The veiling custom originated among desert tribal people. It's a custom rooted in tribalism that got encoded into religion because Islam began in the tribal world.

You can see how this custom arose by looking at Afghanistan. It's still a custom in some regions for men from one tribe to mount raids to steal women from other tribes for forced marriage. If the women are veiled, then the men don't know for sure which women they're stealing. So they don't know whether their raid will yield the women they want to marry.

That's why they say an Afghan man keeps his gold and his women hidden from public view. Anything they put on public view is an invitation to robbery and kidnapping.

Islam, like Judaism, is rooted in the ancient tribal world. I think the diaspora was probably good for Jews because they had to shed a lot of tribal baggage as a consequence. But a lot of the Muslim world is still fully tribal.

It's a kind of contradictory relationship with the modern world to insist that you have a voice in modern public life even though you reject modern public life by embracing a custom that is decidedly tribal and explicitly anti-modern.

I'm not sure what is the best way to handle this contradiction. But I don't think tribalism is going to overtake the modern world. A tribal women voting in her veil is a validation of the power of modern democracy. So it's not something we need to fear.

It's an outrage that this man is still alive to gloat on the anniversary of his attack on our country.

I don't usually spend my time online hating on Republicans but wow -- Republicans should be hanging their heads in shame at the humiliation to which this nation has been subjected today.

Calling Bin Laden "impotent" doesn't excuse a thing.

Shame shame shame shame shame on the party that failed to avenge 9/11.

Seeing Bin Laden gloat over 9/11 has made me so angry, I can't be civil to Republicans at all today.

Normally I try to be civil because I value democracy and I honor the existence of people who disagree with me.

But today I just can't be civil.

Shame shame shame shame shame on Republicans for the fact that this man is still alive.

I'm reading The Complete Guide to Asperger's right now. The chapter on long term relationships is especially illuminating because it discusses the most typical breakdowns in communication that occur between Aspies or between Aspies and normal people.

When I read this chapter I can hear in my head all of the typical breakdowns in communication that happen between Science and the Public.

Black and white thinking, utter cluelessness about the feelings of others, not knowing when to shut up -- those are total Asperger's traits.

Scientists who don't understand the public resistance to transgenics remind me of that evolutionary psychologist who thought the world needed a scientific explanation for the fact that women typically enjoy consensual sex but do not enjoy being raped.

It's that level of cluelessness that's at work here in this debate. It's a breakdown in communication that just reeks of Asperger's.

It's another Asperger's sign that the scientists think media training will resolve the debate in their favor.

Faking social skills is something people with Asperger's often do to get around the fact that they really aren't all that sensitive to the feelings of other people.

Instead of media training, they need empathy training, to help them see how this issue feels to the people who aren't like them.

The reaction to Britney's body reminds me of the way Humbert Humbert feels when he sees Lolita as an adult.

I feel for her. She built her career on the edge between entertainment and child porn. The world wanted her to look like an adult but only while she remained in a child's body. Now that she has an adult's body, they want nothing more to do with her.

Camille wrote:

The Byrds' masterpiece, "8 Miles High," released in 1966, crudely stereotyped them as hippie-dippie druggies smuggling pot into the Los Angeles airport. But as a non-drug taker, I indignantly protest: "8 Miles High," with its eerie earthquake rumble and seductive, melismatic, sitar-flavored riffs, is about the clash between nature and culture, seen from a height through the visionary power of art.

But now it's 41 years later and what have we discovered about those crudely stereotyped hippie-dippie druggies who smuggled pot into LAX?

La Jolla, CA: THC inhibits the formation of amyloid plaque, the primary marker for Alzheimer's disease (AD), far more effectively than approved medications, according to preclinical data to be published in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.

Investigators at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California reported that THC inhibits the enzyme responsible for the aggregation of amyloid plaque in a manner "considerably superior" to approved Alzheimer's drugs such as donepezil and tacrine.

See, this is what we learn about the clash between nature and culture through the visionary power of science.

The problem is, Americans are forced by the federal government to make do with donepezil and tacrine, because our government is incapable of admitting it's wrong about anything, especially anything that concerns pot.

The hippie dippies made good music, and they may have even prevented a few (thousand) cases of Alzheimer's along the way. There really needs to be a population study to determine if this is true. Alzheimer's is serious business. It's time to stop f*cking around.