At the end of another semester, I decided to kill some time by searching for myself at ratemyprofessor.com.
I didn't see anything from Southwestern, but I did find this tidbit from my time at New Mexico:
Eric Loomis is an easy-going teacher. His lectures are interesting, and he is really enthusiastic about his subject matter. Also, he's totally hot.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
It's sad to know that there is actually one government less competent than the Bush administration: Myanmar. The junta's unwillingness to allow foreign aid workers, leading to the temporary suspension of UN aid, is utterly immoral. Not that the government cares about their people at all. Truly disgusting.
Of course, people have known this about the Burmese government for a long time. Remember, this government faced a major rebellion less than a year ago. With a huge hurricane on top of it, the military are holding on with their fingernails here. But being more than happy to shoot all of their citizens and knowing that the UN is ultimately going to cave strengthens their case.
"Shopkeeper and Tailor, Paramaibo, Suriname, 1839"
This contributes to the blog's new commitment to coverage of all things Suriname.
Well, he's gotten his wish...sort of. The world has gone away for Eddy Arnold, who died today at 89. I won't defend the old country crooners, but he had a good voice and this song is classic stuff.
The 2008 Farm Bill is not compelling reading. It is dense, heavily coded, and exists in at least five versions as a cross-referential nightmare. The bill is, however, extremely important and very contentious this time around. Bush has threatened to veto the bill, arguing (in all Nixonian triangulating splendor) that it over-subsidizes wealthy farmers. To his credit, most analysts that I’ve read seem to agree, but these subsidies are a red herring. The majority of the funds allocated by the bill are earmarked for the Nutrition Assistance Program (the program formerly known as food stamps—the name officially changes with the passing of the ’08 Farm Bill). Changes to the NAP include cost saving measures like switching to an electronic debit card, a base increase of $10 billion over ten years, and more programs to make public school food healthier with food produced locally. My hunch is that Bush isn’t balking at the subsidies, but rather the increase in spending for this vital social program.
The subsidies may need to be revisited at some point, but with food prices soaring and worries about climate change, I’d rather see them just pass the damn bill—it seems the Senate may have the 3/5 majority needed to override Bush anyway.
There is a great overview of the basic issues in the Farm Bill at the NPR website.
Aside from the big issues, I just wanted to point out a few progressive items I feel good about:
Sec. 4210 sets aside $5 million to help Farmer’s Markets purchase the technology to accept the new Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards so that families and individuals in the NAP can purchase foods from Farmer’s Markets. One of the better features of this Farm Bill is the continuing and increasing support for Farmer’s Markets, especially the earmarked monies for areas that don’t currently have them. Farmer’s Markets make a lot of sense from an agricultural standpoint, as well as an environmental and health standpoint.
Sec. 4301 prohibits the state from trying to collect restitution for overpayment in the in the NAP as a result of the State’s error. I’m not sure how big a problem it is, but it gives the states incentive to monitor the program more closely and not call a collection agency on people who, by no fault of their own, received more benefits than they should have.
Sec. 310F describes a program that it intended to help “beginning farmers” purchase land (with a low interest rate and only 5% down). This could be a way for a lot of locally owned, smaller, organic / sustainable farms to get off the ground. I hope people take advantage of it.
And lastly, the Farm Bill is not without a laugh or two. I thought these were funny (which tells you something about the Farm Bill text, and probably too much about me).
(b) Purchase Price- To carry out subsection (a), the Secretary shall purchase cheddar cheese, butter, and nonfat dry milk at prices that are equivalent to--
(1) in the case of cheddar cheese--
(A) in blocks, not less than $1.13 per pound;
(B) in barrels, not less than $1.10 per pound;
Apparently, for all of you pennywise shoppers, cheddar cheese is cheaper by the barrel.
(3) COVERED AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES- Paragraphs (1) and (2) apply to the following agricultural commodities:
(A) Fruits.
(B) Vegetables (other than mung beans)
(C) Wild rice.
There’s a lot of hating on mung beans in this bill. I suspect the National Board of Mung Bean Producers will be all over this (file under: smallest protest ever).
For all of this, the 2008 incarnation of the Farm Bill seems good—and if Bush is opposed to it, I’m more inclined to believe that it is fairly decent. The increase in the more progressively minded initiatives is also likely one of the under reported benefits of a democratic majority; since January 2007, the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture has had a democratic majority and a formidable chairman in Iowa’s Tom Harkin. It at least serves as a reminder that, despite all of the attention on the presidential election, the congressional elections are just as vital to a progressive future.
"I think I'll take up smoking
Though I've never smoked before"
Tom Russell
"What Do You Want"
I've always been extremely uncomfortable with the moralistic overtones of anti-smoking fanatics. I am a non-smoker. But the condescension that non-smokers have toward smokers often makes me angry. To what extent should the government regulate the personal behavior of citizens, particularly when they are not hurting others? Yes, second-hand smoke can be bad, especially for children. But unless you are going to regulate the behavior of adults inside their homes, there is little to be done. Outside of that, second-hand smoke isn't really going to hurt you, unless you are in a band or work in a bar. It's not good for you, but neither are a lot of other things that people don't complain about either. They whine about smelling a cigarette and then drive 50 miles in their SUV through massive air pollution, stopping at McDonald's on the way home where they get everything super sized, and then sit and eat it on the couch while watching "American Idol"
On the other hand, there's little question concerning the lack of morality among tobacco officials. Their product does cause cancer, they knew it, and they didn't care. Should cigarette companies be able to advertise on TV? No, I don't think so. Should they target children through Joe Camel and other cartoon figures? Probably not. So clearly, there is a role for government regulation of legal drugs.
It is much the same with alcohol. While I don't smoke, I certainly do drink. It's hard to look back at the temperance movement without laughing. Yet, while prohibition was a failure, it did reduce Americans' drinking consumption. As Pamela Pennock shows in Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950-1990, the Prohibitionist movement was far from dead after World War II. It pushed for a total ban on alcohol, but knowing that was pretty well impossible, had to settle for reductions on advertising pushed on children.
The problem though with limiting advertising aimed at children is that the assumption remains that alcohol is a bad thing. The problem to me is not with alcohol per se, but with the underlying moralistic assumptions of American culture. The constant moralizing is combined with a consumer culture that undermines those morals and personal desires that shows the hypocrisy of so many Americans. They speak of "family values" and then drink, smoke, take drugs, go to prostitutes, cheat on their spouses, etc.
