11 March, 2012
An overstatement, but with points of truth.
Logic of Finance Can Banish Corruption (Part 4): Robert Shiller - Bloomberg: Those in the world of finance who belong to a higher caste -- because they are graduates of an elite college or are connected to a specific business culture -- realize an immense economic advantage. Fearful of compromising that advantage, they adhere to the caste’s social norms. They favor their own caste in business and reject those who don’t belong -- or who don’t respect the social norms. This promotes stability of the caste.
It's Time to Clean House - Philip K. Howard - Politics - The Atlantic
It's Time to Clean House - Philip K. Howard - Politics - The Atlantic: America is mired in a tarpit of accumulated law. Reformers propose new laws to fix health care, schools, and the regulatory system, but almost never suggest cleaning out the legal swamp these institutions operate in. These complex legal tangles not only set goals but allocate resources and dictate the minutest details of how to meet those goals. Most are obsolete in whole or part.
The Mystery of 18 Twitching Teenagers in Le Roy - NYTimes.com
The Mystery of 18 Twitching Teenagers in Le Roy - NYTimes.com: The numbers grew — 12, then 16, then 18, in a school of 600 — and as they swelled, the ranks of the sufferers came to include a wider swath of the Le Roy high-school hierarchy: girls who weren’t cheerleaders, girls who kept to themselves and had studs in their lips. There was even one boy and an older woman, age 36. Parents wept as their daughters stuttered at the dinner table. Teachers shut their classroom doors when they heard a din of outbursts, one cry triggering another, sending the increasingly familiar sounds ricocheting through the halls. Within a few months, as the camera crews continued to descend, the community barely seemed to recognize itself. One expert after another arrived to pontificate about what was wrong in Le Roy, a town of 7,500 in Western New York that had long prided itself on the things it got right.
10 March, 2012
To Kill a Sparrow � Now I Know Archives
To Kill a Sparrow � Now I Know Archives: Mao’s government began a large-scale propaganda campaign to get peasants to shoo or kill sparrows on sight. The poster above is one example: it shows a child armed with a slingshot and the text below, translated, means “Everyone come and fight sparrows.”
The campaign was successful on its face, as the sparrow was nearly rendered extinct in China. But it turns out that sparrows did not just eat grains. They also ate insects — specifically, locusts. The locust population, left unchecked, ate a lot more grain than the sparrows ever could.
By the time Mao’s government noticed and could react, two years had passed, and the damage was already done. The ecological imbalance caused by the Four Pests Campaign helped spur on massive food shortages and, in turn, the death of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.
The campaign was successful on its face, as the sparrow was nearly rendered extinct in China. But it turns out that sparrows did not just eat grains. They also ate insects — specifically, locusts. The locust population, left unchecked, ate a lot more grain than the sparrows ever could.
By the time Mao’s government noticed and could react, two years had passed, and the damage was already done. The ecological imbalance caused by the Four Pests Campaign helped spur on massive food shortages and, in turn, the death of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.
Homeless by Choice: How to Live for Free in America - Mark Sundeen - National - The Atlantic
Homeless by Choice: How to Live for Free in America - Mark Sundeen - National - The Atlantic: "Our whole society is designed so that you have to have money," Daniel Suelo says. "You have to be a part of the capitalist system. It's illegal to live outside of it."
Suelo has defied these laws. His primary residence is the canyons near Arches National Park, where he has lived in a dozen caves tucked into sandstone nooks. In the fall of 2002, two years after quitting money, he homesteaded a majestic alcove high on a cliff, two hundred feet across and fifty feet tall. Sitting inside and gazing into the gorge below felt like heralding himself to the world from inside the bell of a trumpet.
Suelo has defied these laws. His primary residence is the canyons near Arches National Park, where he has lived in a dozen caves tucked into sandstone nooks. In the fall of 2002, two years after quitting money, he homesteaded a majestic alcove high on a cliff, two hundred feet across and fifty feet tall. Sitting inside and gazing into the gorge below felt like heralding himself to the world from inside the bell of a trumpet.
