Mr. Rogers

Speck was a little under the weather recently, and I took the opportunity to show her her first episodes of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. She was under the impression that she wouldn't like them (having seen some documentary footage about him, maybe?), but she was totally engrossed, from the first shoe-change to the bonus-materials tour of a construction paper factory, and eager to see them again.

For me, the experience was less of recall from my own childhood -- honestly, who remembers anything specific from age 4? -- than of an overwhelming wave of appreciation for this man and his approach to children, his understanding of their questions about the world, and his ability to talk to them right out of the television in a way that made them want to answer back and care about their friendship with him. It was all I could do to not openly weep right there on the couch, and this little exchange of letters allowed me to do it just now at the office instead. What a delicate appreciation he had of the people he was addressing, and a gentle way of giving them a gift from a distance.

Thanks, Mr. Rogers, for all the time you took making good things in this world, and for the rare devotion to focus on little kids as people for so many years. A higher being in a sense that many religious traditions would aspire to...

(via Medley on Twitter)

Edit: idiotic to write about Rogers without linking to this profile, about which I can only say, Holy crap!

(via kottke)

Wednesday giggle

Well, *I* just had a 2-hour staff meeting, so I could use one, anyway:

ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS

Great annotated photos expressing many goofy things; it's like a cross between Cute Overload and Demotivators, Inc. Righteous!

(via NowThis)

Tuesday baby-blogging

A few recent cute ones, taken upon the first testing of a new skateboard!


This serious, helmeted look cracks me up a bit.
Maybe it just looks like a kid older than 3.5.


Skateboarding was a hit!!
(Not a surprise, since this was a direct request.)

Will be interested to see how/when the eventual transition to no-hands skating goes, and then to a proper higher deck placement as her confidence increases. But right now, this takes plenty of concentration, and apparently wore out her legs on the way to the playground. Still, seems fun to me!

Thought for the day

The only thing that is real is that we have six roots within us. Three roots of good and three roots of evil. The latter are greed, hate and delusion, but we also have their opposites: generosity, love and wisdom. Take an interest in this matter. If one investigates this and doesn't get anxious about it, then one can easily accept these six roots in everybody. No difficulty at all, when one has seen them in oneself. They are the underlying roots of everyone's behavior. Then we can look at ourselves a little more realistically, namely not blaming ourselves for the unwholesome roots, not patting ourselves on the back for the wholesome ones, but rather accepting their existence within us. We can also accept others more clear-sightedly and have a much easier time relating to them. We will not suffer from disappointments and we won't blame, because we won't live in a world where only black or white exists. Such a world doesn't exist.

- Ayya Khema

(via whiskey river)

To hell in a handbasket

I apparently just read, seethe, and file the links away for some imaginary future date when I'll have lots of spare time to analyze, ponder, and blog. But that's not happenin'! So here's a record-breaking heap of links from the last three months, that pain me to varying degrees and/or foreshadow the end of the American experiment:

I. Politics

• Oh, What Did You Think Would Happen? -- Governor Christie renegs on a major political deal, unashamedly
  
  
• The First Amendment, Upside Down -- campaign finance *stifles* speech?!?
  
  
• Mysterious Firm Gives $1 Million To Pro-Romney Group, Closes Shop
  
  
• Why the Press Loves Jon Huntsman but Ignores Ron Paul -- The media is fascinated by protest candidates who critique their own parties, but it marginalizes those who attack the establishment [fascinating!!]
  
  
• Conservative pundits grapple with ‘anti-science’ charge, flail
  
  
• Wis. Official To DMV Employees: Don't Offer People Free Voter-ID Cards Unless They Ask (no reason to *encourage* civic participation by the poor!)
  
  
• When Ronald Reagan Was President, There Was A Soviet Union And A Cold War -- but now mindless conformity is all the GOP needs
  
  
• Dennis G. Jacobs: Case study in judicial pathology -- more turning the Constitution inside out in the name of Security...
  

II. Economy

• Social Security provides the majority of income for three-fifths of Americans age 65+, but hey! let's whack at it and keep those old folks scramblin'!
  
  
• Related: We know how to reduce poverty among seniors
  
  
• Bill Gross: Deficit reduction can — and should — wait -- even big Wall Streeters can see the obvious! why not our political leaders?
  
  
• British Economy, After Austerity, at Zero Growth in the Past Nine Months -- more evidence that our approach is a deadly one
  
  
• Public special ed employee has $0 paycheck after health insurance deductions -- ah, but the public sector is pampered!
  
