Even after Symantec admitted in a phone interview that the so called “Trojan Horse” titled “OSX.Exploit.Launchd” is not in the wild–that is, it has not attacked anyone’s computer–still, about a dozen sites, like this one, this one, and this one, and many blogs like this one and this one have picked up the story that it is in the wild and that it is a threat, though a low-risk one. The fact is, it is not a threat at all–in fact, despite being a trojan, no one seems to have any idea how it fools the user into allowing it onto their computer.

If any of the news organizations (and to a lesser degree, the blogs) want to maintain credibility in reporting computer news, they had better stop simply picking up news releases from anti-virus companies and printing them verbatim, and start actually checking out whether or not the stories are fabrications intended to stir up business for the companies.

We just got hit by a massive sudden thundershower. First, there were repeated lightning strikes. One hit very close, and had that awesomely cool 3-second ripping sound before the main, booming peal of thunder, a sound like a mile-long sheet of fabric is being torn. Seconds later, rain is pouring in buckets, along with a small amount of hail, so thick you can see it swirling and pouring in two or three different directions before it hits the ground. Then the sun comes out only a few minutes later, while it is still pouring, heralding the coming end of the rain as the ground is suddenly covered with small, fast-running rivulets and deep puddles where dry ground was just minutes before.

I love weather like that. As long as I am not outside in it. And even then, I still think it’s cool.

Crooks and Liars has a pretty good wrap-up of the Schiavo affair. As it turns out, all the claims made about Terri Schiavo being conscious or aware were false. One of her nurses made claims about Terri speaking and reacting that the autopsy proved to be outright impossible (the nurse now faces loss of her license). Bill Frist’s famous diagnosis of Terri as having responded to visual stimulus was thoroughly discredited by the autopsy, which showed Terri to have been completely blind. All 89 complaints against Michael Schiavo, including allegations that he beat and drugged Terri, that he denied her care, and much, much worse–every single one was proven to be absolutely false.

And yet, there are still multitudes of right-to-lifers out there who live in denial, seeing Terri as having been conscious and happy, and her husband Michael being a vile murderer. Such is the fundamentalist mindset, valuing belief over fact, faith over reason, and their own self-serving version of “truth” over reality.

Here’s an article I spotted on Google News, via Vnunet.com:

Security experts have warned that malware which exploits a flaw in the Mac OS X operating system has been spotted in the wild.

As usual, the warning came from Symantec, a firm that now has a firm track record, like McAfee, of releasing alarmist reports full of exaggerations and falsehoods which try to represent Mac OS X as being vulnerable to malware so they can sell frightened users their unneeded anti-virus software.

So you go to Symantec’s page warning of this new “OSX.Exploit.Launchd,” and it says this:

OSX.Exploit.Launchd is a Trojan horse that exploits the Apple Mac OS X LaunchD Local Format String Vulnerability (as described in Security Focus BID 18724). It provides root access on the Macintosh OSX version 10.4.6 or earlier.

The thing is, as much as I try to read this report and the news articles generated by it, I can find no description anywhere of how the trojan presents itself. A trojan is supposed to trick a user into opening the malware via social engineering, but there is not a word about how it does so–information which would be vital for people to avoid it. In fact, the Symantec page only will say that the “trojan” will provide root access to an outside user–but the “trigger” and “distribution” info fields all say “n/a.” Furthermore, while the report claims that the trojan is in the “wild,” it reports that there are “0-49” infections on “0-2” sites.

So guess what? It doesn’t exist. That’s right–this so-called “trojan” in the “wild” has no actual existence except as a potential for existing. The company has now admitted that nothing more than example exploit code exists–in other words, somebody wrote yet another unapplied and harmless bit of code to show how a certain security hole in OS X might be exploited. Not to mention that Apple released a security update a few days ago in 10.4.7 to patch the exploit.