What if we focused on reforming Americans' attitudes toward pleasure rather than think of it as a bad thing that needs regulation? But I guess that would be swimming upstream against 400 years of American Puritanical moralizing. There's no doubt that anti-alcohol groups have done some good things. In the 1970s, drunk driving was not only extremely common but basically unpunished, even when someone was killed. Only with the creation of MADD and intensive lobbying did Americans begin taking drunk driving as a serious offense. I'm glad that has happened. We should continue to make driving drunk socially unacceptable and punishable by law. But I have to wonder if another way to fight these problems isn't making drinking an acceptable everyday occurrence that would make binge drinking less appealing to younger people, as well as a national investment in public transportation that would mean you could drink all you want and still have a reasonable way to get home without driving.
Pennock's book is an interesting overview of the policy debates taking place in the postwar years over restricting the advertising of tobacco and alcohol. I don't want to get into the details of the book in too great of detail. If you have a scholarly or personal interest in issues of alcohol history like I do, then it is an important book. But it is policy and therefore a bit on the dry side. I do want to focus on a couple of interesting issues she touches upon.
First, these debates mirrored postwar debates over free speech. Different makeups of the Supreme Court led to slightly different interpretations of the protections granted to advertisers and broadcasters over advertising sin. One argument the industries consistently fell back upon was the idea of the slippery slope. Once you start banning ads for alcohol and tobacco, what is next? Why not coffee? Sugary drinks? Anything that could be seen as bad for you might be next? Where do you draw the line? These are important questions for anyone thinking about free speech issues, regardless of their interest in these particular products. It is almost impossible to demarcate what is OK and what is not. Almost inevitably, reformers draw the line wherever they are comfortable, which makes it almost impossible to create lasting legal codes with any sense of logic. My sense is that we should ban very little. Perhaps restricting certain sorts of ads to late night hours works, but in reality it just gives those products an aura of naughtiness about them, which just reinforces the problem of overwrought morality in America to begin with.
Second, Pennock offers useful insights on the increased role of science in these debates. While the temperance movement after World War II was still dominated by aging prohibitionists, few took their arguments seriously. But once scientists began studying the effects of smoking, fetal alcohol syndrome, and other affects of these substances on bodies, the terms of the debate began changing. The moral component largely (but certainly not entirely) fell by the wayside and scientific evidence began to take over the now regulatory rather than prohibitionist movements. I think Pennock makes good points here, though she does overstate Americans' love affair with science in the postwar period (92). Rather, Americans were enamored with technology and the good life. Science brought us those things but we've never had a national love affair with science. Large numbers of Americans opposed to teaching Darwinism, discomfort with the effects of the atomic bomb in the early years of the Cold War, and today's baseless skepticism over climate change are just a few examples of the ambivalent relationship Americans have had with science. Technology we love, science we love only when it serves our desires.
My other big criticism of the book is the lack of focus on illegal drugs, especially marijuana. She tries to cut off this criticism early on by saying that she is interested in legal marketing practices (9). OK, but that is a narrow interest. Why not expand the study to ideas about regulation of drugs more generally and use marketing as a tool to understand these questions? I think bringing a discussion of marijuana to these broader questions would make the book all the more interesting and useful for current political debates. Certainly the kind of prohibitionist rhetoric that dominated the temperance movement continues to play a huge role in debates over marijuana. Plus such a discussion would help expose the absurdity of marijuana restriction, at least in comparison to the far more destructive and legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol.
This just infuriates me:
On Tuesday, after a two-day trial, a jury in Belém, in Pará State, acquitted the man, Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura, of conspiracy in the murder of Sister Dorothy Stang in February 2005.
The trial was the second in which a jury had considered Mr. Moura’s role in the killing. He was convicted and sentenced in May last year to 30 years in prison on charges of ordering the killing of Sister Dorothy, 73, who was a staunch advocate of protecting the rain forest.
Under Brazilian law, a retrial is required for first offenders who are sentenced to more than 20 years. This time, the jury voted 5 to 2 to accept the defense contentions that Mr. Moura had no motive to be involved in Sister Dorothy’s killing and that it had been carried out solely by Rayfran das Neves Sales, who confessed to shooting her and is serving a 28-year sentence.
What a great day to be a Democrat. No, this isn't a shot at Hillary Clinton. But with the race all but over, we can all sit back, think about all the great things that have happened to Democrats in 2008, and plan for the fall.
I must disagree with Trend a bit here. He writes, "As I suspect many people do, I wish this were over - I'm just tired of it." I too was tiring of it all, but with little to be decided, I very much now hope Hillary sticks it out. Why? Because this campaign has been the greatest thing for Democrats in my lifetime. Sure, it's been brutal at times. But Democrats across the nation have been inspired. We've signed up new members in droves. A lot of these people are going to stick around for the general election. People in nearly every state have had a voice. Hopefully, the absurd primary system has been blown up in the process. Clinton is almost assured of winning West Virginia by a large amount. Fine. Then it goes onto Kentucky and Oregon. If it ends officially in Oregon, as many are predicting it will, every state but Montana and South Dakota, as well as Puerto Rico, will have had a chance to vote on their candidate. That's just fantastic.
To top it off, we are looking at a potential landslide in the Congressional elections this fall. You may remember that Dennis Hastert's seat went to the Democrats earlier this spring. Now, the seat for Louisiana's Sixth District, which represents Baton Rouge, went Democratic for the first time since 1974 and we are about to pick up a seat in a special election in Mississippi. If we are winning special elections in Louisiana and Mississippi, where can't we win? Awesome.
The Republicans are completely lost. I died laughing when I heard about the House Republican pep rally scheduled tomorrow to get everyone excited about Bush's policies. Would you all please do this every day? Please remind us all of your president and his amazingly successful policies!
So be happy today, regardless of who your candidate is. We had 2 awesome candidates (well, really probably 4 or 5). Only 1 could win. That is Barack Obama. With lots of hard work, he is going to lead us to a huge victory in the fall, not only for the presidency, but downticket races as well. I can barely contain my excitement.
NPR, amazingly, did a story--actually part one of a two-part series--on young children with gender identity issues. Two six-year-olds, born boys, who at a very young age identified as female.
Of course, I have a wee bit of a problem with the discussion at this point, when it starts to sound like these kids are just playing with dolls and their parents are freaking out, but it turns out that's not the case. Both sets of parents, from the beginning, bought their kids whatever toys they wanted, "girl" toys notwithstanding.
