Just Between Strangersmusings tossed into the void . . . |
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Of the 33 cities predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015, at least 21 are highly vulnerable, says the Worldwatch Institute.From Bangladesh to Tokyo and New York, these are cities who are likely to clamor for interventions, although if they wait until waters are lapping their outer-belt roads, it won't be the kind of intervention that really helps anybody...
As Glenn Greenwald keeps saying over and over again, the Washington conventional wisdom is that spying on Americans without warrants and locking them up indefinitely without charges are the Very Serious Positions.Yes. The few, the barely audible . . .This is a deeply sick political culture in a deeply corrupt and deeply sick city, composed of people who have turned their backs on everything most of us grew imagining this country stood for, and it's important to support and be inspired by those who "dare" to stand up for what we all thought were American values.
The New York Department of Transportation is introducing sidewalk compass markings outside of subway exits, so that fuddled tourists can determine not only which way is north, but which direction leads to the adjacent streets (in case they don't know whether Lex is west or east), etc. Inspired! The maps inside the subways have already helped newcomers find their way around, but it's still easy to emerge from a random exit with no idea which way you're facing, etc., and this should put everybody on a more secure footing. (Of course, some friends of mine would disparage such efforts to make New York too user-friendly, but their parochial era might be ending!)(via A.W.A.D.)
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
- -Franklin D. Roosevelt,
32nd US President (1882-1945)
An ad campaign that appears to be supportive of women other than anorexic models is actually offering them merely a parallel spot in the world of objectification and misogyny. I mean, I know it's a bra ad, but this is just embarrassing... Anyway, Mandolin captures the essential issue well here:We as feminists should be deeply skeptical of a culture that offers absolution to fat women by granting them a shadow of the objectification which plagues skinny women.There is power in the de-stigmatizing of fatness, but that's still a long way from a simple recognition of humanity...
. . .
Either way, women lose. We lose when we’re harrassed. We lose when we’re not harrassed. We’re objects of sex, or we’re objects of disgust. Either way, our sexuality is framed around the imagined desires of a "default" male. Allowing fat women to be sexually objectified is far from ideal — it is not a radical movement that will lead toward women’s equality.
All in all, the Graeme Frost case is a perfect illustration of the modern right-wing political machine at work, and in particular its routine reliance on character assassination in place of honest debate. If service members oppose a Republican war, they’re “phony soldiers”; if Michael J. Fox opposes Bush policy on stem cells, he’s faking his Parkinson’s symptoms; if an injured 12-year-old child makes the case for a government health insurance program, he’s a fraud.Uh, yeah, that seems obvious to those of us watching on the wings... Sigh.
. . .
Even if you think adults have made bad choices — a baseless smear in the case of the Frosts, but put that on one side — only a truly vicious political movement would respond by punishing their injured children.
"Building a true culture of life requires public policies that promote the welfare of the most vulnerable," said Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United. "At the heart of the Christian faith is a deep and abiding concern for the need of others. Pro-life Christians who serve in Congress should honor this commitment by supporting health care for poor children."The basis for this argument could easily be seen as being merely Biblical compassion, except that that doesn't push the political buttons that invoking the term "pro-life" activates. Still, I suspect conservatives weren't expecting a challenge from the right, because they sometimes forget that there are people for whom such arguments are more than cant, representing deep guidelines for how life is to be lived . . .
Found this little thought exercise meme on Medley, and it seemed worth a shot:It's long past time for people to stop treating Fox-style, Malkin-style, Limbaugh-style conservatism as merely a "political" phenomenon. It may once have been, but it isn't now. As of this millennium, it's nothing but a hate movement with neckties.[bolding mine] How this is in any way acceptable (or even non-criminal) is inconceivable to me.
(via A Mindful Life)
The graves of cats are not like
those of dogs or parakeets.
They have been slipped out of
a day or maybe two
after you packed the dark dirt
with the long-handled shovel.
Now as you play with the child
or drink a beer beside the stream
while the swallows skim the wheat,
the cats as though from under the table
stretch and slide past roots
and fallen leaves, and not a blade
of grass disturbed, not a worm,
except at the corner of your eye
there’s a small shift of direction
in the alfalfa, and for a moment
the evening preens and stares
in a way you almost call by name.
