilling life.
The first decade of disability was dedicated to rebuilding and learning to adapt. As a high school dropout, I didn’t expect to accomplish much professionally without a degree being a quadriplegic. It took me quite a few years to get an undergraduate degree and then an MBA. In the meantime, I had to learn how to have fun without participating in some sport. It turns out that the wheelchair seating is pretty good in some venues, so concerts continued to be a frequent leisure activity for me. I could watch sports just as well paralyzed as able-bodied. Watching movies was yet another way to pass the time.
The last decade of disability has been dedicated to rejoining the workforce and developing a career. Even with the growing awareness of people with disabilities in society, this is unquestionably the greatest challenge to conquer for someone with a severe disability. Although it’s likely subconscious, there is still a surprising amount of discrimination against people with disabilities in employment. Fortunately, I have been able to encounter a handful of progressive organizations that have overlooked my physical limitations and hired me for my capabilities. I have enjoyed working in a variety of different jobs this decade that were suited to my skills and knowledge such that I have been relatively successful at making valuable contributions to my employer. Hopefully the workforce’s exposure to me has increased the odds of the next young man with a severe disability coming along looking for a job to get it.
Now I’m managing a very successful business unit for an organization. I have led it to rapid growth and through substantial development. Of course, that means I’ve been very busy so, when the twentieth anniversary of my disability came along last week, I was too busy to remember it. I suppose that’s a good thingâhad I not realized the accomplishments I’ve had in spite of being quadriplegic, I’d probably be sitting around home every weekday watching TV and the milestone would instead have loomed up on me like a big cloud.
Granted, I still occasionally think that quadriplegia has made my life rather dismal in many ways. At times like that, all I have to do is think about what life would be like living in a place like Darfur or even just a hundred miles away like the slums of Tijuana to realize that I’m really quite blessed. So here I go, looking forward to the next two decades with anticipation and determination to make them better than the last two.
Check back here at the end of 2027. If I write nothing whatsoever about the fortieth anniversary of my quadriplegia, it will mean either I’ve become fully self-actualized or someone discovers the cure to spinal cord injuries.
As of yesterday, Los Angeles set a record for the least rainfall in any year since records have been kept. Yet it seems as if no one is alarmed. In past Southern California droughts, the media was full of appeals to the public to conserve water. This time, there’s not a word about it, and Californians are watering their lawns in midday, ‘sweeping’ their driveways by spraying water, taking long showers, and denying the dangers of global warming.
Lake Okeechobee in Florida at all-time low water level
Should Americans be concerned about these conditions? They should if they like their current standard of living. Meteorologists are warning that conditions similar to those which led to the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s are again in place in the 21st century. The Dust Bowl lasted more than a year and was so severe that it left over half a million Americans homeless (at a time when the population of the country was much smaller than it is now), and it played a significant role in prolonging the Great Depression.
Americans need to wake up to the threat that drought is posing to the country. Water is the lifeblood to so much of what we take for granted in our everyday lives. People in the effected areas of the country need to change their habits and conserve water, and all of America needs to take action to mitigate global warming so that drought does not become a permanent fixture in our homeland.
John and I drove all the way from Miami to see The Stones. The Tattoo You tour was the first of about a dozen “farewell tours” The Stones have played. The Stones had 
It was just me, Scott, and 100,000+ of our closest friends in the Coliseum with festival seating and The Clash. What, you ask, is so notable about that? The Who headlined! Enough said.
The Progressive Zone 