And yet Symantec’s page on this “trojan” still stands, claiming it is a “trojan” (how can that be, when there is no method of delivery?) and that it is “in the wild”–although in a way, their report of “0-49 infections” is accurate in that there have been “0” infections. Incredibly misleading, however, as no one would expect such a classification to be made if there really were zero infections. And yet…

“What this decision has done is, it’s hampered our ability to move forward with a tool which we had hoped would be available to the president of the United States in dealing with terrorists.”

— Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on the SCOTUS ruling against tribunals

This pretty much sums up how the Bush administration sees the law: as something that gets in the way.

We are supposed to be a nation of laws. The executive branch is supposed to execute those laws. Bush swore an oath to do so. And yet all they do is break them and then whine when anyone objects, calling them traitors or terrorist enablers.

If you’re willing to let the government do whatever they want in the name of public safety, then it is possible for things to be safer (not the way Bush is bungling things, but it’s possible).

There’s only one catch: you will be living in a police state. Police states have the potential for much greater civic safety.

They are also authoritarian, fascist, and lack freedom and civil rights and liberties.

The choice is yours.

The Supreme Court has dealt a blow to Bush’s Imperial Presidency. It ruled that the Bush administration cannot create its own courts for Guantanamo or other detainees, a policy which also has been used as the foundation for other egregious violations of American civil rights. Thank goodness that Kennedy has taken over O’Connor’s role as the swing vote; without him, the Bush Supreme Court would be no less a rubber-stamp organ than the GOP-run Congress is today.

The larger issue behind this ruling is the nature of Bush’s expansion of the executive branch, and the pretenses that have been used to justify it.

In Bush’s presidency, we have seen him usurp the legislative branch by simply breaking laws and then claiming he has the power to do so. Bush has in essence claimed 750 new laws to be meaningless in regards to his own actions by issuing a record number of “signing statements,” essentially declarations that he will ignore those laws as he sees fit. We have also seen Bush attempt to usurp the courts in the way he deals with “detainees,” an ominous term if I’ve has ever heard one. Guantanamo Bay prison was set up specifically to evade the courts, with Bush instead creating his own “tribunals,” shrouded in secrecy and answerable only to himself. Bush has, in these moves, essentially created a bubble government with himself in charge of everything, and uses this independent legal universe to violate the law at will, and remain unaccountable for it.

The pretense? 9/11 and the War on Terror™. And they are pretenses. Excuses. People are scared right now, just like they were when McCarthy was abusing power. But should we be scared? Are we in any more danger today than we were before 9/11? The answer, of course, is “no.” We’ve known for a long time that terrorists have been trying to get us in big ways, spectacular ways. Before 9/11, fiction writers foresaw terrorists doing everything from crashing jetliners into Washington D.C. to unleashing nuclear weapons. We knew that while unlikely, it was plausible. Before 9/11, in fact, one of the major objections to a missile defense shield was that a terrorist could smuggle a nuclear bomb in via a sea port.

9/11 changed that only because it killed 3,000 people in such a spectacular manner. But just as airliner crashes horrify us and make us fear air travel even though it is safer than car travel, 9/11 horrified us into thinking that terrorism is somehow more important than so many other things in life. In reality, we are more at risk from car travel than we are from terrorism.

A lot of talk has been going around about if we do or don’t do this or that thing, then “the terrorists win.” Well, you know what? If we’re terrified, then the terrorists win. And the Bush administration has been making the terrorists win for the past four and a half years. Our own government has been terrorizing us, making us believe that we are in far more danger than we really are. That’s the pretense. And the pretense is being used to grab power from the people. The government has been using that pretense to take away the rights we have long treasured, rights which have inconvenienced people in power.

Think about it: the Cold War was far more of a threat to us than terrorism ever could be. And yet somehow today we are supposed to believe that only measures that would have seemed extreme for the Cold War can help us “win” the unwinnable and endless War on Terror™.

The threat of terrorism is far less than we have been led to believe. The actions of the government are wildly in excess of what is necessary to be secure. We don’t need to give up our rights and freedoms in the name of Terror; that’s what the terrorists–and ironically, our own government–want. In this, they are united.

