Idiotprogrammer Blog

Category: General

  • Hook Up Hysteria, Abstinence, Absolutism and Snap Judgments

    (Here’s a post I wrote 2 years ago and forgot to publish).

    You don’t actually have to read the original article,  but the complaints on CNN  about the alleged outbreak of hookups are more insightful (and funny).

    I had taken Matt to be making fun of the way these articles about the “hookup culture” are set pieces that have been written the same way for decades. The articles always take the same same basic phenomenon (college kids having sex with people they barely know while drunk), wildly overstate its prevalence, and write from the perspective of (invariably female) students who aren’t interested. Invariably the article presents the “hookup culture” as some novel phenomenon, despite the fact that people have been writing the same article for decades.

    The “date” is dead as a phenomenon on college campuses, but there are scads of students who engage in romantic, non-hookup dating. Invariably these articles ignore those couples in favor of interviewing (female) students who complain that all the guys are interested in is hooking up. The possibility that the interviewees are unrepresentative is never explored.

    This article is a perfect example of the genre.

    ***

    This is one ridiculous piece of journalism. It makes me think back to the tripe that the Vanderbilt Hustler used to put forth back before I recently graduated, I reference the Hustler because Ms. Boyle used to write some of the most jaded and noxious columns in the editorial section, and this piece wreaks of that similar stench. Raging at Vanderbilt? I went to Vandy, I was in a fraternity, and I drank and partied quite a bit, most undoubtedly more than others, but Vanderbilt is one of the more tame campuses you are likely to find. Furthermore, the hook-up culture is pervasive. That they would pick a small private school where the average cost of attendance is over $50,000 per year as a microcosm of university life is ludicrous. Next, that they would reference one student taking a stand against hooking up and incorporate "true role models" like Lady GaGa, illustrates the short-sighted nature of this article. Who the heck cares what someone chooses to do or not do? It’s none of my business. All I know is that decrying the hook-up culture on college campuses does nothing to put an end to it. There’s drinking to be done in pretty much any college, and drinking promotes bad decisions. However, it’s a lifestyle that some, like myself, chose, and to tell you the truth it’s really pretty lame to hear this tired old rhetoric time after time. Seriously, what utter garbage

    ***

    The report states: "An April 2010 study from James Madison University in Virginia revealed more college women tend to want a relationship out of a hook up compared with men who prefer to stay independent." Note to James Madison University – you actually needed to conduct such a study to find this out??!! Note to everyone else – make sure you don’t attend this university!!

    ***

    Of course the article most certainly not written by a dude….

    ***

    If you find inspiration from Lada Gaga to maintain your celibacy, YOU’RE A COMPLETE IDIOT. Period.

    ***

    Wow imagine going to school to learn….wow!!!!

    ***

    this poor girl just committed social suicide

    no she didn’t. haven’t you seen any John Hughes movies? she’s going to hold out. the cool jock is going to try to woo her. then he’s going to change his ways and they’re going to fall in love.

    ***

    Dating can be expensive, especially if you’re a guy and you have traditional women expecting you to foot all or most of the bill. If women want to go on dates, about they invite us and pay for it. As a college student living on a budget, I’d rather spend my five bucks at a frat party and get laid. As long as you’re protected, it’s a lot of fun. For every chick who gives up on hooking up, there are thousands more who welcome it. Gotta love freshman girls.
    Plenty of time to go on awkward dates and $80 dinners (appetizers, main course, wine, dessert for 2) after college when we actually have jobs (if we get lucky with this recession).

    ***

    I’m deeply, deeply disappointed that the link to Lady Gaga declaring her celibacy is dead.

    ***

    Over the years I’ve grown sick of these kinds of articles and the false morality they profess, as well as interviews with alleged experts. I think an article can and should be written about the topic, but you can do without delving too deeply into lurid  details and  actually offer  insights about what dating on campus is actually like. I have less of a problem with abstinence per se than those who are promoting it and shouting down those who refuse to see things in black and white.  Abstinence is not really an abstract decision but something arising from your situation and the people involved. The problem with “abstinence” is that people tend to regard it as a good in and of itself. But of course it’s not intrinsically good (except for ministers and monks).   It’s not a bad thing either; I regard it as neutral.

    I once faced a dilemma about a dating profile on eharmony.  A woman’s profile was moderately interesting (and curiously, one of the few without a photo). But her profile sounded more interesting than 75% of the others on eharmony. She was 33 or 35 or 37 or something like that, and she specified in her profile that she was dedicated to the idea of “No Sex Before Marriage.”  The question become: should I respond to this ad?

    I hemmed and hawed. Frankly, the thought of  meeting a woman who refused the very idea of  sex before marriage did not particularly bother me  (I mean, I had already been celibate for quite some time, so a year of no-sex dating would not be an undue burden). On the other hand, I had complex views on the subject and merely because I agreed to contact her/go out with her did not imply that I necessarily agreed with her point of view: it would merely mean  that I would be willing to make an exception in her case. At the same time,  her statement of principles would compel me to state my own principles prematurely. I could easily anticipate a first date consisting only of a discussion of why she promoted no-sex-bef0re-marriage and why I had reservations about it.

    I didn’t want to have that kind of conversation, especially on a first date. It  was (to put it crudely) a dick-shriveling topic. It took the excitement out of the romantic pursuit; it turned the focus away from attraction and romance towards religion and condemnation. Practically speaking, I probably talk to lots of women who are determined not to have sex before marriage; they just don’t wear this belief on a sign!  The fact that this woman on eharmony was announcing it on her profile meant that she was establishing it as a filtering mechanism towards all future husbands. Maybe her intent was simply to ward off casual dating, but it served also as a signaling device. If the woman had absolutist positions regarding sex, just imagine what her positions would be about politics/art/career/ the environment.

    Frankly, if I had met this person at a party and I never knew about her beliefs, I might have gotten to know her better. Who knows? That’s the  thing about online dating. In many instances, I acknowledged that my own criteria weren’t correct, but sometimes you have to make snap  judgments.

    At college I dated a lovely girl whom I surprised one day …. lighting up a cigarette!   She had been hiding her habit from me because she thought (accurately as it turns out) that I was very anti-smoking. It’s true. I almost never would view a smoker as a potential life partner. But when I discovered her subterfuges, I realized that my unspoken rule about smokers just didn’t matter in this case.  This girl  was a great person in every other respect; it would be folly to exclude her from my affections just for that . (As it turns out, her religious beliefs made her oppose premarital sex as a matter of principle, so I guess abstinence  really does exist on campus).

    Online dating is one example of the follies of snap judgments. But there are many instances where initial impressions mislead. Looking for a job is a classic case of this. A perfectly qualified person can have a lousy interview or lack sufficient number of  buzzwords on the resume, and still turn out to be a great employee. I’m currently hiring voice talent for an audio play, and frankly, I’m not sure whether my criteria for choosing a candidate will result in the best qualified candidate getting the job. In fact, they all look good in their own way.

    Two years ago, I decided that I would no longer apply for any technical writer positions in the fossil fuel industry.  I had been reading a lot about climate change and remain convinced that the fossil fuel industries were contributing to the problem in a huge way. But now that I have set my core principle of values, how do I implement it? Practically speaking,  I find that many kinds of companies in Houston are embedded with the oil and gas industry in some way, and it  is often  hard to draw the line. What if a company merely provided software for the fossil fuel industries? What if a company merely provided IT services? What if a company were providing safety inspections for an oil rig and needed someone to write the safety manual? What if  a company designed software which could be used by oil companies, but also on many other kinds of projects? What if a law firm wrote and reviewed leases for oil companies, but that was only about 40% of their business? These are real-life examples where the ethical dimensions are not clear cut.

    The problem comes when your discriminating principles don’t allow exceptions or flexibility.   I almost never read genre fiction; frankly I find science fiction to be a bore – although I’m occasionally surprised. Intellectually, I know that a certain percentage of writers in any genre are doing amazing things; in fact I almost delight in stumbling upon someone in a genre who is actually writing outstanding things. Literary genres are a marketing construct; do I really despise “chicklit” as much as I assume? (For the record, I greatly enjoyed Candace Bushnell’s “Sex and the City”). Legal thrillers, spy novels, YA. I don’t know what these terms actually mean – and I guess my problem is more with the low ambitions of people who write for these genres. At the same time, we need labels to separate things into different piles, or else we would go insane!

    When you buy something like a cell phone, you are dealing with a known set of features. The options may be ridiculously complex, but essentially we all know what 2 MB Camera or “free weekend minutes” mean. But when you are selecting a book or an employee or a romantic partner,  you are dealing with a infinitely complex set of features.  I haven’t read Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice yet but it’s hard to deny his central argument that  the endless number of options can be paralyzing for the consumer. Instead of giving him more freedoms, they give him more stress. 

    The irony is that most of these differences are minor. Often when I buy software or devices, I end up agonizing over features or specifications which I rarely notice or use after I make a purchase. I need to buy a laptop, a subject that I am generally familiar with.  But there are dozens of brands and dozens of cost-reducing or cost-increasing features which I need to sort through.   I need to read customer comments  and also consider how this laptop might run in Ubuntu. I also  need to consider where exactly I will buy this product and the general reputation of the brand (and distributor).

    Then again, I can simply visit a local computer store and buy something. Ugh!  I have $800 to spend. What’s the best thing in the store? I can take the thing home in 2 hours, and as long as I don’t fret too much about better and cheaper products for sale at other stores, I’ll be fine. I like how online stores   use faceted Search  to let the user feature out certain products (“8 gigs or more” or “Between 100-150$”). At the same time, this sort of precise filtering leads manufacturers to cheat a little. So a laptop may have 8 gigs of RAM but have a crappy CPU (something the consumer wouldn’t know enough to look for).  I can go onto a Slashdot page and hide all the results which were ranked 3 stars or lower. This basically guarantees that all the comments I see are interesting and relevant. But it also means that I am missing a lot of insights because – let’s face it, the best comments rarely get the karma love they deserve.

