Month: March 2007

Perfect Shorties

Please won’t anybody think of the Children??? Monday’s report was that Children who spend time in daycare are more apt to have behavioral problems. Now, as I read the article it occured to me that “child care was defined as care by anyone other than the child’s mother who was regularly scheduled for at least 10 hours per week” means that Dad watching the kids was considered “child care.” And frankly, I wondered if the observed effects were in fact statistically significant. Or whether the results took into account any of the other reasons a child might act out. But in any event, by Tuesday the same news was totally revamped to say that the effects of daycare don’t last into the teenage years. Oh, and that “problem behavior” included such problems as “argues a lot.” By that standard, I was a bad, bad kid in school.

Near Sandy Forest Walruses? Susie Bright has a few words about “NSFW” (which, by the way, really means “Not Safe For Work” except, as Susie notes, if you make enough money).

A fitting new home for the Department of Homeland Security: a former psychaitric hospital.

Kafka shook his head and walked away in disgust…. The Washington Post points out how easy it is to push Joe Average into the underground economy just by using government terror watchlists:

Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.

Because the penalties for doing business with people on the list is so high, most businesses would rather not deal with them at all. And since nobody really knows how someone gets on one of these lists, nobody has a clue how to get off the lists either.

Global Warming: The Christian Science Monitor brings us the latest on polar cap melt predictions, and the International Herald Tribune tells us about vanishing high desert oases in peril.

Oh yeah: reasonably priced custom made jeans!

The article may be 7 years old, but it’s still relevant: It may be more relevant than it was when it was written! E.D. Hirsch on standardized testing. This man is The Guy who can tell you what Joe Average should know, whether Joe is in Kindergarten or Grad School. The article predates “No Child Left Behind”, but the fundamental issues have changed little.

For the Children!! Somebody actually ran a study that shows “In a child’s buffet of food commercials, more than 40 percent of the dishes are candy, snacks and fast food. Nowhere to be found: fresh fruit, vegetables, poultry or seafood.” Now, setting aside for a moment that 40% isn’t even close to “most” (could the reporter have gotten things mixed up and means that 40% of all ads aimed at kids are for junk food?), let’s remember that we are talking about food ads aimed at kids. You don’t have to sell Mom on the idea that fruits and vegetables are good for you and she should buy more of them. But you do have to work at making her think it’s a good idea to buy lots of candy, cookies, sugary cereals, and snacks. The other part of the equation is who pays for the ads: the makers of those “candy, snacks, and fast food”! Listen folks, there is a quick way to deal with these commercials: turn off the TV. Failing that, talk with your kids about what they’ve just seen. Say things like “Did you notice that ‘complete breakfast’ was a balanced meal without the cereal?”

The judge was dissapointed he couldn’t throw the book at him: A civil lawsuit stemming from torture allegations has been dropped against Donny Rumsfeld. The judge had to do so based on the law, but he called the situation “lamentable.” On an only sort of related note, the Australian man who pled guilty at Guantanamo did so just so he could get out of there.

Can’t tell the players without a scorecard: Having trouble keeping up with this early bumper crop of Democratic Presidential hopefuls? Here’s a handy article about where they all stand on healthcare. It is worth noting that not one of them has a stance on the expensive class/race war we usually just refer to as the “War on Drugs.”

Come Home: The Senate has joined the House in saying “Ok, Mr. Bush, you can have some money to run your war, but you need to start cleaning up and putting your toys away!” The only reason I mention this is that factions within some groups like Move On think this is a cop-out position (you can learn things listening to the radio). They feel the voters strongly told Congress “We want our soldiers home and we want them home now!” and that these deadlines months out are meaningless. I think many of us would prefer a more prompt withdrawal (particularly the Iraqis), but let’s not let “perfect” be the enemy of “good.” Anything that gets us closer to gone is progress at this point; let’s not forget it.

Millions of Peaches: these nice folks ask If organic food is so popular, why are so few farms transitioning their land?”

And finally: the truth about R2-D2.

