Vacation warning and linky goodness

Am taking off for a much-anticipated vacation, involving camping and other recreational excellence. Check back after July 4 for the resumption of chat here. Until then, an apt quote, and a handful of interesting and amusing links (from my huge backlog) to keep you busy while I'm gone.

Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.

- John Muir,
naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)

(via A.W.A.D.)

• Tired of trying to get to your local pharmacist during business hours? A prescription refill ATM may soon fill the bill... (via Follow Me Here)
  
  
• Also from the world of technology, a new device that can capture subvocalizations, allowing covert communications or alternative input mechanisms for computers. (via boing boing)
  
  
• A reporter describes the strange experience of trying to get rid of unwanted guns. (via Follow Me Here)
  
  
• Women are smarter investors than men, but appear not to get into it as much.
  
  
• There's evidence that parenting doesn't matter for a child's success, or at least not as much as angst-ridden yuppie parents worry that it does.

  So it isn't that parents don't matter. Clearly, they matter an awful lot. It's just that by the time most parents pick up a book on parenting technique, it's too late. Many of the things that matter most were decided long ago — what kind of education a parent got, how hard he worked to build a career, what kind of spouse he wound up with and how long they waited to have children.

  (via Rebecca's Pocket)
  
  
• Why the new food pyramid may be less about health than agribusiness. (Follow the last link there for further explication.)
  
  
• A list of idioms and their definitions. If only there were more... (via A Tattered Coat)
  
  
• Match wits with an online game of Twenty Questions. (via pal Aime)
  
  
• A neat art project involving globes that show different features than simple geography, such as mountains of debt, or only landlocked nations, energy consumption, etc. (Additional chat about the project is here.) (via Rebecca's Pocket)
  
  
• A few excerpts from Edward R. Murrow on McCarthy and dissent (rather timely this week).
  
  
• The ultimate in patronizing tastelessness: Jesus Loves You sandals. (via boing boing)
  
  
• And finally, a wellspring of bad puns from Echidne of the Snakes.

Pace yourself, now! That's a lot to chew . . .

Maybe liberals *are* different

The DNC takes it to Karl Rove on what we've been thinking since 9/11...

Democrats
Believe that we should be honest with our troops about the reasons we go to war, give them everything they need to be safe, and make sure we go in with an exit plan.

Republicans
Manipulate intelligence to trump up reasons to go to war, don't give our troops the support they need, constantly mislead the public about the direction the war is going, and fail to make an exit plan. And turn Iraq into the ultimate terrorist training ground.

Just an excerpt from a long list of comparisons...

(via kos)

Update: don't know what this is about? see this for an explanation by someone who can still be outraged. (wait for it to jump down.)

Raising educated readers

Here's something I never knew existed: a subsection of a major newspaper designed specifically to explain news on a level understandable by and interesting to children. It's at the Washington Post and it's called KidsPost. Sure, there are stories about animals, but there is also an explanation of the Senate decision to apologize about lynching, and lots of other meaty stories. What a fantastic undertaking!

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

I guess poker has really gone mainstream

It must be so, if the New York Times has started a weekly poker column. Sigh. I guess this decreases the likelihood that bridge is about to make a comeback -- seems less likely that this craze spreads outward to re-legitimize other strategic card games than that it feeds the already successful casinos around the country.

(via the Huffington Post)

Right, it's all about fairness

The next CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will be Patricia Harrison, who has no broadcasting qualifications but was recently the co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

Harrison will report to a board headed by Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson, a Republican who is facing an inquiry by the CPB's inspector general for possible partisan meddling in the agency.

Ya' think? Congress recently pared back budget cuts for the agency, but it looks like there are other pressures still to come . . .

(heard on Democracy Now)

Unpacking the wage gap

Ampersand has a great post today on the nature and sources of the wage gap. He rebuts the facile claims of a couple of columnists, and links to much more analysis for those who are interested. Take-home for those not planning to follow the link: the wage gap doesn't arise from an employer looking at two candidates and choosing to pay one a higher wage; it's about systematic inequalities in the way different jobs are valued and particular family structures assumed. Highlights:

I call this last factor the “Father Knows Best” economy; most jobs implicitly assume that workers have wives at home who are taking care of the kids and house, so that these responsibilities never need to be accomidated for by the employer. Maybe that assumption made sense half a century ago, but it doesn’t make sense now; and by continuing to implicitly make this assumption, our economy is making it unfairly difficult for caretakers (who are usually mothers) to have careers.

Historically, this process has happened many times; for instance, schoolteacher wages dropped as towns discovered that hiring a schoolmarm was much cheaper than hiring a male teacher. Similarly, secretarial wages plummeted as that became a female-dominated occupation. In a well-documented example, bank tellers changed from a male-dominated to a female-dominated occupation as wages (and prestige) dropped.

But why are jobs and careers designed in such a way that primary caretakers are punished? (Remember what I said about the “Fathers Knows Best” economy). And isn’t it possible that in a less sexist society, any parenting wage penalty would be split more evenly between women and men?

But really, the whole essay is full of good arguments and valuable statistics -- worth reading over your next coffee break

Best gratuitous snark of the week:

There’s just so much illogic here to be unpacked, I feel like the wardrobe wrangler on a Cher concert tour.

heh heh...

Flaming idiots

Amazingly, with everything going on in the world, flag-burning is back in the minds of busybody Congressfolk. Greg Saunders runs down the untenability of such legislation, even before you get to the First Amendment or the argument that patriotism is about the country and its ideals, or what happens when it's time to retire a flag. You gotta read the post and see some of the examples that reveal the folks thinking about this as grandstanding idiots.

