[links] Link salad can’t touch that
The comment thread in my post of yesterday on language etymology and word choicse is quite amazing — Go check it out.
A Whiff of Colonialism — ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
rosefox on the Spinrad column, and non-Eurocentric writing. The discussion isn’t the least bit about me, quite the opposite, but it does cause me to consider myself. This is a complex topic for me, because of my own background. I’m solidly in the privileged class of white, male, Anglo-Saxon, tall(ish), well-educated, well-employed, etc. etc. Yet I spent most of my childhood in non-white, non-Anglophone countries, and I have a non-white daughter growing up in my house. My experience of culture, privilege and race is far more complex than you could ever assume from seeing my face in an author photo, or reading my utterly English name on a book spine. Yet one of the reasons I’ve generally stopped talking about race and culture on this blog is that every time I do, a meaningful portion of readers see my name and face and assume I’m another clueless privileged white guy, and respond accordingly with either vitriol, scorn or earnest attempts at re-education. It’s hardly a tragedy for the public discourse that some privileged white guy’s words about race have been tuned out, but it saddens me personally to self-censor.
Syphilis: Menace to Industry — Classic poster art. Somehow I never quite thought of industrial productivity as a primary motivator for safe sex.
Constructing a marble machine — Impressive (and obsessive) as all get out. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
Habitable Planets: Working the Odds — Drake, Drake, duck!
Still Taking Exception — Daniel Larison on American Exceptionalism, Obama, and his critics on the Right.
?otD: What color are your parachute pants?
3/11/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hours
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 231.4
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Art, Cool, Culture, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, Science, Writing
Posted: 5:50 am Thu March 11 2010 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad is green and crunchy
Lost Jewish tribe ‘found in Zimbabwe’ — Fascinating.
Is it true every type of animal dropping has its own name? — The Straight Dope with your vocabulary lesson for the day.
The Jobs of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations — A nifty photo essay from NPR.
The Accident, Part 2 — Another haunting image, from the same incident as yesterday’s Shorpy link.
New Rocket Engine Could Reach Mars in 40 Days
Literacy and the sex ratio — Sigh.
Vatican hit by gay sex scandal — Vatican chorister sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for papal gentleman-in-waiting. Those who live by the sword…
The Dogs Will Eat You Because They Are Dogs — When George W. Bush was wrecking the nation, left wing groups talked in terms of organization for elections or of impeachment. These [right wing] groups talk in terms of armed resistance. Yes, that.
Why health care reform is not a “huge progressive victory” — Clearly something has gone terribly wrong since 1965. The ideological barriers against solving national problems through public provision rather than through the logic of profit maximization have increased enormously.
?otD: Do you like pickles?
3/9/2010
Writing time yesterday: 4.0 hours
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 232.8
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Culture, Language, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Religion, Science
Posted: 5:39 am Tue March 09 2010 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad for a rain forest Sunday
Flickr’s Season Wheel — Now this is cool.
Ken Miller can’t win? P.Z. and me gets pwned. — Journalism and biased story.
The economy is hitting us all pretty hard — Hahahaha.
Catholic Charities Ends Spousal Benefits — n a bid to avoid inadvertently providing spousal benefits to gay men and women who happen to be employees, Catholic Charities of Washington, D.C. , has taken the extraordinary step of ending spousal benefits for all of its employees, the Washington City Paper reports. Stay classy, conservative America. It’s what you do best, along with forcing women to remain pregnant, ruining the economy, and launching trillion dollar wars of choice.
?otD: How tall is your tree?
3/7/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hour
Body movement: 60 minute rural walk
Hours slept: 9.5 (slept very well, plus naps)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Art, Cool, Culture, Funny, Links, media, Personal, Photos, Politics
Posted: 9:10 am Sun March 07 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad is watching the detectives
Ursula K. LeGuin interviewed on the Google Books Settlement — I continue to refer to GBS as “banal evil”, but I suspect Ms. LeGuin would drop the adjective. And she swings a much bigger bat than I do. (Snurched from scarlettina.)
Printing body parts — Ok, this is just freaking cool.
B-24 over Ploeisti — Striking WWII photo from x planes.
Mod 1966 ad for Frigidaire refrigerators and freezers — Check out the model’s costuming in this ad. Wow. I think we need a space age fashion revival.
OInternational Space Station comes together — A cool animation of the construction process. (Thanks to KOF.)
