Trying to have it both ways

John McCain is busy talking about Iraq and defending the President's policies, but he apparently can't be bothered showing up for the votes on the matter -- just too busy for the important stuff, or trying not to leave a paper trail that could be held against him if things get even worse?

(via Talking Points Memo)

Quote of the week

The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp.

Charles C. Krulak (commandant of the Marine Corps, 1995-1999) and
Joseph P. Hoar (commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, 1991-1994)

(via Talking Points Memo, and others)

To each his vice

I was going to do another little sheepish post to admit that I'm spending time every day playing Kingdom of Loathing (see my little clip of their cartoon monsters in the footer to this blog), but I think I'll roll that in with another art project display. In preparation/practice for the Philadelphia puzzle that we made for our niece, we made another puzzle for our own amusement using some classic images from KoL:


A little tricky, since it's a black-and-white stick-figure game (see the logo 2nd from left in the upper row, which is an adventurer with sword and martini in hand), but these seemed to work pretty well, and it makes us giggle. We're particularly proud of the brainsweeper (top right), which is essentially a disembodied brain in a lab jar, animated on a set of broom feet.

Yay for Spouse and the jigsaw! Yay for weekend fun!

Don't let the door hit ya'...

A writer at Slate provides an apt reflection on the passing of Jerry Fallwell (on Tuesday). (Man, I'd never heard the quote on feminists! like a parody of a chauvenist!)

(via Follow Me Here)

We are governed by thugs

The latest evidence -- Card and Gonzales tried to get Ashcroft to approve warrantless wiretapping from his hospital bed, where he was barely conscious, and only armed guards prevented them. yeesh.

Yesterday's absence

We had a primary election here in Pennsylvania yesterday, and it was a big one in Philadelphia, with an open mayoral primary and all the City Council members up for reelection (as well as lots of judges and other offices, and a list of ballot questions as long as your arm). Anyway, I worked the polls all day, which was its usual blend of rewarding and exhausting. And the results were a mixed bag of the sort I suppose you always get if you're interested in more than one candidate. So I wasn't here, and now I am, but with a lot of catching-up to do on life, news, and all the rest, and perhaps a few days' rest needed to regain my connection to it all.

Meantime, meet our next mayor, Michael Nutter! whoot!

Anxiety sells

That is, female anxiety, as demonstrated by J. Goodrich at The American Prospect in her piece called How the Media Skew Gender Research (token reg. required). She notes the wealth of studies showing the benefits of equal parenting by men and women, which get no media attention, as opposed to those that raise questions about the "dangers" of day-care, or which show gendered differences in Internet usage, which get blown all out of proportion in widespread media coverage.

A difference of at most six percent became an absolute gulf between the sexes, and the media exclaim, "Women are relational, men are factual!"
. . .
Over and over again, studies that appeal to anti-feminists and social conservatives gain media traction, while the ones that come to opposite conclusions languish in obscurity.

It appears that the goal is to grab the attention of already nervous affluent women, but Goodrich notes that this slant feeds the needs of conservatives (and patriarchy promoters) quite nicely. Worth keeping in mind, the next time some of this junk social science hits the airwaves.

(via Echidne, Goodrich's night job)

Quote of the day

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.

- Yasutani Roshi,
Zen master (1885-1973)

(via A.W.A.D.)

Predators are overrated

How can I tell? Because this tortoise rules the yard, driving cats before him like the wind...

(p.s.) Lots of fluff at the moment, because too much politics going on locally. Hopefully I make it to/through next Tuesday...

Wisecrack of the day

From Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo:

Richard Perle lays into George Tenet on Post OpEd page (appropriate venue). Like a cage match between See No Evil and Evil.

hehehe

Left me speechless

It's been a while since we've had a good parody song about the Bush whitehouse, and this one seems to fill that gap admirably...

Thursday photos -- family fun

No cats today -- instead, a silly wooden puzzle (of the clumsy toddler type, where the pieces drop down in) that Spouse and I made for our niece, Sophie this spring. Classic Philadelphia sights of varous types (please tell me you were able to guess them!)...




Hope your 3rd birthday was a good one, Soph!!

Well, now this *is* something!

That is, it appears that some of the "missing" emails contain evidence of deliberately obscuring Karl Rove's role in the replacement of US Attorneys around the country with Administration loyalists. More here.

Meanwhile, over on Gonzales' end of the mess, he turns out the A.G. broke his oath of office almost immediately upon taking it. These guys really have no shame.

Tee hee

This post captures perfectly the interior conversation of the average pet-owner (here with a dog, but we cat owners get much the same, in different tone). I laughed out loud and alarmed my office-mates...

(via Medley)

Update: um, now the link is right... yeesh.

In case you wondered

President Bush's handling of national disasters demonstrates that he's a putz. That our states are facing such hurdles without their National Guard contingents is more evidence of the folly of this ceaseless war. I don't think we can make it another 2 years -- Congress, save us!!

Today's giggle

...comes from the incomparable McSweeney's:

The Names of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs
After Being Prescribed Paxil, Ritalin, Prozac,
Lithium, Provigil, and Benadryl.

