hot tempered

yep, again

2006-12-01T13:06:00.000-05:00

i know, i know, i said i would go away... but i keep finding interesting, well-written pieces that i just feel i need to share with other people. no commentary, just links, which i very highly recommend you click on and read.

like this one, from william saletan at slate, with a very reasoned analysis of the "contagious shooting" phenomenon.

encore

2006-11-30T17:22:00.000-05:00

just spreading some love for the Center for Public Integrity and their fabulous muck-raking:

Divine Intervention: U.S. AIDS Policy Abroad
A year long investigation into how rigid rules and restrictions of President Bush's initiative to fight HIV/AIDS have affected countries struggling with the pandemic

their work is way too good to ignore. inform yourselves, people!

now back to my cave...

leave a message

2006-11-28T18:16:00.000-05:00

this will be my last post for a while. between lots of work and life turning basically upside-down, leaving new york without knowing yet where i'll end up, i just don't have the time to do what i want to do with this space. and, to tell you the truth, i'm a little tired of feeling guilty about it. though it's possible no one reads this thing anyway...

so, off i go for some unspecified period of time. the content will stay up as is, and--who knows?--you might get a duke post now and again. other than that, you'll just have to hold your breath until i (a) settle myself down somewhere new, and (b) figure out what i really want out of a blog. check back every so often if you're interested, though, 'cause i doubt i'll put out a PSA or anything when the writing part of my brain starts functioning again.

thanks for reading. it's been fun. bye for now.

Dear Nancy: Stop screwing around. Love, Sai.

2006-11-17T13:27:00.000-05:00

Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), our brand-spanking-new Speaker of the House of Representatives (actually, she won't formally take the office until the new session starts this coming January), seems to have started off on the wrong foot. Pelosi backed John Murtha (D-Penn.) in the race for House Majority Leader, even though the Speaker traditionally stays out of such things. In a nice twist, the House went the other way, electing Steny Hoyer (D-Mar.) instead.

So what does the Speaker of the House do anyway? Wikipedia tells us that the Speaker has two main roles: (1) to be the head of the majority party in the House of Representatives (outranking the Majority Leader) and when the majority party doesn't control the White House, to effectively act as the "leader of the opposition"; and (2) to act as the presiding officer in the House, controlling the flow of the debate, ruling on points of order, and appointing committee members. The Speaker is also third in line for the Presidency, after the Vice President.

The papers are frothing over this, each giving its own take on what this says about Pelosi and things to come for the Democratic majority come January. As the LAT says, "Pelosi's failed effort to anoint her own chief lieutenant fueled doubts among critics about the political skills she brings to leading her fractious party. It also sent a clear signal of what kind of leader she is: an old-style politician who puts a premium on personal loyalty, even at the risk of high-profile defeat." The LAT goes on to quote people who wonder why the leading Democrat would choose to do something so divisive to a new majority party desperately in need of consensus. LAT's take: "Pelosi is a strong believer in rewarding those who are loyal to her, through thick and thin." The paper stops short of my first thought: aren't those same words still used to describe President Bush?

The NYT goes a bit further, saying in a strongly-worded editorial that Pelosi "has managed to severely scar her leadership even before taking up the gavel." A Slate column by Timothy Noah recommends putting Pelosi "on probation" and describes the ethics cloud around Murtha as well as Pelosi's probable (loyalty-based) choice for Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Alcee Hastings.

What is Pelosi thinking? Is she drunk on her newfound Speaker power? Does she have mad-cow disease? Is she a Republican operative gone deep undercover? All possible scenarios, but not very encouraging news for a new Democratic majority that has a lot to prove.

my name is drew barrymore...

2006-11-14T11:27:00.000-05:00

Sarah Hepola, A Good Writer, has a new series on The Morning News: "Celebrity Magazine." It must have slipped through the cracks of TMN's recent redesign, and I just saw it today. The first installment is here, and two more have been written since. Take a look! They're each just long enough for a pleasant five-minute diversion between emails at work.

In the same vein, Daily Candy introduced me to DailyLit, a service that will send bite-sized portions of classical works of literature to your email inbox every day. I'm currently reading Pride and Prejudice in 149 parts (though I usually end up reading 2 or 3 each day). I tried reading it before, in traditional book form, and couldn't get through it. But it's more than tolerable at less than 10 pages at a time. Maybe next I'll try Ulysses.

goodbye dear. hello, lover!

2006-11-09T09:58:00.000-05:00

for all you slowpokes out there, our beloved defense secretary, donald rumsfeld, is O-U-T out. let's all go have a drink to celebrate, shall we?

Slate has a whole series of articles on Rumsfeld, including a catalogue of his catastrophes. the WP has a tribute of sorts--the kind where you reminisce about that time you locked your keys in the car at 2:00AM in a foreign country and it's only funny 'cause it was like four years ago.

in other news, the democrats win the house (!) and are all but done winning the senate (!!), as montana's in the bag and george allen is expected to concede as early as today. this all begs the question: now what? this should be fun.

bizarro news roundup

2006-10-27T10:37:00.000-04:00

So on Wednesday, New Jersey's Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples, and gave the Legislature 180 days to figure this out legally (either "marriage" or civil unions). The Bush response: “Yesterday in New Jersey, we had another activist court issue a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage."

Call me crazy, but WTF is so activist about giving people equal rights? The judges didn't say they had to be able to get married, just that couples were entitled to equal rights. Now it's up to the elected fools to put that into the law, however they feel best represents their constitutents.

For the record, Slate's Dahlia Lithwick agrees with me: "If you care at all about states' rights and state autonomy, read this decision. If you believe in judicial minimalism, read this decision. If you think judges should engage in careful scrutiny of state law, read this decision before blasting it as activism. This was a state court taking care of state business. Memo to Karl Rove: Those who oppose this decision aren't opposed to judicial activism. They are opposed to judges."

President Bush, opposed to judges? Yep, that sounds about right.

***

A Muslim cleric in Australia, Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, said, on the topic of "adultery": "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it..whose fault is it - the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem... If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (veil), no problem would have occurred." The paper says he called women "weapons" used by Satan to control men, and implied that victims of gang rape have only themselves to blame: There were women, he said, who 'sway suggestively' and wore make-up and immodest dress "and then you get a judge without mercy and gives you 65 years. But the problem, but the problem all began with who?" he said, referring to the women victims.

People in the country are now calling for him to be deported for inciting violence. I'd rather people just mock his ridiculousness. I'd be more offended, actually, if I were a man: how dare he take away their agency! How dare he imply that men, who control a good portion of the world, are equivalent to starving cats smelling meat! Men can't help themselves--they need mercy from the courts to understand that women are responsible for their violent, repulsive acts! Men have no control over their lustful instincts! Men are just penises with arms and legs, and it's the responsibility of women to avoid tempting them!

Well shit, I guess it's only the generosity and humility of women that keeps them from taking advantage of this overwhelming sexual power to take over the world.

***

In other news:

The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered the IRS to delay notifying and collecting back taxes from victims of Hurricane Katrina until after the November elections and, oh yeah, the holidays too.

and

Donald Rumsfeld's response to detractors of the Iraq war has started approaching chill out: "You ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it's complicated, it's difficult." Yeah man, you're killing my buzz!

in brief

2006-10-25T11:00:00.000-04:00

wired magazine has a neat feature: six-word short stories. my favorite five:

I’m your future, child. Don’t cry.
- Stephen Baxter

The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly.
- Orson Scott Card

“I couldn’t believe she’d shoot me.”
- Howard Chaykin

It’s behind you! Hurry before it
- Rockne S. O’Bannon

Rained, rained, rained, and never stopped.
- Howard Waldrop

PS: the wired story also references Hemingway's famous short short story, which i had never read before. it breaks my heart.

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

"Baghdad has become the capital of death."

2006-10-23T10:38:00.000-04:00

The LA Times has a heartbreaking piece by Patrick McDonnell, a correspondent who was based in Iraq for 2 years, gone for 1, and has just returned to find a shit-ton more chaos than when he left. It's rare that news articles about the war take on such an intensely personal tone as this one. It puts the terror and futility of people's lives there into such glaring light.

One man says, "I forced my son to leave school. It's more important that he be alive than educated."

"A Shiite Muslim religious party controls the main morgue near downtown; its militiamen guard the entrance, keen to snatch kin of the dead, many of them Sunni Muslim Arabs. Unclaimed Sunni corpses pile up."

"The U.S. mission here is now defined largely as training Iraqi police and soldiers. But Sunnis don't trust the mostly Shiite security forces, often with good reason. The question lingers: Are U.S. troops equipping Iraq's sectarian avengers?"

I found that article, and most others I read each day, through Slate's Today's Papers feature, which, if you don't already, you should really, really start reading. Really.

Today, TP ended with this blurb, which almost had me in tears.

This USA Today graph says that 47 percent of Iraqis think that the country is going in the "right direction." TP thought that either Iraqis had lost their minds or that the pollsters didn't speak Arabic until we spotted the qualifier underneath the graph: "Note: 93% of Sunni Arabs say the country is going in the wrong direction."

hot potatoes

2006-10-17T10:26:00.000-04:00

Despite ever-louder calls for closing Guantanamo from high-ranking officials in European countries, said countries have been refusing to take in detainees that hold legal residency (but not citizenship) there. See the WP article here.

I find this article a little confusing. For instance, there are 10 legal British residents locked up at Guantanamo (according to the US). US officials floated a proposal to see if Britain would be willing to take them back. "Court papers show that Britain nixed the idea, saying it would be too costly and difficult to meet US conditions to keep the men under constant surveillance." So, are these guys terrorists, or not? If they are, why are we releasing them? Why don't we try them and sentence them? If they're not, why do they have to be under "constant surveillance"? Are we not sure? After four years of detention, we're not sure who these guys are or what they mean? That doesn't really build confidence in the way that we're going about this whole "war on terror" thing.

Take another case from this article: Murat Kurnaz, Turkish citizen, German resident (born and raised). He failed to renew his German residency while he was locked up in Guantanamo and that is the official reason Germany gave for not taking him back after the US suggested releasing him. The article says that "US military intelligence and German law enforcement officials had largely concluded there was no information tying [Kurnaz] to al-Qaeda or terrorist activities". New-ish German chancellor Angela Merkel reopened the case and wanted to take him back, but the US still insisted he be under 24-hour surveillance. The German government refused, the US eventually relented, and the guy was finally released in August, after four extra years in Guantanamo. Poor, poor guy. The question still remains, though: why would the US insist he be kept under such constant surveillance if they had concluded he wasn't a terrorist?

Maybe the US is afraid that Guantanamo will turn people into terrorists. That's the best idea I can come up with.

The saddest case in the article, I think, is the 22 unfortunate Uighurs. China wants them back so it can treat them even worse than it treats the rest of the Uighur population there. After lots of begging, Albania agreed to take in 5. European governments and others ("100 other nations") are balking because of pressure from China. The US seems not even to be considering giving them political asylum in the US. Meanwhile, through all the political cartwheeling, these 17 people get to just sit, day after day, in a pen in Cuba, NOT GUILTY.

today's must-read

2006-09-28T13:42:00.000-04:00

Today's NY Times has an editorial strongly criticizing the House's passage of the Administration's anti-terrorism bill. If you value your rights, and your life, you should read it. Among its criticism of the behavior of the Democratic party is a list of the worst flaws of the bill:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

The bill has been rushed through right before mid-term elections. The entire House of Representatives is up for re-election in one month. I cringe just to think of the attack ads, calling nay voters "soft on terrorism," that'll be coming out in the next few weeks. The Times accuses the Democrats of having "misplaced their spines," and they're absolutely right.

Maybe you're the sort of person who thinks that these actions are warranted, that strong tactics are needed to keep the country safe, that suicide bombers and terrorists forfeit their rights under the Geneva Conventions by not adhering to the traditional rules of war. I'm not going to bother addressing that argument now. What I will say, though, is that you had better be damn sure that the people you put into this legal black hole, subject to "interrogation techniques" out of the KGB's worst nightmares, are the guilty. And how can you make sure of that if you don't have trials? If you don't have review of the evidence? If the definition of "enemy combatant" broad and subjective? If you deny people their basic right to a lawyer and a review of their case? You end up with extraordinary rendition in the open, 100 miles outside of US soil. You end up with Maher Arar. How many people like him are sitting in Guantanamo? How will we ever know?

that's some range in readership

2006-09-26T18:32:00.000-04:00

A letter to the editor in this week's Economist reads:

SIR--We are Japanese-comic fans who want you to know that you made a mistake and we are embarrassed for you ("Kick-ass maidens", September 2nd). The picture you showed in your article is not of a woman but is our favourite male ass-kicker, Kenshin Himura. We understand how you got confused because he looks like a girl, but he is a boy. Feel free to consult with us on any Japanese-comic articles you do in the future.
DARLA, 14
ANTONIA, 12
KAITLYN, 12
New York

and for further reading

2006-09-22T13:18:00.000-04:00

I posted about the new journal, Democracy, a while back. Well, being a quarterly journal, they've come out with their next issue. Go read it, people! It's free! This issue has got some interesting stuff on security and the demise of American cities, among other goodies. I think it's a great idea, and I hope enough people agree that they don't go bust.

In related news, last night I got to see an odd conversation: Gara LaMarche, director of OSI's US Programs and mover of our programs to build progressive infrastructure in the US, talked with James Piereson, one of the big boys of the conservative philanthropy that propelled the conservative rise in American politics in the '80s and '90s. Piereson's major argument was that the things the conservatives were lacking in the '70s, when the Democrats were becoming less and less popular, were ideas. So that's what the John Olin foundation, under his leadership, funded over 25 years--think tanks; the Federalist society; individual research and scholarship. It was interesting--how often do you get to hear someone working fervently against your ideals stand up and say how they beat you?

Over the two hours, Piereson said two things that I found most striking:

1. He referred to the ACLU as a "progressive organization" and the Council on Foreign Relations as "the beating heart of the progressive movement" or some such; and he said foundations such as Ford or MacArthur were "progressive foundations in self-denial." At first I found this totally bizarre. The ACLU is a rights-defending legal organization, not a progressive think-tank. Its values are more like the values of the Democratic party than the Republican party, but does that make it a progressive institution? I know the ACLU doesn't think of itself that way--not out of self-denial, but just because it's not true. The same could be said of the Council on Foreign Relations. And to think of the Ford foundation--a generally agenda-less charity--as a progressive foundation seems outlandish from the point of view of someone working at OSI. What I realized, though (with the help of after-talk conversations), is that the structure of the left, and its divisions, are as incomprehensible to someone like Piereson as the structure of the right is to someone like me. My instinct is to say that this means I should do more research--but then again, since his work has been so successful, maybe I should just ignore the divisions and think of it as a war. Which brings me to #2.

