I have a blog?? Dump of recent grumps

Apparently the act of moving things into my category tab bars now substitutes for the psychic release I used to achieve through, you know, blogging. Discussion and analysis, venting, all that stuff. Now it's just a boggling heap of tabs up there leering at me. So here's everything that makes me want to scream (other than toddler willfullness, etc.), compiled from the last, um, two months:

• A radical embrace of nullification -- our Disloyal Opposition
  
  
• Wonkbook: The real unemployment rate is 11 percent (including those who've given up looking)
  
  
• NYPD shred kids' paper hearts commemorating Occupy arrestees before their very eyes
  
  
• What Global Warming May Mean for World's Wine Industry -- some people can't pretend it's not happening (look forward to English wine soon!) [related: US agriculturists planning to overhaul the planting zone map to reflect changing temperatures.]
  
  
• A two-part essay on how we're approaching climate change (arguments) completely wrong:
  1. The brutal logic of climate change mitigation
     
  2. The frog and the polar bear: The real reasons Americans aren’t buying climate change
  
  
• WSJ will publish literally anything, as long as it disputes global warming
  
  
• Melting Glaciers Mean Double Trouble for Water Supplies
  
  
• Suffering bad hayfever in Melbourne? -- global warming meaning more pollen?
  
  
• Politifact, R.I.P.

  The people at Politifact are terrified of being considered partisan if they acknowledge the clear fact that there’s a lot more lying on one side of the political divide than on the other. So they’ve bent over backwards to appear “balanced” — and in the process made themselves useless and irrelevant.

• Chump Change -- even the housing bubble was racist
  
  
• Servicer Horror Stories: Resurrecting Zombie Mortgages
  
  
• DOJ to America: we won't reveal the circumstances under which you can be assassinated by us
  
  
• LA City Attorney to Occupy: pay for brainwashing lessons on limits of free speech and we'll drop the charges
  
  
• 10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free Sigh.
  
  
• Abortion, Parenting, and the Government -- how small barriers add up
  
  
• Anatomy of an unsafe abortion (from an E.R. doctor)
  
  
• It’s a girl: The three deadliest words in the world
  
  
• No Women on Facebook Board
  
  
• Boys Will Hire Boys: The Media Is Male and Getting Maler
  
  
• The big "O" stands for "omitted variable" (ahem!!)
  
  
• The real divide here is on gender, not Catholicism (religious arguments are just a cover for men who don't respect female autonomy)
  
  
• Things That Are Not Racist
  
  
• Neuroscience could mean soldiers controlling weapons with minds
  
  
• Why maximizing shareholder value is no way to run a company
  
  
• What's the social cost of making it harder to get Sudafed? -- more stupidity from the War on Drugs
  
  
• Two variations on a theme (societal panic over children's safety):
  1. Me, APD, and 'Babysitting While White,' Part Deux
     
  2. Man At The Bus Stop! Call The Police!
  
  
• The Plan So Far (for Greece = magic!!)
  
  

Quote of the day, political woes edition

Oh well, you battle global economic meltdown with the corrupt idiotic elites you have...

- Atrios

Poem of the day

If snakes were blue

If snakes were blue, it was the kind of day
That would uncoil in a luxurious ease
As each mica-bright scale exposed a flange of gold
And slowly, slowly, the golden eyes blinked.

It was the kind of day that takes forever --
As though minutes, minutes, could never be counted -- to slide
Among the clouds like pink lily-pads floating
In a crystal liquid pure enough to drink.

And there was no distinction now between
Light and shadow except the mystic and faint
Sense of adaptation of the iris,
As light diminished and the first star shone,

And the last veery, hidden in a thicket of alder,
Thought it would break its heart perhaps -- or yours.
Let it be yours, then. For such gentle breaking
In that ambiguous moment could not be

Less than a blessing, or the kind of promise
We give ourselves in childhood when first dawn
Makes curtains go gold, and all night's dreams flood back.
They had guaranteed our happiness forever.

And in a way such promises may come true
In spite of all our evil days and ways.
True, few fulfillments -- but look! In the distance lift peaks
Of glittering white above the wrath-torn land.

- Robert Penn Warren

To Speck, within sight of 4 years old

I can't believe that it's been nine months since I sat to write one of these! The fact that I haven't found the time has to be credited, at least in part, to how fast we're running all the time to keep up with you, your energy and your ever-increasing grasp of the world. You're still at an interesting intermediate state in many ways: you use scissors like a champ now, gladly take on 100-piece puzzles, and are pround to be a user of Big Girl (fluoride-containing) toothpaste as of the last couple of weeks, but you still resist saying goodbye to your high chair or crib, show no signs of advancing toward overnight potty training, and have reverted to eating only a half-dozen favored foods (and complaining about dinners out). Still, leaps and bounds on many fronts mean you're a radically different girl than when last I wrote.

Notably over this span, you took on an assortment of behaviors that I've always associated with Kids (without really being aware of the ages at which they might predominate). We're probably 6-8 months into the world of repeated demands such as "hey! watch this!" You like making up imaginative stories, especially about a former/secret/imaginary life in varying degrees of detail (from the vague to the explicit: you lived in Greece, you had different parents, you rescued a sparrow...). You have lately become obsessed with poop jokes and all things scatological or smelly. And you can make an abstract scribble and then describe in detail the things that it shows.