The Supreme Court decision, in the end, will probably be a relatively small blow. The administration will simply find another legal excuse to do what they want. The Congress, either enthusiastically in support of the new authoritarianism or afraid of being called soft on terror, will go along. The press will continue to be the lapdogs they are, lest they be called traitors and appear as unpopular. And the people, all too many of the people, will go on being terrified.

And Bush and the terrorists will both win.

…with those damned hotlinkers. This time it was some guy on eBay in Spanish, hotlinking a photo I took of a Japanese police radar stand for catching speeders. The guy who hotlinked to me is selling a radar detector for cars. This time, I got fed up and did something I’ve been thinking about for some time but never had the guts. You can check out the resulting page on eBay (it’s down now). It’s damned funny. You’ll have no trouble figuring out which image is the one he hotlinked to.

Something that few expected seems to be becoming more and more of a possibility: the direct ability to run Windows programs in the Mac OS, without having to own or boot up the Windows OS.

This year, we saw two Windows-on-MacTel solutions arise: Apple’s own Boot Camp, which allows one to choose which OS to use upon startup (but not both at once), and Parallels, a virtualization solution that allows you to boot up Windows within the Mac OS, allowing both operating systems to run side-by-side, or at least Windows-under-Mac (Apple is even touting Parallels in its commercials instead of its own Boot Camp).

But now a third solution is becoming possible: the WINE solution. WINE started more then a decade ago as a way to run Windows applications within Linux and other Unix-related systems. One does not need Windows to open Windows software; with WINE, you can open the software directly within the host OS (images here). One company which deals in this software translation, CodeWeavers, has just announced that they will be bringing WINE to the Mac.

The down side of this is that WINE is not a universal translator–it only allows you to use a limited number of apps (and a limited number of versions of those apps) on the host system. These include MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Access), Macromedia Flash 7, Dreamweaver MX, and Shockwave 8.5, Adobe Photoshop 6 & 7, Quicken, and a few other apps.

Obviously, this is not a cure-all. However, it is promising in terms of what can be done, even without assistance from Apple. And despite the limitations, it could be meaningful–I’ve heard some people say that a few key apps, like Access, have been preventing them from making the move.

But more to the point, if this much can be done independently from Apple, then if Apple worked to include Windows APIs and incorporated WINE, a lot more could be achieved.

In the meantime, virtualization like Parallels offers is quite satisfactory, though it does require one to buy the Windows OS, which adds a few hundred dollars to the purchase of a Mac. You still get a lot more for your money, but the bean counters still trying to defend a Windows-only approach will grab hold of that as a last defense.

Now right-wing extremist, Christian fundamentalist parents can finally get that much-needed help with indoctrinating their kids with a deep-rooted hatred of liberalism before they are capable of understanding the politics! Kevin Drum tells of a new line of books being published, selling tens of thousands of copies after Rush “Doctor Shopping” Limbaugh touted it on his show, which demonize the Left. Titled “Help! Mom!”, the series makes despising people with different politics knee-jerking fun! So far, the series has hate-mongering titles such as “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!” and “Help! Mom! Hollywood’s in My Hamper!” New titles expected soon include “Help! Mom! The Ninth Circuit Nabbed the Nativity!” and “Help! Mom! There Are Lawyers in My Lunchbox!”

The first book, “Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!” features two little boys who dream of opening a lemonade stand so they can earn enough money to buy a swing set, but when they try, they are thwarted by a variety of liberals, who appear from behind their lemon tree and from everywhere else and start imposing taxes, regulations, and politically-correct restrictions on everything they do. The poor little boys are forced to cough up half their money in taxes and take down their picture of Jesus (ah, remember the good old days when you made that lemonade stand and put up your favorite picture of Jesus?). They are then made by the liberals to put only one teaspoon of sugar in the lemonade (making it sour), and to add broccoli to the mix, while the mean liberals glare and scream and huff and grandstand. In the end, it turns out that “Liberaland” was just a bad dream, but the boys learn a valuable lesson about liberalism:

“Why, Tommy?” Lou rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Why should we work so hard when liberals might tell us what to do and take everything away?” … “Just be glad we’re not in Liberaland anymore,” Tommy smiled at Lou.