- –Harry Humes
Are there really people who still think that the Republicans are best to look after our national security? Even in light of headlines like this one? What can you say? When your entire foreign policy expertise is based on leaking information to Fox News in order to keep the population in a constant state of low-level fear, sometimes you have to blow actual intelligence information in order to do it. Them's the breaks.Sigh. We don't have any such intelligence to spare . . .
(via whiskey river)These old days - I wonder,
did I dream them
or were they real?
In the night I listen
to the autumn rain- Ryokan Taigu
(via A Mindful Life)
I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
- – Jean Cocteau
Looks like this crazy blog-tube-thing is three years old! Tinges of outrage exhaustion around the edges, perhaps, but seemingly in no danger of giving up. In fact, I'm holding out for the tide to turn, the nation to redeem itself! Party on!
A dailyKos diarist has an interesting way of looking at the real price of gas, factoring in the amount that we spend for defense and security related to the Mideast sources, not to mention the loss of the more productive ways those dollars might have been spent. Looks like we're paying an amazingly steep tax, but it's just not applied at the pump.
For anybody who, like me, missed last night's Democratic candidates' debate, TPM has a pithy roundup of the highs and lows. 
The government can now get a retroactive warrant for all of your movements, using your cellphone as a tracking device, and the standard of evidence for such a warrant is lower than usual because this is "historic" not "live" tracking. I'm sure that will make us all sleep much better at night.
Latest RNC attack is that Obama is too intellectually lazy to be President. Lazy black folk, always laying around the porch... wait, who's that current feller setting records for vacation taken in office (during a war, no less)? Oh yes, it's ok if you're (white and) a Republican!What took place in Jena is not aberrant; it's consistent. The details are a local disgrace. The broader themes are a national scandal. Jim Crow Jr. travels well--unencumbered by historical baggage.Worth a read just to realize that we're not all operating in the same century all the time...
"They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights," she said. "For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means."The passage of over a year, the intervention of the British consulate, and the pleas of her professional society (and her fiance) have all done nothing to advance her case. America, the walled fortress; makes one so proud...
Interviewer: Do you see the world through the prism of gender?(via Echidne of the Snakes)
Gloria Steinem: No, the world looks at me through the prism of gender.
I am almost speechless in the face of this brilliance: Statetris, a variant of Tetris that involves dropping the states into their correct locations (more difficult = having to rotate them too, or having no labels). Inspired, inspired. Need more torment? try other parts of the world . . .
If you are going through hell, keep going.(on the back of the label of my bottle of Honest Tea)
- Winston Churchill
In the Islamic world and beyond, combating the terrorists' prophets of fear will require more than lectures on democracy. We need to deepen our knowledge of the circumstances and beliefs that underpin extremism. (Obama)Again, will be interesting to see Hillary's contribution to this discussion.
Rather than alienating the rest of the world through assertions of infallibility and demands of obedience, as the current administration has done, U.S. foreign policy must be driven by a strategy of reengagement.(Edwards)
The "reference kilogram" kept in Paris for standardization of weights and measures is gradually losing mass when compared with other copies:"The mystery is that they were all made of the same material, and many were made at the same time and kept under the same conditions, and yet the masses among them are slowly drifting apart," he said. "We don't really have a good hypothesis for it."I can't imagine a chemical explanation -- perhaps we're not meant to have a perfect representation of mass . . .
The bar for success is so low that it is almost buried in the sand.Indeed. Am impressed that he's coming out with a not-later-but-now position on this; had feared that all the Top Candidates would shy away from such leadership (Edwards is being treated as almost second tier, and thus a bit of a lonely voice). If nothing else, perhaps this will push Clinton to notice that the American public is developing a high degree of unanimity behind rational action . . .
(via The Dao of Wallace Stevens)
the death of a soldier
life contracts and death is expected,
as in a season of autumn.
the soldier falls.
he does not become a three-days personage,
imposing his separation,
calling for pomp.
death is absolute and without memorial,
as in a season of autumn,
when the wind stops,
when the wind stops and, over the heavens,
the clouds go, nevertheless,
in their direction.
- wallace stevens
(from collected poetry & prose, p. 81)
Caught off-guard by the news that Madeleine L’Engle passed away yesterday. She was an amazing writer, of fiction (and not just for children; the broken characters in A Severed Wasp still haunt me), of nonfiction, of spiritual explorations -- I feel very lucky to have had the chance to meet her at a "Master's tea" while in college, and to have found her just as thoughtful and gracious in person as in her writing."Why does anybody tell a story?" Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.I think your words mattered to a lot of people, Ms. L'Engle. Thanks for sharing all great stories, and all the searches for meaning, high and low. We only wish there could have been more.