2. When asked about areas of common ground, where the left and the right might be able to talk without being in "different universes," he thought about it for a while and then said there aren't any. He said immigration was the one he thought might be easiest, but really, there just isn't a lot of common ground. NO COMMON GROUND. The right isn't looking for common ground. So what have progressives been doing all these years? Looking for consensus? Trying to establish compromise? Trying to win over the right with persuasive arguments? They're not listening! They don't want consensus! Right-wing philanthropists, think-tanks, and research institutes think of this as a battle they are trying to win! They're not looking for a happy medium--they want victory! What a rude awakening that was for me. In this context, it's easy to see why progressive thought has been so defeated in the past 20 years--progressives want to build consensus. They think there's a right answer and they want to convince others that it's right, instead of just beating them. We've been handicapping ourselves by definition. So now I guess I have to make a decision: do I want to drop out of the scene and be content with my own research and intelligence? Or can I fight the dirty war?

the economist!

2006-09-22T13:14:00.000-04:00

these people are a little crazy--but, you know, in the best way. what other analysis-based news magazine makes you laugh while you're reading about trillion-dollar deficits? this should be required reading. seriously.

a few print issues back they had a hilarious editorial that's now available online. for your reading pleasure: what would an honest in-flight announcement sound like?

catchier than leakfast

2006-09-01T14:30:00.000-04:00

i am, you could say, obsessed with brunch. i love it. i have brunch whenever i can. clearly that's out of the question during workdays. but whenever i'm around for a lazy saturday or sunday, brunch is definitely on the docket. it's so great! you don't have to wake up early. you can have breakfast food or lunch food--clearly the best of the three meals to begin with. you almost always get fruit. the coffee is good. and it's perfectly acceptable to have champagne! what more could you ask for? it's the perfect meal. and you can find out how it all began in today's slate, which traces the evolution of brunch. mmm, them's good eats!

nukestan

2006-08-28T13:50:00.000-04:00

Today's USA Today has an article saying that most normal Iranians want their country to continue its nuclear program. This is claimed as if it's a surprise--like it's so out of the ordinary. I'm so sick of it. Why is it so odd to think that a country like Iran would WANT its government to pursue nuclear technology--both for energy and for weapons? Why isn't it obvious that Iranians think the US is arbitrarily bullying them?

Just this year, President Bush told India--not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty--that the US would help India out with getting fuel for its nuclear reactors. India, meanwhile, gave next-to-nothing in assurances that it would even slow down its military (i.e., weapons) program; just that it would split off its military reactors from its civilian ones. And (this is my favorite part) the civilian reactors will be open to inspection by the IAEA, but the military ones won't. Where does that get us? They admit to having military nuclear enrichment and development sites, completely separate from their civilian ones, and refuse to let inspectors in, and in exchange they get to buy nuclear fuels from the nuclear suppliers' group?!?

North Korea, by all accounts a more rogue state that Iran--and with a one-man, unelected dictatorship that oppresses its people beyond all comprehension--has dialogue with the US even though it has said, over and over again, that it has nuclear weapons and has no intention of giving them up (though who knows if this is true). Talks have been going off and on for as long as I can remember. The country has test-fired rockets that could hold nuclear warheads. But do you ever hear any talk of the US bombing NK's nuclear sites? No. No, we don't.

Meanwhile, Iran has no official diplomatic dialogue with the US. Iranians resent the US, and for good reason: backing an oppressive (and unelected) king; supporting Saddam Hussein in Iraq (politically and materially) during EIGHT YEARS of war with Iran; and maintaining a crippling trade embargo. To Iranians, it might certainly feel like they've been unfairly singled out. Who can blame them? I'm no fan of Iran's crazy-ass government and even I understand that feeling. The US's foreign policy stance on Iran sucks. It's senseless and does more harm than good. The money that the US government sets aside for "democracy promotion" in Iran just ends up discrediting the few pro-Western, pro-democracy groups that take it, leading to an ever-weaker internal resistance movement and an exile community with little or no credibility in the country. So when the Iranian government--as insane as their President might be--stands up to the US, people cheer, the same way you or I would if the geeky kid with glasses suddenly got up the guts to kick the big, hulking, lunch-money stealing bully in the nuts.

mishmash

2006-08-24T10:51:00.000-04:00

It's hard to know quite where to begin.

There is some good news to start with. The FDA finally approved wider sales of contraceptive Plan B, or the "morning-after" pill, after years of dragging its feet for what seemed to be entirely political reasons. At one point an administration official suggested that approval of the drug would lead to teenagers forming "sex-based cults." And last year the senate approved Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt only after receiving a promise from the FDA to make a decision about Plan B, yet shortly afterward, the FDA continued the delays.

Another piece of news seems to invalidate the administration's opposition to stem-cell research, but I doubt it will. They are very good at finding new reasons not to like things after old reasons are thrown aside.

In keeping with that trend, in case you missed it, Bush held a news conference the other day in which he suggested Iraq had something to do with attacking the United States, denied it in the next sentence, and then babbled incoherently. Relevant bits:

Bush: You know, I've heard this theory about, you know, everything was just fine until we arrived and -- you know, the stir-up-the-hornet's- nest theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned.

The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East. They were ...

Reporter: What did Iraqi have to do with that?

Bush: What did Iraq have to do with what?

Reporter: The attacks upon the World Trade Center.

Bush: Nothing. Except for it's part of -- and nobody's ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack. Iraq was a -- Iraq -- the lesson of September the 11th is: Take threats before they fully materialize, Ken.

Nobody's ever suggested that the attacks of September the 11th were ordered by Iraq. I have suggested, however, that resentment and the lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists who are willing to use suiciders to kill, to achieve an objective. I have made that case.

Now it seems to me that that could be a valid assessment, that "resentment and lack of hope create the breeding grounds for terrorists." It also seems that that is exactly the sort of situation the U.S. has created in Iraq since deposing Saddam Hussein.

And speaking of depositions and invasions (this all really strings together well, huh?), there have been recent rumblings from the administration complaining that intelligence agencies aren't portraying Iran as quite the threat they would like it to be.

This is a bit scary, as the U.S. has proven very adept at forming evidence to fit our theories in the past, and this suggests that may be the current trend in dealing with Iran.

Particularly amusing is Newt Gingrich's response to the intelligence agencies' assessment that Iran is not close to building nuclear weapons: When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: ‘If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?

I'm starting to think it's a Republican policy to try to so thoroughly confuse people and muddle the issues that they can do whatever they want because people get annoyed thinking about it.

In closing, Paul Pillar (former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East) makes a good point at the end of that same article, stating “It reflects a certain way of looking at the world — that all evil is traceable to the capitals of certain states, and that, in my view, is a very incorrect way of interpreting the security challenges we face.” He also has a rather lengthy read on the administration's disregard for intelligence.

They seem to think that there are a certain number of identifiable "bad people" in the world, and that if we find them and kill them, the world will be safe. And they manage to ignore the rational conclusion, that every time we knock down someone's wall and throw them in prison, all their friends and family hate the U.S. that much more, and will be more inclined to perform acts of terrorism.

But then what use is reason and intelligence when you have an agenda to complete?

ewwwwwwwwwwwww

2006-08-08T02:07:00.000-04:00

Simply because there haven't been any posts here in too long, and because for some bizarre reason disgusting is contagious -- that is, being disgusted makes you want to pass it on to someone else -- here's an article from the New York Times about a tapeworm.

Relevant bits:

"After purging, Rita discharged a tapeworm three feet long."

"Tapeworms sometimes reach a length of 30 feet and can live up to 20 years. They have a complex life cycle; in adult form they attach themselves by suction cup to the small intestine of vertebrates."

"The fishworm is a compact sex machine containing both male and female sex organs sufficient to produce and release up to a million eggs a day."

And to go along with that, disgusting pictures from the internet!!

ewwwwwww
ewwwwwww

But the good news is that soon you may be able to take a tapeworm instead of using birth control.

this is what it looks like

2006-07-21T11:36:00.000-04:00

today's WP has an amazing panoramic photo of a Beirut suburb almost completely levelled by Israeli strikes. click on the picture and drag your mouse to pan to either side.

if we had to live through this every day, i think hurricanes would seem a little less daunting.

jerky lieberman

2006-07-20T17:31:00.000-04:00

joe lieberman, running for re-election to the senate in connecticut, has apparently said that he'll run as an independent if he loses to ned lamont, his challenger in the democratic primary. polls show that he's behind lamont in the primary race, but would win (handily) if he ran as an independent in november against both lamont and the republican challenger.

so WHY the hell is he staying on the democratic ticket?? lieberman has been a fake democrat for years; he should just make a clean break with the party now and save some of his integrity. instead, he's trying to push a newcomer out of the race, forcing lamont to do serious fundraising for the primary, instead of conserving resources for the real election--even if it means losing in the primary and then switching parties, which won't win him any votes in the authenticity department. it's a jerk move, and pathetically transparent to boot. joey, you should be ashamed of yourself.

sigh

2006-07-19T13:03:00.000-04:00

it's all... just... i can't even... help... no words...

just read this, okay?

all life is sacred... except yours

2006-07-18T09:36:00.000-04:00

"Federally-funded 'pregnancy resource centers' are incorrectly telling women that abortion results in an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility and deep psychological trauma... The centers, which are often affiliated with anti-abortion religious groups, have received about $30 million in federal money since 2001."

"Care Net's Molly Ford said the centers criticized by Waxman received federal grants for abstinence-only programs they conduct, but not for pregnancy counseling. 'The funds are kept entirely separate,' she said."

well, molly, that really makes me feel better.

public schools make good

2006-07-17T17:18:00.000-04:00

A new study found that, adjusted for background, children in public elementary schools generally outperformed those in private ones. Good news for America, but somehow bad news for President Bush. Funny how that works.

The study was released on Friday by the Education Secretary without any announcement or fanfare. According to the article, the American Federation of Teachers predicted two weeks ago that "the report would be released on a Friday, suggesting that the Bush administration saw it as 'bad news to be buried at the bottom of the news cycle.'" Nice to know that our president wants government services to do badly.

Additionally encouraging was news that conservative Christian academies fared worst of all private schools, especially in math. Perhaps they teach them that math is just a theory and hasn't been proven to work. Everyone knows that this whole "multiplication" thing is all a crock of crap anyway.

triviality

2006-07-17T14:34:00.000-04:00

when the world is going to shit, sometimes even we need to take breaks for our brains. what better way than by oohing and ahhing over cute overload? how can you not love these awesome pictures of puppies and kitties? don't they just make you want to make squishy-cheeked baby faces at your monitor? what compels this ridiculous, yet satisfying, behavior?

apparently, warner brothers has provided us with a formula: pear-shaped, no-necked, coy-faced babies and animals. so cute! cootchie cootchie lubby wubbly wittle babies oooh!

encouraging news

2006-06-26T14:53:00.000-04:00

I am usually of the opinion that the war in Iraq is going worse than is reported by the media, so it's nice to see some encouraging news every now and then. I'd like to think a more educated populace leads to a more civil society, so this might be a nice sign of some progress.

I, on the other hand, am happy to debate the Israel-Palestine conflict

2006-06-22T22:35:00.000-04:00

I'll speak in rash and general terms, since I can't claim to be an expert at anything. Except possibly sticking my foot in my mouth.

Firstly, if someone could bring to my attention the last time that killing someone in the "war on terror" resulted in there being less terror? Israel has been killing Palestinian terrorists for decades now, so clearly they must be close to getting them all. One of these days. The U.S. has being taking on the terrorists in Iraq for 3 years now, and more of them seem to spring up every time.

Somehow we thought that killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would deal "a severe blow to al-Qaida," yet at the same time were confident that it would lead to more violence. Usually if someone hurts your friend, you hate them more, not less And are more inclined to seek revenge, not less. Why do we insist that killing people is the way to stop people from being killed? Clearly it isn't working too well.

brief notes

2006-06-22T09:58:00.000-04:00

better short than never...

in today's papers, slate points out a couple things that have me scratching my head, even before 10am:

1. "The Journal notes that 52 senators endorsed a (failed) move to increase the federal minimum wage. Sixty votes were needed to move it forward. But the 52 votes were, as the WSJ puts it, a "high-water mark in labor's pay-raise campaign and one certain to boost pressure on Republican leaders to permit a House vote on the issue." The minimum—$5.15—isn't indexed to inflation and hasn't changed a penny since 1997."

i thought 50 was a majority in the senate, and 60 votes were needed to break a filibuster. does that mean the republicans filibustered the minimum wage hike? i'd love to see a comparison between dem and rep filibusters since 2000, especially NOT including judicial nominations.

2. An Israeli missile strike in Gaza missed its target and killed a pregnant woman. Fourteen civilians have been killed in Israeli strikes over the past week, including three children Tuesday.

it's a MISSILE! how accurate are those things? and anyway, they're firing missiles into civilian areas, and they're surprised when they miss their targets? when you're firing at a car that's 60 feet away from, say, a children's hospital, and you miss even only 1% of the time, how is that acceptable? just walk up to the folks and shoot 'em like civilized people.

democracy

2006-06-21T10:19:00.000-04:00

"We do not seek to publish policy papers; we’ll leave the important details on budget line items and dollar figures to others. Rather, we seek breakthrough thinking on the concepts and approaches that respond to the central transformations of our time: the breakdown of the ladder of upward mobility; the promise and problems of an information-based, globalized economy; new national security threats which cross old boundaries and defy old assumptions from jihadist terrorism and nuclear proliferation to climate change, pandemics, and poverty; and a society where people work and live in new and different ways.

"Progressives have been at their best when we are both rigorous in looking at the world as it is and vigorous in introducing creative approaches to remake the world as we believe it should be. Democracy is not interested in either reiterating the conventional wisdom or maintaining unity around outdated orthodoxies. We see our role as upsetting tired assumptions, moving past outdated and obsolete divisions, and stretching the envelope of what is accepted by and of progressives. "

-Democracy.

This journal (Democracy: A Journal of Ideas) came out just recently. It's available online for FREE with registration--though, if you like the content, I strongly encourage you to buy a (cheap!) print subscription.

Let's see what happens now.

the central government is not relevant

2006-06-19T11:28:00.000-04:00

A memo from Zalmay Khalilzad, American ambassador to Iraq, to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice: "Snapshots from the Office: Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord." Slate's Today's Papers flags this as today's "must-read," and I agree.

***

"...[E]ven upscale neighborhoods... have visibly deteriorated."

"...[A] Sunni [employee] said that people in her middle-class neighborhood are harassing women and telling them to cover up and stop using cell phones (suspected channel to licentious relationships with men).... A female in the [Public Affairs Section] cultural section is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats in May.... People who wear jeans in public have come under attack from what staff members describe as Wahabis and Sadrists."