The cast contains thinly-disguised liberal figures, like “Congresswoman Clunkton,” and the mayor of Liberaland, “Senator Kruckle” from “Taxachussetts,” “Mayor Leach,” and his wife “Allmine,” heiress (read: Teresa Heinz Kerry) to the Great Dustpan Fortune (half of the kids’ hard-earned money is used by the nasty liberals to buy dustpans for poor children who actually need shoes).

And no, I am not making all of this up. You can see the book on Amazon here, and take a peek inside. They restrict you from reading more than four or five pages, but doing a text search for various words can get you access to most of the text.

After a 1-month experiment with trimmed RSS feeds, I have reset the feeds to display full stories (or at least, much, much longer excerpts of them). For those of you monitoring the site by feed readers, thanks for your patience.

Man, there is just so much crazy crap issuing from the right wing this morning.

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Bill Frist criticized CNN for causing the GOP’s low poll numbers:

Well, you know, it’s part of my job and your job and your whole coming into this was, again, saying [from] Harry Reid that we are spending all of our time on marriage — which is important. That we’re spending all of the time on flag without mentioning what we’ve done of the floor for six weeks. Iraq, the war on terror, making you safer… where’s your coverage of that? What you do is concentrate on things that are spun to you from the other side of the aisle and that’s why that message doesn’t get out.

So Frist and the GOP make huge issues of gay marriage and flag-burning amendments, shutting down other legislation so they can get these election-year fake issues in the face of the voters, ballyhoo it all over the press and generally make a big deal of it… and then blame the news media for not covering the other stuff they do but don’t publicize.

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And if you think that’s a classic case of a politician being an ass, check this out: Pennsylvania Republican Representative Curt Weldon hears from Dave Gaubatz, a former civilian investigator for the Air Force in Iraq in 2003, who claims that he had a hot tip on four possible sites where WMD caches may have been buried in Iraq. The military didn’t agree that the caches were likely, so Gaubatz goes to Weldon and GOP Representative Hoekstra, and tells the tale.

What does Weldon do? Does he get on the back of the military to check out the site? Does he inform the media? Does he get started on legislative action?

Nope. He sees it as a “personal political venture,” and gets it into his head that he, Hoekstra, Gaubatz, and three Iraqi nationals will travel to the four sites, shovels in hand, and dig up the WMD themselves, just like a real-life Indiana Jones or something. He told Gaubatz not to inform anyone, not any other politicians, “specifically no member of the Democratic party”–not even the military. Apparently Weldon intended to say he was in Iraq to visit the troops, then would secretly duck out and unearth the WMD, becoming an instant celebrity and hero, in time for the elections.

Here’s how he laid out the handling of the publicity, according to Gaubatz:

“They even worked out how it would go. If there was nothing there, nothing would be said. If the site had been [scavenged], nothing would be said. But, if it was still there, they would bring the press corps out.”

All that ended when Gaubatz decided that Weldon was not in his right mind, and he started contacting the media and established his web site, which tells the story.

About this story:

Bush camp attacks newspaper ‘treason’

GEORGE BUSH and Dick Cheney are calling The New York Times a disgrace, Republican congressmen say it is guilty of treason and demand the prosecution of the Editor, while a right-wing radio presenter suggests most of its readers must be “jihadists”.

I believe psychologists call this “projection.”

Postscript: they’re savaging the New York Times for announcing that the government is going after terrorist financing–but Bush himself announced this five years ago. All that the NYT has done is alert the public to the fact that Bush and the GOP are doing this illegally. Definitely a case of projection.