    Taking shortcuts is necessary because frankly we rarely have enough time to consider our options as closely and carefully as we would like. Maybe it was for the best that I chose to filter out smokers on match.com; I didn’t want to face the time burden of distinguishing between smokers who were not health conscious and the rare pretty and liberal and generally health-conscious woman who still smoked but was trying to quit. I was once dismissed by a match.com woman who wrote a polite but pointed reply saying, “My ex was a clueless playwright. I have no interest in dating artistic types anymore.” 

    Ouch. I guess it feels different to be on the receiving end of a snap judgment. I have been trying to promote an author’s ebook and I find curiously that many decent critics rarely review ebooks or even indie-produced ebooks.  It must be a book by a well-known publisher. Is that fair? No. (Indeed, I would argue that that it makes these people less effective critics).

    It’s possible to waste a LOT of time reading a mediocre book. But how allergic are you to mediocrity? If you wanted, you could read nothing but Nobel Prize winners (and maybe National Book Award winners if you tire). Using that criteria exposes you to a lot of interesting and profound literature, but is that enough? It exposes you to only a small number of literary types. You end up missing  so many things, so many different ways of looking at the world.

    I used to be extremely fussy about what I read.  But  this fussiness presupposed that my initial impressions (based on packaging and book reviews and literary awards)   guaranteed  quality (or at least, what seems to be quality to me).  A book cover can signal many things about what a book is about, but a bad book cover doesn’t signal anything. Anyway, the ultimate goal of reading is to read a good book, not  something with a good cover or critical reviews.

    One curious result of this ebook revolution is that there are now oodles of free and low-cost ebooks, most of which are crap. But there are also lots of high quality free titles out there – as long as you’re willing to look and take  chances. Yesterday I downloaded about 50 free titles from the free page for Amazon. I regularly go to Inkmesh to download the free Nook titles (my preferred device).  Truthfully, I don’t read most of these free titles, and even the ones I read I barely finish. But I’m grateful to have access to these kinds of freebies.

    Time, time, time. Everything  boils down to time.  Lately I have been ripping a lot of CDs, both from the library and from CDs I bought. I read consumer guides to music, and even though I enjoy flipping through these things, one can’t regard them as gospel.  For example, Village Voice critic Robert Christgau has reviewed a LOT of music. Most of the albums he assigns an A or A- letter grade to are pretty good, but he overlooks a lot of good stuff (and even mocks them sometimes).

    I often will put on hold music CDs  which have been recommended to me by  critics and find them unremarkable. At the same time, I will randomly pick random albums off the shelves and discover remarkable things just as often (see this, this and this)

    Dating is supposed to be a serious choice. Hook ups are supposed to represent a failure to exercise good judgment and yes, taste. Alas, I have spent way too much time refining my tastes in all realms, even dating….and am I the better for it? I don’t know. I don’t know.

  • Fun Excerpts from Weird Al’s Fan Club Newsletters

    AlYankovicByKristineSlipsonLately I have become enamored – no obsessed — with the parody music of Weird Al Yankovic. I’ll say more in a future post, but I came across the archives of his fan club newsletters from the 1990s. I wanted to jot down some of my favorite parts.   The first section consists of the tongue-in-cheek answers, while the second section consists of more serious and interesting answers. People think of him as just writing song parodies using the same melodies as the original singer, but in fact, Yankovic writes a LOT of original songs. Some are labeled as “stylistic parodies” because they are original songs in the style of of well-known singers. That doesn’t detract from Yankovic’s talent – although Yankovic’s ability to mimic other singers is downright scary!  If you don’t believe me that his original songs are first-class, check out  Generic Blues, Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota,  That’s Your Horoscope for Today, Albuquerque . Also, for lyrical inventiveness, check out the  merciless Couch Potato parody of an Eminem song.  It’s amazing to think that the original Eminem song won an Oscar, while Weird Al’s version has even more caustic lyrics than Eminem’s original ones. Here’s a list of his songs  and even a list of songs falsely attributed to  Weird Al .

    Also, quite apart from Weird Al Yankovic’s songs, he has worked on some hilarious MTV skits/shows. Among them are his mock interview with Eminem. Here is a hilarious running commentary on a bad 1980s video.

    Anyway, here begin the excerpts from the Weird Al Fan Club Newsletters.

    Not–so-Serious Questions

    Is there anything you did naughty as a boy that you never got caught for and still no one knows about it that you could confess to your forgiving fans right now? (Fearless Leader’s comment: And that you wouldn’t mind your mother knowing about?!?!?!?)

    No. Absolutely nothing. I was perfect in every way. With the exception of that one tiny train-derailing incident.

    Of all your albums, which is your favorite? (Bob Rodgers)

    I seem to have a special place in my heart for the albums that sell the most copies.

    What do you think of the current MTV as opposed to the MTV of the ’80s?

    You know, the weirdest thing happened to me the other day. I happened to turn on MTV, and they were playing a music video!

    A lot of successful bands meet and evolve in college. Why do you think college is good for the creative musical process?

    I’m sure that my songwriting ability would suffer immensely if it hadn’t been for those three years of calculus that I took in college.

    What birth control devices do you condone?

    I’ve always figured that my personality was an effective birth-control device.

    How often do you bowl? (Hawaiian Ryan Swoverland)

    At least once every five years, whether I need to or not.

    If the 3 Tenors did another concert and let you pick the songs for the medley (okay, so it’s a really hypothetical question…) what would you make them sing? (#’s 1 & 2 – Unruly Julie Jiles)

    A medley of “Kung Fu Fighting,” “The Night Chicago Died” and “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero.”

    Can you give any information on your new album?

    Yes. (Unfortunately, I can only answer one question about the new album, and I’m afraid that was it.)

    Will the Backstreet boys ever be on your show? because that’s my favorite band and tv show!!

    Seeing as how the show was cancelled in January, that might be a bit of a problem. Okay, here’s what you do? get a tape of the Weird Al Show and then record a video of the Backstreet Boys in the middle of it. Then just watch it and pretend

    Can you name all the Spice Girls?

    Sure. I hereby name them all Bob.

    What is your new years resolution?

    600 dpi.

    I am very interested in becoming a vegan (a vegetarian at least). Can you give me any advice?

    Don’t eat meat.

    fred of chgo il asks: In “UHF” in the beginning, when one of the guys pulls out the gun to shoot you, he uses his left hand, but when it’s on the ground, it’s the right hand, can you tell me why that is?

    I think we realized the continuity error after we had already shot the footage with the actor – the disembodied arm that the prop guys had supplied didn’t match the arm that our actor was using for the whip. At the time, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do about it. We just rationalized, “Who’s gonna even care about this 10 years from now? Besides Fred, of course.”

    What is the craziest thing that you and the band have done at/to a hotel while y’all were on tour?

    We cleaned our rooms before the maid got there.

    Can you name any of the songs on your new album?

    Yes, I can name all of them.

    Is there a specific reason why you tilt your head in photos?

    The left side of my brain is much heavier than my right side.

    What was your worst subject in middle school?

    Physical Education, no doubt. Just out of curiosity, did anybody in history ever NOT have a sadistic Junior High School P.E. coach?

    Were the people in your Disney special your real parents?

    That’s what they tell me.

    CMonkey2000 of Spatula City, Liechtenstein asks: Seriously, how do you rationalize being a vegan and playing a gig at the Great American Rib Cook-Off?

    The same way I can rationalize playing at a college even though I’m not a student anymore.

    Ed of Winter Garden, Florida asks: Hey Al!  Love your work, but aren’t you slipping a bit?  “Don’t Download This Song?”  I mean, the whole downloading music from the Internet controversy is like 5 years old, man!

    Yeah, you’re absolutely right.  It’s a completely dead issue – people stopped illegally downloading songs off the Internet years ago, and the RIAA is no longer taking legal action against P2P sites or criminalizing people who share files.  What was I thinking?  Thanks for setting me straight.  By the way, don’t forget to e-mail Neil Young and ask him why he’s still writing songs about Iraq on his new album.  I mean, come on… that war is so 2003!

    Hannanh of St. Louis, MO asks: Why do you write dirty songs? Since I’ve heard a few (like “Bill Clinton Bimbo Number 5”) myself and a few of the kids at my school (like 183) are boycotting you and spreading the word fast. You disgust me!

    As I’ve stated very clearly in the FAQ, there are a lot of crude and vulgar parodies floating around the peer-to-peer sites that have my name attached to them. They are NOT by me. All of my material is really pretty family friendly. Of course, you would KNOW this if you actually BOUGHT my CDs instead of trying to ILLEGALLY DOWNLOAD them off the Internet like the amoral-yet-self-righteous HOOLIGAN you obviously are! YOU disgust ME!! Ah, the delicious irony of it all…

    Serious Questions

    Matthew Walker of Highland, CA asks: How come your parodies are often played faster than the original songs?

    I generally like to make my parodies a couple beats per minute faster than the original song, just for a little energy boost. Also, I find that the comedy usually plays better if the tempo is a little quicker.

    Sizzling Volleyball of Budd Lake, NJ asks: Hey Al, have kind of a complicated/tedious question for you: Over the years, I’ve wondered how your homages or songs “in the style of” come into being. Many are homages to “demented” bands (B-52s, Talking Heads, Devo, Oingo Boingo, TMBG, Zappa, etc.), but others are less so. Also, there are many that seem to be affiliated to no one particular band, but are genre parodies: unplugged, ska, hair band, etc. Are these bands that you listen to, and so are a sort of tribute? Or are they something else?

