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Seven Hundred and Thirty One Nights/Stories of The Sultan - Vol. 1 (Prologue) سلطنة

2009-08-20T22:05:00.002-04:00

All the disparate peoples of the First Unified Sultanate were restless and frustrated. The new sultan had risen to power two years ago, seemingly out of nowhere. He seduced both the population and the leaders of the ummah with vague promises of golden nuggets while slowly amassing more and more power until all other competitors fell under his spell and flocked like Zoroastrians to Allah. The Sultan did this so skillfully it seemed almost subconscious. Despite some initial trepidation that immediately followed the fall of the previous regimes, the people were happy with The Sultan. What his people felt when they gazed into his big hazel eyes only the greatest of poets could describe. It was hope! Passion! Love! Not being a poet myself nor having witnessed in person the events of our story or The Sultan, your humble storyteller can only suppose it must have been ecstasy. Things did not remain in this state for long though. The Sultan could be many things. One day he'd be restless, others simply lazy. He also had a cold streak interrupted only by episodic storms of temper. The people were constantly questioning just who The Sultan was.

In spite of the opulent and entertaining nights with choice members of the populace that began following his rise to power, the people began to notice that his nuggets had yet to materialize. The Sultan sent slaves to the far reaches of the known world in search of exotic spices and mysterious recipes. Whole rooms in the palace were filled with these gastronomic secrets, but like the rooms themselves, those epicurean treasures were never opened but were instead hoarded away in dark cool cellars. The pittances he handed out were meager, and his attention was focused solely on himself.

To save the sultanate (not to mention The Sultan himself), The Grand Vizier and His most trusted advisor arranged to have a story told every night before bed. This story would illuminate the problems of the last two years without offending the man with the power over who would live and who would die...

سلطنة

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

2009-08-07T12:37:00.004-04:00

The documentary that won't be televised (in the U.S.)...

The Healthcare Post Part Deux

2009-07-25T11:36:00.005-04:00

...I knew the care was expensive, but I didn't have to worry about that. I needed the care and I got it.... My family has had the care it needed. Other families have not, simply because they could not afford it....
- Senator Kennedy in Newsweek

Dennis Kucinich has added an amendment in The House that would allow states to run their own single-payer systems, but who knows if that addition will survive all the deal making and compromises that we'll see in the next few months. "Everyone won't be satisfied—and no one will get everything they want," Kennedy writes, but he is optimistic. "If we don't get every provision right, we can adjust and improve the program next year or in the years to come. What we can't afford is to wait another generation." The battle for health care is old, and the arguments against it are tired. Kennedy's piece in Newsweek provides some context. "In 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third term as president, the platform of his newly created Progressive Party called for national health insurance," Kennedy notes. "Harry Truman proposed it again more than 30 years after Roosevelt was defeated. The plan was attacked, not for the last time, as 'socialized medicine,' and members of Truman's White House staff were branded 'followers of the Moscow party line.'"

Meanwhile the mudslinging going on is in full force, and the reformers are hitting back. "At this moment -- when 72 percent of the nation supports a public plan option and 14,000 people lose their healthcare every day -- the House Blue Dogs and conservative Democratic Senators are doing just about everything they can to cripple real health care reform," Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote recently in her blog at The Nation.

'Though issues with The Blue Dogs may be exaggerated, The Finance Committee's compromise bill would cover too few people and shift the costs to the middle class. That bill would certainly sustain the "torment" Senator Kennedy recounts of the individual families who have to sell everything they own to pay for health care in "the richest country in the world."

Most Americans expect the U.S. to lead the other advanced nations. Why are we so far behind in keeping our citizens healthy?

An editorial in The Globe by Paul Dutton proposes France as a model:

Although the French system faces many challenges, the World Health Organization rated it the best in the world in 2001 because of its universal coverage, responsive healthcare providers, patient and provider freedoms, and the health and longevity of the country's population. The United States ranked 37....
Moreover, in contrast to Canada and Britain, there are no waiting lists for elective procedures and patients need not seek pre-authorizations. In other words, like in the United States, "rationing" is not a word that leaves the lips of hopeful politicians....

It's a model that even the insurance industry could get behind:

...Private health insurers are also central to the system as supplemental insurers who cover patient expenses that are not paid for by Sécurité Sociale. Indeed, nearly 90 percent of the French population possesses such coverage, making France home to a booming private health insurance market....

Whether Senator Baucus's vision eventually wins out in The Senate remains to be seen, but an article in The New York Times airs concerns about the economy - "even if a health overhaul does pass, it may not include the tough measures needed to bring down spending. Ultimately, the only way to do so is to take money from doctors, drug makers and insurers, and it isn’t clear whether Mr. Obama and Congress have the stomach for that fight. So far, they have focused on ideas like preventive care that would do little to cut costs."

Do these "tough measures" address the fact that we spend more money than we should (or need to) on health care? Dutton admits health care in France is expensive. "At $3,500 per capita it is one of the most costly in Europe," but the price for our inefficient and broken system is "$6,100 per person in the United States." Kennedy succinctly counters the cynics who fret about the price tag:

What I haven't heard the critics discuss is the cost of inaction. If we don't reform the system, if we leave things as they are, health-care inflation will cost far more over the next decade than health-care reform. We will pay far more for far less—with millions more Americans uninsured or underinsured....

This would threaten not just the health of Americans but also the strength of the American economy. Health-care spending already accounts for 17 percent of our entire domestic product. In other advanced nations, where the figure is around 10 percent, everyone has insurance and health outcomes that are equal or better than ours. This disparity undermines our ability to compete and succeed in the global economy. General Motors spends more per vehicle on health care than on steel....

The United States is the greatest country in the world, but we don't have the best health care. That is an embarrassment. It's a burden on the economy, and it's a burden on families. When millions of Americans cannot afford to be healthy it's injustice. Opponents of reform often talk about freedom and choice. Dutton points out something that these opponents need to remember:

The link between employment and health security is a historical artifact whose disadvantages now far outweigh its advantages. Economists estimate that between 25 and 45 percent of the US labor force is now job-locked. That is, employees make career decisions based on their need to maintain affordable health coverage or avoid exclusion based on a preexisting condition.

That is not a statistic that supports the freedom inherent in a small government role. It's time to mend this crack in our liberty. Universal coverage will expand opportunity in average Americans who aren't lucky enough to be born into a rich family or get elected to Congress and will make the pursuit of happiness much easier. Let's hope this is the year that The Federal Government will finally provide every American the chance to be healthy regardless of the conditions that he or she is born into.

The Death of Rock in Boston?

2009-07-15T23:44:00.003-04:00

WBCN is dead. If you're not sure why this is important, The Globe and Herald both give CliffsNotes versions of the history and influence of what Howard Stern called "the most legendary rock station ever" on his show this morning.

The bad guy here is CBS Radio, which has mismanaged it's properties across the country. According to The Howard 100 News, former program director, Oedipus, claims it was "the suits" that ruined 'BCN, and the station could have survived by letting "the inmates run the asylum."

104.1 switched formats from underground to corporate a long time ago, and the station's soul has slowly withered away. The latest by CBS Radio just sweeps away what's left. The saddest part is the music. While New York City has long struggled to support rock formats, the genre has thrived in Boston with three alternative rock (not including New Hampshire's Rock 101) and one classic rock station. A big reason for that is WBCN spawned imitators. At least for a while, however, those imitators did a better job. The obituaries forget to mention how little rock there was at "The Rock of Boston." Stern ruled the mornings, Patriot games were added, and then so were Opie and Anthony. For the year they spent on in the afternoons, the chatty Nik Carter handled mid-days. After Stern moved to Sirius XM in 2006, CBS saddled 'BCN with David Lee Roth and then the Opie and Anthony redux - both failed.

Dan Kennedy is succinct:

Along with alternative papers like the Phoenix, Boston After Dark and the Real Paper, WBCN was my main source of information on leftist politics and the counterculture.

But the station had long since disappeared into the cog of corporate radio. It's not that it won't be missed. It's that the time to miss it expired about 20 years ago.

Although I'm too young to know Danny Schechter, he has a longer and more passionate take than Kennedy. In short:

The station’s legacy and importance–the reason it built a national reputation and worldwide respect– was deliberately buried in the need to meet quarterly revenue projections and serve its corporate masters. Their goal was to compete with commercial drek by becoming commercial drek. And they did.

And where did it take them? To the radio graveyard. Shame.

Both paint an accurate picture of what happened at 104.1, but are stained by a lens of nostalgia. Some of their differences are generational as things had improved recently with the talented Toucher and Rich moving their funny show to the mornings. While the independently owned 'FNX might feel more like the original, I have to admit the corporate 'BCN still played music I loved when I had it on. Sure my generation missed the underground WBCN, but many of us have great memories of the station. They played The Beatles Anthology in its entirety, Radiohead's show at Great Woods, and Nine Inch Nails' radio performance with Peter Murphy (here's one of the songs). Losing 'BCN is losing one more venue for these things to air at the local level. How much of channel's troubles were due to mismanagement, however? The pessimist in me wonders if The Rock of Boston's death is actually the latest casualty in The Death of Rock in Boston.