And a gorgeous photo of the ISS, from APOD
Is Democracy Killing Democracy? — The founding fathers saw this coming, but the walls they erected to contain the mob may no longer hold. Tea Party, anyone? Or for that matter, Coffee Party? (Thanks to my Dad for that link.) The GOP has always had it wrong. Government isn’t the enemy, government is us.
Right-wing media praise Bunning for blocking worker pay, relief to unemployed — Stay classy, GOP. It’s what you do best. While people starve. Are you proud of your Republican Party?
Beat Them, Sure — Just Don’t Annoy Them — More likely, [the Senate Republicans] just overlearned the lessons of 1993-1994, and are operating under the mistaken impression that obstructing the majority is always good politics for the minority. On top of that, Republicans do seem much more interested in the short-term reactions of conservative talk show hosts than they are in, well, anything else
?otD: How can he be wounded if he’s got no heart?
3/3/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hour
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (slept well, but short)
This morning’s weigh-in: 227.0
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 4/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Cool, Culture, healthcare, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Science
Posted: 5:15 am Wed March 03 2010 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad becomes necessary
Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book — The New York Times takes a whack at ebook costs. Hmm. (Thanks to my Dad.)
The Many Faces of ‘Alice’ — WaPo with a slide show of pop culture visualizations of Alice in Wonderland.
Golden Gate: Sunset in Yellowstone Park — Vintagraph with an 1897 travel poster. I’m fascinated by the bicycle-mounted rifle in the poster, which was apparently unremarable in its day.
Last Chance Texaco: 1937 — Shorpy with a haunting image from North Dakota.
The Power of Plant Clock Computing — The headline alone is cool, but the story also carries some cool science geekery.
Ice deposits found at Moon’s pole — Ice and hydrocarbons. Excellent.
Another Victory For Labour? — Larison on British politics, with some contrasting observations on the US.
Department of Inmates, Asylums… — The GOP wants to clean up its extremists. Unfortunately, a lot of them hold national office. Fascinating. You brung ‘em to the dance, boys. Now they’re shitting up all the beds. Thanks a lot.
?otD: When in the course of human events?
3/2/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 (slept well, but short)
This morning’s weigh-in: 229.0
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 6/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Art, Cool, Culture, Links, Movies, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Science
Posted: 5:15 am Tue March 02 2010 | Comments(2) |
[politics] Why I poke so much at my friends on the Right
Quite some time ago, the_flea_king commented in passing that I have a hate-on for Republicans. His observation isn’t unreasonable, given the general tenor of my political commentary, but there’s both more and less to it.
First of all, I don’t hate anybody. I hate a lot of things people say or do, but I remain firmly convinced that virtually everyone considers themselves a decent, moral human being, and that most people believe they’re doing the right thing most of the time. This remains true, even when people are dead nuts wrong about stuff and their beliefs are causing suffering and death for others.
I do come closer to true hate when I look at people who deliberately misuse the truth and cause harm for personal advancement. That’s true whether it’s political, social, financial or even just on the petty, personal level. And I have a tendency to include rank, conscious hypocrisy in that mix.
Don’t get me wrong. We’re all hypocrites at least some of the time, myself first and foremost. Human nature is fundamentally inconsistent, and human thought isn’t much better at consistency. I personally place an immensely high value on intellectual consistency, yet I hold a number of mutually or internally contradictory views on a wide range of subjects from the trivial to the critical. But there’s a big difference between the venal sin of human inconsistency and the mortal sin of deliberate dishonesty for personal benefit.
So, to politics, keeping this mental framework in mind.
I moved to Texas in the fall of 1982 to attend college at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time I held a set of poorly-informed, largely liberal, convictions based around the idea that everybody ought to have a fair shot in life, and the best way to ensure that was to use the power of government and society to help everybody up onto a level playing field. (Not so different from the convictions I hold these days, frankly, if anything I’ve slowly radicalized as I’ve aged, but I’m also much better informed.) It was perfectly obvious to me even in 1982 from listening to the Reagan-Carter debates in 1980 and watching Reagan govern that the Republican Party didn’t stand for much I cared about in the way of fairness or opportunity, except to defend continued opportunity for those already well-blessed with it. (Also a conviction which has only deepened as I age.) In effect, my definition of “opportunity” is helping others who haven’t been able to get as far as I have. The conservative definition of “opporunity” seems to be helping those who’ve helped themselves.