(via MindHacks)

Antidote

A little late-day cuteness to offset the grim news elsewhere:

puppy!

kitty!

(Yeah, and that's Pasha over at right, at around 5 weeks...)

Bad news cluster

• A fascinating graphical look at the minimum wage in real dollars over the last 70 years. Most notable to me was the observation that the MW has *never* been sufficient for climbing out of poverty.
  (via Rebecca's Pocket)
  
  
• Creepy and intrusive laws introduced to restrict the reselling of CD's -- in essence, a waiting period and a background check. Surely you jest! Watch your favorite used disc place(s) go out of business.
  
  
• China undertakes forced resettlement of Tibetans, apparently with the goal of disrupting their unique culture. Cruel and unbelievably short-sighted in this day and age.

Holy crap!

I've never seen an entire town just wiped off the map, but Greensburg, Kansas appears to have had just that fate -- one wide tornado front left it completely flat. whew!
That link over there at the right still works...

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

History is still being unfolded

This seems neat: archaologists have found Herod's tomb. Will it be gilt and wonder inside, or just a neat row of dried corpses? I'll be looking for updates...

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

An appropriate tribute to/for Mother's Day

Forget Hallmark -- the origin of Mothers' Day is as a peace movement, and the video at this link is a powerful reminder of how much work there is to do (and a little ray of hopefulness that perhaps it can still be done).

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Sniff.

Carnival of Republican freaks

Just too weird, the stories that started my day: there's

• the agnostic operative who views Christians as "a marvelously effective voter delivery system"...
  
  
• the 3/10 Presidential candidates who deny the process of evolution (just part of the greater repression of science/denial of reality theme) -- oh wait, make that 4
  
  
• the Utah party official who claims that Satan wants to eliminate national borders, drives illegal immigrants to undermine our nation, and works with Democrats to set up "a godless new order."

I don't just want these people out of my government -- I want them kept a safe distance from my family!!

Update: I don't even know how to describe this one! Mormons in space!!

Cool idea

I'm generally a paranoid defender of privacy and of keeping the government off of my phonelines, car recorder, and other gizmos that note my passing. But somehow the idea of using cellphones as a kind of distributed detector for a range of possible risks -- radiation, say, or some subset of chemical and biological substances -- strikes me as pretty neat. It's in line with the use of GPS cell phones to track traffic slow-downs, and generally makes use of the distributed-wisdom sort of thing that drives Wiki (or investigations over at Talking Points Memo). Plus, using the input from a substantial population means that false positives pretty much get drowned out. Probably technically near-impossible, but a neat concept, very Web 3.0 or whatever...

(via Follow Me Here)

America's liberal values

I've often heard it said that people tend to agree with liberals/Democrats on the issues, even if for some reason they've learned to distrust the label/party. But I was still pleasantly surprised to see the depth of that agreement -- I think I'd have imagined widespread support, say, for broader healthcare, but not necessarily for the government's guaranteeing food and housing for all citizens . . . (Commenters also raise some valid questions about how the questions are phrased, but I still think it shows pretty promising starting material for bolder leadership.)

Putting a price on inefficiency

The problem with "letting the market manage" things as we like to in the U.S. is that the wider societal costs are often distributed, while the benefits are concentrated -- take the corporation that drains a local resource for its own ends as an example, or the broad problem of air pollution. It's interesting to see ways that people can come up with to make the invisible prices tangible and give people (or other entities) incentives to change their behavior.

One solution that's getting some discussion in large cities right now is congestion pricing, which charges drivers a fee for traveling through crowded areas at peak rush hours -- the goal is to reduce the pollution from all those idling engines, as well as to increase the ease with which vehicles can actually use the roadways in question, all while generating more customers (and funding) for public transportation options.

The very suggestion that such an idea be considered in Philadelphia caused a minor tsunami in the current mayoral race, and I gather than New Yorkers are squawking too, so I was glad to see in this New Yorker piece that the cities that have tried it have quickly changed their tunes.

Since the London plan was introduced, in 2003, vehicle speeds in the city’s central business district have increased by thirty-seven per cent and carbon-dioxide emissions from cars and trucks have dropped by fifteen per cent. The plan, which the newpapers initially derided as “Kengestion”—after its main supporter, London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone—has grown increasingly popular; in 2004, Livingstone was easily reëlected, and now nearly two-thirds of Londoners say that they back the scheme.

Still, nobody likes paying a fee, businesses can see threats to their customers more easily than they can see the long-term benefits, and everybody worries about anything that could endanger a fragile urban renewal period. So maybe these things will be tried, or maybe we'll wait until the rivers are lapping at the steps of City Hall. Good ideas deserve some discussion, at least.

(via kottke)

Keeping an eye on the ball

Yah, you sure get a feeling of confidence when you hear your Republican Congressmen worry that the worst twist in this endless war is that the space on their memorial wall might run out. Yep, it's the logistics in the rotunda that keep the American people up nights . . .

Clash of Orwellian titans?

Sen. Lautenberg has formulated a clever ploy to force a divide between gun freaks and national security issues in the Republican coalition.

