better the devil we know, beach house view, freedom and tuna
June 30, 2009 at 5:56 pm | In culture, economic, environmental, photography, photoshop | Leave a CommentSome sly satire re the public option as part of health-care reform, Debate over government-funded police protection heats up
Now that the president and the Democrats in Congress have set a fall deadline for legislative action on universal police protection for all Americans, battle lines are being drawn on Capitol Hill. On the right are conservative defenders of America’s system of for-profit, private mercenaries. The Democrats are divided among progressives who favor universal, publicly funded police who would protect all citizens against crime, and moderate and conservative Democrats who argue that any citizen security reform should leave America’s existing system of soldiers for hire in place.
“Do we want long wait times when we call for the police, like people in countries with socialized police forces?” Sen. Russell Flack, R-Ga., asked during a floor debate yesterday. “Under our system, we can choose our own police officers, as long as we pay for protection out of our own pockets. Do we want some government bureaucrat choosing the police for us?”
Which reminds me of Timothy Noah’s privatized miltary comparison. The tiresome argument usually goes that the police and military are been pronounced by the woodland nymphs of all things that reside under the sacred tree of a market economy and engraved in stone no less, that thy govmint shall run stuff like the military and police, but may the great Morrigan, Goddess of war and revenge have mercy on your soul should the people have a competitive public option for health-care. Slightly ironic that the military has take it or leave it health-care. Its the genuine article, the authoritarian socialized medicine that keeps the public options opponents up at night thinking of new epitaphs to call it and combing over obscure cheery picked statistics that wilt in daylight.
You’re giving up basic freedoms to save a little money. A public option is just that. Its hardly freedom for millions of Americans to rely on emergency rooms and bills that drive them into bankruptcy. Almost all police and sheriffs departments rely on state run plans or plans that have been negotiated with private insurers, why can’t everyone else have that option. Actually Lind’s piece is barely satire since block grants, specific government funding aimed at law enforcement, accountability to Department of Justice guidelines and various federal statutes, our police departments are, using the current political pundit criteria, already socialized. Since we always seem to have a few rogue or corrupt police on trial isn’t that a good argument against doing the same with health-care. Only if we ignore the corruption, malpractice, neglect and miscellaneous issues with private insurance companies and health-care providers. All the analogies that one can find between a public option and the vaulted virtues of the private sector include the same institutionalized problems that follow every human run organization – thus anecdotal stories up the yinyang. For many the argument against any kind of optional public health plan seems to include, either directly or by insinuation, the better the devil we know argument. Its not a good argument, but it scares enough people to keep the debate a little over heated.
Street Portrait Photo How To(VIDEO)
Photographer Clay Enos goes from shooting super heroes on the set of Watchmen to taking street portraits of random people.
Enos uses a Nikon, natural light and some white background paper to get some amazing results.
French fishermen vs. media stars in “The Tuna Wars”
French fishermen do not normally cross paths with the stars of stage and screen, but recent environmental fights have put these mismatched groups at odds:
At stake is the survival of the bluefin tuna, a single specimen of which can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars – a price that has seen stocks decline in some areas by up to 90%.
This month Sienna Miller, Elle Macpherson, Jemima Khan, Sting and others signed a letter to Nobu, a famous upmarket restaurant chain part-owned by Robert De Niro, threatening a boycott of their favourite haunt. Stephen Fry, one of the celebrity campaigners, wrote: “It’s astounding lunacy to serve up endangered species for sushi. There’s no justification for peddling extinction, yet that is exactly what Nobu is doing in restaurants around the world.”
The restaurant has so far refused to take it off the menu, citing its cultural importance in Japan and “enormous demand”, but the battle goes on. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Atlantic bluefin will be wiped out in three years unless radical action is taken.