True Health Care Reform

2009-04-23T18:59:00.004-04:00

Most Americans would agree that access to health care is a civil right. Our inalienable right of life isn't possible without it, and the pursuit of happiness is a lot tougher when you're sick. Most if not all would also agree that the system we have is broke. Well, if we want everyone covered with better care while spending less, what kind of system do we create to fix it? The answer is Single Payer. Because our debt as a nation is so high, this is a reform we need to implement now. We are spending too much and getting too little. Joe Conason illuminates in Salon:

Although the public share of health expenditure in the United States is much lower than any other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country except Mexico, the public expenditure on healthcare is much higher per capita than in most OECD countries. So we pay a lot more in taxes devoted to medical care -- not including insurance premiums, co-payments, fees, and other health costs -– than taxpayers in those 27 countries that have universal coverage. Our public expenditure provides coverage only for the elderly and some of the poor (through Medicaid and the SCHIP program for children) while other countries provide universal coverage while spending less.

How much less? Nations with comparable standards of living like France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and Japan spend roughly between half and two-thirds per capita what we spend annually. They cover everyone and their results are measurably better. And the supposed downsides of universal coverage, such as lack of access to sophisticated medical technologies, are belied in many of these countries. For instance Japan has lower per capita health expenditures than the United States (and universal coverage,) but its citizens have greater access to MRI machines, CT scanners and kidney dialysis equipment than Americans do.

It's clear that health care is one of the areas that the public sector is better than the private. It's cheaper, more effective and based on an American study comparing the health between different races, ethnicities, and education levels, it's also more equitable. What I found most surprising is that we already have a successful model of how all this would work. "The VA hospitals represent the most successful large-scale reform in the delivery of health care that this country has seen in decades," explains Timothy Noah in Slate. So, why is this more effective and more efficient system never brought up?

It... stems from a conviction that has seeped deep into the political culture that anything run by the federal government must be inferior to market-based alternatives. The Obama administration and Congress are utterly terrified that in crafting health care reform they will run afoul of this infantile prejudice. They will therefore move heaven and earth to avoid acknowledging the VA's pioneering use of computerized medical records, its avoidance of the justly lamented fee-for-service model (VA physicians are salaried), and the efficiencies it realizes by treating patients over the long term. The implications of this success are too terrifyingly pinko. The VA is, after all, a system in which the role of insurer, physician, and hospital are all assumed by the U.S. government.

Wow

2009-03-30T21:11:00.003-04:00

Divided We Fall

2009-03-29T23:37:00.002-04:00

I haven't read all of this article in Salon (it seems pretty boring), but there are a couple golden nuggets that validated my interest.

I've done the skimming:

If Juanita and Chris are casualties of the intensified war of attrition businesses are quietly waging on workers, Rodney represents a deeper unraveling of jobs and job security, thanks to a globalized economy in which the hard-pressed workers in this country are pitted against cheaper labor pools in Latin America, South Asia, China and even the American South. In such a job environment, what is one to do?

Someone I interviewed prior to my job center visit described her reaction when she heard that her company had recently closed a plant in the Midwest: "The first thing I thought, and I felt bad for thinking it," she recalled, somewhat sheepishly, "was that means more work for us -- at least for the time being."
Quantcast

Her comment speaks volumes, as does her request not to be identified. Who needs union busters, patroling shop stewards, or legions of high-paid lawyers fighting wage and hours claims when a worker is so anxious about job security that she responds positively to the laying off of those she imagines as potential competitors? When employees police their own behavior for fear of the ax -- monitoring their time checking e-mail or using the bathroom -- bad times distinctly have an upside for management....

A look at corporate opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), whose passage in Congress is a central demand of organized labor, offers a glimpse of how persistently companies seek to disadvantage their workers. EFCA would allow workers to form a union when a majority of them sign union cards in a given workplace. "Card check," as it is frequently called, enables them to organize unions without the need for an election. In a November column surveying the business elite's response to the act, Wall Street Journal Op-Ed columnist Thomas Frank wrote: "Card check is about power. Management has it, workers don't, and business doesn't want that to change."

The author concludes that there are two business wars being fought - the second covertly eliminates employees that would otherwise have been retained in better financial times. He asks at what point the press will finally acknowledge this less reported war. Isn't asking how one side is supposed to fight without an army the more important question?

Operation Comix Relief

2009-03-27T20:52:00.003-04:00

A Framingham man who runs a program that sends comic books to military personnel overseas says he may have to cut back because his mailing rates have doubled.

Chris Tarbassian of Operation Comix Relief tells The MetroWest Daily News the price jumped from $2.58 per shipment to more than $5 after he was told he could no longer ship comics at the less expensive media mail rate.

The nonprofit sends comics to about 500 men and women each year.

I've sent some comics here and plan to send more. Hopefully something will be done to make this easier for Tarbassian to get more comics to more troops. Are you listening Senators Kerry and Kennedy?

More info:
Original Boston Globe article

More extensive MetroWest Daily News story

Operation Comix Relief

Interesting Article For Those Into Birds

2009-03-19T13:08:00.002-04:00

Check this out from National Geographic:

Peruvian warbling antbird couples harmonize to warn rival couples away from their territories. But put a single female nearby and the duet turns into a musical shouting match....

The songs of warbling-antbird pairs usually begin as evenly spaced series of couplets. Females can either meld their tunes to their partner's—or jam the other's signal by jumping in at the wrong time....

Threatened by rival pairs, the couple put up a united front, singing rhythmic and coordinated duets. But cooperation broke down when solitary rivals came around.

"Specifically, females responded to unpaired sexual rivals by jamming the signals of their own mates," (Joseph) Tobias and (Nathalie) Seddon wrote.

"Perhaps the most striking result is that males don't like females 'jamming' their song," Tobias said. Males "try to avoid [the females'] jamming, suggesting that they perceive it as costly in some way."

Gov. Jindal's Rebuttal

2009-02-28T21:13:00.002-05:00

If Gov. Patterson of New York had spun a similar tale regarding his actions on September 11th, wouldn't it be big news? While Bobby Jindal has been panned for his callow performance the other night on national T.V. (Happy Mardi Gras), I don't think much has been made of the fact that he made up the story of his role in cutting through the bureaucratic red-tape during Hurricane Katrina.

Here's what he said:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

Here's what happened:

When the storm made landfall on August 29, Jindal was on a foreign trip. His family was evacuated to his parents' house in Baton Rouge, and when he returned, he went straight there to join them. In a September 1st CNN interview given from Baton Rouge, Jindal talked about taking an aerial tour of the disaster area, but didn't mention anything about having been on the ground personally. We've reviewed Nexis and other sources, and can find no news reports putting Jindal on the ground in the affected area during the few days after Katrina struck when people might still have needed boats to rescue them from rooftops.

Remember When You Were Asking the Definition of Hypocrisy?

2009-01-27T20:43:00.005-05:00

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill....

Hyperbole ensues...

"This is the demise of a civilization," said (Home Depot co-founder Bernie) Marcus. "This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm watching this happen and I don't believe it."

Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued, to prevent America from turning "into France."

"If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out their goddamn jobs," Marcus declared.

The sky is falling! We are in a recession and these people want to unionize?! They need to stop thinking about what's in their own greedy self-interest and start putting the country's economy first. Wait - not so fast - Bank of America's own research document states that 'though it could increase labor costs for retailers it would be a "de facto wage and benefit increase" that would increase the amount poorer consumers could spend. Plus, I think that $25 billion was meant to keep the economy floating not line pockets.

Read in full at The Huffington Post.

P.S. Blog sarcasm sure makes you look like a smug prick.

The Hermit's Fiddle (I)

2009-01-27T20:26:00.004-05:00

I haven't posted much of anything for a long time partly because of other priorities and partly because I'm not sure what I want to do with this strand of web. At first, I just wanted to use this space to post articles in lieu of sending out time consuming mass e-mails. Just posting links seemed stupid, so I started writing more analysis, but this presented me with the classic question not asked by the many narcissistic bloggers out there - who cares? The last few months I've posted only what I felt I had to. For now, that's enough until I figure out what else to do.

P.S. Just kidding Alexis.

A Moratorium On Brains or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Be Selfish

2008-11-23T21:50:00.003-05:00

First, a word of friendly warning: I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and finally after 558 pages light has dawned on my marble head. In order to better promote Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, I've decided to rewrite a portion of the novel using the real world example of Hurricane Katrina's impact on New Orleans.

A Moratorium On Brains or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Be Selfish

As the storm crept closer, they saw, at the edge of the sky to the south, in a void of space between concrete buildings, an American flag twisting in the wind. They did not know what it represented and did not care to learn. That day, Mayor Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation, that many chose to ignore.

It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the citizens of New Orleans were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.

The man on South Rendon was a bus driver who believed that the storm would not be so bad, that his home was strong enough to withstand the wind, that he had "seen worse" and no storm could be as terrible as Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

The woman on Rhodes was an elderly school teacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into pathetic beggars, by teaching them that the circumstances of their lives are no fault of their own, that slavery and the machinery of the state have denied them their rights, and that they are owed anything they can take from it.

The man on Dumaine was addicted to drugs and never considered whether the city would maintain a levee system that would protect its residents, or whether it would evacuate those who did not have the means to leave, but instead worried only about how he was going to find enough drugs to keep him doped for the next couple of days.

The woman on Filmore Avenue was a mother who had put her two children to sleep, carefully tucking them in; a mother whose inept and inexperienced husband held a government job that maintained a state supporting only those who could support themselves, which she defended by saying, "I don't care, it's our taxes that are being spent. After all, I must think of my children."

The man on Vermillion was a small business owner who stayed to protect his property. He believed that men are evil by nature, that their basic interests if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and to murder one another - and, therefore force was the only means of keeping men within the bounds of order and justice.

The woman on Touro was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.

The man on Dauphine was a writer who had said with a laugh, "All politicians are corrupt. At least here, we know it."

Among these citizens there was not a man remaining who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the levees broke, the water was the last thing they saw on earth.