This leads to a double-bind for the GOP--if they support the bill, they do the following:

1. betray their rabidly pro-gun base in favor of federal power to prevent gun ownership, and
   
   
2. give the Democrats a legislative anti-gun victory in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech;

If they oppose the bill, they:

1. Deny the Executive authority in an issue of national security; and
   
   
2. Put themselves on record as saying that dangerous firearms should be in the hands of known terrorists.

I applaud his creativity and strategic finesse, at the same time that I am sad to see My Team degraded to playing by the same dirty rules as The Other Guys. (Maybe that's just the game of politics.) I mean, the title of the bill is "Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007" heh. Will be interested to see how it plays out though.

My elephant is all tangled in the bushes...

The most recent This American Life episode is about Habeus Corpus, and specifically about just who it is that we're keeping in Guantanamo Bay (in near-total isolation from the world). It's not pretty, but it should be heard. (This is an update of an award-winning program from a year ago; these guys have been locked up for years and years...)

Ouch.

Quote of the day

Do not carry with you your mistakes.
Do not carry your cares.
Travel on alone
Like an elephant in the forest.

— The Dhammapada

(via The Coffee Sutras)

The other view

As a sort of converse/antidote to the frustrated world-view of GYWO, I should also offer this rather nicer visual from the peerless Indexed.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

Pithy

For stretches of time I forget about Get Your War On (even though I wear this shirt with nontrivial frequency), and then I check in and am rewarded with such grim humorous gems as this or this. Pretty good rantiness -- I wish one of our local weeklies would pick him up...

A vicarious stroll

About a week and half ago, Spouse and I went on a lovely hike in the Wissahickon Creek area (which is within the Philadelphia city limits, but feels like it could be hours away). Great outing, great glimpses of spring. Now my readers can take the trip too, thanks to the fabulous PhillySkyline team, who offer Springtime in the Wissahickon as a photoessay. Great photos, great sense of place, as ever. A lovely escape.

It's Thursday, so it must be kitty time!

Just some fun with cats in sun -- combinations of stripes and spots...


Pixel does some cleaning (and gleaming)


Pasha fascinated by her own reflection...

Sho' nuff

You thought it was a scare when some 17,000 pets were killed by tainted petfood? Now it appears that millions of people have probably eaten chicken that was fed melamine (and lots of it was fed to pigs too). How much of that gets through the food chain and into the people's systems is yet to be seen, but this is a pretty slow warning system from the people tasked with keeping our food supply safe . . .

Those must be some mighty thick fumes

They must be smoking something pretty dense over there in the Right Wing if they can, with a straight face, argue that the Bush administration has been remarkably scandal-free. Over here where the air is a bit clearer, it looks like a record number of resignations and scandals, hearings and investigations, and even elevation of crooks to new positions of power. But hey, that's just my crazy reality-based world view, right?

(via XOverboard/Some Guy with a Website)

Update: this ad must make the fume-sniffers nuts, especially with Thompson among their '08 field... tee hee!

Life's fleeting pleasures

Today's sad news is that new car smell is bad for you. Does this actually surprise anyone? What sort of chemicals, exactly, did you think they were?

(via Follow Me Here)

Only so much room in the tubes

Sorry I'm a bit quiet today, but there are hamsters in the tube and my information can't get through. (Because you know, the Internet is not a truck!) Maybe I'll try phoning it in until tomorrow...

Beware the cuteness!!

A trigger to pull?

Turns out that Congress can enforce its own subpoenas. A radical move, but the Democratic leaders have shown some gumption in pulling up little-used parliamentary rights, and this would certainly be the time...

Chick schtick

I was going to blog this depressing bit about how the recent Supreme Court ruling will make doctors afraid to treat pregnant women in any meaningful way other than as a Consecrated Incubator (my framing, not the author's), let alone with health of their own. Instead, I've decided to celebrate Twisty's rant about the indignity of finding "decent" swimwear in the absence of anything that might "need" covering up.

“Mastectomy swimwear,” see, doesn’t mean “no-boobs swimwear.” It means “swimwear that maintains, for the comfort of the entire community, the illusion that you never had a socially awkward deadly cancer, and could still turn dudes on if you weren’t so old and pruney.”

Let's just call it a day to Shake Fists at the Patriarchy and then get on with the week. Fight each fight as best you can, and enjoy the eloquence along the way...

Update: Oh, what the heck, why not get a full Twisty Overload and go read her rant about the inherent oppression of porn. That's always good for some outraged blow-back (and consequent readerly amusement)!

A woman is a member of the sex class whether she “chooses” it or not. This pre-existing condition forms the backdrop to any fun feminist’s conclusion that her compliance with the patriarchal sexbot mandate is voluntary. She may believe otherwise, but her belief does not alter the fact that patriarchy — a social order predicated on an oppression to which she is already subject — is real and in effect and entirely beyond any unrestricted control she may wish to exert and only too glad to welcome her as a team player and sign her up for the rewards program.

The fun feminist confuses “empowerment” with the decision to acquiesce. This is understandable; it’s the one actual choice she has in this game: surrender, or stand and fight. She doesn’t have to be Candida Royalle to recognize that if she chooses the latter all she’ll get for her trouble is ridicule, hostility, suspicion, and the threat of bodily harm.

