Voters, Not Victims

I really like this campaign that MoveOn has undertaken to rebut Mitt Romney's claim that those who pay no taxes are layabouts and moochers -- it's short individual statements about how a busy and productive life can still land you in slim times. A couple of my favorites are from this grandma and this war vet and Ground Zero volunteer, but there are a lot of others if you somehow need more convincing.

Poem for the day

THEME FOR ENGLISH B

The instructor said,

Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you---
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me---we two---you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me---who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records---Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white---
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me---
although you're older---and white---
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

By Langston Hughes
1951

(via Hoarded Ordinaries)

Jumping off the boat

It's hard not to think that Republicans are starting to worry less about Romney and more about their party's long-term prospects when you see headlines like this one. They really have picked a terrible paraody of themselves to put up for office, haven't they?

An appropriate memorial

...to the World Trade Center attacks is new evidence that the Bush Administration actively minimized and overlooked warnings about Al Quaeda's plans for some 6-9 months, not just that one famous memo. But, you know, Republicans are who keeps this country safe. Sigh.

(via Medley)

Quote of the day

The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.

- Antoine de Rivarol,
epigrammatist (1753-1801)

(via A.W.A.D.)

Could we get rid of austerity already?

I mean, it seems pretty obvious to me that reducing public spending just when the public most needs it will be counterproductive, but, as Atrios always says, the Very Important People see the world differently. Well, here's how it's working out: England is watching its recession lengthen, joining its austerity pals Ireland and Spain, and now Italy joins the disaster, with ripples that even Germany can no longer ignore. Wake up, before it's too late! This is the time to spend, because if nobody does, we're all going to be out of work!!

Ensure *your* right to vote

A great page, GottaVote, summarizes the requirements for voting for each state, so you can see whether you will need new ID, what documents are required, and how long you have to get things straightened out. Look it up, be sure you have what you need to have your say in November.

Our once-proud nation...

This is a sentence that we shouldn't allow to be truth:

Almost half of middle-class workers, 49 percent, will be poor or near poor in retirement, living on a food budget of about $5 a day.

Seventy-five percent have less than $30k in their retirement accounts on the day they depart -- this seems like a clear failure of the 401k model (and a clear explanation of all the elders visible in low-end service jobs). We need to get sane about this before we're right back in the postwar grandma-eats-dogfood days -- actually, I guess we are already. Shameful.

Quote of the day (political edition)

If you were to design a tailor-made plutocratic villain to run for the Presidency in the post-crisis Occupy era, you could barely do better than Mitt Romney. The guy quite literally has the very job and personality that Gordon Gekko's character was based on.

- David Atkins

New kitten!

Yes, we have gotten a new kitten. There was some advance promise to Speck that such a thing would occur this summer, and the wealth of summer kitten rescues gave us a heap of choices. (Those visits are pretty good recreation in themselves!) So here he is, Milo!

He's still living in a bedroom, being sniffed (and sometimes growled at) under the door by our other cats, but we've let him out for a few supervised adventures, and we hope to be introducing him around more formally in the next couple of days. The cats are bitter, but I hope his insistent and resilient playfulness will win them over.

As for us, we're pretty taken with him -- he prances up to anybody who comes into the room, looking for love and/or play, and he has slept many nights already snuggled in the curve of my neck -- and Speck is making her peace with the high energy and unpredictable pointiness of kittens (which I think are different in reality than imagination). One forgets, however, how much feist and play there are in a small kitten, and right now his energies peak around midnight, so it's not uniformly good for our sleep or toes...

This is what happens when summer eats you

That is, you end up with a giant backlog of links and no time to really make a post out of them. Or even hope that anybody will want to sort through them. But here are a bunch of things I've caught in my net over the last few months in the category of Cheerful Bits, yay!

Happy

• College-grad sea-turtle knows all!
• Wolves discuss the Trayvon Martin case
• Death by chocolate and other dangerous desserts
• Fotoshop, the beauty regimin
• Mad Men - The Carousel scene (video)
• Teenager has never seen a record before (sigh)
• Puppets re-enact no-cameras-allowed corruption trial on the nightly news
• Happiness
• Lego man sent to space by Toronto teens
• It Just Goes On and On -- pay it forward, in action
• The Greatest Speech Ever Made - Charlie Chaplin
• That’s no ordinary rabbit. (he herds sheep!)
• Happy Birthday, William Shatner -- that first video, I just...
• Hollywood edition of SOPA
• To My Old Master
• “Spilled Semen” Amendment to Personhood Bill Offered by Oklahoma Democrat; more here, and also Ohio Bill Would Require Men Submit Affidavit From Sex Partner Confirming Impotence Before Receiving Viagra
• Top 10 Reasons Why Men Shouldn’t Be Ordained
• OMG: McDonald’s Does the Right Thing
• Slut Shaming and Why it's Wrong (teenagers, kick our butts!)
• A Note About Panther Pride
• Instapaper Placebo (sob!)
• How to get more likes on Facebook
• Laser de-printer lifts ink from paper, leaving it ready to be reused -- more efficient than recycling!
• The Free Universal Construction Kit
• THIS is why we invest in science. This.
• Man Walks All Day to Create Spectacular Snow Patterns
• Why power generators are terrified of solar; related: Germany sets new solar power record, institute says
• "It Gets Better" at BYU
• Onion: Obama Launches More Realistic 'I Have Big Ideas But We'll See How It Goes' Campaign Slogan
• Lincoln High School in Walla Walla, WA, tries new approach to school discipline — suspensions drop 85% (less Zero Tolerance, more understanding)
• A child's to-do list
• Valentine dilemma (LOL!)