Curley's Shadow

2008-11-23T21:36:00.002-05:00

Dan Kennedy has an article in The Guardian about the long shadow Curley has cast on Massachusetts politicians. It's less about Curley and more about the current state of things in the Commonwealth, but I figured it's worth noting given my last post.

Certainly, some of our problems result from our long indulgence of one-party rule. The reason I've omitted the fact (up until now) that every pol I've mentioned is a Democrat is not because of liberal bias on my part. It's because there are no Republicans in Massachusetts.

But it's in our political DNA, too. We have long lived with the myth that although James Michael Curley was corrupt, he also had a heart of gold and ultimately did more good than harm. In reality, as Jack Beatty makes clear in his biography of Curley, The Rascal King, Curley did little other than line his own pockets.

Unfortunately, the spirit of Curley lives on. All we can do is laugh.

Read it in full.

Curley As Visionary

2008-11-16T09:53:00.004-05:00

James Michael Curley (more info from The Herald) was many things (and this includes "crook"). Unfortunately for his legacy visionary is not usually remembered as one of them. I'm reading The Rascal King by Jack Beatty right now and learning some of the reasons why he isn't (Yankee racism) as well as some of the reasons he should be (Curley was calling for a New Deal as mayor in the '20's). While he was infrequently a profile in courage (his early endorsement of FDR an exception), he had many great ideas for the city of Boston. It was because of this political cowardice (not to mention calculation) that many of his visions went unrealized. Boston Magazine has a good article on one of them, which because it's short, I include in full:

James Michael Curley spent six decades in Massachusetts' public eye, including four terms in Congress, four as mayor of Boston, and one as governor. In that time, he became known for a lot of things—including going to jail twice—but never for serving as a "master builder." He should have been, say local historians C. J. Doyle and Larry Overlan, who are writing a book on Curley. They argue that the politician, who died 50 years ago this month, had more influence in shaping Boston's public transportation system than anyone in the city's history. But when he left office in January 1950, other pols and transit planners ignored his vision and pushed for endless expansion into the suburbs. With gas prices and commuter fatigue on the rise, Curley is now more relevant than ever. Here, Doyle and Overlan describe his failed plans that the city would do well to resurrect today.

MORE SUBWAY, LESS TROLLEY

Today, Huntington Avenue's E Line west of Northeastern is a streetcar route, but if Curley had gotten his way, the line would have stayed underground to South Huntington Avenue (or even beyond), making for a faster commute and preventing countless car-on-trolley accidents. Curley also would have put the B Line, which slogs its way through Commonwealth Avenue traffic, below ground either to the BU Bridge or out to Packard's Corner in Allston, thus saving BU students—and the people forced to share trolley space with them—untold travel hours.

ELBOW ROOM ON THE GREEN LINE

In 1933, Mayor Curley wanted to put light rail under Stuart Street, from Huntington to Tremont. And in 1948, he pushed unsuccessfully for a second tunnel between Park Street and Government Center. This would have doubled the Green Line's capacity, giving it four tracks from North Station to Copley Square. The most contentious issues involving the Green Line today (from the fate of the former A Line to Watertown to the MBTA's decision to give the South End the Silver Line) have revolved around this very question of subway capacity.

A REAL SOUTH END LINE

Everyone knows the Silver Line is a joke, which is what makes Governor Curley's 1935 proposal so intriguing: He wanted the Orange Line to go underground from Sullivan Square in Charlestown to Dudley Street in Roxbury. Curley's plan called for a subway under either Washington Street or nearby Shawmut Avenue—a move that would have spared South Enders from ever having to complain about getting stuck with those Silver Line buses all the way to Dudley Square.

The Cradle of Innovation

2008-10-07T06:48:00.003-04:00

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, was the first to understand that we live in a knowledge economy. Drucker might have seen Boston today as the equivalent of a factory of the future, where smart people use their minds, fueled by investors who match ideas with market needs, producing green, clean, and sustainable products for the world.

Drucker also said that "the best way to predict the future is to create it."

The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship is being officially launched today at MIT to help curb poverty across the world. Today's Globe has a great editorial marking that launch, and I think it will be of interest to you. It's positive and optimistic, so of course it was written by a Bostonian living in California. Here's a little:

There's an old saying that the three favorite pastimes in Boston are sports, politics, and revenge - and not necessarily in that order. And with mob trials, successful sports teams, and the flood of political commentary flowing out of Boston, perhaps there is a comparative advantage from being so competitive, passionate, and personal.

...The real business of the city is ideas.

Think of all its firsts. The first public school. The first college. The first bank. The first public library. The first telephone. The first use of ether. The first subway. The first mutual fund and the first venture capital fund. The first safety razor and the first instant camera. Firsts that transformed the world.

In trying to explain this to a neighbor in California, I said simply, "there must be something in the soil back in Boston."

...perhaps the long, barren winters are the mothers of invention. How could the Pilgrims possibly create their "city on a hill" and become a beacon to all mankind if they didn't quickly apply some Yankee ingenuity to what otherwise was a pretty bleak place, largely devoid of natural resources? Maybe the notion of stewardship and common wealth helped Bostonians to think they needed, more than others, to look out for each other, or that the only way to leave things better for the next generation would be to invent something of enduring value.

Read the rest here.

Palin's Reading List

2008-09-17T03:05:00.003-04:00

RFK Jr. has a short item in The Huffington Post:

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."

It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.

When The Levee Breaks

2008-09-01T19:11:00.003-04:00

While everyone is hoping Gustav doesn't do too much damage,Wired has a great article on the history of the song "When The Levee Breaks."

...because, like almost every Led Zeppelin tune ever created, "When the Levee Breaks" builds upon a former song. In this particular case, the Delta blues classic of the same name created by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie.

Zeppelin's tune is by no means derivative, however. For one, it amped up the proceedings considerably, and was filtered through technology within an inch of its life.

"You've got backwards harmonica, backwards echo, phasing, and there's also flanging," Jimmy Page told Uncut Magazine in 2008, "and at the end you get this super-dense sound, in layers, that's all built around the drum track. And you've got Robert, constant in the middle, and everything starts to spiral around him. It's all done with panning."

The coolest part was hearing the original for the first time. Portions of two newer recordings (including Zeppelin's) are also posted, but those clips are too short. Read it in full here.

Sigh

2008-08-23T17:06:00.005-04:00

"What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history," said Tim Doody, the president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, a consolidated regional levee board created after Katrina to improve levee protection.

"What happened after Betsy? Katrina," Doody said. "And what's going to happen after Katrina? Pick a name and put it on it and it's going to happen again unless we pull together to make sure."

Just in time for hurricane season, things are depressingly as ridiculous as ever in New Orleans. It's hard to stay abreast of what's going on from faraway as the media has pushed the rebuilding of the city further and further from the public consciousness. Sometimes actually following the city's progress is even harder.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.

"People forget, but they cannot afford to forget," said Windell Curole, a Louisiana hurricane and levee expert. "If you believe you can't flood, that's when you increase the risk of flooding. In New Orleans, I don't think they talk about the risk."

..."All the human instincts post-Katrina are the same (as) post-Betsy," said Oliver Houck, a natural resources law professor at Tulane University and longtime New Orleans resident who participated in many of the fights since Betsy.

All of the city's anger at FEMA doesn't seem to have plagued the Army Corps of Engineers. Worse, people actually trust these people who are as arrogant as ever.

At every step in the scramble to correct the engineering breakdowns of Katrina, independent experts have questioned the ability of the corps, an agency that has accumulated ever more power over the fate of New Orleans, to do the right job.

On the road to recovery, the agency has installed faulty drainage pumps, used outdated measurements, issued incorrect data, unearthed critical flaws, made conflicting statements about flood risk and flunked reviews by The National Research Council.

I may write a lengthy Katrina post some day, but for now I still feel too aggravated and powerless whenever I think about what has happened (and continues to happen). It's certainly easier not to think about it. Unfortunately, the people who can least afford this ignorance seem to be similarly infected by it.

Click here for the exhausting, frustrating details.

Down But Not Out In Suffolk Downs And Wonderland

2008-08-09T11:59:00.004-04:00

My beloved Suffering Downs and the subsidized money sink Wonderland are working out a deal.

By joining forces, the tracks would gain significant economic benefits they lack as separate entities. Wonderland would gain the greater financial strength of its East Boston counterpart, while Suffolk would gain access to potentially lucrative development opportunities in Revere.

Dog Racing has to end. It's a dead business. There are probably more employees at Wonderland than patrons. There are at least 4 days a year that the sporting world takes notice of horse racing gambling or not. Why pay to care, train and race dogs when people who want to gamble can easily watch a video version of the same thing or play keno? I know at least a few people who enjoy the sport of kings. Fortunately, businessmen are considering putting this model to sleep:

Still unclear, even to the parties involved, is whether Wonderland, which is financially struggling, would remain open or be shuttered if a deal is struck. One person familiar with the discussions said Wonderland might remain open in the short term until a decision is made by state officials about granting slot machine licenses to race tracks. If that bid fails, the property could well be converted into a commercial or residential development, that person said.

Orwell's Journals

2008-08-09T11:54:00.002-04:00

This looks cool, or interesting rather. The unread entries of George Orwell's journals are being published/posted online. Here's a snippet from May 18, 1942 that I can admit to being guilty of:

It is clear from what American papers one gets hold of that anti-British feeling is in full cry and that all the Isolationists, after a momentary retirement, have re-emerged with the same slogans as before. . . . What always horrifies me about American anti-British sentiment is its appalling ignorance. Ditto presumably with anti-American feeling in England.

Iron Fists

2008-08-07T19:20:00.003-04:00

For those of you that like art and design - a cool review about a new book.

