Posts Tagged ‘McDonald's’
Friday Night
* Higher Ed as Cheesecake Factory. Reply from Beatrice Marovich. Reply from Ian Bogost.
* Scenes from the class struggle at Cooper Union.
Meanwhile, during most of these years, Harvard’s own endowment has annually grown by five or ten or even twenty times that figure, rendering net tuition from those thousands of students a mere financial bagatelle, having almost no impact on the university’s cash-flow or balance-sheet position. If all the students disappeared tomorrow—or were forced to pay double their current tuition—the impact would be negligible compared to the crucial fluctuations in the mortgage-derivatives market or the international cost-of-funds index.
* “Fox News Op-Ed Says Women’s Nature Is To Be Dominated By Men.” GO HOME FOX NEWS YOU ARE DRUNK
* If you’re gay, your basic civil rights now depend on what mood Anthony Kennedy is in when he wakes up in the morning. Like the Founders intended!
* Vice President Joe Biden is quietly working with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to try to pass an inclusive version of the Violence Against Women Act in the lame-duck Congress. And so far, sources tell HuffPost, Cantor is on board as long as one thing is stripped from the bill: a key protection for Native American women.
* What Are the Near-Term Climate Pearl Harbors? What a weird analogy, especially with “climate change fiscal cliff” just sitting there.
* This is the kind of obscene administrative blight you normally only see on a college campus:
Denver Public Schools plans to buy a 13-story building at 1860 Lincoln St. downtown to house its administration offices and the Emily Griffith Technical College.
According to a memo Superintendent Tom Boasberg emailed late Thursday to DPS staff and the board of directors, DPS is buying the 330,000-square-foot building with $24 million in bond money approved by Denver voters on Nov. 6.
* Why the NCAA Doesn’t Care about Concussions.
What happened to Whitmer wasn’t a mistake in NCAA concussion protocol for the simple reason that there isn’t an NCAA concussion protocol. The ambiguity is by design—in order to remain legally blameless, the association can’t involve itself too closely in the health of the athletes. That’s why the job of devising a response to head injuries is left to the schools themselves. As a consequence, when football programs obfuscate what exactly happened to a woozy-looking quarterback, there’s no one—not the local beat writer, and most certainly not an NCAA investigator—to hold them to account. In both the pros and in college football, the risk of legal liability is dictating the response to a medical crisis.
* The War on Superman’s Underpants.
* Your sleight of hand of the day.
* Pennsylvania still wants to rig the electoral college.
* Arrested Development NES Games.
* Moon flights for a mere $750 million. Back to the Future With 1970s Space Colonies.
* And you won’t have Kevin Smith to kick around anymore. Didn’t he do this same thing a few years ago?
Wednesday Night!
* So many amazing things happened today, from the simultaneous implosion of both the Perry and Cain campaigns to Occupy Cal and Occupy Harvard to riots at Penn State in support of Joe Paterno (of all people). And I can’t give proper attention to any of these amazing things because I spent 6 hours hanging out with John Hodgman on behalf of the Regulator Bookshop. Here’s a nice interview with the man himself from Independent Weekly‘s Zack Smith.
* Not to pile on poor Rick Perry, but abolishing the Department of Energy doesn’t make sense even on his own terms.
* Needing a weatherman to know which way the wind blows: Young adults agree that college is becoming increasingly unaffordable in today’s economy even as it is becoming more important, according to a recent poll released on Wednesday by Demos and Young Invincibles, two research and advocacy groups.
* For people looking to transition #Occupy back into traditional electoral politics—and for people who want to make sure that doesn’t happen—Occupy Des Moines is going to be pretty important.
* LGM celebrates Wake County’s repudiation of de-integration.
* Some podcasts from the ASA, including my advisor Priscilla Wald’s presidential address on Henrietta Lacks.
* Cormac McCarthy’s Yelp page.
* A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage.
* Howard is one of the chief architects of the “Cleveland Model” — an effort to create good jobs in depressed urban neighborhoods by fostering for-profit cooperatives founded on a principle of environmental sustainability. The neighborhoods targeted by Howard’s Evergreen Cooperative Initiative suffer from 40 percent unemployment, but he suggests tossing out any preconceptions one might have about whether or not desperately poor people care about the environment. Howard recounts one cooperative worker telling him, “I thought I’d have to move to Portland to become part of the green revolution, and now I can say that we lead the way in Cleveland.”
* The bastards have stolen your honey.
* And some breaking news via Bitter Laughter: The odds that you’d exist at all are practically zero. So enjoy it! A wise man once said, it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.
Later Wednesday Night
* Occupy Durham: We Are the 99%.
* Genocide in South Dakota: In South Dakota, Native American children make up only 15 percent of the child population, yet they make up more than half the children in foster care. An NPR News investigation has found that the state is removing 700 native children every year, sometimes in questionable circumstances. According to a review of state records, it is also largely failing to place native children with their relatives or tribes.
According to state records, almost 90 percent of the kids in family foster care are in non-native homes or group care. (via)
* In 1961, the Amateur Athletic Union prohibited American women from competing officially in road races. When sympathetic race organizers allowed them entry, their results did not count. Even in the Olympics, women were not allowed to run more than a half-mile lest, it was believed, they would risk their femininity and reproductive health. The most alarmist officials warned that a woman who ran a more ambitious distance might cause her uterus to fall out. (via)
* And did McDonald’s disgusting food lead to a decline in violent crime in America? The price was too high! The price was too high! (via)
No More Happiness for Anyone
A nutrition watchdog group is threatening to sue McDonald’s if the fast-food giant won’t stop using toys to to lure children to its Happy Meals .
