The Rush Continues...and There's a Sheep

Back in September, I wrote about the tendency for projects to get rushed through in the fall, before either winter snow blocks off access to project areas, or winter rain makes it impractical to slog through the mud to get to locations or dig in them.

Then, last month, I wrote about how one of these fall rush projects had become a "freezing-your-ass-off-during-the-winter project" in which we broke shovels while trying to dig through frozen ground in an attempt to ward off frostbite.  At that time, I had believed that once we had completed what work we could, we would be done until spring thawed the ground and melted the ice off of the roads, and then we would return along with the warmer weather to finish the job.

Oh, was I naive.

See, our client really needs this project done ASAP, though I am at this point not exactly clear on why anymore.  So, Tuesday afternoon - what was supposed to be a day off - I was contacted by the client and my boss and asked to put together a crew to head out Wednesday morning.  I busted ass, calling everyone I could think of, finally managing to pull a crew together, arrange for a vehicle, and get lodging for the crew by Tuesday night.

So, on Wednesday morning, we all met at the office, headed to the storage unit to get our field equipment, and headed out.  We arrived in the field late morning, and were a bit surprised.  We had, based on both weather reports and on previous experience in this location, expected to be very cold, and expected to encounter frozen soil that we would have to chunk out with breaker bars and chisels.  Much to our surprise and delight, we found that the weather was actually warm.  We quickly discarded our heavy coats and wool hats, and within 45 minutes were down to our t-shirts.  Moreover, the ground had thawed a bit, and digging and screening were both absurdly easy.  We completed a site in a few hours, giving us time to scout some of the roads that had been blocked by ice and snow a few weeks earlier.  We found that all but one of these roads, while still frozen over in parts, were passable. 

So, I am looking forward to getting this project our of the way.  We have two more sites that we can get to.  Both of them are in areas which are likely to still be frozen, so I don't think that the next couple of days will be as easy as today...but they will be easier than they were. 

And then, we finished up our project, and came to our hotel.  None of us had stayed in this hotel before.  It appears to have been an old hunting lodge converted to a hotel.  There are motor homes parked all about it, every one of them apparently having been here for quite some time.  The lower room of the hotel, a true common room, is open 24 hours for whoever wishes to use it.  It has a piano, numerous couches, several shelves of ratty paperbacks, a moose head mounted to the wall, a nude photo of Marylin Monroe on another wall, and a mannequin dressed in a short sundress sitting atop the piano.  Wandering about the hotel grounds is the pet sheep - yes, you read that correctly - which, despite being a sheep, behaves as if it were a dog (replacing the barking with "baa"-ing). 

The hotel rooms, however, are rather nice, and this is a pleasant enough hotel...if a bit odd.

Anyway, the rush to get this done this week has again disrupted my attempt to write entries on a regular schedule.  However, I will try to load some photos of this place by early next week...it really does need ot be seen to be believed.

War on Christmas Annual Report

Last year, I had thought that the annual "War on Christmas" idiocy was rather muted, and figured that the popularity of this particular form of stupid alarmism was finally fading.  And then, this year, it picks up again, with the U.S. Congress even getting in on the act (funny, I thought that maybe they'd have other things to do).  And while last year I had encounters with twits, this year I see signs like this one broadcasting twitdom along a major highway:

Sign on Highway 180 in eastern Fresno County.

Now, had I seen this sign 20 years ago, it would have been in a social context where it was very clear that it was an admonishment towards Christians to not lose the religious value of the holiday to commercialism.  Even as an atheist, I can see merit in this view.  But in the days of the non-existent "War on Christmas", these signs now tend to be aimed at non-Christians and are intended to give them what-for and let them know that they are not welcome.  In other words, twenty years ago, someone who was sincere and in at least some way honorable would have such a sign up as a way of trying to elevate fellow believers, an honorable thing to do.  Now it's just bigoted assholes who do so in an attempt to hurl abuse at those who are outside of their club.

Hell, even the sorts of people who used to express concern over the commercialization of Christmas now demand the commercialization of it, provided that the money-changers in the temple pay lip service to Christianity to the exclusion of every other group on the planet.  Don't believe me?  Let me show you the mis-named American Family Association's "Naughty or Nice" list.  Yeah, they honestly are not only okay with the commercialization of Christmas these days, they are actively campaigning for it as a way of making non-Christians feel unwanted.

Head hurting...world spinning...too much stupidity...

To make things even more bizarre, the usual Religious-Right bullshit about how "Christians are persecuted in America" has been getting amped up, with everything from the tendency of rational people to roll their eyes at Tim Tebow to the refusal of public schools to force non-Christians into Christian prayers seen as a sign of the persecution.  As in previous years, this reached it's usual December peak o' stupid this year when I began to hear, both around town and in the media, about how wishing someone "Happy Holidays" is a form of anti-Christian persecution.

The dictionary on my desk defines "Persecute" as "To Harass with Cruelty and Oppression."  So, members of the LGBT community, who often face direct violence as well as legislation aimed at stripping them of rights can fairly argue to be the most persecuted minority in the U.S.  In many locales, while legal persecution of ethnic minorities may be prohibited, it is still nonetheless a common practice (such as this church that banned an inter-racial couple*).  Religious minorities, while they usually face much milder harassment (although in some areas even this gets increased), also could argue to some minor persecution (people losing jobs, being harassed or even physically attacked, being barred from public speaking and advertising - which is, notably, in every case open to Christians).

But Christians?

Christians make up something in the neighborhood of 70%-80% of the U.S. population (depending on how you crunch the numbers).  A politician can not become elected without pandering to Christians in some way - even non-Christian politicians have to engage in some degree of pandering.  Christianity is the only religion that has one of it's holidays observed as a Federal and State holiday within the U.S.  While acts of vandalism occur against Christian churches and property, they are far, far, FAR less common than acts of vandalism against the places of worship of religious non-Christians, and the property of the same non-Christians plus atheist organizations. 

What's more, the attempts at bigoted legislation, hogging the public square, and acts of vandalism and aggression against non-Christians are pretty routinely helmed by, you guessed it, Christians.

Now, it should be said, most Christians don't do this sort of thing, most are actually good citizens, and decent people...but, and there is a but of course, they tend not to speak up when other, more radical, members of the Christian community are doing these things.  While the majority of Christians are not engaged in this sort of nonsense, by remaining quiet when the obnoxious minority are engaged in it, they give them cover, and the willingness of many otherwise decent Christians to reflexively strike out - whether through the media or the ballot box - at anyone who questions the obnoxious minority, they make themselves complicit.  At most, they will attempt to claim that the offender is "not a real Christian" as a way of denying that their own religion can give rise to the sorts of assholes that they will readily spot in other religious groups.  In short, Christians are not persecuted in the U.S.  If anything, Christians are either persecutors or are complicit through silence in the persecution of others. 

