Points of Interest 06/30/2011

Reads:

The Village takes a vacation.

"The best thing the organizers could do to solve America's most pressing problems would probably be to encase the city of Aspen in an impenetrable dome on the last day of the festival, trapping all participants and attendees inside, forever."

Our debate, growing more stupid by the day.

Needed 231,000, got nearly 1.3 million.

Bachmann: Cease and desist, pert deux.

"So once again, just like in the government shutdown debate..."

"...Obama and the Democrats are fighting to get what the Republicans and the right-wing economic think tanks originally proposed they should do, and the GOP just keeps walking the goalposts to the right. If this comes down to the constitutional option, I hope everyone remembers that the Democrats have actually proposed doing exactly what the Republicans and the right-wing economists originally asked for."

"Not since the Gilded Age has a Supreme Court been so determined to strengthen the hand of corporations and the wealthy."

A well-oiled War Machine.

I like Campaign Obama better then Pragmatic Governance Obama.

Highlighed on Lawrence O'Donnell's Last Word feature last night, this editorial from middle America is on point regarding today's GOP.

"It's sad to see what has happened to the Party of Lincoln, and for that matter, the party of lesser mortals like George H.W. Bush of Texas, Bob Dole of Kansas and Jack Danforth of Missouri. No one ever would mistake them for liberals, but they were statesmen who put country before party.

Today we have the spectacle of smart, patriotic men and women putting their brains and integrity on ice to please a party dominated by anti-intellectual social Darwinists and the plutocrats who finance and mislead them."

“These risks,” the IMF said, “would also have significant global repercussions, given the central role of U.S. Treasury bonds in world financial markets.”

Chris Christie's 'successes' in New Jersey might be a lesson on how the pursuit of political power can make a party blind to the bigger picture.

"Halperin’s choice of words pales in comparison..."

"...to the fact that he’s offended by the president’s mild rebuke of political recklessness the likes of which American hasn’t seen in generations."

(Legitimately) slacking off, Senate bipartisanship edition.

"In every instance, conservative rulings received more coverage, longer articles, and better placement."

Points of Interest 06/29/2011

If you haven't already, sign it. At this time, over 73,000 others have. #sharedsacrifice

Reads:

"It's cheaper to fire a couple of workers then let a union vote succeed."

"Somalia has slightly higher standards than Wyoming and Nevada."

"A corporation is a legal person created by state statute that can be used as a fall guy, a servant, a good friend or a decoy," the company's website boasts. "A person you control... yet cannot be held accountable for its actions. Imagine the possibilities!"

Most fathers love their sons and will do anything for them.

"Interviews with a number of sources close to the Huntsmans reveal a powerful, ambitious father who has played a significant role in his son’s political rise at every turn—leaning on contacts, calling in favors, and, in several cases, lashing out at those he feels have slighted Jon Jr."

Once upon a time, we did work like this.

"And then there's the talk and opinion shows which no one ever pretends are news and factual."

"More than half of New Jersey residents say they wouldn’t back Governor Chris Christie for a second term..."

"...disapproving of his choices on a range of policy and personal issues, from killing a commuter tunnel to using a state-police helicopter to attend his son’s baseball game."

Simple: No Congressional recess, no recess appointments. Result: More obstructionism.

For your reading pleasure, I give you the Quadruple Bachmann:

• Cease and desist, American Girl.
• Where better to get fake history than from a fake historian?
• Both lying and demonstrating hypocrisy in one single statement.
• "Michele Bachmann, for example, has argued that eliminating the minimum wage would eliminate unemployment entirely."

Yeah, me too.

"Republicans are actively opposed to any ideas, even their own, that might help give the economy a boost. They are, however, equally enthused in support of ideas that are likely to hold the economy back.

I wonder why that is."

Pictures:

Some things are fail no matter where you are from, and they must be mocked. (via)

Points of Interest 6/28/2011

Sign it, already. #sharedsacrifice

Reads:

Almost a regular Joe.

