B12 Solipsism

Some additional reading December 4th from 18:17 to 21:21:

• Day 18 - "My job is crazy. I mean looney tunes. I wish everybody in America could come to my school tomorrow and just hang out with me for 20 minutes. How long would everybody in America last in that building? If everybody in America really knew what it was like the problem would get fixed tomorrow. This shit is unConstitutional. Nobody should have to go to school under these circumstances, and I include faculty under the umbrella "nobody." Nobody in the world should ever have to send their kids into a public school system this fucked up, and we mandate it by law that parents do just that. "
• Amanda Palmer Too Gorgeous For Her Own Record Label | Blowfish Blog - I've never heard of this chick, but by no meaning of the word is she fat.
  "Incredibly cool and beautiful singer Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls fame) has been forced to search for a new record label after Roadrunner refused to promote her latest single, video and album. Why? Because she refused to let them remove shots of her “fat” belly from the video for Leeds United (see above), and is therefore “uncommercial”.

  Check out the video. She’s insanely hot."

• MenuPages Blog :: Boston: Down By The Shipyard - my photo used here

  "Unless you live or work down that way, do you often trek to Charlestown? But what's stopping you? While it may seem a little out of the way, parking sucks, and parts can be overrun with tourists and their fanny packs, taking photos of the harbor, there's one solid reason to visit: Navy Yard."

A few interesting links for December 3rd through December 4th:

• T.R.O.Y.: On Your Marks, It's Funk Marathon Stage 1 - "This is volume one from a six part series. I put these together years ago. The material is mostly 70's funk, with a few exceptions here and there. You'll recognize some well known samples, but there is also a fair amount of obscure music too. The idea with these long-play funk mixes was to fit as many dope tracks as I could onto a 700 megabyte cdr. I wanted all day compilations for driving, working and generally just grooving. There are distinct sections in each volume, so check them out thoroughly."
• ODETTA RIP - "Her 1965 album "Odetta Sings Dylan" included such standards as "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Masters of War" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

  In a 1978 Playboy interview, Dylan said, "the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta." He said he found "just something vital and personal" when he heard an early album of hers in a record store as a teenager. "Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar," he said."

• Ethiopian music legend convicted of manslaughter - "Afro first made his name on the Ethiopian music scene in 2001 with his mix of reggae and east African pop. He became renowned for songs paying tribute to the late Emperor Haile Selassie as well as athletics heroes Kenenisa Bekele and Haile Gebrselassie.

  His third album, Yasteseryal, was released in 2005, the year of disputed national elections that saw mass anti-government protests quashed violently by the state. One of Afro's songs accused the government of failing to deliver on promises of change, and his music became the unofficial soundtrack of the opposition struggle.

  Afro was detained shortly after the hit-and-run incident in 2006, and released on bail. He was the biggest local star of Ethiopia's millennium celebrations in 2007, before being arrested again and charged in April, leading Ethiopian bloggers to question why it took the authorities 18 months to decide to put him on trial. A least two journalists were arrested for writing articles seen as siding with Afro."

• Hi, How Are You? | MetaFilter - Austin music scene ~1990-1995 (an unscientific survey)

  Boy, I saw a lot of these bands, even knew several band members. Ahhh, youth.

From Snapshots from a Flounder

Some additional reading December 3rd from 18:27 to 18:42:

• Dan Shanoff: My Sportsman of the Year: Barack Obama - "The DanShanoff.com Sportsman of the Year is Barack Obama.

  Much as he will be named regular ol' "Person of the Year" in a consensus probably not seen in the history of "Person of the Year" award-giving, he similarly deserves Sportsman of the Year.

  Here is the case for Barack Obama as Sportsman of the Year:"

• Media Matters - We're in the money … - "Regarding the McCaffrey/NBC affair: I find it appalling that the main argument from NBC and McCaffrey himself to justify this utter lack of professionalism is that McCaffrey was wounded in action; ergo he is a man of integrity. It's as if they are implying that one shouldn't question the ethics of anyone who has been wounded in the line of duty. Apparently NBC does not remember Benedict Arnold, a general wounded severely fighting the British at the Battle of Saratoga. Three years later he became America's most notorious sell-out. "

Some additional reading December 2nd from 21:14 to 21:14:

• Vice President For SUPERTRAIN - “China invests 7-9 percent of its GDP in infrastructure projects. We invest just 1 percent. There’s a reason they have a mag-lev train that can go over 200 miles per hour.I may have a bit of a pro-rail bias, but think of the jobs we could create – in both construction and innovation – if we made similarly bold investments here.