One set of parents, though, decided it was a problem when their 'son' didn't just want to play with dolls, she wanted to be referred to as a girl, and she wanted dresses. So they bought her dresses, but they decided to see a professional, just in case. Thankfully, this family lived in California and found an awesome therapist, Diane Ehrensaft, who encouraged them to let their child live as she wanted to, to refer to her as a her, and to refer to her as transgender, not as "gender identity disordered."
The other family let it go until their child came home one day with a gash on his head from being assaulted on the playground for playing with Barbie. They ended up going to this guy. (Coincidentally, Belledame had this post up just today.) He, of course, convinced them that they should 'train' their son to be a 'boy.' And of course being a boy means not wearing pink, not playing with dolls, playing only with other boys. And it makes the poor kid miserable.
It nearly moved me to tears when the mother described asking her child, who doesn't want to play with the "boy toys" they bought, to draw a boy instead of the girls and rainbows that he draws. He says, "I don't know how to draw a boy," and I nearly started to cry at the dog park.
Gender patterning has infuriated me for a while. I ran my family's bicycle business for three years before heading back to school, and most of our business came from rentals. You can't get a gender-neutral little kids' bike--they're either pink or blue, either girly as hell or super-boyish. But our adult bikes (and even our larger kids' bikes) were all black, yet grown men would still freak out about them being "girls' bikes" because they had the sloping top tube rather than the straight bar. And just imagine what happens when the only kids' bike we had left was the wrong color...oh, no, we can't have that!
So it should go without saying that I was annoyed first by the definition of "girl" and "boy" being limited to pink and blue, and then by this shrink who thinks he can train this child out of thinks he enjoys doing and turn him into a "proper boy" who plays with trucks--and probably becomes exactly the kind of boy who cracks other boys on the head for playing with dolls.
This guy's excuse is that you can't be transgender at that age, that kids' gender identities are fluid, and that therefore the kid can't possibly know his own mind.
Yeah, but what the hell is wrong with the kid being happy? They're not signing him up for sex reassignment surgery just yet, they're just letting him play with the toys he wants and wear the clothes he wants.
The child whose parents let her live as she wants to is happy, well-adjusted, and the most popular kid in school.
The child whose parents force him to be a boy (and have now convinced him that he wants to be a boy, hence my use of the male pronoun) is not happy. He has "a few male friends" but his mother admits that she thinks he's living a split identity.
How the hell is that good for your kid?
Sure, kids can be cruel and they like things defined rigidly and tend to mistreat kids that don't fit their assigned roles. I could tell you tons of stories of things I dealt with when the rumor went around my elementary school that my friend and I were lesbians.
But if your child is happy, as Ehrensaft said, why put her in therapy? When she's depressed and confused, then maybe the time for therapy has come, but if she knows what she wants and is happy with it, why is it so damn important that your kid be forced to play with gendered toys and dress in gendered clothes?
Maybe this kid will grow out of this. Maybe she will live the rest of her life as a girl and never have surgery. Maybe she'll surgically transition. But of all the horrible things that could happen to a child out there, this is hardly one of them.
I was impressed with NPR's coverage, though, except for the reporter's tendency to refer to the child living as female, whose parents use "her" and "she," as "him." On the whole, I thought it was an evenhanded, thoughtful story and they were quite forthright with saying that the child living as female was clearly happier.
Tomorrow is going to be the second part of this series. I'll have to download it.
(Cross-posted at Season of the Bitch)
Would anyone care to be my date for Jenna Bush's wedding on Saturday in Crawford? It's only an hour from my house. Should be a great time.
And we can get wonderful souvenirs like these commemorative plates!
Thomas Nast, "A Civil War Christmas," December, 1863.
The image is much larger if you click on it. The detail is worthwhile.
Scott believes that, in the wake of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries last night, not even the media can avoid that Clinton's chances are virtually nil, and while that certainly appears to be possible (it's a good sign when even the thick Tim Russert is acknowledging as much), I'm not so sure it's a certain thing that the media is going to be giving this "Clinton cannot statistically win" narrative. I woke up this morning to see MSN (the homepage when I open the internet), cnn.com, and the NY Times all with enormous pictures of Clinton on the front, discussing the Indiana primaries. At best, Obama's numerically way more significant win in North Carolina was secondhand news, deserving of no photos and smaller font; at worst, they didn't even mention North Carolina. And all morning (and into the afternoon), CNN's [the network] broadcasts have had three major stories: Clinton in Indiana (and later, the fact that she's loaned herself money); John McCain; and Myanmar. Um, guys? Um....how to put this delicatetly.........wasn't there another Democratic candidate? With a lead in the delegates? And a greater total vote count (excluding the non-election of Michigan)? And more states won? Across a broader swath of society? Who won a state last night? That was bigger than Indiana? And finally - shouldn't you maybe at least pretend not to be a farce and a mockery of journalism by talking about him a little, too?
I have no doubt that some media outlets and television "personalities" may finally be getting it through their heads that, statistically speaking, Clinton is done in terms of primaries. And it's one thing to focus on Clinton first and Obama second (biased? Probably. Defensible? In a way). But to do your stories on Clinton, and then McCain, and then Myanmar, with no mention whatsoever of Obama or North Carolina???? That's....I don't know. Racist? Stupid? Ridiculous? Ignorant? (Insert adjective)?
As I suspect many people do, I wish this were over - I'm just tired of it. But to even pretend to offer "real news" and "objective reporting" and all of that tripe that professional journalists on major news outlets claim to love, and then to pull this kind of garbage, is just ridiculous. You'd think Clinton had a stake in CNN or something. Sheesh....
I've made clear before how stupid I think the Falklands/Malvinas War was, and it's clear through monuments and such that the war and the islands themselves continue to play an important part to at least some sectors of the identities of Argentines.
That said, I find the trashing of over 30,000 school textbooks simply because they said "Falklands" rather than "las Islas Malvinas" ridiculous. Whether Argentina likes it or not, the British state administers the islands, not Argentina, and "claims" on the islands don't undo that fact (though the spokesman for the Islands still comes off as arrogant, too). Wasting paper, funds, and resources to destroy and replace 30,000 books over one name that you don't really like is definitely one of the more ridiculous things to do. Chalk another one up to misplaced nationalism.
In an effort to write more about music, and more in general, I'm going to start writing about particular album every week(ish). It was fun for a while with the random 10, but it isn't easy to write about a random song. Sometimes, I learn a lot but, mostly, it's too much damn work. Instead, I'm going to stop leaving it up to the fates and write on some of my favorite albums, or just whatever the hell I want to when I write the thing. First up was on my ten favorite rock album list from a while back (one year ago yesterday, as it goes), from my favorite metal band and the best rock show I've ever seen, Neurosis' Enemy of the Sun.