Here’s an interesting case:

Western Digital Corp. is offering free software to about 1 million consumers to resolve a class-action lawsuit alleging that its computer hard drives stored less material than promised — a discrepancy stemming from high-tech’s different standards for sizing up digital data. …

The lawsuit against Western Digital alleged the company’s 80-gigabyte hard drive had an actual capacity of 74.4 gigabytes. If not for that 7 percent shortfall, the buyer could have stored an additional 80 hours of digital music or 5,600 digital pictures, the suit claimed.

So, these people just now figured out that storage media don’t really have as much capacity as advertised? Where have they been? I realized this the very first time I got a hard drive. Heck, every time I burn a 4.7 GB DVD and can’t put more than 4.4 GB onto it, I realize this.

I still don’t understand why they do this, how they get the higher number. I just know that they do, and so has anyone who has bought more than one piece of storage media and bothered to look at the capacity measurement. But these people filed a class action lawsuit? Did they really buy the drive thinking, “I can store 1,142 hours of of digital music or 80,000 digital pictures,” and then got really upset when they saved 1,062 hours of music or 74,400 pictures and then ran out of space? Or did the lawyers just notice the discrepancy like everyone else and see a big chance to file a tort case?

Network Neutrality is coming up for a big vote today. Contact your senators if you’re not sure that they’re already supporters. Phone numbers for key senators are in that link. Do it!

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4, with Kennedy being the swing vote, that politicians may gerrymander the districts in their state at any time they want, so long as it does not disenfranchise ethnic populations. (PDF of ruling.) The case was about Tom DeLay’s famous non-census gerrymander in Texas that helped Republicans stay in power.

The decision cuts both ways, of course: Democrats are no more restricted in doing this than Republicans are. This may even act as a signal for all parties in power in any given state to gerrymander and fortify their parties’ positions.

Personally, I’m no fan of the gerrymander, whoever does it. And as I’ve said before, you can’t have it both ways–you either accept all gerrymandering or none. Republicans, for example, gerrymandered the hell out of Texas, but then in California, tried to pass an anti-gerrymandering measure, because Democrats hold and have reshaped the state. You can’t do that and not be a raging hypocrite. It’s all or nothing.

And frankly, I’m for nothing. I think there should be a Constitutional amendment that breaks the back of redistricting. (Wow! A constitutional amendment proposal that actually means something! How about that!) There should be a random and mathematically logical sequence to it, something like, start in the northwest corner of the state and move south and east, drawing districts as you cover the number of people that will make up each district. Something like that, which will have no prejudice to party or even to race. Just have it work out randomly, and keep to that system.

If you really want to stir things up, do away with districts. Just randomly assign “virtual districts” to every new voter, irrespective of their geographical location in the state. It’d make campaigning and advertising harder, but it would also do away with redistricting.

Or here’s a more radical system, reworking House elections and House voting altogether: for each state, all candidates are thrown together into one big election. Everybody gets to vote for one candidate. If a state has, say, 25 representatives, then the top 25 vote-getters are chosen. That’s the primary. In the main election, people then cast their vote again for one of those 25 winners. Each winner then represents the percentage of votes in the state that were given to them in votes in the House. More complicated, but also a hell of a lot more representative in a true sense! Gerrymandering would lose all meaning in such a system, and the opinions of the voters would take on new importance.

Not that any of that is going to happen. But it would be far, far better than the stagnant and corrupt system we’ve got now. Gerrymandering is bad enough, but add to that the 98% reelection rate of incumbents, and what we have going on today gets downright sick. The way things work at present, with districts redrawn to predestine the outcome, and with lobbyists then making the people matter even less, it is becoming more and more the case that the people of the United States have no real sway or influence in their own government any more. A government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”? Hah! Maybe it never really was, but it sure as hell ain’t so now. Not even close.

So along with a complete public election financing law prohibiting campaign contributions, and a ban on any political “buying of speech” of more than $20 per person, redistricting should be made illegal.