  We should fast-track funding for the thousands of ready-to-go projects across the country that can quickly put people back to work and lay the foundation for long-term growth.

  In the longer term, we are calling for the creation of a new National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will help us make the investments we need to build a 21st century transportation system – while creating jobs and taking the politics out of infrastructure spending. And it has the added benefit of making American business more competitive in the world. “

Some additional reading November 19th from 09:12 to 09:12:

• FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right: An Interview with John Ziegler on the Zogby “Push Poll” - Republican mind-set, encapsulated. Wow, just wow.
  “Ziegler was responsible for commissioning a Zogby International survey of Barack Obama supporters, which took the form of a multiple choice political knowledge test, stating a “fact” to the respondent and asking them which of the four major candidates (Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin) the statement applied to. Because I believe that many of the statements on the survey are questionable or false but are misleadingly presented as factual to the respondent, I characterized the survey as a “push poll” in an article posted early this morning.” 

  You should read this transcript if you are up for a good laugh. The RNC pays this guy Ziegler?

Some additional reading November 5th from 13:33 to 13:33:

• TidBITS Just for Fun: Top 10 Screensavers for the 21st Century - Love interesting screensavers myself. Am adding about 6 of these to my rotation”When I went in search of new and interesting screensavers, I was looking for three things: screensavers that could change and develop over time, screensavers that made use of input devices or updating information, and screensavers that put a fun twist on age-old tricks like clocks or photo slideshows”

Some additional reading October 30th from 20:58 to 21:01:

• Archaeologists report finding oldest Hebrew text - Yahoo! News - Archaeologists in Israel said on Thursday they had unearthed the oldest Hebrew text ever found, while excavating a fortress city overlooking a valley where the Bible says David slew Goliath.
• ESPN - ESPN The Magazine - I KNEW Pippen and the Bulls got robbed:
  “Did Scottie Pippen’s ratings in the game really drop when he played certain teams?
  It’s true, but only when the Bulls played the Pistons. If there was a close game and anyone on the Bulls took a last second shot, we wrote special code in the game so that they would average out to be bricks. There was the big competition back in the day between the Pistons and the Bulls, and since I was always a big Pistons fan, that was my opportunity to level the playing field.”

Some additional reading September 12th from 16:10 to 16:10:

• James Fallows - The Palin Interview - “What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the “Bush Doctrine” exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years.”

Some additional reading September 6th from 00:14 to 00:14:

• A tangled Web at the RNC - Clicked - msnbc.com - I can name one piece of legislation Obama’s had a hand in and, at least on the Internet, it is part of a relatively famous story. What’s more, it actually came up last night at the Republican National Convention, apparently completely unnoticed in the glare of Palin’s performance: The Coburn-Obama Transparency Bill a.k.a. The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006.Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard chairwoman and vociferous McCain advocate mentioned this in her address to the convention: “In his first year in office, he [McCain] will subject every government agency to a top to bottom review and post the results on the Internet for all Americans to see.”

A few interesting links for November 30th through December 2nd:

• Media Matters - Wash. Times and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review publish false Heritage Foundation claims about autoworker compensation - " In recent days, The Washington Times and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review published op-eds by members of the Heritage Foundation containing the false claim that union autoworkers earn $75 an hour in wages and benefits. In fact, according to General Motors, these claims are based not only on current workers' hourly wages and benefits, such as health care and retirement, but also retirement and health-care benefits that U.S. automakers are providing for current retirees."
• NBC and McCaffrey's coordinated responses to the NYT story - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - General Barry McCaffrey has been corrupt for a long time (he was the drug Czar, remember?), and NBC was quite happy employing him in his role as defense contractor shill.
  More here
  http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/01/mccaffrey/index.html
• Daily Kos: Who Rules Mark Halperin's World? - "Number of references on Mark Halperin's website, thepage.time.com, for each of the following, according to Google:

  Rush Limbaugh: 113
  Sean Hannity: 77
  Matt Drudge: 56
  Bill O'Reilly: 34
  Huffington (Post or Arianna): 23
  Keith Olbermann: 14
  Rachel Maddow: 9
  Daily Kos: 0"

• Daily Kos: Defending The Media From Halperin's Tin-Foil Attack - " I assembled a list of 92 articles published by the NYT in 2007 and 2008 (see below). As you can see, none of thes articles show any signs of "extreme bias" or "extreme pro-Obama coverage."

