Archive for February, 2009
  When baseball resumes in Moundville this year, it will do so after a 22-year rain delay.
In the intervening years, the town has reinvented itself around the rain. Homeowners have rigged giant sheets of plastic, like umbrellas, over their homes. Officials have constructed a series of canals around the town to siphon off water. Townsfolk have to go to the giant gymnasium if they want a rain-free place to exercise.
And the town itself has even earned a new nickname: Mudville.
The world is a whole lot cozier for Mudville’s creator, author Kurtis Scaletta. Full story »
Two weeks ago, I published a post that claimed that the U.S. had offshored just over 18% of its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. I was wrong – it’s only 15%. The problem was in how I calculated the CO2 emissions of other countries. Instead of using actual estimates of CO2 emissions (publicly available at the Energy Information Administration), I used market exchange rates and purchase power parity (PPP) exchange rates, and so added a significant source of error that made the percentage vary from 18% (for market rates) to 10% (for PPP rates).
I realized that there was a way to make the results independent of the currency exchange rate, and that’s how I generated the graphs below. Full story »
In an article titled Two-Thirds of Hispanic Women Discover Breast Cancer Themselves at U.S. News & World Report on Thursday, Feb. 5, Amanda Gardner writes:
Two-thirds of breast cancers in Hispanic women are detected by a self-exam, while only 23 percent come to light through a mammography and another 6 percent through a clinical exam. Yet screening mammography rates were 83 percent among U.S.-born Hispanic women and 62 percent among non-U.S.-born Hispanic women.
That Hispanic women are both receiving mammograms and beating mammography to the punch with self-exams is encouraging, especially considering the often poor education of the non-U.S.-born subgroup. However, there’s more to the story. . . Full story »
Dew Drop
I sat down to read one morning and noticed this drop of water. It was on the partially unfurled blossom of the Peace Lily plant.
 Our illustrious leadership is haggling over the super-sized bailout like it was the end of the world. My god, do you know how much money we’re talking about? Actually, i do. It’s roughly equal to what the Department of Defense spends every year. And for those kind of duckets we get our ass kicked by guys wearing dress shoes without socks. To make matters worse, we’re going stone broke in the process of losing to pick-up teams. We can call ourselves the Harlem Globetrotters all day long but that don’t make it so. I have no use for the American Empire, but if an Empire it shall be does it have to be such a half-assed failure of an empire?
Full story »
 Parts I and II of the “Ministry of Truth and Peace” series described the Pentagon propaganda program that the Department of Defense inspector general didn’t judge to be a propaganda program because he couldn’t find a definition of “propaganda.” Part III examines how one retired military media analyst made a killing from our woebegone war on terror.
Retired military media analysts aided the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign in support of the Bush administration’s wars for a variety of reasons. The analyst with the broadest motivations was undoubtedly retired Army four-star Barry McCaffrey, who exemplified the confluence of Big War, Big Bucks, Big Message, Big Brother and the Big Schmooze in the new American century. Full story »
A poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in early January says that, of the priorities listed in the poll, “dealing with global warming” was dead last, with only 30% of respondents declaring it a “top priority.” This was below other issues such as the economy, jobs, fixing Medicare, crime, and the environment. But as is so often the case with polls, the devil is in the details and the methodology. For example, climate disruption is certainly an environmental issue, yet the issues are polled separately. And when you broaden the poll results beyond just the “top priority” category to include “important but lower priority,” global warming attracts support of 67% of the poll’s respondents. Full story »
You’ve likely, at some point in your life, been in the company of someone who says something akin to, “I don’t give money to panhandlers. They’re just going to spend it on drugs and/or booze.” “They do this for a living. That man probably just bungs it in a savings account at the end of the day.” “They’re bums. They failed at life. They don’t deserve my hard-earned money.”
Or, maybe, this person is you.
I grew up listening to countless versions of the ideology of “Son, we don’t reward failure.”
You have to hold your own. You have to work hard and carry your weight. You have to straighten up and fly right. You have to contribute something to get something back.
You don’t want to live in some welfare state where people get rewarded for being bums.
Well, guess what: We’ve got it.
Full story »
Today is the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that famously became known as “the day the music died.”
For those not consigned to the generational hell that is Baby Boomerdom, on this day 50 years ago a small plane carrying three important rock stars of their time – Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. “Big Bopper” Richardson – crashed in a snow storm.