What will the blue fin tuna eaters do once their coveted sushi favorite becomes so rare fishing for it is impractical or extinct. Move on to the next delicacy, then on to the next. Applying our heath-care thinking caps, stopping the carnage of the blue fin fishery would deprive sushi fanatics of their freedom. So extinction please and more of it.
the virtues of rich white conservative booty calls, golden gate, learn to love the toxic coal dust
June 29, 2009 at 6:09 pm | In art, culture, environmental, photoshop | Leave a CommentThe morning news shows, the late afternoon talk shows, the bookstores, print magazines, webzines and blogs present an endless supply of relationship advice, takes on marriage and all the ingredients one needs to possess that dull eyed look of mildly drugged happiness. Conservative columnist Ross Douthat at the NYT didn’t think that was enough. Ross is in a real pickle. It just so happens two of his own have recently bit the adultery dust. One (John Ensign) may have also committed extortion, while Governor Sanford might have used tax payer money to enhance his wandering ways. What is a clever boy to do. The Way We Love Now or Ross on the Virtues of Rich White Conservative Booty Calls
These irrepressible passions make a fascinating counterpoint to the complaint, advanced this month by two of the nation’s finest essayists, that modern relationships have been drained of danger and purged of eros.
What are the odds. Two scandals. Both involving risks, financial and political, and a major piece of media turf occupied by a fellow con, suddenly extols the virtues of of untamed passions and intrigue. Many cons are wannabe clever boys, but are not because they would never takes the trouble to climb up the back alley drain pipe, run over the roof and shimmy down the air ventilation shaft to deflect blame.
Both writers depict a country where pragmatic anxieties — think of the children! think of the mortgage! — are forever trumping romance and dulling the libido. Theirs is a nation of nesters who have clipped their own wings.
Poor Ensign and Sanford were merely real men, stout hearted men filled with testosterone like the men of yore who had the brass balls to say to hell with the kids I’m getting my freak on. There will be no straight forward columns about personal matters being personal or perhaps something about the hypocrisy of the self-righteousness crowd from Ross.
As Nehring observes, our hyper-educated, socially-liberal elite is considerably more romantically conservative than its blasé attitude toward pornography or premarital sex would lead you to expect.
That’s con-speak for its the poor trash that really be do’in the horizontal shuffle so do not be fooled by the constant parade of Gucci loafers. Wealthy elite sex is clean and rarely results in rug rats so just keep walk’n. Our romance and sexually correct socio-economist shows us the verbal version of a snake eating its tail in one paragraph.
Better, perhaps, if this dynamic were reversed. Our meritocrats could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess. [ ]… But most Americans, particularly those of modest means, would benefit from greater caution and stability in their romantic entanglements.
If only poor folk would get their birth rate down and rich meritocrats? would betray their families more, the metaphysical tides of happiness would ripple in soft waves across America’s furrowed brow.
update: Ross it have a sentence appended in parenthesis about all that intrigue not being for parents and older folks. Still since so much of his argument was either contradictory or just silly, that sentence seemed like a flute in a trombone band.
Top Ten List on Why President Obama Must Visit Appalachia
3) Coal Companies Receive A Lot of Welfare, and Martin County, Kentucky, Home of the War on Poverty, Lost 67 Percent of Its Coal Mining Jobs Due to Stripped Down Mountaintop Removal Operations: For a chart on the relationship between mountaintop removal, lost jobs and poverty in Martin County, see: http://www.kftc.org/our-work/canary-project/campaigns/mtr/county-profiles
4) Like Coalfield Parents, President Obama Wouldn’t Want to Send His Daughters to the Marsh Fork Elementary School Either: Unlike the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, children at Marsh Fork school in Sundial, West Virginia, must play in toxic coal dust from a nearby coal silo, as 2.8 billion gallons of coal sludge held back by a precarious earthen dam stare down daily at the playground, as mountaintop removal explosions take place nearby.
Ross would probably tell us we’re raising nation of weenies. If you don’t learn to suck up that toxic coal dust as a kid you’re grow up with two healthy lungs and have a lot of unprotected sex.
John Lydon by Elizabeth Peyton 1994. Pencil on notebook paper. Not always on display, but in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Some might know Lyndon better as Johnny Rotten. Peyton has done quite few stretches of musicians.
confrontations and results, suspected domestic terrorist arrested, bathsheba by giovanni battista naldini
June 28, 2009 at 4:11 pm | In architecture, art, culture, photography, sociology | Leave a Comment
My wife and I were on a crowded 1 train last year when a young red-haired woman turned to the woman seated next to her, who was playing her iPod way too loud.