(The wording of this argument necessarily brings to mind this classic mind-bending cartoon...)

What it takes to get by

Local blogger pal Above Average Jane had a good piece this weekend on how much it costs to eat, thinking about whether she or someone in her community could make do on the tiny amount allotted by foodstamps. She details her imagined solutions, but also comes to realize that even those minimalist meals depend on many structural resources in her life -- from choice of grocery stores to up-front cash to buy the supersizes -- that are unavailable to those who actually must live on so little. An illuminating reflection.

Jon Stewart rocks

His interview with McCain last week was powerful precisely because Jon had been enjoying the mavericky silliness of the previous McCain incarnation, and thus dealt a double blow by being unwilling to accept talking points this time. Anyway, the interview on Bill Moyers show (30-min video or transcript at link) was great. Stewart doesn't want to accept too much credit as a revolutionary voice (after all, the Daily Show has a good dose of fart jokes and the like), but he speaks well to the frustration of watching the press and the White House play set roles, or of Congress and the President talking past each other on issues that are critically in need of serious discussion.

Nobody is saying, "We don't have a problem." Nobody is saying that, "9/11 didn't happen." What they're saying is, "We're not a fragile country, trust us to have this conversation, so that we can do this in the right way, in a more effective way."

It gets better and better -- worth finding the lunch hour to watch it, whether you watch the Daily Show or know little about it.

(thanks, Mom!)

Update: also linked from the same page (part of the same episode?) is a great interview with Josh Marshall, which lays out the story of the US Attorneys -- how "the bloggers" uncovered it, how the pieces fit together, why it matters. A good background for those who find the coverage a bit hard to unravel (and pleasantly framed like a mystery hunt).

Making us safer!

Yes, folks, our leaders, undermining our ability to respond to a pandemic (by politicizing the appointment process until a huge number of posts are left empty) and overlooking food safety issues until pets start dying (and then trying to keep quiet the degree to which the human food chain might also be contaminated). That ever-smaller government is really dedicated to keeping the American people safe!

-- sound of head hitting desk --

Quote of the day (+)

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

- Archibald MacLeish,
poet and librarian (1892-1982)

(via A.W.A.D.)

Big fat racist

I already thought that Rush Limbaugh was a jerk and a liar, but this is really astounding. And we wonder how the values of the patriarchy come to be reinforced . . .

(via Atrios)

So tie-tie

This has been a long week for me, so I relate to this tiny kitty -- just wish *I* could flop down where I am and nap for a while. Instead, I have a backlog of work looking up from my desk.... sigh.

What we're really fighting about

Josh Marshall has an important post about "winning in Iraq" -- what it meant originally, what, if anything, it means now. I think he's onto something fundamental (emphasis mine):

It's often been noted that we've had a difficult time explaining or figuring out just who we're fighting in Iraq. Is it the Sunni irreconcilables? Or is it Iran and its Shi'a proxies? Or is it al Qaida? The confusion is not incidental but fundamental. We can't explain who we're fighting because this isn't a war, like most, where the existence of a particular enemy or specific danger dictates your need to fight. We're occupying Iraq because continuing to do so allows us to pretend that the initial plan wasn't completely misguided and a mistake.

He argues that any talk of "winning" or "losing" is meaningless, although I would counter that "losing" is just shorthand for "have nothing further productive to gain," and that most Americans understand it that way. Anyway, he goes on to say,

The reality though is that the disaster has already happened. Admitting that isn't a mistake or something to be feared. It's the first step to repairing the damage. What the president has had the country in for four years is a very bloody and costly holding action. And the president has forced it on the country to avoid admitting the magnitude of his errors.

This is the critical truth, and I think it's precisely the way that the Democrats should be explaining this. Unfortunately, we have two more years of Bush at the top, and it's clear that appearances (esp. admitting no mistakes) are much more important to him than realities (such as coming up with any Plan B for ending this mess). Too bad for those still on the front lines...

Three quick bits from local sources

Started my day in the local news section, and caught these three quick bits that are of more general interest:

• An Inquirer piece looks at the post-lightbulb future, in which offices may have lighting systems that adjust for incoming sunlight, use low-energy LED technology, and generally beat the pants off even the usual office fluorescents on both cost and efficiency fronts. They cite DOE statistics that 30% of home and business energy costs go to lighting, so that could add up to a lot of savings.
  
  
• Tony Auth offers a pithy visual condemnation of the double standard that the Bush Administration applies to political use of the war and related concerns.
  
  
• Daddy Democrat, a Pennsylvania blogger, notes a key point from Bill Moyers' recent coverage of media failings in the run-up to the Iraq war: even when some wire reporters (at Knight-Ridder) did ask the right questions, local paper editors often chose not to run those stories, choosing, perhaps, less "controversial" but more misleading options. Don't let up on your local publications!
  
  

Yeah, how red are *our* faces!

Tom Tomorrow holds the pundits accountable. If only somebody with a bigger megaphone would...