Though they would go way farther with their ideas, Enemy of the Sun is the encapsulation of what Neurosis was and what they would become. After their debut, a very standard-issue West Coast punk album called Pain of Mind, they veered closer to metal until their third album (second in 1992) and first for Alternative Tentacles (though that label reissued the first two and made money off them until Neurosis started their own), Souls at Zero. With it, the band threw all the punk aesthetic out the window for slowed down, long-form metal. Not only was their change in sound like I've never heard elsewhere, I'd never really heard a band sound like that before. A year later, they would expand the sound into what became a mind-blowing experience for me.
Enemy of the Sun opens the way its predecessor does: with a vocal sample. Instead of the confusion at the beginning of the former, however, this sets a very particular mood. "Are you lost?" "Yes" and, with that, the drum and bass kick in a slow, natural rhythm while the questioner goes on about the amazing brevity of life. Steve Von Till's vocals come in slowly while the sample fades out, but the lyrics aren't the typical gloom and doom from much of the metal world. Make no mistake, the words are violent and are belted out in screams, but it is the kind of violence that displays the Earth's power over humanity and how easily we are snuffed by the elements. Fire and water are all over the place, but so is the necessity of the harvest and the ever-repeating ritual of life. There is an empowerment and a spirituality in the lyrics that trumps the darkness.
The words aside, these same ideas make the music even better, which is more important to me in almost any realm. The album is a pure wall of sound, heavy as hell, and oppressive as anything I've ever heard. Through this, unlike most bands that came before them, the music lives and breathes. The rhythms change organically as they move through the waves of guitar and the vocals, one singer in frustrated screams and the other in beastial growls, move in line with the changes in the music. To compound it, their extensive use of traditional acoustic instruments, repeated samples and field recordings that, when added into the huge, sludgy, Sabbath-style riffs, add a dimension to the music that I'd never heard in metal before. Beyond the traditional two guitar, bass, and drums setup, of which they make a tight hardcore band, the addition of strings, bagpipes and didgeridoo at various times give the songs a fully orchestrated feel. The samples add contextual weight that obscure lyrics that are difficult to understand never can. The third track, called "Burning Flesh in Year of Pig," is a recording of a report on the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk during the Vietnam War that is accented by noisy tape loops and isn't pretty. Behind everything, in all the silences and through all the noise, is a constant stream of ambient sounds that is trance-inducing. This culminates into the final song, "Cleanse," a thirty minute epic of primal drums, vocals and noise that has many times driven me to a near hypnotic state, never having realized that eighteen minutes have passed it flows together so naturally.
None of this is done as gimmickry, however. While the eight songs average over nine minutes a piece, none of that excessive amount of time is used for noodling. There are no discernible guitar solos anywhere on the album and, while Neurosis is by far not free from pretension, the time is used to build and release tension, not to impress listeners with their prowess. Enemy of the Sun, and Neurosis in general, is a case where the sum is greater than its parts. The album has a feeling of wholeness, like it emerged naturally from the Earth. While this may all sound like some kind of hippie-metal, let me assure you that the album rocks your ass off, even if it takes a little time to get there.
Enemy of the Sun was a revelation for me. With its roots squarely in metal, it found common ground with folk, electronic, and classical to make something really unique. Over the years, they've expanded their sound, taking it farther away from metal and more toward the folk and ambient sides and into strange new places. At this point, I think that their later albums Times of Grace and Through Silver in Blood are far better albums, but Enemy of the Sun will always have the top place in my heart for how wide it opened my eyes to the possibilities of metal.
While we're waiting with bated breath for the returns in Indiana to come in, I thought I'd write a little about sexism in the campaign.
Not the usual bit about sexism in the campaign, of course. That's been done. Yes, Hillary Clinton has faced sexism. (And Racialicious has a great post about sexism and racism in the campaign that you should read.)
Now her supporters are using it against her opponent.
And that, along with the "obliterate Iran" comment, has made me lose any last bit of positive feeling that I had about her possibly being the first woman president.
I blogged before about why my feminism leads me to be critical of Clinton's tactics and to support Obama.
Words have power. And the way they are used tells you something about the person using them. Hillary Clinton is not stupid. When she says "obliterate," she knows the message that she's sending and the person that she's appealing to at least as well as Obama knows what he implies by saying "the claws come out."
And Carville straight-up saying that Clinton has balls is just doing overtly what her campaign has been doing more subtly for months now. While he's at it, of course, he's attempting to emasculate Obama.
Aside from being troubling in its similarity to tactics used by the current administration, this crap bothers me because I feel that it confirms what I've felt all along: Hillary Clinton isn't interested in pulling women up behind her, unless it's when she can say it and get a few votes. She's not out there trying to prove that women can be president. She's out there trying to prove that she's an honorary man and thus gets a pass.
Ariel Levy wrote about this phenomenon in Female Chauvinist Pigs, a book I both liked and found problematic. Levy wanted to site the problems with this phenomenon in "raunch culture," but her strongest arguments were not against raunch itself but against the commodification of sex and against this very "honorary man" phenomenon--hence the title.
Like Margaret Thatcher and many other women leaders, Hillary Clinton spends lots of time trying to prove she's got, as my father says, the "balls for the game." And in an article in The Nation about the Pennsylvania primary, one man at least showed that she'd proved her point.
A construction contractor who gave the name Mike Giordano said he did not watch Obama's speech on race after the Wright controversy broke because "I don't listen to those people. They don't make sense when they talk." And he summed up the presidential contest this way: "They put a senior citizen for President, a woman and a black man. What do you got? Nothing. But that woman's got balls."
Quite an offer W made to help Myanmar after their cyclone. He did such a fantastic job reconstructing New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Why wouldn't the Burmese take advantage of this generous offer!
The thing is, I fully believe that the U.S. will do a better job in Burma than they did in New Orleans. Why? Because helping Myanmar recover serves their policy goals in a way that New Orleans never did. New Orleans was full of black people in a mostly Republican state. Driving them out just made Louisiana a Republican redoubt. Bush has never shown any interest in assisting African-Americans and he sure didn't after Katrina. What survived in New Orleans? Exactly what white people like. Bourbon Street, the French Quarter, the spaces of partying. Turn New Orleans into Disneyland for adults, who cares.
On the other hand, a bigger U.S. presence in Burma would serve the nation's policy interests but undermining the military dictatorship and key ally of China while rebuilding the nation's reputation around the world.
