It was difficult to decide today whether to write about Donald Rumsfeld’s personal responsibility for torture at Abu Ghraib or the link between omega-3 fatty acids and violence. I’m going with the fish.

Studies at the National Institutes of Health and at prisons in the US, UK, and the Netherlands indicate that prisoners given nutritional supplements of fish oil show fewer violent tendencies. The clinical trial of 80 people in the US follows an earlier, smaller study that showed a reduction by one third of anger, hostility, and irritability. So, prisons are doing their own experiments and finding a reduction in violent incidents.

It’s just predictable biochemistry. Your brain is (60%) fat and it needs fats from outside your body to function. Chips, cookies, and ice cream all have fats, but they tend to be omega-6 fatty acids from seed oils. Those don’t help.  Your synapses

contain even higher concentrations of essential fatty acids - being made of about 60% of the omega-3 fatty acid DHA. . . . Omega-3 DHA is very long and highly flexible. When it is incorporated into the nerve cell membrane it helps make the membrane itself elastic and fluid so that signals pass through it efficiently.

Without efficient transmission you get suicidal, angry, and impulsive. Sound like anyone you know?

Apparently, omega-3s have helped children and criminals. Maybe it is the emphasis on foods like pretzels and chicken tenders that makes the Bush administration so violent. Let’s experiment on them. Let’s give them multivitamins and fish oil to see if it prevents any violent, criminal behavior. You know where they are.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

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This time Charlie Rangel (D-NY) is serious about reinstating the draft. He says it is a matter of fairness. Thomas Jefferson agreed. It is probably no surprise, however, that students don’t tend to agree. Students involved in Nonmilitary Options for Youth in Austin, Texas, asked high school students how they would solve the problem faced by the all-volunteer army.

If most young people are adamantly opposed to universal military conscription, and if some understand the unfairness of the de facto draft we have now, what is the solution?

Students suggest that answers may be found in what schools have taught all along: “I think we should handle things in a nonviolent grown-up way.” “We should be big enough to reach an agreement with our enemies and settle it like civilized human beings.” “I think that people who think war is the best option are completely lazy; there are so many more options!” One student concluded simply, “I believe that the best way to make peace is with peace.”

College students at Campus Progress have been weighing in, too. Some say no way to the draft, others favor joining the Israeli Army (!). Then comes the response that suggesting joining any army is no way to run a progressive website.

I like the alternatives offered by the high school students. I am not crazy about the draft. I do think it would be completely fair to have mandatory national service, though. National service doesn’t necessarily mean serving in the military. No, that’s not an idea that is making me excited either. I don’t know. I don’t know.

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I think it’s safe to say that we can’t rely on the federal government (especially any part of the government administered by the executive branch) for accurate science.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt choose a physician with experience in Christian pregnancy counseling (no contraceptives and discouragement of abortion) to oversee federal reproductive health programs. That’s just the kind of horrible irony they are so good at.

We face a serious environmental situation, both from peak oil and from global warming. You know that, and I know that. Yet, in August the Environmental Protection Agency closed their libraries in order to be fiscally responsible. They didn’t just close the libraries to the public but to their own employees. Now that is selective fiscal responsibility. The whole situation is difficult to fathom. The EPA even claims that they that they have no authority to regulate emissions. Fortunately, twelve states, several cities and more than a dozen environmental groups are challenging the decision. This case will be heard by the Supreme Court. That may not fill you with hope, but it’s better than no hearing at all.

I know, the war between the Bush Administration and science is not new. These have just been a few stories in the news over the past couple of weeks. Here are a few more from the past few years.

• August 2003, Committee on Government Reform Minority Office
  Investigating the State of Science under the Bush Administration
• February 18, 2004, Wired News
  Bush Distorts Science, Kristen Philipkoski
• February 19, 2004, The Nation
  The Junk Science of George W. Bush, Robert F. Kennedy Jr
• March 15, 2004, CSICOP
  The New Science Wars, Chris Mooney
• March 22, 2005, The Guardian UK
  For Bush, science is a dirty work, Tristram Hunt
• June 30, 2005, US News & World Report
  Scientists and Bush Administration at Odds, Thomas Hayden
• June 30, 2006, CBS, 60 Minutes
  Rewriting the Science

Update 12/2: A BuzzFlash alert notes that the new House Democratic leaders are already addressing the EPA’s library closings, at this point through a relatively strongly worded letter to cease destruction and disposition of library holdings.

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Jim Webb, the Virginia Senator-elect who narrowly defeated George Allen, wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal this week on “Class Struggle.”

As one of the commentors when the story was posted at Buzz Flash wrote:

Think of it: a former Republican, and a Naval officer to boot, writing and speaking out for the working class!

It is clear from the piece that he doesn’t mean class struggle in the Marxist sense but a less violent and not particularly revolutionary need to deal with economic disparity in the U.S. He writes that class is becoming an issue like it hasn’t been since the 19th century. My knowledge of history tells me that class had not gone away during that period in U.S. society. What we can read here is a dawning realization of the simple fact of the existence of class in U.S. society. Class is obvious to many. I personally can’t see how it wouldn’t be, but some just don’t realize it is there even as they see its evidence all around them. Webb is saying, “HEY! Look at this or you’ll see the consequences.”

In general, I have found that people in the U.S. like to deny class. I found strong evidence for this in the years I spent teaching about class at university level. Based on polls conducted among them, most of my students called themselves “middle class” from families making $100,000+ / year. At the beginning of semesters, they told me class was not an issue in the U.S. A few students, sometimes those from the rare ~$20,000 / year families, rolled their eyes at this. Even fewer students openly dissented from the prevailing opinion. For the most part, they were the beneficiaries of the system. Denial worked well for them.

So, I did my best to introduce them to the world of diversity they hadn’t yet met. One of the resources I used often was the PBS site for the film “People Like Us,” a 2001 documentary shown on public television. The games and graphics gave me a way to approach the subject safely before jumping into the depths of poverty, corporate greed, income disparity, marketing of the middle class, and so on.

The book I read in college, the book that shocked me into awareness, was Paul Fussell’s Class, A Guide Through the American Status System, which is still in print in several formats.

It isn’t like class is out of the mainstream entirely. Last summer, the New York Times published an interesting series of articles on Class Matters. Minus the Flash graphics, the articles were then published as a book. It’s a place to start.

What Webb wrote is a short opinion piece. He points out that it is the elites who need to be educated about class and fairness or American workers will rise to demand fairness. I’m sure a few paragraphs can’t put a fine point on a topic so many have spent lifetimes and epics discussing. Still, I’m glad to see this new Senator implying that he intends to confront the issue.

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If you are tempted to go out shopping tomorrow, don’t. The day after Thanksgiving is, of course, international Buy Nothing Day. The movement isn’t just about one particular day (the busiest retail shopping day of the year), but about changing lifestyles, consuming less.

There will be a great Whirl-Mart event in New York City. See the great videos of Whirl-Marts past.

Don’t forget to pick up your gift exemption vouchers, Zenta cards, and Buy Nothing Carols for a Buy Nothing Holiday season.

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