"An Arab newspaper editor [said] he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province, as political parties and their militias are seemingly engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals..."

In a country where many people get "one hour of power for every six without," a "staff member reported that a friend lives in a building that houses a new minister; within 24 hours of his appointment, her building had city power 24 hours a day."

"In April, employees began reporting changes in demeanor of guards at green zone checkpoints. They seem to be more militia-like... guards held [an employee's] embassy badge up and proclaimed loudly to nearby passers-by "Embassy" as she entered. Such information is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people... We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their 'cover.'"

"One colleague told us he feels 'defeated' by the circumstances... Another employee tells us that life outside the Green Zone has become 'emotionally draining.' He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral 'every evening.'"

"The central government... is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by militias. People no longer trust their neighbors."

short stories

2006-06-17T11:41:00.000-04:00

i have a weakness for well-crafted short stories. they're not supposed to be like little novels. short stories are slices of life. like when you slice an apple, from top to bottom. in some slices, something happens: you hit a seed, you cut the core in half. in most, though, you just get sweet apple and nothing else.

presently, i'm in love with amy hempel.

most of hempel's books are out of print. she just released a book of collected stories containing everything she's published so far. i can't help but share it with other people. maybe you'll love it as much as i do; probably you won't. but you should read it all the same. one of her stories starts with this line: "The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me." that story, "the harvest," is seven pages long and was originally published in her book "at the gates of the animal kingdom." this is a part of it.

***

As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.

The accident happened at sunset, so that is when I felt this way the most. The man I had met the week before was driving me to dinner when it happened. The place was at the beach, a beach on a bay that you can look across and see the city lights, a place where you can see everything without having to listen to any of it.

A long time later I went to that beach myself. I drove the car. It was the first good beach day; I wore shorts.

At the edge of the sand I unwound the elastic bandage and waded into the surf. A boy in a wet suit looked at my leg. He asked me if a shark had done it; there were sightings of great whites along that part of the coast.

I said that, yes, a shark had done it.

"And you're going back in?" the boy asked.

I said, "And I'm going back in."

jefferson redux

2006-06-16T11:44:00.000-04:00

House Democrats voted on Thursday night to strip a Louisiana congressman [William Jefferson] of a key committee position [until his case is resolved] as they tried to avoid any taint of scandal in a year when they want to ride accusations of Republican corruption to election victories.

Ms. Pelosi sought to draw a line between Republican scandals and what she called "individual mistakes." [She said,] "If we have any of that in our caucus, we will deal with them. That is quite different from the Republican caucus. The entire Republican caucus condoned, enabled and benefited from the culture of corruption, and that is what I will continue to rail against."

***

Damn right, Nancy P. Way to take my very good advice.

Big surprise

2006-06-08T00:45:00.000-04:00

The CIA's plan to support Somali warlords has backfired? Surely no one saw this coming, after a long history of hugely successful campaigns of meddling in foreign governments.

"We've strengthened the hand of the people whose presence we were worried most about," said Mr. Prendergast, who worked on Africa policy at the National Security Council and State Department during the Clinton administration.

Perhaps I have a biased memory, but this seems to be the standard result whenever the United States involves itself in foreign affairs recently.

I can recall, quite some time ago, having a heated discussion with a couple of knowledgeable and progressive history professors on the merits of keeping troops in Iraq. I don't remember the date, but it wasn't too long after the "Mission Accomplished" blow-up. Anyhow, these professors told me that no good could possibly come from keeping soldiers over there. This went against what any sane person thought at the time (and what most members of Congress still seem to think). If we took our troops out, all hell would break loose! There would be suicide bombers, chaos, and civil war.

Firstly, why no one thought of this before we invaded still perplexes me. Secondly, that's exactly what seems to have happened even with U.S. soldiers there, with the added benefits of more hostility toward the U.S., the deaths of thousands of U.S. troops, and the U.S. spending tons of money we don't have.

But anyway, why are we still there? Is it because we're keeping things nice and orderly? Clearly not. Because if we don't have easily accessible troops there to attack, the evil people might come over here to do it? I guess that might make sense. Are we scared that if we pull out, the evil people will declare victory? Probably. But I'm not sure how much sense that makes. The stated reason for attacking Iraq is the war on terror. What better way to show how vindictive and crazy we can get if attacked than by invading a country, destroying its government, reducing it to rubble, and then declaring victory and leaving?

We can make an announcement along the following lines (I am not a speech-writer, so I imagine the final draft would be a bit smoother, but you get the idea):

Dear World,

A while ago someone attacked us. We did not like it. In response, we attacked pretty much anyone we thought we could get away with attacking. We may have fixed some things, we may have screwed some things up, but who really cares? Anyway, we're done for now. We're going to take our troops and go home, from everywhere. We won't try to fix any problems any more. We'll even get the CIA to stop meddling in your affairs. We're sorry if we screwed anything up, we really didn't mean to, we were only trying to help. But anyway, we're done. Please don't bother us, we should really be left alone for a little while. If you do bother us, we'll probably go a little crazy, leave your country in shambles and claim that we fixed it, so it's really better for everyone if we go our separate ways at this point. Take care.

Sincerely, United States.

jefferson

2006-06-02T18:29:00.001-04:00

Summary:
Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) has been under FBI investigation for bribery related to preferential contracts for high-tech services in Africa. (It should be mentioned that, as part of this investigation, the FBI maintains that it has captured Jefferson on tape accepting a $100,000 bribe; they also assert that $90,000 of this money was found in Jefferson's home freezer.) The FBI searched his home (with a warrant), and at that time Jefferson was seen by a Justice Department agent to be trying to hide documents in violation of the subpoena. His office was raided on May 20, 2006 by the FBI, who had obtained a warrant from a real, live judge. This was the first time a sitting Congressman had had his office searched in the history of Congress. The FBI took some documents, copied his computer's hard drive, and refused to allow the Sergeant-at-Arms into the office during the search.

Jefferson himself "responded" to the raid by calling a news conference, where he made it clear he would discuss everything except the case itself: "I do want to say... that there are two sides to every story. There are certainly two sides to this story. There will be an appropriate time and forum when that can be explained and explicated. But this is not the time, this is not the forum, and operating on advice of counsel, I will not get into facts." Of course, he did not refrain from commenting on the raid in his office ("an outrageous intrusion").

Both Democrats and Republicans were furious, calling the raid an abuse of the Executive branch and a breach of separation of powers. Their justification is the Speech or Debate clause of the Constitution, which states that "[Senators and Representatives] shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place." Constitutional scholars are divided on whether an FBI (executive branch) raid on a representative's office is actually in violation of the Constitution. The WP's analysis maintains that the breach was in the spirit, rather than in the letter, of the law: "The issue could turn on whether a court finds that the items seized from Jefferson's office were related to such protected legislative activities as writing, researching and voting on bills. Other things could be fair game for the prosecution."

In response to the raid, Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) issued a joint statement: "Noting that 'no person is above the law, neither the one being investigated nor those conducting the investigation,' Hastert and Pelosi asserted that the Justice Department must cease reviewing the documents and ensure that their contents are not divulged. Once the papers are returned, 'Congressman Jefferson can and should fully cooperate with the Justice Department's efforts, consistent with his constitutional rights.'" In response, President Bush ordered the documents sealed for 45 days, ostensibly to give everyone a chance to chill out.

The Senate, meanwhile, has had a decidedly cooler-headed reaction to the news. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) "weighed in... saying that he was 'okay' with the search and saw no constitutional problems with it."

***

First of all, the Democrats missed a huge opportunity to cement themselves as the real party of morality with the disillusioned centrist voters in a congressional election year. The appropriate reaction from Pelosi, while Republicans were scurrying around in a huff, would have been: "Look, we don't care what party this guy is in; if you take bribes, if you are morally corrupt, if you abuse your office, entrusted to you by the American people, for personal financial gain, then you WILL be found out, you WILL be investigated, and you WILL face the consequences. We stand by Jefferson until he is found guilty, as we should with all those in the justice system, but at the same time we understand that EVERYONE has an obligation to comply fully with the law, and we encourage Jefferson to do so as well."

Instead, we got some sniveling, unintelligible whine about separation of powers because, what, a guy got his office searched? For taking a bribe? When his own people are suffering??? Instead, who got the good moral press? BILL FUCKING FRIST, who is very likely going to be the next Republican Presidential candidate.

I understand, especially in this environment, the need to be particularly cautious about the Executive branch's over-reaching. And, to be honest, I'm plenty ticked that the FBI didn't raid DeLay's office, or Duke Cunningham's, or Scooter Libby's. Then again, none of those guys were dumb enough to be caught on tape, and then to have evidence of that interaction turn up in a search of their house, and on top of that to get caught pilfering documents out of the house, against orders, during a warranted search. And don't even get me started on lawmakers making a fuss about a perfectly legal search - approved by the courts and all - when we're dealing with flagrant violations of privacy in warantless wiretapping and data-mining of domestic phone calls.

The reaction from the Democrats effectively neutralizes, in the minds of most people (who don't, for instance, know what the Speech or Debate clause is or why it would at all matter), the moral high-ground that the Republicans were so hell-bent on conceding with scandal after scandal. Government is a corrupt place, and a Democrat was bound to go under sooner or later. But the party is judged more on their reaction than on the behavior of an errant representative. How can they say, now, that it's the Republicans who are making a mess of the government--when the Democrats have loudly supported their own right to immunity from legal searches? When a condemnation of obvious wrongdoing isn't immediately issued?

This must seem like a trivial issue, but it's just one more example, in a long, long list, of the Democratic party really not having its shit together. Every single time they've had the upper hand, every single opportunity to get back on top, they just fuck it up. I swear it gets harder and harder to be a member of this party.

jesus

2006-05-31T16:15:00.000-04:00

It's not exactly new, but some folks in the Southern Baptist Convention are pushing their leadership to plan an "exit strategy" from the public school system. NPR had an interesting story, which you can listen to here.

I don't know whether to be concerned or think "good riddance."

The man pushing the strategy, Roger Moran, has some baffling quotes, including

It is time for responsible Southern Baptists to develop an exit strategy out of the public schools because the public schools are no longer allowed to train our children in the ways that the scripture commands that we train them. And that is in the ways of the lord, not in the ways of the world.

I must admit I'm not especially godly, but to claim that you want your children not to be taught "the ways of the world" seems a bit goofy to me. But I suppose they are entitled, and better that they take their kids out of school than insist that public schools teach to Baptist ideals.

Another of Moran's statements has some encouraging news:

Evangelical Christianity is losing 88% of it's children. At the age of 18, they're leaving the Church, and they're not coming back. Or at least they're showing no signs of coming back. And if that is even remotely true, then what that says is, we got a serious problem.

The NPR report continues: "Moran says it's not just the public schools, but also movies, popular music, and other cultural influences that pull children away from the biblical Christian perspective."

In an article on The Conservative Voice, Nicholas Jackson has more interesting thoughts on Baptists in public schools. Apparantly

never has there been such a clear antithesis between those who love our God, our country and our children, and those who wish to destroy our God, our country and our children. Nowhere is this battle being fought more aggressively and fiercely than in the halls of our government (public schools).

Even worse, "It is self-evident that secular humanism and its concomitant moral relativism has become the official state sponsored religion in government schools." Not to mention that "we are raising up warriors for homosexual activism rather than warriors for Jesus Christ." and:

The impact of homosexual activism alone has been staggering in my sphere of influence. There are young women in their early twenties, having lesbian affairs on the job, and acting it out on the clock. Women are abandoning their husbands and children for other women, men are abandoning their wives and children for other men, there are countless men who want to be women, and countless women who want to be men.

There are some weird people in this country.

mercenaries

2006-05-23T19:52:00.000-04:00

An increasing reliance on "private security companies" by the United States has led to a recent report by Amnesty International accusing it of "war outsourcing."

Amnesty's Executive Director Larry Cox states that "War outsourcing is creating the corporate equivalent of Guantánamo Bay — a virtual rules-free zone in which perpetrators are not likely to be held accountable for breaking the law." He goes on to claim that the U.S. "has sacrificed its most fundamental principle [human rights] by abusing prisoners as a matter of policy, by 'disappearing' detainees into a network of secret prisons and by abducting and sending people for interrogation to countries that practice torture." This doesn't seem like the sort of thing a country leading the war against terror should be doing.

In a somewhat related matter, the "military contractor" Blackwater USA is being sued for the wrongful death of four employees killed in Falluja, Iraq. Blackwater is a "professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations firm" according to its website. Essentially, the U.S. pays them to do the same job as the military. Well, not quite. The U.S. pays Halliburton, which pays another security firm, ESS, slightly less. They then pay another firm, Regency, slightly less, which pays Blackwater slightly less. Blackwater then goes on to pay its employees slightly less. Profit for everyone.

The mind-boggling details are a bit too complex to relate here, but The Nation does a good job.

Blackwater doesn't discriminate, though. They've profited nicely from Hurricane Katrina, are prepared to take on "the Darfur account."

recent news round-up

2006-05-23T15:17:00.000-04:00

There has been a lot going on in the past few days, and I've been bookmarking articles left and right to remind myself to post about them. But, since I'll probably never get a chance to go as in-depth as I like with analysis and commentary, I'll just stick them all up here for you to peruse at your leisure, highlighting my favorite parts. It's all over the place, but interesting (at least to my mind) nonetheless.

Flak Over 'Fast Food Nation': US food manufacturers rally to oppose a film and book that blame them for obesity

More than a dozen trade groups representing producers of beef, potatoes, milk and snacks, along with restaurant groups, are fighting back with a media campaign to counter what one groups contends is the "indigestible propaganda" Mr. Schlosser [author of Fast Food Nation] is spreading. They've launched a Web site called Best Food Nation that quotes employees from Tyson Foods Inc., Cargill Inc. and other food concerns praising the quality and safety of the food supply...

The Leadership Institute, an Arlington, Va., organization that says its mission is to further conservative causes, recently sent a letter to the headmaster of a California school before Mr. Schlosser was scheduled to appear there, warning that his message would "be harmful to your school and to your children," and that the author "undermines and assaults American businessmen."

Egypt continues down the "road toward democracy"

Riot police beat and arrested hundreds of demonstrators today who had gathered to support two judges facing disciplinary charge for charging publicly that parliamentary elections were fixed.