(via Atrios)

Thursday signs of spring

We went from a snowy Easter weekend to shorts weather within a fortnight. Not stabilized of course, but happy to see that the warmth has lured new leaves onto my frost-bitten pyracantha, flowers are opening on the dogwood, and a host of buds threaten to turn my little lilac bush into an obscene purple cloud sometime soon. The patio furniture covers are off, and I insist on its being spring from now on!



Somehow this photo by Dooce put me back in my grandmother's kitchen
(even though we had a pretty popular birdfeeder of our own).
She always loved images like this of regular visitors . . .

A different way to appreciate books

A range of artists make books into sculptures and other art -- striking, but makes me a little pained for the ruined texts . . .

(via GirlHacker)

Total disregard

Evidence mounts for what was previously speculation, including use of all arms of government to advance partisan goals, even where it's strictly illegal (you know, "how can we oversee government properties in a way that helps elect more Republicans next fall?" and other absurdities). And you'd think that the threat of hearings and subpoenas would strike some fear, but they just blow it off. I'm not just angry about how the Bush Administration has abused this country and its institutions; I'm actively frightened that there is no longer any rule of law here. Their arrogance is astounding, and appears unresponsive to any check.

Two things, unrelated

Because apparently giving them separate posts is Just Too Much. or something.

• VoteVets, who had some powerful ads during the fall elections, have a new project called Videovets, which involves filming veterans and their family members talking about how easy it is to support the troops and oppose the war. Some touching tributes to those still over there, some not coming back, some home for good. I'd seen one or another linked from various blogs, but they have a whole array of testimonials at their site. A great idea and probably a gift to all involved.
  (via dailyKos)
  
  
• On the lighter side, A4 papercut is an amazing array of artistic creations made by cutting shapes out of a standard sheet of paper, and folding the removed parts into 3-D forms -- the resulting shapes (animals, buildings, etc.) and the negative space they leave behind (often more than structural) create amazing resonances. I could look at these all day.
  (via Medley)

Incremental progress

Here in Philadelphia, we're fighting to make our leaders care about recycling. Meanwhile, around the nation (most notably in California), innovative leaders and governments are trying to make the whole idea of "trash" a thing of the past through comprehensive recycling and repurposing, from the factory to the consumer.

They want industry to mimic biology, where one species' excrement is another's food. "We're not talking here about eliminating waste," McDonough explains. "We're talking about eliminating the entire concept of waste."

Very exciting stuff here, if usually behind the scenes -- I recommend reading the whole thing for a little optimism buzz for the day.

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

That pesky pay gap

Everybody knows there's a gap between when men and women get paid, but I was still struck by the notion that it starts right out of college and widens steadily over the decades -- and that the difference holds up when you control for marital and family status and a lot of other factors. Yes, each life decision (colored by societal expectation) can set a woman back a bit more, but the fact of the matter is that the deck is already stacked against her, and age only makes the pay ratio (like all other responses to women) worse.

But, you know, the need for feminism is over. Pesky humorless shrills.

(via Medley)

Inspired goof

A vision of how Gilbert & Sullivan might cover Sir Mix-a-lot:

Baby Got Back

(via boing boing)

Look who's giving up now!

Harry Reid created a bit of a kerfluffle last week by stating the obvious expressing the common perception that "Iraq is no longer winnable" (and he perhaps chose his words to spur debate). Turns out, not only do most Americans agree, but even such a stalwart of Endless Conflicts as Henry Kissinger agrees that military victory is now beyond us...

Quote of the day

The human eye is a wonderful device. With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice.

from "Poems and Other Prevarications" by Quell
quoted in "Altered Carbon" by Richard K. Morgan

Yeowch!

The New York Times is driven to snarkiness by Gonzales' performance in testifying before the Senate:

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch....

They even go on to say that it's becoming ever more critical that Rove et al. testify to clear up who really was calling the shots on this one. Fight on!

How did this slip by?

Apparently there are now state databases of all medical prescriptions, which are available for the perusal of a host of law enforcement and/or medical system employees. And apparently this system came into being two years ago! Don't you feel safer (and healthier) every day?! ack!

(via Medley)

Another round of homegrown

It really frustrates the hate-mongers when violence is perpetrated by Americans, let alone Christians. There goes the towel-head argument! Sigh.

Thursday kittens

Has been a bit of a tough weeks all 'round, in honor of which I offer this snap of our kittens snuggling -- it dates from over a year ago, when they were still scrawny adolescents (now nearing two years old!)...



Pasha raises a head in greeting, though neither she
nor Pixel could open an eye from sunbaking...

More than just posturing

Machismo is mostly lost on me, but I'm completely gratified by the latest show of spine from our Democratic leaders (on the notion that more war funding should carry requirements for demonstrated progress).

"Reid made it clear to the President that he understood that the President and Vice President after the veto would come after him and Speaker Pelosi with everything they have. Reid said that he and Pelosi would respond just as aggressively. He said he was convinced that they were on the right side of the issue."

The American people certainly agree. Hope the "war room" has great strategic ideas for what the response will be -- I can't imagine a veto working for Bush at all, so there's lots to be said, and I'm starting to trust that Reid and Pelosi have good plans brewing...