Sorry to be so cynical, but it's not as if the Republicans haven't said all of this themselves.
To begin, I’ll own up to a nasty vice I have: cooking magazines. I subscribe to a ton—some good (Cook’s Illustrated, Saveur), some just shiny ad rags hawking outlandishly expensive designer kitchen baubles and “authentic” $3,500 per person international cooking trips that contain just enough decent recipes to keep my attention. A “Letter to the Editor” in the January issue of Gourmet caught my attention, and I was pleased to find another reader’s pithy retort in this month’s issue. From January:
For those of us who are not enamored of the culture and cuisine of the southern part of the United States, the January 2008 issue was one for the recycle bin. I went from page to page and not once did I crimp a corner to remind me to go back and savor a recipe or an article. Marianne W., Rolling Hills, CA
I particularly like the reply, from Cate M., San Antonio:
I read with interest Californian Marianne W.’s letter concerning the January 2008 issue of Gourmet. In it, she expressed that she is “not enamored” of either the culture or the cuisine of the South. I am tempted to say that I am not enamored of the consumerism, superficiality, and pollution found in Southern California, but instead I will just say, bless her heart.
I love the response—well-deserved and very apt (and so Texan). But I’d like to look a little more at M-Dub from the 310. First, for some background about Rolling Hills, CA: the city’s website states that “Rolling Hills is a private, gated community located atop the scenic hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula”. Got it. For those of you unfamiliar with Palos Verdes, here are some quick facts: median family income of $133,563, 78% White, 12% Asian, 3% Hispanic, less than 1% African-American, currently nine homes for sale in the city; the cheapest will set you back $1.98 million. So that’s where she’s coming from. Here’s what she could have written:
I’m not a fan of Southern cuisine, so I was a little disappointed that the whole January issue was devoted to it. I hope that in the future you decide to have at least some variety of recipes and articles in your themed issues.
But she didn’t. The opening of her letter is rather striking (for those of us), as it serves to create a sense of invisible majority behind her coming statements. No me’s, I’s, or one’s here; it is a strongly implied plural for which she speaks. Further, the author is “not enamored of” Southern cooking, and specifically adds Southern culture to the cuisine. Slightly anachronistic usage aside, the tone seems intended to imbue her prose with an air of heightened discourse (not unlike the present writing, granted), clearly with an eye to capitalize on the phrase’s ability to privilege her in the discursive hierarchy. That she calls out the culture as well as the food is particularly telling. My favorite part of her little epistle is “the southern part of the United States”. Not the South, the Southeast, Southern cooking (or, perish the thought, Southern cuisine)—the southern “part”. By being only a “part”, it is reduced to lacking a sense of regional cultural autonomy, diminished in stature. I would posit that she wouldn’t elect to use “the northwestern area of the country” rather than the “Pacific Northwest”. Rounding out the subtly haughty California missive, she does not pass up the opportunity to brandish her moral superiority and contempt once more: she doesn’t just throw the magazine out, she recycles it.
This is all slightly tongue-in-cheek, but does speak to real issues regarding the class divide. My hunch is that Marianne self-identifies as a liberal and as such, considers those red states in the “southern part of the United States” to be backwards and unsophisticated in comparison to the southern part of California. Of course, this is a wealthy R+6 congressional district, so I may be off on that, and I may be giving her too much credit by not bringing up the obvious racial implications of all of this. In any event, I thought it was an interesting exchange from a strange source.
Both Erik and I have made my opinions on favela-tourism clear before, and like Randy, I fully believe that this is still exploitive. But two comments on this story. First, the fact that tourists' lives are suddenly in danger because they are meeting armed narcotraficantes face-to-face is absurd. Quite honestly, if there is any danger (and there probably is - tourists don't know when rival gangs or the police are going to invade a favela, resulting in a gun-battle), tourists have been exposed to it for years. When I first went to Brazil in 2005, some British tourists were telling me how they did this favela tour, and saw three kids walking by with M-16s, and their tour-guide said that they were all under 20, and that one of them was one of the top men in the drug gang, had already killed over 20 people, and was still a teenager. So any notion that there is a new element of danger simply because now tourists can meet these people face to face is ridiculous. The danger's always been there.
Secondly, while I again think the whole practice of favela tourism is disgusting and exploitative, the company owner is right on this:
The tour company has been accused of glamorising criminal activity.
But the unrepentant owner of the agency involved says the presence of armed men in the favelas is the fault of the authorities, and they should clean up their own act before starting to criticise him.
Between the tragic Kentucky Derby, the baseball season, and the Boston Celtics being stretched to 7 games this weekend, a major news item flew under the radar.
Julio Franco, playing in the Mexican league, has retired from professional baseball at 49 years of age.
I'm actually fairly sad about this. Franco played for my beloved Cleveland Indians in the 80s, and the first teams I remember had him on their roster. I have bunches of his baseball cards. Unlike just about anybody else, I could look at him and say, "a guy that played for my team when I first remember baseball is still around." And he was the only player who was still playing whose baseball card I had. I also just loved that he was still around, playing on his own terms. I was really hoping he'd make it to 50 - I just thought it would be wonderful to have a major-leaguer who was 50, even if he was a bench-warmer. Alas, for whatever reasons, Julio Franco has retired, and with him goes one of the final good bits of my childhood that was still present. But a little nostalgia is nothing next to a good career. And maybe he'll become a coach, now....
Well, I'm finally finished with this semester's hellish load of coursework and I suppose it's time for me to finally write a post here.
I'm the new token female. No, seriously, I blog a lot about feminism and women's issues, and I will be bringing some of that with me, as well as a sick, twisted addiction to our political process and a certain amount of media criticism.
About me: I'm working on a master's in journalism in Philadelphia, I'm unhealthily obsessed with Nick Cave, I've been an Obama campaign volunteer since the winter, and I'm writing a thesis on missing white girl syndrome in the news.
My other blog is here, if you care to check it out. I'll try to come up with something coherent soon.
I hadn't planned on writing about soccer-star Ronaldo having (mistakenly) picked up some transvestite prostitutes. It just didn't seem relevant. I really don't care what Ronaldo (or anybody else) does or does not do in his spare time, and hadn't thought the story was really worth writing about. So he apparently picked up a couple of prostitutes, only to discover they were transvestites. Embarrassing for him, yes, but who cares? Prostitution is legal in Brazil, so he wasn't doing anything illegal. And not to put too fine a point on it, but picking up transvestite prostitutes with ease in Brazil is well within the realm of possibility - they often gather in places like Copacabana, and are not too hard to find in Lapa on any given night, and the fact that many have facial hair removed via lasers or even have surgical procedures to remove their Adam's apple can lead to some confusion, I suppose. Certainly there must be more important things going on in Brazil, right? Why would I blog about this?