"The debate between shrill free traders and strident protectionists has become utterly irrelevant."

"In-market production or national champions? This is the kind of debate we should be having -- not the tired old debate between academic free traders and nostalgic protectionists. It is certain that transnational production, in some form, is here to stay -- and it is just as certain that nation-states, democratic or otherwise, will use their power to shape the pattern of transitional production by global corporations to advance their own domestic and foreign policy goals, at the expense of the free market, if necessary."

"A line has to be drawn somewhere; it should have been drawn last fall; but to concede now would effectively mean the end of the presidency."

"Indeed, in Texas’ case..."

"...Republicans have dominated state government for years, and never felt the need to cut off Planned Parenthood. The preventive health care organization hasn’t changed; its mission hasn’t changed; and its menu of health services hasn’t changed. The only thing that has changed is the radicalism of Republican Party."

"That's why they don't want state insurance commissioners having any more regulatory authority than they currently do, which is really precious little."

"In fact, access to justice – like access to elected office, let alone a pundit's perch – is becoming a perk just for the rich and powerful."

"America's unique hatred of finance reform."

"A lot of sunlight hits tall office buildings, only to go to waste."

"Relative to national economic trends, states that increased spending enjoyed on average:

• 0.2 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate
• 1.4 percent increase in private employment
• 0.5 percent real economic growth since the start of the recession

In contrast, states that cut spending saw on average

• 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate
• 2.1 percent loss of private employment
• 2.9 percent real economic contraction relative to the national economic trend"

"In fact, they are just as wrong about this as they are about the relationship between marginal tax rates and overall economic growth."

"In the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now."

"...the congressional GOP has decided it’s against their own ideas about helping the economy, which necessarily raises some awkward questions about their motivations."

"Again, what we’re seeing here are the limits of fact-checking..."

"...something we rediscover every cycle. Candidates, party committees and outside groups make false claims. Media fact-checkers go to work and debunk the claims. The candidates and groups go right on making them anyway. Reporters stop pointing out that they’re false."

Points of interest 06/27/2011

Of prime note - we celebrated grape_wifey's birthday over the weekend. Happy birthday, honey. I love both you and the fact that you'll always be younger than me.

Reads:

"Nearly 10 percent of the world’s adults have diabetes, and the prevalence of the disease is rising rapidly."

"It really feels like the only job category showing growth in America right now is the "scams" category."

“You know, it’s bad enough trying to find 29 people..."

"...you don’t need to have 40 more to look for…They just had a major explosion. They could’ve killed every one of us … We were expendable that night, that’s my opinion … they didn’t care what they did with us.”

"[NJ Governor Chris Christie] appears to be fine with cutting back on education..."

"...and social spending out of supposed concerns for cost and is willing to deride public media as a relic of the Soviet Union, but does not seem to have the same qualms about subsidizing a giant corporate mall."

"A 30-year war for energy preeminence?"

God, I'm tired of political ads that flat-out lie.

A month later, fully employed, King appeared in a Romney ad, blaming the president for the fact that “no one is going to hire” him and he “can’t get a job.” He even told Facebook friends, the day after the filming, “Off to work for the day.”

"Inside Nancy Pelosi’s drive to win the House majority back for Democrats."

"But we could also be talking about 1991..."

"...when the consequences of vast, loan-financed overbuilding of commercial real estate in the 1980s came home to roost, helping to cause the collapse of the junk-bond market and putting many banks—Citibank, in particular—at risk."

"Has 'too big to fail' transformed into 'too big to challenge?'"

"Flake," idiot, lunatic, right-wing extremist...and now "Gay Rapist Clown Serial Killer."

"Economists have known for many years that many tax cuts are nothing more than spending by another name."

"They call such things “tax expenditures” and there are about $1 trillion worth in the tax code. Getting rid of many of them would have exactly the same economic benefits as reducing on-budget subsidies. Nevertheless, Republicans oppose eliminating tax expenditures unless other taxes are cut because any net tax increase would depress growth. The historical evidence, however, does not necessarily support this view."