Other pleasant surprises: you have moments of real snuggliness. You no longer require your PB&J cut into tiny pieces, and you sometimes even eat the crusts! (as long as they're not attached.) You worked hard for several months at swinging and jumping until you finally achieved your goal (around 42 months) of successfully navigating a set of monkey bars. Around that same time you took your first true solo potty trip and also managed to get yourself dressed one morning. (Neither of these things are reliable yet, but progress!) You're not only able to spell your name, but you can write at least the first three letters -- and love to do so -- and you know your and Gammy's phone numbers by heart. You can work a computer mouse and no longer even think about doing so as you navigate games and websites. You have developed an interest in board games, which is something of a relief to your parents. And you're a complete water bug, loving to splash in Gammy's pool, and taking your first no-parent swim class at the Y.

Most striking here is your leap in social development. Not only have we seen you play with (as opposed to next to) other kids, first occasionally and now regularly, but you actually made your first real friends in the last two months -- we even swung a playground playdate with one of them. You still have a tendency to adopt little kids and look after them more than to engage real peers, but friendship is a pretty loose construct at this age, and the enthusiasms are mutual, so who cares!

Here are a couple of things that I now recognize as toddler behavior, but might in a more naive stage of life have expected I had another 10-12 years before I'd have to master: claims that we're "ruining your life," general anti-parent acting out, and back-seat driving ("keep two hands on the wheel!")... I find that a glass of wine with dinner is a great help in such matters -- that and increased use of morning coffee appear to be your parents' adaptations to life with the challenges of 3.

Here are some distinctive new things that seem very specific to you:

• You started to have a set of "three questions" that you wanted to ask at bedtime before the last song (what time will I get up, am I wearing a diaper, will you come if I need something) and this has evolved into a pretty long nighttime ritual, including a "sleep tight" call-and-response with whoever is putting you to bed.
  
• An innocent game of feeding you macaroni (to speed dinner time) took on a life of its own as each bite had to have an entire narrative context (a bunny running away from a fox, who says, "I'll get him next time!" etc.). We repented too late.
  
• Your vocabulary, grammatical structures, and use of idiom continue to be amazing to one and all. You ask the meanings of new words and often incorporate them later.
  
• You are interested in maps (especially to playgrounds!), flags, and languages (esp. the bits of Spanish being introduced at school), so we're happy to see that you seem to have some concept of the greater world. However, you've taken to calling the US flag the "Philadelphia flag," so there's still a way to go! hah.
  
• Your desire to read has begun to bear fruit, as you now recognize easily 100 words when you see them written, and while you still like to "fake read" books to your family, at other times you also work in the real words that you recognize, such that your takes approximate ever more closely the real story (and, in the case of Pooh stories, often make it all the way there). You've also surprised me by reading a sign or bit of chat from the online games we read together, so this may soon be another skill you apply without thinking about it (although I keep waiting for a moment of amazement when you realize that you are uncovering new content for yourself)...

So I feel that we are poised on the cusp of a whole new world -- of spending time with friends, of exploring new ideas and places through reading, of transitioning more and more into the Big Girl realms of behavior. And yet you still feel very attached to us, like having your flock around you, are in no rush to push off. We're in no rush either. Part of us looks forward to reclaiming more free time, more head space, but part of us can hardly imagine you heading off to kindergarten in another 18 months, or even graduating to the older class in your preschool (in more like 6-9 months). And I suspect that we'll miss your acute desire for our involvement in everything you think and do, however exhausting it can seem right now. But we're excited for what you're seeing and thinking, what's just ahead, and the whole crazy trip. Keep it coming!!

Quote of the day

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

- Anton Chekhov

(via whiskey river (riskywiver on Twitter))

Minds ranging through the universe

I went to this video to see Stephen Colbert out of character, but I stayed for the whole thing, because it's the best demonstration I've seen of Niel DeGrasse Tyson's amazing way of bringing science and its wonders to life (and one of the best discussions I've seen of the broader value of science and of encouraging intellectual curiosity in general). Heartening, and worth the hour or so of investment.

Grimly apt

Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech isn't freely available in video form because of the choices of its legal owners (his family and Sony Entertainment). You'd think that they'd want everybody to watch it on MLK Day, what with the national holiday and all, but apparently keeping history alive costs $20, man.

(via Ezra Klein)

Now THIS is how a new year should start!!

The FDA is finally limiting antibiotic use in agriculture, to help forestall the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Better late than never -- the future of our species thanks you!!

(via mimi smartypants)

Tweet of the day

Seriously, more people live in my apt complex than will vote for any candidate in the Iowa caucuses. Come here & cover our tenant meetings.

- anildash (Anil Dash)

Wacky idea of the day

...would be Obama-Clinton for '12. Seems unlikely to me, given her previous statements that she's done running, but it would certainly give the campaign a kick in the shorts and would set the party up for 2016. Only time will tell...