Beyond ludicrous

Here's a personal account that makes clear the ridiculous situation that women find themselves in because of the tangle of laws surrounding reproductive choices, medical decisions, and legislative triumphalism. There's no way to read this story and think that the debate is about "saving babies" -- it's clearly putting women's lives at risk even when there's no baby to save. You don't have to involve coat-hanger imagery to get outraged here!

(via Hullabaloo)

Update: it's worth reading this piece about the recent Supreme Court decision -- how the language reveals that even "moderates" like Justice Kennedy are now accepting the frame and rhetoric of the anti-abortion movement (like calling the obstetricians involved "abortion doctors" and taking a patronizing stance to the women facing their choices)...

Themes worth repeating

From John Edwards recently:

I think some people really believe that all you have to do to succeed in this country is pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work hard.

Well, I can tell you, I have traveled all over this country and I have been in the places where people's bootstraps are worn to a thread from all the pulling they've been doing. Places where all the hard work in the world hasn't helped to pull them out of poverty—because the system discriminates and opportunity isn't equal. But if we come together and are honest about it, we can change that and build an America that gives every American an equal chance.

This nation needs more empathy. For every loafer there are dozens, if not hundreds, of people trying and trying and just not getting anywhere, and if we ignore that, we not only doom them to lives of poverty and frustration, but we risk a future in which large swaths of people feel no investment in our nation as a whole. Change is long overdue.

(via Medley)

Through the spin clouds

The President is ranting, but the American people are hearing the truth anyway. That is, they can see who cares about the right next strategy. Am very interested to see how this apparent showdown between the branches of government plays out; if Bush is hoping to rally the public, he's really suffering the echo chamber delusion...

(via Atrios)

Good news, bad news

That kind of day so far.

• Good news: those feisty libertarian Montanans come out strongly against national ID cards, planning to defy the Real ID Act at home and lead the fight against it at the national level.
  
  
• Bad news: those "beloved of precedent" conservative jurists at the Supreme Court are throwing out precedents that are 7 and 15 years old in upholding the right of states to pass abortion restrictions (specifically the "partial-birth" kind); as Bitch PhD puts it, they're declaring the legislature smarter than individual women about the fates of their families and their own health. Great.

Frolic

I'm not at work today, having a flurry of errands and appointments to keep, so here are a few gleanings from recent weeks to keep you amused until tomorrow...

• The virtual whale -- see any part of a grey whale close up (only a bit at a time, of course).
  (via Medley?)
  
  
• A sample of edible oragami cranes, made out of wonton wrappers.
  (via kottke)
  
  
• And here's another collection of art made with sushi, from computer screens to classical paintings.
  (via boing boing)
  
  
• A French skyscraper allows passers to play video games using its lighting, including tetris and other faves -- imagine your screen at 30 stories!
  (via Bouphonia)
  
  
• Here's a classic impossible structure, rendered in three dimensions. (Mind bending, but of course it only works when viewed a certain way...)
  (via Follow Me Here)
  
  
• And finally, here's one man's life reduced to pie charts -- from the ludicrous to the profound.
  (via boing boing)

Oh, and this

Just had to laugh (in that world-weary way) at this: antifeminist bingo. Inspired.

(via Medley)

Cretins of habit

There's so little room for satire these days -- this ladies' reservation page at American Airlines pretty much leaves me totally agape. Perhaps they meant to target the information-fearful in a non-gendered way? Sigh.

(via Tom Tomorrow)

Quote of the day

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

– St. Augustine

(via This Modern World)

Laughing pug

This pug is laughing pretty hard. At the moment, it feels like he's laughing at all of us here in Philadelphia (and many places northward along the coast) who got hit with torrential rain all yesterday and then awoke to sleet and gale-force winds this morning. Really, the joke's on anybody who has to drag themself out of bed and shlep to work... (grumble)

Better than I could have done

Markos (of dailyKos) really irritated me yesterday, by blundering into a heated topic in that has had several weeks of much more informed discussion (see my input here) and dismissing the seriousness of online harassment (it's not the same thing as trolling or general asshatery, of which there is also plenty) with an airy wave. It's frustrating to see a leader in the progressive community show such a blind spot, and it's also hard to make any effective response.

Anyway, all that by way of saying that Bitch, PhD, does a good job of explaining the error of his ways in an open letter, but also of reiterating that major megaphones have a larger than average responsibility to help set the code of conduct for their communities and the larger online realm. Perhaps he'll wake up, perhaps he won't, but at least *his* crap isn't getting a free ride.

Presented without comment

Old photo of a mother disguised as a chair, to support a formal baby picture.

The big, bad bogeyman

The Republicans are constantly beating the drum of voter fraud, talking about dead people registering to vote, people showing up several places in town, and on and on. Has never resonated with my experience in any of the states/cities where I've lived, so I was dubious, but I imagined they must have at least a few regional scandals to point to.

But nope. There's just about no proof of more than a handful of frauds anywhere in the country, mostly individual misunderstandings, nothing systemic.