Egypt's treatment of the judges and the demonstrators, its reauthorization of an emergency law and its decision to postpone local elections for two years all threaten to take attention away from [the World Economic Forum, which began on Saturday], that officials hoped would highlight this country's efforts at economic reform. Recent decisions in Egypt, from arresting a popular blogger to postponing local elections, present a problem for the White House. Not only do they contradict President Bush's call for spreading democracy, but they complicate the administration's effort to maintain the nearly $2 billion a year that Egypt receives in military and development aid in the face of some calls from Congress to re-evaluate the package.

An appeals court on Thursday upheld the fraud conviction of Ayman Nour, the candidate who challenged President Hosni Mubarak and his 25 years of one-man rule in elections last year, effectively consigning the fiery lawyer to five years in prison. Nour was convicted in December of forging documents needed to legalize his Tomorrow Party, even though a government commission had approved the papers in October 2004 and a witness at his trial said he was tortured into testifying against Nour.

Nour finished a distant second in Egypt's first multiparty presidential election last September and incurred the wrath of officials by claiming fraud. His campaign, though it attracted only about 7 percent of the vote, was notable for its energetic effort to reach large numbers of Egyptians. The government occasionally sent out police and provocateurs to block Nour from reaching rallies in the countryside.

During the presidential vote, members of Mubarak's National Democratic Party openly recruited voters at polling places. During the parliamentary rounds, police kept voters away from several polling stations and killed 11 people who tried to reach the ballot boxes. There has been no judicial inquiry into the deaths.

Protesters accused the United States of being soft on Mubarak. Last week, a day after Cairo police beat scores of demonstrators during a march in support of the judges, Gamal Mubarak, the president's son, secretly visited the White House. He was greeted by President Bush and met with Vice President Cheney, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The meeting became public only because a reporter for al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite television news channel, observed Mubarak entering the White House.

Language in leases to oil companies for off-shore drilling "mistakenly" did not include a price cap for royalty incentives

In an attempt to revoke billions of dollars worth of government incentives to oil and gas producers, the House on Thursday approved a measure that would pressure companies to renegotiate more than 1,000 leases for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The measure, approved 252 to 165 over the objections of many Republican leaders, is intended to prevent companies from avoiding at least $7 billion in payments to the government over the next five years for oil and gas they produce in publicly owned waters.

Democrats argued that energy companies were shortchanging taxpayers at the same time that soaring prices for crude oil and natural gas had pushed industry profits to record highs. Republican leaders, who had hoped to avoid a vote on the issue, agreed that companies should not be getting lucrative incentives in times of high prices. But they insisted that the government had no right to reopen valid leases that it signed years ago with offshore drillers.

The lopsided vote to rescind royalty incentives came three months after The New York Times disclosed that companies drilling in publicly-owned waters of the Gulf of Mexico were set to escape royalties on about $65 billion worth of oil and gas over the next five years. The windfall stemmed in large part from a major error in leases that the Clinton administration signed with energy companies.

To encourage drilling and exploration in water thousands of feet deep, the government offered to let companies avoid the standard royalties, usually 12 percent or 16 percent of sales, for large quantities of the oil and gas they produced. But the incentives, which have been expanded in recent years by the Bush administration and by Congress, were supposed to stop as soon as prices for oil climbed above $34 a barrel and prices for natural gas climbed above $4 per thousand cubic feet. For reasons that are now being investigated, the Interior Department omitted the restriction in 1,000 leases it signed in 1998 and 1999. In addition, the Bush administration offered extra "royalty relief" to companies that drilled very deep wells in very shallow water. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated in March that the royalty incentives could cost the government $20 billion over the next 25 years.

Ed: this does raise some contract law issues. a bigger question is: oil has been WAY over $34/barrell for quite a while now. when was this first caught, and where was the news when it was??

Receiving and distributing information that was obtained by illegal means (leaks of classified information, tapping into cellphone signals) by a third party might be a crime in itself.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales raised the possibility yesterday that New York Times journalists could be prosecuted for publishing classified information based on the outcome of the criminal investigation underway into leaks to the Times of data about the National Security Agency's surveillance of terrorist-related calls between the United States and abroad.

Yesterday, Gonzales said, "I understand very much the role that the press plays in our society, the protection under the First Amendment we want to promote and respect . . . but it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity."

Related:

Rep. Jim McDermott tells the story of how Rep. John Boehner came to be his political nemesis. The story has its roots in a previous Republican ethics scandal in Congress, but at its core it is about take-no-prisoners politics and a challenge to First Amendment freedoms—a challenge that has alarmed free-speech advocates.

A Florida couple, John and Alice Martin, were messing around with their police radio scanner and happened to pick up the call [between Boehner, Newt Gingrich, and other Republicans] as the Republicans were talking about how to spin Gingrich's ethics charge. [A condition of Gingrich's settlement for his ethics violation was that no "spinning" would be done.] Being Democrats who followed politics, they realized whom they were hearing and decided to make a tape for posterity. Their congresswoman, Karen L. Thurman, encouraged them to give the tape to McDermott because of his position on the ethics committee.

What the Martins had done—recording a private cell-phone conversation and distributing it to others—was illegal. (Indeed, they were later prosecuted by the Justice Department, pleaded guilty to intercepting private electronic communications, and paid a $500 fine.) But the Martins' illegal behavior had produced information that was of public importance: a recording of congressmen plotting to get around an agreement with the House ethics committee. To get it out to the public, they turned to their representatives in Congress, and in that sense, this was not all that different a scenario than the common one in which a whistleblower, in violation of the law, makes a copy of a secret government or corporate record and then provides that record to another person, often a journalist, who has the power to make sure the document is widely read.

The story of the tape, which hit the front page of the New York Times on January 10, 1997, proved to be a political sensation, and when it came out that McDermott was behind the leak, Republicans reacted with fury. McDermott, however, believed he had a First Amendment right to leak the contents of the tape, just like the journalists who wrote about it had a right to quote from it; none of them, after all, had participated in the illegal behavior that led to the creation of the tape in the first place. Republicans begged to differ, demanding an investigation by Janet Reno's Justice Department. When that produced no criminal charges against McDermott, Boehner decided, in March of 1998, to file a civil suit against McDermott seeking $10,000 in damages for the disclosure of his private phone call.

It was the first time one congressman had sued another in civil court, and it marked the beginning of a draining legal fight that has gone up and down the federal court system for the last eight years, costing each side well over half a million dollars. "This is the modern-day duel," McDermott says.

Another battle of process vs content:

An unusual FBI raid of a Democratic congressman's office over the weekend prompted complaints yesterday from leaders in both parties, who said the tactic was unduly aggressive and may have breached the constitutional separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. Rep. William J. Jefferson (La.), who is at the center of a 14-month investigation for allegedly accepting bribes for promoting business ventures in Africa, also held a news conference in which he denied any wrongdoing and denounced the raid on his office as an "outrageous intrusion."

The Saturday raid of Jefferson's quarters in the Rayburn House Office Building posed a new political dilemma for the leaders of both parties, who felt compelled to protest his treatment while condemning any wrongdoing by the lawmaker. The dilemma was complicated by new details contained in an 83-page affidavit unsealed on Sunday, including allegations that the FBI had videotaped Jefferson taking $100,000 in bribe money and then found $90,000 of that cash stuffed inside his apartment freezer.

Ed: the normal investigative route involves months of subpoenas, congressional interviews, and media spin cycles. One issue to consider is the fact that this wasn't done for our favorite Congressman, Randy Cunningham, or Tom "the Hammer" DeLay. However, I'm inclined to think that search warrants should be issued to investigate ALL cases of potential criminal misconduct by lawmakers, rather than NONE of them (which is what's being advocated by vocal members of Congress on both sides of the aisle).

what's another billion here or there?

2006-05-18T00:03:00.000-04:00

Having just finished cutting taxes (decreasing government revenue), Congress is now getting to work on increasing spending. The new plan includes a seven percent increase in military spending (to over half a trillion dollars) and provides at most no increases in spending on education and national parks.

Not surprisingly, the recent tax bill focused on providing breaks in dividend and capital gains taxes, as well as limiting the Alternative Minimum Tax. Both of these disproportionally hit affluent Americans. Left out of the bill were breaks for college tuition payments and savings credit for low-income families.

The military spending increase coupled with the recent tax cut makes up about one-third of the projected budget shortfall. Since President Bush took office we have gone from a projected surplus of $500 billion for 2007 to a shortfall of $350 billion. And still we're cutting taxes.

a WINNING strategy!

2006-05-17T22:53:00.000-04:00

House Democrats, trying to capitalize on conservative dissatisfaction with Republicans, are reaching out to Christian voters with radio advertisements critical of Republican proposals to overhaul Social Security.

...What?

Republicans have alienated the fiscal conservative base of the party with their crazy spending, expansion of expensive entitlement programs, and freaky domestic and international policies. Meanwhile, the religious right bloc is stronger than it's been in years, so much so that they've extended the abortion debate to begin advocating for limits on contraception. So, instead of galvanizing the socially liberal base - which has become disenchanted with the lack of direction and leadership in the Democratic party - and targeting the disgruntled conservatives that are sick of ridiculous deficit spending, the Dems are going after the strong-as-hell religious base of the Republican party by talking about social security, an issue for which the Dem position has generally been limited to "Bush's plan sucks"?

Good job, kids. Really fucking brilliant.

scientific consensus: who needs it?

2006-05-16T17:53:00.000-04:00

This Modern World is one of my favorite caroons, but I'd lost touch with it for a while. Here, a recent tidbit for your viewing pleasure.

rulers, and not the kind you measure with

2006-05-16T11:35:00.000-04:00

I was reminded of this by Duke's post:

They Rule aims to provide a glimpse of the relationships of the US ruling class. It takes as its focus the boards of some of the most powerful U.S. companies, which share many of the same directors. Some individuals sit on 5, 6 or 7 of the top 500 companies. It allows users to browse through these interlocking directories and run searches on the boards and companies. A user can save a map of connections complete with their annotations and email links to these maps to others. They Rule is a starting point for research about these powerful individuals and corporations.

I first saw this at a seminar in February and was quite impressed - not just because of the idea that Time Warner is connected to AmEx is connected to Viacom etc etc, but also by the construction of the site itself. If you've got an hour to kill, go play around a bit. It's kinda fun.

the death tax

2006-05-15T16:41:00.000-04:00

I could write forever on taxes, but for now there's this.

Apparently the efforts over the past decade to repeal the estate tax have been orchestrated by 18 of the country's wealthiest families. A major part of the President's tax cuts, estate taxes are being gradually phased out, with higher minimum thresholds every year until 2011. At that point the cuts expire, reverting back to a lowly $1 million threshold -- only a person's first million dollars will be tax exempt. This was necessary to "balance" future budgets; the idea was that they could count the money expected to be brought in by the tax to offset future deficits while at the same time fully expecting Congress to act before 2011 to make the cut permanent. A brilliant job of passing the buck.

According to the report, the families have spend $490 million dollars lobbying in the past 8 years, and stand to save $72 billion if the tax is repealed permanently (or if they all die in 2010). Much of the money goes to persuading the public that the tax primarily hurts small business and farm owners, when in fact fewer than the richest one half of one percent of people are subject to the estate tax each year.

On a slightly related note, if you are interested in knowing where your Congressional Representative gets money from, you can do so here.

egypt is just going to hell

2006-05-12T10:27:00.000-04:00

Police Beat Crowds Backing Egypt's Judges

President Hosni Mubarak's government dispatched thousands of riot police officers into the center of the city on Thursday to silence demonstrators intent on showing support for judges demanding independence from the president. The police clubbed men and women trying to demonstrate as well as half a dozen journalists.

[some pictures here]

After small steps last year toward greater political freedom, Mr. Mubarak's government stopped when it came to Egypt's nearly 7,000 judges, who have called not only for independence, but also for the right to be the sole monitor of elections. The judges say the system is corrupt at least in part because the justice minister, appointed by the president, oversees the judiciary. Government officials have said the judges have adequate independence and security decisions are made to protect people and property.

Last December, for the first time, the government tolerated protesters chanting anti-Mubarak slogans. But it has shown no tolerance for protesters backing the judges. That has put the United States, which considers Egypt one of its closest allies in the region and gives it nearly $2 billion annually in aid, in an awkward position. But, faced with huge challenges in the region — from Iran to Sudan — the United States has appeared to back off on putting pressure on Egypt over its domestic policies.

***

It's of note that, for better or worse, the most organized opposition group in the oppressive political environment is the Muslim Brotherhood, which supports creation of a conservative Islamic government.

disagreeing with the experts. again.

2006-05-11T11:07:00.000-04:00

The special American Bar Association (ABA) committee that evaluates judicial nominees has unanimously rated Michael B. Wallace, one of President Bush's appeals court nominees, as unqualified for the post. This appears to be the first time in 25 years that a nominee has received a unanimous rating of unqualified from the committee. The White House disagrees with the ABA's rating and supports the nomination.

Article here.
ABA ratings here.
More on Mike B.Wallace here and here, and in his own words.

I wish the ABA would publish their reasoning.

introducing (and one other thing)

2006-05-10T23:25:00.000-04:00

in the spirit sharing and caring, or whatever, it's my pleasure to welcome dave to the pretty things blog.

hi dave! write good things.

in other news, anyone with a tv has probably seen the new vw ads. love 'em or hate 'em, they're a new step in car marketing.

west

2006-04-26T22:09:00.000-04:00

i spent 4-1/2 days in the bay area: sunnyvale, san francisco, san jose, berkeley, davis. i saw catherine at this yummy sandwich shop, then spent a couple of hours with daniel (and met his wife!, claire). getting back to san jose was more difficult than i anticipated, so i got picked up at the san fran airport. now i'm in la with my cousins. la isn't as strange as i expected, though perhaps that's because i haven't been to beverly hills yet.

i realized today that i haven't thought about anything remotely political since i left new york. i wonder what this means, if anything at all.

next: vancouver, on thursday night.

voice

2006-04-21T10:15:00.000-04:00

i wonder how much the recent shake-ups and controversy at the village voice are responsible for the sudden disappearance of savage love? there's a new column in the stranger, so i know it exists. well, there goes the only good reason to read the voice.

in other news, i'll be on the left coast for the next couple weeks: san francisco, LA, vancouver, portland. wowee! see y'all in may.

the golden rule

2006-04-18T14:20:00.000-04:00

A person who is nice to you but not nice to the waiter is not a nice person.

surprising success

2006-04-12T10:38:00.000-04:00

A new WP-ABC News poll indicates that seniors who have enrolled in the new Medicare drug benefit (Part D) are generally happier with the drug benefit than they were without it.

I'm ashamed to say, I had to remind myself that This Is A Good Thing. Despite all the talk about benefiting drug companies, older people are saving money and getting the medications they need. This is going on the "further research needed" list.

