[IP] A sobering report from Moyers

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject: A sobering report from Moyers
Author: Dick Edmiston
Date: 13th December 2004 7:40:00 pm

For IP, if you like.

Bill Moyers will be retiring from public broadcasting on December 17,
2004. Coming at the close of a distinguished career makes his award
acceptance speech below quite sobering. It is long, but well worth
reading.

Dick Edmiston

--------------------------------------------

Battlefield Earth

By Bill Moyers, AlterNet
Posted on December 8, 2004, Printed on December 13, 2004
http://www.alternet.org/story/20666/

Recently the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard
Medical School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen
Award
to Bill Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the
Center board, said, "Through resourceful, intrepid reportage and
perceptive
voices from the forward edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an
environment under siege with the aim of engaging citizens." Following is
the text of Bill Moyers' response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the
award.

I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom
you
never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just
plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how
environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply
beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's
experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.

The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill
McKibben.
He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic
heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His best
seller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel Carson's "Silent
Spring"
left off.

Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we
journalists routinely cover � conventional, manageable programs like
budget
shortfalls and pollution � may be about to convert to chaotic,
unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he
writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment,
creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is
causing the melting of the Arctic to release so much freshwater into the
North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a
weakening
gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of
changes that could radically alter civilizations.

That's one challenge we journalists face � how to tell such a story
without
coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most
want to
understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable
narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers,
there is an even harder challenge � to pierce the ideology that governs
official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my
lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in
from
the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in
Congress.
For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a
monopoly of
power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven
true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being
contradicted by
what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology
couple,
their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there
is
the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first secretary of the
Interior? My
favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist,
reminded us
recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting
natural
resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus
Christ.
In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will
come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was
talking
about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across
the
country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true �
one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is
accurate.
In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to
the
polls believing in the rapture index. That's right � the rapture index.
Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today
are the 12 volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian
fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true
believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th
century
by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the
Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the
imagination of
millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George
Monbiot
recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for
adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of
its
"biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering
a
final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not
been
converted are burned, the Messiah will return for the rapture. True
believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven,
where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their
political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores,
locusts,
and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've
reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West
Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel
called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish
settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's
why
the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book
of
Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river
Euphrates
will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the
Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed � an essential
conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the
rapture index stood at 144 � just one point below the critical threshold
when the whole thing will blow, the son of god will return, the
righteous
will enter heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to
Grist
to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer
�
"The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how
millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental
destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed � even
hastened � as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe
lawmakers
who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress
before the recent election � 231 legislators in total � more since the
election � are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and
186
members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings
from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They
include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader
Mitch
McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair
Jon
Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy
Blunt.
The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was
Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical
book
of Amos on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God,
that
I will send a famine in the land." he seemed to be relishing the
thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found
that
59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of
Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible
predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio
tuned
to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn
some
of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time
gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of
such
potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about
the
environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine
and
pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse
foretold in the bible? Why care about global climate change when you and
yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from
oil to solar when the same god who performed the miracle of the loaves
and
fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord
will
provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's
providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or
socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie
...
that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he
Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and that there
is no
shortage of resources in god's earth ... while many secularists view the
world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has made the earth
sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the
people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that
militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of
the
foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a
powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the
journalist
to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a
personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without
expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I
can
to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I
think
of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the
market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so
worried?"
And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the
Center
for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the
natural
environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the
health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that
I
don't want to believe that � it's just that I read the news and connect
the
dots:

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency
has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the
environment.
This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the
Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and
animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental
Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions
might damage natural resources.

That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle
tailpipe
inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility
vehicles
and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep
certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting
coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with
coal
companies.

That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and
increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest
stretch of
undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild
land in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental
Protection
Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars � two million of it
from
the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council � to pay
poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These
pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but
instead
of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were
going
to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's
clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.

I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's
friends at the international policy network, which is supported by
ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that
climate
change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising," [and] scientists who
believe
catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment."

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations
bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached
to
it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from
pesticides;
language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of
environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider
pressed
by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the
computer � pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age
10;
of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, 9 months. I see the future looking
back
at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know
not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not
right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future.
Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are
greedy?
Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain
indignation at injustice?

What has happened to our moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And
Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a
journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can
be
the truth that sets us free � not only to feel but to fight for the
future
we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for
cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those
photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human
health
is what the ancient Israelites called "hochma" � the science of the
heart
... the capacity to see ... to feel ... and then to act ... as if the
future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public affairs series NOW with
Bill
Moyers, which airs Friday nights on PBS.


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Mad props to my main girl Caitlin in New Haven for putting us up (and up with) Saturday night for our brief visit to New Haven. She is living on top of a Rochdale and still wants a dog.

Gratzi.

Also last night, idle speculation on the prospects of turning Nancy Drew & the Hardy Boys into porn.

Titles offered include "The Hardy Boys and the Search for the Catholic School Girl."

Tiny Humans update #8: live capture?: "
Angus sez: Yet another development in the Flores Hobbits story. Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa claims to have captured one last month...

Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa has a strange tale to tell. Sitting in his bamboo and wooden home at the foot of an active volcano on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, he recalls how people from his village were able to capture a tiny woman with long, pendulous breasts three weeks ago. 'They said she was very little and very pretty,' he says, holding his hand at waist height. 'Some people saw her very close up.'

Link (Previous tiny humans updates here.)

- Mark Frauenfelder
"

(Via Boing Boing.)

More recent Hobbit sightings.

My previous questions stand. Would we let them vote?

MarsEdit 1.0 came out today, and aside from the lack of (promised in post 1.0) atom posting support (required for titles on blogger), it rocks.

You haven't experienced the merits of offline blogging until you've started composing an entry online on blogger or diaryland, and have something sketchy happen when you try to post on the web site, or have your browser crash, leaving you minus a post that you might have spent some quality time on (laugh now.)

Also, through a post on boinbboing I learned that Fonts in the US do not legally have any copyright protections.

Rock. Who has cool fonts for me?

Tonight jeanne yulia & i saw Oceans 12. Lotsafun. My only regret was seeing it from the fourth row on a digital screen. Digital Screens Still Suck. The one at the theatre on 34th st & 8th Ave had the horrible screen between the pixel blocks showing up, which wasn't too bad for the most of the film. The problem seems to be related to the process used to digitize the film. The movie is worked on in post production and output to film, and then redigitized so it can be shown in theatres.

Now don't shoot me if I'm not describing the process properly, as it is entirely possible that the film goes straight from post processing to the theatre and never actually goes through an intermediary film stage. The problem with converting from digital to analog and back to digital when your target output medium is effectively another computer screen is best demonstrated when you blow up a movie trailer to full screen on an LCD monitor. The monitor doesn't exactly display the resolution of the movie trailer, so it has to interpolate the resolution of the movie to the resolution of the screen. So the trailer looks perfect when viewed in a window on your screen, but choppy when viewed full screen. The same problem seemed to occur for the film in the theatre tonight. Most of the movie looked good, especially since the natural grain of the film tended to smooth out over the grid of the projector. However, in cases where there was text that had been added in post production, (many many instances), the text looks choppy, as if you were looking at a closeup of a computer screen. The answer is pretty simple.