Pictures:

Actual news headlines versus Fox News headlines.

Points of Interest 6/24/2011

Lots of stuff to carry us through the weekend....

Reads:

"The secretary-general of the Apparel Industry of Shenzhen, Shen Yongfang, said..."

"...the region’s garment export industry used to sell more than 100 billion dollars worth of goods per year. Now, at the best, it can generate just a few billion."

Record flood season continues. (with pictures)

Irony, Israeli edition.

Shimon Peres is a skeptic about foreign aid: "Giving is problematic. We take money from poor people in rich countries and give it to rich people in poor countries. Aid sometimes creates corruption."

They're hoping that if they push that meme hard enough, it will take hold.

As "fruitless" as going after Clarence Thomas may be, there still might be some good that comes out of doing it.

Meet the real-world effects of denying Planned Parenthood the Medicaid funds necessary to treat low-income residents of Indiana.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Dumbass) and his latest dumbassery. (with video, just forward to the 2:55 mark)



And here I thought there wasn't any more room in the GOP primary clown car.

Singin' | go on | take the money and run

A report by China’s central bank found that thousands of Chinese government officials have smuggled billions out of the country and fled, mainly to the U.S., highlights "the corruption within a corrupt system".

"Government red tape" and "burdensome regulations" are bad, at least up until they can be used to promote a right-wing agenda.

Credit reporting system found flawed and subject to "mission creep": credit information being used for purposes other than lending.

"He put $9 million of his own money into the campaign, and then he has the company pay him back shortly after the election..."


Watch:



The fun part of this is that the kids were just as enthusiastic about being in a limousine as they were to meet the President.

Points of Interest 6/23/2011

Reads:

"The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false."

"It's also the ultimate 'green' way to create electricity because it uses waste heat to create electricity with no carbon dioxide."

I hear slave labor is really cheap. Why don't businesses use that?

Money can buy you a more agreeable Dick.

But there’s one other problem with his critique. As a long-time proponent of controlling health care costs, Gephardt has supported greater government intervention in the health sector and in 1994 proposed empowering the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish “target rates of growth” for health costs that included the private sector (thus going further than the IPAB).

"Nurses are calling for a change in priorities because they have seen enough and want to stop the bleeding now."

"She's trying to look like June Cleaver..."

...but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.

"Indeed, choosing a leader of the free world from the ranks of those who sport a self-serving incuriosity is a habit, like crash landings and cock-fights, best cultivated in strict moderation."

On the road again. Maybe. Not to Sudan. Also. Too.

Banksters and slumlords.

"Once a household or nation is burdened with stupendous debt loads and stagnating earnings, 'growing your way out of debt' is impossible."

Points of Interest 06/22/2011

Reads:

"My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor."

Bachmann and other GOPers may be using taxpayer money to support Tea Party activities.

The money came from the Members' taxpayer-funded office accounts, despite House rules prohibiting the use of these funds for political activities. Bachmann's office insists the expense was a proper use of official funds.

Whistling past the submerged graveyard.

According to the authors, we are "at high risk for entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history." It's not just about overfishing or marine pollution or even climate change. It's all of those destructive factors working cumulatively and occurring much more rapidly than scientists had expected.

9/11, for fun and profit.

And Grassfire Nation is a company -- not a political action committee devoted to promoting conservative causes or candidates. It is a division of an Iowa company, Grassroots Action, which calls itself "the leader in building custom conservative action networks for organizations seeking to expand their impact through the Internet" and in getting "results that reach your bottom line."

"But in an unusual mid-month note to his investors..."

...Gross hammered the “anti-Keynesians” in both parties who believe “that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth.” The truth, he says, is just the opposite. “Fiscal balance alone will not likely produce 20 million jobs over the next decade. The move towards it, in fact, if implemented too quickly, could stultify economic growth.”

Politifact's fact-checking rates a "false."