    As you’ve obviously noticed, I have done quite a few style parodies over the years — that’s what I call songs that are original (as in, not direct parodies) and yet they are done in the style of another artist, group or genre of music. It’s an interesting exercise for me to try to get into the heads of these artists — or at least attempt to crudely forge their musical signatures. In fact, I enjoy doing these kinds of songs so much, I hardly ever do an “original” original any more. (I guess “Hardware Store” could be considered a true original — but truth be told, that was actually a screwed-up style parody. I started out trying to write in the style of a particular group, but I got it so wrong that I just gave up and did it my own way instead.) The artists that I’ve style-parodied range from the extremely popular (Bob Dylan, Nine Inch Nails, James Taylor, etc.) to the semi-obscure (Tonio K, The Rugburns, Hilly Michaels, etc.) — but they’re all favorites of mine, and my homages to them are always done with great affection and attention to detail. In the past, I never put the artists that I style-parodied in the Special Thanks section on my album, mostly because I wanted to see if fans could figure out what I was doing (without being given any obvious hints). But I’ve come to realize that’s a little unfair to those artists — to whom I certainly owe a huge debt of gratitude– so I plan to acknowledge all my musical influences in the CD liner notes in the future.

    Tim Sloane of Ijamsville, MD asks: Al, which of these purchasing methods should I use in order to make sure the most profit gets to you: Buying one of your albums on CD, or buying one of your albums on iTunes?

    I am extremely grateful for your support, no matter which format you choose to legally obtain my music in, so you should do whatever makes the most sense for you personally. But since you ASKED — I actually do get significantly more money from CD sales, as opposed to downloads. This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me. It costs the label NOTHING for somebody to download an album (no manufacturing costs, shipping, or really any overhead of any kind) and yet the artist (me) winds up making less from it. Go figure.

    Gary Derrick of Mustang, Oklahoma asks: I was recently watching Late Night with Conan O’Brien and the tambourine player with that night’s musical guest (whom I can’t really remember at the moment) looked surprisingly like you… any idea who your evil twin is?

    Well, first of all, it was Jay Leno, not Conan O’Brien — and FYI, the musical guest was Ben Folds — and the guy who looked surprisingly like me was … me. But you’re absolutely right, it WAS a tambourine. The story is, Ben and I have been friends for a while (I directed one of his music videos and we’ve performed on each other’s albums). I went to see Ben when he was in concert here in Los Angeles, and afterwards we were hanging out in his dressing room. At one point he said to me, “Hey, I’m doing the Tonight Show tomorrow — you should come on the show with me and just play tambourine!”  And we both laughed at what a ridiculous idea that was. Then the next morning, he called me up and said, “I just woke up from this weird fever dream, and I think it was some kind of a sign — you HAVE to play tambourine on the show.” I was honored to accept his offer, of course, so I hopped in the car and headed down to the NBC studios, practicing the tambourine as I drove. I was surprised when I got to the stage — I thought they were going to have me tucked away somewhere behind the string section, but they had me standing right next to Ben’s piano. It was kind of surreal — my first appearance on the Tonight Show in 20 years, and there I was being a professional tambourine player! Well, needless to say, I had a blast, and I think the performance came off very well. And I’ll be happy to slap the tambourine again for Ben any time he wants.

     

    Jake L. of Readington, NJ asks: When you recorded your lines for The Simpsons, were there any that got cut out of the episode?

    Thankfully, my part wasn’t cut at all, which was lucky for me because I know a lot of really, really funny lines from that episode wound up on the cutting room floor. My band recorded the instrumental track for the ”Jack and Diane”  parody at Mad Dog Studios in Burbank, but I got to go to the 20th Century Fox lot to sing the song and read my lines in a studio sitting next to Dan (Homer Simpson) Castellaneta himself, which was a huge thrill for me. Originally I was only intended to be in the body of the show, but the recording session went so well, the writers thought it would be a great idea for me to sing an extended version of the parody over the closing credits (and of course, I did too)! So they came up with some additional lyrics and I went back to the Fox lot several weeks later to record that as well. Then, shortly before the show aired, I had to go back one more time to re-record the end of the song? — I think the original ending went something like, “Oh yeah, we got time to fill  — Why don’t you go pee before King Of The Hill? “ The problem was, by the time the episode was scheduled to air, The Simpsons was being followed by Oliver Beane, not King Of The Hill  —  so they had me change it to the more generic “Oh yeah, Weird Al had fun on this show “  Even if it was just a brief cameo, being on The Simpsons was definitely a high point in my life  —  big thanks to all the writers, producers and artists who helped make it happen!

  • A Call to Action

    Chris Hedges (author of  the great book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning) wrote this about our current political landscape:

    Either we begin to militantly stand against the coal, oil and natural gas industry or we do not. Either we defy pre-emptive war and occupation or we do not. Either we demand that the criminal class on Wall Street be held accountable for the theft of billions of dollars from small shareholders whose savings for retirement or college were wiped out or we do not. Either we defend basic civil liberties, including habeas corpus and the prosecution of torturers or we do not. Either we turn on liberal institutions, including the Democratic Party, which collaborate with these corporations or we do not. Either we accept that the age of political compromise is dead, that the corporate systems of power are instruments of death that can be fought only by physical acts of resistance or we do not. If the liberal class remains gullible and weak, if it continues to speak to itself and others in meaningless platitudes, it will remain as responsible for our enslavement as those it pompously denounces. 

    (This echoes a sentiment I’ve seen in many progressive circles:  it is futile  to engage Republicans politically on any issue; the only solution is to vote them out of office or at an individual level to boycott those companies and organizations which provide support for them).

    Mark Shields on the lunacies of Arizona gun laws:

    In Arizona, in order to cut toenails and fingernails, and to shampoo another person’s hair for profit, you must first undergo a background check and obtain a license from the State Board of Cosmetology.

    To operate as a massage therapist in Arizona, you must, by state law, have had a minimum of 500 hours of instruction from a school recognized by the secretary of the Department of Education.

    Before you can legally qualify as a pest-control applicator, you must undergo and pass a state-mandated background check.

    Arizona requires a state license to sell minnows or other live bait. The Arizona Board of Athletic Training will decide whether you are qualified to be an athletic trainer. If your life’s ambition is to intern as a cremationist, you must win the approval of the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers. Hope to become an Aquatic Animal Processor, cleaning aquatic animals? Not until the Arizona Department of Agriculture approves and licenses your application.

    It’s entirely possible that all of this licensing and permits and paperwork are needed to protect the public health and safety of the good people of Arizona.

    But please tell me why to buy a Glock 9 mm pistol, modified with a high-capacity magazine to fire 31 rounds, Jared Lee Loughner, an obviously troubled and alienated young man, had to undergo no background check at all.

    I’m pretty horrified by the news that Judge Thomas didn’t disclose his wife’s income source for working as a conservative lobbyist. Perhaps it was an error of omission, but remember that the Citizens United case was a 5-4 case and if Thomas had recused himself (because his wife received substantial sums from corporate donations), the case would not have gone the way it did.

    Jonathan Schwartz explains why TARP was insignificant compared to how much the  Federal Reserve spent to rescue the commercial paper market.

    This WAS a real, frightening problem. No commercial paper market, and Wal-Mart can’t pay for everything being delivered to its stores. Big grocery chains can’t pay for food. And no one is paying their workers. The entire economy could grind to a halt, and no one knew how hard it would be to start it again.

    But there’s one thing Bernanke and Paulson left out, and that all the people talking about on TV didn’t know: there was no need for congress to pass a bill to save the commercial paper market, because the Fed could buy it directly. We know this because the Fed DID buy giant amounts of it, over $300 billion — but not until October, well after TARP had passed.

    So in September, Bernanke was saying: "Help! We need $700 billion or else the commercial paper market will destroy the world!"

    Then a month later in October, Bernanke quietly went ahead and saved the commercial paper market, using non-TARP money — something he could have easily done the month before.

    This can all be seen in the above graph that I made. The Fed balance sheet exploded starting in mid-September. They spent $500 billion by October 1st, two days before TARP passed. They spent $1 trillion by the time the first trickles of TARP money were allocated in late October. (This in itself is damning — we had to give them the money or else Planet Earth would explode, and yet it took Paulson three weeks to dole out the first TARP sliver.) All along, the Fed side of the bailout had dwarfed TARP.

    Yet it’s been completely invisible. While we were all screaming about that little pink line, the Fed was carrying out the real bailout via the blue line and we never noticed.

    A chart sheds light on this: image

    (More here). This way too macro for me to concern my little head about. I’m too worried about just making ends meet.   But loftier minds should be giving such items intense scrutiny. 

    More locally, the way Texas is dealing with its budget deficit is scary. Houston ISD mentions the possibility of having to reduce its budget by 15-20%. (That’s the likely scenario; the failure of the state to take action to increase revenue will cause school districts to increase taxes, thereby giving governor Rick Perry someone to blame). Ponder this for a moment:

    Texas, which crafts a budget every two years, was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years. It plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money, allowing it to leave its $9.1 billion rainy day fund untouched.

    One Chronicle blogger has given a name for the phenomena for starving government: the Perry Spiral:

    Call it ‘The Perry Spiral’ – a terrible cycle in which further budget cuts just create new needs which cannot be met which lead to more budget cuts, which create new needs which cannot be met, which…you get the idea.

    You could cut the quality of government to such an extreme that it begins to create new costs. It works like this. Say, in order to keep taxes low this year, you cut back food/housing aid to poor families with children, literacy programs, CHIPS, and school funding. You also eliminate any money being spent on health care for illegal aliens. Easy enough. Done. Maybe they’ll finally go back to Mexico.

    Sustain that over time and you start seeing other costs surge up through the cracks. Counties experience ballooning emergency room expenses, eroding the quality of care at local hospitals. Demand for police and prison beds climbs. Graduation rates and the quality of the workforce decline.  And so on and so on in an ever-accelerating game of whack-a-mole.  The response to this new round of needs for prisons and schools and cops and hospital spending?  Cut some more. 