  I'm not saying the articles prove any sort of systematic anti-Obama bias. But they do invalidate Halperin's claim about the NYT, in the process exposing his claim that coverage of the 2008 campaign represents "the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war" as totally unsubstantiated.

  Given Halperin's utter lack of specifics to support his claim, the real question is this: why did he choose to throw the media under Rush Limbaugh's bus?"

• Bargain gifts for the culture vulture - 2008 Gift Guide - Salon.com - ". On the leading edge of an incoming tsunami of art-house-flavored releases is the first-ever batch of Blu-rays from the Criterion Collection, available for preorder now and pre-Christmas delivery. It's an eclectic and intriguing blend, from Nicolas Roeg's deliciously culty "The Man Who Fell to Earth"($27.95), starring the 1976 androgynous version of David Bowie, to Carol Reed's sinister, black-and-white Vienna Brit-noir "The Third Man"($28.99), Wong Kar-wai's winsome 1994 romance "Chungking Express" ($27.95) and Wes Anderson's debut indie heist caper "Bottle Rocket" ($27.95). (Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" ($23.99), exactly the kind of eye-popping spectacle you'd expect to see in a new format, will be along in January.) No telling yet whether technophiles will kvetch or kvell about the hi-def transfers, but to you and me they'll look stupendous."

Some additional reading November 30th from 21:00 to 21:40:

• War Machine - "On NBC and in other public forums, General McCaffrey has consistently advocated wartime policies and spending priorities that are in line with his corporate interests. But those interests are not described to NBC’s viewers. He is held out as a dispassionate expert, not someone who helps companies win contracts related to the wars he discusses on television.

  But rather than focusing on McCaffrey and his issues, it’s worth contemplating the breathtaking lack of integrity on display from the television networks here. As I said, Barstow published a piece on this back in April. None of the TV networks addressed the issue he raised in anything resembling a serious manner. And, again, we now have NBC News caught flat-out in the midst of corruption, deceiving their viewers. And NBC News isn’t sorry. They’re not apologizing. They’re not ashamed. Because they’re beyond shame. They never had a reputation for honor, so they don’t even see this sort of thing as damaging."

• The ongoing disgrace of NBC News and Brian Williams - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - "Still, what was — and remains — most incredible about Barstow's April, 2008 exposé was that, to this day, the networks which featured these highly conflicted "analysts" have never uttered a word about the controversy over the Pentagon's program, despite the fact that it was the subject of an enormous front-page NYT story; members of Congress accused the Pentagon — rightfully so — of operating a potentially illegal propaganda operation and demanded information directly from the networks; both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton spoke out against the Pentagon's program; and even the Pentagon felt compelled to terminate the program in the wake of the controversy. None of that merited a mention by any of the networks, despite (more accurately: because of) the fact that their own reporting was so directly implicated by the controversy."

A few interesting links for November 28th through November 29th:

• Lawmaker to Homeland Security: Don't forget to credit God for keeping Kentuckians safe - "A lawmaker is upset with his state's Department of Homeland Security for its lack of credit to a "higher power" for its work in protecting the state's citizens.

  Kentucky State Rep. Tom Riner, a Southern Baptist minister who helped establish a requirement that the federally funded agency credit God with keeping the state safe, is upset that under Gov. Steve Beshear, the department's 2008 annual report did not do so."

  I don't know what to say in response to this Christian Taliban silliness.

• Gapers Block : A/C : Chicago Arts & Culture - Friday Flickr Feature - "In case you were dreaming of a white Thanksgiving, swanksalot provides your fix."
• People Who Need People - "Jimmy Carter’s circle regarded Johnson, who mired the nation in Vietnam and then handed the White House to Nixon, as a failure. They weren’t about to have any “Johnson people” in their White House. Clinton’s circle regarded Carter, who allowed himself to be paralyzed by a few hundred Iranian “students” and then handed the White House to Reagan, as a failure. They weren’t about to have any “Carter people” in their White House.

  It didn’t seem to occur to either crowd, Carter’s or Clinton’s, that old hands, far from being eager to repeat the errors of the Administrations of which they had been a part, would be especially keen to avoid them. Also, they would know in detail what those errors were."

• Good old Christian charity again | The Green Atheist - "After contacting the ACLU and filing a lawsuit, Bell and McCord became the subjects of hatred and even violence. Bell’s house was burned down by a firebomb. McCord’s 12-year-old son’s prize goats were slashed and mutilated with a knife. Bell was assaulted by a school cafeteria worker who smashed her head repeatedly against a car door. (School authorities praised the cafeteria worker, and she was forced to pay a $10 fine and Bell’s hospital bills, community residents raised donations on the assailant’s behalf.) McCord and Bell were both mailed their own obituaries.