How did a practice as vile as branding become so valued, indeed, the very mark of value? Officials in the past have branded slaves and criminals... Steven Heller’s “Iron Fists” makes a sophisticated and visually arresting comparison between modern corporate-branding strategies — slogans, mascots, jingles and the rest — and those adopted by “four of the most destructive 20th-century totalitarian regimes”: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, and Mao’s China. As he pursues his four “case studies,” Heller, by means of unsettling images and shrewd analysis, amply restores the vileness to branding.

Raising Fares at the T (again)

2008-08-06T17:49:00.003-04:00

The T has been saying for a week now that they are going to have to raise fares again in a couple years. The fares are already expensive enough (especially if you are buying monthly passes), and the service is not good. Today we have some analysis from The Globe:

Current fares don't even come close to keeping the T alive, let alone funding improvements and extra services.

So, instead of a world class system, we are left with the prospect of one with major problems - crowding, crumbling infrastructure, and too much debt to fix inevitable problems.

...A hefty fare hike would make our public transportation system one of the most expensive in the country, but it would make little difference to the agency's bottom line.

The MBTA needs a major bailout. Only the state hasn't got the money to do it.

This has been pretty obvious for a while now. My guess is that the T knows it needs that bailout and is playing this in the press because frothing riders are the only defense from angry taxpayers and scared politicians.

P.S. The article makes a mistake that is continually being made by the press - claiming increased ridership will take cars off the road. Whenever you take cars off the road, the road becomes more attractive, and other people flock to fill those empty lanes. The key to increasing ridership is that you can more easily increase commuters by public transportation than you can by car. Also, idle riders pollute less than idle cars.

Speaking of Green...

2008-08-05T23:50:00.003-04:00

Cool article from Wired recapping the Absinthe legalization. Relevant quotes:

To date, there are four brands on US shelves: Lucid (Breaux's formula), Kuebler, Green Moon, and St. George Absinthe Verte. "The US is lucky in that its first absinthes are high-quality products, distilled from whole herbs," Breaux says. "In the European market, 80 to 90 percent is industrial junk."

More info here.

It's Easy Being Green

2008-08-03T17:47:00.004-04:00

Lately, at least. From today's Globe:

Tally up the crush of bills passed during the Legislature's 19-month formal session and it's hard to find a politician or interest group with bigger bragging rights than environmentalists...

Activists hope the successes not only burnish the state's reputation as a green leader, but pay long-term dividends, from preserving open spaces to reversing the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

For a list of everything, check the rest of the article out.

The Greening Of Southie

2008-08-03T16:51:00.002-04:00

I just watched a great documentary called The Greening of Southie. It does a good job of showing all the work that goes into building "green." This is a new process and there are a ton of kinks to work out of the process. A film like this is a good primer for people that are thinking about greening a remodeling job on their house as well as people that are involved in planning and construction projects.

Striking Image of Shrinking Rain Forest

2008-06-09T21:17:00.003-04:00

Via National Geographic.

Complaint Dept. Redux

2008-06-07T10:32:00.002-04:00

You've got to be kidding me. Everyone is catching their breath between fare increases and the transportation agency that is more in the red than any other is unhappy with a customer that is giving them thousands to advertise. From The Globe:

A lot of riders on the Green Line seem to think they're a hoot. So does Roger Berkowitz, the chief executive of Legal Sea Foods, who shelled out $150,000 for the ad campaign featuring the "fresh" fish.

But the MBTA is not laughing. Neither are the hundreds of employees who work on the Green line. This week, after the trolley conductors union complained to T management, the agency's top brass ordered the immediate removal of the "this conductor" ads, deeming them in poor taste.

..."To say they are angered and offended is to put it lightly," [Stephan] MacDougall said. "I will tell you this: If they don't come down, we will not drive those trains."

This is such a joke, and it says something about the trolley conductors (if you can find one that looks like Brad Pitt, ask him if he's offended). Because my grandfather was once a D branch operator, I'll conduct some informal polling myself. One more thing:

[chief executive of Legal Sea Foods Roger] Berkowitz said he was surprised by the decision because Legal Sea Foods did not hear any complaints after it sponsored a virtually identical ad campaign earlier this year on the tops of Boston taxicabs. Those ads showed a fish declaring, "this driver has a face like a halibut."

Coups de grâce?

Complaint Dept.

2008-06-06T07:31:00.000-04:00

So true.

Hurricane Katrina - The Comic Book

2008-05-29T17:58:00.005-04:00

Check out this awesome comic covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Lebron's 8-42, 17 turnover start

2008-05-09T18:32:00.004-04:00

There's been a lot of talk concerning Lebron James' performance over the first two games and whether it's James beating himself or the suffocation of the Celtic defense. There are better places to talk about this, so I'll keep it brief. It's neither. The infamous leprechaun has officially moved into the new building and is blocking Lebron's shots and poking the ball out of his hands to alert Celtics players.

Here's a few good thoughts from Cleveland prior to Game 2:

Forget the Big Three of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. There's really only one guy capable of sending the fans at TD Banknorth Gardon into a frenzy.

Gino.

...In writing about the Gino phenomenon, Boston Globe film critic Wesley Morris said, "He looks like he cut Mr. Kotter's class to boogie at Dick Clark's."

The Red Sox have "Sweet Caroline." The Celtics have Gino. It has taken the place of Red Auerbach's victory cigar. It's what makes this place unique in this world of NBA corporate copycats, where every game has the same dancers, fan patrol, skits, halftime entertainment and scoreboard videos.

(You thought that Al Pacino "inches" speech from Any Given Sunday was used only by the Cavs, didn't you? Wrong. They use it here, too.)

...On the way to the Celtics practice facility in Waltham, well-intentioned fans have placed several signs. One reads, "Celtic Pride." Another reads, "17," which would be the number of NBA titles the team has if it won this year. There's one that reads, "6," which was Bill Russell's number.

"I've seen it," Garnett told the Boston Globe. "It's Celtics tradition. That's what it is."

...Just a thought, but why didn't Auerbach and the Celtics ever create and patent or copyright a souvenir victory cigar? Even a chocolate one. They'd sell a million of'em. I'm not advocating smoking. Just shopping ... and souvenir hunting.

That cigar idea has got to have legs.

How will this affect the election?

2008-04-28T23:19:00.005-04:00

People are idiots. Who gives a shit about Hannah Montana? I actually wasted time googling the correct spelling of her name because every time a young white girl gets into some sort of mess (serious or not), it's a national security issue. Why get up in arms now? Isn't it a bigger deal that she's being exploited by her talentless father in order to stay in the limelight? I ask again, who gives a shit about Hannah Montana? 'The Children!!!' Seriously, ten year old girls don't usually read Vanity Fair, but they all have seen that photo now on every TV channel including (gasp!) the local news. End of story.

Oh, by the way, we're a country at war.

P.S. I realize the irony in writing this post. Thank you.

Yes

2008-04-24T23:02:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty thrilled about this.

Update: How about adding a little anxiety for the fanboys?

I may be moving to Alabama

2008-04-21T11:26:00.002-04:00

Charles Barkley is about to make the plunge into politics.

"I don't create controversies," he has said. "They're there long before I open my mouth. I just bring them to your attention."

..."Poor people cannot rely on government to come to help you in times of need," he once said. "You have to get your education. Then nobody can control your destiny."

Somethings to make you feel better...

2008-04-16T19:21:00.003-04:00

Two fun links to brighten spirits. One for pessimists and one
for... OK, they're both for pessimists. Hindsight is 20/20.

P.S. This might work for an August birthday.

More time to check it twice

2008-04-02T23:55:00.003-04:00

From The Globe:

With little-noticed procedural and policy moves over several years, Bush administration officials have made it substantially more difficult to designate domestic animals and plants for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Controversies have occasionally flared over Interior Department officials who repeatedly overruled rank-and-file agency scientists' recommendations to list new species, but internal documents also suggest that pervasive bureaucratic obstacles were erected to limit the number of species protected under one of the nation's best-known environmental laws.

So much for limited government.

If you're keeping score, G. H. Bush averaged 58 listings per year and Clinton averaged 62. In almost 8 years, the current Bush has listed 59. Total.

Because it's Easter (or was)

2008-03-23T23:59:00.002-04:00

The Holy See announced 7 new deadly sins a while back. Sorry if you've already read about them. At least have fun with the headline.

Comics!!!

2008-03-23T23:30:00.004-04:00

...overriding a kid's judgment is part of a parent's job, up to a point. Otherwise, we'd all have grown up on a diet of candy and pizza.

Salon has an interesting book review on The Ten Sent Plague by David Hajdu and the role of comics in the culture wars.

The press fanned the frenzy by running headlines like "Depravity for Children -- 10 Cents a Copy!," which was published above the logotype of the Harford Courant, according to Hajdu, "a step unprecedented in the Courant's 190-year history." The comic book problem was apparently bigger news than Pearl Harbor.

...The lineaments of this story are fairly familiar, despite Hajdu's insistence in the introduction to The Ten-Cent Plague that it has become "a largely forgotten chapter in the history of the culture wars." A fresher observation is that comics, not rock 'n' roll, were an intimation of the "postwar sensibility" to come, an outlook that was "a raucous and cynical one, inured to violence and absorbed with sex, skeptical of authority, and frozen in childhood." Mad magazine, full of bratty parodies of the products of mainstream culture, has often been cited as the first inkling of that sensibility, and Mad was decidedly born out of the comic book scare.

...As a story of intergenerational paranoia and censorious media-fueled panic, the comic book scare was a signal moment in postwar American history, the grammar school version of the McCarthy hearings.