So I’m a radical. So what? I’m right.

Turns out that it’s “unethical and illegal” in Florida for a doctor to make a prescription out to themselves and then hand them off to a patient. Limbaugh got two doctors to do this for him, so his lawyer claims.

People are also pointing out that Rush, a divorced, hardcore conservative, presumably with strong beliefs against extra-marital sex, was detained upon returning from the Dominican Republic, well-known for its illicit sex trade (including human trafficking), with Viagra. So he’s not married, there’s no girlfriend going with him, and he needs Viagra in a country with a vibrant sex trade. Hmmm… From the AP:

Limbaugh joked about the search on his radio show Tuesday, saying Customs officials didn’t believe him when he said he got the pills at the Clinton Library and he was told they were blue M&Ms. He later added, chuckling: “I had a great time in the Dominican Republic. Wish I could tell you about it.”

I wonder why he can’t. This Rush caller, however, had a clue, slipping in a comment on the sex trade in the Dominican Republic, which Rush carefully ignored.

Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh… the top figures in conservative punditry.

Wow. I really got him good this time. Fantastic images, probably the best I’ll get. (Not to mention a sound file and a movie!) I got back from work early yesterday, arriving back in town a little past 4:00. I figured I’d stop by to see if I could catch Howard, seeing as how the light was very good. I went to the usual overpass and looked in the usual places in the little valley underneath, but I didn’t see him. I saw some Oriental Greenfinches, a few wagtails, some House Swifts (more on them later), and even heard a Zitting Cisticola, as I’ve seen (but not been able to photograph) along the Tama River. But no Howard, nor his mate, Henrietta.

And then I heard him. I’d never heard Howard calling before. It sounded like a timid Rooster with a hesitating call; one sharp cry, followed by another, followed by a double cry. Like, “ka! … ka! … ke-ka!” I caught it on digital audio; here is an mp3 of the call.

I looked over in the direction of the call, and there he was! I was on the wrong side of the sun, so I didn’t get a good shot at first…

Howard seemed to be milling about in just one place, kind of on a ridge. It was in an area that was laying fallow for future construction, with levels along a gentle slope flattened out and ridges along their edges; Howard was along one of those edge ridges, above me. I was outside this area; from where I was on the regular walking areas, there was just no way to get a better view of him. So I climbed over a small, waist-high fence and entered the area. The idea was to walk around Howard so I could get a shot of him with the sun to my back, to get better colors. Then I’d close in, getting as near as he would let me. As I walked around the ridge area, I saw Howard’s tracks:

Then I climbed up a ridge above Howard, and snuck up behind some tall straight bushes, between which I got what I considered to be a good shot (click to see 1100 x 700-pixel version):

“Not bad!” I thought; it was about as good a shot as I had ever gotten of him. So then I figured I’d see how close I could get. I walked out from behind the bushes and snapped some more pictures; Howard just sat there, watching me. I climbed down the ridge to be at the same level as him; he didn’t seem to mind. Oh, he was cautiously giving me a good look-over, but I wasn’t making him nervous enough to leave yet. So I carefully walked not towards him, but more alongside him–and he let me get to within about 20 feet! That’s when I got these fantastic shots:

Click the above photo for a 1280 x 854 wallpaper image, or click here for a giant, full-sized 1800 x 1240 version.

Here’s detail on Howard’s head from a different shot:

To continue…

Click the above photo for a 1280 x 1000 wallpaper image.

Click the above photo for a 1000 x 700-pixel image.

Here are a few cropped 450-pixel close-ups of the above photo, focusing on Howard’s head and back to show feathering details:

Needless to say, I was very pleased with the quality of shots I got. I don’t think I’m ever going to get better shots than that, not without a much better camera and a big zoom lens.

