An article by Seth Slabaugh in the Muncie Star Press reports a Ball State study on the stuff in our water.

Here’s what you might be ingesting the next time you have a cool drink of water: acetaminophen; antibiotics used to treat urinary tract infections; antibacterial agents found in soap; trace amounts of caffeine and cotinine, a body-producing byproduct of nicotine; anticoagulants; and carbamazepine, a drug used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder. Oh, and DEET insect repellant.
. . .
The federal government has not established maximum contaminant levels for pharmaceuticals in treated drinking water, Alan DeBoy, vice president of operations for Indiana-American Water Co., said during a community forum in Muncie this week.

“But those will be coming,” he said.

I don’t know how you deal with this except through government regulation. I know that anti-government types dislike almost any sorts of government intervention and believe that property owners should be able to do as they will on their property and that people’s ability to manufacture or buy products should be almost unfettered. But, as always, a person’s right to swing his arm stops at the other guy’s nose. In the case of something as simple as a punch in the nose, you don’t need a whole lot of government intervention; you can just sue the guy for damages you sustain from the punch. Pollution is a tougher issue because the damages are less direct. If I’m get sick from a steady stream of cocktails consisting of soap, caffeine, nicotine, and DEET, who do I sue?

You have to either stop the chemicals from getting in the water or treat the water more completely before it gets to third parties. So far as I can tell, this requires regulation and taxes. Like I’ve said before, I’ve never heard a very good Libertarian approach to pollution. I’d certainly like to hear it though.

There is a sad tale in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette about a woman who bought a house where there had been a meth lab. Renters of the house had the lab and apparently got busted. The landlord at the time got recommendations from the county on how to clean the property, but the landlords efforts were insufficient. The new buyer started to get sick, apparently from the house. This, according to the article, led to the woman losing her job, having to go on disability, and being subjected to foreclosure. I wonder if it would be feasible to record some kind of notice of environmental condition in situations where toxic chemicals have been manufactured at a site. Though, I’m not sure how you would enact such a requirement without opening the flood gates to the recorder’s office and cluttering up the title work.

I can’t imagine seeing this on my commute. Someone passed along an e-mail with a picture of the tanker blowing up at I-69/465.

The Lafayette Journal & Courier has an article about the announcement of West Lafayette City Councilman, Paul Roales, to seek the Indiana House seat currently held by Randy Truitt; House District 26. The last election was a tight one between Truitt and John Polles as they sought to fill seat left open by the departure of Joe Micon. Micon’s himself won the seat, initially, in a narrow election. So, historically, anyway, this has been a pretty balanced district.

Fishing licenses are up 8.1% this year in Indiana; above the national average of 7.7%. One explanation is that people have more time because they aren’t working as much and fishing is (or at least can be) a relatively cheap pastime.

The Interim Study Committee on Alcoholic Beverage Issues has come out opposed to modifying the alcohol laws to allow Sunday sales. I don’t have time to provide any commentary, but the minutes from the hearing are here (pdf). O.k. – just a bit of commentary. The current laws seem like a protection scheme for the benefit of package stores with little benefit to the public.

Matt Taibbi’s recent article in the Rolling Stone about massive stock market abuse to push Bear Stearns & Lehman Brothers off the cliff for fun and profit is eye popping. The article focuses on the practice of naked short selling — selling a stock short without actually having the shares to cover or knowing where to find them. It’s apparently technically illegal, but with no enforcement, it’s done frequently. Without having to have control over actual shares, the naked short sell is similar to flooding an economy with counterfeit dollars, driving the share price down with your “counterfeit” shares, and making your short sale bet more likely to pay off.

Taibbi makes it clear that Bear & Lehman were ripe for the pushing because of their bubble investing, but the final push off the cliff looks a lot like fraud engineered by the other big investment firms and members of the Fed.

Along with the specifics of the naked short sale technique, Taiibi paints a picture of what amounts to a counterfeit economy.

