How can a wrong number be so right?

This morning I got a call from a phone number with a San Antonio area code.

The conversation went like this:

Matt: Hello, this is Matt Dick

Slow, Slurred-Speech Guy: Hello?

Matt: Hello, this is Matt Dick

SSSG: <silence>

Matt: Hello?

Someone in the same room as SSSG: <something loud and unintelligible>

SSSG: Is this Mesario?

Matt: No.

SiSraSSSG: <something loud, unintelligible that is clearly a question>

SSSG (to SiSraSSSG): Mother fucker!  No, this is my friend's phone
number but some
little bitch answered!  What the fuck!?

SiSraSSSG: <much louder and unintelligible>

Matt: <hung up>

I *really* made a mistake and didn't string this along.  I'm thinking
of calling back and re-engaging...

The Land of the Free

It's hard for me to imagine how any of the actual human beings in this circumstance went about making their decisions.  I read this and initially shook my head in sadness.  But then as I considered it, it became more and more deeply disturbing to me.  I tend to think that "The State of California" did this monstrous thing.  But it didn't.  A series of human beings made and kept making one monstrous decision after another.

Consider this:

Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf.

This is a habit of journalism.  No county made this decision, people did.  They were guided by their laws and culture, but a human being looked Clay in the face and made the decision that because he and his partner were both males, that their previous, clear and written commitment to work for each other's well-being was invalid.  Who on Earth did that person think they were?  What drove them to that moment of evil?  Even if he or she thinks that homosexuality is wrong or unnatural or something else, what, at that moment, made them choose what they thought was right over the suffering of these two people?

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years.

Imagine yourself in a position of authority here... the hospital administrator, the judge, some police officer... you.  You deciding that Clay and Harold were so wrong that mediating their suffering for those three months was not as important as following the rules about visiting family members at the hospital.  You say, "I know you and he spent 20 years together, but since you are gay, your suffering is..."  What?  Now finish that.  There are only two options from what I can see.  If you conclude that statement to your satisfaction then it is inescapable that you think Clay and Harold do not suffer as much as straight people do, or you think that it doesn't matter that they suffer as much as straight people do.

Introducing Your NIH

The National Institutes of Health, as a part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services is "the nation’s medical research agency - making important medical discoveries that improve health and save lives."¹

The NIH is made up of 27 institutes. Some examples are:

The National Cancer Institute: "NCI leads a national effort to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer."²

The National Eye Institute: "NEI conducts and supports research that helps prevent and treat eye diseases and other disorders of vision."³


So far so good. I can get behind my tax dollars going towards the research of cancer and vision.

There are also seven "centers" under the umbrella of the NIH. These include such organizations as:

Center for Information Technology: "CIT incorporates the power of modern computers into the biomedical programs and administrative procedures of the NIH..."⁴

National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities: "The mission of NCMHD is to promote minority health and to lead, coordinate, support, and assess the NIH effort to reduce and ultimately eliminate health disparities."⁵

Awesome... if we're going to fund an NIH, let's do it right... let's apply the latest in science and technology and let's make sure we address some really key and fundamental problems like the health disparities among different groups of Americans. Most of the other centers have similar missions.

And now to the punchline. There is a center in the NIH called the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine⁶: "NCCAM is dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative medical (CAM) practices in the context of rigorous science; training CAM researchers and disseminating authoritative information."

I have to admit to being skeptical to start with when it comes to complimentary and alternative medicines. Things like ear candling and therapeutic touch are silly on the face of their claims and there is no one who has ever articulated any mechanism for how these modalities might work that shows even an ounce of understanding about how the natural world actually works. But some stuff, like acupuncture and chiropractic, while born of superstitious nonsense, actually do things to the body, so it is not literally physically impossible that those modalities could affect the human body and health. So I can understand the value of studying those things.

Let's explore the NCCAM a bit.

In the "About" page, the NCCAM tells us:

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is the Federal Government's lead agency for scientific research on the diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine.

It has been said by smarter people than I that if any of these things worked, they would start to become conventional medicine. I have several friends who are medical doctors. I guarantee that if homeopathic pills were shown to work, they'd prescribe them as gladly as they currently prescribe any other pill.