"CBO: We’ll only have giant deficits if Congress wants giant deficits."

If Congress passes laws extending the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the cost, repealing the Affordable Care Act and its cost controls and protecting doctors from Medicare cuts without making up the savings elsewhere — the “alternative fiscal scenario” — the national debt will be totally out of control...

Any clue why this isn't a bigger story?

Many of the WikiLeaks US embassy cables reveal the naked intervention by our ambassadorial staff in the business of foreign countries on behalf of US corporations. From mining companies in Peru to pharmaceutical companies in Ecuador, one WikiLeaks embassy cable after the next illuminates a pattern of US diplomats shilling for corporate interests abroad in the most underhanded and sleazy ways imaginable.

We need to legislate with the deficit we had in mind, not the deficit we wish we had.

To put it in budgetary terms, the deficit we imagine comes largely from discretionary spending. The one we have comes partly from discretionary spending but mostly from everything else: tax rates, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Senate kills job-creating bill.

But let’s be clear about what transpired yesterday: Republicans who’ve praised the Economic Development Administration for years voted in lock step to kill a measure that would have created jobs. They did so in part because they wanted to waste time on a bunch of irrelevant amendments and Harry Reid didn’t want to let them.

Watch:

How to build and utilize an echo chamber.



Consider:

If universal health care is good enough for soldiers, veterans, and prisoners, then why isn't it good enough for other Americans?

Points of Interest

Reads:

Rocky start for Huntsman campaign.

“So far today, Huntsman campaign has gotten his name, phone number & address wrong. That’s a rough day in first grade.”

Rocky start for Gingrich campaign continues.

"People familiar with Gingrich's campaign spending say his fundraising has been weak since he launched his bid and that he has racked up large travel bills. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk openly about campaign inner workings."

"With Friends Like These"

"But we already know how many in the New Democrat coalition feel about an independent board to help reduce Medicare costs: during health care reform, several signed letters opposing its formation."

Oceanfront property.

"The sea-level is now rising faster along the U.S. Atlantic coast than at any time in the past 2,100 years, and this surge is linked to increasing global temperatures, an international research team reports."

"The Myth of the Lower Marginal Tax Rates"

"Altogether, in years when the top marginal rate was lower than 39.6 percent—the top rate during the 1990s—annual real growth averaged 2.1 percent. In years when the rate was 39.6 percent or higher, real growth averaged 3.8 percent. The pattern is the same regardless of threshold. Take 50 percent, for example. Growth in years when the tax rate was less than 50 percent averaged 2.7 percent. In years with tax rates at or more than 50 percent, growth was 3.7 percent."

Clarence Thomas, meet Abe Fortas.

"If this sounds familiar, it’s because America has seen this movie before. Indeed, the Thomas scandal is little more than a remake of the forty year-old gifting scandal that brought down Justice Abe Fortas. Like Thomas, Fortas liked to associate with wealthy individuals with potential business before his Court. And like Thomas, Fortas took inappropriate gifts from his wealthy benefactors."

"How states are rigging the 2012 election"

"These statutes are not neutral. Their greatest impact will be to reduce turnout among African Americans, Latinos and the young. It is no accident that these groups were key to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008 — or that the laws in question are being enacted in states where Republicans control state governments."

Watch:

What's wrong with the US recovery, in a little over two minutes.

The radicalization of the U.S. Muslim

So, when right-wingers do stuff like this...

Ms. Gabriel is only one voice in a growing circuit that includes counter-Islam speakers like Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and Walid Shoebat. What distinguishes Ms. Gabriel from her counterparts is that she has built a national grass-roots organization in the last three years that has already engaged in dozens of battles over the place of Islam in the United States. ACT! for America claims 155,000 members in 500 chapters across the country. To build her organization, Ms. Gabriel has enlisted Mr. Rodgers, who had worked behind the scenes for the Christian Coalition’s leaders, Ralph Reed and the television evangelist Pat Robertson. (Ms. Gabriel herself was once an anchor for Mr. Robertson’s Christian television network in the Middle East).