One strange thing I noticed in the WP article:

Still, opinions about the program, which passed Congress in 2003 by narrow margins and over substantial Democratic opposition, remain heavily influenced by partisanship. According to the Post-ABC News poll, a majority of Republicans (56 percent) said they approve of the new benefit, while a similar majority of Democrats disapprove. [emphasis added]

Since when is 56% of anything a majority overwhelming enough to indicate heavy partisanship influence?

lucidity, and sadness

2006-04-11T13:34:00.000-04:00

Just to shake things up, I've started setting a radio alarm (NPR) for the morning, instead of a shrill, ambulance-in-your-skull beeping alarm. Also, I like to hit the snooze button.

This morning I woke up to hear that President Bush, at one or another talk, was trying to dispel rumors that the US is considering military (and possibly nuclear) action in Iran, presumably in retaliation for flouting the Security Council's non-binding non-resolution to stop nuclear bomb-making. The President said no military action is coming. Being more than half-asleep at the time, I snoozed for another 9 minutes. But before falling back to sleep, I remember thinking to myself, "I have absolutely no idea if he's lying. I have absolutely no faith that when the leader of my country speaks, he's telling the truth." He could say that 2+2=4, and I would question. Not because I have a particular grudge against the man or the office, and not because I have some sick desire to disbelieve everything he says. It's because I've learned, from experience, that this President lies, and it would be foolish of me not to doubt.

It reminds me of a children's fable I'm sure I've heard somewhere. Maybe the President should be reading Aesop to schoolkids, and to himself, instead of My Pet Goat.

omg

2006-04-10T10:00:00.000-04:00

A reporter recently obtained several [flash] drives at the bazaar [in Bagram, Afghanistan] that contained documents marked "Secret." The contents included documents that were potentially embarrassing to Pakistan, a U.S. ally, presentations that named suspected militants targeted for "kill or capture" and discussions of U.S. efforts to "remove" or "marginalize" Afghan government officials whom the military considered "problem makers." The drives also included deployment rosters and other documents that identified nearly 700 U.S. service members and their Social Security numbers.

wow.

wow.

john vs jon

2006-04-09T13:40:00.000-04:00

the new york times on john mccain's recent forays into the conservative base in anticipation of his '08 presidential campaign, i.e. his commencement speech at jerry falwell's liberty university.

the article quotes mccain's recent appearance on the daily show with jon stewart (scroll down and click on citizen mccain). it's a great interview, that makes me like john mccain just a little bit less. "has john mccain's straight talk express been re-routed through bullshit town?" i'm going to go ahead and say, "uh, yeah."

stewart: so you're not - you're not freaking out on us. are you freaking out on us?
mccain: just- just a little.
stewart: 'cause if you're freaking out on us, and you're going into the crazy-base world... are you going into crazy-base world?
mccain: i'm afraid so.

i know i say this everytime i watch the daily show, but still: jon stewart, marry me.

watch this

2006-04-05T12:56:00.000-04:00

a good development for people fighting for sensible and accountable US foreign AIDS policies:

This week, the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE) and Health GAP (Global Access Project) launched PEPFAR Watch, a new website intended to share information about U.S. global AIDS policy. The new site is found at www.pepfarwatch.org.

On the site, you will also find a new report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), which analyzes the effects of the abstinence-until-marriage requirements under the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), as well as our press release concerning the report. We also will soon be posting an analysis of the findings of the GAO report by CHANGE as well as by colleague organizations.

a no-brainer?

2006-04-05T10:26:00.000-04:00

Massachusetts will soon require (and enable) all of its residents to have health insurance.

I think I should be psyched, but I have to say, I don't know how I feel about that.

More later.

yuppie + hipster = new york city

2006-04-03T12:49:00.000-04:00

a fantastic article, and today's required reading.

"Let’s start with a question. A few questions, actually: When did it become normal for your average 35-year-old New Yorker to (a) walk around with an iPod plugged into his ears at all times, listening to the latest from Bloc Party; (b) regularly buy his clothes at Urban Outfitters; (c) take her toddler to a Mommy’s Happy Hour at a Brooklyn bar; (d) stay out till 4 A.M. because he just can’t miss the latest New Pornographers show, because who knows when Neko Case will decide to stop touring with them, and everyone knows she’s the heart of the band; (e) spend $250 on a pair of jeans that are artfully shredded to look like they just fell through a wheat thresher and are designed, eventually, to artfully fall totally apart; (f) decide that Sufjan Stevens is the perfect music to play for her 2-year-old, because, let’s face it, 2-year-olds have lousy taste in music, and we will not listen to the Wiggles in this house; (g) wear sneakers as a fashion statement; (h) wear the same vintage New Balance sneakers that he wore on his first day of school in the seventh grade as a fashion statement; (i) wear said sneakers to the office; (j) quit the office job because—you know what?—screw the office and screw jockeying for that promotion to VP, because isn’t promotion just another word for “slavery”?; (k) and besides, now that she’s a freelancer, working on her own projects, on her own terms, it’s that much easier to kick off in the middle of the week for a quick snowboarding trip to Sugarbush, because she’s got to have some balance, right? And she can write it off, too, because who knows? She might bump into Spike Jonze on the slopes; (l) wear a Misfits T-shirt; (m) make his 2-year-old wear a Misfits T-shirt; (n) never shave; (o) take pride in never shaving; (p) take pride in never shaving while spending $200 on a bedhead haircut and $600 on a messenger bag, because, seriously, only his grandfather or some frat-boy Wall Street flunky still carries a briefcase; or (q) all of the above?"

you break it, you buy it.

2006-03-30T10:22:00.000-05:00

He's very charismatic. He can convince you even when you know he is lying. He is a con artist.
-Archbishop Francis, Liberia

Charles Taylor has finally been given over to the Special Court for Sierra Leone, after two and a half years in exile in Nigeria and a foiled escape attempt.

Taylor was president of Liberia from 1997 until 2003, winning "free and fair" elections after fighting a seven-year civil war. While in power, he created, armed, and supported rebels in Sierra Leone, who in their civil war committed horrible crimes, including using child soldiers, rape, and amputation.

During Taylor's presidency, rebels in Liberia fought another civil war to oust him from power. The country asked for international help to stabilize the situation. The US said it wouldn't send peacekeepers until Charles Taylor left the country. Charles Taylor said he wouldn't leave until peacekeepers arrived. The rebels eventually made it to the capital, Charles Taylor accepted exile in Nigeria, and the peacekeepers finally came.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected president of Liberia in 2005. The country is held together by a fragile peace, and some members of the new government are former followers of Charles Taylor. Nigeria's government had indicated that they would return Taylor only to Liberia and only under request from Liberia's government. Johnson-Sirleaf worried, quite reasonably, that returning Taylor to Liberia now might undermine the stability of the government by reigniting his followers and bringing them out of the woodwork. However, the US - as part of its campaign to undermine the International Criminal Court in favor of regional Special Courts - put significant pressure on Liberia's government to request extradition now. Johnson-Sirleaf caved and let Nigeria's president know they wanted him back.

Charles Taylor disappeared for three days.

He was caught at the Cameroon border, because his Land Rover had easily traceable diplomatic license plates.

He was flown to Liberia and immediately handed over to the Special Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he will be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Update 4/3/06: Charles Taylor pleads not guilty to war crimes.

the minds of madmen: riddles at best?

2006-03-26T23:50:00.000-05:00

(From the Economist (March 18th), article in full. Links and notes have been added.)

Inside the box
New insights on what Saddam Hussein thought he was doing

When the American army overran Iraq three years ago, it was famously short of military policemen, Arabic-speakers and good ideas for putting the broken country back together again. But the army's historians have since then made the most of a unique opportunity: the chance to question Saddam Hussein's top generals and advisers about what happened inside the regime before and during the war. The findings are to be published next month in a book-length report. But its authors have published a preview on the website of the New York-based journal, Foreign Affairs. It contains some riveting findings.

One of these, based mainly on the testimony of Tariq Aziz, Saddam's deputy prime minister, is that right up to the last moment the dictator did not expect America to attack, because of the faith he had in pressure from Russia and France in the UN Security Council. Mr. Aziz told his interrogators that the two countries had received millions of dollars of trade and service contracts with Iraq, "with the implied understanding that their political posture... would be pro-Iraqi."(1) Even after the invasion started, Saddam did not expect the Americans to fight all the way to Baghdad - a delusion that prevented him from torching his oilfields or opening the dams to flood southern Iraq.(2) Fixated at first on internal threats, instead of the advancing American army, Saddam later came to believe that Iraq was winning, and continued to think so until American tanks reached Baghdad. His own generals were far too scared of him to risk breaking the bad news.

As for those weapons of mass destruction (WMD), it seems that some senior members of the ruling circle never stopped believing, even after the war, that Iraq had these, even though Saddam himself knew otherwise.(3) When he revealed the truth to members of his Revolutionary Command Council not long before the war, their morale slumped. But he refused a suggestion to make the truth clear to the wider world on the ground that his presumed possession of WMD was a form of deterrence, and that coming clean might encourage an attack by Israel.(4) Instead, of course, the dictator's non-existent WMD became one reason America gave for its decision not to topple him. This was, without a doubt, the mother of all ironies.

Some or all of these points may be addressed in the report, which I haven't yet read:
(1) What did this contribute, if anything, to France's rabid resistance to the war? I don't remember the country's motives being questioned much in the media, except to say they were lilly-livered sissies, but maybe that's just my selective memory. This bears futher research.
(2) Flood southern Iraq? Seriously? I mean, I know the guy was off his rocker, but would he really put part of his country under water? How many people would this have killed, I wonder?
(3) This is a HUGE boon to the US (and UK) intelligence community. If Saddam was deliberately spreading information about a WMD program among all ranks of officials, any information gotten through surveillance of conversations, or interrogation of key members of the party, or good old fashioned spying, might have led the CIA to conclude that Iraqi WMDs were a viable threat. Maybe Saddam even went so far as to try to purchase parts (or uranium?) to make it more believable that Iraq was building chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. I wonder if any how this'll be used by the Administration's public relations machine.
(4) Why would Israel go out of its way to attack a neighboring country without direct provocation? Maybe it was just Saddam's crazy paranoia talking, or maybe there's a reason buried (or obvious) in Arab-Israeli relations.

chaos, minus order

2006-03-20T17:34:00.000-05:00

While it is a Republican refrain that Democrats criticize Bush but have no positive vision, for now the governing party also has no national platform around which lawmakers are prepared to rally. Every effort so far to produce such a platform has stumbled.

great. now neither party has a plan.

well, i guess harry reid kinda has one, but it might have been more effective if it weren't easily accessible to anyone with a computer.

it even cures warts!

2006-03-16T14:27:00.000-05:00

the amazing awesomeness of duct tape.

you mean there are LOOPHOLES in tax laws?

2006-03-15T17:25:00.000-05:00

utility companies collect for taxes they never pay.

companies paying little or no tax. hey, what a surprise.

bizarre

2006-03-14T13:54:00.000-05:00

The LA Times has a short report defending itself against President Bush's accusation that its article on IED neutralizers tipped off insurgents in Iraq. I can't find the original article, but today's report makes it sound like the accusations come from nowhere. I wish there was an impartial report - or at least some comparison of the original and Bush's remarks - somewhere, because as it stands, the situation seems just very strange.

The writer is Secretary of State.

2006-03-13T18:23:00.000-05:00

Condi on India, in today's Washington Post. She makes a strong point about false comparisons between India, Iran, and North Korea, but on the whole the editorial seems like just a lot of mush.

Nuclear (non)proliferation is one of the issues I know least about. Why is it a good thing for India to separate its military and civilian facilities? What's the point of international inspectors having access to the civilian plants if they can't get to the military ones? Why are we OK with India even having military weapons if they didn't sign the NPT? Will Congress agree to change the laws to allow us to share technology with India, and if they don't, will we do it anyway?

Mainly, I'm confused about the emphasis on India's civilian nuclear activities when we, they, and everyone else acknowledge that they have weapons. Is it just a smoke screen? Why is it important for us to see their civilian things when they won't give us access to their weapons? The Indian Prime Minister has even acknowledged publicly that this deal won't in any way constrain India's "strategic" activities. What does the US get in return, besides money for the US-based nuclear reactor business and some bad blood in the Middle East?

These are sincere questions. I really don't understand. Please, explain if you can.

Other related links from WP (which I've only skimmed) here, here, here, and here. By the way, is anyone else annoyed at the New York Times for limiting access to their archives for non-subscribers? I personally find it quite frustrating.

not encouraging

2006-03-13T11:45:00.000-05:00

one more reason to buy a shredder.

office spaces

2006-03-10T15:30:00.000-05:00

Reviled by workers, demonized by designers, disowned by its very creator, it still claims the largest share of office furniture sales--$3 billion or so a year--and has outlived every "office of the future" meant to replace it. It is the Fidel Castro of office furniture.

the cubicle.

in a nutshell, don't move to south dakota.

2006-03-06T17:34:00.000-05:00

here's a very brief update, to fill the space between now and when i have time to comment.

South Dakota Governor Signs Abortion Ban...

which looks like this...

because...

he wants to get rid of this.

so that's what librarians do.

2006-03-05T14:16:00.000-05:00

British librarians list books everyone should read before they die (via fark):

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Bible
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by JRR Tolkien
1984 by George Orwell
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
All Quite on the Western Front by E M Remarque
His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
Tess of the D'urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

EVERYONE should read Life of Pi. Go buy it. Open it up. Start reading it. Right. Now.

an imam grows in brooklyn

2006-03-05T13:47:00.000-05:00

Time and again, Mr. Shata's new country has called for creativity and patience, for a careful negotiation between tradition and modernity.

"Here you don't know what will solve a problem," he said. "It's about looking for a key."

-New York Times

generally a good and insightful article, though with some unpleasant parts, like when the imam makes a man who burned his wife with an iron sign a paper that says he'll owe her $10,000 if he ever does it again. and, the police had intervened before, so clearly this is a pattern of abuse.

hey, freedom of religion, right?

interesting legal gymnastics

2006-03-03T10:45:00.000-05:00

US Cites Exception to Torture Ban: McCain Law May Not Apply to Cuba Prison

According to the article, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 has the following provisions (among, I'm sure, many others):
1. No cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of detainees in US custody
2. Guantanamo Bay prisoners have access to US courts only (a) to appeal enemy combatant status determinations; and (b) to appeal convictions by military commissions.

The government is arguing that this makes the current torture case, of Mohammed Bawazir, unarguable, and that there is no legal basis for the court to intervene. Other lawyers, even from Human Rights Watch, agree that, as written, the law says you can't torture people at Guantanamo, but it also says you can't enforce that ban through the courts.