The thing is, the most of these things don't show a lot of efficacy. But let's read more about NCCAM.


In their introduction on Traditional Chinese Medicine they say:

Although TCM is used by the American public, scientific evidence of its effectiveness is, for the most part, limited. Acupuncture has the largest body of evidence and is considered safe if practiced correctly. Some Chinese herbal remedies may be safe, but others may not be.

and:

* Yin-yang theory—the concept of two opposing, yet complementary, forces that shape the world and all life—is central to TCM.
* In the TCM view, a vital energy or life force called qi circulates in the body through a system of pathways called meridians. Health is an ongoing process of maintaining balance and harmony in the circulation of qi.
* The TCM approach uses eight principles to analyze symptoms and categorize conditions: cold/heat, interior/exterior, excess/deficiency, and yin/yang (the chief principles). TCM also uses the theory of five elements—fire, earth, metal, water, and wood—to explain how the body works; these elements correspond to particular organs and tissues in the body.

Nothing above has any basis in anything even vaguely scientific. Nothing about it is proven, or indeed even hinted about, in any rigorous study of the natural world. Vital life forces or energies are unknown, undiscovered and undescribed by science. "Meridians" have never been found by any doctor, scientist or anatomist. There is no coherent theory explaining why any of this should work.

The explain about acupuncture:

Acupuncture. By stimulating specific points on the body, most often by inserting thin metal needles through the skin, practitioners seek to remove blockages in the flow of qi.

So they are trying to unblock the flow of something they can't adequately describe and which has never been demonstrated or measured in any way.

In the NCCAM's section on "If You Are Thinking About Using TCM" they advise"

"Do not use TCM as a replacement for effective conventional care or as a reason to postpone seeing a doctor about a medical problem."

In discussing more CAM modalities, NCCAM discusses "Energy Medicine thusly:

Energy medicine uses energy fields with the intent to affect health. Some fields, such as magnetic fields, have been measured. Others, such as biofields, have not. Therapies involving biofields are based on the idea that people have a subtle form of energy; energy medicine practitioners believe that illness results from disturbances of these subtle energies.

and

Examples of energy medicine include magnet therapy, healing touch, and Reiki (pronounced "ray-kee").

Magnet therapy uses magnets or magnetic devices to treat or ease the symptoms of various diseases and conditions, including pain.

Healing touch practitioners pass their hands over or gently touch a person's body to try to identify imbalances in the body's energy field.

Reiki is based on the idea that there is a universal (or source) energy that supports the body's innate healing abilities. Practitioners seek to access the energy and allow it to flow to the body to help with healing. In a Reiki session, the practitioner's hands are placed lightly on or just above the client's body.

In other words, "Someone had some concept of 'energy fields' and named them, no one has ever measured those energy fields or proven them to exist, but someone will not touch you in order to manipulate those fields, and that will heal you."

I defy you to find a more coherent description of healing touch than what I have just supplied.

So what do we know? We know that nearly $3 Billion has gone into the NCCAM over the last 10 or 11 years, and it is apparently using that money to study whether not touching a patient might effect a cure. If not touching me might cure disease, why aren't all shut-ins 100% healthy all of the time?

---

1. NIH's Mission
2. NCI
3. NEI
4. CIT
5. NCMHD
6. NCCAM

Dying Old

What you're looking at is a graph depicting the death rates in different eras.

Take the low blue line. This is the 1900-1902 line, showing what befell the people in the United States, base on a per-100,000 live birth rate. At the left you can see that since this is live births, everyone survived to birth. There is a steep decline showing that only 89% of Americans survived to 1 year old. The next data point along that line shows another decline and only 82% of the original group survived to 5 years old. And so on.

What does this show? Well we're getting better and better at surviving to the elbow of the curve... no line shows a lower survival at any point than a previous era except in one spot. Between 1919-1921, humans in the United States survived to five years old in a lower percentage than between 1909-1911. I think that must be related to the 1917/1918 flu epidemic. It shows what a real pandemic actually looks like... imagine what it was like when children were dying at such a rate....