    Sound familiar? 

    You may continue to attract more new jobs because you’re a cheap place to do business, but an increasing percentage of those jobs are in low-wage, low-skill activities. Real estate is cheap, but for good reason. Cost of living is low, for the same reasons as the real estate.

    On paper the economy looks pretty good, but median incomes begin to wobble. Why? Because it gets harder to attract or develop high-end jobs. A greater percentage of the most attractive jobs come to be located in places where the best employees would rather live; where their kids can go to good schools, enjoy a library, and not be surrounded by shanty-towns and strip-joints.

    Robert Reich explodes the myths that public sector labor unions are blowing up budgets: 

    The final Republican canard is that bargaining rights for public employees have caused state deficits to explode. In fact there’s no relationship between states whose employees have bargaining rights and states with big deficits. Some states that deny their employees bargaining rights – Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona, for example, are running giant deficits of over 30 percent of spending. Many that give employees bargaining rights — Massachusetts, New Mexico, and Montana — have small deficits of less than 10 percent.

    …

    It’s only average workers – both in the public and the private sectors – who are being called upon to sacrifice.

    This is what the current Republican attack on public-sector workers is really all about. Their version of class warfare is to pit private-sector workers against public servants. They’d rather set average working people against one another – comparing one group’s modest incomes and benefits with another group’s modest incomes and benefits – than have Americans see that the top 1 percent is now raking in a bigger share of national income than at any time since 1928, and paying at a lower tax rate. And Republicans would rather you didn’t know they want to cut taxes on the rich even more.

  • Site Migration complete

    Finally,  my move to the new hosting service is complete. I’ll be back with a roar soon.

  • Waltz with Bashir: Do perpetrators tell better stories than victims?

    Waltz with Bashir is a serious animated film which tells the autobiographical story of an Israeli soldier during the Israel attack on Lebanon.  This was a serious film tackling important questions in an innovative way.  imageAt the same time, I was uncomfortable with how it dramatized  political events. It raises an interesting ethical and aesthetic question: is the Israeli soldier’s perspective a good vantage point for  viewing a historical event (and  constructing a narrative)?

    In the film, Israeli soldiers are semi-innocent bystanders who watched Lebanese murder one another. Poor Israeli soldiers are stuck in Beirut while barbarian Lebanese fire at them.

    In reality, Israeli attacked a peaceful nation (where yes PLO used to hide out).

    (more…)

  • Green Linkdump #1 November Edition (and it’s massive!)

    Long overdue and probably an overlong post. I’m dumping from Facebook and other places.

    To describe the predicament of climate deniers, Naomi Oreskes invokes  the metaphor of the waiter:

    “Imagine a gigantic, colossal banquet. Hundreds of millions of people come to eat. They eat and drink to their hearts’ content, eating food that is better and more abundant than at the finest tables in ancient Athens, or Rome or even in the palaces of medieval Europe. Then one day a man arrives wearing a white dinner jacket.”

    It is, Oreskes explains, the waiter—and he is holding the bill. She continues:

    “Not surprisingly the diners are in shock. Some begin to deny that this is their bill. Others deny that there even is a bill. Still others deny that they partook of the meal. One diner suggests the man is not really a waiter, but is only trying to get attention for himself or to raise money for his own projects. Finally the group concludes that if they simply ignore the waiter, he will go away.

    “This is where we stand today on the question of global warming. For the past 150 years, industrial civilization has been dining on the energy stored in fossil fuels and the bill has now come due. Yet we have sat around the dinner table denying that it is our bill, and doubting the credibility of the man who delivered it.

    “The great economist John Maynard Keynes famously summarized all of economic theory in a single phrase: “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” And he was right. We have experienced prosperity unmatched in human history. We have feasted to our hearts’ content. But the lunch was not free.

    “So it is not surprising that many of us are in denial. After all we didn’t know that it was a banquet—and we didn’t know that there would be a bill. But now we do know. The bill includes acid rain, and the ozone hole and the damage produced by DDT. These are the environmental costs of living the way citizens of wealthy developed nations have lived since the industrial revolution. Now we either have to pay the price, change the way we do business, or both.

    “No wonder the merchants of doubt have been successful. They’ve permitted us to think we could ignore the waiter, while we haggled about the bill. The failure of the United States to act on global warming as well as the long delays between when the science was settled and when we acted on tobacco, acid rain and the ozone hole are prima facie empirical evidence that doubt-mongering works.”

    This is probably the longest linkdump I have ever made so I am hiding the rest of it under the fold.

    (more…)

  • Reasons to Vote for Bill White instead of Rick Perry

    This list is ongoing. I’ll be adding to it over time.

    Ethics/Character

    1. Rick Perry was ranked as one of the worst governors by a national ethics watchdog group.  The Houston Chronicle summarizes: the group said that the governor “allegedly disregarded campaign finance laws and aided a business that was especially generous to his campaign” and “accepted travel and campaign donations from a business that received benefits from his official actions.”  The group also accused Perry of rejected federal economic stimulus money “in a manner that appeared to put partisan politics ahead of the interests of the citizens of Texas” and “has perpetuated the revolving door between government and special interests.”  (Source)
    2. Vile political campaigns. In the 2002 governor’s race against Rick Sanchez, Perry used a negative campaign ad which implied that Sanchez was involved with Mexican drug smugglers (More).  Even though there was no evidence linking Sanchez to this charge and the ad was widely condemned, Perry used this to sow doubt in the minds of white Texas voters.  “What the ads did not mention is that Sanchez helped federal authorities bust the bad guys, and earned the praise of the Reagan Justice Department. In fact, when the ads ran, David Almaraz, the DOJ official who handled the investigation, denounced them, saying, “Perry’s claim is absolutely preposterous and completely false, without any foundation and fact.”(more). Perry also had to settle a lawsuit over possibly illegal campaign contributions during the 2006 campaign (source).
    3. Irresponsible political rhetoric. Perry has  talked of secession several times and when speaking before  a  Tea Party group, called them a group of patriots, “not right-wing extremists.”  (Source). image
    4. Rick Perry has avoided scheduled debates for gubernatorial candidates. Instead, he has opted to get his message out by press conferences and political ads, things which by definition avoid public scrutiny. The refusal/inability to engage in a public debate with your opponent is a sign of political ineffectiveness and a contempt for the everyday voter  (not to mention cowardice).

    Education

    1. Perry misused federal education grants that were earmarked  to hire more teachers and instead used them to reduce taxes. As a result of protests by 40 school district superintendents in Texas,  the US congress had to add a special  provision to ensure that Perry would never do such a thing again (More).
    2. In the middle of a $11 billion budget shortfall,  Perry’s administration spent $888 million on new ideologically-pure textbooks that has quickly made Texas the butt of late-night TV (Source). This action led one  political commentator to call Rick Perry “the worst person of the world.”
    3. The Perry Administration refused even to apply for the $700 million in federal funds for the “Race for the Top” school improvement grant program. (Source).  Houston ISD superintendent said “I’m disappointed. It was potentially a lot of money for our state. I’m not one to sell my soul for money, but I have 100,000 kids in Houston who don’t read at grade level, and I don’t agree with people who say resources don’t make a difference.” Debra Kerner, trustee of the Harris County Department of Education criticizes Perry’s rationale  for not applying. “Perry attempts to justify his decision not to sign on to the national education standards by saying that our standards are already high. Again, I ask: If our standards are so high, why do we rank so low?Also according to the comptroller’s Web site, “Texas was the only state in the nation to cut average per pupil expenditures in fiscal year 2005, resulting in a ranking of 40th nationally; down from 25th in fiscal year 1999. Texas is sixth in the nation in student growth. The general student population in Texas public schools grew by 11.1 percent between school years 1999 and 2005, with the largest percentage of growth seen among low-income and minority children. Perry is cutting education funding while our school population is growing. He is playing politics with our schoolchildren, and it is costing our state millions of dollars.”

    Business/Economy

    1. Rick Perry has been the primary supporter of the Texas Enterprise Fund, a public fund to give cash to companies to create jobs. After Texas distributed $363 million to various companies,  the number of jobs created was disappointing, so much so that Rick Perry’s  office had to amend the original contracts and according to one study, “quietly redefine success.”
    2. 20 of the 55 companies to receive funds from the Texas Enterprise Fund were contributors to the Rick Perry campaign (Source).  In addition, there are allegations that companies made donations to the Republican Governors’ Association – which in turn made campaign contributions to Perry’s campaign.
    3. Amazingly, one beneficiary of the Texas Enterprise Fund was Countrywide Financial who received $20 million from the State of Texas before going bankrupt under allegations of fraud. Not only did Perry approve of giving funds to Countrywide, he actually made a point to give a speech touting it as the fund’s “crowning jewel” (Source). Countrywide later became known for being a primary cause of the subprime loan mortgage meltdown and “has become synonymous with the excesses that led to the housing bubble.”
    4. Rick Perry rejected $556 million in federal unemployment stimulus dollars. (More).  He did it because he felt the fed dollars came with too many strings attached. But that is not the point. The purpose of this stimulus money was to maintain consumer spending in the Texas economy.  The end result is that unemployment taxes were doubled on Texas businesses.
    5. Rick Perry solicited a $250,00 donation from BP to help restore the governor’s mansion. (Source). Later after the BP spill he described the spill as an “act of God” and said that the company  “historically had a very good safety record from my perspective” despite the fact that BP’s violation of safety standards at the Texas City refineries were numerous and well known.  (Source)

    Law Enforcement/Justice System

    1. Death Penalty. Rick Perry has mishandled several death penalty cases, but the most egregious is the Cameron Todd Willingham case which many claim is the first recorded case of an innocent man being wrongly executed (See this investigative report). image Perry’s job was to make sure due process has been done for these kinds of cases and to handle last minute appeals.  On the day of the scheduled execution, Perry had received a clear and persuasive report by one of the nation’s leading arson investigators that poked serious holes in the original arson report and suggested the original conclusion was invalid. Rather than order a delay  to consider the matter, Perry decided to ignore the report and let the presumed innocent man be killed.
    2. On the same death penalty case, Perry manipulated the schedule of a scientific review purely for political  purposes. He fired the head of the commission which had the result of delaying their conclusions from being published before the 2010 election. Many commentators say Perry he did this to avoid political cowardice before the election (More).
    3. Wildly unpopular fees on drivers.  As a way to raise revenues, Rick Perry supported the Driver Responsibility Program.  “Under the program, exorbitant state surcharges are attached to citations like speeding, driving without insurance, driving without a license and driving while intoxicated. In addition to paying the fines and court costs associated with the ticket, drivers must pay an annual surcharge ranging from $100 to $2,000 or their license is suspended.” (Source) By all measures the program has been a failure. Texas Tribune reports, “More than 60 percent of $1.8 billion DPS has billed in surcharges has gone uncollected. And some 1.2 million Texans have had their licenses suspended. Many continue driving anyway, without licenses and without auto insurance.”