Render in post-production to the resolution of the projector in the theatre, and anti-alias text.

This shouldn't be too hard. Come on now, we've all used AVIDs.

-=-

Tomorrow, (err later today) - New Haven for the first time in a decade and a half.

Carnito's Way

The long awaited December trip to Peter Lugers is coming up next week.

And just a year ago I was a lad in the woods of epicuridom unaccustomed to the treasures of the kingdom.

Also, Yo La Tengo is playing 8 Hanukkah shows in Hoboken. I might try to make their show on Monday night.

Here's a bit of fairly interesting fun. Google for "african slaves" - and then note the sponsored advertisement on top. Vowe has a bit of explanation.

I just ordered software from the Ukraine.

Ain't globalization grand?

By the way, anybody up for a campaign to bring back ain't into general usage?

IT: PA Sues Online 'University' For Spamming
Spam
Posted by timothy on Wednesday December 08, @07:57AM
from the can-they-get-to-university-of-phoenix-soon? dept.
CousinLarry writes "Online 'university' Trinity Southern University (Google cache of disabled site homepage) has been sued by the state of Pennsylvania." Besides spamming, this self-described school has, as another reader points out, "awarded an MBA to a cat owned by an undercover Pennsylvania deputy attorney general." I bet my cat could get a PhD.

A mouth watering review of what I'm calling Blade 3.

Who wants to go with me?

Eliot Spitzer is running for Governor of New York State in 2006.

www.spitzer2006.com

Rock.

His motto: "I want to fix what's broken. It's what I do best"

HTML for ♥ is

& # 9 8 2 9

An islander visits the center right, by which it is to be assumed that he leaves the island and travels far far away.

I have a headache and I am restless.

Money, christmas, new years, school, work, taxation, man's role in changing the face of the earth, and some deep primal desire to go on road trips haunt me.

Thanksgiving, instead of slaking my wanderlust, only made me realize how parched for travel I am. I don't want to get there, just enjoy the ride.

Northeast of Poughkeepsie, a small grocery store, with a minivan in the parking lot full of stuffed animals, had a woman in the checkout in front of me who spent thirty dollars, of which fourteen was spent on rub off a sordid assortment of instant win rub-off lottery tickets, the process of choosing which was, interestingly enough, mind you, a collaborative process between seller and sellee. "Why don't you get this one too?" went the conversation.

The subway stop smelled like olding clam chowder on Thursday. Now imagine the internalized requisite "smile & nod".

The station this evening had an a capella gospel group singing. Less Xmas schlocky, more Hallelujahish.

The trip up north was nice. A cabin in the catskills. Good food. Good wine. Satellite Television with the same collection of shitty channels everywhere else. A record player and tons of LPs to go through. The record player was a delight to play with. Antonia & I were in early twenties indie rocker bliss in finding icelandic disco/late seventies rock. And an excellent selection of country albums, including a collaborative effort with Kris Kristoferson and Kenny Rogers. Oh to have had the cables to record it onto a computer.

The only use of a computer the entire weekend was to search out a Hardees location in order to find the elusive 1400 calorie burger, yes, a passing fancy of mine. The closest Hardees, alas, turned out to be in either DC or western Pennsylvania. No deathburger for me today.

Sunday Dinner is at Jeanne's today. Cornish Hens cooked wrapped in bacon. No Meatards here.

mmm.

AND, Avigail's copious spice rack, an early purchase for our place, is getting much love.

Or is it the other way around?

"Over"

There was a /. article on the Canadian iTunes store this morning, where songs go for 99 cents Canadian, which, is umm, cheaper than the 99 cents US here in the states, assuming, umm, that you actually buy the stuff.

There's a hilarious discussion thread there I took a screen shot of.

I'm sorry I haven't updated more. Lots of stuff from Thanksgiving still have to go up.

And Jeanne's response to "you never call" last night, "We're in New York."

Yeah we're bastards.

I can't remember the last movie I saw in the theatres. I'm thinking of {Sideways,Closer,The Incredibles,The Video with Yo Mama from Last Night}.

Ahh the warm memories of Paul Mel_ passing me a copy of Phrack back in Olsta_'s physics class back in high school.

This is where I learned about smtp.

And now, I find a well (not better) documented version on Microsoft's site while researching "How to fix a stupid exchange server."


funny

Foxtrot today has the dorkiest comic ever..

Every now and then I rediscover Diesel Sweeties, and it is love all over again.

Every now and then I rediscover Diesel Sweeties, and it is love all over again.

Every now and then I rediscover Diesel Sweeties, and it is love all over again.

Fafblog brings up an important point:

Sales of violent video games have lead to increased violence in our culture, but sales of Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball have not lead to increased playing of xtreme beach volleyball. Why is this?

Resetting the alarm when half asleep, and blindly, is never a good idea.

The clock now proudly sits 1.5 hours ahead.

argh.

Cheer up bluestaters:

Clinton for Secretary General.

ponder.

Also gained this weekend, new dead baby joke and things that are done but shouldn't be at bachelor parties involving Jaeger.

Seth's father's legendary Mashed Potato recipe:

5lbs potato

8 sour cream

8oz cream cheese

a stick of butta

sprinkle bread crumbs

stick it in the oven at 250F till barely golden

I will modify it to add copious quantities of garlic and perhaps some cheddar for the meal tonight.

Cookingforengineers has nothing to add, so perhaps I'm good for now.



[Update: 12:08am]

The potatoes were a smashing success!

My final modifications were to add to the above:

+1.5 sticks of butta

4 garlic cloves

fresh ground garlic

.5 cups heavy cream (scalded)

.5 lbs Sharp Cheddar

stuck in the oven at 350 for ten minutes

And now I must go help clean up.

The best University of Michigan commercial ever just played during the halftime of the Michigan/Ohio State game.

It just says "Apollo 15, an all U of M crew."

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Morbi lacinia libero eu nulla. Morbi ultrices erat volutpat nibh. Nam pretium, libero sed feugiat cursus, pede lorem pulvinar magna, in vestibulum urna nulla id felis. Etiam placerat adipiscing leo. Mauris vel turpis. Aenean eu mauris. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Curabitur dapibus, nibh ut pellentesque viverra, wisi ligula dignissim tellus, a sodales dolor mauris at tellus. Quisque non nulla. Vestibulum ornare nulla consectetuer neque. Etiam tristique, mauris vitae euismod faucibus, risus eros aliquam ligula, non viverra nibh arcu et lacus. Vivamus viverra, leo eget eleifend feugiat, urna mi ultrices ligula, quis lacinia risus velit vitae purus. Suspendisse congue fringilla lacus. Aliquam quis lacus. Morbi at velit. In est dolor, pulvinar vel, auctor et, hendrerit varius, arcu. Vivamus vulputate orci at dui. Mauris ultricies hendrerit dolor. Morbi vitae enim ut justo fringilla gravida.