The other curious thing it shows is that the advantages over our very recent forebears is still holding up... in 2004 we still see the same advantage over 1989-1991 as 1909-1911 saw over 1900-1902. I would have thought we'd be compressing more than we are.

Also, while the data stops at 100, it's clear that we converge at the extreme old age... we aren't getting a greater percentage of people beyond about 95 than we ever have.

At the big bulge we can see how well we're getting people into their 50s. For Americans born in 1850 we were getting about 54% into their 50s. 94% of Americans born in 1954 were still alive in 2004.

That's pretty amazing, and shows that we seem to have gotten people over the childhood disease rate... the curve is flat until heart attacks take people out in their 50s and 60s. I suspect that cancer is killing us at the far right, and we clearly are making great strides there as well. Born in 1920? Only 14% of people made it into their 80s. Born in 1920? 54%. In 100 years we now are as good at getting people into their 80s as we used to be at getting them into their 50s.

Still, we need to crack the top end before I relax.

96 ways to kill a good thing

So we're going to get 96 teams.

I will gripe only once in a general sense: John Feinstein had it right when he pointed out that the NCAA is so stupid it's literally doing the exact opposite of what makes sense--they refuse to address their football championship system which is clearly the worst champion-picking exercise of any major sporting season, college or pro.  At the same time they are messing with arguably the greatest sporting spectacle EVER DEVISED.  I don't even mean that facetiously, it's possible that March Madness is more fun for the serious-down-to-casual fan of anything yet devised in sports.

And now they are going to add tons of mediocre-to-bad teams.  But my main reason for bringing this up is an aspect to this travesty that I haven't seen discussed yet: what does this do to filling out brackets?  64 teams is hard to bracketize as it is, but it can be done with a single piece of 11.5 x 8 inch paper if you write small.  It can be integrated into a website form if it's done well.  When you make it one round bigger it's going to be harder to manage.  Not impossible, but you aren't going to carry around your bracket in as pleasant a way anymore.

If that's the case, does it make the 96-team tournament really unfriendly to the casual fan?  Is my mother, who has actually filled out brackets before, ever going to sit down long enough to decide if the 8th place Big-Ten team might beat the third best Mountain West school?  No way.  A 96-team bracket makes the obscure match-ups just that much more abstract to people on the margins of caring.

The office pool goes from something fun for $5 to an annoyance to deal with... that will be as hard on the popularity of the event as anything.

Giving Way to Hating

Are we reaching the point where a legislator being actively anti-gay will make us all believe the legislator himself is gay?  It's becoming too common to be a joke anymore, and is just a sad reality.  How much does a man have to hate himself to spend the first 55 years of his life actively denying rights to those of his own sexuality.

[Mr. Ashburn] also voted in the statehouse against efforts to expand anti-discrimination laws...

As a kind-of meta comment on this episode, does anyone else find it sad to read a statement like "voted... against efforts to expand anti-discrimination laws..."?  I am a pretty libertarian guy.  If I am radical politically, it is along the lines of believing the government has no place in my personal life.  How can there be laws governing behavior that doesn't affect anyone but the primary actor?  But general libertarianism aside, I can't imagine a better use of extraneous laws than to be anti-discrimination. 

*sigh*

If there is any value to the fact that humans have to get old and die, perhaps it's so that this generation can leave and let the rest of us get on with more important things that the previous generation's hang-ups.  Note that I know people like this do not represent everyone, and I am aware that I must have hang-ups that my children will abhor.  So maybe it's good that someday I'll die so that they can get on with whatever terrible thing it is that they think is more important.

The Right Way

I love Fareed Zakaria. I agree with him about half the time, but he's always on-point. As far as I know, he's never advocated for the United States' Congress to spend time talking about the NCAA Bowl Championship selection.

In a recent WaPo column Zakaria references the recent al-Qaeda crotch bomber and our response to that event:

Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission and later a senior State Department official in the Bush administration, suggests that we should try to analyze failures in homeland security the way we do airplane catastrophes. When an airliner suffers an accident, major or minor, the National Transportation Safety Board convenes a group of nonpartisan experts who methodically examine what went wrong and then issue recommendations to improve the situation. "We approach airline security with the understanding that it's a complex problem, that we have a pretty good system, but that there will be failures -- caused by human beings, technology, or other factors. The point is to constantly fix what's broken and keep improving the design and execution," says Zelikow.