The article also reports that the method in question, which involves strapping detainees on hunger strike to restraint chairs and painfully force-feeding them through large nasal tubes, was used much more frequently after the Detainee Treatment Act was passed (though, to be fair, that information comes from the lawyer defending Bawazir and isn't corroborated).

Pretty clever, don't you think?

[EDIT: see the text of the Detainee Treatment Act here.]

gaaagh!!!

2006-03-01T14:59:00.000-05:00

"A Mississippi House committee voted Tuesday to ban most abortions in the state.... The only abortions allowed under the bill would be if the life of the pregnant woman were in danger. There would be no abortions allowed in cases of pregnancy caused by rape or incest. It's similar to a bill that South Dakota lawmakers passed last week."

falksdjf; aoiusedr;ljkashd;fokuas;oeru;lkajsdgpaoiuawe!!!! motherfuckers!

[UPDATE 3.5.06: Bill passes House, with exceptions for rape and incest added during discussion, and moves to the state Senate. Governor Haley Barbour anticipates signing it once it's on his desk.

The bill came out of the House Public Health Committee. One article has the Senate Public Health Committee chairman saying he will recommend passage by the Senate.]

why i love (LOVE) dan savage

2006-03-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

Q. I am a 26-year-old female, and I've been with my boyfriend for almost five years. Our relationship is pretty good, for the most part, but I'm having reservations. I don't really know how to broach this subject, because I feel like I'm just being a bratty little princess. But I feel like I'm at the bottom of my boyfriend's priority list. He'll stay up until 5 a.m. working on something, but won't sacrifice an hour to do something with me. He leaves for work around 9:30 a.m., and most nights doesn't come home until 10 p.m. Every household expense must be split exactly 50-50, regardless of the fact that he makes four times what I make. If I eat a little more than my fair share, he makes me pay him back. He has a car and I don't, but he'll only ever give me a lift somewhere (like work) if he's already going that way—but he still makes me pay for gas, even though he was already going that way. He doesn't bat an eyelash at spending $2,500 on new stereo equipment, but puts a $50 cap on my birthday dinner, saying, "If it goes over $50, you're paying the rest." If I'm stranded in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and call him crying (this actually happened), he'll tell me to call my other friends first and if none of them can come, then he'll come get me—but I'm paying for gas.

We only ever have sex when he's in the mood. If I want to change position because I don't like being twisted like a pretzel, he gets angry and stops. So if I want it, I just have to pretend it doesn't hurt to have my legs pushed so far back they're gonna pop out of my hip sockets. He wants me to go to college, which I'm doing this September, so I asked him if he would let me pay slightly less than 50-50 for rent so I could afford it. His response was: "Lots of people put themselves through college, why should you get any special treatment?"

Isn't it only fair to split our expenses 50-50, even if it breaks me? And isn't it fair to ask for gas money when he has to do all the driving? Can I expect a man to spend more on me than I can spend on him? I don't want to be showered with expensive gifts and lavish vacations. I just want to feel like I'm worth something, you know? Am I being selfish? —Stressed and Depressed

A. If you're a new reader, SAD, you may not be familiar with this handy acronym: DTMFA. It stands for "dump the motherfucker already," and halfway through your letter I started muttering DTMFA under my breath. By the end, I was screaming DTMFA at my laptop. On an airplane. Look, this isn't a relationship. It's a hostage situation. Your boyfriend is an asshole. Wait, maybe I'm not being fair—to assholes, which are as delightful as they are functional. Your boyfriend is a piece of shit, a loose stool, a santorum slick. And you, my dear, have the worst case of lousy-relationship-induced Stockholm syndrome that I've ever encountered. Stockholm syndrome—when a hostage begins to identify with, and feel sympathy for, her captor—is the only possible explanation for the final paragraph of your letter, in which you meekly justify your boyfriend's appalling behavior. Stop identifying with your captor! Stop making excuses for the way he treats you! DTMFA!

To steel your resolve to leave this piece of shit, let me clue you in to a few secrets of healthy relationships: Where a large income disparity exists, household expenses are split based on the percentage that each individual's income means to a couple's total combined income. If he makes four times what you make, he should pay—and pay gladly—80 percent of the household expenses, while you pay 20 percent. By insisting on a 50-50 split, your boyfriend is treating you like a roommate, not a girlfriend.

Moving on, a boyfriend is someone who comes to your aid when you need him. If you get stuck somewhere and you call him, he jumps out of bed and comes to help you. He doesn't tell you to call everyone else you know, or leave you standing out there in the rain. He certainly doesn't hit you up for gas money! We should avoid overburdening our significant others, but we have a right to expect that they will be there for us in emergencies.

I could go on and on. Sex? A loving boyfriend may make special requests about positions—hell, he can make demands (and a good girlfriend can as well)—but he does not force his girlfriend's body into uncomfortable positions against her wishes, and he doesn't withhold sex to punish her if she refuses to consent to being so abused. College? Yes, lots of people put themselves through college, but lots of people have partners who helped them out when they were paying their way through college. Birthday dinners? Only a piece of shit threatens his less well-off girlfriend with having to pay the difference if her birthday dinner goes over $50. DTMFA, SAD, DTMFA! You can do better—hell, being alone would be better than being with this asshole. DTMFA!

well, you're the duke

2006-02-27T14:59:00.000-05:00

From Cash to Yachts, Convicted Congressman Set Bribery Rates (via Drudge)

Ignoring the obvious infuriating aspects of this whole mess, I'd just like to point out the following:

"Prosecutors will ask federal Judge Larry Burns to impose the statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison [for Randy "Duke" Cunningham].... His lawyers say he has cooperated fully [since pleading guilty]... and they will ask the judge to go outside the sentencing guidelines and impose a lighter sentence than 10 years." Meanwhile: "One of the defense contractors, Mitchell Wade, pleaded guilty Friday to... four corruption charges [that] carry a maximum sentence of 20 years."

So, the guy that offers bribes could get 20 years, while the guy who took them, and also took bribes from a bunch of other people, abusing his power as a Congressman on the defense appropriations committee, gets at most 10.

Wikipedia says, "Because he pled guilty, Cunningham faces a maximum of 10 years in prison. Had he tried to fight the charges, he risked spending the rest of his life in prison. Cunningham's attorney, Mark Holscher, later said that the government's evidence was so overwhelming that he had no choice but to recommend a guilty plea." And also, the article mentions that Cunningham has cancer and could very well die in prison. Will it be a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison? My magic 8-ball says: doubtful.

michael richard stoops

2006-02-26T23:39:00.000-05:00

one more reason to pay attention to news about africa: as of next saturday, mrs2006, aka stoops, will be serving in the peace corps somewhere to be determined in uganda. so, i'm going to try to pay special attention and post stories of interest. to start off: recent presidential election results have been challenged.

hopefully some happy stories will get posted too.

good luck mike! do good things!

and be safe!

and take lots of pictures!

and don't eat chicken!

and write! often!

we'll miss you, kiddo.

terrible and yet hilarious

2006-02-24T17:09:00.000-05:00

A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal.

reflexive secrecy

2006-02-24T13:30:00.000-05:00

eric umansky on the recently-leaked photos of torture at abu ghraib:

"Who possibily could be surprised that the photos eventually leaked. The fact that the adminitration has tried to hold them back is yet another example of its winning strategy of Reflexive Secrecy. It's the double-whammy: Wrong on principle and wrong on efficacy. Cheney's little incident this weekend, the photos, tendency toward secrecy keeps boomeranging. It's not just an offensive anti-democratic habit, it's a dumb one."

this was my reaction, too, when i heard about the cheney-shooting thing. so stupid! why, dear god, why would you bother keeping that secret? because secret-keeping is what this administration does. and, as has been proven over and over again, they're very bad at it.

i've thought about linking to the abu ghraib pictures. maybe i should. but they are so disturbing, so infuriating, and so incredibly sad that i can't bear it.

civil war beginning?

2006-02-23T10:24:00.000-05:00

idiots. morons. terrible, terrible people.

i can't post pictures for some reason, so just go here:

before

after

protest

in the midst of all this, i can't help but notice that everyone, every person in every picture i've seen, is male. where are the women? don't they have opinions?

abortion news

2006-02-22T14:04:00.000-05:00

"Lawmakers are preparing to vote on a bill that would outlaw nearly all abortions in South Dakota, a measure that could become the most sweeping ban approved by any state in more than a decade, those on both sides of the abortion debate say.... Since 2005, bans similar to the bill have been proposed in at least five states, but those on both sides of the abortion debate say this effort has the strongest chance of succeeding.... The proposed legislation, which states that "life begins at the time of conception," would prohibit abortion except in cases where the pregnant woman's life was at risk."

Also.

"The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to decide whether a 2003 federal ban on the procedure that critics call "partial birth" abortion is constitutional, setting the stage for its most significant ruling on abortion rights in almost 15 years. Without comment or recorded dissent, the court granted the Bush administration's request to review a lower court's ruling striking down the law, which passed Congress overwhelmingly but has yet to be enforced."

The WP article (2nd one) has a great historical summary of the "partial birth" abortion voting controversy. It's also worth noting that neither Today's Papers nor The Morning News mentioned the South Dakota vote.

UPDATE (2/23): "After more than an hour of fierce and emotional debate, the [South Dakota] senators rejected pleas to add exceptions for incest or rape or for the health of the pregnant woman and instead voted, 23 to 12, to outlaw all abortions, except those to save the woman's life. They also rejected an effort to allow South Dakotans to decide the question in a referendum and an effort to prevent state tax dollars from financing what is certain to be a long and expensive court battle."

"The bill was designed to challenge the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe , which in 1973 recognized a right of women to terminate pregnancies. Its sponsors want to force a reexamination of the ruling by the court, which now includes two justices appointed by President Bush."

It's clear to me that, if the intent of this law is to provide a significant challenge to Roe v. Wade, it has failed miserably. I can't believe the Supreme Court would let stand an abortion law that didn't include exceptions for rape, incest, or health of the mother. So, in effect, the South Dakota anti-abortion zealots have shot themselves in the foot. Regardless, while the court battles drag on and on, women in South Dakota won't have access to safe abortion, and may not have the resources to travel to states where abortion is legal.

Do not talk to me about abortion today, because I may either explode or resort to violence.

i might be repeating myself

2006-02-21T13:23:00.000-05:00

a while ago, i remember having a lot of fun with googlism. i found it again today, and again it made me happy.

sai is everywhere
sai is me
sai is ever pouring into the hearts of those who strive with him
sai is beyond globe
sai is the avathar of our time
sai is one example
sai is appointed by parliament and government
sai is wearing a spacesuit
sai is excited to extend the powerful capabilities of dvd
sai is just a sai
sai is definitely a guy
sai is righteous and treasures friendships
sai is not liable for any damage caused by such dangers
sai is an autonomous legal entity
sai is large
sai is a weapon
sai is sisterhood
sai is thinking while he's eating breakfast and is not doing a good job of eating
sai is listening in on this
sai is the only action
sai is a quite refined character
sai is an equal opportunity employer
sai is established
sai is a fork
sai is well equipped and ready to meet your every need
sai is a major contender in deathmatch
sai is universal and so is his message
sai is not a new character though
sai is divided into three modes of operation
sai is open to all women pursuing a major or minor in any area of music who have completed at least one semester of study
sai is now complete
sai is limitless; it manifests for ever
sai is the universal divine mother
sai is preparing to demonstrate its unique design through a 25kw prototype
sai is ever full of joy

le simple life

2006-02-20T22:58:00.000-05:00

back from a weekend away, and happy to be home. i've been distracted recently. hopefully it'll fix itself.

it's 11pm, and i'm so tired that it's taking effort to write in complete sentences. i think i'm going to go to bed, sans shower (disgusting, i know), and try to get up and get to work very early. it should be a tougher week than i've been having, with a lot going on at work, and i am woefully unprepared.

things to look forward to in the near future:
1. dinner with mike (and shabu?) on tuesday
2. dinner with mara and vix on wednesday
3. volleyball game of sorts on thursday
4. dave coming back from sunny CA on friday
5. soon-to-be-cousin reza coming in for the weekend
6. georgetown decision by the 28th (or so they say)
7. seeing austin in march for the first time in over a year
8. going home for a weekend (and pawn shop!)
9. getting my tax refund direct-deposited
10. having 10 things to think about and smile.

in other news: i think this space will soon see a redesign (or, at the very least, a thorough content edit). watch for updates.

the full-contact method

2006-02-17T09:38:00.000-05:00

"Spotsylvania County's practice of allowing detectives to receive sexual services in prostitution cases has exploded across the nation... [Sheriff] Smith and the county's chief prosecutor, Commonwealth's Attorney William F. Neely, defended the tactic. They said detectives needed to go beyond striking verbal deals of sex for money because the "masseuses," whom they called "illegal aliens," spoke little English and Virginia's prostitution laws require more than "mere touching" to make a case... Smith and Neely said that undercover officers often purchase illegal drugs to build cases against dealers and that the "same lawful investigative technique" was used in the prostitution cases."

soliciting and receiving sex in an investigation of sex work isn't like buying drugs... it's like buying drugs, and then shooting up with the dealer to make sure the drugs are real.

strange

2006-02-16T14:11:00.000-05:00

rivers cuomo, 35, lives in student housing at harvard.

cool.

lots of love, kids.

2006-02-14T10:31:00.000-05:00

obsessive-compulsive valentines.

I love you. Wait. That didn't feel right. Let me try it again. I love you. Don't think about disease. Don't think about disease. Don't think about disease. I love you. There.

snow sunday

2006-02-12T19:27:00.000-05:00

26.9 inches!!!

read more here.

initially i'd been planning to spend today in my pajamas, reading, unpacking, and recovering from jet lag. when i woke up at 11, though, i got really excited at how much snow had accumulated on the street outside. after cooking and eating a ginormous breakfast with my roommates (minus tao), i got decked out in makeshift snow gear and walked to the supermarket. after putting away groceries, i went and played in the snow with my friend/neighbor evan in central park. i made my first ever snow angel. and we walked up a large hill--and by walked, i mean i kept getting stuck and evan had to drag me up. we decided that the top of the hill looked like the forest lucy first sees in narnia--everything was covered with snow and untouched. after about 20 minutes i got very cold and stiff, so we retired to his apartment to have hot chocolate. i still haven't unpacked, but i think having a productive day was worth the delay. once evan figures out how to get pictures off his new camera, i'll post them here.

i'm starting to get very sleepy again. hopefully i'll put everything away before collapsing again.

geneva, istanbul, and wireless sucks.