John Edwards and Joe Average

So now we know that yes, Elizabeth Edwards is battling cancer again, but that John Edwards will continue to work and campaign to be our next President. I wish I could find a transcript of the press conference, because he said something to the effect of “If I can’t handle both these things at the same time, then I can’t handle being President.”

Sad but true, this puts Mr. Edwards more in line with Joe Average. Over 240,000 women per year are diagnosed with breast cancer alone in the United States, and it’s a good bet that many of them have husbands or other long-term partners.

Joe Average can’t quit work to take care of a sick wife. If nothing else, he would lose his health insurance benefits, which means paying for all her care out-of-pocket. He can’t get private insurance that will cover the expenses, because her illness will be considered a “pre-existing condition.” In fact, woe to Joe if he is self-employed or an independant contractor, since his insurance rates are about to go through the roof at the very time he can least afford it. It is worth noting that the Edwards health reform plan does very little for Joe unless he has an employer. Which reminds me — Mrs. Edwards’s previous bout with cancer was fairly well publicized; is her current problem covered at all?

Nor can Joe Average afford to take a lot of time off work to accompany his ailing wife to doctor’s appointments and hospital visits. Joe is expected to keep his private life to himself. That means no whining, and getting the job done. If Joe gets an hourly wage, he can’t afford to lose the hours as much as he wants to be there for her; if Joe is salaried, chances are he is expected to give 110% and pitch in with unpaid overtime at the boss’s whim. Mr. Edwards, on the other hand, despite his gruelling schedule can still manage to “be there” for important appointments. He’s clearly a stand-up guy in this respect.

If Joe Average has kids, that throws an additional wrinkle into things. Chances are his wife has been the primary provider for the kids, even if she has been working full time. Her illness makes it unlikely that she can continue to do everything that she has done around the house. Joe’s time is already stretched very thin for the reasons described above. If Joe is very, very lucky, he might have a (female) relative who can come help around the house for a few months. It is worth noting that he would never consider asking a male relative for such assistance. If there are no female relatives, either there’s a lot of pizza and canned soup in the Average Family’s future, or he’s going to need to hire some help he can barely afford to pay. Probably both. By way of contrast, the Edwards Family probably already have household staff on at least a part time basis, and they certainly have the money to hire quality in-home assistance if necessary. They also have a grown daughter who can pitch in if needed.

It will be interesting to see how Mr. Edwards’s political stances evolve with his circumstances.

In closing: “fame, narcissism, and MySpace”; yet another state considering a wait and see stance on Real ID; the Heinlein Society; clearing the way to using (what’s left of) our troops at home; Amnesty International thinks our treatment of certain prisoners leaves a lot to be desired, like say, trials; and finally hmm, yeah conservatism is expensive.

House of Cards

Ok, so in ring one of this circus we have Al Gonzales dancing as fast as he can. He has to put on a good show, lest someone notice that only the President can fire federal attorneys. Which means that either the President knew what was going on, has no clue (maybe he thought he was cancelling a delivery of broccoli to the White House), or that the attorneys were fired illegally. None of these is good. As distasteful as it is that after all the things Mr. Gonzales has said and done, it turns out that 8 politically motivated terminations are the one unnacceptable thing in the bipartisan eyes of the Senate. But wait, it gets better! It turns out that this may be a puppet show, with none other than everyone’s favorite crony, Karl Rove pulling the strings from a remote email account. Why is that important? Because if he’d used a whitehouse.gov email account, it would be archived and available on subpoena. So now, everybody wants to get to the bottom of this situation. And that means somebody *cough cough that would be you, Mr. Rove* has to testify before Congress. Not just the Senate. The House of Representatives too. Needless to say the White House doesn’t like that idea one bit. They may have very little bargaining room, as now it seems Mr. Gonzales may have lied to Congress.