It's hard to argue that terrorism is designed to change what we do. The crotch bomber was successful because we've talked about him. Can't we just measure James Carville's penis* and get on with our lives?

---

* Speaking of Mr Carville, I have for years maintained that he is the most entertaining person on TV. I firmly stand by that position.

There Are No Hangovers in Heaven

I just got my PCS orders for Heaven. I called my sponsor and he said:

"Bill Dick, in Heaven, all your dogs are there; and all your cousins' dogs are there; and all the dogs you ever loved are there.

"Right out your front door are the Arizona mountains and every day you hike all day long. You work up a terrific thirst, but that's okay because the Hofbrau Haus is right down the block and all your friends are there. You listen to oompah music and sing.

"You wander home around 3am. You sleep well and in the morning you feel great... because there are no hangovers in heaven."

Fair play?

Alberto Contador will stay with Astana. This is pretty interesting, because with the team falling apart it was widely suspected that Contador, despite having a contract through 2010, would sign with another team and deal with whatever legal battles would ensue.

The announcement made me do a double take, and it's so revealing of a sport that is so screwed up. For the agreement to be binding, Astana must, among other things "strictly comply with the code of ethics and internal doping control system that will be implemented by the new leadership of the team."

Has anyone else ever heard of an athlete holding his team to an ethics clause instead of the other way around?

Cycling is so great and so troubled at the same time.

Loving the Monster

The geniuses in New Mexico have been reintroducing the Mexican Gray Wolf to certain areas along the New Mexico/Arizona border. And now they are surprised that things have gone a little astray.

So I hardly know where to begin here. How about this: humans have spent quite literally thousands of years trying to rid the world of the things that kill us. In Europe, wolves were the predator that did the job of killing humans best. You don't get to be the star of essentially all of a culture's fairy tales if you aren't the thing of nightmares. They are, quite literally, monsters.

From the LA Times article:

Environmentalists argue that grazing practices are part of the problem and the wolf reintroduction program has failed because of mismanagement by the federal government.

Here's why the program has failed: they're wolves. They eat stuff that we don't want them to, like cows and small human beings. Ranchers are going out of business because, surprising to no one but "Bud Fazio, coordinator of the Mexican gray wolf reintroduction program", wolves are really good at killing cows. What?! Millions of years of selective pressure optimizing large predators made wolves good at what? Killing what? Yes, killing cows, you idiot.

Fazio says:

"One thing about wolves is they bring out extreme emotions..."

Yes... fearing for one's livelihood tends to do that. I am pretty sympathetic to the idea of protecting endangered species. I'm soft-hearted about it, and I hate the idea that we kill entire species for non-critical activities. But I consider ranching pretty critical.

I want to protect wildlife, but we can't be stupid about this... wolves are enormously dangerous and we can't pretend they are not.

Junior

The question was asked by Steve Salerno over at ShamBlog, exactly how much has Ken Griffey, Jr. hurt his lifetime batting average by hanging on over the last 10 years. Steve guessed it was about 10 points. Thanks to the greatest website in the history of the entire world, Baseball-Reference.com, any guy like me can find the answer with Excel and about 10 minutes.

Here is what I found. I plotted Junior's year-by-year BA, the lifetime cumulative BA, and then for fun I plotted that against the MLB average over the same period to see how he compared against his contemporaries.




As you can see, Junior the league average was a distant thing for the first 11 years of his career, but for his year-by-year and his lifetime average. These last 10 years he's flirted with, and failed to meet, mediocrity most years.

The specific answer to Steve's question is, Griffey, Jr. was a lifetime .299 hitter after the 1998, his first ten seasons. He is now sitting at .285. He's taken a 14-point hit, so the damage is worse than Steve thought.

As is my wont, I have shown the dividing line between the modern and steroid eras of baseball, the start of which, and I propose a universal adoption of this standard, is the season Brady Anderson first hit 50 home runs. I don't think Anderson ever tested positive for steroids, but look at his lifetime power numbers and I think you'll agree that this is the demarcation point.

perspectives

Today I clicked on a CNNMoney article with the headline "Mac share grew after Windows 7 debut".  Okay, I'm thinking that's an interesting topic.  So I clicked. 

