Sunday, July 6, 2008
Obama the reader (8:36 pm)
Salon has a fantastic article on Obama’s literary tastes and what they might mean about him and how he’ll govern. Check it out.
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Wal-Mart - venemous snakes, yes; HIV-awareness, no (7:50 pm)
Two bits of Wal-Mart news to start your day:
1. Rattlesnakes enjoy the Garden Center area of the store - and occasionally bite people there.
2. You’re not allowed to educate people about HIV on the premises.
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Happy Illusion of Independence Day! (6:47 pm)
Last Wednesday, as many, if not most of us, were preparing the brats and brisquet and cooling the Coors, media and non-profits of all shapes and sizes were reporting on a spate of varying stories, the general gist of which can be summed up thusly: privacy in America is (approaching) dead. Having all been reported right before Independence Day, I’m sure they’ve faded away like tracers in the sky from our collective consciousness, so let’s review:
* The BBC reported that a U.S. Court has ruled that “Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube,” a decision that has the good folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation up in arms.
*Value the privacy of your relationship with your doctor? Well, if you’re a woman and you live in South Dakota (or any of the surrounding states) you can kiss that luxury goodbye. Slate reported on “South Dakota’s unbelievable new abortion law,” wherein the government provides an inaccurate, emotionally manipulative, albeit clever, statement that abortion providers in SD must give to any patient seeking an abortion before the procedure begins. You see, women are little children who can’t make private, serious medical and moral decisions on their own - they need to be lectured, belittled, humiliated, and condescended to, as required by state law.
*Who needs warrants? “Tentative Justice Department guidelines, to be released later this summer, would let agents investigate people whose backgrounds — and potentially their race or ethnicity —... read more
posted by Jarrett | start the discussion
Thursday, July 3, 2008
America: Hugest. Country. Ever. (11:37 am)
As we unfurl the patriotic bunting under the 2nd story windows and over-decorate the driveway with our miniature American flags this 4th of July, let us keep in mind that the act of decorating is a good thing, for it is, in its small way, an act of physical exercise. And holy crap does America need it.
The Consumerist reports today on the 2008 state-by-state obesity ratings calculated by CalorieLab, a website that “supplies a calorie calculator for generic foods, nutrition facts for brand name foods, a calorie counter for fast food chains, and nutritional information for table service restaurants.” And the most obese states in the Union are? All deep-fried Southern with a sizable side of Rust-Belt. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the country’s off the hook. See for yourself:
(Chart courtesy of CalorieLab).
Save for Colorado, home of the quite trim David Sirota, and a few others, 1/4 or more of the population of almost every state in our country is obese. I don’t think epidemic is too strong a word.
By the way, in case you’re looking for a way to burn calories that’s a helluva lot more enjoyable than building a float, CalorieLab provides another chart calculating the amount of calories you can burn without ever leaving your bedroom.
posted by Jarrett | 2 comments
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Get Better Soon, Brian! (1:35 pm)
First, the bad news: Brian Beutler, the Media Consortium’s Washington Correspondent (and hence regular ITT contributor), was shot three times last night in a mugging in Washington D.C.
The good news is that he underwent successful surgery last night and is expected to make a full recovery. In typical wryly hilarious Beutler-fashion, his first words post-surgery to Addie Stan, his editor at TMC who he was supposed to file a piece for today, were: “Sorry, I left you high and dry.”
Aside from being an excellent reporter, Brian is also a true mensch, so the staff here hopes that his recovery is as quick and painless as possible. In the meantime, he and his family will be in our thoughts. Get better soon, Brian!
posted by Brian Cook | start the discussion
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Q: Why Is Chris Hayes Like The Wu Tang Clan? (11:14 am)
A: Well, yes, I’m sure he too has admired the Hudson while he’s dustin’, but more to the point, he also knows what it’s like to have wanna-be hacks ridin’ on the jock of a true innovator. To wit, from today’s Washington Post:
The e-mail landed in Danielle Allen’s queue one winter morning as she was studying in her office at the Institute for Advanced Study, the renowned haven for some of the nation’s most brilliant minds. The missive began: “THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO.”
Laid out before Allen, a razor-sharp, 36-year-old political theorist, was what purported to be a biographical sketch of Barack Obama that has become one of the most effective — and baseless — Internet attacks of the 2008 presidential season. The anonymous chain e-mail makes the false claim that Obama is concealing a radical Islamic background. By the time it reached Allen on Jan. 11, 2008, it had spread with viral efficiency for more than a year. …
Allen set her sights on dissecting the modern version of a whisper campaign, even though experts told her it would be impossible to trace the chain e-mail to its origin. Along the way, even as her hunt grew cold, she gained valuable insight into the way political information circulates, mutates and sometimes devastates in the digital age.
It would’ve saved everybody a lot of time (and a superfluous WaPo feature) if, in January, someone had handed Dr. Allen a two month-old copy of the Nov. 11, 2007 issue of The Nation.
posted by Brian Cook | 1 comment
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Southeast Asia’s unwelcome people (8:53 am)
The Hmong people, who mostly reside in Southeast Asia, have long suffered persecution in Laos. In the ’60s and ’70s, many Laotian Hmong collaborated with the CIA to fight the communist Pathet Lao. When the Pathet Lao took control of Laos in 1975, the Hmong were singled out for revenge. Since then, thousands of Laotian Hmong have sought refuge in the jungle and across the border in Thailand. The Thai government, however, does not recognize them as refugees.
Last week, 5,000 Laotian Hmong attempted to march from a Thai refugee camp to Bangkok. Their aim? To draw attention to their plight and Bangkok’s practice of forcibly returning Hmong to Laos. Thai authorities have responded by rounding up thousands of Hmong. On Sunday, 800 Lao Hmong refugees were forcibly returned to Laos by the Thai government, which intends to conduct further repatriations “in the coming days,” according to Medicins Sans Frontieres.
Earlier this month, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the U.S. Congress calling upon the Thai government to stop repatriations and the Laotian government to cease its persecution of the Hmong.
Al Jazeera English has this story on the Hmong refugees’ miserable state:
posted by Mark Berlin | start the discussion
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Truly Unadulterated Good News (2:30 pm)
This New York Times article leaves me speechless:
In a deal that environmental groups said would be the largest ecological restoration in the country’s history, a plan for the state to buy the nation’s largest producer of cane sugar was announced Tuesday by the governor and officials of U.S. Sugar Corporation.
Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, with Robert H Buker Jr., the chief of U.S. Sugar, held up an agreement struck between the state and the sugar producer.
The intention is to restore the Everglades by restoring the water flow from Lake Okeechobee, in the heart of the state, south to Florida Bay. That flow had been interrupted by commercial farming and the Everglades have suffered as a result.
Under term of the tentative deal, U.S. Sugar would continue farming and processing for six more years before closing the business and allowing 187,000 acres of land to return to its natural state. For its part the state would pay U.S. Sugar $1.7 billion.
For a born-and-raised Floridian like myself, I can’t begin to explain how absolutely mind-blowing this news is. Big Sugar’s sordid role in not only destroying the Everglades (by discharging massive amounts of phosphorous), but also actively obstructing any and all real attempts to help the Everglades recover from that devastation cannot be overemphasized. (See this classic and comprehensive Harper’s piece from 1999, for one example, or, for a shorter, but still admirably comprehensive take, this blog post.) From the state’s Everglades Forever Act in the early 90s... read more
posted by Brian Cook | 4 comments
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