The article shrewdly points out that this story isn't black and white. Time has given us not only the perspective to see how wrong the establishment was, but also how much it was right.

Some of the era's comic books were a kind of art, but others were produced with the attitude best epitomized by Morse, who once said, "No one complained, so we gave the people what they wanted until they started complaining about it."

...The clash between the comic book publishers and the anti-comics campaigners was a folie à deux, with neither side showing much willingness to consider the larger consequences of its actions. Comics were an easy target for morals crusaders because their constituency -- children and teenagers -- couldn't stand up for themselves and their rights. On the other hand, some comics publishers really had abused the naive faith of American parents who assumed that their fellow citizens wouldn't seek profits by introducing their kids to dismemberment and cannibalism behind their backs. If the greater wrong lies with the censors, both sides sought advantage in the fact that nobody took children's culture seriously.

...The problem, as the counterculture would eventually demonstrate, is that while authority isn't always right, it isn't always wrong, either. Knee-jerk rebellion can be as stupid as knee-jerk obedience. Just think how differently the sorry tale of the great comic book scare would have turned out if everyone involved had been a little more grown-up.

While the culture wars still rage with strikingly similar slogans, we at least have a history of precedents and a paper trail to make any debate more informed if not more intelligent. All we need to do is follow it.

Hockey in Ireland

2008-03-09T11:50:00.002-04:00

An early St. Patrick's Day post. The Bruins are sending donated youth hockey equipment to Ireland in order to promote the game there. I think this is a good idea as far as ice hockey and the NHL is concerned, but I can't help but think they could do more here in the city of Boston (not to mention those apathetic Southern markets) to increase interest in the sport.

Wolf!

2008-03-09T11:38:00.003-04:00

I've been meaning to post this for a while. They found a wolf in Massachusetts a few days ago. I actually think this is pretty cool. More here. Something I thought was interesting:

New England's large stretches of interconnected woods, mountainous regions, and rural farmland offer good north-south corridors for wolves on the move.

What no one has mentioned so far is that wolves are not solitary, so this was either one of a pack or, more likely, a wolf expanding its range looking to start a pack of its own. Either way, it means we could see more in the future.

More from the future

2008-03-05T22:12:00.004-05:00

How long does DVD have left with Blu-Ray knocking on the door? The better question is whether Blu-Ray will have much of a shot at all when the public would rather spend less on a physical disk and just get the movie on demand (which is also a greener option). Via Wired:

The lessons from the music fiasco are clear: Trying to limit the inherent advantages of digital files is a losing strategy. The way to stop piracy is to make everything available — easily, legally, and at a fair price. But it's a lot of work to secure Internet rights to old films and TV series from writers, directors, composers, and the like, and the studios show little inclination to monkey around with their lucrative sales to premium channels like HBO — deals that don't affect DVD sales but are written in a way that can keep electronic distribution rights locked up for years. "There would be a lot fewer Mercedes pulling up to the Palm every day without those pay-TV deals," one exec quips. Right — but how many music moguls have you seen pulling up to the Palm lately?
Entertainment executives tend to find what they expect to find. If they fear theft, they'll see piracy; if they're looking for opportunity, they'll discover ways to profit. The music labels ignored the opportunity for so long that it has all but evaporated. The television and film industries still have a shot, but they need to move fast.

I doubt that the innovation required or at least made inevitable by current and coming technology will be spurred by the studios. They have the most to lose. If they notice the foolishness of the music industry and learn from those mistakes, they have a shot at a piece of the pie, but in the age of DIY, distribution may be the studios' last refuge. What I wonder most is what this will do to the blockbusters and epics. Films that cost so much to produce will have a lot harder time coming up with enough money from investors than they have in Hollywood.

Think about the future

2008-02-20T18:33:00.004-05:00

New Blue Line cars are almost here. Finally. I'm not a fan of the automated announcements 'though. What are the odds that within a couple months I'll be posting stories about what went wrong with them?

Kit Carson

2008-02-18T22:15:00.003-05:00

WGBH has an interesting show airing tonight (hopefully more than once considering it's ending as I post this).

Here's a review:

...Kit Carson the man was lost well over a century ago in the jaws of our hero machine, so it is fascinating to see him properly placed in the broad flow of American history, where he looms large. "Kit Carson," which airs tonight on Channel 2 on "American Experience," does this job well, although what is good at 90 minutes would have been great at 60.

Carson was nothing less than the agent for change that opened the American West to whites. He was the incarnation of Manifest Destiny, an idea with which he had no truck. (Manifest Destiny was the expansionist belief that the United States should span the continent.) He simply did the jobs asked of him. There were many, from scout to Indian agent to leader of an army campaign against the Navajo.

...Ironically, his feats led to the creation of a West he would abhor: a place lurching toward congestion and railroad barons. He opened a door that could never be closed. He epitomized the mountain man, a true romantic figure, whose time was passing, allowing others to feast on his identity.

But Kit Carson died reviled by the Navajo who had suffered grievously because of him, among many tribes. In 1863, Colonel Carson was ordered to put down a number of tribes, starting with the Navajo, to shoot every man and force women and children on a brutal march far away from their lands to a distant reservation.

Carson refused to kill the men, but he did burn all of the Navajo food production and eventually starved them out of Arizona's Canyon de Chelly, where they had retreated. He promised protection for what became known as "The Long Walk" to the reservation, but never came through. Hundreds died and far more simply disappeared.

...his accomplishments were forever stained by his remorseless treatment of the Navajo. He was, like so many other figures in the American West, a round peg that never fit in a square hole.

Short and sweet

2008-02-17T16:21:00.002-05:00

One last post for today (three's a charm). I promise.

The Globe has a funny (well not exactly ha, ha funny) article about Upton Sinclair using controversy to fuel book sales when his Oil! was banned in Boston. A pretty ingenious idea in my opinion.

P.S. On the topic of movies, HD-DVD's death has come sooner than I thought. Hopefully anyone that's bought an HD-DVD player for Xmas still has the receipt.

Happy long weekend

2008-02-17T16:08:00.004-05:00

Here's something to look forward to this President's Day.

A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of President John F. Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed, including a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin (sic) Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby, the Dallas Morning News said on Sunday.

...But one potentially controversial item is a transcript of an exchange between Oswald and Ruby in which they discuss killing Kennedy to halt the mafia-busting agenda of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

The Morning News said one theory about the transcript was that it was part of a movie script Wade was working on with producers, for a film that was never made.

Ha.

Ocean pollution

2008-02-17T16:05:00.002-05:00

For those of us so close to the sea, this is probably noteworthy.

"The ocean is so big, I figured there would be a lot of areas that we hadn't gotten to or that people rarely get to," Halpern said.

"But when you look at the map, there are huge areas that are being impacted by multiple human activities," he said. "It was certainly a surprise to me."

The project revealed that more than 40 percent of the world's marine ecosystems are heavily affected.

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-13T19:01:00.002-05:00

Story.

What is the world coming to?

2008-02-13T19:00:00.000-05:00

Another strip club has had a shooting.

Lando busted

2008-02-10T23:08:00.000-05:00

Landcalrissian that is. No joke. At least the Falcon is OK.

More good news

2008-02-07T01:04:00.000-05:00

The MBTA is telling the media it's flat broke.

HPV sucks more than you think

2008-02-07T00:32:00.000-05:00

The sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer in women is poised to become one of the leading causes of oral cancer in men, according to a new study.

More here.

Speaking of green waves...

2008-02-03T10:18:00.000-05:00

Bush's Environmental Protection Agency moved to block a $220 million Army Corps of Engineers flood-control project in the Mississippi Delta, laying the groundwork for the first EPA veto of an Army Corps project since 1990. And the project is arguably the most ecologically destructive Army Corps boondoggle on the books today, which is saying something. It would build the world's largest hydraulic pump to protect a sparsely populated area dominated by soybean fields from Yazoo River flooding, and it would drain or degrade enough wetlands to cover all five boroughs of New York City. Authorized by Congress 67 years ago, the so-called Yazoo Pump is a relic of an era when wetlands were considered wastelands.

This article from time (full version here) states that this is less out of concern for the environment and more out of thriftiness.

But as (the number two EPA official Marcus) Peacock knows all too well, a slew of independent investigations have exposed Corps analyses as shams designed to justify big projects that keep the agency's employees busy and its congressional patrons happy.

I personally had to interview someone that worked for the Army Corps in pre-Katrina New Orleans for a class I took. His main point to everything we talked about was that everything the Corps did was mitigated, and if mistakes were made (in construction or in completing projects that proved harmful), they would just fix those mistakes later. When I read the reports on Hurricane Katrina and the underlying problems that made it such a tragedy, I thought back to this smug interview. What's worse is that he's right. The Army Corps has made mistakes all over the country, but what ever happens? They are the ones assigned to clean up the mess and restore order. Where's the accountability? These guys have balls:

The Corps claimed in its analysis that the pump will ultimately benefit the environment, because the agency will mitigate the damage after it's built.

Balls I said! Let me tell you something after you've caught your breath. Scientists have done studies comparing the ecological health of restored ecosystems (like those Army Corps mitigations) with untouched ones. The man-made ecosystems' performance couldn't hold a candle to the originals. Oh, by the way:

The investigations have also documented how the Corps rarely follows up on its mitigation promises.

The article ends with a good (if not overly optimistic) summary:

The Corps was wasting money and destroying wetlands with mockeries like the Yazoo pump when it should have been building decent levees and restoring the wetlands that used to protect New Orleans. Killing the pump won't reform the dysfunctional Corps, and it won't prevent the next catastrophe. But it's a start.