  
• A rising hunger among children -- eventually a lack of money affects nutrition and these children's futures
  
  
• The Embarrassment of the Poverty Rate -- is that it gets higher as we throw up our hands
  
  
• The Price of Rural Life -- disproportionately dependent on national support
  
  
• Big oil companies make huge profits with taxpayer support but cut jobs anyway
  

III. Health Care

• How our two-tiered healthcare system hurts kids -- wait longer for appointments and care than identical symptoms with private insurance
  
  
• Perversity -- public health interests and the financial interest of hospitals are often at odds, showing why capitalism is unlikely to solve this one
  

IV. Other stuff

• All Work and No Pay: The Great Speedup -- American workers getting squeezed from both ends
  
  
• Guilt Through Algorithmic Association -- when what people Google starts affecting your life or your safety (really scary!)
  
  
• Even married monogamous women are dirty sluts who deserve cancer now -- when a vaccine becomes a political football
  
  
• Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas -- when you hear that "when 10% hold an unshakeable belief" is the threshold, it makes more sense of the craziness that passes for Conventional Wisdom these days...
  
  
• Return of the Bug-Eyed Bachmann -- not so funny when you clue into the gender politics of such images -- more here.
  
  
• A Message To Women From A Man: You Are Not "Crazy" -- more on how women's opinions and feelings get dismissed
  
  
• Finally, really pulling lemons out of the lemonade pitcher: Ugandans say they were beaten and forced from homes to make room for carbon credit forest. Of course...
  
  

Say it ain't so

Digby notes some disturbing parallels between our response to the current economic situation and steps taken during early stages of the Great Depression. Nontrivially alarming how little we've apparently learned...

Maybe I'm just grumpy

...but I think this current headline could sort of summarize the GOP's problems/strategies on most fronts over recent years:

Super Committee Riven By Major Divide Over Basic Facts

If those tasked with preventing disaster are going to sit around yelling "Earth is flat!" "Earth is round!" then we're already lost.

Quote of the day

Apropos to my previous post, but from a different context:

I no longer fear bad men doing bad things. I now fear ignorant people doing ignorant things out of their own misguided fear that the world is a horrible place.

Ridiculous that we are afraid to exercise our own parental judgement, to live our lives as if those around us were doing the same...

Who we became over the last 10 years

I was discussing with Spouse the degree to which I was resistant to this weekend's memorialization of 9/11. A part of me is fine with our sharing as a nation the shock and sorrow of that day, finding some unity again, but that possibility has been obliterated by ten years of politicization of the event, of claiming it as justification for unwarranted actions overseas, civil rights intrusions at home, and a general willingness to make our decisions out of fear and defensiveness rather than rationality or our founding principles. It leaves me frustrated with our nation and our leaders, and unable to get back to the reality of the searing moment we're trying to commemorate.

How have we changed in the last ten years? Only insofar as we've learned nothing, continue to give up our freedoms, get used to continuous intrusions on our rights and persons in the name of "security." Just ask this everyday Ohio mom who was detained and treated like dirt for having the nerve to, um, fly in a plane while brown? There appears to be no penalty for cruelty and injustice anymore, as long as somebody is sufficiently nervous along the way, and nobody has any concrete rights that they can rely on once DHS is involved. It's more than scary -- it's alienating, infuriating, heart-rending. This isn't who we wanted to be; why have we let bin Laden push us there?

About my feeling

I guess I'm with Krugman on this one. That, and Sunday's comics pages were really poisoned. Enough that my tennis and football frolics were all soberized -- the comics too? Have we lost all sense of humor in this country?

Shameless

Am left speechless by this conservative columnist who admits that he's against registering the poor to vote. I guess I'm just amazed that there are really people who think that moving big blocks of money around is more "productive" than fixing your sink or assembling your gadgets. Or that the poor care about robbing the wealthy more than just being able to live their lives happily and safely. Loathesome.

Seems obvious but it's not

A very cogent and concise argument against the current Google+ "real-name" policy: Google+ Can Be A Social Network Or The Name Police – Not Both

The Google+ common name policy is insane. It creates an antisocial space in what is supposed to be a social network. It is at odds with basic human social behavior; its implementation is NECESSARILY arbitrary and infuriating, and it is actively damaging the Google+ brand and indeed the broader Google brand.

Indeed, people are fleeing the network, the Blogger host, and even finding alternative search engines. The wondrous allure of "starting over" with all the lessons of Facebook in hand has been wiped away by this demonstration of complete obliviousness to how people operate in the world (of which the Internet is just one slice)...

(More on the arguments against using/requiring real names, when pseudonyms do the job just fine, here.)

Thought of the day

A Modest Proposal

Since conservatives claim to believe that the stimulus destroyed the economy, how about we have Stimulus II which only goes to states with Democratic governors. Everybody's happy!

- Atrios

(directly from Eschaton)