09 March, 2012
FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil - Washington's Blog
FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil - Washington's Blog: President Obama has just stated a policy that he can have any American citizen killed without any charge, without any review, except his own. If he’s satisfied that you are a terrorist, he says that he can kill you anywhere in the world including in the United States.
Two of his aides just … reaffirmed they believe that American citizens can be killed on the order of the President anywhere including the United States.
You’ve now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion
Two of his aides just … reaffirmed they believe that American citizens can be killed on the order of the President anywhere including the United States.
You’ve now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion
Oh, America....
PrintFriendly.com: Print web pages, create PDFs: September 15, 1896: Engines No. 999 and No. 1001 a moment before impact. (Photo courtesy of Four Event Photos, The Texas Collection, Baylor University)
Thirty yards or so down the track, the respective engineers would throw their trains' throttles wide open, and the crews would jump to safety. Physics would do the rest
Thirty yards or so down the track, the respective engineers would throw their trains' throttles wide open, and the crews would jump to safety. Physics would do the rest
Nonsense. Look at the commission site.
Geoffrey Kabaservice: Why Won’t The GOP Stick Up For Dwight Eisenhower? | The New Republic: With its 80-foot-high smokestack columns towering over a four-acre site whose only representation of its subject would be a statue showing him as a barefoot boy, the current design for the proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial in Washington, D.C. manages to be both bombastic and silly. It’s easy to imagine tourists mistaking the memorial as a spectacularly misconceived tribute to Huckleberry Finn.
Arianna Huffington: Virality Uber Alles: What the Fetishization of Social Media Is Costing Us All
Arianna Huffington: Virality Uber Alles: What the Fetishization of Social Media Is Costing Us All:
"The campaigns can sort of distract reporters throughout the day by helping fuel these mini-stories, mini-controversies," said the New York Times' Jeff Zeleny. Mini-stories. Mini-controversies. Just the sort of Twitter-friendly morsels that many in the media think are best-suited to the new social media landscape. But that conflates the form with the substance, and we miss the desperate need for more than snackable, here-now-gone-in-15-minutes scoops. So we end up with a system in which the media are being willingly led by the campaigns away from the issues that matter and the solutions that will actually make a difference in people's lives.
Someday, historians will likely look back at this virality-uber-alles age and wonder what we were trying to accomplish. The answer will be: not a whole hell of a lot. Our times demand a much better response. All these new social tools can help us bear witness more powerfully or they can help us be distracted more obsessively.
"The campaigns can sort of distract reporters throughout the day by helping fuel these mini-stories, mini-controversies," said the New York Times' Jeff Zeleny. Mini-stories. Mini-controversies. Just the sort of Twitter-friendly morsels that many in the media think are best-suited to the new social media landscape. But that conflates the form with the substance, and we miss the desperate need for more than snackable, here-now-gone-in-15-minutes scoops. So we end up with a system in which the media are being willingly led by the campaigns away from the issues that matter and the solutions that will actually make a difference in people's lives.
Someday, historians will likely look back at this virality-uber-alles age and wonder what we were trying to accomplish. The answer will be: not a whole hell of a lot. Our times demand a much better response. All these new social tools can help us bear witness more powerfully or they can help us be distracted more obsessively.
How Romney could change his narrative - Mitt's media d�tente -- B'days: Raj Shah, Matt Vogel, Santorum embed Andrew Rafferty, Michael Kinsley, Charlie Gibson - POLITICO Playbook - POLITICO.com
How Romney could change his narrative - Mitt's media d�tente -- B'days: Raj Shah, Matt Vogel, Santorum embed Andrew Rafferty, Michael Kinsley, Charlie Gibson - POLITICO Playbook - POLITICO.com: In January, while criticizing liberal federal judges during a townhall meeting in New Hampshire, Santorum said since they can't be removed, judges who don't meet his conservative standards should be shipped off to Guam.Santorum apologized for his comment about Guam.” http://bit.ly/zI3k6g
08 March, 2012
:/ (h/t Dish)
"Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services secretary, she said that it's important that we have contraceptives because that prevents pregnancy, and pregnancy is more expensive to the federal government. Going with that logic, according to our own Health and Human Services secretary, it isn't farfetched to think that the president of the United States could say, we need to save healthcare expenses, the federal government will only pay for one baby to be born in the hospital per family, or two babies to be born per family. That could happen. You think it couldn't?" - Michele Bachmann.