Integer nec elit. Ut adipiscing. Vivamus vitae massa tincidunt nunc volutpat molestie. Phasellus urna massa, vestibulum semper, faucibus ac, aliquam sed, sapien. Fusce facilisis mi eget nibh. Fusce at dui. Vivamus dolor. Integer nulla magna, faucibus sit amet, fringilla in, pellentesque ut, mauris. Cras eget dolor. Morbi ultrices, risus placerat ornare egestas, risus lorem tempor est, eget volutpat erat ipsum ornare nulla. Morbi nec velit eget ligula sollicitudin varius. Vivamus vitae mi.


Donec est. Duis nibh turpis, volutpat id, scelerisque quis, venenatis et, sapien. In id leo. Curabitur est. Nullam ultrices tristique neque. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Etiam adipiscing lacinia elit. Mauris nulla quam, euismod sit amet, fringilla eget, tempus vel, nulla. Morbi commodo, orci eget feugiat lacinia, arcu pede pharetra orci, at eleifend metus urna eget augue. Aenean odio. Vestibulum feugiat pede eu diam. Etiam egestas. Suspendisse lacinia. Curabitur luctus. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Phasellus mattis, dui ut pulvinar pretium, sapien risus adipiscing ligula, sed porta magna neque at justo.


Etiam cursus. Sed rutrum ante vitae sem. Vestibulum accumsan magna ut justo. Vivamus venenatis. Maecenas vehicula, wisi quis dictum laoreet, enim augue vestibulum tellus, at auctor metus quam vel ipsum. Cras non turpis. Integer tellus dolor, fermentum at, iaculis eget, dignissim quis, ante. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. In arcu velit, tristique aliquet, varius sed, eleifend nec, augue. Vestibulum neque justo, sodales nec, mollis et, adipiscing ut, arcu.


Etiam sollicitudin nisl eget velit. Ut sapien. Duis non lorem. Nunc placerat ullamcorper risus. Suspendisse tristique, lacus nec porta facilisis, mauris arcu malesuada justo, id nonummy metus erat vel felis. Nullam ut ipsum. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos hymenaeos. Mauris lacinia accumsan ipsum. Vivamus id ligula. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Nullam mollis purus bibendum wisi. Aliquam iaculis tempus odio. Donec vel eros. Pellentesque est orci, volutpat et, dapibus porta, luctus at, turpis. Ut tristique purus vitae nisl. Nullam faucibus placerat lacus. Praesent aliquet orci vel lorem. Vivamus viverra.


-=-
I'm only getting a spelling error on the first word.

Hmmm.

jeanne's cat snores and sounds like an owl

Google just announced scholar.google.com.

This would have been ridiculously useful back in UROP. Scirus and the other science search engines are pretty lacking.

Sigh. The results from this query now make me want to cry. There's so much more in 2004 than in 1998.

Damn you gratuitously plastic dinoflagellates! Damn your twenty four morphologies.

The bodega across the street has something like forty boxes of cereal.

We looked at five to ten this evening, and all were expired.

yowza

Gmail finally gave me pop access today.

It isn't IMAP, but I can at least go back to using Apple Mail now.

Gali points out:

as discussed:

Main Entry: asa·fet·i·da
Variant(s): or asa·foe·ti·da /"a-s&-'fe-t&-d&, -'fE-; Southern also
-'fi-t&-dE/
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English asafetida, from Medieval Latin asafoetida,
from Persian azA mastic + Latin foetida, feminine of foetidus fetid
: the dried fetid gum resin of the root of several west Asian plants
(genus Ferula) of the carrot family used as a flavoring especially in
Indian cooking and formerly used in medicine especially as an
antispasmodic and in folk medicine as a general prophylactic against
disease.



Also, I was given a Burger King Crown at a client's office today.

Badly paraphrasing a french king: The kingdom is worth the paper crown.

Gmail finally gave me pop access today.

It isn't IMAP, but I can at least go back to using Apple Mail now.

The funniest thing I've seen all week.

And, new years plans anybody? How about New York this time? I've got a place in harlem for people to crash...

This is why I love New York:

Do Pretty Girls Ride The Subway: "

Someone hacked into the MTA's computer system yesterday and changed the LED message at the West Fourth Station to read "PRETTY GIRLS DON'T RIDE THE SUBWAY." Apparently, the new message appeared for several hours until 8PM last night, and the MTA is investigating whether or not it was an "inside job" or someone who has never had a reason to post a subway missed connection on craigslist. Of course, the female straphangers are annoyed. One told the Daily News, "It's a vicious lie." But one found some humor in it: "Pretty women take the subway so we can go spend money on more important things - like alcohol." You go, girl! And, clearly, Gothamist believes the subway is filled with lovely ladies, as well as handsome fellas, adorable babies, that person who didn't wear deodorant, the woman with too much perform, a leering skeeve, the arguing couple, the out-of-towners who think if you're on an orange line you'll go the same place, kids trying to sell you M&Ms, and countless others.

This is yet another investigative coup for the Daily News, who apparently researched the story yesterday (their picture is at right). Last week, it broke the MTA's acceptance of an ad promoting oral sex. Gothamist on the F train's rep as the "love train" and subway love in general. And in MTA budget news, even though they are slashing or raising fares everywhere else, the MTA is not taking deep cuts at headquarters.

"

(Via Gothamist.)

This hell of a week, work and sickness is finally coming to an end.
Perhaps tomorrow I will actuallly move in.

The soba restarurant was a fitting reward to several days of long hours.

Did anybody else catch Mr. Izzard (outed as a wheatard) on Leno this week?

When asked what he thought about the election he answered in that classic, dirty older knowing unclish sort of way, "What [the hell] happened there?"

I wonder if my apartment has acquired silverware yet (as anthropomorphized apartments are oft to do.)

:: issue 58 :: for that technicolor ::

Yo. There's a badmash in your inbox. You'd think with the advent of color televisions, people would demand more color on their televisions. The latest rounds of eliminations on reality television this week says otherwise. Fortunately, some folks perservered in their attempts to help make television look more like America and less like a red state. Now they're headed for the auction block? BADMASH CREW :: featured sponsor :: Send Badmash to friends (or that special someone): :: featured sponsor :: To unsubscribe, click on the unsubscribe link below. You are receiving this because you are 1) a brown person; 2) a friend of a brown person; 3) an individual who has spoken to someone who is brown; 4) fired. On a weekly basis, we send comics, announcements, news, and missed connections to hella people via email. Please see the unsubscribe info at the bottom of this message or contact us directly if this email or brown people are unwanted.

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:: issue 57 :: for them november sweeps ::

Yo. There's a badmash in your inbox. November 2nd has come and gone, so we'll have to wait awhile before the next round of whacky electoral hijinks and other insights about what it all means and stuff. Maybe we'll just go hide in a movie theater for four years. BADMASH CREW :: featured sponsor :: Send Badmash to friends (or that special someone): :: featured sponsor :: To unsubscribe, click on the unsubscribe link below. You are receiving this because you are 1) a brown person; 2) a friend of a brown person; 3) an individual who has spoken to someone who is brown; 4) a sleepy Japanese commuter.On a weekly basis, we send comics, announcements, news, and reminders to do your homework to hella people via email. Please see the unsubscribe info at the bottom of this message or contact us directly if this email or brown people are unwanted.