2006-02-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

my internet connection here sucks. i wrote a ranting post (i know you guys love those) about the idiotic riots by complete morons in beirut and damascus (and now tehran, i guess?), but i couldn't save or send because my connection went out, and i lost my post. and now i don't have the energy to write it again, so i'll just connect you to background and commentary that are comprehensive and, for that reason, infuriating. i was raging yesterday, you should have seen it.

my last day in geneva was lovely. it was sunny and warmer and i walked along the river and saw swans napping (napping!) in the river. and they had the fountain on, which was very pretty, and all the boats were sitting in the harbor, and you could see the mountains that surround geneva for the first time, and it was like a postcard, glorious.

so i'm in istanbul, and it's snowing. it's the first time in my life that i think i've seen snow on mosques. kind of a contradiction in some ways--i think of mosques as desert places, always surrounded by red and heat. it's new to me to be here in the winter, since the last two times were in may and september, both very hot months. the snow has made me lazy, and on my first day i only went out to go to the gym. i'll hopefully have some time to check out the bazaar, shop, and hit up a turkish bath on friday, when the program folks will be in one-on-one meetings that don't concern me and don't require minute-taking. i've got some souvenirs to find, and as always i'm in the market for a new pair of earrings (or seven).

on my first day here, i had the TV on while getting dressed for dinner, and i watched the last 10 minutes of that new-ish MTV dating show about dating daughters. the premise is that a dude goes on "dates" with three moms, and the mothers basically try to sell him their daughters by bragging about their modeling careers, violin skills, or vibrator collection. based on this interaction, the dude picks which daughter to date. the episode i saw was RIDICULOUS. the mtv dating drama machine, perfected on "dismissed," is totally in overdrive on this show. the girl who won walks up to the dude, gives him a hug, and her (short) dress flies up, and the camera has to blur out her butt because she's not wearing any underwear. mind you, this is in front of her mother!! and then they start making out! IN FRONT OF HER MOTHER!!1@!! clearly i can't expect those mothers to really care about shit like that, but still. i guess i expected slightly better from MTV. obviously i was a naive little fool.

tonight i went out to dinner with heather and mary (osi staff) and martin (board member and very, very accomplished public health doctor and advocate) instead of going to the "group dinner" with the rest of the fray. that turned out to be a perfect decision--good food, good company, very good conversation (from osi gossip to the war in iraq to martin's upcoming trip to israel), and a nice break from the tedium of the meeting. i feel like this is why i travel, to make these connections and really enjoy spending time with people i like. makes having to type 120 wpm for 8 hours all worthwhile.

1015pm and i'm exhausted. time to curl up in my comfortable, but slightly hard, bed. i've got some stuff to look forward to: back on saturday to birthday dinner and engagement party; sunday completely off (maybe with some winter league, depending on the weather); a relatively easy week with bosses traveling; a weekend away in maine. really, life is good, and i can't complain a damn bit.

geneva, v.2

2006-02-05T16:19:00.000-05:00

it feels like i've been here for two days rather than two weeks. i'm sure part of that is due to jet-lag, and also from having a packed day today. in between meetings and hitting the gym and eating, i haven't had any time at all to tourist around the city. i really should have gone outside instead of napping (read: sleeping for 6 hours) yesterday after arriving. if only my wake-up call had come! if only i'd gotten more sleep on the plane! etc etc. nothing to be done now. since i don't have to leave for the airport until noon tomorrow, i'm going to do my best to get up at a reasonable hour (say, 9am) and finally check out the church next door. at least then i'll feel like i've seen something.

last night i went to a peruvian co-op restaurant with mark and his microfinance grantees. good food, neat place, complete with music videos playing against the wall. i think 15 languages were represented at our dinner table, with strange overlaps: i spoke with the couple in front of me in my broken spanish and their broken english. i learned that the swiss say "nonant" instead of "catre-van-dis" to mean 90 (or however you spell it in french). i also learned that while "bombilla" means straw in bolivia, it means lightbulb in spain; in mexico, by contrast, you'd say "popote" for straw. i learned how to say "mop" in four different languages--which i promptly forgot. so, dinner was a pretty good time, as is any time that involves hanging out with mark. the trip home was full of adventure too, as we hopped on a tram without tickets and then realized we were on the wrong line and had to follow a strange lady to the bus stop and talk to her the whole way home. jet lag caught up with me last night and kept me from sleeping, so i'm very tired now even though it's not yet 11pm.

i have a lot of music on my ipod that i haven't yet listened to--mostly things i've gotten off people's playlists at work. while packing for my trip on thursday night, i finally listened to "the bends" by radiohead, and i just can't say enough good things about it. i'm starting now to understand why people are obsessed with this band. i've listened to it in its entirety every single day since thursday; it's one of the greatest albums i've heard in a long, long time.

i could probably write more, but my brain is slowly turning into mush, so i think i'll call it a night. tomorrow afternoon i'm off to istanbul until saturday morning and should have less sleep disruption and more free time to sightsee, shop, and get bathed by old, fat turkish ladies.

until we meet again, adieu, ma cherie.

geneva!

2006-02-04T04:36:00.000-05:00

the battery on this laptop lasts less than an hour when it's fully charged. i thought of all kinds of things to write about on the plane today (yesterday?), but i had no where to put them. hopefully i'll remember now.

i always look for lights on transatlantic flights. usually i can't sleep, and they turn off the lights a couple of hours into the flight--perfect for star-watching and boat-spotting. for the first ten minutes i get all excited every time i see a boat or a new star pops up as the city lights fade. i wish i could stay entertained by that for the whole time--it would make staying awake much less painful.

i was surrounded by sick people today. the woman sitting directly in front of me had a terrible cough; she was sputtering for the entire trip. i felt kind of bad for her at first, but the more she coughed, the more angry i got at her, for no real reason. maybe i'm a little jittery and claustrophobic, and it manifests itself in general directionless rage when i have to sit still in a small seat for seven hours. at least i'm little enough to curl up into the seat and take cat naps. i don't know how you tall people do it.

the sun was rising just as we got over france. i could see it out the window--it looked like a really fat rainbow starting with red on the horizon and going all the way up the spectrum to violet in the middle of the sky. [tangent: i heard that they removed "indigo" from the light spectrum. weird.] i could see all the colors, even the greens, which are usually the least visible. pretty neat.

europe looked like it was napping, tucked under a blanket. there was a thick mass of low clouds way under us from the english channel inward. i couldn't tell if we were over land or sea. when we got near switzerland, i could see the alps popping their little heads up out of the clouds, saying hello. from that far up, the mountains looked tiny, like ant hills.

geneva is very european. i forget how much smaller everything is here--cars, toilets, streets. it's grey and cold and foggy, but it smells clean. i think i'm staying in the hotel district; at least, four of the five buildings across the street from my window are hotels. right next door is a lovely church that looks about 300 years old. maybe i'll start my walking tour there this afternoon.

i checked in to the hotel in time for breakfast, and i remembered how much i love cheese in the morning. do you remember those cow cheeses, that came in little foil cubes and had a picture of a cow on them? they were really creamy and tasty. i used to beg my mom to buy them when i was little and we went to the supermarket together. they had them in the breakfast room (except these are shaped like triangles, and come in different flavors). i got so excited! i brought one back to my room for a snack later. yum.

i'm realizing that i have a hotel ritual. when i get to my room, i have to unpack, completely, even if i'm just staying for two nights (like now). i've put the do-not-disturb tag on the door, hung clothes up in the closet, spread my toiletries out on the bathroom counter, and set my desk to "organized chaos." i can't imagine letting someone in to fiddle with this and that. having to use the same towel twice is a small sacrifice for making the space mine.

it's 10:50am now. i slept maybe an hour on the plane, and i'm starting to fade. thankfully, my normal weekend sleeping schedule doesn't see me out of bed before 1pm, so it makes sense to take a nap now for a couple hours. i'm going to meet mark and his microfinance friends later for dinner, and i should really get some more work done before then (now that i can't use a dead battery as an excuse). the hotel has flat-rate wireless internet--lovely. wireless internet really should be a public utility, like heat, or water. why else do we live in the developed world?

and with that, goodnight.

[UPDATE: there is a bottle opener in the wall of the bathroom, right next to the toilet... brilliant!]

2006-02-02T20:41:00.000-05:00

after reading mara's post recounting her IM conversations, i was inspired to look back through my own quotes file. wow. i've been out of the IM world for long enough--and these quotes are old enough--that i can't remember the context at all. but it brought back a lot of memories, especially since many of them were from people i barely (or never) talk to anymore. here are a few of the choicest bits:

scorp1014: who addresses themself as self ?
scorp1014: that's hilarious
scorp1014: because that's always what i preface my sentences with when i talk to myself
scorp1014: self, stop throwing it away
scorp1014: self, time to do homework
scorp1014: you know, self, this beer really isn't that good
LiteAngel: i'm going to quote you
scorp1014: hehe
scorp1014: you, self, are on a roll

LiteAngel: i guess i'll have to wait and see it
LiteAngel: your art, not your johnson.
duuuuk: haha
duuuuk: ha
duuuuk: haha
duuuuk: wooooo
duuuuk: that was good
duuuuk: really
duuuuk: I'm really laughing
duuuuk: I'm not being sarcastic
duuuuk: damn
duuuuk: the more I say that
duuuuk: the more sarcastic I sound, huh?

LiteAngel: what happened to all your resolutions?
teknohype: i ate em. they tasted oddly of bull feces.

and, of course, mara gets her own section. who is mara? the world may never know.

who is mara: you wish you were as cool as da masta
LiteAngel: i don't need to leave letters off my words to be cool
LiteAngel: yo.
who is mara: aight dogg
who is mara: i see how its gonna be
LiteAngel: it's! it's!
who is mara: you jus think yous da shit
who is mara: but you aint
LiteAngel: ain't! ain't!
LiteAngel: the apostrophe is your friend, masta!

LiteAngel: i'll but your mom!
who is mara: oh god
LiteAngel: sorry, couldn't resist
who is mara: your mom couldnt resist

LiteAngel: i'm always up for sush
iLiteAngel: how is it that "up for" and "down for" now mean the same thing?
LiteAngel: what if i said "i'm always sideways for sushi"?
LiteAngel: AND now i know how to punctuate that sentence!
who is mara: omg what are you talking about!?!?
who is mara: LOL
who is mara: that was the weirdest converstaion with yourself that you've ever had (on IM)

in other interesting news: i'm headed off tomorrow for geneva, then istanbul, for lots of work and hopefully also lots of fun. cool work folks are heading to istanbul with me, so it should be a good time. speaking of which, i should be packing. i always aim to avoid checking luggage, but it's wintertime now, and clothes take up so much space. we'll see if i succeed.

stay tuned for travel posts! don't you just love those?

because clearly, jesus christ wants THIS.

2006-01-31T11:11:00.000-05:00

"You turn this nation over to the fags and our soldiers come home in body bags."

i'm not kidding.

frey fray

2006-01-30T14:42:00.000-05:00

okay. i read a million little pieces. not having had much experience with alcoholics, drug abuse, and ciminal activity, i figured that it was at least mostly true, if a bit exaggerated. i read it in one day. i stayed up until all hours of the night. i couldn't put it down, and i loved it.

(this, by the way, had nothing to do with oprah's book club--thanks to benji for his very thoughtful christmas present.)

then i read on the smoking gun that, actually, it was mostly not true. so, okay. do i really care? mmm... not so much. it was a good read! yes, part of the appeal was the idea that a real person had really had a real root canal, really without anesthesia--but in the grand scheme of things, who gives a shit?

and then, larry king live does an interview, like there aren't more pressing world issues that need our attention. oprah phones in to support her buddy james--cool, i like that she stands by her recommendations. jimmy basically tells the smoking gun to go to hell, which is really not the best idea when they're spot-on with their criticism... whatever.

after some more drama, oprah gets jimbo back on her show with his publisher and just lays into him, saying she felt betrayed yadda yadda yadda. he apologizes (when oprah's mad at you, you're really in the shithouse), feels really bad about it, but stands by it as a memoir. i figure, thank god this stupid controversy is over so we can stop hearing about it.

ah. how silly of me.

Late Friday afternoon, plaintiff's attorney Marc Bern said he filed a lawsuit against Random House and its Doubleday imprint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan charging that the publishers misrepresented that book as nonfiction. His client, California resident Karen Futernick, alleges in the suit that she purchased "A Million Little Pieces" on that basis but that the defendants "failed to conduct a reasonable investigation or inquiry regarding the truthfulness or accuracy" of the material. Mr. Bern said that he will seek more than $50 million in damages for the plaintiffs. "Nobody can get away with profiting with a product that you represented as something that it is not," says Alan Ripka, another partner in Napoli Bern Ripka LLP, the New York City law firm that filed the suit.

$50 million dollars.

nice.

relax

2006-01-28T12:01:00.000-05:00

this is the first weekend in a while that involves little or no obligation. it's kind of nice. last night i got home from work around 730, watched satc and ate cheese and crackers, and did sudoku puzzles before falling asleep before 1am. all in all, a very restful and comfortable night (especially with my new bed accessories!).

today i'm meeting up with abhay for lunch in about an hour. later, i'll have dinner with eric and possibly see a movie. in between, i'd love to find the idiotarod, which is taking place in nyc this weekend. i've never seen the race, but finding it is complicated by the fact that they don't say where they're going! very frustrating. if i can find out the end point of the race, i'll con bay into coming with me to watch the finish. it should be ridiculous.

tomorrow night: chinese new year at cottage, hopefully minus the person next to me vomiting in their noodle bowl. maybe mikeliu and sarah will be there, and i can congratulate the happy couple, possibly by hitting them in the face with cream pies. seems appropriate.

new things!