(and this and this)

...and the detainment of American citizens who are Muslim without charge is excused by the courts...

Gelernt tries to close by painting a picture of a statute "that had enormous consequences." As he reminds us, ACLU-ishly: " People were held—half the people were held more than 30 days, even though the statutory presumption is 10 days. Many people were held for months. They were arrested at gunpoint. They were not immunized. Half the people were not called to testify. It went on in cities all over the country. People being held under horrendous conditions for long periods of time, interrogated about their own activities."

 ...and go on witch hunts targeting U.S. Muslims...

Representative Peter T. King Republican of New York, said he would rely on Muslims to make his case that American Muslim leaders have failed to cooperate with law enforcement officials in the effort to disrupt terrorist plots — a claim that was rebutted in recent reports by counterterrorism experts and in a forum on Capitol Hill on Monday. 

...do you think all that makes an American Muslim more or less willing to become part of whatever is considered 'mainstream America'? How likely is it that a person for who is singled out for investigation, demonized, and ignored by a system that doesn't work for them to be satisfied with their status?

The right wing in America is doing far, far more to promote Al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts in the US than Al-Qaeda could ever hope to do on their own.

Points of Interest

Reads:

John and John.

Ensign and Edwards, respectively. The former bows out to avoid an ugly campaign while the latter gets ready for Federal court.

Zen campaigning with Senator Scott Brown and David Koch.

In public appearances, the senator says that he's not interested in politicking right now, that there will be time for it in 2012 — his re-election year.

Yet in the video, Brown tells Koch he's politicking right now.

Overpromised and unable to deliver.

In retrospect, I think Republicans will see that they had one bite at the apple to enact significant budget cuts – and that they blew it.

Lobbying over debit card fees intensifies.

What can happen when you privatize infrastructure. (via)

2011 Nobel Peace Prize nominees announced.

Watch:

Dear God

My Twitter feed alerted me to this post from Digby:

Grayson tried to do that and used the "T" word, which is out of bounds because apparently Americans can never be compared to anything evil, whether historical or contemporary, even if the analogy is extremely apt. He got hammered not only for being imprecise in his ad but for taking on his opponents fringe religious views at all. I'm sure it was noted by other politicians and it will be a cold day in hell before anyone does it again. And that's too bad because Grayson was right. Webster is a member of a fringe, patriarchal cult that is as far out of the Christian mainstream as the Taliban is outside the mainstream of Islam...

It also includes a link to this disturbing profile of right-wing evangelist Bill Gothard. Both are worth the read*.

What amazes me is that there are people who possess the strength to break free from these closed worlds. How hard must it be to leave a lifetime of belief and your closest friends and family who remain believers? It's a wonder that it happens at all.

(*on the same subject, I'd like to point you towards yesterday's POI, which includes a link to The New Yorker's profile of Paul Haggis, a former Scientologist)

Points of interest

Reads:

"But now that they have a majority in the House, Republicans certainly have the power to ignore nature."

If you don't believe climate change is a problem, then most of these new carbon rules are pointless. And, within the Republican Party, the belief that global warming is a made-up non-problem has become thoroughly ingrained - so much so that it's no longer even worth justifying.

"The Chamber of Commerce and the President of GE Have a Plan to Restore Business Confidence and Create Jobs, 1931 Edition."

His Swope Plan is considered one of the main documents for the idea of an associationalist economy, or what we would now call a corporatist economy.   Let businesses collude and form price-fixing organizations, and in response they’ll hire more workers and even provide a social safety net for those workers.  The government will need to suspend all anti-trust laws first, obviously, before all the sweet growth and jobs show up.  Many socialists at the time realized that this was asking for trouble for obvious reasons of rent-seeking and businesses not following through and fighting any type of regulatory oversight.

"By making it harder for borrowers to avoid paying credit card debt, [the 2005 bankruptcy law] made it more difficult for them to pay their mortgages, so foreclosure rates rose."