Turns out it's a regular column titled "Mac news from outside the reality distortion field."  So now I'm thinking that this is very interesting because I have Mac friends.  You know who you are.  I know who you are.  You and I both know that you are not rational.  So I figure I'll get the alternative viewpoint.  You know, the one that's an alternative to "Steve Jobs is like God, only perfecter."

Before I being reading, I see the headshot of the column's author, Philip Elmer-DeWitt. In the blurb about Mr. Elmer-DeWitt it says:

Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple – and watching Steve Jobs operate — since 1982.

And now I'm thinking, "Whoa!  We're finally going to see rational news about Apple, how fun!"

The article begins:

If Microsoft (MSFT) was hoping that the launch of Windows 7 would halt the erosion of its operating system market share — and curb further inroads by Apple (AAPL)  — there is no evidence that it's working yet.

I don't follow the OS wars very closely, so I'm thinking that this sounds reasonable.  I know MSFT has had as high as 90% of the OS market, but I figure that this mus be slipping.  I wait for the next paragraph.  I see:

...preliminary data released overnight Sunday by Net Applications show Mac OS X's Internet share growing by 2.73% in October, from 5.12% to 5.26%.

And then:

Windows' Internet presence, meanwhile, fell from 92.77% to 92.54%

Seriously?  This is from "outside the reality distortion field"?  And he's written an article about "eroding market share" and "curb[ing] further inroads". 

For reference, Dell is the #1 seller of PC's with a 13.9% market share.

Nokia is the #1 cell phone company with about 38% market share.

Coke, the #1 beverage company in the world, has about 43% maket share.

MSFT?  92.54%

Mr. Elmer-DeWitt, you are firmly within the distortion field.

Why we love good writing

I consider John Feinstein the best non-fiction author today. I know I'll get disagreement about that, but it's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. Today on his blog he noted that he was struggling this morning because his coffeemaker broke and he is going to have missed his morning routine today. He finishes the introduction with:

I know I can go and buy coffee--or a new coffee maker after I drop my son off at school. Not the same.... I feel like Miss Clavelle in Madeleine

I feel the same way when I miss my routine coffee in the morning, but I am not clever enough to reference the great children's book Madeline while whining about it.

Thoughts on Art for the Day

One thing Picasso might have considered is naming his works something other than exactly what they are about.

"Woman in Blue"

Thanks, Pablo, I got that one on my own since it was, essentially, a photorealistic painting of a woman. In blue.

Indoctrinating our Children

My local school system has gotten dozens of calls about Obama's speech to our nation's school children.  I can't imagine what is on their minds.  The objection is that he is going to send a political message to our kids?  I don't buy it for a lot of reasons. 

From the Indianapolis Examiner, Samuel Bruce says, "The problem with the direct to the school speech is it not filtered through parents and guardians."

What on Earth is he talking about.  Everything message given at school is essentially unfiltered through me, and Disney has unfiltered access to tens of millions of American kids every day, and who thinks they have the children's interests at heart?

Second, in what universe do the people objecting to this live in?  He's going to talk about the importance of education and public service and how the power of a single dream is blah, blah, blah.  He's going to bore school children of America for 20 minutes.  Since when is this a new event in school?

Ryan Witt, also from the Examiner brings some actual information to the "controversy" by reminding us that "Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush did in fact speak to school children in national addresses...".  Check out the embedded video in his article to see the elder Bush boring school children in the 1980s.

I do agree with George Will, who was referencing an entirely different topic when he said Barack Obama is eventually going to have to realize that some things are not the president's business. I think this is a waste of *his* time and an over-reaching of why he was elected, but in a minor way that I don't think it particularly damaging to the Republic.

Like it or not, the President of the United States is a role model, the most visible and important role model we have.  It's crazy to think this is the worst message our kids will receive at school this year... or this week.

Palinism

I like the term, coined as far as I know by Richard Cohen in an Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post.  He points out the similarities between Palin's ability to drive the debate on health care as a death panel scare to MacCarthy's ability to drive the debate in Washington as a whole as a red scare.