  Don’t make assumptions though: McCord and Bell were not atheists, although they were accused of being atheists. They just belonged to Christian churches that weren’t part of the dominant Baptist sect in the area. "

  Insane! Simply insane. There should be no place for religious freaks in public schools.

• Civic Literacy Report - Additional Finding - "Among the 2,508 respondents, 164 say they have been elected to a government office at least once. This sub-sample of officeholders yields a startling result: elected officials score lower than the general public. Those who have held elective office earn an average score of 44% on the civic literacy test, which is five percentage points lower than the average score of 49% for those who have never been elected. It would be most interesting to explore whether this statistically significant result is maintained across larger samples of elected officials"
• U.S. judge sentences noisy offenders to Barry Manilow - Yahoo! News - A U.S. judge has hailed as a success a new form of punishment for people who go to court for being too noisy — an hour of listening to Barry Manilow or the theme tune from the children's TV show "Barney and Friends." Judge Paul Sacco said he decided to try something new after noticing that violators brought before his Colorado court for playing their stereos too loudly, or disturbing neighbors with band rehearsals, kept doing it again. …

  He said his methods had cut the number of repeat offenders appearing in his court.

  But offenders who are found to enjoy facing the music will have the songs taken away from them. Sacco says these people must listen to music they don't like, because that's what they impose on others.

  Court officials take surveys after each session, and if it turns out that many of the offenders happen to like a particular song, that tune is removed from the playlist.

• “Bush’s Greatness” - "t’s obvious not only that George W. Bush has already earned his Great President badge (which might even outrank the Silver Star) but that much of the opposition to Bush has a remarkable and very special quality; one might be tempted to call it “lunacy.” But that’s too easy. The “special quality” of anti-Bush opposition tells a more significant, stranger story than that.

  Bush’s greatness is often misunderstood. He is great not because he showed America how to react to 9/11 but because he showed us how to deal with a still bigger event–the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 left us facing two related problems, one moral and one practical. Neither President Clinton nor the first Bush found solutions–but it’s not surprising that the right answers took time to discover, and an event like 9/11 to bring them into focus."

  Bwha-ha-ha

• China executes man for ant-breeding scheme - No bailout in this tale of white collar crime:

  "China has executed a businessman convicted of bilking thousands of investors out of $416 million in a bogus ant-breeding scheme, state media reported Thursday.

  The official Xinhua News Agency said Wang Zhendong, who was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to death in February last year, was executed in north China's Liaoning province on Wednesday.

  The death penalty is used broadly in China. Though usually reserved for violent crimes, it is also applied for nonviolent offenses that involve large sums of money or if they are seen to threaten social order."

• Axe falls on historic Dijon mustard factory - The factory, set up in 1911 by the descendent of a long line of master vinegar makers from Dijon, produced the brands Amora and Maille. The pungent range of Maille mustards dates back to the 18th century when its founder boasted that his antiseptic vinegar could help fight off a plague threatening the south of France.

  But the multinational Unilever, which took over the brands in 2000, said it was closing the site and two others in Burgundy to consolidate in the difficult economic climate. The company said production at the Dijon factory had dropped by 42% since 2002. Mustard production will continue at Unilever sites elsewhere in France.

  The price of mustard grains has risen by 144% in one year.

• The Left Coaster: Purchasing The Plantation - "Under the bill, employers would not be able to obtain insurance on employees who are not considered key personnel, such as owners or partners - anyone whose death would cause financial loss to the company. No policy could be taken out on rank-and-file workers unless they gave written consent. If they did not consent, employers could not retaliate against them. "They must agree to it, you have to inform them and not come and harass them if they don't want to be insured by you," Fairley said before the vote.

  Last year, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. settled a lawsuit over the practice. The six families who were part of the lawsuit argued that Wal-Mart never told workers about the life insurance policies, something the company disputed. Wal-Mart is one of many large U.S. companies in recent years that have taken out policies on the lives of employees, ranging from executives to workers on the bottom rungs of the pay ladder, with the goal of collecting benefits when the employees die."

Some additional reading November 28th from 12:18 to 16:48:

• Another milestone: Obama 1st president who's got game — chicagotribune.com - ""There is an aspect of improvisation within a discipline that I find very, very powerful," Obama told HBO's Bryant Gumbel last year. "I can't imagine more fun than having a good pickup basketball game, when everything's going right and people are passing the ball and you're actually hitting some shots."