Green wave keeps rolling...

2008-02-02T23:29:00.000-05:00

A couple of cool things to check out from Boston's Going Green expo - Beer and diapers.

Small and shy not big and bad

2008-02-02T09:57:00.000-05:00

The Boston Bruins are in the playoffs if the season ends today. They are seventh in the conference and have more points (in fewer games) than the third seed Hurricanes née Whalers. There is little interest though. The Jacobs family has brought malaise to the bruins, and they have infected one of the two parts of the country that actually has a history of playing the sport with a similar malady.

Kevin Paul Dupont, the Globe’s outstanding hockey writer, recently revealed how truly grim things have gotten on Causeway Street after two consecutive last-place finishes: According to his mole, the Bruins’ season ticket base has fallen to approximately 4,000 (in a building that holds 17,565 for hockey), a number so low that under NHL expansion standards, it would disqualify the city from being awarded a franchise, were it trying to start a team today.

Despite this "grim" fact, the B's are one of the most valuable organization in the 30 team league. The billionaire Buffoon
even made a profit on the team according the previous list. I guess we can console ourselves that despite owning an Original Six franchise, the Bruins are only seventh on Forbes' list.

And yet the fans here tonight still care enough to shell out to attend games. And along with their tickets, they’ve paid for the right to bitch. So when it comes time for the Q&A session, that’s what they do. One after the other, they eagerly body-check the organization the way their favorite goons might have done decades ago when their team was still the Big Bad Bruins. Nostalgia, it turns out, just might be the Bruins’ toughest opponent these days. Several fans rise to wax poetic about yesteryear. One even says he prefers to watch reruns of classic Bruins games rather than the current incarnation. Afterward, Savard will shake his head in amazement and say, “That was kind of intense, eh? I looked at their faces and thought, Jesus, we might need some people to hold them back.” In the moment, though, everyone on stage remains calm and poised. Well, just about everyone.

Charlie Jacobs seems uncomfortable. His arms stay folded as he listens to the criticism, and because he’s a skinny guy, he looks almost invisible at times. For much of the evening he says little, choosing to let Chiarelli field many of the questions. When he does address the assembly, his style is awkward. He’s polite, but he doesn’t open his mouth much when he talks. He looks wooden as the words escape from a thin slit between his teeth, as though he’s doing the dummy part of a ventriloquist act. Still, Jacobs acquits himself nicely for most of the session by merely sitting there. Why further antagonize faithful customers? When your job is to defend the indefensible, to appease the few supporters you have left, the best strategy is to simply absorb the blows.

It gets worse. A fan asks about the Jacobses' commitment to winning and points out that it hurts that this storied franchise should be confined to also-ran status with (I'll be politically correct) the non-traditional Nashvilles and Columbuses of the league.

...Jacobs tries to play the tough guy. “You’re damn right it’s hard to swallow,” he says. But the words sound meek and forced, Woody Allen reading lines written for Nicholson or De Niro.

The Boston Bruins show how important good ownership is. John Gonzalez's piece (long version here) illuminates how bad (hockey) things are being run on Causeway street. His main argument seems to be that 'the face of the franchise' is absolutely hideous, and like Boston's troubles on the ice, it starts at the top, with Jeremy.

...when Jacobs looked in the mirror he saw, by default, the face of the franchise: a man who didn’t live in town and who lacked the energy and passion displayed by the new breed of owners, palm-pressers like Robert Kraft and John Henry here in New England or, in the most extreme case, Mark Cuban down in Dallas. Jacobs wasn’t the sort of man to move to Boston and marshal a parade down Boylston Street.

Now we see why Charlie is here.

I don’t want you to write a story that says, ‘Here’s Charlie Jacobs and here’s Jeremy Jacobs, the villain’—as he’s been painted so many times.” As he trails off, Charlie Jacobs’s true motive with the Bruins reveals itself. His goal has less to do with making the Bruins champions—that’s Chiarelli’s task—and more to do with protecting his father.

The hiring of Cam Neely is a great move. If they're really smart, however, they will make him the face of the franchise that this article says is so vacant under Jacobs (pick either one). The end, however, puts a damper on that theory when Charlie says that he would be reluctant to give it to a guy (who "absolutely" wants that title) when he has no NHL front office experience. Maybe it's jealousy.

Every time Neely speaks, the fans practically clap their hands raw. “Must be nice to be Cam Neely,” (Charlie) Jacobs will tell me later. “Everywhere you go, people give you a standing ovation.”

That standing ovation is why I hope (despite the urge to stick it to the slum lords who own the team) the Bruins make the playoffs and do well. There is still a pulse if faint, and I don't want the culture of hockey that is part of the culture of Boston to disappear. It's hard to be optimistic 'though.

As the conversation—which will turn out to be our final sit-down—continues, Charlie Jacobs grows increasingly anxious. He asks if I’m sympathetic. I tell him that I don’t think he or his father can win in this town, that the public perception is cemented, that I wouldn’t want to be him. That just makes him more nervous. “Here you go out and paint a story that says, ‘Jacobs can’t win in this city,’” he says. “Isn’t that perpetuating?”

It might be, but the problem with the Bruins used to be their main asset - the heart. What's the heart of the problem?

...Jacobs may own the Bruins, but at heart he’s a Buffalo guy. That’s where he lives, and where Delaware North, the umbrella company that houses all the smaller concerns that make up the Jacobs empire, is headquartered.

The latest global warming plan

2008-01-22T22:39:00.000-05:00

Massachusetts officials are piecing together the state's first detailed blueprint to ensure those reductions actually happen. The Climate Roadmap will break down, for example, the greenhouse gas savings if appliances sold in the state have to meet certain energy-efficiency standards or if people had to pay more for driving during rush hour. Then, it will identify the least expensive way to get the most reductions.

Here's the rest.

Mr. Lee...

2008-01-21T18:04:00.000-05:00

I really shouldn't need to defend the legacy of the world's greatest sports franchise, but people still cling to certain false stereotypes. We all know how horrible racism was (and still is) in Boston. Is it because we were we so much worse than other cities that we can't shake that part of our reputation? From a story in The Globe about Earl Loyd:

Lloyd said fans in St. Louis, Baltimore, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Indianapolis were particularly hard on him. He was spit on, asked by fans to see his tail, and told to go back to Africa.

P.S. We also demolished New York today.

Stuff to make you mad

2008-01-17T23:31:00.000-05:00

I got something to say. Well, a lot of somethings.

By now, this probably isn't shocking - George W. Bush is not a fan of Polar Bears. For someone so religious, he certainly puts further enriching the rich over protecting God's creations. Then again, I guess God could just fix everything in a week.

During its seven-year reign, the Bush administration hasn't been eager to protect a single threatened or endangered species. More than 615 days have passed since the Fish and Wildlife Service has protected any new critter, a record of unconcern since the inception of the Endangered Species Act in 1973. In fact, the Bush administration has not voluntarily listed a single species, making it the very first administration since the act passed not to do so.

The South has truly risen again - and to the detriment of Northern animal species. Global Warming's recent assaults on New Orleans and Atlanta must be unintended consequences. In case you want more proof - a little context:

Even Bush's father, the first President Bush, managed to list 231 species in four years, while the current administration has made its 58 listings under duress. That's hardly because the nation's critters are faring better now than they were back in the '90s. They continue to face the growing pressure of global warming, habitat loss and competition from invasive species.

W. has occupied the highest federal office for seven years. The EPA has become as bad as the CIA, but without the memory holes:

Goss lamented the fact that the public will probably never know the particulars of such historic events as the Cold War, the civil-rights movement, or the growth of the international drug trade.

"I'm sure the CIA played major roles in all these things," Goss said. "But now we'll never know for sure."

Things aren't better around here either. I always assumed I'd see the day when Boston would loosen up about last call being so early. Now, Lynn and Revere are actually talking about rolling back last call to 1 A.M. This sucks. Revere police Captain Michael Murphy makes ink:

"This will result in a dramatic increase in alcohol-related calls for service between 1 and 3 a.m. . . . It is when our staffing levels are at their lowest level of the day, and often among our busiest times."

OK, does anyone know why the "busiest" time of day is staffed by the fewest amount of officers? However, I can see the other side of the argument. How can you not feel sympathy for the cops who deal with the drunkest, trashiest scum every night at these places? I guess I should be more angry at the Lynn city council for starting all of this. Do the geniuses who've come up with these plans actually think people will want to stop having fun when the clock strikes one?

The last bit of news involves the casino. The track is nervous about a probable NIMBY backlash.

“I believe it would fail hands down,” [Joseph] Mason [head of the East Boston Land Use Council] said. “The biggest problem East Boston faces is an invasion by outsiders.”

That couldn't be more true (and applicable to a range of things). Dan Kennedy's Media Nation has previously pointed out what most casino proponents don't like to admit (possibly even to themselves) - no one in Massachusetts want a casino near them. I won't go into my personal thoughts on the proposal, but I agree with the following:

State Sen. Anthony Petruccelli contends Suffolk must show it can make such an ambitious project work.

“There is still a heavy burden on them to show they can make it work in that location,” he said.

Suffolk Downs has treated slot machines as a silver bullet to save the track in the past. That has not been the case in other parts of the country. A casino would certainly save the owners (who've so far said all the right things about saving horse racing in Massachusetts), but having a casino in your backyard would dramatically alter the landscape. We have a right not to know what that landscape looks like, but to determine what that landscape will be.

Cape Wind finally approved?

2008-01-14T22:51:00.000-05:00

Cape Wind has gotten another one. I stopped keeping score a long time ago, but have the opponents of the wind farm found anything to convince the public that there is a valid reason to stop this yet?

