Archive for April 2010
Up Too Early Central Timezone Blues
* The paper on ecological debt I’m giving at the Debt conference at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee’s Center for 21st Century Studies today is pretty indebted to Naomi Klein’s recent work on the subject, which can be found at YouTube, Democracy Now, The Nation, and Rolling Stone. I may try to put this talk up as a podcast at some point.
* The oil spill disaster in the Louisiana has turned out to be much, much worse than originally thought: “a river of oil flowing from the bottom of the Gulf at the rate of 210,000 gallons a day that officials say could be running for two months or more.” The final devastation will likely be worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster. The White House says BP will pay the costs of cleanup. Related: Obama Administration Learns That Oil Leads to Oil Spills. At least they’ve quietly reinstated the federal moratorium on offshore drilling as a result of all this. Hope it stays that way.
* Can reconciliation work for climate like it worked for health care? Ezra Klein says not really.
* Ten states, including my beloved North Carolina!, are now considering Arizona-style document laws.
* Speaking of North Carolina, here’s the Independent Weekly voting guide for Durham County. The primary is Tuesday, May 4.
* It turns out the measurement fallacy Cory Doctorow was speaking about in my class’s interview with him has a name: Goodhart’s Law.
* Grad School Necessary To Maintain U.S.’s Global Position. Take that, The Simpsons.
* Republican consultant on Republican 2012 presidential field: “We Have Real [Expletive] Problems.”
* Calling out the real judicial activists.
* Socialphobes of the world unite! Against the telephone.
The telephone was an aberation in human development. It was a 70 year or so period where for some reason humans decided it was socially acceptable to ring a loud bell in someone else’s life and they were expected to come running, like dogs. This was the equivalent of thinking it was okay to walk into someone’s living room and start shouting.
* Books: still greener than e-readers.
* I can’t believe I forgot to celebrate Explicit Legal Pants Day. The rest of the post, on heterosexual privilege in Mississippi, is good too.
* Inevitable District 9 sequel coming in two years.
* I’m so old I can remember when the GOP was against involuntary microchip implantation. It was like a week ago.
* And YouTube has the trailer for the feel-good movie of the year.
Trying to Predict the Present: An Interview with Cory Doctorow
I think Utopianism has genocide lurking in its bowels; I think a lot of Utopians are saying, “First we eradicate all the systems that are present. We settle all the grievances, we wipe the slate clean, we level the earth, we pave everything, and then we start from go.” The Bitchun Society doesn’t require that at all; it does have a lot of social upheaval in it, but it doesn’t begin “First what we do is kill anyone who has a beef with anyone else in the Middle East, and then we settle up with whoever is left.” That’s a bad solution.
Alongside its regular coursework this semester my Writing 20 class recently did a group interview with Cory Doctorow, which can be found at the course blog here. It came out, if I may so myself, pretty well; they asked really good questions, and Cory gave really good answers…
It Is a Far, Far Better Thing That I Do Than I Have Ever Done
Earlier today, Reid appeared to reverse course, saying climate/energy would be the next logical issue to address, followed only afterward by immigration reform. So everything’s groovy, right?
Far from it. Tonight, Graham told me that he will filibuster his own climate change bill, unless Reid drops all plans to turn to immigration this Congress.
I hope all the people who’ve been so eager to defend Lindsey Graham’s reasonableness these last few days take the time to weigh in on this. Can’t we all agree this is obviously a transparent attempt to take a losing issue off the table for the GOP? Now, that’s fine—I wish the Democrats would play this sort of hardball more often—but his tantrum is not some noble gesture, and we don’t have to give the guy cover while he throws it.
And this doesn’t even get into the near certainty that in the end he’ll find some reason to vote against his own bill anyway. How many times have we already seen this exact scenario play out?
UPDATE: Or, via Brad DeLong, what Greg Sargent said.
But we’ve been here before: Earlier this spring, Graham issued the same threat, saying that if Dem leaders moved forward on health reform it would kill the chance of compromise on immigration.
“The first casualty of the Democratic health care bill will be immigration reform,” Graham said in March, adding that movement on health reform would “kill any chance of immigration reform passing the Senate this year.” Time to wise up to Graham’s game?
Tuesday Night and I’m Way Behind
* Even Tea Party darling Mark Rubio opposes the new Arizona immigration law. Meanwhile, Kos highlights a clause that will launch a thousand lawsuits later this year.
* You had me at Fantasy & Sci-Fi Magazine Art.
* When Malcolm X’s assassin was paroled earlier today, he walked out onto the corner of West 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard. You can’t make stuff like this up.
* High school senior Brent Jones had a problem: officially he didn’t exist.
* Great news: Noah’s Ark has been found again (again).
* The case against Laurence Lessig’s case for Elena Kagan.
* And the Coast Guard may set the Louisiana oil spill on fire in an effort to contain the spreading damage. Drill, baby, drill…
Monday Night Links
* Vincent Kartheiser (Angel‘s Connor, Mad Men‘s Pete Campbell) turns out to be sort of awesomely crazy, living in a one-room apartment without even a toilet.
* Science proves that for the depressed chocolate is even more delicious.
* Do you suffer from Mean World Syndrome?
* Behold, Space Monkey.
* And sometimes weird things happen. You just have to go with it.
Oil
Coast Guard officials said Monday afternoon that the oil spill near Louisiana was now covering an area in the Gulf of Mexico of 48 miles by 39 miles at its widest points, and they have been unable to engage a mechanism that could shut off the well thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface. MetaFilter has more.
And Now Four for Monday
* Stephen Hawking says we shouldn’t talk to the aliens. Yes, but what if they’re trying to talk to us? Both links via MeFi.
* Hardline cleric vindicated; feminine immodesty now proven to cause earthquakes.
* Jonathan Chait explains how not to play poker.
* And they’ll tell you whether cell phones cause cancer… in thirty years.
Four for Sunday
* Does academic freedom protect a professor’s right to blog about scoring prostitutes? Outside some very specific exceptions, I don’t see why it would.
* Imagine if the tea party was black. Via MeFi.
And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.
* More on Durham’s local food culture, again in the New York TImes.
* And your game of the day: Enough Plumbers, a Super Mario clone that uses cloning for its game mechanics.
Breaking News
In an event entirely without precedent, a Republican senator has negotiated with Democrats for months on a contentious, highly charged political issue only to back out at the last second out of obscure, bad-faith process concerns.
Friday Night Links
* “The worldwide triumph of capitalism … secures the priority of Marxism as the ultimate horizon of thought in our time”: Benjamin Kunkel reviews Fredric Jameson in LRB.
* Archie Comics will soon be introducing its first openly gay character, “strapping, blond Kevin.”
* If you were trying to persuade me to support the climate bill, you picked the absolute worst possible approach.
* The ACLU explains everything that’s wrong with Arizona’s brazenly unconstitutional documentation legislation.
* Julian Sanchez has been doing an influential series of posts about epistemic closure on the right.
* Meanwhile, Glenn Beck continues his slow-motion breakdown, GOP unanimity seems to have lost its mojo, and Chris Christie is the right wing’s crush of the month.
* Chicken-to-medical-procedure currency converter.
* And some breaking news: Jay Leno sucks.
Gerry Canavan 