  Yes. Exactly. And as you're doing it, you're probably telling yourself, "Yes, we can."

• David Byrne - 11.22.08: Gas Wars - "Last week GM — once one of the largest, most powerful companies in the whole world — went begging for a government bailout, along with the other 2 big U.S. automakers. …These companies do not have the country’s best interests at heart — for years they have fought tooth and nail against fuel economy, defeating 2 bills in congress that would have resulted in cars that use less gas and burn cleaner. They saw that they could sell the macho U.S. car buyers on gas-guzzling giant SUVs and pickup trucks, and got the government to exempt those vehicles from many of the rules that apply to cars — and we’re supposed to help these guys? They could give a shit about us!

  I feel bad for the working stiffs who will be and have been laid off by the thousands — though I didn’t see too many of the unions fighting hard for fuel efficiency and smaller cars — they mainly fought for more pay for less work and they aren’t getting much public sympathy either as a result."

Some additional reading November 27th from 22:18 to 22:31:

• How the media talks about torture and the rule of law - "noted the sly way that asshole Mazzetti slides from "the CIA's secret detention program remains a particularly incendiary issue for the Democratic base" — because, of course, only those wacko lefties worry about war crimes — to the completely bogus assertion that said concerns have made it "difficult for Mr. Obama to select someone . . . who has played any role in the agency’s campaign against Al Qaeda since 9/11" (emphasis mine). So, according to the New Pravda (sometimes known as the New York Times) to criticize crimes against humanity is to oppose the entire campaign against the people responsible for 9/11. Dick Cheney couldn't have put it better. Now THAT'S some sleazy journalism we can believe in."
• Eight Is Enough: Comment: The New Yorker - "You might think that an organization that for most of the first of its not yet two centuries of existence was the world’s most notorious proponent of startlingly unconventional forms of wedded bliss would be a little reticent about issuing orders to the rest of humanity specifying exactly who should be legally entitled to marry whom. But no. The Mormon Church—as anyone can attest who has ever answered the doorbell to find a pair of polite, persistent, adolescent “elders” standing on the stoop, tracts in hand—does not count reticence among the cardinal virtues. Nor does its own history of matrimonial excess bring a blush to its cheek. The original Latter-day Saint, Joseph Smith, acquired at least twenty-eight and perhaps sixty wives, some of them in their early teens, before he was lynched, in 1844, at age thirty-eight. "
• Death to film critics! Hail to the CelebCult! - "A newspaper film critic is like a canary in a coal mine. When one croaks, get the hell out. The lengthening toll of former film critics acts as a poster child for the self-destruction of American newspapers, which once hoped to be more like the New York Times and now yearn to become more like the National Enquirer. We used to be the town crier. Now we are the neighborhood gossip.

  The crowning blow came this week when the once-magisterial Associated Press imposed a 500-word limit on all of its entertainment writers. The 500-word limit applies to reviews, interviews, news stories, trend pieces and "thinkers." Oh, it can be done. "

Some additional reading November 26th from 11:22 to 22:42:

• Bad times demand big thoughts - "As the media spaces have been filled of late with the FDR-like public works talk that was a part of summer blog discussions, I’ve been struck by the lack of vision exhibited by most mass media yakkers on this topic and am curious to provoke blogosphere free-wheeling of a type similar to what Mr. Obama must be provoking amongst his assembling presidential posse.

  Big Changes for a Big Century could include the much discussed ideas of wind farms and electric cars but I know your clever readers and writers might have a few other ideas for the economic recovery melting pot.

  Here are a few of mine

  -A transcontinental wide-body maglev or high velocity rail system"

  Rail! yes, yes, yes! We need a good national rail system, please!

• Matt Bonner of the San Antonio Spurs sees himself as 'boring guy' - "Despite making $2.978 million this year and $3.256 next year, Bonner remains frugal. Former Spurs guard Brent Barry, who is now with the Houston Rockets, remembers a time in Sacramento when Bonner was getting a snack at his favorite spot: Subway.

  “Matt had a coupon for half off a sandwich, which said: ‘Valid at participating stores only,'” Barry said. “The owner said we're not ‘participating stores' and Matt was like ‘Well aren't you a Subway? I walk outside and I see the name ‘Subway.'” After 10 minutes, he talked his way to half off a turkey sandwich. He saved like $2.16.”

  Added Bowen: “It's not about what you make, it's about what you keep. He understands that motto perfectly.”"