I even took some movies, full-size and full-frame video. Here’s an iPod-ized version of 12 seconds of that video:

It might play with iTunes; if it won’t play, or worse, gives you a page full of junk characters, then just download it (right-click and save target file) and see what media player can handle it. I know that QuickTime and VLC can, but I don’t know about Windows Media Player (I’m guessing that recent versions can). Sorry if the video wavers around somewhat–it was hand-held, fully zoomed-in, and I was a bit shaky from trying to hold really still in general.

Note that Howard is panting in the video quite a bit; it was hot out, and I was sweating a whole bunch too, mainly because I kept my leather jacket on as it had a pocket I could put my camera in if I needed to use my hands for something else. When I got home, I was soaked, but it was well worth it. I certainly had come a long way in getting to know Howard since I first spotted him a month and a half ago.

This from the AP/San Francisco Chronicle:

Men who have several older brothers have an increased chance of being gay, researchers say, a finding that adds weight to the idea that sexual orientation has a physical basis.

The increase was seen in men with older brothers from the same mother — whether they were raised together or not — but not those who had adopted or stepbrothers who were older.

For a long time, conservatives have been fighting the idea that homosexuality has a biological basis. The obvious reason they do so is that if homosexuality is biological, that means it is natural, and therefore not a “lifestyle choice.” If being gay is natural, it would mean that most of the anti-gay arguments made by conservatives would collapse and they would no longer have a ostensibly “rational” shield to disguise their homophobia. Even more, a natural genesis for homosexuality would suggest for creationists that God made homosexuals the way they are, which would devastate many religious homophobes, unless they came to the conclusion (which they probably will) that God created these evil people as a test of our morality.

I’ve even heard conservatives go so far as to claim that gay people themselves say it’s a choice; to do so, they had to dig way back into the early days of the gay rights movement and find a few radicals who made that claim as a way of asserting control over their sexuality. Few gay people make such claims, however; an overwhelming majority report being gay as a natural consequence, one they did not choose. The common phrasing is, “why would I choose to be someone who is so discriminated against?”

We’ve long heard the idea that homosexuality is biological; various researchers have come to that conclusion, and in that sense, this new study is nothing really new. Nor is the study conclusive. It does, however, bolster the general case, and helps opens the way for further study and research.

Conservatives naturally refute these findings:

Tim Dailey, a senior fellow at the conservative Center for Marriage and Family Studies disagreed.

“We don’t believe that there’s any biological basis for homosexuality,” Dailey said. “We feel the causes are complex but are deeply rooted in early childhood development.” …

“If it is indeed genetically based it is difficult to see how it could have survived in the gene pool over a period of time,” Dailey added.

That’s another common argument against homosexuality having a biological basis: how could the genes for such a thing be passed on? Well, of course, there are many answers to that. For example, if it is genetic, it can be passed on as a recessive gene. But this study, which found that homosexuality occurs more often in men with many brothers, strengthens the case for homosexuality being a consequence of fetal development, and therefore not in the least dying out because a homosexual man does not have children. Apparently Mr. Dailey did not even understand the basis of the new study, or else this lame non sequitur was all that he had to fall back on.

There is also a biological and evolutionary advantage to homosexuality that has been forwarded, one that fits in very well with the idea that men with several older brothers have an increased chance of being gay. If a family group in prehistoric times had too many children and not enough caregivers, it could put the group in danger of not having sufficient resources to raise the children well. Gay members of the group would therefore be an advantage, adding to the number of caregivers who themselves do not produce offspring. The fact that this would kick in only after several heterosexual offspring were produced bolsters the case, suggesting a natural evolutionary solution to a life-threatening problem: family groups with more caregivers once a population threshold had been reached would be more likely to survive.

It is also heavily ironic in light of the policy of many religions which pressure their adherents to have larger families, especially with an emphasis on producing many male children. Such religious mandates would have the effect of increasing the homosexual population.

In any case, this theory, if true, would explain homosexuality quite nicely in evolutionary biological terms. Or even if you don’t believe in evolution, it still would make the case for natural, and therefore God-ordained homosexuality.