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The right question about religion...maybe: "

It's only been two days, and I feel like I've already been through way too many discussions among seculars on the "Religious Problem." I'm tired of the cartoon about "Jesusland," of arguments about whether religion just has too much influence, about how we can encourage low-income whites to vote "their interests" rather than what they consider moral values, or whether we should "encourage moderate religious voices," whatever that would entail.

I think the right way to frame the question about the role of religion in current American life is as follows:

We are clearly in the middle of one of the great periods of Christian revival in American history, the third or fourth of the "Great Awakenings" in American Protestantism. Each such period has begun with a change in the nature of worship itself, essentially a private phase, and moved onto a public phase where it engaged with the political process. These have been significant moments of progress for this country. The Second Great Awakening led in it public phase to the Abolitionist movement. What some historians consider the Third Great Awakening beginning in the 1890s led to the Social Gospel movement, settlement houses, and the beginnings of the progressive era idea of a public responsibility to ameliorate poverty.

The right question, I think, is not whether religion has an undue influence, but why it is that the current flourishing of religious faith has, for the first time ever, virtually no element of social justice? Why is its public phase so exclusively focused on issues of private and personal behavior? Is this caused by trends in the nature of religious worship itself? Is it a displacement of economic or social pressures? Will that change? What are the factors that might cause it to change.

I need some reading suggestions here. If you've read Robert Fogel's The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism you'll probably recognize that my question comes from there. Here's a chart that summarizes Fogel's basic view of the Great Awakenings, which I believe is idiosyncratic compared to that of most historians of religion (Fogel is an economic historian) Fogel helped me understand the question, but not to answer it. I'd appreciate any thoughts or advice.

"

(Via The Decembrist.)

This hearkens back to one Dr. Collar's great achievements - drumming the idea of cycles in history into my head, one of those wonderful light bulb moments in my education. I saw him a couple years back, referring to OHS as cloistered - of course, he left OHS to teach at a college. I hope they appreciate him as much as we do.

Ok, in a respite from the world's events (Arafat - dead or alive?) (Kerry - does his concession speech matter if the provisional ballot count puts him ahead [actually no]) I'd like to note that gali, antonia & I have a place now in Harlem, right on 125th st. On an express stop, a block from an old navy, magic johnson movie theatre, health club, post office, pharmacy and enough fast food and fried chicken to last a lifetime. And the apartment? Marble floors in the bathrooms, a jacuzzi tub, wooden floors, walk-in closets with shelving we suspect can double as midget bunk beds three bedrooms and a shaftway. (for the bodies.)

The search for the essentials (beds, sofas) continues.

Now if you come visit, you might actually have a place to crash with me.

In regards to events, the republicans say that they won on a "morality" platform.

Bigotry equals morality? Should I be crying? Who are these people? Today's Decembrist essay puts it well. Fuck this national reconciliation bullshit. I am ashamed today to be a part of the country that validated this administration based on... morality.

Does anybody else remember the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?

And btw, if annybody tells you "you voted, now STFU" remember that if you vote, you signed off on the process, so don't complain is a bas an argument as "you didn't vote, so you have no right to complain."

Oh my God! Brian Boitano....

The shock of 9/11, all over again.

Back then, US vs the Fundamentalists.
Now, us vs the Fundamentalists.

There are Two Americas.

And this is not "Et tu"

What can I say?

After 2000, I decided to be far more cautious about the election this year, and despite my optimism, there was a persistent kernel of doubt that kept me worrying about the results of a republican sweep this year.

Will Bush win? At this point it seems all but a done deal. Getting out the vote combined with voter suppression seems to have been a winning ticket in the federal elections.

The major fear was that with the judiciary on the line this year, the democrats would be able to stave off an appointment or two to the Court. This now also appears to be unlikely, especially with Rehnquist's serious problems.

At the same time, despite the irregularities in the swing states, the country appears to have given the GOP time and time again the mandate to govern. Allen points out that this is cause for some to desperately pull out their copies of Democracy in America. It has been far too long since I have pulled out those volumes (if I'm not mistaken not since high school).

Perhaps it has come time again to reevaluate the American Experiment. In most objective circles (dare I consider myself among those) it is generally acknowledged that the winners in this years races while of ideological purity were ... lacking. The Daily Show (unfortunately watched from Television last night my loyal readers) perhaps put this best in the last ten minutes of their election special, rattling off some of the more ridiculous parts of the regional platforms and rhetoric espoused by GOP candidates.

Despite the closeness in the votes in the electoral college, this was not a close election. Any election where these candidates get sixty million votes is a loss. My initial impression is that the problems with this election stem not from a failure to get out the vote, but an inherent failure in the logic behind the get out the vote drives. Voter canvassing attracts marginal voters to the cause.

We have a serious problem with the electorate en-masse. We have to face the fat that there are many Americas, and that most of us are not familiar with them, or their ideas, that we have no strategy to change their core beliefs, which were reflected in this election. To sink to the level of palliative metaphors, "You can't boil water with a blow torch, you just end up making steam."

A majority of Americans are amenable to religious demagoguery, affiliated homophobic paranoia, and a willingness to reject a global context in favor of allegiance to narrow mindedness.

If we who pride ourselves as intellectuals want to regain control of our political process, our international soft power, our pride in our nation, we will have to start from within. "Strength" and false "resolve" are not the only alternative panaceas to ignorance.

Reeducation begins at home.

Today, I live on an island.

See the problem?

From inside, I've been told the Drudge numbers reported so far are correct.

Looks like a landslide...

Thanks to Chibisuke on totalfark. My favorite unexpected poll result.

Just Click Damnit. Totally WorkSafe.

And what's with all this "Just Vote" bull I'm hearing all over?

You don't go to a baseball game and hold up a sign that says "Win!"

I want to see more "Vote Kerry" signs up. If you're a Bush voter, my opinion (and dare I say the opinion of my colleagues) is "Stay Home!"

Money

sex & thought control

A generation without soul

Perfect people

In a perfect world

Behind closed doors

All in control

Life in a world of luxury

Cold cash money mentality

You gotta keep the faith

You gotta keep the faith

You better keep the faith

And run away


Run away

run away

Run away and save your life

And only the last stanza in the luxury car commercial.

I love it.

Firefox tidbit.

If you want to delete an entry from the auto-complete drop-down menu in a field (say in a username or password field on a web page form, where you accidentally entered the wrong information and don't want it saved, you usually hit shift-delete once you have it highlighted to get rid of it.

If you have a mac laptop, hit shift-Fn-delete instead.

Also, we may have a place in harlem.

Stay tuned...

Wandering Brooklyn through the day with Yulia, Jeanne, & Avigail looking at apartments.

A no show landlord at Parkside, followed by a nice apartment in an abysmal location near East New York - followed by seeing an abysmal apartment in an excellent location (Bedford in the heart of Williamsburgh) - mediated by a bus ride through Bed-Stuy (generally not referred to as an up and coming area), the location of a (since canceled) appointment-to-be on Sunday to look at a place purportedly in Clinton Hill (generally considered to be an up and coming area).