    Environment

    1. Rick Perry falsely claimed that climate change legislation would cost the typical Texas household $1200 per year. In fact, CBO and EIA estimate the cost to taxpayers at $180 per household (and potential economics  benefits to Texans run to about $100 per household. (More).  He directed his Attorney General to sue the US government for its EPA CO2  endangerment finding – even though  the Texas  climate expert Perry appointed strongly objected to this action. (I’ve read the Petition (PDF)  to the EPA; its scientific basis is laughable).
    2. Rick Perry, in refusing to implement any state plan to regulate greenhouse gases, has prevented Texas from getting early credit for 42 million tons of emission credits resulting from renewable energy.  Because Texas did not provide a plan when EPA asked for one,  future EPA rules may not take this into account. One environmental group claims that this delay in coming up with a plan may cost Texans billions of dollars  (Source).
    3. Rick Perry has praised the work of major denialist Sen Inhofe and according to his policy analyst “is not convinced” that global warming is a threat. (Source). Asked for elaboration on the scientists who Perry said are abandoning the “global warming bandwagon,” his office listed two dozen recent articles, almost none about scientists. They range from calls for Gore to lose his Academy Award to a posting from the Tehran Times (“Iran’s leading international daily”) stating that Gore doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize because as a senator he voted to authorize the first Gulf War. Despite the fact that almost every  scientific body have endorsed the connection between CO2 and global warming (source) , Perry has continued to imply that the science is unsettled and wrongly states that Climategate casts doubt on this conclusion (source).  In fact, the allegations of impropriety from ClimateChange are false, and even if they were true, it would not undermine the basic conclusion that CO2 is responsible for a large part of global warming (Source).
    4. Rick Perry tried to fast-track the approval process of 11  coal plants for Texas, something Bill White played a part in opposing (more).

    Social Services/Welfare/Civil Rights

    1. Perry has argued  against health care reform, arguing that emergency room access is sufficient for those without insurance. In fact, when uninsured people go to the emergency room, they are 21% more likely to die. (More) . It also ends up increasing the cost to taxpayers.
    2. Civil Rights. When the abolish gay marriage referendum passed in 2005, Rick Perry had wholeheartedly endorsed it. Not only was this referendum challenged in the courts, legal experts are predicting that the US Supreme Court will soon  prevent bans on gay marriage in every state. If this happens, then Perry would have endorsed a position that is legally and politically backwards.. that catered to people’s prejudices. It sends a strong signal of intolerance to people inside Texans and outside it. Related: the Texas Republican party platform supports criminalization of gays and even re-enacting an  anti-sodomy law which the US Supreme Court has already forbidden  (More). Although Perry hasn’t  embraced these extreme viewpoints of the Republican party, it’s worth asking whether a party that  embraces such bigoted positions deserve our vote for anything.

    Reasons why Texans need to vote for Bill White

    1. He’s not Rick Perry.

    (More seriously, I haven’t had time to write that part).

    A request to potential commenters: If you are going to make a comment, please restrict your remarks to the claims made above. For example, if you think that “Bill White is bad because X,” your point may very well be valid and interesting, but it is not relevant to this particular post. Over the next few weeks I will try to add positive reasons why I think Bill White is the better candidate of the two.

    Another request: If anyone has any funny Rick Perry political cartoons, be sure to forward them to me!

  • Robert Flynn has a blog!

    imageMy old writing teacher Robert Flynn has a blog.   Oddly, the blogging platform he uses (blogster) doesn’t really let you download RSS feeds, (although it has some social community features). I tried to organize the links a little better, but put it off and then lost the links I was going to organize. (Sigh!) Here’s what I had so far.

    Literature Left or Right

    I have written about war but there are no anti-war novels. I read Johnny Got His Gun, that was intended to be a war novel. I think most young men who read the book felt challenged as I did to endure such loss of everything but thought, and to believe that we could prevail. War is the ultimate human experience because it changes nothing yet changes everything.

    Here’s an interview with Robert Flynn.

    Garden of the Priest and Scientist (an alternate creation story with a serpent and an eagle).  The Curse of the Luddite God (allegory based on the Prometheus theme). Swallow the Dollar (odd encounter with Satan), Sex Life of the Pharisee (pharisee who experiences the most unusual temptation), True Story of Postmodern Job (where Job is a CEO with stock options), Legend of Bob the Good (a man who does good deeds for the wrong reasons).

    Slouching Toward Zion: Part 1,  Part 2 , Part 3, Part 4 .  Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting at the Baptist Church, John Wayne Must Die, Sister Constant Attention (sketch of an unusual nun), Singing Soprano in the Cowgirl Church of God (amusing story about a Texas cowboy who prays to god for a great singing voice), No Clergy Women (by a backwards-looking  man who can’t understand why women would ever want to seek the pulpit):

    Man has won his laurels rescuing her from her own folly, from doing things that God never intended she should do and leaving undone her divinely appointed task of serving her husband.  Since the days of Adam and Eve woman has offered man an apple and given him a lemon.

    Woman has always been the first to kneel at the feet of false gods; she is the slave of custom, the victim of sentiment and the prey of fashion.  Does she not seek to intensify the figure God gave her? to augment her beauty? to enhance her charm?  There is more power in her smile than in the pulpit.  It is she who is at fault for sin in this world.  Why does she not arrest the glance of the seductress? retard the saunter of the wanton? neutralize the smile of the harlot?  Why does she not save homes from the peril of the male’s wandering eye?  Why does she not bring up the child in the way it should go?  Why does she not prepare a meal devoid of French cuisine?  Let woman solve her own problems before invading the potent pulpit.

    Various Essays about Religion and Society: For the Love of Agape or Eros without Error, a religious sex shop,.image

    Politics and Religion: Deadbeat Patriots , A War Profiteer (George W. and 9/11) , Imaginary Interview with Pastor John Hagee, The Best Known Christian is …? ,  Christianity and Reason, Call It Appeasement (interesting piece on Bin Laden and Bush), Obama’s Pastor, Weak on Security (a historical look at how the Republican party advances their agenda by accusing liberals of being weak on security—never mind that being strong costs a lot of money and sacrifice). When you read the sequence of right-wing accusations against every administration, you see how  powerful this banal  “weak on security” accusation is:

    Like Eisenhower, Carter saw the danger of the military/industrial complex that co-opted corporations, contractors, small businesses, schools, cities, churches. He inherited Eisenhower’s blunder–overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iran and putting the tyrannical Shah in power. During the OPEC oil embargo America got most of its oil from Iran until the Shah was overthrown. Ayatollah Khomeini became the leader, held American hostages and stopped oil sales to the US. Carter kept the US out of war and substantially increased US military spending but was never forgiven for saying that Americans had "an inordinate fear of communism." His attempt to rescue the hostages failed. “Free the hostages” became the slogan for the next election.

    The day Reagan was inaugurated the hostages were freed, Reagan released frozen Iranian assets, and lifted the arms embargo for Israel so they could ship weapons to Iranian terrorists. The US replaced the Israeli weapons. The Iranians took more hostages, blew up two US embassies and a barracks killing 241 Marines but nothing stopped the arms sale until Israel sent Iran missiles that didn’t work. Reagan began direct sales to Iran but because he was giving aid and comfort to the enemy, he also sent weapons, intelligence and agents necessary for the production of WMD to assist Saddam Hussein in his war on Iran.

    Here’s a satirical piece about McCain’s involvement with Communists:

    Forget Professor Ayers. Professors are not that scary. I’ve known professors. I’ve been a professor. No one was afraid of me. John McCain is no professor. Sarah Palin had rather bag a professor than bag a moose.

    Also, forget Charles Keating. He was just trying to live the American dream of fooling enough fellow citizens to become fabulously rich. That’s what America means. It’s unfortunate that laws and regulations stand in the way or all of us would do it. Fortunately, Keating had a good buddy who palled around with him on free vacations, free plane rides, free baby care. But John McCain was younger then.

    What’s frightening about McCain is that he was tied up with people who hated America. They didn’t just sit at an antiaircraft gun, they shot down American planes. They killed Americans. And McCain was no eight-year-old kid. He was a grown man. Married. Children of his own. He was wearing American clothes made in America. (It was a long time ago.) In the heart of that dark place there is a monument and it doesn’t depict Hanoi Jane but Hanoi John.

    He had a close personal relationship with lots of people who hated America. For five and a half years he slept in their beds. He ate their food. He listened to anti-America ranting. He listened to Communist propaganda. There are photographs of America-haters with their arms around John McCain.