Well, I wasn't going to. But the New York Times writeup hits upon something important in this - the media's obsession with this story (and stories like it).
But not all of Brazil’s soccer fans seem ready to forgive and forget. Reports of Ronaldo’s wild night, which ended around 8 a.m., have become Page 1 news here.
To be clear, the criticism he is facing is nothing compared with the media frenzy that would probably have erupted in other countries where prostitution is illegal — and sexual mores more rigid. Still, the fact that Ronaldo’s misadventure has been front-page news here for several days — and that some cartoonists and blogs have made him the butt of jokes, even as other commentators have said his behavior is unbecoming of a role model — is evidence that soccer stars are held to a different standard.
The venerable bastion of free* market capitalism, the Investor’s Business Daily, has come to the defense of John McCain against those that would paint him as a big spending quasi-liberal (apparently, some people actually think of him this way). The following article makes the case that he isn’t (he really isn’t).
* “free” until risky speculation causes you to lose your ass… then the government can bail your corporation out, as long as you aren’t a single mother or disabled veteran.
The nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union has compared spending proposals of the various candidates and found that while McCain's proposals for new federal outlays come in at under $7 billion a year, Clinton's total exceeds $226 billion and Obama's tops $307 billion.
McCain's ideas include spending $5.4 billion over three years for elementary and high school scholarships for disadvantaged children, $280 million over five years to let families buy health insurance across state lines, and $5 million over five years for development of electric auto batteries.
Item 1: $5.4 billion for scholarships sounds great, given the way federal student loan programs have been fundamentally changed over the past few years—the decrease in interest subsidies for these programs has made interest rates skyrocket for federal loans. If I may inject some anecdotal evidence—my wife’s student loans from her undergrad in the late 90’s are locked in a 2%. The ones I took out for my doctoral degree over the past few years are at 6.8%.
Given the drastic change in affordability of credit for education, the $5.4 billion is welcome. But read the sentence again—“for elementary and high school scholarships for disadvantaged children”. I think this might denote scholarships for elementary and high school students to attend other elementary and high schools, which amounts to a federal voucher system couched in more palatable terms. Vouchers are wildly unpopular, and remain a part of the GOP platform that even many conservatives don’t support.
Item 2: McCain’s healthcare plan is… well, see my post from last week. Buying insurance across state lines is part and parcel of the idea that increased competition will somehow force the insurance cabal to lower prices. If you believe this one, we should talk about that $10 million in my Nigerian bank account again.
Item 3: McCain, savior of the environment, climate change warrior, and leader of energy policy reform: $5 million over five years for electric auto batteries. A whole $1 million a year. That’ll go far. To invoke my good friend Sator Arepo, “Wow. Just, wow.”
So the IBD goes on to rail against the massive spending proposals by Senator Clinton and Senator Obama, which apparently are considered egregious. These include:
$113 billion for Healthcare (Clinton)
$20 billion for education, including pre-K programs (Clinton)
$2.3 billion for welfare and foster-care proposals (Clinton)
$32 billion over 20 years to rebuild the Gulf Coast (Obama)
$15 billion in energy, environmental and agriculture programs (Obama)
$60 billion over 10 years for infrastructure reinvestment (Obama)
Addressing energy policy, food supply, health care, infrastructure, education, rebuilding the Gulf Coast... those sound like things the government should do. John McCain is basically espousing a carbon copy of the Bush-era domestic policy: destroy what you can and sit around with your thumb up your ass on the rest. No thanks, John.
MSN has an interesting exercise up about 10 "classic" movies that it dubs "unclassics." I have never even seen a few of the movies on the list (I never even realized people considered Love Story a classic), and with others (Easy Rider) , it's been so long that I'd have to re-view them to consider whether I think he has a point, and I'd rather spend time seeing movies I haven't seen than seeing movies I have seen over again. Still, some of David Fear's choices make a lot of sense (like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, which I believe Pauline Kael called "the best movie of 1957." Ouch).
I fully agree, though, with Gone With the Wind. Is there a more overrated movie out there? I saw this maybe 10 years ago, in the midst of my "classic movie" phase, and I just didn't get it. First, I simply can't stand the pure melodrama of stuff like that (it's the same reason I stay away from novelas). Women ranting and raving ("I don't know nuthin' about birthin' no babies!" or "I shall never go hungry again!", anybody?) is not good acting to me, nor is Clark Gable's...um...style. I've heard defenders say, "well, that's how it used to be back then! Those were great performances!", and maybe that was what was considered great back then, but that wasn't the standard for acting. Citizen Kane, Casablanca, and a lot of the early film noirs were nothing like that, and they were (and are) still great acting performances. The way Vivien Leigh in particular goes through that film may have been common, but that doesn't mean it's great - are we going to look back 30 years from now to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and say, "well, that's how a lot of women performed then, so it's a great performance!" I doubt it. And we all know Leigh definitely had the chops in her to put on a far more fierce and realistic (if still highly emotional) performance, a la A Streetcar Named Desire. Sure, the sets are impressive, even for their time, but it's not like Holywood hadn't done big-scale before.
I just never got the hullaballoo for Gone with the Wind. I'm sure there are others I'd add to the "unclassic" category (though none spring to mind right now, but hey, I just woke up). Still, I think at the end of the day I'd still have Gone with the Wind as my #1 "Unclassic" movie.
I am interested in this story of Daniel Ortega's Citizen Power Councils. The Nicaraguan opposition claims that he is creating a dictatorship through the CPCs, which are funded by Venezuela. There is really no accountability for the money and it's pretty clear that Ortega is building the Sandinista movement through this funding.
I'm less interested in the fear mongering over Ortega. On one level, I'm pretty uncomfortable with Ortega generally and the potential for corruption and for skirting the apparatus for government is obvious. It's clear that Nicaragua is still deeply affected by the Cold War civil wars. Both sides seem to operate through this framework.
What's more interesting to me though is the fact that Ortega is using this money to help the poor. And his opponents have never had any plan to help the poor and still apparently don't. Much of this money is going for microloans and food supplies. It is legitimate that the conservative opposition doesn't like Ortega's methods. Less acceptable is their clear indifference to helping the people. For all the criticisms leveled at Ortega and Hugo Chavez, I think the opposition must come up with a real plan to help the poor. If they don't like the CPCs, how are they going to pave roads? How are they going to provide food? How are they going to give and administer microloans? The conservatives had 15 years after the fall of the Sandinistas to fix some of their issues with poverty and they did virtually nothing. They didn't even really try to. So I have a hard time taking their opposition seriously, even if they aren't all wrong.