Fascinating

• Eight lazy ways to lose weight
• Touch interfaces everywhere (using sound!)
• This is What Happens When You Give Thousands of Stickers to Thousands of Kids
• How Doctors Die -- It’s Not Like the Rest of Us, But It Should Be
• Can walking reduce the deficit?
• People using pseudonyms post the highest-quality comments, Disqus says -- so there!
• Stranger Danger Dispelled By Bears And Kindness
• New York City gets a Software Engineering High School
• President John Tyler's grandsons are still alive!!
• Mercenary hacker to the stars -- superorganization of organized crime
• Why Sharing Passwords With Your Girlfriend/Boyfriend Is A Spectacularly Bad Idea
• Tunnel to the Other Side of the Earth -- find out on a map what's on the opposite side
• A Swiss idea for removing space junk
• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo -- I had it, if only for a moment...
• Tim Ferriss explains how to hyperdecant wine
• Forty-five procedures doctors don’t think doctors should do
• 7 Commonly Corrected Grammar Errors (That Aren't Mistakes)
• Feel Me, a new way to connect
• Writing Across Gender
• Gay rights in the US, state by state
• Tact Filters -- great insight
• Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is (also very insightful); follow-up here
• When Data Clashes with Common Sense
• What’s better for heating a mug of water: The stove or the microwave? (I love the Internet!) related: Burning Desire for Efficiency
• Clang -- for those who fantasize about realistic swordplay
• Perspective

Romney is a scary guy

A great video makes that argument here -- not so much that he's shown a list of scary tendencies (although I think that could be argued as well), but that he appears to be clay in the hands of his handlers, and he appears to be surrounding himself with men in the mold of Dick Cheney. Nobody wants another round of Bush/Cheney years . . .

Ze Frank says

This manic style of video may or may not be for you, but I love Ze's notion of a finishing stamp, which somehow combines the notions of self-actualization with the idea that You Have to Ship (which could itself be put better if I were less tired). Lots of good bits in that 3-minute package!

Update: man, if you're feeling a little bleak, watch this Chase the Happy video! I loves me some silly!!

Through the door at last

Great GQ profile of Joss Whedon, one of TV's greatest (and most overlooked) writers of the last couple of decades. Manages to capture the whiff of martyrdom that his fans surround him with, while also noting the tragedy that his innovation and creativity have run into so many walls. Worth a read for diehard followers and the mildly curious alike, and a little poignant for fans, knowing, as the writer didn't, that The Avengers was about to meet with such explosive success. [Bonus: he's a redhead! who knew!!]

When the personal is political

Am touched by this piece about the President's announcement yesterday. It's true that there are political arguments, and then there's the immensely personal moment of recognition, of participation in civic rituals as old as time.

There's something very deep about having your government declare you a stranger to its laws, defining your love as outside all respectable recognition. For my president to stand up and say that I should belong fully to my nation, that my wife and I should be considered as fully married as my brother and his wife—well, it reopens and washes out some very deeply incised sense of exclusion, a scar inflicted when, at age 15, I first panicked at the realization that I might be queer.

I still remember a friend's adapting the Jewish custom of spilling some wine at a wedding to the statement that their joy could never be complete as long as so many of their friends could never share the same moments in their own lives. Not soon in Pennsyltucky, maybe, but the stir is clearly rising...

Quote of the day

Let me not think of my work only as a stepping stone to something else, and if it is, let me become fascinated by the shape of the stone.

- Ze Frank *

Yes, this

A heartfelt parental response to recent tragedies, and a reminder to everybody to make change happen where you can, in your community, in your home.

(via Medley)

The power of the 40-hour week

It's not just good for lazy people; it actually makes workplaces more productive, in every category, from manual labor to "information fields."

But the bottom line is: For the good of our bodies, our families, our communities, the profitability of American companies, and the future of the country, this insanity has to stop. Working long days and weeks has been incontrovertibly proven to be the stupidest, most expensive way there is to get work done.

Hopefully the culture can be saved from itself, at least for bottom-line reasons, if humanitarian arguments aren't enough.

Quote of the day (absurd misogynist ideas edition)

If we could harness the power of the crappy ideas coming out of the state of Arizona, we could probably power a rocket ship to the moon, where there are no Mexicans or fertile wombs and everyone can be free to be as mean a cranky asshole as they want at all times!

- Jezebel

Kickstarter backing for science?

I can't decide whether I think this is brilliant or the beginning of the end -- a Kickstarter-like method for crowd-funding small scientific projects. What appeals to the public and what needs doing are often miles apart, although, conversly, there are almost certainly a host of worthy small projects that are beneath the notice (or outside the main focuses of) larger funding institutions. This could help offset the starving of less sexy low-tech fields, and/or enable student projects and other limited endeavors. But it's hard not to picture a sort of flash-over-substance ethic too. Will be interesting to see.