Christians who complain of persecution in the U.S. are fools or liars or both.  And regardless of which of these options best describes the one that you most recently encountered, they slander their fellow Christians in other nations who really are facing persecution.  In Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other nations, it takes great courage and conviction to declare one's self a Christian.  I may not agree with their views, but I can see something admirable in their fortitude.  In the U.S., declaring one's self a Christian is not an act of bravery, as it is the declaration that one stands with the majority.  At best, it's a statement of fact, which is honorable but not remarkable.  At worst, it's a disingenuous attempt to claim to be part of a privileged minority.

And it's privilege that this is all about.  Nobody is persecuting Christians in the U.S.  Nobody.  Nobody has the power to do it, even if they wanted to.  What is happening is that Christians are being told that there are other people living here, and that they have as much a right to speak and be heard as anyone else.  And, it should be said, most Christians accept this with grace and with ease.  However, a very vocal group can not see the difference between not being allowed to persecute and being persecuted themselves.  They can not see that they have the same rights as everyone else, and are not entitled to special rights that the non-Christians don't have.  And, unfortunately, the Christians who get it, who are generally decent and honest and aware, seem to be unwilling to call them on their bullshit.

And the yearly "war on Christmas" bullshit is symptomatic of this.  There are many holidays during this time of year.  There are people who celebrate no holidays this time of year.  The fact that the Federal and State governments essentially shut down on December 25 means that even those who don't celebrate Christmas are forced to observe it in some way - even if the observance is trying to figure out how to get work done without the necessary agencies involved.  So, if you support Christmas being a Federal and State holiday, but are upset that non-Christians are doing something to make it their own - the sentiment expressed in the phrase "Happy Holidays" - then you are an empty-headed hypocrite.  I have no respect for you, nor will any person with more than two brain cells to rub together.

You are not being persecuted, maltreated, or harmed in any way.  Grow up, and get over it.






*The church later rescinded the ban, but the fact that it occurred in the first place shows the depth of racism and willingness to engage in real persecution that exists in that particular church community.

The Not-So-Disturbing Origins of Maligned Common Sayings

When I was in graduate school, I worked as a teaching assistant, and UCSB offered many one and two day courses aimed at helping the teaching assistants learn to teach and communicate with students.  One of these courses was named "Feminist Pedagogy" and was required by one of the departments for which I worked.

By and large the course was a fairly useful run-through of the sorts of things that instructors often do that may upset or turn-off female students, and I had no problem with this.

However, there was a fair amount of time spent on the origins of common phrases, and how their origins might be offensive to female students.  The problem, however, is that the origins discussed by the instructor were wrong.  Dead wrong.  Completely wrong.

The two examples given were "more bang for the buck" and "rule of thumb."

The phrase "more bang for the buck" comes out of military and political circles, where it meant more firepower for the amount of money spent.  There is one other possible origin, however, that it comes from the explosives and mining industry, where it referred to the amount of explosive power per unit of explosive purchased. 

The instructor, however, was convinced that it came out of prostitution, and referred to the tendency for men who solicit prostitutes to hire those who would work for longer, or be more exciting, I suppose.  Really, I'm entirely unclear as to how, even assuming that the term "bang" to refer to sexual intercourse is old enough to pre-date this saying (it may be, I don't know), one would get "more" bang for one's buck with a prostitute...but, then, I have never solicited a prostitute, so what the hell do I know.

It is ironic that the misogynist false origin is the one that stuck with a group of self-described liberal people, while the possible actual origin involving warfare didn't.  Both appeal to their sensibilities, but one actually makes some degree of sense (clue: it's not the false one).

Then, there's the phrase "Rule of Thumb" which, thanks to a particularly stupid list of false origins for common sayings that made email inbox rounds circa 1998, people think comes from a law that described the width of a rod with which a man could beat his wife.  This is, however, not the origin of the saying at all.  The origin is somewhat murky, but appears to come from the world of measurement and not domestic violence.  In fact, there's evidence that it is a very old saying and well-predates both modern English and the legal codes that people often claim it is derived from.  Given the way that the phrase is used - meaning a quick-and-easy way to reach a conclusion or course of action - having an origin in measurements makes significantly more sense than it having an origin as a way to determine the size of the cudgel that one might use against one's spouse. 

But since then I have been thinking about this.  While the erroneous belief about the origins of the saying "more bang for the buck" aren't particularly widespread, there are probably as many people who falsely believe that they know the origins of the saying "rule of thumb" as people who don't.  Many, though not all, of these people refrain from using the phrase because of its allegedly sordid past.  The problem is, since it doesn't actually have a sordid past, we are creating one, and therefore feeding some dubious notions about our ancestors.  Moreover, we are casting the women of the past into the role of helpless victims rather than dealing with messier and more realistic views of women in the past.

In short, by buying into these false origins for these phrases, by trying to cast them in the role of remnants of a misogynistic past, the instructor for the Feminist Pedagogy course ironically bought into a misogynistic "men are the victors, women the victims" view of history and of our language, reinforcing the very "men vs. women" binary that most feminists admirably fight against - indeed most of this instructors statements and attitudes indicated that she did.  So it was rather odd that she should so easily fall into this trap with this portion of her lecture.

The simple fact of the matter is that history is messy.  Our ancestors did things of which we have every right to be proud, but they also did things of which all who are decent among us will be ashamed.  I am not sure whether the ease with which we buy into the notion that our ancestors were so despicable comes from our desire to see ourselves as enlightened and better than them, or whether it comes out of a certain type of cultural self-loathing that many of us seem to have developed to a high degree.

Regardless of the source, it's pretty damn annoying, and likely counter-productive.



For other common sayings and practices that most people know false origins for, go here.

Virus, Looters, and Antiques, Oh My!

So, I had all of the fieldwork in the last month and a half or so, but figured that, now that it was done, I'd be able to get back to a normal blogging schedule. 

And then my computer got hit with a particularly nasty rootkit virus, which after a week-long battle and the failure of multiple anti-malware programs I finally took to someone who actually knows what they are doing, and will therefore be without my computer for most of the next few days.  So, I may not be blogging as per normal.  I'm sure everyone is so sorely disappointed.

Fnord.