For some reason, the bus driver said "last stop" at the outskirts of Williamsburgh well before the actual end of the bus route. Our walk through Williamsburgh, though considerable, was lightened by the walk through the block which contains strong whiffs of the nearby Peter Lugers.

That and posters in authentically Chasidic Brooklyn, full of writing in Hebrew and Yiddish, and a two paneled poster that showed first a concentration camp oven, and secondly various pieces of technology, including cell phones and (IMHO) a 1994 era Mac Centris. The caption (as translated to me) implied that both led to the destruction of Jewry...

Oy.

Dinner (with Bill & Katie, and sans Avigail) was at a Thai place in Bedford called See, which is apparently the restaurant that was used to film the early crappy asian restaurant scene in Garden State. See has great atmosphere, and rather mediocre food.

In lieu of going out, we decided to be lame and stay in. PBS won out this evening, with renditions of The Candidate (not only with Robert Redford, but also a much younger incarnation of Peter Boyle, of Everybody Loves Raymond) and Stardust Memories.

Fantastic Fantastic Earlier Allen.

Tomorrow, the Search continues, in Roosevelt Island, Long Island City (props to Bill for that recommendation) and further along in Queens.

Also, the Onion's AV Club this week has a really nice interview with newbie scifi director ___. There's this great little bit about the role of science fiction in culture today that was really nice:

O: Science-fiction movies are usually big-budget action films set in space. Was Primer intended as a corrective to that? Does science fiction in film need to be redefined?

SC: I wasn't trying to change the industry or anything, that's for sure. It does seem like there's the aesthetic of science fiction, with the aliens and chrome and neon and explosions in space, and then there's science fiction that's used as a literary device. That's the kind I'm interested in. The Greeks had their mythology, and they had a great shorthand. They could assign a human trait to a god and suddenly be able to talk about all sorts of things. I feel like we've got science fiction, which is an even better shorthand, because if you do it right, it's not a matter of "What if this happens?" It's "When this happens..." What will be the reaction, how will we cope with it, and what does it mean for who we are? People complain about I, Robot not being about ideas, and then it makes a ton of money. It's weird. I know I'm not doing anything that's going to change that.

The Onion reports the news first.

From the nyt today:

There were also complaints about possible dirty tricks in some precincts. In Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, the police and the district attorney's office were investigating a letter telling voters that the state had extended voting to Wednesday, Nov. 3.

The letter, written on fake Republican Party letterhead, instructed Republicans to vote on Tuesday and Democrats on Wednesday.

Tiny Humans update #3: "
Michael sez "There may be new impetus to visit Kerinci Seblat National Park in Indonesia. The Orang Pendek may be a living fossil - the same species as Homo Floresiensis, but be very much alive. There are still sightings of such "little people" even today, and none other than Fauna & Flora International, the worldâ€'s oldest conservation charity, is searching for the creature.

They have set up camera-traps in likely areas of forest or in areas where local people have reported sightings. So far the picture that will make world news has proved elusive and as reported sightings get rarer, the naturalists fear that if orange pendek does indeed exist it may be very close to extinction. Link

- Mark Frauenfelder
"

(Via Boing Boing.)

As I was saying...

Don't laugh, but perhaps it is time to seriously think about the Prime Directive before the missionaries (damn them) get their hands on them.

And the important questions have yet to be asked about whether they have achieved a human level of intelligence.

Have they created a market economy?

More importantly (a far better indicator, in my humble opinion) have they discovered bacon?

#!/bin/sh

#==============================================================================
# File: OSServicesStartupItem.sh
# Installed As: VirtualPCOSServices
#
# Contains: Bash shell script for OS Services startup item.
#
# Copyright (c) 2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
#==============================================================================

I never thought I would see a MS bash shell script.

And here's a hint. If you can't get the Virtual Switch working in VPC 7, it may be because the special kernel extension it uses didn't get started.

Just open up Terminal before you start Virtual PC, and run this command:

sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/VirtualPCNetworking.kext

HOBBITS

Scientists say they have found skeletons of "hobbit sized people."

Which is interesting on at least two levels. First, that a separate species of humans was in existance until 500 years ago, and secondly, that they are referred to as people, as opposed to just hominids. It appears that there's a line beyond which we are willing to see organisms, even of a separate species, as akin enough to use to consider people.

This obviously leads to the question, "are there others?"

Working from 8am to 11pm should imply that I am getting sufficient quantities of food, water, and sleep.

My Bad.

Kudos to jeanne for pointing that out and taking care of the aftermath of the absence of aforesaid necessities.

Monday Joke Edition

From here via boingboing, of course. Also, Chris Dobosz stopped by last night on his way to teh Swiss Consulate this morning.

Notables:

Three women had a very late night drinking. They left in the early morning hours and went home their separate ways.


The next day, they all met and compared notes about who was drunker the night before. The first girl claims that she was the drunkest, saying, "I drove straight home and walked into the house. As soon as I got through the door, I blew chunks."


The second said, "You think that was drunk? Hell, I got into my car and wrapped my car around the first tree I saw. I don't even have insurance!"


The third proclaimed, "Damn, I was the drunkest by far. When I got home, I got into a big fight with my husband, knocked a candle over, and burned the whole house down!"

---

The room was silent for a moment. Then, the first girl spoke out again, "Listen girls, I don't think you understand. Chunks is my dog."

One day, Kermit Jagger goes into a bank because he needs a loan. He asks the teller and is directed to Ms. Patty Wick. He tells Ms. Wick that he needs a loan. She tells him (rather haughtily) that he needs some sort of collateral because they don't go loaning frogs money every day.


So, Kermit reaches into his bag and hands Ms. Wick a small glass elephant. "What is this?" she asks. "We can't give you a loan using *this* as collateral!" Kermit tells Ms. Wick to go talk to the bank manger.


So, Ms. Wick goes to the manager and asks him why she should take the glass elephant as collateral. The manager replies......


"It's a knicknack, Patty Wick. Give the frog a loan. His old man's a Rolling Stone."

---

Q: Why can't engineers tell jokes timing?

---

What does the H. stand for in Jesus H. Christ?
Haploid.

---

How many kids with ADD does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

LET'S RIDE BIKES!




A man walks into his kitchen with a duck under his arm and says
'This is the pig I have been fucking'
His wife says' That's not a pig that's a duck'
He replies ' I wasn't talking to you'

---

A guy gets hit by a car and goes to hell. When he
gets there, the devil is standing in front of 3
doors. The devil says, "It's your lucky day. I'm
gonna give you a chance to get out of here. You
have to complete 3 tasks.


"Behind this first door is a 5 gallon jug of Jack
Daniel's. You have to drain it in one drink.


"Behind the second door is a 600 lb. grizzly bear
with a sore tooth. You have to pull the tooth out.


"Behind the third door is a nymphomaniac. When
you've completely satisfied her, you can leave"


The guy figures it's worth a shot, so he goes in
the first door and manages to drink the whole jug
of liquor. He goes in the second door, shuts it,
and the most horrible commotion can be heard from
inside the room. 20 minutes later, the guy finally
comes out. His clothes are torn to shreds, and he
is sliced and scratched head to toe.