Fantasy World Cup!
Although I’ve filled out a World Cup bracket or two at ESPN, everyone knows the real competition is McDonald’s FIFA World Cup, which is now online after an almost interminable delay. Email me ASAP if you’d like to join our league. The competition should be intense.
Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?
Have I done this one before? Via Twitter.
Misc.
Misc.
* Ezra Klein argues Nancy Pelosi is playing three-dimensional chess.
* “Tea Party” is now a registered party in Florida. Excelsior! The sky’s the limit.
* John Hodgman now has a daily podcast.
* 40 House Democrats are now threatening to vote no on the health care conference bill unless Stupak is removed.
* Number of Ph.D.’s hired last year to “develop” carrot sticks for McDonald’s: 45. Is this on the usual job list? Interviews at MLA?
* Also at Harper’s: Number of U.S. universities that have a Taco Bell Distinguished Professorship of Fast Service: just one. That’s the tragedy.
A Classic Bad News/Good News Situation
Classic bad news/good news situation: Sure, Iceland’s economy has completely collapsed, but at least it caused McDonald’s to leave the country.
Late Sunday Links
Late Sunday links.
* Rachel Maddow kicks ass on another visit to Meet the Press. They should just give Rachel Meet the Press; I hope eventually they do. It’s the only version of the show I could imagine actually watching.
* The networks are apparently afraid of SF; Day One has apparently been downgraded to a miniseries and the V remake is rumored to be forbidden to use the world “alien.”
* Octavia Butler’s papers will go to the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, joining Christopher Isherwood’s, Charles Bukowski’s, and Jack London’s.
* Playgrounds of the 1970s. A version of the Officer Big Mac at right was active in Ledgewood, NJ, well into the 2000s. (Is it still there?)
* Judith Butler: Save California’s universities. My only quibble is that she appears to be writing in the wrong country’s newspaper.
* More Nate Silver: That the conservative intelligentsia reacted giddily to news of the Americans losing is telling. It’s telling of a movement that was long ago knocked off its intellectual moorings and has lost the capacity to think about what people outside the room think about. Flagged by Bitter Laughter. More thoughts along the same lines from Cogitamus and Contrary Brin.
* My happiest time was after Mao came into power. Our social status improved. People were allowed to express their views. Before, people had no right to speak out. After the founding of new China, the first parade, I was on the front row during the first parade. Foreign journalists from America and the Soviet Union took lots pictures of me. I was carrying a flower basket, walking down Huaihai road, it was very festive, and there was much excitement. I went out during the parade every year for many years, rain or shine. Why the Chinese support the Communist party.
McDonald’s
Americans are never further than 145 miles from a McDonald’s. I’m actually surprised the number is that high. (via)
A Few Missing Links
A few links I’ve missed over the last few days.
* xkcd discovers the secret origins of the Kindle.
* RIP, Philip Jose Farmer. More here, especially about Venus on the Half-Shell, the book he published under the name Kilgore Trout. It’s not half-bad.
* ‘Las Vegas Running Out of Water Means Dimming Los Angeles Lights.’
* Spider-Man is taking a job at McDonald’s in these tough economic times.
* And Joss Whedon explains why DC Comics movies don’t work. He’s right and wrong about this; there’s something to be said for the “pain” thesis, but mostly it’s a failure of writing and directorial ambition, compounded by corporate cowardice…
McDonald’s Hamburger from 1996
McDonald’s hamburgers are not food. Here’s a picture of a hamburger from 1996 that looks exactly as it did the day it was made twelve years ago—and probably tastes the same, too. Via kottke.
Which was bought in 1996, and which today?
Flag-Waving American Companies Cheat On Us With China
Flag-waving American companies are cheating on us with China.
Flexitarians
Ezra Klein’s had a number of good posts lately on the high environmental and social costs of Americans’ meat-laden diets.
Bacon is transcendent. The words “porterhouse” and “steak” make my mouth water. Pork belly makes me simultaneously believe in God and doubt my own religious tradition. And because of this, I’m not a full vegetarian. But I should be. And not liking liberals don’t change the truth about meat: Industrial agriculture is cruel, meat production is a huge contributor to global warming, and the market for meat contributes to world hunger in a substantial and direct way.
My come-to-Gandhi story is almost exactly opposite, which is why I think it’s been relatively easy for me to stay vegetarian for a decade: my vegetarianism originated in a visceral distaste for nearly all meat, with the eco-awareness and smug self-satisfaction turning out to be just nice bonuses along the way.
In general I’d say the emergence of flexitarianism is one of the better and more important memes to emerge out of last decade or so, though at this point I’ve completely ruined myself for anything that’s recognizably meat-based. And it’s unlikely flexitarianism could have worked for me, anyway; as anyone who’s ever watched me try to make any sort of lifestyle change knows, the only workable strategy is total, unbreakable taboo. Eighteen-year-old me attempt to eat less-but-still-some meat would have resulted in my eating nothing but McDonald’s Chicken Nuggets, which had been a big part of the problem in the first place.