Quick story, though - yesterday, Kaylia and I went to take care of the last of the Christmas shopping*.  We ended up in old town Clovis, which, as far as I can tell, as a five-block area consisting entirely of antique shops and Italian restaurants.  Anyway, in one of the antique shops, we found a large collection of flaked stone tools and groundstone tools (including an unusual quartz mano) in a glass display case.  Not telling the owner who I was or what I do, I asked him about the tools, and he replied that he used to be a rancher and that all of these tools came from his ranch.  He then went on to tell me about digging them out of sites that he was sure would yield stuff.  After a few minutes, I mentioned that I was an archaeologist, and he continued to go on about the virtues of digging into sites and just looking for "the good stuff."

As we left, Kaylia asked me why I was looking annoyed and perturbed.  I told her about my conversation with the shop owner, and expressed that after a bit, I had really wished he'd stopped talking.  He appeared to not know that he was actually destroying sites more than recovering artifacts, and that his lack of documentation made the artifacts less interesting to me, as I had no idea where they came from or what they meant.  He just kept going on, with me getting more annoyed and disheartened as he continued. 

Oh well.

On the up-side, I then got to go home and deal with a rootkit virus.




*If you were at all annoyed at an atheist celebrating Christmas, then work to get it removed as a federal holiday.  As long as our institutions are shut down and we are therefore forced to observe it, we're going to have fun with it, and there ain't nothin' you can do about it.

Mountains, Cold, Regulations, and Fieldwork

So, in the last week, I have been out in the field, in an isolated location, twice,been to a mini-con in Oakland, and just generally been everywhere except next to a computer.  Hence my lack of posts.

Still, I am back now, at least for a little while, and the last week's work has got me thinking about some of the strange timelines that being a consultant rather than an academic forces on one.

See, we are contracted to do the archaeological work for a large utility company.  They have facilities, including some underground utilities, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, at altitudes between 7,000 and 8,000 feet.  Changes to these utilities may damage near-by archaeological sites, so we have been tasked with determining the boundaries of the sites in order to figure out whether or not the work on the utilities will impact the sites.  Normally, this would be a pleasant, even fun, task.

However, it is December.  While much of the world thinks of California as a giant beach that is warm year-round, this is only slightly true of small parts of Southern California (and even there, it gets cool enough in December and January that you're more likely to wear a sweater than a bikini).  In the Sierra Nevada, it's fucking cold.  Okay, not Wisconsin-level cold, but we haven't even gotten hit by the full force of winter yet and tempuratures are dropping to 25 degrees below freezing at night.  The Sierra Nevada has glaciers for fuck's sake!  There are 497 glaciers in the Sierra Nevada.  Yeah, next time you think of California as nothing more than a giant beach filled with silicon-injected bimbos and meatheads lifting weights on the sand, look up how many glaciers your state has, and if it's less than 400 I don't want to hear you even try to describe my state.

This is a road in California.  Note the lack of beach.

But I digress.

The point I was getting at is that it is cold in the Sierra Nevadas in December.  Cold enough that the ground is frozen.  Cold enough that we broke shovels attempting to excavate sites.  Cold enough that we routinely mistook chunks of ice in the screen for pieces of quartz (a common stone used to make tools in the area).  Could enough that we would scoop the dirt that we had just broken up and taken out of a unit into a bucket, only to have it freeze to the bucket minutes later, requiring us to use the shovel to get it out of the bucket and into the screen.

Years back, a friend of mine told me that his grandmother had died in Maine in January, but that they waited until March to bury her.  I didn't comprehend why one would do such a thing at the time.  I get it now.

So, yes, if you're willing to be frustrated and actually have tools break under stress, you can excavate in the Sierra Nevadas in the winter.  It would, however, be better to wait until Spring, when the soils can be easily dug and screened, and when you don't have to bundle up like Ralphie's little brother in A Christmas Story in order to work.

Field tech Dave doing his Vasily Zaytsev impression.



But this isn't possible.

See, our client needs to actually begin working on the utilities in the Spring.  Because of the delays and details involved in getting a cultural resources report written and accepted, that means we have to do the work now.  We would have been able to start the work earlier, when the ground was not yet frozen, but the Forest Service, who is responsible for the land in question, has it's own consultation duties that must be carried out before they can issue us the permits to do the work.  The timing is bad, but it's really nobody's fault, it's just the way these things go.

So, there we are, bundled up and looking more like a cross between the Michelin Man and WWII-era Russian sniper than archaeologists, digging in the frozen earth, trying very hard to maintain feeling in our extremities.

But we got the job done, on-time and on-budget, dammit!


Quick note: all of the photos in this post were taken by me in the general vicinity of our project area, but none of them are of sites or client facilities in the project area.

The Value of a Good Crew

I am doing a whirlwind tour of California - Sequoia National Forest yesterday, Oakland today, back to Fresno tomorrow, and then back out to Sequoia on Monday.

So, as described in my previous entry I described that we were anticipating freezing our posteriors off while doing fieldwork in the mountains.  The mornings were cold, though the afternoons weren't bad.  Some of the roads are covered in snow and/or ice, and we are staying in lodgings that one would compliment by comparing them to the Bates Motel.

And yet, it has been fun.

I have written before about the trouble of finding good crew, and it can be difficult.  But when you have a good crew, it makes life good.  Currently, I have a young archaeologist, someone who is just getting his feet wet, but is a fast learner, has an excellent attitude, and is excited enough about the work that he infectiously gets our spirits up.  I have an army veteran who finds that archaeological field work is somewhat therapeutic, is a hard worker, and is full of amazing stories.  And I have the son of one of my bosses who has never used the "my dad's the boss" excuse, is a hard worker, extremely smart, and is willing and quite capable of being the right-hand-man of the supervisor.

My boss's son, in fact, is heading to graduate school soon to earn the credentials to become a supervisor himself.  He will be excellent, of that I have no doubt.

All of these guys know their job, all can provide good suggestions that can change our strategy, but all understand the basic chain-of-command so that I don't find myself having to argue with them to get things done.  It is a pleasure to have these guys in the field.

Anyway, a potentially miserable situation has become an enjoyable one.  I am very grateful for this crew.

On Freezing One's Ass Off

So, the end-of-year fieldwork rush is finally concluding with a literal last-minute trip into the Sierra Nevadas.  I was notified this morning that I will be heading up tomorrow morning to lead a crew doing boundary testing at several sites in the Sequoia National Forest.  I may only be gone two days, or I may be going back up again on Monday, depending on weather. 

This is not the best time of year to be doing Sierra Nevada fieldwork.  There is the ever-present chance of snow, closed roads, and associated logistics problems.  There is the fact that many facilities available during the warmer months are closed in December.  And then there's the cold.