[T]he great investment banks like Bear and Lehman no longer made their money financing real businesses and creating jobs. Instead, Wall Street now serves, in the words of one former investment executive, as “Lucy to America’s Charlie Brown,” endlessly creating new products to lure the great herd of unwitting investors into whatever tawdry greed-bubble is being spun at the moment: Come kick the football again, only this time we’ll call it the Internet, real estate, oil futures. Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class.
. . .
To the rest of the world, the brazenness of the theft — coupled with the conspicuousness of the government’s inaction — clearly demonstrates that the American capital markets are a crime in progress. To those of us who actually live here, however, the news is even worse. We’re in a place we haven’t been since the Depression: Our economy is so completely fucked, the rich are running out of things to steal.

The whole thing kind of makes you feel like a chump for working for a living. Still, worth a read.

This story in the Muncie Star Press made me feel all judgy. I don’t know any facts except those in the article, so I realize I might have an incomplete picture, but:

#24 year old woman;
#With 5 children;
#Leaves children with her mom for 5 days;
#Goes to stay with estranged, soon to be ex, husband who is on house arrest for having previously abused her.

Just me talking here, but: Twenty-four seems too young to have five kids, you shouldn’t abandon your kids, and if a guy beats you, don’t go back to him. One fairly common theme in my collection cases is a screwy family situation. Family problems and money problems can have a chicken and egg dynamic – hard telling which causes which.

I’m not saying it’s technically, politically, or morally feasible, but some days the idea of requiring a license to reproduce doesn’t sound like an awful idea. Maybe put some sort of contraception in the water and give an antidote upon demonstration of family stability. Yeah, probably a bad idea. Still.

The Indianapolis Star has an editorial that is a little wishy-washy, but mostly critical of Rep. Buyer’s Frontier Foundation activities. What’s amazing to me, however, is that the editorial is absolutely silent on Buyer’s jarring about face on his involvement with the Foundation. First, he has no special involvement with the organization, but only after the heat was on did he suddenly remember that he was deeply involved with it.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, writing for NPR, has an article entitled “A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists.” (h/t Tom D.) The article describes a debate among atheists about how best to engage with believers. It describes peaceful, polite coexistence as the more traditional view as opposed to a newer, more confrontational approach.

What struck me is that it seems reminiscent of a debate that took place (or is still taking place) in pretty much any other minority group movement you care to name. Martin Luther King versus Malcom X are the examples that leap to my mind first. But, gays and feminists have had this debate as well. Do you go along to get along or do you get in their faces and try to shatter their prejudices?

I’m definitely no student of such movements, but from my perspective it seems that the more peaceful approach worked better in terms of black rights while a more aggressive approach has worked better for gay rights. As for atheism, I don’t know how closely it parallels some of these other movements. One huge difference is that there is nothing innate about religious belief or lack thereof. By and large, it seems to reflect what is stuck in your head at a young age (note, for example, the very large number of people who adhere to the same religion as their parents.) But, certainly there is nothing immutable about that belief. I was raised as a Presbyterian, for example.

I think atheists need to be open and unapologetic about their lack of belief, but they don’t need to be jerks about it; at least to people who are being respectful to them. Being open about it is necessary for the mainstreaming effect this has. Others who aren’t religious should be able to see that, even if they’re in the minority, they are not isolated.

The article mentioned Christopher Hitchens saying, “I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt, and I claim that right.” In my mind, that approach makes him kind of like the Ann Coulter of atheism. It will make him money and earn him a certain hardcore following, but ultimately, it will probably be counterproductive as it leads to people digging in and refusing to communicate very well. On the other hand, responding with contempt when contempt is being dished out is probably necessary at times. But, in my mind, disrespect is only appropriate when directed at the disrespectful. Where you have a person of faith treating you as an equal with whom there is an honest difference of opinion, I don’t think there is any upside to behaving rudely.