UT was rife with Young Republicans, Campus Crusade for Christ, and dozens of other political and religious organizations not very distinguishable from one another to this young liberal. The state of Texas, in general, was as doggedly and blindly conservative as always, a fact well reflected in the reporting, editorial pages and reader/viewer feedback of virtually every media outlet available with the partial exception of The Daily Texan, our campus newspaper, and The Austin Chronicle, our local alternative weekly. The mid-cycle elections of 1982 were rife with party switching, as the Southern Republican realignment was in full swing. We were told over and over again that conservatives had common sense and uncommon courage.
The message everywhere, often in so many words, was that liberals are immoral, foolish, untrustworthy and destructive to American interests. Conservatives are ethical, consistent, with strong moral compasses and common sense. And I had ths pounded into me for years on end. All the while watching the arrant greed, hypocrisy and sheer gall of the Reagan-Bush years flow by, and even more during the Clinton years, when we were lectured endlessly that “character counts” and it was all about the Rule of Law. (Iran-Contra, anyone?)
So while I have no great brief for the Democrats, their party’s nominal values at least somewhat align with mine. And their hypocrisies tend to be personal rather than the institutional schizophrenia of the Republican Party. (For serious, go read the 2008 Republican Party platform, then try to reconcile any of that with GOP governance over the past thirty years. Other than tax cuts and mindless opposition to abortion, it’s as divorced from conservative reality as can be.) Whereas what I see and hear on the conservative side to this day is continuous disparagement and namecalling of me and my values, wrapped in a flag and the putative morality of toxic Christianism.
So I don’t have a hate-on for Republicans, or conservatives. I have a hate-on for most of their rhetoric and many of their deeds, and especially the self-perpetuating myth of the moral superiority and rectitude of conservative positions.
In other words, I have a hate-on for wholesale, for-profit hypocrisy. Especially hypocrisy that is actively destructive to our national interests and undermines our culture — climate change denial, evolution denial and the forced pregnancy movement are all at the root driven by money and interests that don’t actually believe in those causes, but see them as ways to rally millions of reliably passionate votes. If not for deliberately cynical Republican electoral strategies, none of those issues would be significant on the national radar. And these conservative hobbyhorses are profoundly destructive to our society, our national security and our future competitiveness.
And while we’re all hypocrites, having spent years being told by conservatives that I was morally inferior, intellectually inconsistent and ethically unreliable, as well as inherently anti-American for simply wanting people to have opportunities in this life, my sensitivity to the insitutional hypocrisies of your Republican party is beaten firmly into my political bones.
So long as the GOP claims the mantle of “real America” and moral superiority, I’ll call out conservative bullshit often as I can. When you need to rely on arrant rabble rousers and eliminationists like Limbaugh, Beck and Palin to speak for you, you don’t have a meaningful message. Noise does not substitute for signal. Find me some intellectually honest, self-consistent conservatives like Daniel Larison, and I’ll start listening with something other than a lifetime’s irritation.
Tags: Culture, Personal, Politics, Religion
Posted: 5:58 am Mon March 01 2010 | Comments(7) |
[links] Link salad runs and runs to catch up with the sun
How Not To Apologize — Cheryl Morgan on bad behavior. (Not the fun kind, I’m afraid.)
Fallen Princesses — Disney, the morning after… (Thanks to willyumtx.)
Light runners — Language, headlines and the social logic of recordings.
Obvious quacks: the tip of a scary medical iceberg
Right wing slams White House for meeting with atheist ‘hate groups’ — So let me get this straight. If you oppose Christianist bigotry, and support secular freedoms over the narrow, restrictive views of any particular religious sect, you’re a ‘hate group’? Got it, right. Check. This must be why I’m not a conservative. Such logic escapes me.
?otD: Is the sun really the same in a relative way?
2/28/2010
Writing time yesterday: 60 minutes
Body movement: 45 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 8.0 (slept poorly)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a (forgot to weight)
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 5/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Culture, Funny, healthcare, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion
Posted: 11:38 am Sun February 28 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad is buried like a mole in a fox hole
Teaching kids to read from the back of a burro — The biblioburro. Admirable work. (Snurched from shsilver.)