Finally he manages to say, "Ok, where's that girl
with the sore tooth...?"

ok I'm done now.

The Bush campaign has a new campaign ad out, Wolves. Decembrist deliciously tears it apart.

Josh Marshall brings www.wolfpacksfortruth.org to my attention, a fantastic rebuttal.

homage to delirium

waking yourself after food coma after a breakfast of freshly cooked ground chicken tacos with shredded cheddar and sliced cherry tomatoes with the first track to the Dancer in the Track soundtrack just barely audible in the background as iTunes runs through the entire playlist but really it was Dave who had woken you up with a text message asking if we were coming over to watch the Michigan v Purdue game at his dorm also so I could use faster internet to look for apartments, schools and then getting on the internet to let him know that we will miss the kickoff but oh wait the game starts at 3:30 not 3 as jeanne thought and then getting reminded (repeatedly) that the laundry needs to be put in the dryer and then reading blog about cat and remembering an article about animal culture and the lion that herded instead of eating animals because it was orphaned and grew up and learned from the sheep dog and oh yeah Jeanne says I can't smell fall which is true and I couldn't smell it even if it came behind me and bit me in the ass and by the way I finally understand why people wear high heels because I bought these hot looking patent leather dress shoes but they feel so gawd awful painful while I break them in and suddenly I feel so gloriously vain to which Sarah rolls her eyes and calls me a metrosexual and now I must go.

Not everyone is sad in Mudville.

No schadenfreude, really.

Good Luck Sox...

Kittens: "This is presented as an instance of internet culture rather than as cogent political argument. (Which should go without saying, but I felt like I should say it.)



It’s one of those passed-around-via-email things.



Doesn’t this confirm just about every stereotype of liberals?

"

(Via inessential.com.)

Yeah Yeah, a nice adaptation of an old farkism. But also true...

An Awesome musicalDebate spoof. W/ Ali, Amitabh, Bush, Cheney...just watch it.

This is how I want recipes to look:



I have a cold. The Allergy pills with gratuitous amounts of pseudoephedrine passing for a sudafed replacement seem to be doing the job.

Looking for apartments with mediocre credit in the city... Sucks.

I've heard enough bitching about my "price range" today. I think $2500 is more than enough for a three bedroom thank you. And no we don't collectively make 40 times that a year.

Anyways, the search continues.

And hamburgers at the UN cafeteria Suck.

Thank god for bacon wrapped pineapple.

And Happy Birthdays to all. I've been a bad person who's been forgetting them. You know who you are.

"Narcissus and Goldmund"

Sponsored Link seen on Google:

Horde For Sale
Low Priced Horde
Huge Selection! (aff)
ebay.com

Umm, I'll take two?

Jeanne took back the Roomba and bought the Roomba Discovery. It works much better than the previous one. Yes it does have an issue with rug edges. But it is cool to turn it on and leave the room, and then come back when the room is clean (or when it pleadingly beeps to ask you to free it from the rug's edge.) Somebody please hack it to talk like R2D2. The Cat is less afraid.

The Cat also likes Romano cheese, but that's another issue.

Neil Gaiman points out blacksocks.com - Socks by subscription! Rock. I want one a pair. Hell. I want a sock subscription.

This series of pictures with Ron Jeremy discovering goatse.cx for the first time is priceless.

So the dinner rotation hit me this Sunday. It is nice to have full budgetary discretion when planning a meal. It is also nice to cook a group meal again after so long. The roast turned out fairly well, though I was an idiot for taking the string off that held the fat on the meat - before putting it in the oven. Check out the recipe if you need one; it works quite well. Jeanne found it and also provided the key advice on leaving a meat thermometer in while it cooked.

We also made tea - DNA style. (And check out the cute 90s flash howto if you get a chance.) So roast, salad, cheese, pate, artichoke pasta and ice cream from coldstone creamery - the mongolian bbq of ice cream places (the perjorative tone is - I assure you - intentional. All in all, yumm.

And this the day after I had the best tofu of my life, at a soba restaurant at Houston & Mercer in SoHo. The soybean concoction was only nominally a solid, and dare I mention the chestnut ice cream that came later? mmmmmm.

I've been thinking up phrases lately. I keep forgetting them before I can commit them sadly. My muse seems to be with me between waking and about an hour and a half later, when I get off of the train in Manhattan.

I have so taken a liking to "constituency rot"...

I've been thinking about the continuum from literature to journalism through blogging recently, and the idea of Journalism < Literature has been haunting me.

As Cyril Connollly once supposedly said, "Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once."

Cute but wrong.

I'm thinking the key is that literature is just a superset of journalism. Good journalism is certainly literature.

Here's the idea: Journalism can be defined as the written word concerning events fixed to a temporal context. Furthermore, journalism has an inherent bias of assuming objectivity, generally unlike literature.

Journalism is about presenting the near here and now as it supposedly is. Stray from that and you lose the journalism label.

Anyways, here's a tidbit that sort of reflects how I feel about blogging.

I'm off to bed. It has been a long tiresome day only punctuated briefly by Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk, some Travis, and croissants.

Oh yeah, and this:

src="http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2003/01/os_quiz/amiga.jpg" width="300" height="90"
border="0" alt="You are Amiga OS. Ahead of your time. You keep a lot of balls in the air. If only your parents had given you more opportunities to suceed.">
Which OS are You?

About one year ago I referred to the Pea Coat Mafia here in the city.

So there's this really nice black knee length pea coat that I saw at Banana Republic this weekend.

I haven't bought it.

yet

In some dream: [the light] it burns me precious, sniff sniff.

Is it weird to dream that you're hung over, and then wake up not?

Dave's birthday partay was fantastic. A ridiculous number of people up and down from as far as DC & New Haven. And poor Allen feeling the brunt of the need to handle emergency stage management. Awww.

There were tentative plans for Dim Sum today, but the Packers/Giants game starts at 1 (Jeanne wants to see that) and the Jets/Miami game is on at 4:15 (Cy wants to see that.)

Dog gone it. I want real food.

Allen's Tony has taken it upon himself to be my externalized conscience. He was playing the parens patriae game with my jacket, gave me family advice, and mentioned last night "You know... Everything I learned in college I learned after I realized I was going to pass all of my classes my last semester."

It is a cool and sunny morning. Allergy med time.

I just realized that I've never spoken the word Bulwark, nor heard it pronounced.

How do you pronounce it?

I was coming off of the B this morning at 42nd street and heard the announcer say that you could transfer to the IRT 7 upstairs. Most people have no idea what the announcer is talking about when they hear IRT, or BMT, or IND from a train conductor, because those are the old names of the lines from before the City took them over. But it is still nice to hear the announcers using the old monikers.

It is reminiscent of the cobblestones that occasionally peek up from fading pavement, reminding us of the past that often does still coexist here with the present. Not the past for the sake of the past, in the historic districts, not new for the sake of the new, in parts of midtown, but somewhere comfortably in between.

I just finished Sandman 6, and I do have to say that it is taking a definite turn back towards addictive.