    Here’s a long article by Flynn about whether faith-based communities really consider life to be sacred. This is a damning indictment of the Bush Administration and its lax enforcement of environmental regulations. Some examples:

    The US ranks last among industrial nations in avoiding death by preventable disease. (Democracy Now 1-9-08) A twelve-year-old died of a toothache. An $80 tooth extraction might have saved him if his family had not lost its Medicaid. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care at a cost of more than $250,000 the boy died.

    Is such neglect of public welfare benign or malignant? EPA has dropped or delayed more than 400 cases of suspected violations of the law such as illegal industrial discharges. (NYTimes 8-18-08) EPA has overstated the purity of the nation’s drinking water for four years leaving millions of people at risk. (Washington Post 3-12-04) At least 46 million Americans are affected by trace amounts of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, up from 41 million people in six months. Chicago found a cholesterol medication and a nicotine derivative. Many cities found an anti-convulsant. Colorado Springs found five pharmaceuticals, including a tranquilizer and a hormone. Even in extremely diluted concentrations pharmaceutical residues harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species in the wild and impair the workings of human cells in the laboratory. The overwhelming majority of U.S. communities have yet to test drinking water. (AP 9-12-08)

    (Here’s another article which enumerates the ways in which the Bush Administration ignored the health and safety concerns of soldiers and civilians in Iraq). These two articles are a year old, but it’s importantly to understand exactly how much happened (or didn’t happen) during the Bush Administration.  In a piece examining the “courage” of WH spokesman Scott McClellan, Flynn points out:

    Veterans for Common Sense (veteransforcommonsense.org) has discovered that more than 43,000 soldiers declared “medically unfit” for combat by doctors have been sent back to Iraq or Afghanistan. More than 58,300 soldiers are involuntarily enlisted because of stop-loss; 500,000 have been deployed twice or more into combat, which increases the risk of PTSD by 50%. About one half of one percent of Americans have served in Bush’s war on terror, yet, Bush was reelected in 2004 by those who approved of the war. How can you, like Bush and Cheney, support a war and refuse to fight in it or pay for it? No reporter has asked Bush why his family, including his daughters, or the family members of those in his administration and congress and family members of the millions who supported his war on Iraq refuse to serve in it. Is it because he and Cheney are their role models? No reporter has askedwhy the US paid $135 million to soldiers of other nations who either willingly or unwillingly fight the war that not even Bush’s daughters believe is as important as shopping.

    I’d like to ask members of the media, especially the corporate moguls who control the media outlets, why do you claim 30,000 US casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan when Veterans for Common Sense forced the Pentagon to reveal that there are more than 72,000 casualties, 300,000 have been treated at VA hospitals, 288,000 have filed claims for military-related disabilities? Why do you claim there may be as many as 100,000 civilian casualties in Iraq when two years ago a study that the British government reluctantly accepted reported more than 500,0000 and a recent UN survey of Iraqis reported more than a million. Okay, let’s say it’s wrong by 50%, 75% and only 250,000 civilians have been killed. Is that old news?

    Did it seem ethical to you that NBC and MSNBC advocated war when their corporate owner, General Electric, is a major defense contractor? Was it patriotism that motivated you to prop up George Bush when you saw his inadequacy, incompetence and inability to act that was a precursor of Katrina? Did you really believe that the heroes who fought in World War II, stood by their guns during the Cold War, and fought the hot wars of Korea and Vietnam were terrified by nineteen hijackers or was it only the chicken vultures in the White House and Pentagon? Did you really believe they were afraid of Saddam Hussein who had no air force, no navy and a degraded army with obsolete equipment or was it only Bush and Cheney and perhaps yourselves.

    General Politics and History: Rethinking Vietnam,

    Interviews: with historical fiction writer Linda Ballou:

    Q-I have heard that to know a place you need to live there a week or a lifetime. In a week you know the differences between this place and "home. In a lifetime you know why there are differences. Do you agree?

    A- You can’t know a place in a week like someone who lives there; however, I can capture the essence of a place better than someone who does. I research before arriving, have an eye trained for telling detail, and I am objective about what I see and experience. People living in a place know it at a deeper level but often they can’t see themselves as clearly as an outsider. Travel writers can get a sharp snapshot of a place in a short time, and therefore serve a distinct purpose in society.

    Here’s an interview with a noted rabbi:

    Q: Did you really say, “Those who advocate abstinence-only sex education have blood on their hands?”

    Rabbi Block:Yes.They assure the ignorance of kids who could protect themselves from HIV/AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis, or unwanted pregnancy, on the disproven theory that, if you don’t teach kids that condoms provide protection, they won’t have sex. Yes, we want all teens to abstain. On the other hand, we know that intended abstinence fails more frequently than any other contraceptive measure. When abstinence fails, the kids who’ve had "abstinence only sex education" have 0% protection against potentially life-threatening sexually transmitted diseases, not to mention unplanned pregnancy.

    Pieces on 9/11 and Bush: The Only 9/11 Conspiracy, 9/11 Official Co-Conspirators, 9/11 Conspiracy Conclusion

    “Deadbeat patriots” wear flags made in China on their lapel, buy gas from countries that support terrorism, and approve any war as long as they and theirs don’t have to to risk death, physical, mental injury, or criminal charges for it. They support dropping bombs on women and children, kicking in doors, invading homes, imprisoning and torturing civilians to give them democracy as long as the cost in blood, treasure and conscience is paid by others.

    Clever politicians have learned that they can legally bribe freeloaders by promising them tax cuts. Let someone else pay for it, they say. So far someone else always has.  And some of those are caught in stop-loss hell because others think buying a yellow ribbon is all the support troops need. (Deadbeat Patriots )

    Miscellaneous  things: Hunting Camp Pranks, and Eating Tamales for Christmas

    Photos: Here’s a photo of me with Robert Flynn in 2008.

    image

    Update: Apparently Robert Flynn’s novel LAST KLICK (about a Vietnam war reporter) is available as a Kindle ebook for $1.99.

  • July Linkdump Social/Political 1

    Why is it standard operating procedure  for beauty pageant contestants to favor world peace & world leaders to favor war? — Constant Weader

    I’ve become a real fan of Constant Weader whose  realitychex blog covers a lot of the usual liberal haunts for commentary and analysis in a succinct & entertaining way. I found out about this woman by seeing the URL on all the great comments she made on NYT articles (which she generally reposts on her blog).

    Where  should one  go to read about current events? Reading the NYT headline page is a safe choice. For a while I would go to ThinkProgress/Matt Yglesias site, but I like the idea of checking an offbeat blog for a summary of the good stuff in NYT.

    By 2015 75% of American adults will be overweight or obese, and 41% will be obese.

    According to recent studies, as many as one in five girls between 10 and 18 years of age are now cutting themselves with razor blades or burning themselves with matches (according to Leonard Sax).

    In other words, the girls who are most successful at meeting gender-specific societal expectations appear to be just as likely as other females to be cutting themselves.  Not so for boys.  How come?  That’s one of the questions I try to answer in my book Girls on the Edge.  My bottom line is that these pretty girls are searching for a sense of self that’s not about how they look, but about who they are.  We reward them for how they look but we — i.e. American society — are much less interested in what’s going on inside.  Self-cutting fills that need for some of these girls — just as anorexia does for others, and obsessive perfectionism does in others.

    According to a Chronicle report, white children make up less than 8 percent of the Houston ISD enrollment… None of the 181 Texas state lawmakers are Hispanic Republicans.

    According to this NPR Article:

    "Children of parents who reported having a rule about bedtime scored about 6 percentage points higher on an assessment of their vocabulary compared with children whose parents did not report a rule about bedtime. They scored 7 percent higher on assessments of early math skills."

    Health care information site. Good and easy to find things.

    Melvin Goodman on how much of the defense department is privatized and lacking in accountability:

    Nearly a quarter of the federal budget is devoted to contracts to the private sector, with the new Department of Homeland Security and Office of National Intelligence serving as conduits for this money.

    Private contracts are now responsible for 70 percent of the intelligence budget, and private contractors represent more than half of the employees of the new National Counterterrorism Center. The trumpeting of "cyber war" marks the next cash cow for the defense industry.

    See 2 other articles by Melvin Goodman here and here.

    Steve Benen and commenters debate the soul of the Washington Post. I think the downfall began when Bob Woodward started writing Tell-All books about the Bush Administration.

    Realclimate asks whether we can provide different levels of reporting for differing proficiency levels.

    Joe Keohane reports on how brain science is finding that people cling to certain political beliefs, regardless if proven wrong.

    People ignorant of the facts could simply choose not to vote. But instead, it appears that misinformed people often have some of the strongest political opinions. A striking recent example was a study done in the year 2000, led by James Kuklinski of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He led an influential experiment in which more than 1,000 Illinois residents were asked questions about welfare — the percentage of the federal budget spent on welfare, the number of people enrolled in the program, the percentage of enrollees who are black, and the average payout. More than half indicated that they were confident that their answers were correct — but in fact only 3 percent of the people got more than half of the questions right. Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were by and large the ones who knew the least about the topic. (Most of these participants expressed views that suggested a strong antiwelfare bias.)

    Studies by other researchers have observed similar phenomena when addressing education, health care reform, immigration, affirmative action, gun control, and other issues that tend to attract strong partisan opinion. Kuklinski calls this sort of response the “I know I’m right” syndrome, and considers it a “potentially formidable problem” in a democratic system. “It implies not only that most people will resist correcting their factual beliefs,” he wrote, “but also that the very people who most need to correct them will be least likely to do so.”

    Other insights: people with wrong ideas are more likely to change when presented with direct contradictory evidence; just showing them an article doesn’t do any good. Self-esteem has something to do with it:

    Nyhan worked on one study in which he showed that people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t. This would also explain why demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are.