Meanwhile in ring two we have the Iraq War. The darn thing is getting ready to have a 4th anniversary, sad as that is to say, and it’s not quite as popular as it was when it was younger. The President is having to spend time and energy defending it, “plead[ing] for patience” and giving us dire, dire warnings about what might happen if we were to stop pouring money down that bottomless pit and support our troops by bringing them home. Be afraid! Be very afraid! I fear that our capacity for fear was drained by years of Department of Homeland Security look out oh wait it’s nothing warnings. It is no coincidence that suddenly reports are coming out of our professional torture chambers that the enemy combatants we have in custody have confessed to everything short of funding John Wilkes Booth (yes folks, that last link is satire). If this isn’t enough to discredit the practice of torture, what more do we need? War is hell, we have lost a lot of lives on both sides, and we have lost a lot of money.

It’s hard to tell what’s going on in the third ring of this circus. It’s totally dark. And even though it’s hard to tell in the dark, it may be covered by a big tarp. And in fact to be perfectly honest, all the things that we are pretty sure we know happened there happened years ago now. But it sure looks like certain people in the administration are doing everything they can to keep the War on Terra rolling. For example, The Taliban offered to send Osama Bin Laden to a neutral country presumably for trial back in October of 2001. If we really wanted justice, the international courts are the place. Seriously, you won’t find an impartial jury here in the United States. Surely the Hague could have helped us out on this one. And then we have the Vice President. It seems that various parties may have been working out of Mr. Cheney’s office to “us[e] stolen funds from Iraq to arm al Qaeda-tied groups and foment a larger Sunni-Shia war…” It was specifically done this way — the author alleges — to avoid the problems of CIA involvement that brought the Iran-Contra scandal to public attention.

If nothing here rises to the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, what does it take?

In closing: compare and contrast; credit card tricks; credit card tips (hey, I can be fair and balanced too!); a car that’s supposed to be a little fishy; when it comes to TV, “[T]orture is the new sex”; and finally, a big plane we don’t need.

Watashi wa Nihonjin ni Naru to Omoimasu.

or, “I think I’m turning Japanese.”

Those of you who know me personally realize that I’ve been studying Japanese for about 3 years now. And not one of those classes where they teach you how to pronounce things from the Berlitz phase dictionary. Nope, we’ve actually been learning to read and write, listen and speak, vocabulary and grammar.

Frankly, many sushi chefs are impressed by any hakujin (that’s “white person”) who can successfully say that the meal was delicious. The grammar is complicated. Verbs and adjectives conjugate but there is no future tense. Nouns rarely appear in the plural; if you want to express more than one you can say how many, or just say “a lot of”. And then there are particles; put the wrong one in the wrong spot, and instead of eating dinner with a friend, you have eaten your friend for dinner.

Reading in Japanese is complicated by the fact that they have three basic writing systems which are all used at the same time. Hiragana — a system of 46 lovely curved figures, each of which represents a syllable — is learned first, both in Japan and here. Learning Hiragana is like being in Kindergarten all over again, scratching your head and trying to remember which squiggly bit makes an “ah” sound, and worse yet, not really being able to read anything substantive even when you have figured it out. After one learns Hiragana, the next set of symbols is Katakana — the 46 angular figures you might see on package labels or signage — which are used for “foriegn” words and sometimes for emphasis. Great, now the reader can tell that the sign over the bananas says “banana”! To make sense of Japanese writing, one still needs Kanji, a set of (*gulp*) 1945 Chinese characters which impart meaning and one of several pronunciations. For the record, I’m currently about a sixth of the way to that figure.

Actually, Kanji are very interesting. For example, the kanji for “sun” can also mean “day.” It can be pronouced ni, hi, bi, nichi, ka, or jitsu, in addition to other ways one finds while reading. It combines with the Asian “elements” to make the days of the week: Friday is literally “Money Day”. Pair it with the kanji for “now” and you have “now-day,” or “today” (pronounced kyoo, using none of the pronunciations I listed earlier). Pair it with the kanji for “bright” (which is a sun and moon kanji together) and “bright day” is “tomorrow” (pronounced “ashita”, the sun will come out tomorrow). Some pairings are not so esoteric; “sky” plus “harbor” turn unsurprisingly into “airport.”