Sullivan: It May Get Worse
It May Get Worse:
This cartoon just ran in the New Tribune in Rome, Georgia. Update:
This cartoon just ran in the New Tribune in Rome, Georgia. Update:
John Bailey of the Rome News-Tribune emailed (and commented below) to clarify that the cartoon was not published in their paper — "Our editorial department killed it," he explained — but was published elsewhere. The RNT does frequently print Rome resident Mike Lester's work.Zandar at Angry Black Lady Chronicles vents:
You’ve got the African-American President is a 70's pimp angle, the Sandra Fluke is a whore angle, the "evil light-skinned brother" angle, the white girl subservient to the black man angle, a complete misrepresentation of Ms. Fluke’s statements to boot and it’s all rolled up into one big insulting awful package of pure hatred for black people, women, and human beings with working souls. It's actually impressive, in the same way ebola-tipped bullets fired into crowds of baby sloths is impressive: just overwhelmingly, unremittingly awful on multiple levels.
'Bizarro World' - The Boston Globe
'Bizarro World' - The Boston Globe: "It's funny," I told Flewin. "We have an old Nintendo Game Boy floating around the house, and Tetris is the only game we own. My wife will sometimes dig it out to play on airplanes and long car rides. She's weirdly good at it. She can get 500 or 600 lines, no problem."
What Flewin said next I will never forget.
"Oh, my!"
After I hung up the phone, I went to the bedroom and woke my wife, Lori.
"Honey," I said. "You're not going to believe this, but I just got off the phone with a guy who's in charge of video game world records, and he said the world record for Game Boy Tetris is 327 lines, and he wants us to go to New Hampshire this spring so you can try to break the world record live in front of the judges at the world's largest classic video game tournament."I
What Flewin said next I will never forget.
"Oh, my!"
After I hung up the phone, I went to the bedroom and woke my wife, Lori.
"Honey," I said. "You're not going to believe this, but I just got off the phone with a guy who's in charge of video game world records, and he said the world record for Game Boy Tetris is 327 lines, and he wants us to go to New Hampshire this spring so you can try to break the world record live in front of the judges at the world's largest classic video game tournament."I
An Executive Power to Kill? by David Cole | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books
An Executive Power to Kill? by David Cole | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books: The President of the United States can order the killing of US citizens, far from any battlefield, without charges, a trial, or any form of advance judicial approval. That’s what Attorney General Eric Holder told a group of students at Northwestern Law School yesterday, in a much anticipated speech. The Constitution requires the government to obtain a judicial warrant based on probable cause before it can search your backpack or attach a GPS tracking device to your car, but not, according to Holder, before it kills you.
Abuse.
Not an Ike and Tina Thing | Vela: And then he reminded me of my promises. During those long, late-night talks, when he’d raised the curtain on his anger and suspicion and sadness, raged against his ex and his parents and the friends that had let him down over the years, whispered about how alone he was, in a world that seemed designed to hurt and hound him, I had promised that I wasn’t, that I would never be, “like everybody else.” He had trusted me, and I had reveled in that trust, enjoyed that rush of pride that is the volunteer caretaker’s main form of payment. I had been so sure that I could handle whatever his illness might throw at me – and now, feeling sick and hurt, I was trapped by my own confidence. I had promised.
Bernanke Needs Some Bounce in His Tail: Stevenson and Wolfers - Bloomberg
Bernanke Needs Some Bounce in His Tail: Stevenson and Wolfers - Bloomberg: Eeyore’s message is so sobering that it mutes the desired stimulus effect of the low interest rates. After all, why would you buy anything, or invest in producing it, if you have just learned that some of the smartest forecasters in the country think the economic outlook is so awful that they dare not raise rates until 2014?