2006-01-25T21:19:00.000-05:00

i decided to invest a bit of time and money in making my (very small) room slightly more livable. first, i moved my bookshelf to by the bed from its old home by the door, and i moved the laundry basket to where the bookshelf was. this made some space by the desk and allows the closet door to open and close completely, which really opens up the left side of the room. then, i put up a couple of wall dressings that had been waiting for attention: my surrealist poster of the two bodyless girls; my concert tickets; the collage from the ultimate team at the end of senior year. also, i put photos in my frames and set them up on the dvd player. and also, i decided to buy new beddings. i ordered two fluffy pillows, a down comforter, and a duvet cover from overstock.com (cheap! and fast!). the last of it came today, and now everything is in place. the final things on the list are new, non-white curtains, which should brighten up that end of the room a bit, and frames for my prints from greece and poland. i'm very, very happy with the results so far. *pats self on back*

also, i've been listening to everything but the girl obsessively for the past couple weeks. i'm about ready to go out and buy everything they've ever recorded. tracey thorn is my new hero. what lovely lyrics! what smooth music! and such a silky voice! yes, wonderful.

i'm starting to accept the idea that life will just never slow down--at least, not in the foreseeable future. when i got back from miami, i was looking forward to new york as a restful place (not joking). instead, i've been to three birthday parties, spent a long weekend in providence, had many dinners with friends, entertained pleasant company for a weekend, and worked my butt off organizing tobacco control meetings. and it doesn't end! dad's coming to visit, and then winter league starts (which i may or may not attend), and then i go to geneva and istanbul for 8 days and two weekends, and then it's another long weekend, which may involve a trip to the south florida area, but who knows. on top of that all, i have to do my taxes and fill out the fafsa and the profile and make sure my parents do their taxes and apply for financial aid for law schools, because i certainly can't afford to go without some help. i shake my head just thinking about it.

speaking of law school, here's some news: i've been accepted to temple (philadelphia) and gw (washington dc), and georgetown deferred me to regular decision. since i applied in november, i expect that acceptances and rejections will be trickling in over the next couple of months; of course, i obsessively check every email address i own, waiting for notice. a couple others in the office have also applied for the coming fall, and we update each other whenever we pass in the halls.

i'm so, so relieved to be in to more than one school. at least this way i feel like i have some choice, like i can make an active decision about my life. and gw is a good school--and in DC--and i certainly wouldn't mind spending a year, or even more, there. we'll see what happens, i guess. i'm still waiting to hear from: chicago, harvard, columbia, and georgetown. tough crowd.

i can't decide if i should take a shower. it's only 10:15, and i'm not sleepy yet, so i guess i might as well.

2006-01-17T17:03:00.000-05:00

i have no words.

damn the press!

2006-01-06T18:22:00.000-05:00

well, only sometimes. like when slate opens their mouth about my starbucks drink.

a couple of years ago, i read a great article about the disappearance of the 8-oz coffee cup. in that article, the authors divulged that, in fact, starbucks made a "short" coffee and just didn't put it on the menu. since then, i usually order short coffee or hot chocolate there--it tastes better without the extra milk, and i can't drink that much anyway.

that same article also talked about how cup companies were trying to make an 80-oz soda cup that didn't collapse on itself. in some movie, i think supersize me, they showed a guy getting ready for gastric bypass surgery; his wife, standing next to his hospital bed, had a thermos of soda about the size of a mini-keg. and what are we up to now at 7-11, the double super big gulp? i think it's all a bit ridiculous.

florida news

2006-01-05T19:38:00.000-05:00

"In a ruling expected to reverberate through legal battles over school choice in many states, the Florida Supreme Court today struck down a voucher program for students attending failing schools, saying the state constitution bars Florida from using taxpayer money to finance a private alternative to the public system."
-nytimes

While I'm still officially undecided on the question of school vouchers, my instinct is to applaud this ruling. The court really ruled on a technicality, saying that the constitution requires the state to provide "uniform" schooling, and that private schools don't meet the standard of uniformity. But I guess most court cases are decided like that, in absence of moral judgment, and I prefer that to the alternatives.

In any case.

I lived through 12 years of Florida public education. My parents used a fake address to enroll me in elementary school in Coral Gables so that I wouldn't have to go to Coconut Grove Elementary, which was (and I think still is) fairly poor and run-down. I applied to a magnet program for middle school, and admission was, I'm pretty sure, completely dependent on the SAT they used to make us take every couple of years in elementary school. I continued the magnet program through all four years of high school and ended up at Coral Reef, a brand spankin' new school where I was in the first graduating class and routinely had classes of 10 people or less (thank you IB). It was a great program in a pretty great school, and I worked hard and got good grades and ranked high and went to Columbia.

But I had a few advantages going into it all. I'm not an idiot--that was helpful. I'm competitive and like to do better than other people--that helps too. My parents, while not rich by any means, valued education and pushed me from a young age to work hard in school, get good grades, and read. They had enough time to check that I did my homework at night in 4th grade, and they could take an afternoon off of work to go to a parent-teacher conference if they had to. I could look to my family in Iran to see how hard they were working, how important school was to them, and feel like I had to keep up. I'm a good test-taker (though that's a discussion for another time), so I got put into the academic excellence program in elementary school and did well on the elementary school SAT, the college SAT, the ACT, and other standardized tests. I had people around me--in my house, in my family, in my community--that provided positive (and negative) reinforcement that education equals success equals money and happiness. Not doing well in school would have been seen as a major failure by the people I cared about, and no one likes to fail.

What if I'd gone to a ghetto school where my teachers didn't give me any attention because they were distracted by the 37 ADD kids in the class who don't know how to shut the fuck up? What if no one in my family had ever gone to college or even graduated high school and the only people I interacted with at home and in the street dealt drugs or mugged old ladies or collected welfare? What if I had dyslexia but no one noticed because my school was understaffed and everyone was overworked and my parents both had two jobs and we didn't have health insurance so I couldn't afford to see a specialist to find out what was wrong with me? Maybe the drive to succeed is innate and I would have been just fine regardless, but I find it hard to believe that environment doesn't play a significant role in making people who they turn out to be.

back in the saddle again

2006-01-05T01:03:00.000-05:00

i got back to new york on tuesday after a very hectic two months. first work was insane, then i was in miami for 2-1/2 weeks, then back to nyc for 10 days, then back to miami for another 2 weeks. i sat down with my boss today for the first time since mid-november. i just unpacked my suitcase, cleaned my room quite well, and showered, and now am getting ready for bed. it's late, and i'm tired, but i don't want this blog to die and the only way to keep it alive is to write.

i was ready to leave miami. the weather there was so gorgeous--sunny and warm and just lovely. new york is pretty mild as well, or maybe i'm just remembering january worse than it actually is. in any case, i've been pleasantly surprised by the weather. maybe i've broken through the glass wall of the northeast and can be at peace with the changing of the seasons. i'm a sun girl at heart, but i guess a brisk little breeze can be nice once in a while.

anyway. miami is exhausting. how do they do it? i think it'll take me a couple of weeks here to recover. i missed my routine--going to work, watching tv, finding something to do on the weekends... things are so much easier in miami, and harder at the same time too. there's always something going on, someone is always going to bouganvilla or the grove and god forbid they miss friday night at pawn shop. it's been exciting for a while, and a nice change from my much chiller life in new york. but i think i've reached my limit. i'm tired of feeling like i'm regressing when i go home. it's disconcerting to constantly run into people i know from high school, middle school, elementary school for chrissakes. it's like all of the hard work i've done to make myself into someone i like since leaving miami gets undone when i get around all these fools. well, maybe that's a bit extreme--i'm definitely much more confident than i was then, and happier, and generally better, and i don't lose it all. maybe i was just feeling dull from all the hoopla. too much drama. i'm happier in places where the tide doesn't move so much. i guess i like it flat. and i guess, for me, new york is just flatter than miami most of the time.

dave's leaving for his bike trip tomorrow. this necessitates major changes in my social life. i'm making an endeavor to keep in touch with old friends, and make new friends, and all in all just experience my last few months in this wonderful, wonderful place. so, tomorrow night i'm going to meet up with stoops and the gang for dinner, after i have a drink with mike, whom i haven't seen in what feels like ages. friday i'm hoping to see the spam allstars at SOBs with whoever wants to come along, and saturday i'm going to help selom celebrate his birthday downtown. i'm also going to rope someone into coming to the new iranian restaurant in chelsea with me--they seem pretty authentic, and i've been itching to find good iranian food in the city.

it turns out that i'm traveling to geneva and istanbul in february, and i get to go to (and speak at!) the harm reduction conference in vancouver in may. beforehand i'm going to try to take my own trip to the western states, maybe visit folks LA and my aunt in portland.

it's weird to think that by may i'll know whether i'm going to law school next year. i hope i hope i hope.

goodnight!

also

2005-12-19T23:17:00.000-05:00

i am the sudoku master.

i now issue an open challenge: if you can solve a sudoku puzzle faster than me, i will buy you the beer of your choice at the bar of your choice (or a six-pack from the corner deli, of my choice).

that is all.

My First Christmas

2005-12-19T22:36:00.000-05:00

the past few days have been great.

on sunday they let my brother out of the hospital. so now he's home, where he'll actually get his medications on time and the doctors and nurses can't get their grubby, incompetent hands on him. he seems to be doing really well, and to not be in too much pain, and he's going back for a check-up with his surgeon next week, where they'll undoubtedly give him two thumbs up.

on monday i flew back to new york, went straight to work, got basically nothing done, and then went home.

on tuesday after work i got on the train to DC and spent wednesday talking about tobacco companies with a bunch of highly intelligent and funny lawyers. they made a bunch of predictions, some of which have already come true. it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next few months.

on thursday i met up with jethro, whom i hadn't seen in something like four years. he graduated from risd in providence in may and moved to nyc in september. like the hipster he is, he's living in williamsburg (bushwich, really) and enjoying life. we had dinner and hot chocolate, played in toys 'r us for an hour or so, and then saw christian's band, hello nurse, play downtown at a venue called fat baby. the opening band, the nsg, was fantastic, but unfortunately for us, they're breaking up, and that was their last show as a band. hello nurse played a great set, and i think i converted jethro into fandom. good times all around.

on friday there was no transit strike, but i decided to take the morning off anyway, and i ended up sleeping until noon and getting to work around 130pm (i managed to be highly productive, though). that night was the osi holiday party. by the way, the chelsea piers lighthouse is a great place to have a party--it was beautiful and the food wasn't bad. the dj was great, reminiscent of my previous three friday nights at pawn shop. someone, i'm still not clear who, had arranged for an after party at a nearby bar/lounge called hiro, on 17th and 9th. unfortunately, some of the older folks had forgotten their ids and couldn't get past the anal bouncers (even though they look older than 21). after gawking at the women swinging from bedsheets on the ceiling and enjoying another good dj, i went to the hotel bar upstairs to hang out with the old folks. all in all it was a successful holiday party, without too much drama, and i had a good time.

saturday started with brunch at french roast. i got most of my christmas shopping done, including an absurd number of cards from the met. the day ended with a party at abhay's house in the east village, where i saw people i hadn't seen in forever, including selom!, who is back in the city at cornell med school. i was so tired, though, and ended up leaving rather early to go home and go to bed.

sunday was spent running errands (uptown, for the first time), wrapping presents, burning cds, watching the jets, and winding down for the week. unfortunately i couldn't sleep at all, and i ended up taking the morning off today again too. i can't really complain about that, though.

so, life has been hectic, but i like it that way. i thought that my 10 days in new york would be a vacation from life in miami--which is way, way busier than life here could ever be; i don't know how they do it--but as it turned out, tonight is the first time i've been able to really chill out and relax. i've spent long stretches of time tonight not talking to anyone else... that felt really strange because it's been so long since that happened last.

i think the quality of my writing goes down with the frequency of my posts. for self-preservation, i should really start posting more. there's no shortage of shit to rant about, either, but i've just felt uninspired of late. maybe that'll start changing.

wednesday night i'm off to sunny (or rainy) florida again until the 3rd day of 2006. i think some neat new years plans are shaping up... in any case, should be a good time. i have a stack of 6 economists that need reading--they're coming with me, as are four new books that i'm going to try to start and finish. it's time to get back on the reading wagon. i think i'm ready now.

put your back into it

2005-12-12T14:09:00.000-05:00

yo.

back in new york, fools.

more later.

adios.

ps: happy birthday stoops! happy birthday mary!

hello world.

2005-12-05T12:21:00.000-05:00

since i'm terrible at returning phone calls and emails, here's an update for those of you that haven't heard from me in a while.

my brother has cerebral palsy. it's pretty severe and affects his motor functions. an effect of this is that he can't hold up his own body weight. so, as he gets older and grows faster (he'll be 13 in january), it gets harder for him to maintain any semblance of good posture. over the past couple of years, his back has been curving more and more, and he's developed a pretty severe case of scoliosis. to prevent him from curving over too much and crushing his organs, a team of surgeons, in an eight-hour operation, fused his spine with titanium rods and screws on monday, november 28th. he's had some complications during his recovery and is still in intensive care, but he's doing better now, and my best guess is that he'll be in a normal hospital room on wednesday or thursday, and home a week or so after that. i came home for thanksgiving and decided to stay to help out my parents and make sure everything was ok. i'll be here 'til he's out of the ICU, and i'll probably hop on the first plane to nyc the next day.

so, as you can imagine, life here has been pretty hectic. i'm trying to work from home and finish my applications while i'm here, but i've been basically failing at it. at least it's warm and beautiful, and i have some friends here who've been taking great care of me. still, it's hard to sit around doing not much of anything for days on end; i'm starting to miss my new york routine of getup-gotowork-workworkwork-gohome-watchtv-gotobed. but i'll be back soon enough.

ok, back to work.

mara good luck on your papers!

all you can do is laugh

2005-11-16T12:00:00.000-05:00

i only hope that, one day, i have the political, financial, and moral security of these guys.

also, can i just say that i love dana milbank. seriously. what a guy!

whores deserve to die.

2005-10-31T21:20:00.000-05:00

"The WP mentions that a new vaccine against cervical cancer, that could become available as early as next year, has sparked a controversy between health practitioners and conservative groups. The vaccine seems to be almost 100 percent effective in preventing the most serious types of the human papilloma virus that can cause cancer and some want to immunize as many prepubescent girls as possible. Because HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, however, some conservatives are concerned that large-scale vaccination among the young could be seen as encouraging premarital sex. " --Slate

Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me.

I guess when they find an HIV vaccine they will keep it from people because it promotes promiscuity. What if an STD increased the risk for prostate cancer? Say if you got herpes, your risk of prostate cancer increased by 50%. Would Focus on the Family be up in arms because a herpes vaccine, made mandatory for boys age 13, might "encourage risky sexual behavior in adolescent patients?" I think not. Old white men tend to have each other's backs, and the backs of their sons, too. But their daughters can go to hell if their purity be disturbed.

Not to mention it's just bad public health policy.

I'm outraged that this is even a debate. When did this become okay? When did this kind of dialogue on these issues become accepted and even mandatory? Ridiculous. Fucking ridiculous.

all sorts of blocked

2005-10-24T23:47:00.000-04:00

for many many days, i've been unable to read anything except "the fountainhead." i have no idea why, of all the books i own and have read, i stick to good old howard roark. i don't get it. it's not the easiest read, but not quite dense enough to put me to sleep... who cares. the more pressing problem is that i can't write either. i've got lots of personal statement to get through and very little ability to do it. instead i lay around and read things online and fiddle with applications and watch baseball teams i don't care about. meh. i'm tired, and it's making me totally apathetic. i think i have to sit down at work and write a few sentences before leaving tomorrow night. not that i love to stay at work late, but i've got to bite the bullet and get this shit done. now that lsat scores are in, i have nothing else to wait for.

write write write write write. send me some mojo if you've got any to spare.