He's right, in that both debates are trumped up, baseless lies, and are beside any kind of actual point.

He's also right in a way he didn't intend.  The red scare was fear mongering and insane, but there was legitimate cause to at least investigate a few people in the State Department and to oust a few sympathizers.  What it became--McCarthyism--was a crazy caricature of responsible security.

I am not comfortable with the current direction of Democratic health care reform.  The problem is that the only real opposition to their proposals is a crazy caricature of responsible debate. 

What to do when the enemies of my enemies are insane?

Possible Lifting?

In searching for the Jesse Jackson quote comparing Michael Vick to Jackie Robinson, I ran across this commentary from Mason Lerner of "The Faster Times".

Looking further I found this piece from James Causey of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Does anyone else think that Causey's piece (10 August) sounds an awful lot like Mason's (9 August)?

They both comment on the NY Times piece on Jackon's comments, as did I, but the pieces seem more than coincidentally similar to my ear.

Jackson on Everything

Jesse Jackson has recently weight in on Michael Vick's potential career in the NFL.  Seriously. 

Whatever credibility Jackson had left is now completely gone in my mind.  What on Earth does he have to add to this?  Well the New York Times reports that he says:

“I want to make it an issue,” Jackson said Thursday in a telephone interview. “I want teams to explain why they have a quarterback who has less skills but is playing or at least is on the taxi squad, and a guy with more skills can’t get into training camp.”

So this is crazy for two reasons. 

1. Jackson wants teams to explain why they have quarterbacks who aren't as skilled?  In whose opinion?  Jackson's?  He knows who's better than whom? 
   
2. He knows that the Bills *must* choose the more skilled backup quarterback?  And why? They have *no* other considerations?  Like maybe is he the kind of guy who kills dogs for fun? 

Where was Jackson when I was laid off?  Why didn't he require Motorola to explain why other, less skilled, project managers were being kept while I was let go?

And this is another quote from the reverend:

"Democracy does not guarantee success. Democracy guarantees an opportunity. It’s not fair to de facto try to lock him out of his right to compete."

What?!  This makes no sense at all.  Democracy is our form of government, not our form of running football leagues.  If he'd said this runs counter to our collective ethic of fairness... well okay.  He'd then have gotten off crazy and elevated himself to just being wrong.

The NY Times also had this to say:

Jackson, born in 1941, has been a civil rights activist for most of his adult life. He said that in some ways, Vick’s attempt to re-enter the N.F.L. was similar to Jackie Robinson’s entering Major League Baseball.

Now unfortunately they don't give us the quote and I've looked and can't find it, which I think is criminally negligent journalism.  Apparently it was confined to saying that Vick and Robinson both had to find courageous owners willing to make a controversial signing.  Could anything be crazier in the context of sports than to compare a criminal attempting to convince NFL teams he can still play to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier?  Really, I need to see what Jackson said because while I think the NY Times is generally trustworthy, it doesn't seem possible that even Jesse Jackson is this crazy.

Daddy

Daddy
by Ethan

Daddy
You are the one that puts me together every day.
I wish you were home.
Daddy,
you put me together.

Jelly Beans

This morning, on the free food table in the break room there sits an unopened bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans.

They were labeled Jelly Belly Sours. I looked at the front of the bag which was labeled "Sours" but which did not show the actual individual flavors. So being a reasonable person I looked at the back of the bag, which also contained not one hint as to the flavors the bag contains.

Now look, I seriously do not care how much riboflavin is in Jelly Bellies. But there on the back of the bag, taking up important Jelly Belly flavor information real estate, is a line telling me that one serving of Jelly Bellies contain some amount of whatever riboflavin is. But what I want to know, what is important to me as a consumer, is what flavors are in that bag.

Jelly Belly needs to be legally bound to label their beans with the flavors they contain... and in fact there needs to be consumer protection legislation about making it easier for me, the consumer, to distinguish banana from lemon from vanilla pudding.

Lindsay Graham and Chris Dodd spend a whole heck of a lot of time talking about things that they have no business talking about when they have a pretty clear obligation as the senior lawmakers of our land.

There ought to be a law.