Terrific Party
Chairman Tigger has a totally different approach. He figures that the prospect of a terrific party will revive everyone’s animal spirits. He also knows what folks are thinking: Every time the economy gets going, the Fed spoils the party by taking away the punch bowl -- that is, by raising interest rates to keep inflation in check. So Tigger gives a speech promising to keep interest rates low for several years -- even when the economy recovers
Terrific Party
Chairman Tigger has a totally different approach. He figures that the prospect of a terrific party will revive everyone’s animal spirits. He also knows what folks are thinking: Every time the economy gets going, the Fed spoils the party by taking away the punch bowl -- that is, by raising interest rates to keep inflation in check. So Tigger gives a speech promising to keep interest rates low for several years -- even when the economy recovers
For three years, the NFL says, members of the Saints - 03.12.12 - SI Vault
For three years, the NFL says, members of the Saints - 03.12.12 - SI Vault: On Saturday nights during the 2009 NFL season, Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, the lightning-rod leader of a feisty unit, would stand in front of his men holding white envelopes filled with cash—bonuses for their performances the previous week. As Williams called up player after player, handing them envelopes with amounts ranging from $100 for a special teams tackle inside the opponents' 20-yard line to $1,500 for knocking a foe out of the game, a chant would rise up from the fired-up defenders:
"Give it back! Give it back! Give it back!"
Many players would do just that, to beef up the pot and make the stakes bigger as the season went on. The NFL alleges that by the time New Orleans reached the NFC Championship Game against the Vikings on Jan. 24, 2010, the stakes had risen to the point that middle linebacker and defensive captain Jonathan Vilma personally offered a $10,000 bounty to any player who knocked Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre out of the game. (SI's attempts to reach Vilma were unsuccessful.)
"Give it back! Give it back! Give it back!"
Many players would do just that, to beef up the pot and make the stakes bigger as the season went on. The NFL alleges that by the time New Orleans reached the NFC Championship Game against the Vikings on Jan. 24, 2010, the stakes had risen to the point that middle linebacker and defensive captain Jonathan Vilma personally offered a $10,000 bounty to any player who knocked Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre out of the game. (SI's attempts to reach Vilma were unsuccessful.)
Life in the rest of America
THE EATBEAT: Long-awaited Olive Garden receives warm welcome | Grand Forks Herald | Grand Forks, North Dakota: After a lengthy wait for Olive Garden to open in Grand Forks, the lines were long in February. The novelty is slowly wearing off, but the steady following attests the warm welcome.
My first visit to Olive Garden was during midafternoon, so I could be sure to get in. After a late breakfast, I figured a late lunch would be fashionable.
The place is impressive. It’s fashioned in Tuscan farmhouse style with a welcoming entryway. There is seating for those who are waiting.
My booth was near the kitchen, and I watched the waiters in white shirts, ties, black trousers and aprons adorned with gold-colored towels. They were busy at midday, punching in orders and carrying out bread and pasta.
My first visit to Olive Garden was during midafternoon, so I could be sure to get in. After a late breakfast, I figured a late lunch would be fashionable.
The place is impressive. It’s fashioned in Tuscan farmhouse style with a welcoming entryway. There is seating for those who are waiting.
My booth was near the kitchen, and I watched the waiters in white shirts, ties, black trousers and aprons adorned with gold-colored towels. They were busy at midday, punching in orders and carrying out bread and pasta.
One Take on Kony
Teju Cole on American sentimentality towards Africa:
Teju Cole, who just won a prestigious award for his novel “Open City“, offers a brief essay, in Twitter form, as a reaction to Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign:
Teju Cole, who just won a prestigious award for his novel “Open City“, offers a brief essay, in Twitter form, as a reaction to Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign:
Seven thoughts on the banality of sentimentality.
1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.
2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.
3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.
4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.
5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.
6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.
7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.
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