Turning outrage into sanity?

This bill seems a great idea to me -- it's a crime that a few small-minded state officials can virtually disenfranchise large swaths of the population on whim or through negligence. Here's hoping that the same energy that drove unexpectedly high turnout this fall will also create pressure to pass this one.

Failure of responsibility

A former journalist takes those colleagues to task for failing to cover climate change as the crisis it is.

In the face of this situation — as much as it pains me to say this — you are failing. Your so-called "objectivity," your bloodless impartiality, are nothing but a convenient excuse for what amounts to an inexcusable failure to tell the most urgent truth we've ever faced.

I sympathize that it's hard to create and sustain a sense of urgency -- crises like Katrina managed coverage for, what, a couple of months? -- but this is the lives of our kids, the future of our species, and time is running out. We *need* to get everybody scared and not take the focus off the issue for today's minor news; unfortunately, the business model of the press doesn't fit well with scaring and depressing everybody. Political leadership, anyone?

(via Medley)

Shameless

When I saw the Romney photos from the Red Cross, I thought about the inevitability of his emphasis on charities versus FEMA, but otherwise I sort of shrugged it off. Hearing that the entire thing was staged, and in fact wasted the time of real Red Cross personnel, rather turns my stomach. This campaign really knows no shame.

Arbitrary justice and online commerce

I do the majority of my shopping online. Thinking it's time for board games for Speck? to refill an obscure spice? track down that novel I just heard about? It all ends up on my Amazon wish-list (or directly in my Cart, waiting for critical mass), fueling a steady trickle of packages to my home.

So I can only imagine my horror if I were to wake one day to find that my account had been completely wiped from existence! I think I would collapse on the floor -- not just because of the loss of the couple of Kindle books I have, but all that history and planning in my various lists, and where else would I even get half this stuff (one painful web search at a time)?? And to think that such an account termination could happen because of a foreseeable algorithmic misfire just adds to the chill in my bones.

This seems even worse when you consider the number of other accounts that you might have linked to your Amazon account, whether you use them to fund your Kickstarter contributions or record your audiobooks. A lifetime ban could be severely crippling.

I hope Amazon sorts out the kinks in their system and remembers that users (as reviewers and customers) are what has powered their success. We might be afraid to get too reliant on a resource that can so suddenly and pointlessly be pulled out from under us!

Modern gladiators

I love football. I don't know if it's all the Thanksgiving afternoons with the family menfolk digesting turkey in front of the TV, or the effects of college football and its harmless rivalries, or the sense of a whole region rooting together for a common (pro) team, but somewhere I got the bug, really enjoy watching, and we have even gotten Speck interested in Sunday afternoon games.

But in recent years all the coverage of concussions has made me more and more uncomfortable with this pastime -- not just news of acute injuries, but recurrent patterns of low-level head trauma that add up to early Parkinson's, personality changes, and middle-age dementia (leaving their wives and girlfriends scrambling to hold things together). Many of these players are literally giving up the rest of their lives for these few years of glory (and some for pretty slim glory, as much of the damage accrues to unsung players like punt returners and linemen).

So I watch, and I cheer, but every time there's a really hard hit, or a man stays on the ground, or the replay shows that grim neck-snap, I feel my stomach turn a little, a pang of uncertainty about whether I should watch. The idea that any fans, however incensed, would actually cheer an injury leaves me totally floored. Am glad that this team-mate took his own fans (and the public) to task for that occasion, but honestly, are they meaningfully worse than those of us whose fanship supports the sport in general? I wish I felt more clean about it all.

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...