-=-

The Debate is over, and I am relieved. Kerry came off far better than I thought he would. I think this speaks less to Kerry's strength than to the abilities of the Bush campaign to spread Fear uncertainty and doubt about Kerry. Clearly, the more the better.

Cy is coming in late at night, and likely heading home. Bec is coming in late as well. I've got reservations for 5 at Milk & Honey tomorrow (or is that tonight now?)


Also, Bethany's purse called me out of the blue. My phone returned the call, to everybody's surprise. Her phone relays a "Hi" to yall. B was too busy driving a city Prius.

Prius needs to have the word King in front of it.

This post is through ranchero software's marsedit (from the same guys that have made the indispensable NetNewsWire 2.0 - If you've got a mac try it... My most used program next to Firefox.) It uses the old blogger API, so no headline support until ATOM API support comes in post 1.0. Consider the headline to be:

Hello Fall

And besides, it feels Autumnal this week.

Also, I love Dumbo (the area of downtown Brooklyn next to the Brooklyn & Manhattan Bridges. Washington St, just between the bridges and on down to the East River is amazing. It feels like a spanking new office building area, and yet is in between these massive old bridges, and cobblestones peek through the pavement. A starbucks is opening up (any coffee shop will do) and the area is blocks away from the best Pizza in the City (Grimaldi's - formerly Patsy's) and the A,C and F trains, which all cut underground to Manhattan, far faster than the trains (BDQMNR) that go over the Manhattan bridge. Of course, I can't afford it yet.

Kristof wrote a good piece in the nyt about gender equality becoming the battle of this century. I don't agree with him. I think Genetic Modification of animals and humans will become a far larger issue. I am inclined to wonder if the future ubermensch will also have gender equality issues.

The article talks about Pakistani judicial rape victim Mukhtaran Bibi who's trying to make an impact, despite the death threats of neighbors. You can send money here. The money will actually go to something better than first worlders careening around the third world in NGO SUVs.

The debates start tonight. I'm bracing myself to be very very depressed.

Also, who is coming this weekend? Brendan & Miriam? Caitlin & Cy yes I think. I'm going to make reservations for Milk & Honey tonight for sometime late tomorrow evening.

I'm on Book 5 of Sandman. Is it just me or does the dare I say novelty start wearing off about this point? (Back off... Gaiman is still Amazing...)

So there are strong economic arguments for privatizing social security. But those aren't the republican goals, as described below. I'm going to say this one last time (not likely): Republicans, conservative Democrats, and fellow travelers - Stop Ruining My Country.

Thank you. Bitches.

Are There Reasons to Be in Favor of Social Security Privatization?: "

Duncan Black writes:

Eschaton: The Case for "Privatizing" Part of Social Security: Actually, I don't think there is one. What would be the point? If you think reducing payroll taxes and/or guaranteed benefits in a way which adds up is a good idea then go ahead and advocate that policy. But, what possible good argument is there for a policy roughly like the ones which are floated by the Bushies (without details of course), which would cut payroll taxes by 2 percentage points, cut guaranteed future benefits, and then mandate that you save/invest that 2 percentage points of income. What's with the mandatory savings? If you want to cut benefits, fine. If you want to having all kinds of tax free savings instruments, which we already do, fine. But why force people to save? The only point of doing so is to ensure that people have a reasonable income base when they're of retirement age, but once you take the "insurance" part out of retirement insurance, then a mandatory saving/investment program doesn't achieve that.

I disagree. There are five reasons to be in favor of Social Security privatization. They are:

1. There are large-scale financial market failures which cause the equity premium to be *way* too high: the stock market does a lousy job at mobilizing society's risk-bearing capacity as applied to investment. Privatizing Social Security and mandating that such accounts be invested in stocks rather than holding the public Social Security Trust Fund in Treasury bonds is a powerful way to try to repair this market failure by boosting demand for equities
   
   
2. Too many households are myopic: they do not save enough. Households resist increases in Social Security taxes--they see no link between the taxes and their future benefits. But if Social Security were privatized so that households saw their Social Security contributions as their own, in the future there would be much less objection to upping the contribution rate--and so creating a real and more effective forced saving program to raise the national savings rate.
3. Prefunding Social Security is moral: it is unfair to make tomorrow's young bear the entire burden of financing the retirement of the baby-boom generation. But prefunding requires raising Social Security contributions and building up huge assets in the Social Security Trust Fund--enough assets to give the Managing Trustee of the Trust Fund effective voting control over corporate America. The Managing Trustee is the Secretary of the Treasury. Do we want the Secretary of the Treasury casting the deciding votes in every election for corporate boards of directors? No. Hence privatization is a necessary first step to create the possibility of doing the moral thing--making the boomers build up the assets needed so that they can shoulder a greater share of the burden of financing their own retirement.
   
   
4. We need to raise our national savings rate. But if we just raise Social Security taxes, Congress will treat these taxes as general revenue and spend them. Only by funneling Social Security contributions into some vehicle that Congressional representatives cannot interpret as a resource available to fund current spending can we raise the national savings rate. And private accounts are the best vehicle we can find to (a) accumulate contributions without (b) allowing Congressional representatives to seize them as resources available to fund current federal spending.
5. At present, your Social Security benefits are yours only by grace of Congress: Congress could cut them if it wished. But if your privatized Social Security account were *yours*, then it would be yours not by grace of Congress but by right of property: courts would stand ready to defend it against any casual attempt to cut or confiscate it.

The problem is that I cannot see any of these as a reason for George W. Bush to be in favor of Social Security privatization. (It does seem likely to me that (1) and (3) are Marty Feldstein's and Andrew Samwick's reasons for being strong advocates of privatization, and that (4) is Kent Smetters's reason for being a strong advocate of privatization. But their reasons aren't the administration's reasons, and hence whatever plan a second Bush administration might ultimately propose would be unlikely to be crafted to achieve goals (1), (3), or (4).

Why are other groups inside a second Bush administration likely to be in favor of Social Security privatization? What's in it for them? I can see three possibilities:

• Enormous fees for the mutual fund industry...
  
  
• Huge capital gains for current investors as stock prices rise in anticipation of the enormous flow of stock purchases by private accounts...
  
  
• Over time as the contribution rate to private accounts is upped and the resources to pay for the still public system fall, the finances of the public system get worse and worse as the relatively young place less and less reliance on it and more and more on their private accounts. Eventually the balance of political support tips--and the public system's benefits can be slashed and then the public system itself shut down.

I don't think the Bush administration itself knows why it is in favor of Social Security privatization. It only knows that it is.

Nevertheless, I accept Duncan Black's big point: most of the good arguments for privatization are simply not accessible to people on the right: they are inconsistent with their view of the world.

"

(Via Semi-Daily Journal.)

My g-d its full of stars.

Brendan & Miriam may be stopping in next weekend. Miriam's supposed to be giving a talk at a conference in Istanbul the week after, so we'll see what happens. I for one hope that they come in and we have a grand old time.

Friday night we got the kids off to a bang for Yom Kippur through communal gorging at Outback. Dave had this funny notion that if you aren't going to eat for 25 hours, you should eat lots of carbs before you start fasting.

