Time is reporting that the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office has prosecuted a mother of two children for felony tampering with records for sending them to the suburban Copley-Fairlawn City Schools, instead of her local school district in Akron, Ohio. The mother was using her father’s address to enroll her children. I wonder if the criminal justice system would have treated the defendant so harshly if the mother and her children were not black.

I love the American Experience series. However, when I was watching the episode on Test Tube Babies, I came across this annoying segment:

Part of the documentary is blacked out on the Internet, presumably because WGBH only has the rights to broadcast the NBC historical news clips over certain forms of transmission. 21st century technology crippled by 20th century laws. How sad!

The next time you fill-up, take a look at some of the warning labels affixed to the gasoline pump. I saw the above label recently while purchasing gas from Costco.

This device dispenses gasoline solely by volume measured in standard gallons (231 cubic inches). It does not adjust for temperature or other factors which may affect the energy content of each gallon dispensed.

Makes sense. Obviously, if you purchase gasoline in the morning, each gallon of gasoline would presumably be denser because of the cooler temperature. I was going to research this issue, but Snopes had already beat me to it.

Is Proposition 8 a civil rights issue? The supporters of Proposition 8 would claim otherwise. Allowing blacks and whites to marry is one thing. However, allowing two men or two women to marry is another. Their argument is that the purpose of marriage is to propagate the human race. That’s why allowing gays to marry is different from allowing people of different races to marry. However, a look back in history reveals that the same arguments against gay marriage were also used to ban interracial marriage:

It is stated as a well authenticated fact that if the issue of a black man and a white woman, and a white man and a black woman intermarry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid the intermarriage of blacks and whites, laying out of view other sufficient grounds for such enactments.

I suspect that if this was 1948 instead of 2008, the same people supporting Proposition 8 would be advocating for the prohibition of interracial marriage.

Somehow, I find it quite ironic that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (a/k/a The Mormons) is backing Proposition 8. After all, marriage in the Mormon tradition is not one man and one woman, but one man and many women. And, for Mormons, it doesn’t get any more traditional than Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Ron Prentice, the official proponent of Proposition 8, stated that he was “confident that voters will reaffirm the traditional definition of marriage[.]” In California, the traditional definition of marriage reads as follows:

No license may be issued authorizing the marriage of a white person with a Negro, mulatto, Mongolian or member of the Malay race.

California enacted its traditional marriage statute in 1850, the year it became a state. Actually, the 1850 statute was relatively more liberal in that the restrictions governing Mongolians and Malays were not added until 1901 and 1933, respectively. If 1850 is not sufficiently traditional, consider that Maryland banned marriages between white persons and Negroes or Indians as early as 1663. That’s a pre-independence tradition. Or, for those whose ancestors came from China, 1663 is 19 years after the fall of the Ming Dynasty.

In short, the traditional definition of marriage has nothing to do with a man and a woman. Instead, the traditional definition of marriage is a racist and bigoted law that viewed the Chinese people as being inferior and incapable of progress or intellectual development beyond a certain point. I cannot support the traditional definition of marriage. Neither should you.

Without judging the merits of Proposition 3, I have to wonder about the credibility of its supporters when they state that “PROPOSITION 3 DOES NOT RAISE TAXES.” If the State of California sells $980 million in general obligation bonds for capital improvement projects at children’s hospitals, the money to pay back the bonds must come from somewhere. Sure, the proposition isn’t technically a sales tax, income tax or property tax, but someone is on the hook for the money, and I think it is all of us.

With the general election just 3 weeks away, now is as good a time as any to start focusing on all the ballot box issues. In California, Proposition 8, which eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry, is a bit curious. Its supporters claim that “Proposition 8 is about traditional marriage.” Indeed, I saw an advertisement in a regional Chinese newspaper for a rally in support of traditional marriage. However, cultural differences being what they are, the advertisement explicitly stated that the traditional marriage they were referring to involved one male and one female, as opposed to the traditional marriage found in Raise the Red Lantern. God forbid that some royalists show up at the rally urging Californians to follow the ways of late Ching Emperor.

In all seriousness, I just don’t understand how Proposition 8 protects marriage. It may protect the definition of marriage. However, for people that are contemplating marriage or who are married, it offers no assistance or support whatsoever. Proposition 8 supporters offer that “the best situation for a child is to be raised by a married mother and father.” Great! But, how is banning gays and lesbians from getting married going to help working parents raise their kids. Uh. If Proposition 8 was really about protecting marriage and raising kids, it would offer tax relief to married couples with children.

Each day, government officials worldwide are announcing that more and more Chinese food products contain melamine. The good news is that someone is testing all the products, obvious or not, for melamine contamination. The Voice of America reported that latest products recalled include Koala brand chestnut and chocolate flavored cookies, Nabisco Ritz cracker cheese sandwiches and rice crackers. The lesson here is that nothing is safe. Rice crackers contain milk? Even I wasn’t expecting that. Time to be extra careful.

A few days ago, I spotted this post: Tainted Milk in China; No Threat in US. However, that headline is not entirely accurate. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a Health Information Advisory that “there is no known threat of contamination of infant formula manufactured by companies that have met the requirements to sell such products in the United States.”

1. No Known Threat. First, “no known threat” is not the same as “no threat.” We are talking about milk production here and not terrorism. Some farmer is not going to release a video threatening to poison the milk supply with melamine. So, the government and the public, more often than not, will not become aware of specific threats to the food supply until someone has already been seriously injured or killed.
2. Infant Formula. Secondly, the Health Information Advisory was limited to the contamination of infant formula and not to other milk or milk-based food products. So, while infant formula may be “safe,” that doesn’t mean that melamine contamination posed no threat in the United States. In fact, right after I read that, my immediate thought was to wait and see. I did not believe that melamine contamination was an isolated incident. However, I wasn’t expecting the situation to unravel that quickly. Today, the FDA announced the recall of my beloved White Rabbit creamy candy (小白兔奶糖) because of melamine contamination. Fortunately, I had not indulged in those in quite a few years. The FDA also announced the recall of Mr. Brown instant coffee and milk tea, also because of melamine contamination.
3. Met the Requirements. Finally, the FDA didn’t say that all infant formula was not knowingly unsafe. (Yes, that is a double negative, but not knowingly unsafe is not the same as safe.) Instead, the FDA limited its declaration to infant formula manufactured by companies that have met the requirements to sell such products in the United States. So, infant milk formula produced by companies that have followed applicable laws and regulations is not knowingly unsafe. But, we really have no idea which companies are following the “requirements to sell such products in the United States” now, do we? Is the Health Information Advisory less reassuring than when you first read it?

This melamine contamination issue is very serious because there is no meaningful way to distinguish between safe and unsafe food products. Take for example the Mr. Brown instant coffee and milk tea recall. King Car Food Industrial Co. Ltd. produces Mr. Brown instant coffee and milk tea. King Car is a Taiwanese company that used a non-dairy creamer manufactured by Shandong Duqing Inc., a Chinese company. Let the implications of that sink in a bit. First, the melamine contamination scandal implicates products made by companies outside of China. Secondly, the source of contamination was a non-dairy creamer. So, either the “non-dairy” wasn’t really non-dairy, or products other than milk are also contaminated. Yikes. So, even if you wanted to boycott food products manufactured in China, you will not necessarily be safer because companies located outside of China may be using China-sourced ingredients.