In the years after the Cold War, foreign policy took a backseat in the minds of many Americans. Of course, the United States was involved in the world--NAFTA, the first Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, etc. But with the exception of the Gulf War, the nation's people tended to be wary of foreign engagement outside of the realm of trade. It seemed that the United States had won the Cold War and, more broadly, won control over the world. Francis Fukuyama notoriously claimed that we had reached "the end of history." Now we could trade and travel around the world. Who could stop the obvious superiority of American free market capitalism? And when obstacles did stand in our way, we did our best to cover our eyes and ignore what was going around us. We were reticent to enter Bosnia and only did so after hundreds of thousands of people were dead. We never made a national commitment to Somalia and pulled out after the disastrous Battle of Mogadishu. We ignored the genocide in Rwanda entirely. We chalked the first attempt to blow the World Trade Center up to a few crazy extremists and went on our merry way.
Of course 9/11 changed all of that. Some change was inevitable after that date, but the incompetent ideologues running the country made the transformation all the more painful and unnecessary. The rise of China threatened American economic power, along with rising oil prices and the falling dollar. The pointless Iraq war brought America's international prestige to a point as low as in the doldrums of the late 1970s. Perhaps most importantly, Americans have had to engage the world in a way we thought we had left behind after 1991. Whereas 15 years ago, we thought the world was our oyster, now we feel besieged in a world of hostile religions, growing rivals, and saddled with a declining economy.
Not surprisingly, this new world is leading to interesting new books on U.S. foreign policy. One of the leading recent works is Michael H. Hunt's The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained & Wielded Global Dominance. Providing a long overview from early American history to the present, Hunt does a fantastic job of showing how the U.S. became the global hegemon and how it has always existed in a world not of its own making.
A major point here is that the United States is not exceptional. American exceptionalism has long been a major national myth. Hunt demonstrates how American expansionism largely mirrored that of Europe except that our 19th century conquests came on our own soil. In the 20th century, our attempts to dominate the world were really little different than those of Britain, France, or the Soviet Union. In my view certainly, the sooner these ideas about American exceptionalism can be destroyed, the better off the nation will be and I appreciate Hunt's efforts toward this goal.
Hunt also does a fantastic job of emphasizing the importance of U.S. culture in pushing foreign policy. From Coca-Cola to automobiles to movies, U.S. cultural products have arguably done more to both push American interests and to alienate our enemies than anything accomplished in the State Department or the White House. This sort of cultural foreign policy history is traditionally understudied, though that has changed significantly in recent years. Pairing the Velvet Underground and Frank Zappa with Robert McNamara and Walt Rostow to understand America's foreign policy in the 1960s not only expands our definitions of U.S. foreign policy, but also makes a lot of historical sense.
Hunt discusses many interesting points that I don't have to go into in detail. He shows the complicity of the Republican Party in the rise of European fascism in the 1920s and 30s, detailing how happy U.S. companies were to invest in Mussolini's Italy and how J.P. Morgan became Mussolini's leading financial advisor on international issues. (100), how the United States help doom democracy in the developing world by practicing the slogan "Better for freedom to come slowly than risk disorder" (232), and showing compelling evidence that dismisses the Republican myth that Reagan won the Cold War (263).
Finally, Hunt places the U.S. war in Iraq in historical and global context. He minces no words. Among other attacks, when describing Bush's foreign policy, he writes, "A macho streak that was part of Bush's Texas ethos and compensated for a lifetime of underachievement may have at this point [after 9/11] come into play" (279). The Bush administration has created one of the great disasters of American history, one that threatens America's hegemonic position in the world. Hunt questions the durability of American hegemony, suggesting that it is difficult for nations to retain their position at the top. We may be seeing this now. The decline of the dollar, America's extreme susceptibility to oil prices, the rise of China and India, the failure of the United States to succeed in Iraq or Afghanistan, and global warming may all be threatening the United States' ability to navigate a tricky world successfully.
I definitely recommend this well-written overview of U.S. foreign policy for anyone interested in the issue. This challenging book forces the reader to question the role of the U.S. in the world and made this reader at least wonder about the future of this nation and of the world.
Those lousy liberals are coming after your… e-mail? This is from John McCain’s official campaign website:
John McCain Will Ban New Cell Phone Taxes. John McCain understands that the same people that would tax e-mail will tax every text message – and even 911 calls. John McCain will prohibit new cellular telephone taxes.
I heard that if you flash your bright lights in your car at night someone will shoot you, because it’s a gang code. Oh, and I also heard that Bill Gates is giving away $10,000 for every time you forward this e-mail… And, wait, wait, I heard that car thieves are using your VIN# to make duplicate keys and that Obama is a Mormon or he's from Muskegon or something….
If you believe this bullshit from McCain, please contact me. I have $100 million in a Nigerian bank account I would like to share with you.
By chance this week, I watched When the Levees Broke in my Hurricane Katrina in Historical Perspective class and then No End in Sight at home. These two films are great documents to show the historical incompetence of the Bush administration. Plenty of people have talked about both films so I won't go into much detail here. But I think watching them back to back is extremely powerful.
When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is possibly the best documentary I have ever seen. That's a strong statement I know. But that film has unbelievable power. It's actually not that great for discussion I think, or at least it wasn't with me leading it, because it is just too overwhelming. After each of the 4 episodes, one just feels completely devastated. Michael Eric Dyson, in his book about Katrina, Come Hell or High Water, explores Kanye West's assertion that George Bush doesn't care about black people. Essentially, Dyson says, that regardless of Bush's actual feelings toward African-Americans, he doesn't care about them as a political group. That disinterest dominated hurricane relief efforts. As we all know, relief was slow and inadequate and hundreds if not thousands of people died as a direct result. In the aftermath, Bush was conducting fundraisers and talking about Iraq, Cheney was hanging out on his ranch in Wyoming, and Condi was shopping. None of them cared. Today, Hurricane Katrina relief funds are running out with most of the city not yet rebuilt and much not even cleaned up. Nothing more is coming either. Disgusting.