Kitty Wigs

2008-01-13T12:11:00.000-05:00

More evidence that people have too much time and money. I'm not even going to attempt a joke here, but I will say that this has now eclipsed dogs in sweaters as the most humiliating thing you can do to an animal.

Twiggy's back

2008-01-12T05:58:00.000-05:00

Twiggy Ramirez is back in Marilyn Manson. Manson talks about it in a long, good (drunk sounding) interview. I guess he's also upset with Trent for breaking up the live band. Finding out about it through the press probably pisses him off too. I missed that last bit of news when it came out in September. There will be a lot more that comes out from this fallout, and I hope some of it will shed more light on the Trent Reznor - Marilyn Manson feud, which still hasn't been adequately explained. The current lineup of MM now has three documented Reznor-hating members.

P.S. One reunion isn't happening. Still. Why is this question even posed anymore?

Teeth

2008-01-07T21:03:00.000-05:00

I can't wait to see it.

Another thing that will soon be forgotten

2008-01-07T19:53:00.000-05:00

This won't be brought up much. When it does, it will probably be dismissed.

Onward by looking backward?

2008-01-06T11:42:00.000-05:00

Bush's labor board may indeed be the worst in history, and a temporary shutdown couldn't be a bad thing. But it wouldn't address the deeper problems plaguing the labor movement, which date back at least to 1947, when the Taft-Hartley Act greatly curtailed workers' ability to strike and otherwise pressure employers to recognize unions. Since then, Democratic labor board majorities have had little positive effect on organizing. Private-sector union membership dropped steadily and by more than half between 1977 and 2000, while the two parties spent equal time in the White House. The Reagan years were particularly dismal, but labor didn't exactly thrive under the Carter and Clinton boards. Today less than 8 percent of private-sector workers belong to a union.

That's from an article in The Nation. I won't spend a lot of time on this because no one cares about unions (and of those that do, few probably care what I have to say about them). This is my point. The Labor Movement is comatose and has been for a long time. It's a sad reality, but it's true. I can't help but feel that as bad as things have been for the unions, they keep holding themselves back. They are losing a PR game that I grant is largely run by anti-union forces, but they have an army in the streets (at least potentially). I think that in order for any substantial resurrection of The Labor Movement to occur, the unions needs to re-frame how the public views them. It's ironic, but most people feel closer to the employers and corporations (maybe thanks to warm and fuzzy advertising) than to the trouble-making unions. Corruption and strong-arm tactics aren't helping things either. People don't remember what it means to organize. The collective, unconscious in daily routine, has most importantly lost its faith in the Labor Movement. With their resources, the larger unions could begin to win back the public so that people actually want to organize.

'Remember when you were asking me the definition of irony...'

2008-01-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

Despite agreeing with practically everything George W. Bush has done in the last four years, Mitt Romney is now a candidate that will change Washington. At least Massachusetts is an entirely different state thanks to his 2 or 4 years in office. He's walking a fine line between flip-flopping and outright lying these days. Oh yeah, and he's stealing material from either Chris Rock or a politically correct Daniel Carver (wake up, white people!). I'm not sure which:

"...we cannot afford Barack Obama as our next president. He's a very nice fellow. He's a well-spoken fellow. But he's never done it. It's one thing to say it; it's another thing to do it."

Why does Revere even have historical societies/commissions?

2008-01-03T19:55:00.000-05:00

The Old Rumney Marsh Cemetery is falling apart and needs a lot of money. Mr. Pearlman makes a good case:

"I hate to say it, and, as a historian, it makes me angry, there just aren't enough people that are knowledgeable that we even have the Rumney Marsh Burial Grounds. It's not just one of the first, but [it's] the only one within the confines of the city of Revere. The kids and parents have no idea. Revere Beach takes up all the attention."

I guess they don't take people there for field trips anymore.

From 1624 to 1738, the village of Rumney Marsh was part of Boston. In 1690, in the midst of a smallpox breakout, Boston selectmen ordered that "all persons dying at Rumney Marsh, and parts adjacent, of small-pox" be buried in that area instead of being carried south through Boston, creating a hazard to residents there, according to research done by Henry. It wasn't until 1743 that Chelsea adopted what would become the Rumney Marsh Burial Ground. In 1871, North Chelsea, which included the burial ground, adopted the name of Revere.

P.S. Someone of important local interest lies there:

Deacon John Sale, a delegate to the Provincial Congress and a representative to the Massachusetts General Court. His farm, Beachmont, played an important role in the first naval battle of the Revolutionary War, known as the Battle of Chelsea Creek, in 1775.

Some hilarious ideas

2008-01-02T21:56:00.000-05:00

What are people thinking these days?

Something positive to end the year?

2007-12-31T19:36:00.000-05:00

The centre cannot hold, Yeats wrote; his next line is “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. Anarchism in the contemporary sense of decentralised direct democracy is on the loose, and that’s the rest of the good news. Globally, as the nation-state becomes increasingly less meaningful - a provider of positive goods and more and more just an army and some domestic enforcement - people are withdrawing to shape and support more localised forms of organisation and power. To the extent that it’s part of that civilised and localising world, the same is true of the US .

From here.

Hasta la beachmont siempre!

Good - year.night.luck.bye.

Nature nutures learning

2007-12-31T19:34:00.000-05:00

No shit.

Not tonight Phil

2007-12-31T00:37:00.000-05:00

Nothing worked for L.A. all night. See you next year.

Welcome to Hen Combat

2007-12-28T18:12:00.001-05:00

The august city

2007-12-10T23:36:00.000-05:00

Globe article I like here.

So what about us? Our collective losses have launched a thousand newspaper columns. The Bank of Boston, which once ruled Hollywood and toppled Central American governments with the flick of a finger, no longer exists. The Northeast mob, our great department stores, wonderful publishing houses - they have all disappeared or relocated, as Boston has become Branch Office City. Even the US Open squash tournament slinked out of town in the dead of night! Can you imagine!

Do you hear what I hear?

2007-12-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

Good game last night, but we may be have trouble in the future.

Here's another.

Absinthe returns

2007-12-06T23:45:00.000-05:00

The Globe wrote an article on Absinthe. Finally, someone quoted T. A. Breaux.

What if one of the "traitors" were to be elected?

2007-12-04T23:40:00.000-05:00

I think people without access to what they feel are basic necessities of life want a political system that will provide them with those necessities regardless of what that system is. It's only after they can drink clean water, afford bread and/or safely walk the streets (this is relative), that they concern themselves with the means of government. That being said, Hugo Chávez's referendum thankfully failed. Something I pulled from the article:

The urban poor, Chávez's core supporters, seemed dispirited and underwhelmed by the economic provisions, perhaps because they were experiencing shortages of flour, rice, and pasta as a result of price controls Chávez clamped on these staples in 2003.

A majority of voters decided that they didn't want another Fidel Castro, Chávez's role model. But to give Chávez his due, he allowed the opposition to make its case and let the votes be counted honestly. Castro would never tolerate this open democratic process.

What Chávez supporters need to consider is whether they would have trusted those sweeping powers to another person post-Chávez.

Echoes of Kennedy

2007-12-04T23:26:00.000-05:00

Surprise, surprise! Romney is addressing his Mormonism à la JFK. As Dan Kennedy has previously pointed out (apologies for not linking the relevant post), there is a crucial difference between the two, which has now been commented on in The Globe:

Now, 47 years later, another presidential contender from Massachusetts who is an adherent of a minority faith is heading to Texas for a campaign-defining speech about why his faith should not be an obstacle to his candidacy. The circumstances are quite different - Mitt Romney's faith, Mormonism, remains less understood than Kennedy's Catholicism was in 1960, and his campaign for the Republican nomination has been premised heavily on appealing to voters who support a greater role for religion in public policy, while Kennedy was seeking to reassure voters that he was committed to the separation of church and state.

P.S. Maybe I should have researched, because that point may have come to my attention from (Dan) Kennedy's previous employer. I'll get over it.

Siriusly gay

2007-12-03T21:51:00.000-05:00

Check out who's featured in this Gay.com article.

P.S. Uruguay has found another way to support my argument that it's the Massachusetts to Argentina's New York.

To be insured or not to be insured

2007-12-03T21:27:00.000-05:00

I'm not too sure now if I actually have health insurance anymore. Guess I'm one gambler of many.

Books on film

2007-12-02T23:15:00.000-05:00

I meant to post this a while ago and never got around to it. It's a good essay. I haven't seen Beowulf yet, so I'll probably wait for it on video. Some highlights:

Tolkien was able to use the ancient stones in "Beowulf" to build a modern masterpiece because he recognized that the enduring power of myths derives from their deeper truth. This does not mean he believed that orcs and goblins and elves really existed; rather it derives from his belief that the world was enchanted, illuminated by a sacred light, and that the human sub-creations we call myths -- "living shapes that move from mind to mind," he called them in a poem he wrote for C.S. Lewis -- were splinters of that primordial light. For Tolkien, the ultimate source of enchantment was the Christian God, but it is not necessary to share that faith to feel the power of his creation.

and...

...we have plenty of bad fairy tales and high-tech kitsch, and very few "Beowulfs." The least we can ask is that those who venture into those dim and distant realms not wear clown suits. They spoil our view of the sea.

Like I said, I thought this really interesting, but I think the author is forgetting one thing - the few are special often and arguably because of their scarcity. There is a reason Beowulf survived (besides luck). It's natural selection of the mind. I'm sure there were plenty of other stories that could have survived as long as this, but they weren't as good. They didn't have something that was adaptable or poignant enough to survive. Beowulf or any other great work will survive a poor re-interpretation. The fact that it remains a source is the mark of its importance.