MTA Rip Off — An excellently cranky letter about a ticket. Apropos of that, the somewhat amusing story of my long-ago parking ticket, with extensive ramifications and legal idiocy. I won, but it definitely was not worth the cost.
Brewster Rockit on the threshold for outrage — 386, anyone?
Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ — This makes me laugh. I don’t believe it, but it does make me laugh. PZ Myers explains why the study is bs.
Afflicting the Afflicted — Paul Krugman on the Healthcare Reform summit, and the Republican ideas. While some people would gain insurance, the people losing insurance would be those who need it most. Under the Republican plan, the American health care system would become even more brutal than it is now. And yet ordinary people still vote for them.
The End of the Tea Party — Right-wing populist fads catch our attention — but they burn out quickly. Money shot: “the idea that there is a “conservatism” that is measured, responsible, decent, and worthy of the word is a bit of a myth.” In a word, yes. Hell, in their own words, yes. And no, I really don’t think the Tea Party is going away any time soon. Not til the economy and unemployment get sorted out. I just wish their outrage were based on actual factual information instead of the drumbeat of conservative rhetoric. It would be nice for a start if the Tea Party recognized that the ballooning deficits, the bank bailouts and the foreign wars originated with Bush — a noted Republican and decidedly not a Socialist — and not Obama.
Can We Have Our Electricity Back, Please? — Anti-Chinese pogroms in 19th century Tacoma. I’m particularly struck by The New York Times report on the end, about the utter lack of agency to be found among Tacoma white after the fact.
It’s George Wallace’s GOP Now — Like Wallace and his supporters 40 years ago, today’s conservative populists are long on anger and short on coherence. Money shot: “The history of the modern Republican Party in one sentence: Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller got into an argument and George Wallace won.” A lot of interesting stuff in this one.
Hand Me Down World — Specific examples of the sociopathic lack of empathy in conservative America. Are you proud of your Republican Party?
Rep. Trent Franks: Blacks Better Off Under Slavery — Speaking of sociopathic lack of empathy, guess what party he belongs to? The stupid, it burns. Ta-Nehisi Coates nails it, saying: “This is what happens when your knowledge is capped, and your ignorance is boundless.” Which is not a bad description of the current conservative movement as a whole, especially the Tea Party and the Palinite wing.
Two posts about denialism, climate change and otherwise — Bad Astronmy with links to discussion of denialism. I was struck by this observation. …when faced with overwhelming evidence, Simpson’s lawyers attacked the court process instead of the actual case. That’s exactly how the GOP has opposed HCR, by attacking the process rather than the merits of the question.
?otD: Who is the master of fox hounds?
2/27/2010
Writing time yesterday: 60 minutes
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 (slept decently)
This morning’s weigh-in: 224.4
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Books, Culture, Funny, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Portland
Posted: 8:34 am Sat February 27 2010 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad begins to mourn its golden locks
How Books Are Made — Charlie Stross explains it all to you. This dovetails nicely with my widely-linked recent piece on what my publisher does for me [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]. Go read him. You will learn.
Old Lisbon (Not New Amsterdam) — Strange Maps with an odd bit of centuries old New World fraud.
Hallucinatory Architecture of the Future — A nifty feature from Dark Roasted Blend.
Other Life in the Multiverse? — A crazy cool article from Centauri Dreams for all you skiffy geeks.
Rep. Henry Waxman makes remarks on health-care costs at White House health summit — [Republican Rep.] Paul Ryan has a proposal right now to say that Medicare recipients in the future ought to have just a little voucher, and then they can shop for their own insurance. They can be prudent shoppers. Right. That’s why I have cancer. Because I wasn’t a prudent shopper, like a good conservative. And we know how transparent healthcare pricing is, right, to help me in my prudent shopping? Tell me again about this Republican “plan” for healthcare, because it sure as hell ain’t connected to the medical reality I live in.
?otD: Where is my hairbrush?
2/26/2010
Writing time yesterday: 60 minutes
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.0 (slept well)
This morning’s weigh-in: 225.8
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 4/10
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Books, Cancer, Cool, Culture, health, healthcare, Links, maps, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Science
Posted: 5:36 am Fri February 26 2010 | Comments(3) |
[photos] Your Saturday moment of zen
Your Saturday moment of zen.
Americana at its finest. Eastern Washington state. © 2006, 2010 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: Culture, Photos, zen
Posted: 9:39 am Sat February 20 2010 | Comments(0) |
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