All three men died, as did the pilot, a 21 year old with, evidently, about 30 minutes of flying experience.
There has been much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over the years due to this event. Full story »
In a June 1st, 2003 article by Catherine O’Mahony, published by The Sunday Business Post Online, Joey Mason, founder and managing director of Eumom is quoted as saying,
“This is really going to make us a player. For advertisers, we want to get higher quality interaction with the women they are targeting. We want them to be able to choose when and how they speak to their target customers.” He further says, “We know we are a new kid on the block and that we need to prove ourselves.” (emphasis added)
Where will Mr. Mason’s firm be a player? In 2003 Eumom was awarded a three year contract worth at least €2.4 million to provide promotional materials to Dublin’s three maternity hospitals. Eumom replaced the 25 year veteran Bounty Euro RSCG.
Full story »
 I come before you this morning with a morality play, a modern-day American fable. I’d call the following, which made its way to me a few days ago, a true story, but since I wasn’t actually present I suppose I can’t swear to its accuracy. I will say that the source is someone I have come to respect and trust, and I believe that what I am about to relate is, in fact, true, even if the facts are off an inch or two in places. So I’ll change the names to protect myself from malevolent whores litigious types and leave you to decide if it all seems plausible.
Meet Danielle Jones
My source is a woman we’ll call Anne. Full story »
Buy the ticket, Take the Ride
 Part I described how the Pentagon’s use of retired military media analysts to funnel propaganda through the mainstream media fit into a larger operation aimed at rewriting history as it happened.
On January 16, the Friday before Barack Obama’s inauguration, the Defense Department inspector general released the report of an investigation of the Pentagon’s Retired Military Analyst program. The report stated that, “the evidence in this case was insufficient to conclude” that the program had “violated statutory prohibitions on publicity or propaganda,” because “the definition of propaganda in this context remains unclear.”
Miriam-Webster OnLine defines propaganda as “the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person.” In April 2008, an in-depth investigation by the New York Times revealed that the RMA program had employed retired military officers in a “campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.”
So all that really remains unclear in this context is why the I.G. didn’t look up the definition of “propaganda.” Maybe that was outside the scope of his investigation. Full story »
 “To my wife, who read all the drafts of my book. I am the lucky beneficiary of not only her wise editorial comments, but her loving encouragement.”
“To my husband, whose generosity of spirit enables him to laugh at the irony that my writer’s solitude has imposed a life of solitude on him too.”
Ever notice how many volumes of poetry and prose these days are bookended by gushing dedications and acknowledgments like the fictional examples above? Writers outdo themselves in expressions of gratitude to their loved ones for their help and patience. It’s as if we’re in the midst of a golden age of support — emotional anyway — for writers. Full story »
 An adept asked his master, “I have finished my breakfast, what shall I do?” “Wash your bowl” was the reply. To eat in a Zen monastery is both sustenance and ritual. Like the tea ceremony’s elevation of the mundane to the sublime, it becomes the prayer rather than being prefaced by the prayer. Simple fare served under the rule of take what you’ll eat and eat what you take. And when your meal is finished, wash your bowl. First you pour a small amount of water onto your plate and carefully scrape the plate with the edge of your spoon; then you pour the water from the plate to your bowl and repeat the scraping. Finally, you drink the wash water. If all this seems like a waste of time it’s because you’re missing the point.
Full story »
 I was talking to Jesus the other day and the subject of the Super Bowl came up. Oh, I know what some of you are thinking – this guy talks to Jesus? Right. But just because I play for another team now doesn’t mean I’ve shunned all my former teammates. You think Ken Whisenhunt doesn’t still talk to people in Pittsburgh?
So yeah, we talk. I’ve even applied for a couple jobs up there over the years.
Anyway, I asked Him who He was pulling for. He’s a big sports fan, obviously (“I created sports, remember?”), but tries to stay neutral. This year is a little different, though: “I’m pulling for the Steelers.” I was a little shocked, so I asked why. Full story »
 Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link)
Shashank Bengali, McClatchy News, Israel’s destruction of U.S.-style school shocks Gazans:
“It seems that targeting our school . . . was one of the very few things that fanatic groups and Israel could agree on,” said Sharhabeel al Zaeem, a member of the school’s board of directors. … Yet of the 25 schools and hospitals that Israeli forces hit during the 22-day war, according to a tally by Palestinian officials, only the American International School was destroyed.
Why did they do it? No one to stop them.
Full story »
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