The damn cold.

The weather report states that we will have high temperatures below freezing while we are out there.  Below fucking freezing.  Yeah, some smart-ass archaeologist from Wisconsin is reading this and laughing at my wimpiness, but they can go screw themselves.  It's cold in the Sierra Nevada, in December, at 8,000 feet.  Not good fieldwork conditions.

The last time that I worked int he Sierras in the Fall, and this was mid-October, not nearly as cold as it's going to be, it looked like this:

However, our client, for various reasons, needs this project taken care of ASAP, and as cold as it will be, we're not looking at snow in the next couple of days, so the roads should stay open.  We would have done it sooner, but the federal agency with which we are working is constrained by consultation requirements with Native American groups, who are in turn constrained by political realities within those groups, all of which led to us being delayed by a couple of months.  So, it's off to the frozen highlands with us.  Yipee!

I'm not sure how much writing I am going to be able to get done over the next week, so it may be fallow here for a bit.

Point!

Every now and again, I'll work on a site where I find something that really doesn't seem to belong there, until the context of the item is worked out.  This is one such situation, involving a projectile point that seems out of place, but likely seems out of place simply because we don't know as much about the site from which it has come as we would like.

So, I was recently excavating at a site in the central Sierra Nevadas, in an area where the earliest agreed-upon sustained occupation began around 2,500 years ago.  We were at a known site, performing boundary testing - where we excavate small holes to see if the buried archaeological materials extend beyond what is visible on the surface, and if so, how far they extend.  We were not collecting any artifacts, just noting them, photographing them, and re-burying them in the holes from whence they came*.

During this process, we found a projectile point, probably a point from an atl-atl dart, made out of chert (while most of the waste flakes we found were obsidian).  It was of a type not commonly found in the area**, but appeared to be fairly unremarkable otherwise.  It looked like a type known as a Borax Lake Wide Stem, but those are very, very old, and I figured it was more likely that I was getting the type wrong than that a site that held features and artifacts that we can confidently date to the last 2,000 years held a point that was significantly older.  My boss was out on that day to see how we were doing, and neither he nor I immediately thought anything more of the point than that it should be photographed and we should try to type it when we got back to the office.

On returning to the office, I pulled out my books and articles to try to more accurately type the point.  And I kept coming back to the Borax Lake Wide Stem.  This was odd, as these points date from 7,000 to 11,000 years ago.  So, again, I assumed that I was wrong, and we forwarded the photos to an expert on projectile points.

When the expert responded, he told us that the point is, in fact, of the Borax Lake Wide Stem variety, and that it likely dates to between 7,000 and 11,000 years before present.

Now, keep in mind that other materials on the site date it pretty clearly to the last 2,000 years.  So, this point is a bit of an oddity.  However, similar points are found in the Great Basin, to the east of the Sierras, and throughout California to the west.  So, it is not at all unbelievable that this point would be there, but its presence brings up an interesting question: is it simply an isolate (a single artifact that was dropped and/or may have been picked up and moved by later people, such as those inhabiting the site during the last 2,000 years), or does it represent an earlier component to the site (that is, was there an early site here that the newer site was simply placed on top of)?  One confounding element is that the site is located in a somewhat out of the way place, somewhere where later peoples were clearly living, but where traders passing through would be less likely to go.  Another definite possibility is that points of this type, being relatively simple to manufacture as compared to some other points, might actually have a much longer period of use than is normally thought (and possibly, the longer period of use is based on the location).  Yet another possibility is that a later occupant of the site found this point while they were traveling elsewhere, and brought it back to the site (while this possibility tends to get downplayed in many reports, there is ethnographic evidence of this sort of thing happening from time to time).

Anyway, the presence of this point at this site does not necessarily mean that the site itself was occupied all those many years ago.  It's an oddity the meaning of which is unclear. There's no way to know without a more extensive excavation, and we have no idea whether or not we'll get to do it.  Still, it's pretty cool to find something unlikely, regardless of the final conclusion.






*This is a pretty common approach.  Partially this is an effort to reduce the amount of stuff that ends up being stored in curation facilities and not studied.  Partially it is done out of deference for Native Americans who are concerned that materials stay where they are.  And, partially, it is a desire to reduce the impacts that archaeologists have on the sites that we study.  We may destroyt the stratigraphic context of an artifact, but it's horizontal context remains intact - it may not be much, but it's better than nothing.

Of course, that being said, we still do collect artifacts on many projects.

**The shape and size of a projectile point can be used to figure out who was in an area and when.  Projectile points changed over time and not every group used the same sorts, so looking at the points

Ahhh, Libel Claims...

So, a high school student by the name of Rhys Morgan has written some blog posts about a Doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski who offers cancer treatments that appear to be poorly researched, and therefore of dubious value.  Mr. Morgan has since been contacted by a man named Marc Stevens who represents the doctor (though Burzynski's own website indicates that Stephens is a PR guy and does not work for the doctor as an attorney), and his description of the matter can be found here.

The issue in short: Morgan wrote a blog entry in which he was extremely critical of Dr. Burzynski's methods, citing articles written by cancer researchers (such as this one) and court documents (such as this one) which argue that Burzynski's methods are not simply unproven, but disproven, and therefore questioning the ethics of a practitioner who continues to use them. A man by the name of Marc Stephens contacted Morgan demanding that the blog entry be pulled down and threatening legal action against the libel that this blog entry allegedly represented. 

Now, I am not an expert in the law, obviously, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to think that a high school kid writing a blog entry that cites published research to criticize the work of a controversial doctor meets the legal criteria for Libel, especially as the kid, while certainly making his feelings known, didn't really make any material claims that were not present in the journal article or legal decision. 

And it turns out that Morgan isn't the only one getting this.  Andy Lewis of the Quackometer blog has also received threats of legal action from Mr. Stephens.  And Stephens has, in his emails, demanded not only that these two bloggers remove their content regarding Burzynski, but that they also "pass the word" on to the other "skeptics" who would dare question the alleged brilliance of Dr. Burzynski.  So, it sounds like this is more of an attempt to scare people into not stating their opinions of Burzynski and his treatments than anything else.  Unfortunately, to many people the law is this strange, arcane thing, and they see a mass o' legal sounding jargon such as Stephens sends out and feel like he can do bad things to them if they don't comply.

Also, while I really don't know if Stephens is licensed to practice law, this seems like a bit of an odd qualification for a PR guy, so I suspect he does not*.