Watching No End in Sight only reinforced When the Levees Broke. Again viewing the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the multiple ways the Bush administration sabotaged their own war through ideology, contempt for the Iraqis, inexperience, incompetence, disinterest, malfeasance, and idiocy. While I still believe that it is a very hard case to make that this administration is the worst in American history, it sure is awfully close and I pray the worst in my lifetime. Because I don't want to live through something worse.
I was thinking about Fahrenheit 9/11 after watching these films. The problem with that movie is the conspiracy theory aspect to it. Why focus on conspiracy theories when this administration has done so many horrible things that are easily documented and clear to the public? Accusing it of conspiracies almost serves its interest because it draws attention from their actual evil.
Kudos to the store BJs (unfortunate name there) in Jacksonville for not allowing one of their employees to park his truck in their employee parking lot so long as he insists on flying the Confederate flag on it. They claim to be protecting the rights of other workers and I think that is absolutely right. Flying the Confederate flag is akin to flying the Nazi flag, or at least to the flag of apartheid South Africa. You can't ban those symbols but you can enact a high social cost for flying them.
The guy flying it is now walking a half-mile into work and says that he will give up his job before taking down his flag. North Florida--home to America's best and brightest.
For some reason, William Sparrow, the editor of the Asian Sex Gazette, has an occasional column at Asia Times Online. I suppose I should expect this from the editor of such a fine publication, but Sparrow's piece today was particularly loathsome.
Sparrow argues that women are gaining power in Asian countries while still recognizing the proper differences between men and women. The first part of the equation may well be true. Women do seem to be playing a bigger role in the public sphere at least in many Asian countries. But for Sparrow and other white men who go to Asia for the women, women's sexual prowess is their ultimate value. Those differences for Sparrow are about sex.
For Sparrow and his ilk, feminism has always been a repudiation of sex, despite the vast amount of feminists who no one could legitimately ever accuse of being opposed to sex. He writes: "I've heard countless men expressed how nice it is to be somewhere that they can tell a woman that she is "beautiful" or "sexy" and have it taken as a compliment rather than a lawsuit." Yes, in my experience, men who say these things are often total fucking assholes who claim that they are just telling women how beautiful they are. In reality, they may be going way over the line, sexually harassing women in really bad ways.
When I lived in Asia in the mid 90s, I knew men who had come to Asia for the women. They said things like this all the time. And you know what? They had almost no respect for women at all. Many seemed to outright hate women. They liked Asia because there one could supposedly find a submissive woman that would have sex whenever you wanted and not talk back to you. They wanted the myth of the patriarchal past, when men dominated the household and the bedroom.
Sparrow also talks about "angry feminist protests in the West - the type typified by anti-male rhetoric ("Use condoms or beat it") and signs about male oppression ("Keep your laws off my body") and empowerment ("Riots not diets")." Funny, I've hardly seen any anti-male rhetoric in years, at least among anyone under the age of 50. I guess demanding safe sex means that you hate men. Huh. Also, fighting for abortion rights is hardly the same as being "angry" about "male oppression." And I guess women's empowerment sucks or something. What a jerk.
Sparrow's views about feminism become crystal clear when he reports on what one female working at a Bangkok bar thought about his description of western-style feminism. Her response: "Do women in your country - these 'feminists' - actually do what you're saying? (bold face added)" she asked. "[They] get angry for men looking at sexy women? They cut off their hair, don't wear make-up and dress like men?"
"No wonder [foreigners] like Asia so much."
Hmmm...so for Sparrow, all feminists hate men and sex. Really? Because most of the feminists I know talk way more about sex than I ever do. They quite often wear makeup. They rarely "dress like men," whatever the hell that even means today. I guess Sparrow hasn't been in the United States since 1975.
It's also worth wondering, as is often the case in some Asian countries and certainly in Thailand, if these female bar workers he talked to were also sex workers. Naturally, we don't know that from the article.
Sparrow's attack on those man-hating feminazis totally ignores the real oppression that many Asian women face. We'll leave the sex industry out of this. Domestic violence is an epidemic in many Asian countries. When I lived in South Korea, you saw women with black eyes way too often. They had a saying that was something like (and to get this you have to know that it references some sort of fish dish where you pound the fish) "Women and fish need to be beaten twice a week." I was teaching elementary school teachers English at that time, preparing them to teach their kids. So I brought this up to them. They were mortified that I knew this. I got called into the state education board the next day and was asked why I was teaching communism. The reaction against me telling them that beating women was wrong was sharp and swift.
But I guess issues like domestic violence, not to mention unequal wages, rape, high rates of childbirth, and the rising tide of fundamentalism don't play a role in Sparrow's ideal Asian feminism. Rather, Sparrow is much more comfortable with women who are just happily pro-sex. What else matters? He closes with an appeal to support feminist NGOs, but it really feels like a non-sequiter thrown on by an editor to make the piece more palatable.
The venerable baseball anthem Take Me Out to the Ball Game was registered in the U.S. copyright office one hundred years ago today (the same year in which the Chicago Cubs won their most recent World Series).
The song as we know it is actually the chorus from a vaudeville song by Albert Von Tilzer (music) and Jack Norworth (lyrics). The two verses center on the story of Katie Casey, a young woman with baseball fever who gave umpires hell, knew all of the players, and would rather see a baseball game than a show.
For a fun musical challenge, try singing the song starting on the second word "Me out to the ball game take, Me out to the crowd buy. (etc.)" It's really difficult, but a cool party trick.
Today, this stupid sign is five years old. Good for it...kindergarten is an awesome time, enjoy it little buddy.
Since I was never sure which mission had actually been accomplished, I'm just going to assume that it still is. Good Job!
Via Brian at Incertus, we have the worst album covers ever. Some of these are freaking awesome. I was sure one of those extra-cheesy Al DiMeola covers from the 70s would make it, but they get so, so much worse.
Why can't Italy get over its fascination with fascism? First, they reelect Silvio Berlusconi, who responds by saying, "We are the new Falange."
Now, there is this:
Italy's new parliament met for the first time yesterday with applause for Rome's mayor-elect, Gianni Alemanno, a day after followers celebrated his triumph with straight-arm salutes and fascist-era chants.
5 years ago today, a bunch of kittens were born under my house in Albuquerque. My ex-wife decided to gather up all 8 of them (there were 2 litters, born at the same time) and adopt them out. We ended up keeping this one. I got him in the divorce. His name is Torvald. Today, he gets birthday pets.
"Another American Aviation Achievement." Cartoon from the Louisville Courier-Journal, July 21, 1927.
The cartoon depicts the Battle of Ocotal, where US invading forces killed more than 300 Nicaraguans in what was the first example of an air attack directed from the ground.