“Hey, mind if I listen?” the redhead said, and without waiting for a response, plucked the woman’s left earbud, placed it in her own ear, and began bobbing her head to the music. The iPod owner looked mortified. The car grew silent save for the blare. I looked at my wife, who had heard me rant about this so many times, she knew exactly what I was thinking: At last, someone was taking a stand.
This isn’t an advice blog, but unless you’re very good at either charming confrantations or intimating people I’d try some ear plugs. Some people are actually reasonable and will turn down their music players, but most of the time you get two responses. One, the spite response. People figure they’re already using headphones, they’re in their little zone and resent what they see as a petty intrusion. The second is not much better. You can see they are embarrassed and the descent part of them is saying turn it down, but another, low self esteem side of them takes your polite request as a contest of wills and they are not going to let a stranger boss them around.
Thinking good thoughts for these folks, Britain demands release of nine Tehran embassy staff.
Britain today condemned the arrest of nine employees of the British embassy in Tehran and demanded their immediate release.
Jarmund/Vigsnaes Architecture: Farm house
…(Norway) – this farm house by jarmund/vigsnaes architecture echoes the materials and design
of an old barn. the private home covers only 165m2 but feels light and spacious thanks to a continuous band of windows that wrap around..
I liked the design, but they are tearing down the old barn that inspired some of the design. From the looks of it, the barn had a lot of good wood timber that could have been reclaimed to build the minimalist modern house. Cool design, poor planning.
Former Kansas City KKK leader indicted in 2004 mail bomb
“There are few criminal acts as cowardly as a parcel bomb,” said Christopher White of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Phoenix.
In cowardly terms it rates up there with gunning down doctors because the perp felt the the doctor had committed crimes. Thoughts perpetuated by clowns like Bill O’Reilly. Also from the same report,
Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said some anti-government groups that aren’t necessarily racist — such as sovereign-citizen activists and tax protesters — now are finding common cause with white supremacists.
“These two things have dovetailed due to the election of the first black president,” said Beirich. “The anti-government movement is more racialized.”
The economic crisis also has played a role, said Mark Pitcavage, a research director for the Anti-Defamation League. Occasionally, people in desperate financial shape look for scapegoats and take extreme actions, he said.
Dennis Mahon never strayed far from the movement.
After moving to Tulsa, he became the Midwestern consultant for the White Aryan Resistance and operated a Dial-a-Racist hot line. In 1991, he made headlines for going to Germany to recruit. He said his audiences included racist skinheads.
[ ]…“I think white men are finally realizing there’s no other solution but violence,” he said.
In a 2005 interview, Mahon said many supremacist groups had turned into “wimps.”
Bathsheba by Giovanni Battista Naldini 1570s. In one of the more bizarre opinion pieces on Governer Sanford’s inability to exercise control over his own zipper, a Mark Steyn blames big gov’mint and liberalism.
be careful what you say in front of the finch, when a governor is like a king, painted blue sun
June 27, 2009 at 3:50 pm | In culture, graphic art, photoshop, science | Leave a CommentResearchers see evidence of memory in the songbird brain
When a zebra finch hears a new song from a member of its own species, the experience changes gene expression in its brain in unexpected ways, researchers report. The sequential switching on and off of thousands of genes after a bird hears a new tune offers a new picture of memory in the songbird brain.
Not every new song they heard made permanent gene changes. While its amazing that the zebra finches can possess this level of memory and devout considerable biological resources to it, if every new song made permanent gene changes it be bio overload. The finch ignores some songs or parts of songs, seems to process parts of some songs, but still regulates the genes and new protein production so the new input does not overwhelm normal functioning.
For the hard core science geeks that were wondering how they got these genetic snapshots to determine their findings, the researchers used microarrays.
All those chart and graph making skills they teach in school actually get put to good use once in a while, Apocalypse Not: Behind the Swine Flu Hysteria
Sometimes you have to wonder about the evolutionary or social benefits of trying to give a guy a break. The day after John Dickerson’s poignant defense of Governor Sanford’s basic ‘humanity”, South Carolina Governor Sanford Compares Himself to King David. Thanks you governor for that non-lesson in humility. We all make a screwy comparison once in a while, but some people and groups seem to have more of a flare for it then others. While I was researching something about the history of slavery I came across this gem, Virginia state representative Robert Marshall (R) compares stimulus package to slavery.
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