So, Marc Stephens, if you happen to be reading this** be advised that I have both attorneys and a judge in my family and my circle of friends.  Should you decide to send me threatening emails, I will seek their counsel, and if I am advised to do so by them, will hire an attorney and respond with legal action against you and your employer.  I grew up around lawyers, I am well aware of what they can and they cannot do, and mere mention of a lawsuit isn't going to intimidate me and send me cowering to the corner.

Oh, and stop picking on high school kids.  Don't you have an actual job to do?  You know, like PR work?





*On the off-chance that he sees this, the way I constructed that sentence doesn't constitute libel.  You see, I made it clear what part was my opinion and what part was based on actual information.  But it will probably piss him off anyway.

**Normally I wouldn't have the ego to assume that any particular person is reading anything I write.  However, as this guy seems to be going to blogs with the intention of sending emails to their writers, it is possible that I will hear from this guy.

Mormons and the Term "Cult"

So, we're gearing up for the 2012 election season by watching the Republican front-runner change every couple of weeks.  Because Mitt Romney is in the running, this means that, every now and again, we get to hear some new claim or fact about his religion.  He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons.  While much is said about the Mormon church in general and Mitt Romney's involvement (or, more often, his supposed and/or feared type of involvement) in particular, one common claim that is made, over and over again, is that the Mormon church is a cult.

A cult. 

Interesting word, "cult." 

Interesting, largely meaningless as used in general conversation word.  A term of abuse with no real meaning other than "they believe stuff that I don't" or "I don't know what they believe, but they give me the willies."

The problem is that there is no real generally agreed-upon definition for the word outside of research circles.  Within the research community, the word "cult" lacks pejorative meaning and refers instead to any particular form of supernatural belief and/or the rituals engaged in by people who follow a belief system.  Using this definition, all forms of Christianity are cults, as are all forms of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and many forms of nationalism, where one venerates a symbol of the nation rather than a supernatural being, but does so with the types of rituals and beliefs with which one venerates supernatural beings.  Broadly speaking, the term "cult" and the term "religion" are almost interchangeable within the social sciences*.  So, in this sense, Mormonism is a cult, but your local Baptist, Methodist, and Episcopalian churches also represent cults.

In broader colloquial English, the term "cult" generally means a shady, destructive group that hides its members away from the rest of society, holds strange beliefs, and has predatory recruitment patterns. 

Does this describe Mormonism?  Well, if we get away from the absolutely arbitrary ideas that most religious people have regarding what is destructive to one's soul (and, really, considering that no two denominations of even the same religion will agree on this, it seems an absurd thing to focus on) and look solely at verifiable harm and destruction that a group can do, it's hard to think that Mormonism is a cult.  Certainly, there is no shortage of stories of members who are secretly homosexual or who have some doubt about the teachings of the church being done harm by the indoctrination, but that's true of the vast majority of religious traditions and is not in any way unique to Mormonism.  So, if Mormonism is destructive in any meaningful way, it is no more so than any other religion, so if you are reluctant to call the local Southern Baptist denomination a cult on these grounds, you probably shouldn't call Mormonism a cult, either.  In fact, given the general focus on self-improvement and social responsibility within the church, the Mormon Church may be healthier on average than many other denominations.

As for hiding members away from society, Mormonism is pretty damn innocent there.  Unlike groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and many Protestant denominations, Mormons are generally encouraged to be members of the broader community through social functions, charity work, and political activity.  While I take serious issue with some of the ways in which this occurs (such as a general - though by no means universal - support of Proposition 8 ihere in California), it nonetheless demonstrates that members are not being held away from society at large.  While the Church has been known to discourage the reading of certain books and viewing of certain films, television shows, etc., it doesn't seek to prohibit this in the same way that many Protestant churches and the Catholic church have historically (and currently) sought.  What's more, the Mormon Church encourages education and general social engagement, which is more than can be said for many "main line" denominations**.  So, again, while I often have problems with the Church's official and unofficial stances on issues related to this point, there is not the prohibition of interaction with the outside world that I have seen in many a "main line" Protestant church.  So, once again, not really cult-like.

How about holding strange beliefs?  Well, I've described some of the Mormon Church's teachings before, and they are pretty weird.  You know what else is pretty weird?  The idea that the world was created in six days by a strange all-powerful being that seemingly was just always there, a belief held by many a "main line" church in the U.S.  The idea that a man in Italy who wears a funny hat communicates with this creator and is infallible in his decisions is also pretty damn weird, but that's Catholicism for ya'.  While we're at it, the entire idea of the Holy Trinity really only makes sense if you think of it as mythology and not reality.  The idea that a religious group that has been abused throughout the course of western civilization is the special chosen people of an all-powerful deity is pretty odd, come to think about it.  And don't even get me started on talking snakes.  And yet, these really bizarre beliefs are considered mainstream and respectable by people who think that Romney is a member of a cult.

Some people will respond that the Mormon Church hides many of their beliefs from the public, holding secret closed ceremonies in the Temples.  This is true, and I can easily understand where this would unnerve many people.  Hell, I find it a bit creepy, myself.  However, I also know enough about human religion to know that this is pretty damn common amongst religions.  I don't like it, but it's an aberration within Christianity, not within religion in general.  So, unless you want to dismiss the majority of religious systems the world over as "cults", you'd be hard pressed to explain why this makes Mormonism a cult.

How about predatory recruitment?  Well, first off, it's really hard to think of anything less threatening than the tie-wearing bicycle-riding missionaries.  Have they been known to take advantage of people's moments of weakness to get them to join the church?  Yep.  Does this separate them from the "main line" denominations?  Nope.  In fact, the use of missionaries, who are very clear about their purpose, means that the Mormon church is arguably less predatory than many, perhaps most, other expansionist religious movements.  My own personal experience is that, as a child, many different churches made an effort to persuade myself and my school-mates to join their ranks, whether our parents approved or not.  This included the usual Protestant sects (Baptist, Methodist, Calvinist, etc.) and even a couple of Catholic churches.  However, the local Mormon Church never invited the children to any religious functions - it would often invite the adults and suggest that they bring their children with them, but it was always an invitation at the adults first.  While I haven't done any serious research into the matter, my own experience and that of others with whom I have spoken has been that this is the common way that the church works.  So, whereas on everything else, the Mormon Church is no more cult-like than most churches, on this point it actually is much less cult-like than most other churches.