Despite opposition from public interest groups, the 2005 law easily cleared both chambers of Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. In a paper released Tuesday, New York Fed researchers Donald P. Morgan, Benjamin Iverson and Matthew Botsch determined that the law sparked about 116,000 additional subprime mortgage foreclosures a year after going into effect.

"My internal compass was to think like an intolerant meathead."

The insider was asked whether Fox News should be considered a legitimate news outlet. After laughing, the person explained, "I don't think people understand that it's an organization that's built and functions by intimidation and bullying, and its goal is to prop up and support Republicans and the GOP and to knock down Democrats. People tend think that stuff that's on TV is real, especially under the guise of news. You'd think that people would wise up, but they don't."

 The anti-gay evolution of Tim Pawlenty.

In light of last year’s Pentagon study, which concluded that “the risk of repeal … to overall military effectiveness is low,” Pawlenty’s stance on gays in the military cannot be justified with the customary nod toward ‘unit cohesion.’ In fact, his new position should be seen as part and parcel of the Governor’s evolving view of gays, which, over nearly two decades, is sometimes nuanced but generally regressive...

"The Apostate" (lengthy article alert)

He had read a recent exposé in a Florida newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, which reported, among other things, that senior executives in the church had been subjecting other Scientologists to physical violence. Haggis said that he felt “dumbstruck and horrified,” adding, “Tommy, if only a fraction of these accusations are true, we are talking about serious, indefensible human and civil-rights violations.”

Also: Friends in high places.

The church has had, throughout its history, plenty of friends on both sides of the aisle. Or, at least, plenty of people willing to cash its checks. Few prominent politicians, that I know of, have said much about the things we've learned about the church more recently.

Matchmaking on Twitter.

The "baby talk" and emoticons inspired by Twitter's character limit can be nauseating. We don't even need to talk about the usernames. But while the correspondence above is not exactly sophisticated, it's meaningful because a connection was made.

Points of Interest

Reads:

"What this tells me is that the emphasis is on 2012 — on politics, not on policy."

Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R), who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the Bush administration, said that her party's focus during its first month had tended more toward placating activists in the party. 

It's not the 'center' if the solutions you are pushing are the same ones the Republicans were proposing two decades ago.

...a growing number of outside groups are vying to fill the space that the leadership council occupied for more than two decades, betting that an appeal to moderation, rather than polarization, is the best way to win over fickle independent voters.

"Ron Paul Versus the Kochtopus."

He’s also going to make Paul Ryan look reasonable instead of someone who is both uninformed and terrible on monetary policy. In each case he’s building on problems people are experiencing and pushing them further to the right. Do liberals have any type of counter-narrative rather than relying on discredited technocrat expertise?

"Loser people and loser organizations..."

Grover Norquist closes the curtain on the groups that have showily boycotted the conference over annoyance at the gay Republican group GOProud, the business transactions of ACU's David Keene, or the participation of Muslim Republican Suhail Khan.

"National governments and the international community must urgently address this issue in a proactive manner."

Existing migration patterns expected to accelerate, the study says, include rural-urban migration, especially to large cities; cross-border migration to India; migration of semi-skilled laborers to Middle East and Southeast Asian countries, as well as the continued "brain drain" of educated and wealthy people to developed countries.

In a future remake of the movie Red Dawn, a battle cry of "Wolverines!" won't make much sense.

Built for the cold, wolverines make their homes mostly in the northern forests and tundras of North America, Europe, and Asia. The carnivores are rarely found in places where temperatures get higher than 72 degrees F (22 degrees C).[...]

The new study shows that climate change might endanger wolverines in the mainland U.S. by eliminating springtime snow and significantly increasing summer temperatures.

I guess it depends on whom you are trying to appeal to.

While the modest increase in the inflation rate in many countries may have some negative impact on the standing of central bankers, their failure to stem the housing bubbles that brought on the worst downturn since the Great Depression would be a more obvious explanation for their loss of status.

