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!!