Ummm, no.

Allen, Dave, Yulia Jeanne & I made good use of the meat provided. Afterwards, we introduced Allen to play Dr. Mario, and warmed ourselves by the glow of Heathers.

Saturday, a pleasant albeit fruitless walk many blocks down Flatbush in search of an even moderately reputable looking establishment to find breakfast. After capitulation and return to the apartment, we succumbed to an afternoon of football and some movie with a blonde beardless Chuck Norris playing a zen trucker. We sat for a while wondering of it was actually Norris, and eventually saw a signature fight scene. But folks, Truckers vs Hillbillies? Need I say Rock!

All in all a well spent day, culminating in a search for a bar to hold Dave's birthday party (observed) next weekend. Which is actually pretty tough in the village. You find a bar that's too popular, and there's a line to get in, and expensive drinks (even worse, you may find an establishment so cocksure the bartender doesn't know how to make any drinks). You find a bar too ratty, and you end up with lots of old people and or frat boys.

We think that we found a possible sweet spot in the East Village. Reasonably priced drinks. A pool table. A dart board. Bathrooms cleaner than at Peculier (you ask about our standards...) And as Jeanne points out "a waitress/bartender with a skirt that's ... short."

Cue to the events of today. Plenty of time to catch a game or two on TV.

I'd like to point out for the record that Cy's Jets went yet a third week undefeated.
(Bye week or not)

It was Jeanne's turn on the dinner rotation tonight, and the bar was rose yet again.

A leg of lamb (there are pictures of Allen gnawing at the bone at the end of the night), squash, polenta, strawberry shortcake, and well, really the leg should be listed twice. Yup, that big. Eight people big.

The poor cat, frightened by the prospect of the apartment population rising from 3 to 8, huddled on a chair under a table. Ok, not just because of the dinner party, because you see earlier today Jeanne & Yulia went to

Target (hereafter to be also known as the Robot Pound). She picked up a Roomba [paid for it] and brought it home. And wow. wow.

The little robot spun around the rug and mindlessly cleaned it...and the room... eventually. It was quite strange to see a resurrection of the slave - overseer relationship in the room. Jeanne picking up the roomba, and putting it down in a different place to make sure it cleaned in a region it kept constantly missing. It took about 4 times as long to clean the room as it would have taken a person with a vacuum. Though brownie points to Yulia for calling the vacuum "Sweetie" when it kept running into her in the kitchen.

I do have to say this about the Roomba. It (He? She? And don't you dare say automaton - there was very little ato about it) helped me discover the 4th law of robotics today.

4th law: Thou shalt stare in awe at a machine doing a person's job, even if the machine does the job poorly.

fare well. Next weekend: birthdays & portuguese cooking, but is it kosher?

How to end an Occupation during a war

Join the other side.

Of note, Kolkata's (formerly Calcutta you imperialist ninnies) Airport is named after Subash Chandra Bose.

iCat meets iSat

Kitty has taken a liking to the pretty white cord that extends from the satmac to the wall outlet.

I'm tempted to take her to an apple store and watch her go apeshit.


I'm trying out Verizon's Broadband Access wireless service on my mac. EVDO is supposedly arriving in NYC, and I can get 400k/100k speeds when I'm connected to the EVDO towers. I'm doing a hunt and peck around town to see where I can get service.

The advantages:

If I am in the vicinity of a EVDO equipped tower, I can connect at DSLish speeds to the internet. Which potentially may be a far wider area than that of random hotspots I may be around. (If I'm not around such a hotspot, I can always connect at 1XRTT speeds, which connects at about 40k/30k - not fast, but sufficient to use google, ichat, and a couple of browser windows, arguably faster than at some clients' sites.)

The cons:

It is EXPENSIVE, clocking in at $80/month (the same service in Japan, using the same technology is only $40/month). There's also no clear coverage map. Brooklyn (meaning flatbush between atllantic and ocean) for one appears not to have EVDO coverage yet. The card also seems to be fairly finicky with the computer. I can be connected using EVDO, and then suddenly drop to 1XRTT, go back and forth as time goes on. And the signal strength bar seems to widely fluctuate between several bars and no bars. Some of this can be attributed (using my cargo cult knowledge of mobile phone protocols) to the ability of CDMA (the wireless technology used by everybody these days for high speed mobile phone network internet, and regular mobile phone service from Sprint & Verizon) to "breathe" to deal with network congestion. As more people get on the network, the coverage area shrinks.


But come on man. I was sitting a block from Grand Central, on 42nd st.

I have 15 days to decide if I want to keep the service. So we'll see.

Also, Mr. Handler of Lemony Snickett fame has a new indie movie out, directed by the person who did American Psycho. It opens today, and plays at the Angelika. Anybody game?

Anybody game to find me an affordable 2 bedroom apartment in manhattan in a safe neighborhood?

Anybody?

Beuller? Bueller?

One Month

to me having a place with Avigail in the city, or Brooklyn within 30 minutes of Midtown, if we can find one. Affordable 2 bedroom suggestions are now being seriously considered.

Last night was the beginning of the weekly Sunday Dinner rotation. Dave got us on a nearly unmatchable start, cooking mushrooms, pelmeni, potatoes, making several salads and laying out a dazzling array of herring cheese and caviar.

Tonight Jeanne made Bacon soaked collard greens and peach cobbler with home made whipped cream. (Yes Bacon deserves to be capitalized.)

Did I mention that I'm eating well?

Tom appears to be jettisoning SNRE for Kzoo. Mike is taking over his old job, and there is a vacancy. And Maya's growing bigger.

Yulia & I have begun the process of devouring the Sandman series. It is my first foray into graphic novels, aside from that brief dalliance with Transmetropolitan. Yulia's on Book I, I just started book II, and Jeanne just bought book VI. It is... ridiculously good. And I love the intellectual integration into Gaiman's other works. I'm almost tempted to (likely errantly) belt out the word leitmotif.

Also, Randall from my freshman year pulled me aside on the street this weekend. After seven years, I find that he's looking for a law school and in an Urban Planning program at NYU. He's promised me an evite (isn't that word going the way of xerox) to a party on Yom Kippur.

This blows a big hole in my previously cynical theory that friends tend to drift apart as they grow older. Ha.

In SciFiLand, Ghost in the Shell 2 is finally in theatres, after a wait of 8 years.

And. Star Wars Episodes 4-6 come out on DVD tonight. We were planning on having a marathon on Friday night, after we found a big screen tv somewhere. The only big screen tv we know of resides in somebody's house who likely will be doing religious stuff friday night, and Yulia insists that we respect the one day out of the year she does anything religious. We're likely to acquiesce, especially considering that it is to be she that buys the discs tomorrow. She works across from a Best Buy.

Speaking of religion, this is great, if you get it.

Jeanne & Yulia still don't have a cable modem or dsl.

Internet through my phone sucks. God bless internet through my phone.

I miss Boggle, porches and sleeping in terribly.

Says the person who wakes up when everybody else leaves.

Ayiee. I seem to have landed in a rough patch of ramble.

clap clap.
I'm off.