Here's the nickel summary: In 2002, DOJ changed their guidelines to make it easier to prosecute voter fraud. They made it a priority to find voter fraud cases. They appointed a clean slate of U.S. Attorneys loyal to the Republican Party. They set up training classes to help prosecutors charge and win voter fraud cases. But after all that, they managed to demonstrate fraud in a grand total of only 86 cases over four years. And even then, many of the cases of confirmed fraud were simply mistakes, while virtually none of them were actually designed to affect the outcome of an election.

Meanwhile, ID laws threaten to turn away large numbers of voters in low-income neighborhoods, huge amounts of money are being wasted chasing phantoms, and occasional lives are being ruined over simple oversights. Classic Bush Administration in action.

(via Medley)

Update: more here.

The passing of Kilgore Trout

Kurt Vonnegut is no more. A sorrow to many, myself included. Here are a few links, the tip of the iceberg of the literary, cultural, and personal analysis bound to come:

• New York Times obit
  
  
• A Hullabaloo post that ends with a nice excerpt of his writing
  
  
• One example of his wit applied to current events
  
  
• Vonnegut's homepage, with a stark yet poignant image
  
  
• A personal reflection over at Salon offers perhaps the best summary quote for the day:

  Vonnegut had an incomparable way of mixing bleak pessimism with avuncular warmth. He could inspire even in the moments when he was underlining, highlighting and italicizing just how fucked up and criminally insane the world really was.

Thanks for keeping us on our toes, or at least trying.

Update: Indexed adds a nice tribute in her inimitable style...

Another reason to stay well

Because if you have to take a bunch of antibiotics, and end up killing off all your beneficial gut bacteria (leaving you susceptible to all kinds of nasty infections), you might have to drink a turd cocktail to get them back. Now will you finish your vegetables, Johnny?!

Pithy

Another stellar take from Indexed.

After May there's always November

Interesting numbers on the Presidential match-ups. I'm starting to feel like Edwards might be the best choice for internal party reasons, but it's easy to imagine his being the best choice by a long stretch once you involve Republicans and Independents in the mix too. Feels like less than a year away!

Quote of the day

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

– Albert Einstein

(via A Mindful Life)

Ok, this cinches it

People in San Francisco really are more crazy do have more fun: Easter Day Big Wheel races down legendary Lombard Street.

(I'm amazed adults can squeeze into those things!!)

Two months in

Surprising few: the surge isn't working.
What, we're not being greeted as liberators? maybe that was something else...

(via Talking Points Memo)

Friday cat-blogging

Today is dedicated to cute, clownish Pasha (see, e.g., here), always on the move, rolling and writhing and barging to take over any opportunity for play. Not in full action, but always poised for mischief...


Lounging (or disturbed from a nap)


Time for a good belly-cleaning...
(I wish the lighting were this good elsewhere in the house!) As always, click "cats" below for more bengal-blogging and other cattage.

It's ok if you're a Republican (installment #84759084)

Clearly there are bad Catholics, and then there are bad Catholics who need shaming. Or something like that. sigh.

(via dailyKos)

Ouch

I'm no fan of Geraldo Rivera, but it takes a seasoned yeller to keep up with Bill O'Reilly's antics. Watching the video makes my blood pressure rise, but good for Geraldo for not letting O'Reilly get away with his crapulant spin. Eesh.

Tee hee!

Coworker t-shirt of the day: I'm out of my mind. Please leave a message.

A sobering sense of scale

People have been talking about the "housing bubble" for a while now, but it wasn't until I saw this graph that I had a sense of what they're really talking about -- it looks nontrivially scary. In Philadelphia, most of the housing market rush is a correction of years of undervaluation, but I'm sure we're not immune to some future corrections too. Anyway, a more entertaining rendition of the graph can be had as a rollercoaster ride. (So far, no final drop...)

(via Medley)

Well *that* surely makes us all rest easy!

The GAO finds troubling lapses in I.R.S. security management on many fronts, ranging from lack of employee background checks, insufficient training in confidential records management, and physical security laxness. But heck! all they're getting is your complete personal and financial records!!

Nice economy you got there

A couple of graphs that help explain why Bush can keep crowing about how strong the economy is while most people feel an increasing pinch in their pocketbooks:

1. GDP versus wages showing that the former has gone up 15% in the last five years while the average worker (median wage) hasn't seen any of that increase in his own take-home pay.
   
   
2. Current economic expansion versus average past cycles shows that almost everything has grown more slowly (employment, investments, even GDP) except for corporate profits, which have skyrocketed.

As Kevin Drum said, if you think these shifts are coincidental, you haven't been paying attention: Bush reports to the corporate interests, and thus defines a "good economy" as one like this, that has benefitted them. He appears not to care at all what's happening to the little guys down the totem pole...

To heck with the rising tide/boats business if you live on a mountain! Tally ho!!

Lowered expectations

August nails it. Simple functionality is almost unimaginable...

In case you're having a late lunch

I really have to recommend this post by Amanda Marcotte. It's about arguments over environmentalism, feminist men, and all sors of things, but at root it's about how we balance short-term versus long-term benefits, and how we can convince some folks to give up the (clearly visible) former in favor of the (distinctly more abstract) latter. Good stuff, and in the comments too. Long, but worth a lunchtime read...