    Alan Bellows talks about how the 1985 New Coke marketing campaign overlooked the tendency of people to develop irrational reactions based on groupthink. The concept is informational conformity, defined as “the human tendency to unconsciously adjust one’s opinions to correlate with the outspoken views of the social group.”

    Informational conformity was first formally documented by Dr Muzafer Sherif in 1935, when he placed a group of subjects in a dark room with a single point of light in the distance. He asked them to estimate how much the light moved around, and although each person perceived a different amount of movement, most of them relinquished their own estimates to conform to the predominant guesses within the group. In reality, the light had not been moving at all; it only appeared to move because of the autokinetic effect, a quirk in visual perception where a bright point of light in complete darkness will appear to wander. It is thought that this imagined movement occurs due to the lack of a fixed visual reference point, and it may be the cause of many nighttime UFO sightings.

    (Michael Tobis relates this groupthink tendency to climate change).

    (I remember that era well, and New Coke was on everybody’s minds, even to the point where during a homily, my parish priest held up a can of New Coke and asked rhetorically whether there were more important things to worry about).

    David Corn explains why Politifact sometimes gets things only half-right:

    Yet PolitiFact didn’t evaluate Cheney’s remark. So here’s the real problem: Huffington made a charge that was rooted in reality. Cheney responded with a statement that had no basis in reality. Yet PolitiFact zeroed in only on the former and let the real lie escape. True, Huffington had dared PolitiFact to review her remark. But Adair and his intrepid band were free to expand the mission. The greater public service would have been to compare Huffington’s and Cheney’s comments and determine who was closer to the truth. This is where PolitiFact truly fell short.

    Matt Thompson talks about how news media drowns you with episodic content when  we yearn for  system content: 

    Chances are that most of the information you’ve encountered about this subject has been what I’d call episodic. Over time, you may have heard a lot about budget reconciliation, insurance premium hikes, the public option, the excise tax, the Wyden-Bennett bill, the Stupak amendment, and on and on and on. You know that Democrats are trying to do something to the health care system, but it’s either a government takeover or an insurance industry giveaway. Hard to tell.

    This constant torrent of episodic information is how many of us encounter information about current events. This has been true for as long as any of us has been alive, but in the wake of the real-time Web, it’s become ever more constant and ever more torrential.

    Hundreds of headlines wash over us every day. And part of why many of us engage in this flow is because we have faith that over time, this torrent of episodic knowledge is going to cohere into something more significant: a framework for genuinely understanding an issue. And we live with it ’cause it sort of works. Eventually you hear enough buzzwords like “single-payer” and “public option” and you start to feel like you can play along.

    See also:  Matt Thompson on 3 key parts of news stories you don’t usually get. Later Thompson describes 5 ways journalists can improve the news:

    You might have heard about Politico’s notorious goal of “winning the morning,” i.e. finding a scoop that’ll lead each day’s news cycle. That’s great, if you’re content with your stories having about as much impact as a popular tweet. Too many of us follow Politico’s lead.

    Instead, try to win the story. Aim to produce a work of journalism so excellent it’ll get passed around for weeks. Put your best storytelling chops to work on this. Try to supplant Wikipedia as the top Google result for your topic. This might not be a single article; it might be a nicely-packaged collection, a wiki, or something else you devise. The key is that it should be long-lasting and distinctive.

    Essay on the same topic by  Tristan Harris and Jay Rosen. Also Thompson has 10 questions journalists should ask themselves.  Also, there is a modest amount of discussion on the Future of Context website even though it doesn’t seem to be actively maintained.

    10 Mistakes JFK Jr. on the day his plan crashed. Interesting insights into the minds of nonprofessional pilots.

    Beijing and Mexico City have the worst traffic congestion. Houston has one of the best.

    Robert Sullivan on new ways to use buses in mass transit to improve efficiency:

    Flexibility remains the bus’s chief advantage—unrailed, they can go wherever we want them to go—and they’re a relative bargain. But over the last decade, in a few transit-enlightened cities around the world, the bus has received a dramatic makeover. It has been reengineered to load passengers more quickly. It has become much more energy-efficient. And, most important, the bus system—the network of bus lines and its relationship to the city street—has been rethought. Buses that used to share the street with cars and trucks are now driving in lanes reserved exclusively for buses and are speeding through cities like trains in the street. They are becoming more like subways.

    For me, this leaves out another obvious issue: decentralized mass transit system protects  against terrorist attacks.

    Great list of reasons why using cameras to give traffic tickets is a bad idea. (PDF Alert). I would add:

    • Before these red light cameras, were we facing an outbreak of people running red lights? In my experience, I haven’t seen much redlight running….
    • There are reasons to run red lights on occasion. But the ticketing process makes it impossible for the ticket recipient to have a specific memory about the incident in question (which would be necessary to defend himself). If there were a way for the ticket recipient to be receive immediate feedback about the violation, my opposition would be greatly reduced. But if I receive a ticket and a photo in the mail two weeks later, chances are I will have no memory of this specific incident (and be powerless to oppose it).

    Here’s one reason that I could find persuasive: saving police manpower! If police don’t have to handle routine stops, that could free up their time to do more pressing things. But the benefits of that would have to be proven. For example, traffic tickets may be a good excuse to stop cars exhibiting suspicious behavior.

    My personal problem with camera tickets is that I don’t know the threshold for ticketing. If i follow a car across when the light is yellow, I don’t know if that would be considered a violation. Are the firms looking for egregious cases? Somehow I feel that if there is revenue involved, the tendency will be to fine all people who meet some minimum threshold.

  • Linkdump: Ecology and Social Science

    I’ll be attending TedX Houston on Saturday.  Come grab me if you see me.

    10 Ways Cities Can kick the offshore oil habit.

    Here’s a beautifully written story about North Korean economic problems. Related: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary lives in North Korea.

    10 Studies on Meat and Global Warming. From the University of Chicago Study:

    In their study, Eshel and Martin compared the energy consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions that underlie five diets: average American, red meat, fish, poultry and vegetarian (including eggs and dairy), all equaling 3,774 calories per day.

    The vegetarian diet turned out to be the most energy-efficient, followed by poultry and the average American diet. Fish and red meat virtually tied as the least efficient.

    The impact of producing fish came as the study’s biggest surprise to Martin, an Assistant Professor in Geophysical Sciences. “Fish can be from one extreme to the other,” Martin said. Sardines and anchovies flourish near coastal areas and can be harvested with minimal energy expenditure. But swordfish and other large predatory species required energy-intensive long-distance voyages.

    (to follow up: you should try to buy frozen version of salmon rather than buying farm-raised salmon. Farm-raised stuff is usually shipped by airplane while frozen salmon is shipped by ship—which has a significantly lower carbon footprint). See also:  Tara Parker-Pope reports on a meta study exonerating beef from bad health .

    10 ways cities and towns can kick the offshore oil habit. (Basically, it’s smarter urban planning).

    Time Traveler John Titor tells us what 2036 was like.

    Here’s a great simulator for the US federal budget. One problem with political discourse is that most people (including myself) don’t have any sense of what kind of numbers we are talking about.

    Richard Florida’s list of the 10 least bohemian cities.

    I’m a big fan of the new Roku/Netflix facelift.  Here’s a recent presentation by netflix about their business model. Key points: DVD-by-mail will peak in 2012-13, better online advertising rates might allow Google to compete in the free-with-ads streaming video market, Netflix now is targeting premium channels like HBO and plans to go international sometime in  2010. (if you’re reading this from outside the US, you’re out of luck).

    Here’s a way to find demographic data about your zip code from the census. This is only 2000 data (2005 data will be released very soon). Here’s what I see about the 77082 zip code: In my zip code: 60% rent apartments, 11% have graduate degrees, 33% of adults have never been married, 17% of adults between 21-64 have a disability; 37% of adults over 64 have a disability & 11% of adults over 25 haven’t finished high school.

    Allison Aubrey reports on the  the value of sleep:

    "Children of parents who reported having a rule about bedtime scored about 6 percentage points higher on an assessment of their vocabulary compared with children whose parents did not report a rule about bedtime. They scored 7 percent higher on assessments of early math skills."

    See also: Sleep Warrior’s free ebook on the subject

    Finally, I did a long post last week about the Freedom Flotilla. Over the week I’ve followed it very closely but am not dumping links from it. Most of the interviews from eyewitnesses confirm that the Israelis shot first and that the flotilla were generally not resisting. Not only is Israel on shaky ground by insisting that it had the right to board a ship in international waters, its propaganda campaign was absolutely atrocious.

    Probably the most interesting thing I learned was the population:

    • Israel: 7 million
    • Egypt: 81 million
    • Jordan 5.9 million
    • Turkey: 73 million
    • Saudi Arabia: 24 million
    • Iraq: 30 million
    • Iran: 71 million

    Also, I learned some geography about latitude: Houston has the same latitude (approximately) as Suez and Kuwait City; Boston has the same latitude as Sofia and Rome….Wow!

  • Toxicology of an Oil Spill

    Here’s a must-read piece by Ricky Ott on how Exxon Valdez affected people:

    During the Exxon Valdez spill, health problems among cleanup workers became so widespread, so fast, that medical doctors, among others, sounded warnings. Dr. Robert Rigg, former Alaska medical director for Standard Alaska (BP), warned, “It is a known fact that neurologic changes (brain damage), skin disorders (including cancer), liver and kidney damage, cancer of other organ systems, and medical complications–secondary to exposure to working unprotected in (or inadequately protected)–can and will occur to workers exposed to crude oil and other petrochemical by-products. While short-term complaints, i.e., skin irritation, nausea, dizziness, pulmonary symptoms, etc., may be the initial signs of exposure and toxicity, the more serious long-term effects must be prevented.”[1]

    Unfortunately, Exxon called the short-term symptoms, “the Valdez Crud,” and dismissed 6,722 cases of respiratory claims from cleanup workers as “colds or flu” using an exemption under OSHA’s hazardous waste cleanup reporting requirements.[2]

    Sadly, sick Exxon cleanup workers were left to suffer and pay their own medical expenses. I know of many who have been disabled by their illnesses – or have died.