If the theory can be proven, that would go a very long way to breaking down the societal objections to homosexuality, and perhaps, in time, even overcome the more primitive foundations of homophobia. One can hope. Just don’t expect it soon.

So far, a local Florida TV station is the only source outside of a few liberal blogs that is reporting on Rush Limbaugh having been “detained” at Palm Beach International Airport for illegal drug possession.

Update: OK, it got picked up, only after Limbaugh’s lawyer got his version of the story out. The claim is that Limbaugh had only Viagra, and on a doctor’s prescription; that the bottle did not have Limbaugh’s name on it, but rather the names of two doctors, “for privacy purposes,” according to his lawyer. Perusing discussions on the matter, I’ve seen a few people make a point by asking, “how many of you out there could get your doctor to prescribe any drug to you in someone else’s name?” While nothing may come of this, it certainly shows up Limbaugh’s shortsightedness. I mean, really, if I were on probation for doctor shopping, I wouldn’t take any drug–much less travel with one–unless it were absolutely necessary, until the probation ended. I’d want to stay squeaky clean, not go traveling with prescription drugs under someone else’s name, for crying out loud. But then, I’m not Rush Limbaugh.

“The convergence of globalization and technology has created a new brand of terrorism. Today, terrorist threats may come from smaller, more loosely defined cells who are not affiliated with al Qaeda, but who are inspired by a violent jihadist message. And left unchecked, these home grown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al Qaeda.”

–Alberto Gonzales, June 23, 2006

“…the Attorney General held a press conference which I was watching as I came in on the plane to Chicago to announce the arrest of seven individuals in a cell in Miami, plotting among other things an attack on the Sears Tower here in Chicago. It is a very real threat. There are still people out there who are trying to do everything they can to kill Americans.”

–Dick Cheney, June 23, 2006

In the sense that someone out there wants to kill Americans, this could have been said about any time in all of American history. Today it is more true than before, more because of the Bush administration than despite it.

But the Sears Tower plotters? A “real threat”? “As dangerous as al Qaeda”? Please.

What we have here are seven idiots who made themselves a clubhouse. Did they want to do damage? Yes. Should they have been arrested? Of course. But were they enough of a threat to merit even one-hundredth of the media coverage they got? Not a chance.

These guys were never in contact with al Qaeda. They had set up a “karate school” where they reportedly did push-ups and “jumped over chairs.” Neighbors saw them as odd but unthreatening. Several months ago, they made contact with an “al Qaeda representative” who turned out to be an FBI plant. The informant then strung them along for some time, collecting information. The men had no funding, no weapons, no explosives–they even had to ask for boots, which is the only thing the FBI man gave to them. They made grandiose claims about their plans and plots, talking about a “full ground war” against the U.S., and carrying out attacks “just as good or greater than 9/11.” It was all talk, made by deluded morons.

In fact, there is even doubt about whether they tried to make contact with al Qaeda, or if the FBI sting operation presented them with the idea. The same is being asked about the “pledge of loyalty” they made to al Qaeda, which may have been the suggestion of the FBI plant. Reportedly they even got the pledge on film. One official described them as “bungling wannabes.”

So why was this made into a huge national news story? Why were initial reports blasting at full volume about a “terror cell” threatening to “wage war” and blow up the Sears Tower and many other targets? Why did this merit a planned, full-blown press conference with the Attorney General, an FBI Deputy Director, and the Assistant Attorney General? Why did the initial reports fail to mention the insignificant nature of the group?

Can you say “election year”?

That’s right folks. Apparently, the Bush administration knows that the public has caught on to the fact that the 2004 “terror alerts” were nothing but fake abuses of the national security system in order to stoke popularity for Bush, and if they tried that again, no one would buy it. So they do this instead: ferret out a lame bunch of bozos with delusions of grandeur, pump them full of ideas, get them to perform for the cameras like trained monkeys, then arrest them in a hailstorm of media attention. The result: people get scared again and think they should elect Republicans.

Welcome to the new version of the fake terror alert.