Holiday cheer

Or, at least an end-of-year batch of cheerful and/or fascinating links to tide you through quiet afternoons of eggnog recovery. Hooray!!

Fascinating

• My political philosophy and personal philosophy are not the same
  
  
• Taxing Job Creators -- not how it's usually explained...
  
  
• Audiobooks: A Cautionary Tale -- how authors can get happier outcomes
  
  
• Insomnia drugs waking people from comas
  
  
• 2011: The Science Year in Brief
  
  
• 12 Ways to Make Congress Work -- certainly raises some interesting ideas!
  
  
• I Would Like To Help You Get Your Show Cancelled -- on life in the TV writers' world

Cheerful/hilarious!

• The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah!
  
  
• A community design success from Philadelphia
  
  
• Planting Wind Energy on Farms May Help Crops, Say Researchers
  
  
• Louis C.K.'s giant pool of money -- a great story on many fronts
  
  
• Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work! (worth repeating)
  
  
• Generation X Doesn’t Want to Hear It
  
  
• New Decoy Website Launched To Lure Away All Moronic Internet Commenters (if only!!)
  
  
• Pointlessly Gendered Products
  
  
• I’m Christian, unless you’re gay. -- a heartfelt essay about living your supposed values
  
  
• An open letter to Minnesota state senator Amy Koch (gays apologize for causing her adultery)
  
  
• xkcd presents Some new science mnemonics
  
  
• What group projects teach
  
  
• Tim Minchin: If I Didn't Have You [video]
  
  
• I Have No Words -- Mike Tyson as Herman Cain
  
  
• 18,000 People Cheer Thing Going Through Thing -- sports satire
  
  
• Fabulous dance performance [video]
  
  
• The most beautiful literary mystery in Edinburgh -- be sure to click to see them all
  
  
• Charlie Todd: The shared experience of absurdity -- some great projects from Improv Everywhere
  
  
• Turtle has some wisdom to share (in ALL CAPS)
  
  
• Holiday pupcakes are almost done (oh, the cuteness!)
  
  
• Finally, this photo just makes me happy.
  

Quote of the day

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

- Ted Hughes

(via whiskey river)

Taking the long view

Really good piece over at Hullabaloo about what liberals should be trying to accomplish not only in terms of near-term domestic policies but in terms of the future evolution of the truly global economy and its level of justice toward all. It's a little on the long and chewy side, but really important. It's hard for me to imagine the political mechanisms for this level of global organization of the "90%," even if they feel some psychological kinship already, but lack of imagination is no excuse -- we need to find a way to give labor some kind of voice/leverage before it's already plutocrats all the way down.

Go, read it already. Things to mull.

(via a Medley tweet)

Widespread frustration

Am finding this a very frustrating time to be a well-informed citizen of the world -- rabid politics is dooming us to extended recession, America seems to be near-single-handedly preventing the world from addressing global warming before it's too late, and our government is reacting violently to expressions of free speech and public demonstrations. I'm short of time, but I hate to let my "grumpy" file get any thicker before Christmas, so here's a big frustration dump from the last month or two, without much additional comment:

• How evo psych is laying waste to responsible science journalism
  
  
• Essays on the trap of US student debt
  
  
• Sexism's Low-Grade Fever
  
  
• The Psychology of Nakedness (and unfortunate implications for opinions of women)
  
  
• A flurry of how online harrassment of women is completely different from what men experience (in both quantity and sometimes-terrifying quality):
  
  
  1. On being harassed: a little GF history and some current events
     
     
  2. But How Do You Know It’s Sexist? The #MenCallMeThings Round-Up
     
     
  3. The Internet Miniskirt
     
     
  4. "You should have your tongue ripped out": the reality of sexist abuse online
     
  
  
• What baseball tells us about racism
  
  
• Congressional Dysfunction Begins To Spook Old Pros
  
  
• What We Want to See On TV: Handsome Politicians
  
  
• EPA chief tells GOP to STFU
  
  
• Wal-Mart to Cut Healthcare Benefits
  
  
• Lack of jobs leaves more suburban, middle class sliding into poverty
  
  
• CHART OF THE DAY: Paul Ryan Wrong About Upwardly Mobile America
  
  
• CHART OF THE DAY: Long Term Unemployment Is A Huge Problem — Especially If You’re Old
  
  
• Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census
  
  
• New Cartoon: Government To The Rescue!
  
  
• Worthless (we can always protect the banksters somehow)
  
  
• A Banker Speaks, With Regret

  My daughter and I are reading Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” aloud to each other, and those Depression-era injustices seem so familiar today. That’s why the Occupy movement resonates so deeply: When the federal government goes all-out to rescue errant bankers, and stiffs homeowners, that’s not just bad economics. It’s also wrong.

  
  
• Who Killed Hard Work And Personal Responsibility?
  
  
• Federal Prosecution Of Financial Fraud Falls To 20-Year Low, New Report Shows
  
  
• The euro zone’s terrible mistake
  
  
• Ignorance is bliss when it comes to challenging social issues
  
  
• The Medicaid Ambush: The Supreme Court's unexpected and astounding reasons for wanting to hear a challenge to Obamacare.
  
  
• Congratulations, Television! You Are Even Worse At Masculinity Than Femininity
  
  
• IBM co-opting GPS system?
  
  
• Topeka, Kansas, legalizes domestic violence to save money
  
  
• How Medicare Fails the Elderly
  
  
• W. enters my wife’s schoolboard race
  
  
• Naomi Wolf: how I was arrested at Occupy Wall Street
  
  
• Psychology of pepper spray
  
  
• Pepper-spray inventor: "It's fashionable to use chemical agents on people who have an opinion"
  
  
• The Healing Process
  
  
• San Diego police arrest congressional candidate for voter registration in Civic Center Plaza
  
  
• Occupy Forcing Militarized PDs to Show Their Colors
  
  

Ouch

This bit at Animals Talking in All-Caps is right on, with an amusing finish to take the edge off of what would otherwise be a head-banging frustration frenzy of agreement. Wow.

(And can I just say, how does that guy keep the creativity coming at this impressive level day after day? It just blows my socks off.)

Tuesday kid-blogging

Been a while, I guess! Here are some of the Many Faces of Speck from recent months:


A playful grin during her midsummer obsession with hanging bars.


Speck during her second haircut, admiring the effects of (ahem) combing!


Zebra warpaint for Halloween, very dramatic!