Outside-the-box stuff

(or crazy pinko ideas, depending on your point of view)

Seeing the Forest has a rumination on oil prices, and how price changes might have been put to good use in helping us free ourselves...

(via The Daou Report)

Supreme Court extends eminent domain

Today's decision is a blow for the ownership rights of private citizens.

A divided Supreme Court ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth conflicts with individual property rights.

The majority decision was rendered by the strange coalition of Justices Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer.

Government siezing of private property has been traditionally limited to use of the land for explicitly public works -- e.g., rerouting a highway, building a stadium, and the like -- but this case was about building a private office complex. I find this notion nontrivially shocking: who gets to decide that my neighborhood is so crappy (or powerless) that it should be razed for more exciting city developments?! Commercial properties always represent more tax revenue than private citizens, but surely that's not our criterion for defining the "public interest" and the limits of my legal rights!! Justice O'Conner echoes my concerns in her dissent:

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

Indeed. I feel for New London's desire to revitalize itself, but this seems like a terrible precedent for much less laudable projects and politicians.

(via Metafilter)

Update: short NPR piece on the story (with Nina Totenberg) in Real Audio here.
(via How Appealing)

Update 2: SCOTUSblog provides the following encapsulation of the majority opinion:

The Court commented: "Those who govern the city [of New London] were not confronted with the need to remove blight..., but their determination that the area was sufficiently distressed to justify a program of economic rejuvenation is entitled to our deference....Clearly, there is no basis for exempting economic development from our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose."

I guess we have to hope that each legislature can be held accountable for the "broad latitude" that the Court sees fit to afford them. I'm not sure that "economic development" always leads to civic-minded views of the public good...

Update 3: fellow liberal Mithras thinks this decision was about right, and that politics is the way to punish bad policy, not invocation of the Constitution.

Doh!!

Somebody was caught napping at the Washington Post, as they accidentally (and only briefly) released Rehnquist's obituary/retirement tribute prematurely . . . Almost makes me wish I used an RSS feed.

Viral videos

Or at least, the feisty voices of the frustrated. Just a coincidence that I was directed to both of these today (I think the first predates the last election):

Punk Voter (via Booknotes)

F**ck Yeah! (via Atrios)

(Each about a minute or two. It should be obvious, but headphones are recommended for both of these, on account of, um lyrical freedom...)

Speaking of smack-downs...

Tom Tomorrow tries a little compare/contrast to test out DeLay's contention that there's no comparision between media portrayals of the situation in Iraq and what things are really like on the ground.

Sorry, but no...

The crazy opinion page of the Wall Street Journal opines that evidence for global warming is in decline (guess they're not thinking of this one). The scientists at Real Climate deliver the smack-down, in well-documented form:

The Wall Street Journal vs. The Scientific Consensus

While we resist commenting on policy matters (e.g. the relative merits of the Kyoto Protocol or the various bills before the US Senate), we will staunchly defend the science against distortions and misrepresentations, be they intentional or not. In this spirit, we respond here to the scientifically inaccurate or incorrect assertions made in the editorial.

Heh -- it's several screens worth, and includes 17 rebutted excerpts. Yeowch!

(via rc3.org)

Arnold's in free fall

Governor Schwarzenegger is becoming the least popular governor ever in California, alienating beloved groups (nurses and schoolteachers), wasting money, letting promises slide. Digby summarizes pithily, as ever:

Well, when you run as a superhero who is going to magically solve all problems by the sheer force of your supernatural powers, people tend to be quickly disappointed when they realize that you are actually a pampered movie star who doesn't have a clue.

Maybe they really will work up a recall effort!

Bad news still biting at their heels

Apparently a kerfluffle over one of Bush's Social Security "town hall" events is still having repurcussions in Colorado and in DC:

The Denver Three's quest: to learn the identity of the "Mystery Man" who, impersonating a Secret Service agent, forcibly removed them from a taxpayer-funded Social Security event with President Bush three months ago because of a "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker on one of their cars.

These three regular guys gals are gradually bringing the CO congressional delegation over to their side, peppering government agencies with Freedom of Information Act requests, and generally refusing to just go away, which is much the preferred response to GOP slightings. It's about time somebody made a fuss about this kind of incident, which is clearly illegal but also clearly not isolated. (Of course, the White House declares the issue settled, despite the lack of answers to any of the actual questions...)

Things you never thought to wonder

A blogger takes a look at the evolution of the Starbucks logo from lurid siren to sanitized icon, possibly mermaid, and maybe now just the safety of words... Fascinating!

(via Follow Me Here)

A battle for the heart of the Florida GOP

Florida Senator Jim King, a political fixture for twenty years, is facing a primary challenge from the right next year. And not just any challenge -- his newly announced opponent is Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue and promoter of violence against abortion providers. Terry is also on record as calling for a Christian nation:

We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism. ... Theocracy means God rules. I've got a hot flash. God rules.

As the Jacksonville story noted, this is really another fight for the soul of the GOP (with shades of the Specter-Toomey battle last year):

The contest is already centering itself as a core fight over Republicanism. King is a social moderate and fiscal conservative who has sometimes clashed with the right-wing elements of the party. Terry says the district has no room for moderation and that he can better represent Republican principles.

Expect poor Terry Schiavo to be in the midst of the fray again; King was one of the few Republicans to vote against Congressional action in the matter.

(via XOverboard)

Quote of the day

True peace is not merely the absence of tension;
it is the presence of justice.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

(via Medley)

I don't think that word means what you think it means...

Think Progress has a great summary of the ever-shifting target of the U.S. mission in Iraq, as exerpted from speeches by Bush himself. Sure makes you wonder just how we'll know it's really accomplished... Sigh.

Kitty porn...

(political undercurrents division)

(via Alas, a blog)