(via kottke)

Holiday cheer

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

Fascinating

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

Cheerful/hilarious!

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

Quote of the day

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

- Ted Hughes

(via whiskey river)

Taking the long view

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

Go, read it already. Things to mull.

(via a Medley tweet)

Widespread frustration

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

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

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

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

Ouch

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

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

Tuesday kid-blogging

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


A playful grin during her midsummer obsession with hanging bars.


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


Zebra warpaint for Halloween, very dramatic!

Quote of the day

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

- Carlos Castaneda

(via whiskey river)

Occupy is not "visit"

Rachel Maddow gives a little history of organized protest and suppression of same in the last 50 years and how it's likely to apply to efforts to get rid of Occupy Wall Street protests in cities throughout the country. Heartening to see people returning after armed thugs chase them out; I hope she's right that this will be counterproductive.



More here on how the apparently coordinated clearings out took place and how the media is handling them. Will be interesting to see whether the country's sympathies rebound as quickly as the protesting crowds; I hope that these dictatorial actions aren't rewarded...

Planning ahead

Looking ahead to Thanksgiving with anticipation/dread? Need to figure out just the right thing to bring? Here's the perfect flowchart, covering possibilities from the college party-on to Grandma's traditional show and friendly to hostile. Hilarious.

(via a Medley tweet)

Friday frolics

A heaping helping of cheery and interesting links to unburden my browser and lighten your weekend (with apologies for how old some of them are):

Cheering/silly

• Have old books and nobody to trade them with? BookMooch might be for you!
  
  
• Matt Damon explains non-financial motivations and the education sector
  
  
• Occupy Wall Street boiled down to a humorous (but accurate) caption -- indeed!!
  
  
• A list of Obama's accomplishments to remind the nay-sayers
  
  
• Also, separately, good advice to get involved in politics, not just spectate:

  ... creating change is the responsibility of the people who desire that change. Being disappointed in President Obama or frustrated with the Tea Party is a waste of time. The only thing we really control is the amount of effort we put into getting what we want.

  Well said.
  
  
• Also well said, the now-famous quote from Elizabeth Warren on how nobody succeeds alone.
  
  
• Medicare steps up enforcement of equal visitation and representation rights in hospitals
  
  
• Malaria report sees near-zero deaths by end of 2015 -- there's a headline I didn't expect! thanks, Gates Foundation!!
  
  
• Rafe reminds us that sometimes success is just keeping going, whether or not your approach is perfect or planned to the end; adjust when you must, but show up.
  
  
• A Dutch city set up a pedestrian slide an alternative to the stairs down to the subway -- fun!!
  
  
• Here's a blog of what reasonable women's armor would look like if it were made for fighting, not titilating teenage viewers -- amen!
  
  
• Goofy photos of dogs shaking off water -- oh, the jowls!!
  
  
• I continue to find ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS absolutely inspired, from the simple and goofy to the wordy and/or profound. Rock it!
  
  
• A heap of Demotivator-style expressions of first-world angst -- most entertaining.
  
  
• The problem with averaging star-ratings - hah!
  
  
• An amusing list of cultural faux pas in New York City -- lots of insights there into cultural norms of busy places generally.
  
  
• Here's a fun cover/collaboration of the Muppet Show Theme (by Ok Go)
  
  
• I've tried to resist all these auto-tuning videos, but I love the musicality and science of this video about the matter of the universe, which features a lot of great people expressing their joy in the crazy beauty of it all... (kind of makes me teary)
  
  
• You've probably already seen this, but it's so sweet I want to bookmark it here: an elderly couple tries to figure out their webcam, with much entertaining discussion along the way...
  
  
• Here's another old couple who know how to play a duet!! wonderful.

Fascinating

• Game of Thrones visual effects -- an amazing demonstration of how real scenery can be blended into green-screen fantasies to make movie places come alive
  
  
• Amazing slow-motion video of an owl coming in for a landing.
  
  
• Spoilers don't spoil anything -- a surprising finding that knowing how a story turns out lets us relax and enjoy the trip to get there.
  
  
• Facts Don’t Persuade Climate Skeptics–So What Does? graphics!! (also, this report might have some impact...)
  
  
• Ever wonder why it's hard to speak a foreign language over the phone? Part of the answer is provided by this audio-visual illusion, in which different mouth movements make you hear different sounds from the same track. We need visual cues to put it all together well.
  
  
• Speaking of fooling your senses, apparently it's possible to make apple pie without any apples, something that came in handy during, e.g., the Civil War. Who knew?
  
  
• How to Peel a Head of Garlic in Less Than 10 Seconds -- it's not a way you probably would have thought of!
  
  
• Have an old globe? Find out how old by using this table of when different countries ceased to exist/appear on maps...
  
  
• Ever wonder why your fingers and toes wrinkle up in water (but nothing else does)? Looks like it may actually improve traction on slippery surfaces! Thanks, evolution!!
  
  
• Did you hear about that faster-than-light-speed particle that seemed to challenge Einstein's theory of relativity? A proper application of relativity made sense of things (and proved that it hadn't broken light speed after all)...