Laugh:

Dewey defeats Truman.

(picture at the link)

Points of Interest

Reads:

Well, I wasn't talking about cutting the stuff I thought was important.

"Nobody needs to fear that the centrists aren't going to be well represented in the Democratic Party. They run the place."

"I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying 'uniting conservatives' is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state..."

The White House kicks off its 'Advise the Advisor' online feature.

"The data also cast new doubt on the ability of charter schools to outperform their traditional school peers."

“The government should focus on services that prevent disease. Fertility and babies are not diseases. Fertility occurs in healthy women.”

"The percentage of unemployed who will drop out of the labor force is increasing, gaining over those who will find a job. This is unique in the post-World War II economy — and only getting worse."

Laughs:

The Onion:



A (NSFW - language) parody of a Michigan ad campaign:



(original ad campaign here)

What to do after your period*

I can't tell you the number of times I've participated in The Great Post-Sentence Debate with a co-worker who was sure that placing a single space after the period was wrong-wrong-wrong:

Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It's one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men's shirt buttons on the right and women's on the left. Every major style guide—including the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style—prescribes a single space after a period. (The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, used widely in the social sciences, allows for two spaces in draft manuscripts but recommends one space in published work.) Most ordinary people would know the one-space rule, too, if it weren't for a quirk of history. In the middle of the last century, a now-outmoded technology—the manual typewriter—invaded the American workplace. To accommodate that machine's shortcomings, everyone began to type wrong. And even though we no longer use typewriters, we all still type like we do.

Told ya so.

Fortunately, the two-space specification will die out when the last people who remember using typewriters do the same...unlike the standard alphanumeric keyboard configuration, which will likely live on well past the point that advancing technology or an improvement in a specification should have made it obsolete (we write more clearly than we speak, and I can't yet see how voice recognition software will change that). People do have trouble with the process of change, though. That's why - unfortunately - I have to tools in both metric- and English-measurements and have to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit when talking about the weather with colleagues overseas.

But it's not just a resistance to change that powers the persistence of our specifications; it's the fact that the technology and systems of tomorrow build on what is available today...which stands on the shoulders of yesterday. My favorite example of this involves the internet meme about the width of the Space Shuttle's booster rockets:

Well, there's an interesting extension of the story about railroad gauge and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad from the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railroad track, and the railroad track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was originally determined by the width of a horse's ass.

Of course, Snopes has some issues with the specifics, but the broad idea that today's advanced transportation** is based on the limits of  yesterday's technology still holds.

So what's the moral of the story? If anything, it's more proof that we are limited: 1) by our own habits, 2) by the necessity of having to base our reaction to what's coming tomorrow on the modified, re-purposed thought and technology available today...and 3) that an awareness of why things are the way they are - knowledge of history - helps us to better understand the present (not to mention winning points of dispute with fellow co-workers).

*I couldn't resist; apologies if you were expecting something different...then again, it's your fault for thinking that in the first place, isn't it?
** or, that of the 1980's

Housing fitting the times

I think that this odd-looking shape designed by Alexander Remizov is a rather interesting idea for a housing structure, reminiscent of Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House, of which one of the two that were made is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, just outside of Detroit:

 No, they don't look alike. The resemblance* has to do with purpose of structure and the time for which it was/is intended to be built. Remizov's 'Ark' is built from available materials after (presumably) a post-climate catastrophe, with the ability to fulfill its occupants' needs using non-consumable energy sources and large amounts of interior green space.Fuller's Dymaxion house was built from aluminum and re-purposed aircraft parts as an attempt to leverage spare post-WWII manufacturing capacity to provide a source of cheap, resource-efficient housing.

What a contrast to the big footprint homes built in the US over the past two decades.

*Although the central design of each structure does take some inspiration from the 'Siberian grain-silo house' noted in the linked Wikipedia article.

"A collective action problem"

The greatest threat to our national security is our unwillingness to address issues until they become catastrophic problems...and even then...