"It does indeed have something to do with faith," she said, "faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically."
No commentary added.
Two things are cool about this story: first, that an animal that we've been familiar with for ages (the moray eel) turns out to have a whole anatomical feature/function we previously knew nothing about, and second, that any creature would have this particular feature -- a second set of jaws that hang out in the throat region until they are needed to leap forward and drag large prey down into the gullet. The abstract for the paper makes it sound like throat-jaws, in and of themselves, are something common in fish, which is also something I never knew, and leads to fascinating ruminations about the evolutionary duplication that could have generated such an arrangement. Spiff!Thus, Hiatt's attack on [IAEA Head] EdBaredei begins with the complaint that he "was lionized by opponents of the Iraq war" for being right. That's because in Hiatt's world, having been right on Iraq -- and being "lionized" by war opponents -- are actually hallmarks of unseriousness.Really, the loops of logic documented here (not only denying the facts but reversing their own positions and actions over decades) are enough to make your brain quiver. Also clear, the script that's being peddled is depressingly identical to that used to justify the Iraq war. Will our media (and Congress!) be so credulous as to allow us to instigate another disaster in the name of, um, Seriousness?
I don't know the tenor of this forthcoming Bush biography (although a title like "Dead Certain" leaves room for quite a bit of color), but the excerpts say it all pretty well... Yeesh.President George W. Bush said today that he understands and respects the views of those who are calling for him to cut short his summer vacation, but warned that an immediate withdrawal from Crawford, Texas would "send a terrible signal to the enemy."And so forth . . .
How many minutes of the war do you think you'd have to divert funds from to rebuild New Orleans as a fucking stately pleasure dome? ... Five minutes?
- - Jick (Zach Johnson) on KoL radio, 8/30/2007
In other words, except for the fact that Iraq has a disfunctional government, a disfunctional police force, and a barely functional army, things are going great. I can't wait to see how Crocker and Petraeus spin this into an argument for staying another four years.Indeed, with the White House manning the pen, this will somehow be made to look like progress and sunshine. Or, at least to some of the most brainwashed...
White said it suggests that the military commanders want to be able to distance themselves from Iraq strategy by making it clear that whatever course is followed is the president's decision, not what commanders agreed on.Yeowch! The Bushies are already scrambling to get the grading scale adjusted so that they can tout their incremental progress toward a handful of the goals, somehow missing the point that all of these benchmarks were to be met by September . . .
TPM Muckraker provides a handy summary of Republican crooks, from the Abramoff allies to the recent sexual miscreants. An impressive list at this point, just from the last few years!"Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples--even couples who see men and women as equal," says Davis.Would like to know more about the comparability of the two pools -- i.e., perhaps those who choose to marry already have more "traditional" views that lead them in that direction than do the cohabiting couples, rather than being changed after the fact. It would take a prospective study (one that started with, say, serious dating couples, without knowing which would end up married) to tease that out, which means we're unlikely to know the answer any time soon...
...the more familiar they can seem. Pretty neat pixelated stained glass windows in a German cathedral look like the effect of many abstract glass patterns through time (and even some that try to tell stories but are too far away to make out). Seeing the high-res version of the photo, however, makes me think that it might look quite striking (in a familiar yet different kind of way) in person.
(via whiskey river)
To be uncertain is uncomfortable, but to be certain is ridiculous.
- - Chinese Proverb
Most of us are very cautious and circumspect about leaving our children's developing minds to the tender mercies of the media. Those of us who care about the elders in our families might be equally vigilant about their media diets as well. We do not have to take the political hijacking of our seniors lying down, or assume that's just the way it is. We just have to do what we do with our kids: make sure they've got consistent access to appealing, age-appropriate media that gives them hope, confidence, and truly balanced ways of seeing the world.A good point, as well as the need to intervene early, before the damage is done -- brainwashing is hard to undo, and the Rush and O'Reilly folks know how to wash with the best of 'em.
(via A.W.A.D.)
Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
- - Robert Benchley
Interested in local politics of Philadelphia and/or PA? Check out A Smoke-Filled Room
The regional heavyweights are summarized at
Those who would trade an essential freedom for temporary security deserve neither freedom nor security.
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