    Here is that OSHA Footnote: U.S. Dept. of Labor, OSHA 29 CFR Part 1904.5(b)(2)(viii): “Colds and flu will not be considered work-related.”

    Here’s her thoughts  about the use of dispersants by BP:

    So, Riki, explain why some people are a little concerned that this chemical dispersant will actually do more harm than good?
    OTT: Chemical dispersants involve a trade-off. And the trade-off is keeping as much – away from hitting the beaches.  So we’re trying to keep the oil from hitting the beaches because once it hits the beaches, there is really the oil industry has no way to clean up oil once it hits the beaches.
    WHITFIELD: So the idea is that this chemical will slow down the oil so it won’t hit the beaches. But here is the other fear that some have described, and environmentalists I spoke with last hour said, OK, so this chemical attaches itself to the oil, the oil then sinks, but it gets down to the bottom of the gulf, so, say you have a hurricane, well, that’s going to stir up the bottom, these big globs of oil will find its way into wildlife or on to the sea grasses, on to the shores. Do you believe that?
    OTT: What is going on is with dispersants, in an oil spill, to dissolve oil, light dissolve light, so you have to use a toxic solvent. Oil is toxic. You have to use a chemical, an oil-based solvent to dissolve the oil. So it gets stirred up by wind and waves, it acts like Joy soap on the surface of the water where it makes the oil sheen divide out and split.
    And it mixes with the water so you get tiny little oil droplets down in the water column. And these – the trade-off is that you’re trying to save animals on shore by trading off animals and fish in the water column.
    WHITFIELD: I see.
    OTT: You’re killing shrimp eggs.

    WHITFIELD: So then, why would – why would BP want to use this? Why would they reportedly get the endorsement from the EPA to actually use this and put these chemicals in the water today?
    OTT: Because they’re desperately trying to keep the oil from hitting land fall where it will make an even bigger mess. And the unfortunate truth is that the oil companies have developed chemical dispersants, they buy them from themselves, write off the expense of buying the dispersants as a tax write-off, and they have really effectively stopped their contingency plans if the contingency plans did not include use of dispersants, there would be no oil spill contingency plan.
    Oil development would not be allowed to happen. The oil companies have just — have not come up with really any effective tool. You’re seeing what is going on with the booms. And the booms just stop slicks on the surface. Everywhere you see oil on the surface, there is a huge underwater cloud of oil.
    WHITFIELD: So it is still getting through. So also in your view then, this chemical dispersants, something is going to be sacrificed in this oil spill, whether it is the livelihood on the shores, the marsh lands, or it is going to be the shrimp eggs, other wildlife, marine life living in the depths of the gulf. You cannot save both.
    One will have to be – one body will have to be sacrificed in these measures of containing the oil?
    OTT: Yes. And actually what we’re talking about here, no dispersant is 100 percent effective. So all we’re talking about is killing sea life in the ocean, and making less of a mess on the beaches. So you’re actually losing both.
    WHITFIELD: Wow.
    OTT: And as far as – and what happened with Exxon Valdez is since the dispersants failed, there was a huge storm that came up and they were pretty much ineffective right off the bat.
    WHITFIELD: You know, what is remarkable, I saw the some numbers in the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, only four, four percent of the oil was ever recovered, and if this is much larger, some say maybe five times larger than the oil spill of "Valdez," you have to wonder exactly what kind of percentage, how much oil could actually be contained at all in this case.
    OTT: Yes. And that’s – nothing has improved, believe me, since Exxon Valdez. We’re still looking at those –

    I expect that this time around there will be better health and safety for workers and better OSHA oversight. To put it simply: we now know what the potential harms are.

    At the same time, this disaster is potentially bigger than Valdez. Estimates about the oil flow rate have gone from 1000 barrels a day to 5000 barrels a day (as of last Wednesday) to 20,000 barrels of oil each day (as of this weekend—note: not an official estimate).

    Over the next few years I’m sure we will find people and companies to blame. (Already Jason Leopold reports that BP failed to keep updated schematics of their piping and instruments, which may have been a contributing factor to the accident).

    I predict this will  have a devastating and transformative  effect on Houston:  layoffs, lawsuits and bankruptcies. And we’re not anywhere near the path of where the oil spill is headed. 

    I think it will also have a psychological effect. The price of oil will continue rising for various reasons, but also  as a result of business uncertainty created by this crisis. There will be lots of blowback against the oil industry (funny how fickle the public can be about these things), taxes, fines, more regulations,  removal of subsidies and (I hope) a reconsideration of our national energy policy with respect to climate change.

    Other than hitting the pocketbooks of BP/Halliburton/Anadarko, it’s hard to predict whether other oil companies will feel  a fallout. (But the prices will surely be going up).

    Two news sources to follow over the next few weeks (in addition to Climate Change and Grist) will be News Watch energy blog from the Houston Chronicle (generally pro-oil, but not insanely so) and  the peak oil blog Oil Drum (generally alarmist, but frequented by knowledgeable industry people).

    Unrelated: During this ecological crisis, the subject for this week’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria is an interview with the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Does anyone seriously worry that Goldman Sachs won’t be able to get their side of the story out?

  • Random Literary Junk & A.F.S.E.

    Some random stuff marginally related to ebooks:  image

  • Post-SXSW Linkdump

    Lots of small things to blog about.

    Allegory of the Cave as a claymation film (3 minutes). Great but it made me realize how much I missed the first time I read Plato!

    Here’s  Life after Tomorrow, a  delightful 70 minute documentary about some of the people who starred in the Annie Broadway play as children. This film is pure joy.

    From the health care debate, here is Natoma Canfield’s letter to Obama  and an update about her health.

    AT SXSW Interactive I saw Dan Roam talk about visual thinking. (Here are his succinct diagrams illustrating the health care debate).  I bought both of his books and found them fascinating. The trick is reading the text and trying to imagine how Roam will illustrate these abstract ideas.  Here is an audio interview with Dan Roam by Moira Gunn.

    I just learned that apparently you can use a Pen + pad device to draw over Power Point presentations. You need a USB device costing about $50-75, but it’s extremely helpful, especially if you are trying to do on-the-flaw diagrams.

    Sam Greenspan’s 11 Funny Graphs about Twitter.

    Although I like idiotprogrammer as a blog name, I would seriously change it to Booby Naked (just because it’s more memorable). Just an idle thought.

    Bill Palmer asks how long it will take for the iPad to become a kind of joke:

    Hundreds of thousands of people have already plunked down for a device that they can’t even get their hands on until next month, and many of them will go wait in line to pick it up because they don’t want to be in the bathroom when the delivery man comes and risk not being among the first to get their hands on one. The question isn’t whether Apple will sell a million iPads in the first year, but how many millions. As such, the first generation iPad will be consumed by the masses in a way that the first (second, third) generation iPod never was. Here’s the funny part: no matter how well received the first generation iPad might be next month, even if most users consider it to be a gift from above, within two or three years it’ll be considered a joke in comparison to whatever the future iPad lineup looks like at that point.

    Some fascinating audio:

  • New health insurance plan

    I just updated my guide to buying individual health insurance in Texas. For the record, as a 44 year old, I obtained health coverage with $5000 for $132 with Aetna Texas in Jan, 2009. By April, it had hit $188. I switched to a comparable plan with United Health  with $5000 deductible for $167.

    Even though I asked a lot of questions about the new policy and took good notes, I still feel that I’m missing a lot and making a half-informed decision. This is unsurprising given the fact that choosing a health care plan requires a lot of mental effort and time (a good 2 hours).

    For now I am still healthy, but I expect there will come a time when a medical history will start to make it harder to find a good private plan.

  • Silly hamster scams

    From the people who brought you Amish porn (SFW! – but in poor taste!) here is a wacky flying hamster experiment gone awry. Here’s what happens when animal rights people protest (later, the website guy makes a kind of retraction).

    Related: the same people seem to have cracked the Willa Wonka code: it’s really about college sex orgies!

    I can enjoy a good hoax, but the thing about the Internet is that there is no way to know if one  person’s comedy is another person’s sadism.

  • Interview with Vavrek & John Holowach (Tryad)

    Recently writer and critic Robert Nagle made a list of 11 Incredible Musicians You Can Download for Free . Many of the musicians on this top list make their music freely available on Jamendo, a free and legal music sharing site. Several musicians  appearing on this  list also gave interviews to this blog  (Read the other interviews).  You can also download a free sampler containing full songs from artists profiled here . listentryad

    Tryad is an amazing musical group of people who never met until they produced an album. Listen, their second album is often ranked as the #1 most frequently listened to out of Jamendo’s 29,000 free albums. It is quiet, mysterious, unsettling, full of piano and strong rhythms, pauses, occasional crashes and silences (it’s labeled as “Industrial Classical Pop”).  Although it  includes a core group of  performers, most of the songs are built upon songs by  other Jamendo artists.   The results are  astonishing. Struttin’ is a kind of funky protest song about the music industry. Breathe is an intimate song  that poses a question to an imaginary lover. Alone is a meditation on solitude that almost seems … joyful. Lovely is an uplifting romantic ballad  that offers consolation to a sad individual  (“trees and galaxies/can’t you see/just like these/you are so lovely/how could you ever think you’re separate from everything”). Mesmerize takes a lovely song by Brad Sucks, embellishes it with piano and  gives the original melody a new meaning…and profundity. This is a powerful  song by Vavrek based on a piano melody by Antony Raijekov with a solemn rhythm.   The mysterious Waltz into the Moonlight uses  gentle tapping sounds to give the song a steady  momentum.

    (more…)