More on the continuing death of a city

2007-12-02T23:10:00.000-05:00

Here:

The disappearance of places like Buddies and Chaps may sound like a problem limited to gay men, but it is part of a much larger trend reshaping American cities. As gay bars vanish, so go bookstores, diners, and all kinds of spaces that once allowed "blissful public congregation," as sociologist Ray Oldenburg described their function in his 1989 book "The Great Good Place."

In New York, the Jewish deli - a staple of the city's identity - has all but vanished. In the Boston area, many of Harvard Square's bookstores, Kenmore Square's student eateries, and myriad other places that guaranteed a diverse urban experience have closed their doors, replaced by a far more uniform lineup of bank branches, chain stores, and upscale restaurants.

This change is a serious challenge to the city, which has historically been defined by the breadth and variety of its street-level experience - and the wide diversity of people it threw together. "City air makes free," a saying that dates to medieval times, was a favorite of urban-studies pioneer Jane Jacobs. But as a wide range of gay bars dwindles to a handful of survivors - and the city's diners, indie bookstores, and dive bars yield to high rents and shifting patterns of commerce - that air is becoming the province of an increasingly narrow set of people.

Oldenburg calls public gathering spots a "third place" where we can temporarily step out of our household and workplace roles. Besides taverns, he cites drugstores (the kind with soda fountains), pool halls, and barber shops as examples. But if you were a gay man in the late 20th century, the place with all the qualities of an ideal third space was the gay bar.

Still waiting Q....

2007-11-29T22:52:00.000-05:00

Sir Charles said it at halftime - great game if you are a Celtics fan.

"Great, another ball-less Beatles cover!"

2007-11-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

Good article about I'm Not There, Across The Universe, and Beatles and Dylan covers in general. Excerpt:

Everything changed with the Beatles. The band reinvented melody and orchestration and song structure for the rock era. Miraculously, all that innovation added up to thrilling pop tunes that anyone with a beating heart fell for, and keeps falling for. But Beatles songs are stamped, forever, by the band's mythic sweep... even the most expert Beatles covers tend to sound like glorified karaoke.

I'm a huge Beatles fan, and I pretty much hate most all Beatles covers - not because I'm opposed to a reinterpretation, but because they are always so bad. They should be called Beatless. The Beatles were a rock band first. Musicians who cover their songs don't seem to get this. When you cover a song by men old enough to be your grandfather, and they are heavier than you, there's a problem. This is always the case 'though. Maroon 5 covered "Don't Let Me Down" on Howard Stern this year. Of course, they managed to take a mellow song and make it even softer. Not every song is "Yesterday." Even other ballads like "Let It Be" or "Something" have (electric!) guitar solos. The Beatles weren't safe, and they weren't a bunch of sad sack emo kids either. Exhibit A:

I used to be cruel to my woman
I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved...

Un-universal music

2007-11-27T23:12:00.000-05:00

OK, the title is a little confusing. Basically, I can't think of a more inappropriately named company/division/conglomerate. Not only does UMG's CEO admit to being an idiot, but he actually brags about it. What demographic are these companies clamoring for?

Xmas comes early to Cleveland

2007-11-27T21:53:00.000-05:00

Ray Allen missed two free throws in a row, and Lebron James was money from the line all night. Happy Xmas Cleveland.

P.S. Big Baby one the Tommy Award.

More disasters coming

2007-11-25T21:57:00.000-05:00

This, not a 60 degree Thanksgiving, is evidence* of Global Warming.

*Scientists don't use the term proof.

God in the dust

2007-11-25T14:09:00.001-05:00

I wanted to see The Golden Compass before I read this article. Now, I'm sure. Here's a sample:

...These books are deeply theological, and deeply Christian in their theology. The universe of "His Dark Materials" is permeated by a God in love with creation, who watches out for the meekest of all beings - the poor, the marginalized, and the lost. It is a God who yearns to be loved through our respect for the body, the earth, and through our lives in the here and now. This is a rejection of the more classical notion of a detached, transcendent God, but I am a Catholic theologian, and reading this fantasy trilogy enhanced my sense of the divine, of virtue, of the soul, of my faith in God.

The book's concept of God, in fact, is what makes Pullman's work so threatening. His trilogy is not filled with attacks on Christianity, but with attacks on authorities who claim access to one true interpretation of a religion. Pullman's work is filled with the feminist and liberation strands of Catholic theology that have sustained my own faith, and which threaten the power structure of the church. Pullman's work is not anti-Christian, but anti-orthodox.

Getting over her

2007-11-24T11:56:00.000-05:00

Damn, I don't have any of those albums.
By the way, check out the irony in the Sixth Sense "Misunderstood" Absinthe ad.

See it before it's...

2007-11-23T00:06:00.000-05:00

...Gone Baby Gone.

60 minutes...

2007-11-21T22:21:00.000-05:00

...here

At least they don't have activist judges

2007-11-21T19:10:00.001-05:00

I guess Massachusetts isn't the only place that has teachers trying to brainwash kids.

Tim's Birthday

2007-11-21T18:44:00.000-05:00

It's Frank's birthday, so we should decide pretty soon what to get his almost name-sake Tim (né Timmy). Besides some obvious choices, I know one thing he needs to have if he doesn't just burn my copy.

Adamses' letters

2007-11-20T20:38:00.000-05:00

My Dearest Friend looks interesting. I had wanted to go see the Kennedys, Dukakises and Patricks (is that how you pluralize their names?) read some of it at Faneuil Hall Monday, but I didn't.

Free trade

2007-11-20T19:35:00.001-05:00

Free Trade is best for everyone, right? I don't know anything about economics, so I've been willing to entertain this belief despite some hesitation. Unfortunately, I don't have any evidence of this actually working, and seeing as I am no longer e-mailing things to discuss with people, I'll post it here in hopes someone in the cold corners of space will want to speak back.

The way all this sounds makes me think I've given up any attempts at not being pretentious.

Anyway, I'm reading a book called Special Providence. It's about American foreign policy. Here's a quote from page 202:

At a time of British technological and financial superiority, a system of protective tariffs was the only way to ensure that the United States would not sink utterly into the role of a provider of raw materials for the British industrial machine, and an outlet for its finished products. In the last analysis the lesser evil was the development of a domestic manufacturing sector; the greater evil was to remain a permanent appendage to the British dynamo.

How is the developing world any different? Weren't the creation of domestic jobs good for the economy? Wasn't the competition created by an industrial rival good for worldwide consumers?

I look forward to hearing from anybody - especially WASPy Catholic descendants of men who turned down appointment to LBJ's cabinet.

Xmas present idea

2007-11-18T12:06:00.000-05:00

Nerdcore

Proof Billy Corgan went crazy

2007-11-17T11:09:00.000-05:00

Why?

P.S. Do you ever notice that when someone says 'that's a really interesting story' it isn't?

JFK still pissed at character assassin

2007-11-16T22:43:00.000-05:00

John Kerry is taking on the oil baron that helped fund the Swift Boats.

Something less dense...

2007-11-14T23:12:00.000-05:00

Because the last post was long, something lighter:
Mailer's Buried Car

Church and State

2007-11-14T22:36:00.000-05:00

Wow!

I was sick Sunday and really bored with what was on TV, so I ended up watching a round-table discussion on C-Span consisting of a bunch of Virginians who wouldn't vote for Romney because he is Mormon (deserving of its own post in and of itself). After, they played JFK's famous speech to the Houston Ministers. Here are some relevant points (no longer applicable):

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President -- should he be Catholic -- how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference...

I believe in an America... where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials...

I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views -- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise....

There is no doubt in my mind that the viewpoint that I have expressed tonight publicly represents the opinion of the overwhelming majority of American Catholics...

and from the Q&A:

Question: Let me ask you then, sir: Do you state it with the approval of the Vatican?
Senator Kennedy: I don't have to have approval in that sense. I have not submitted my statement before I read it to the Vatican. I did not submit it to Cardinal Cushing. But my judgment is that Cardinal Cushing, which is the Cardinal from the diocese of which I am a member, would approve of this statement, in the same way that he approved of the 1948 statement of the Bishop.

Question: The reason for our concern is the fact that your church has stated that it has the privilege and the right and the responsibility to direct its members in various areas of life, including the political realm. We believe that history and observation indicate that it has done so. And we raise the question because we would like to know, if you are elected President and your church elects to use that privilege and obligation, what your response will be under those circumstances.
Senator Kennedy: If my church attempted to influence me in a way which was improper or which affected adversely my responsibilities as a public servant, sworn to uphold the Constitution, then I would reply to them that this was an improper action on their part, that it was one to which I could not subscribe, that I was opposed to it, and that it would be an unfortunate breach of -- an interference, with the American political system. I'm confident that there would be no such interference.

Bottled water and the environment

2007-11-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

Dan Kennedy wrote a good article on some Environmentalists' campaign vs. bottled water here.

Here's a quote:

The problem with all this is not that the anti-bottle crusaders are wrong - in fact, they're right, strictly speaking. Rather, the problem is that they're looking at this too narrowly. The thirsty among us are not choosing between a bottle of water and a bubbler in the corner - although, given who could have been using the bubbler, that bottle looks pretty good, thank you very much. And, say, is that phlegm?

No, we are instead choosing between two bottles of water, one loaded with corn syrup and sundry other natural and unnatural ingredients, the other relatively clean and pure. And, as Fishman observes in Fast Company, we are still nearly twice as likely to choose soda over bottled water.