...detecting disease outbreaks remains a challenge, particularly in impoverished areas where medical care and modern communications systems are absent. A serious outbreak could soon overwhelm local governments and spur mass migration of infected victims across international borders.

"There are no international contingency plans for such an occurrence, nor are even the basic information systems in place to link (disease reporting) to potential response mechanisms like the U.N. Security Council or NATO," the National Intelligence Council concluded in a report it released two months ago.

Health officials question whether even the United States is prepared to handle the unpredictable impacts of climate change. Many local health systems lack trained health technicians who can diagnose new diseases, and the right epidemiological equipment.

They note that diseases once considered rare in the United States, such as dengue fever and West Nile virus, are no longer uncommon. West Nile virus, which was reintroduced to the United States in 1994, is now present in 44 states, while the mosquitoes that carry dengue fever are found in counties where 173.5 million Americans live.[...]

What role politics will play in the United States' ability to prepare for a climate-related health catastrophe in the new Republican-led House remains to be seen. In 2007, the administration of President George W. Bush deleted six pages from the prepared congressional testimony of then-CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding that detailed the human health impacts of climate change.[...]

"We're making progress, but it's a slower progress than it needs to be," [Former director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, now the dean of the University of Washington's School of Public Health Howard] Frumkin said. Climate change "is advancing far faster than has been forecast. We need to be ready not in 20 years or in 30 years, but relatively soon."

Most problems have a solution. I can't come up with one for a lack of political and social will.

Dear God

With all this talk about the Tucson slayings, there's been ample consideration - and denial - of the role ideology, belief, and rhetoric (violent or non-) play in influencing to a person's actions. I don't agree with the deniers, as there's too many instances of things like this occurring:

An Ohio science teacher accused of burning the image of a cross on students' arms has officially been fired.

The Mount Vernon school board voted 4-1 Monday night to accept a state hearing officer's recommendation to terminate John Freshwater. The Columbus Dispatch reports the firing took effect a few hours later, at midnight.

Freshwater had appealed his earlier firing by the board. An internal investigation found he had preached Christian beliefs in class. He also was accused of using a scientific device to mark several students with a cross and of keeping a Bible on his desk.

Aside from a reaction of "what the hell", I'm scratching my head as to how an avid follower of Christ can wander so far from His teachings as to think that branding His symbol into the arms of children is acceptable.

"GOP to Strip Consumer Protections, Resume Big Bank Bailouts"

(I know...but...well, that's what Michele Bachmann is proposing, isn't it?)

What happens when a once-great city slowly dies

I was in a store yesterday which was running a temporary display of framed old-timey pictures of Detroit in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's. One was of the Michigan Central Station, which in its heyday, was a grand structure:

"Designed by the renowned architects Warren & Wetmore and engineers Reed and Stem, that also designed the Grand Central Station in New York City, the Michigan Central Station opened in 1913 with a final price tag of $15 million and consisted of a 3 story train station with an 18 story office tower. The building contained 7,000 tons of structural steel, 125,000 cubic feet of stone, and 7 million bricks.

As one would enter off Roosevelt Park, they would walk into the buildings center piece, the main waiting room. The 54.5 feet tall waiting room modeled after a roman bath, stretches the length of the building and is decorated with Guastavino arches, columns, and three arched 21 by 40 feet windows flanked by four smaller windows. Beyond the waiting room, you could buy your ticket from one of the many ornate ticket counters, or walk down the 28 feet tall arcade to visit a newsstand, drugstore, cigar shop, or barbershop.

In addition to the arcade and waiting room, the station featured a restaurant with vaulted ceilings, a main concourse with a copper skylight,and a lunch counter."

Today, I find a heartbreaking pictorial from the UK's Guardian/Observer. Slides 6 and 16 in the photo set show the Michigan Central terminal in a sadly dilapidated state. A Google search returns even more decay, such as this image of the terminal's rail bed:

We've lost so much.