Now, I do take issue with the Mormon Church on many points - note, though, that I don't take issue with specific Mormons except where they require me to do so.  Like any church, the Mormons are not a monolithic whole, but rather there is a range of ideas, beliefs, and attitudes on many issues, and it is wise to keep this in mind, because you will find yourself dealing with individuals (many of them both bright and articulate) and not mindless automatons.  Moreover, what issues I have with the Mormon Church, I also have with many, probably most, other religious groups.  But as to the question of whether or not the Mormons constitute a cult, well, that idea is absurd and reveals a large degree of bigotry on the part of the populace of the United States. 






*The terms do have different meanings, but are intertwined enough that for our purposes here, they can be thought of as essentially the same thing. 

**Many people will say that the Mormon church encourages this for it's own reasons.  This is probably true.  It is also true of pretty much every large national and international church organization, so, again, if you're not going to consider the local Baptists a cult on these grounds, it's pretty damn hypocritical to consider the Mormons a cult. 

Gender, Sex, and Where They Don't Meet

My partner, Kaylia, has many friends who are part of the transgender community.  These are people who don’t fit the traditional gender roles in that they are living as members of the opposite sex, are undergoing medical procedures to change sex, don’t find themselves fitting into either male or female sex roles, or are biologically not clearly male or female to begin with.  The tendency in society in general (and here in Fresno in particular) is to treat these people with confusion, fear, and/or skepticism as to their gender or lack thereof.  Natalie of the Skepchick blog argues, with a good deal of success, that this is due to a discomfort that people have with having their notions of gender challenged.  While I agree, I think that it also comes from a basic miscomprehension of what, exactly, gender is to begin with.  Gender and sex are not the same thing, and this seems to be at the root of much of the problem.

I was first introduced to the concept of gender as something other than a synonym for biological sex during my freshman year of college.  This was a difficult concept to wrap my head around, having grown up in a time and culture in which we are in many ways obsessed with observing, reinforcing, challenging, and critiquing a binary male/female idea of gender.  The notion that there might be more than two genders simply did not compute because we only formally recognize two genders that roughly correspond to one’s genitals*.  While even my own culture’s notions of gender don’t quite line up with biological sex, the insistence otherwise tends to blind one to this and make it difficult to conceive of the idea that there may be more than two genders.

And yet there are, in fact, multiple genders observed across time and across cultures.

First, a little clarity and definition…

Gender is not the same thing as sex.  Sex is biological, based on whether or not a person possesses a Y chromosome.  This, obviously, determines your genitalia, but also impacts things such as your overall physical build and, to an extent, the way in which hormones influence aspects of your behavior and socialization.  Gender is the social role that is ascribed to you based primarily on your sex.  However, gender takes things into account that are based on socialization and not just biology – the tendency to socialize boys into an interest in sports and girls into an interest in shopping, for example – but because gender and sex are interrelated, we tend to conflate them.  And so we have a number of, frankly bizarre, research papers on the evolutionary roots of why women like shopping and wearing pretty clothes or why men like football and watching wrestling, papers that rarely really deal with the fact that they are conflating gender roles with biological sex.  There may well be biological influences on these interests, but they are largely cultural rather than biological.  Gender takes the biology into account, but covers it in a heavy dollop of social norms, cultural context, and the flotsam and jetsam of history.

We tend to think of gender as being divided into two for a very simple reason: humans are generally divided biologically into male and female.  The different physical capabilities - due largely to the necessities of child-baring and rearing and to a lesser extent to general physical builds – results in different social roles being ascribed to men and women within any given society.  And so, on the surface, it seems that we should expect there to be two genders in every society corresponding to biological sex.  That is, we should expect a set of socially/culturally-constructed roles and expectations that correspond with biological sex to break into two – male and female – if this is what biology actually demands. 

But scratch the surface and think about it for a few minutes and it becomes clear that this isn’t, in fact, what biology actually demands.  First off, it should be said that biological sex is not really the simple binary that we tend to conceive of it as being.  Humans generally divide into male and female, but don’t absolutely.  There are a number of physical traits (from hermaphroditism to a range of genetic conditions and even a few anomalies) that can and do result in individuals who do not clearly fall into either the male or female gender.  Then, of course, there’s the issue of sexual orientation – itself a rather complex and often murky subject that is typically so mired in social context that it is difficult (though not necessarily impossible) to clearly tease out the underlying biology – which can lead to a person not comfortably fitting into the procreation duties imparted to the gender role that corresponds with their biological sex.  And, of course, there is the fact that there appear to have always been individuals who find that they fit better into a gender role other than the one that corresponds with their biological sex – while it is tempting to think of transgendered people as being a product of modern society and medical technology, the fact is that the ethnographic literature is filled with information about this phenomenon across time and culture, implying that it is something inherent to humanity and not a product of current western culture.

So, what we are left with is the realization that two genders doesn’t actually quite work.  Even with loose gender roles, it doesn’t cover all of the bases.  Now, of course, the majority of people within any society appear to fit the male or female role…but there are enough that don’t that it is unlikely that you will find a culture that actually strictly observes the notion of two genders.

Third, fourth, fifth, etc. genders are well-documented.  Off of the top of my head, there are the Hijras of the Indian Sub-Continent, Sworn Virgins of the Balkans, ‘Aqi of the Chumash, Winkte of the Lakota**, ZapotecMuxe of Mexico, and the list could go on for pages (and actually does so here).  In these cases, the majority of people fit within the male/female genders, but a sufficient number of people do not that additional gender roles evolved.  In addition, things such as a shortage of men or women may produce additional gender roles that allow the surplus of whichever sex is overabundant to take on the roles of the other.  Many of these gender roles have ritual/religious functions, as is the case with the Hijra, as well as the vestal virgins of antiquity, but membership in the gender is not limited to participation in the ritual functions and is all-encompassing of the individual’s role in society, and as such should not be confused with a solely ritual position. 

To many, perhaps most, of my readers, these groups will sound strange or exotic – genders beyond male and female will likely seem to be derivatives of the religious beliefs and practices of other cultures, and something that has nothing to do with good ol’ rational Western culture (many people would also add either "post-Enlightenment" or "Christian" in there). 

These people would be wrong.

Though they are not often discussed in textbooks, if one begins looking at the primary historic sources, evidence of people who don’t fit into either the male or female roles are pretty clear within western history.  The most lurid (and therefore most often discussed) examples are male prostitutes (both ritual/temple based and otherwise) who took on roles similar to, but separate from, women.  However, there are many other examples of individuals and even small communities rejecting gender roles altogether, or else of people living as members of other genders (sometimes for limited purpose – such as women acting as men to join armies or take on positions of power – but often because the individual simply seemed to be comfortable as a member of the opposite gender, or even outside of gender norms altogether).  This has been common throughout western history, even if little acknowledged.