You always suspected it...

Refs are affected by crowd noise in assigning of fouls, an effect large enough to account for most statistical home-team advantage.

It's all in how you look at it

The headline of this article seems laughable -- much more on point is this quote:

"Look at al Qaeda's plans," said Michael Scheuer, who once led the CIA team devoted to finding al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "They're very simply defined in two phrases: spread out America's forces and bleed the United States to bankruptcy. I'd argue America has been under attack successfully every day since 9/11 from that perspective.

Ouch. Sounds about right to me, given the multiples of our national budget that are being poured into the Middle Eastern sands.

(via Echidne)

Looking ridiculous

Josh Marshall thinks that McCain has jumped the shark, calling his absurdist trip to Baghdad (see how safe it is when you bring the whole army with you?) his "Dukakis-in-a-tank moment." Only time will tell; remember that it's the media that can make such things stick, and they sure love Republicans McCain...

Carnival wackiness

This past weekend's Carnival of the Cats is particularly noteworthy for the artistic liberties that the host took with many of the submitted photos. Pasha visits space, and Pixel takes a turn as Big Brother... heh.

Science rumination of the day

Sometimes it's good to unpack your useful but misleading metaphors, and this article does just that: 10 Important Differences Between Brains and Computers and the practical significance of those differences for cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. Interesting on both scientific and philosophical levels, and accessible to non-scientists (with a few jargon caveats).

(via Cognitive Daily)

A lot of anger flowing downhill

Readers here may or may not have heard about a recent development in the blogosphere, in which a prominent tech-blogger decided not to make her keynote presentation at a conference after receiving an escalating heap of hate mail and death threats. This one blogger's choice to publicize her experience has brought forth many stories of similar experiences from other women, and to some soul-searching about the relative merits of developing a thick skin versus fighting for some measures of protection.

I've been wanting to blog this story, because it disturbs me but doesn't surprise me, but I hadn't found the right essay out there or the right way to express my thoughts. However, yesterday Orcinus totally captured the essence of my reaction, which is (a) that this treatment is more than a bad feature of those nasty anonymous Internets, but is, rather, a simple extension of the misogyny that's been keeping women "in line" for centuries:

Hate crime is a low-level form of terrorism designed to disenfranchise, stifle, and ultimately remove certain people from the public sphere by forcing them to erect imaginary boundaries of fear in their own heads. It causes people to change their behavior, shrink their horizons, and stop participating fully in their own lives. Suddenly, there are places -- the synagogue, the clinic, downtown after dark, professional conferences, the comments threads that form the living rooms of their own online homes -- that they can no longer approach with a feeling of acceptance, belonging, and safety. Walsh notes that the hate mail she gets has definitely had this effect on her own writing, and that of her other female writers.

Further, I agree with the subsequent argument (b) that such misogyny, in plenty of evidence in recent years, is part and parcel of the increasingly prevalent social norm encouraging violent fantasies about anybody that is disapproved -- most notably liberals, women, anti-war activists, immigrants, and academics.

Given that, it seems possible that Kathy Sierra may have been collateral damage in the right wing's continuing escalation of hostilities, both in the real world and on the Web. Years of acrid bile form Coulter and Malkin and Rush have corroded the tenuous bonds that keep these people civil, and given overt sanction to outrages that any serious civilization would regard as barbaric. It's hardly surprising that all those years of misogynist hate speech from the right have congealed into eliminationist threats against a woman who did nothing more than show her face in virtual public.

I don't wan't to discourage you from reading the whole thing, but it's noteworthy that the author thinks that people who find such threatening behavior acceptable will only change their minds when some respected male authority figure tells them otherwise. All rational men should keep this responsibility in mind.

Misogyny has always been a core piece of authoritarianism; and so many of the issues feminism addresses -- sexual violence, silencing women's public voices, respect for female authority -- depend, utterly and completely, on how effectively we can identify and reduce the authoritarian impulse in our culture. When women like Joan Walsh and Kathy Sierra are tempted to stifle their voices or hide their faces to shield themselves from a never-ending onslaught of male rage, we all feel a measure of exhaustion at how very far we have left to go.

(via Medley)

Filling a need I never considered might exist...

For blind people with allergies, fears, or other reasons that keep them from utilizing guide dogs, there are apparently guide horses, of the extremely miniature variety. Supporters rave about their calm attentiveness and long lifespans, etc. Who knew?!

(via boing boing)

Giving the cats a run for their money!

Lots of bloggers untertake Friday cat-blogging and the like, but it's a much rarer and more elegant project to work up a weekly nudibranch -- a sort of sea-slug that appears to occur in a mind-boggling array of shapes and translucent colors. Many of these photos are transcendantly beautiful.

(via Echidne)

Quote of the day

In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have.

-Lee Iacocca,
automobile executive (1924- )

(via A.W.A.D.)

From interesting quarters

The latest blow for environmental sanity is struck by the Supreme Court, of all folk, who are ordering the EPA to get moving on vehicle emissions and global warming. Will be interesting to see what follows.