Then, of course, there are the examples of additional genders existing, but only being semi-acknowledged.  For example, if one reads many of the primary sources from the 16^th century, people will be very clear that women are to have specific, prescribed roles within society…except for Queen Elizabeth.  She may be a woman, but she’s a queen, so the rules don’t apply to her, you see.  In other words, the Queen does not fit the gender of “woman”, she is instead a “queen” and therefore has her own set of rules and expectations, some of which are derived from her sex (such as bearing an heir - which Elizabeth did not manage to do), and some of which are derived fromt he social or political demands of the day. 

Likewise, Catholic priests and nuns, while linguistically described using the standard binary gender pronouns and associated language, don’t really fit their gender roles either.  The terms used for them – Father for priests and Sister for nuns – are the terms for family and not prospective mates, linguistically put them off-limits sexually, rendering them functionally neuter***.  Further, they are expected to be detached from the family and work roles reserved for both men and women within society at large.  While they are not generally acknowledged as such, this arguably makes them a third and fourth gender within western society. 

Given this context, the rise of a transgender community and movement is not some strange anomaly or a product solely of modern western culture.  Rather, it is the contemporary western manifestation of a tendency common in human populations for as long as we have records of human populations.  Certainly, modern medical technology allows for new manifestations, such as having one’s appearance and even sex (or aspects of sex) physically changed, but the underlying reasons appear to have existed throughout history. 

P.S.  Some time back, I read a magazine article, I believe it was in Time, though I cannot recall with certainty, in which the journalist stated that despite claims to the contrary, anthropologists have never found a culture with a “third gender”.  To this day, I am uncertain as to whether this journalist was conflating gender and biological sex, was ignorant of what anthropologists have actually found (which leads one to wonder why they would write such a blatantly un-researched statement), or was ignoring anthropological data for some personal or political reason.

*Minds out of the gutter, people.

**It is common for people to refer to third-gender or transgender people of the Native American groups as “berdaches”, but this is likely a term that was largely applied by European explorers and colonists and a term of abuse, rather than the term actually used within that culture.  Plus, it attempts to apply a broad term to a phenomenon that is expressed and handled different from culture-to-culture, and as such is probably not a particularly useful term.

***Which didn’t stop many from acting on their sexual impulses, certainly.  But the fact that they did so was considered a violation of their role, while it would not be a violation if they were normal men and women.

Peruvian Alien Mummy!

In a great example of how a bit of knowledge on a subject can change how you react to a news story, we have this one from Peru about an alleged alien mummy found in a Peruvian archaeological site.

The following quote is attributed to Renato Davila Riquelme, who the story states works for the Privado Ritos Andinos museum in Cusco:

"It has a non-human appearance because the head is triangular and big, almost the same size as the body. At first we believed it to be a child's body until Spanish and Russian doctors came and confirmed that, yes, it's an extraterrestrial being."

Here, have some photos (from io9):

Okay, so two things right off: 1) I am not an osteologist, human skeletal anatomy is not my specialty.  Like most archaeologists, though, I do have some training in osteology and have handled a wide rnage of human skeletons both with and without pathologies, so I have a good baseline idea of what I am talking about, though it should be kept in mind that I am not an expert.  2) All I have to go on is these photographs, and not the original bone.

So, that being said, when I first saw these photos, the first thought that went through my head was not "GAH!  What the HELL is THAT!  ALIEN!"  It was, in fact "oh look, human bones exhibiting signs of pathology and possibly some intentional cranial deformation."  In other words, something unusual, but definitely well within the range of known and well-understood human variation.

The assurance of how it was determined that these are alien bones is pretty damn comical.  Leave aside the fact that it's a group of Spanish and Russian physicians who are never named who say that it's an alien (really, this is the sort of thing that would end up in a journal, with the names of the researchers highlighted in order to ensure their impending flood of grant money), it's that they "confirmed" that it's an extra-terrestrial.  As the website io9 puts it:

"BOOM. There ya go. Four out of five faceless scientists agree that what you're looking at are mummified alien remains. Case closed."

Now, let's assume, for a moment, that it was definitiely shown to not be exaclty what it looks like (a human skeleton exhibiting bone pathology), how would you go about confirming that it was an alien? 

I have done faunal analysis, and when I have a bone that I can confirm does not belong to any of the animals with which I am familiar, I don't confirm that it is, therefore, from another planet.  I conclude that it belongs to an animal for which I don't have a sample for comparison.  So, let's say that these bones were shown clearly to not be human.  That would imply that they were from another animal, true, but why assume that this animal is from another planet?  Why not an undiscovered primate from Earth?  If you don't have an extra-terrestrial body to which to compare it (and this article says nothing about the bones being taken to Nevada for comparison with the Roswell...oh, I've said too much!), then you have no reason to think that it's an alien.

I suppose that if the bone contained some element or compound not found on Earth, you could conclude that it came from elsewhere, but then why would a group of doctors and not a group of chemists and physicists be making that announcement (again, with their names in bold to help catch the flood of grant money coming their way)?

Anyway, I suspect this is a hoax.  If it's not a flat-out hoax, then it's a case of someone being very, very stupid.

Regulated Madness

As anyone who regularly reads this blog knows (and contrary to what I suspected before I placed traffic trackers, there's actually quite a few of you), I spend alot of time looking into regulations and case law to try to figure out how to apply historic preservation laws to specific projects.  Right now I am particularly confounded, though.

See, I have a project in the southern San Joaquin Valley.  This project involves historic-era archaeological sites that are related to the early use of the oil fields.  Now, back in the late 90s, the Department of Energy sold Naval Petroleum Reserve 1 (which is about two miles north of my project area) to a private company, and in the process had to go through the environmental revue process.  During this process, rumor holds that they developed a good set of criteria for determining whether or not a historic-era oil field site was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, and therefore would gain some (admittedly minor) level of protection, and that the State Office of Historic Preservation agreed to these criteria in a programmatic agreement. 

Now, the project that I have is not on the old Naval Petroleum Reserve grounds, and therefore these criteria would not be directly applicable to my project, but they can provide guidance on how to apply the regulations in similar environments within the vicinity of the Petroleum Reserve grounds.  It is, essentially, a matter of hunting down precedent.

Which makes my current task as necessary as it is frustrating.

You see, the studies and documents that I need to find were produced in the late 90s, as federal agencies were beginning to gain a strong online presence, but before the early 2000s shuffling of various federal responsibilities under Bush.  In other words, it came into being during that magical internet time when all web sites had blue balls to illustrate bullet points (mind out of the gutter!), Geocities and Angelfire were where it was at, and federal agencies were sure that they needed to do something with this internet thingy, even though they weren't sure what, exactly.  So, I can find the Record of Decision in the Federal Register that describes the project and the documents, I can find the public comments to the documents, and I can find agency comments for the documents from the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Energy...but I can not find the document itself.  I can't even find PDF copies of one of the several documents to which the document I need would have been an appendix or attachment! 

Now, this wouldn't be bad if I could get a hard copy of the document.  But here's the problem - if I make a formal request to OHP or DOE, my project will be due before I actually hear about the possibility of receiving the document.  I could conceivably call one of my contacts at an agency that works with the documents, but I have already found that most of them are out of the office for extended periods of time on their own projects.  And the people I know at private companies who could get me a copy are currently so buried under their own work that they rarely respond to emails or phone calls anyway.

So, I continue trying to find it by some other sneaky way.  Oh joy!

Don't Need That After High School?

About once a week I come across it.  Someone may be referring to a historical fact, or to a mathematical concept, or to famous scientific experiment, or to a...well, you get the point.  Someone will be referring to something that they had been required to learn in school, laugh derisively, and say "well, I don't need that now that I am out of high school!" with the sub-text pretty much always being that learning the information, process, or concept in question was a waste of time and not applicable to "the real world."

Bullshit.

The "I don't need that now that I'm out of high school" line is nothing more than a proud proclamation of intentional ignorance.  If you want to know why out country is in a shambles, stop looking for conservative or liberal boogeymen, stop looking at religious or sexual minorities.  Start looking at the fact that we are a nation full of people proud of the fact that we don't retain basic information once we have a diploma in hand.

Once I have heard someone say that they don't need some skill or information or ability post-school, I have a very hard time taking anything else they say about any subject seriously.

Leaving aside the very real fact that, now that we don't live in a society where young men automatically go to work at dad's factory and young women are usually married and pregnant at 19, learning all of these "useless" facts and skills opens up the possibility that a young person can actually find a career path; leaving aside the fact that there is a pleasure in learning this information for those who go with it rather than resist it because to do so is somehow perversely considered cool; leaving aside the fact that simply having been exposed to this sort of information can provide one with an appreciation for the work lives of others who are not in one's own occupation, and therefore make it easier ot live with other people; leaving all of those very valid reasons why it is a good thing to have learned and been exposed to a wide range of academic disciplines, the claim that what one learned in high school (or junior high, or college) was a waste of time best left to nerds and egg-heads and not applicable to the so-called "real world" remains complete and utter bullshit. 

Let's take a common high school math class: algebra. 

Algebra, on it's surface, seems to have very limited application to the non-academic world.  If you are a construction contractor or involved in some types of business, you may have some use for very basic algebra in order to solve day-to-day problems.  But, all of those quadratic equations and discussions of arithmetic properties, what good is that?  Well, it is true that you can get by, day-to-day in most jobs without having to make use of those skills and knowledge sets.  In that sense, you don't need it.  But that doesn't mean that it isn't useful.  Go here to see some places where quadratic equations come up in your everyday life, even if you don't do the math, knowing that it's there can help you make sense out of what's going on.  Even if you don't need ot solve for them, you can find uses that will allow you to improve your life, and likely improve your workplace, by retaining this knowledge.  You may not need it, in the same way that you don't need a cell phone - it's still useful to have one, and the more you use it, the more likely you will be to find further uses.

How about another math class: statistics.

This one tends to be even more poorly understood, and in my experience even more likely to be scoffed at by the proud ignorance brigade.  You can probably go on with life quite well without being able to perform a chi-square test, or calculate standard deviation on the fly.  However, if you have learned to do these things at some point, and retained a decent part of the conceptual knowledge, you are far, far, far less likely to be conned or scammed than everyone else around you.  Simply remembering that there are ways to determine whether or not a correlation is due to random chance or due to causal factors allows you to ask some important questions when a politician pushes a policy, or when a scam treatment is presented to you, or when someone wants you to buy something to increase your fuel mileage, or when a self-help guru is trying to peddle idiocy packaged as wisdom (I'm going to go out an a limb here and guess that The Secret didn't sell well amongst mathematicians).  In other words, having just a basic-level knowledge of statistics, the sort that someone could acquire from high school and retain through adult life, will make you a smarter consumer, voter, and citizen.  Again, can you get by in life without this?  Yes, you can live day-to-day without basic mathematical knowledge, but much of the poor policy passed by politicians and the idiocy marketed to consumers relies on the fact that most people will relegate statistics to the dust pile of their personal histories and not use it to defend themselves as adults.

Let's look at something that is not as clearly related to day-to-day life and yet very important: history and civics classes.

I live in California, and like many states in the U.S., we have a referendum system that allows voters to put legislation onto the ballots and vote for it, bypassing the state legislature.  On the surface this sounds great - direct power from the people, for the people, right?  In practice, it means that many pieces of legislation get passed because they sound good to the public but make very little sense, are unenforceable or would require a wide range of inoffensive activities to become crimes, laws get passed that drain the public treasury for very little gain, or laws get passed that are struck down immediately (often in costly legal battles) because they clearly violate the federal or state constitution and therefore should never have been passed (and initiatives favored by both the political right and left do these things with what appears to be equal resolve and gusto, so don't go blaming the other side, your side is also at fault).  Likewise, everytime I see someone who is swayed by cries of "activist judges" I know that I am looking at someone who doesn't remember high school history/civics and who therefore is being taken advantage of by political opportunists.

Here's the thing - if voters were generally more aware of what the constitution actually says (and right now I know that both Occupy people and Tea Party people are nodding their heads while dellusionaly believing that their take on the constitution is the only valid one...and both are wrong), then laws violating it (and wasting resources as a result) wouldn't get passed.  If voters had a better idea of history, then they would know where to look in trying to figure out whether a proposed piece of legislation was likely to do what it said (after all, most of these measures have been, in some form or another, tried somewhere before).  In short, knowing some basic civics lessons and retaining at least a broad outline of history (allowing for a small bit of research when necessary) would make us better voters.

The same sorts of things can be drawn from high-school level biology, physics, chemistry, even classes such as literature, art, and music.  There is information and skills that can be gleaned from these classes which will help you to avoid getting ripped off, which will help you to avoid making stupid choices in the voting booth, which will help you to deal with many day-to-day matters.  But, here's the catch, you have to come to the realization that "I don't need that after high school" is the battle cry of the imbecile.  It's justification for laziness, not a show of wisdom or worldliness.