Japanese textbooks are also kind of interesting. They seem to invariably follow the adventures of an English speaker visiting the country with good but limited language skills. This allows us to learn from the mistakes of our fictional travelers. In Japanese for Busy People, for example, Mr. Smith is a lawyer spending some months in Japan on business. Since he doesn’t read Japanese, he ends up asking people to read him business cards. In one case, he asks someone what the department store hours are, while standing in front of a sign listing the store hours. This book is great for people who must cram enough working phrases into their brain to function without worrying about grammar. It is worth noting that you learn in chapter one how to say “Pardon me, where is the American Embassy?” Since it is aimed at the potential business traveler, there is much more formal, humble, and polite language earlier. There is a separate workbook for hiragana/katakana, but no kanji.

By contrast, in Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese, we follow the adventures of Mary, and exchange student from the University of Arizona, her Japanese boyfriend Takeshi, and their friends. Mary gets to ask silly questions like “Pork loin? What kind of fish is that?” and “You mean all those Kabuki actors were men??” Because this course is aimed at college students, a lot of time is spent on college and young-adults-coming-of-age sorts of language issues. Chapter one, for example, focuses on “What is your major” and “What year student are you?” As the text proceeds, we learn about studying, part time jobs, seeing a doctor, going to a party, and other things. Grammar is taught early and often. Each chapter has a parallel chapter on the written language. If you have the time, this is really a better book than “Japanese for Busy People.”

Even books like Teach Yourself Beginner’s Japanese focus on a foriegner, this time a high school exchange student. This book addresses the written language only in passing; it’s fine for those who need something a step above a phrasebook, but it’s only a stepping stone for those who want to really learn the language.

This discussion would not be complete without some of my favorite Japan-oriented websites. You may already know Pureland Mountain and Gaijin Smash from my link list. A couple of more news-oriented sites are Japundit and Japan Probe. If you’re looking for help learning the language, there’s flash card generator (as a word of warning, if you use 3×5 cards, they will eventually take up a bit of space), online dictionary, and a leve 4 proficiency exam study page.

In closing: War on Terror == War On You; something that should really terrify you, China may sell some of it’s US Bonds (like oh, maybe a few hundred million dollars worth); if that doesn’t scare you how about climate change; even some evangelicals are worried about the environment; on a related note, the real decline of the American family; even Gretchen Morgenson thinks a “Crisis Looms in Mortgages”; I am very sorry, no papers, no medical care (real sorry about that fire that burned up your kid’s birth certificates; even bigger shame they’re gonna die of something we can fix!); could it be that drunk driving is not quite as big a problem as certain people want us to think?; “Even Republicans Hate Our Health Care System”; Orwell at the Office (please ignore that many of the “Orwellian” intrusions cited in this piece are merely a continuation of school rules); the 10 most important video games of all time?; custom clothes on the internet; and finally, I may be the only person not calling for Halliburton’s blood this morning (CNBC’s caption was that they were Un-American!), but as I read the actual story, I am noting that “The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as its legal incorporation in the United States, meaning that it will still be subject to domestic laws and regulations.” Only the big boss and his cronies are leaving for Dubai. Let him go! The bright spot is that this is bringing scrutiny to their contracts with the United States government.

Hey, Ho, Gonzales Must Go!

Or, Bring Me the Head of Alberto Gonzales.
Back in January I said to write your Senators and tell them to demand the resignation of United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Bad enough he has called the Geneva Conventions and their prohibition on torture “quaint.”

Bad enough he authored the opionions that allow terror suspects to be held without charges until the end of the War on Terror — a war which Discovery and Ted Koppel are calling “Our Children’s Children’s War”.

Bad enough he thinks it’s just fine for Vice President Dick Cheney to have secret meetings with energy company executives before coming up with an “energy plan”.

Bad enough he has sat in a Senate hearing and said that the Constitution does not actually give us a right to Habeas Corpus.

Now it is clear that he has been instrumental in getting rid of eight U.S. Attorneys — who had recently gotten “glowing performance reviews” — apparently on grounds of not towing the official administration line. The Christian Science Monitor says “At issue is whether the Justice Department’s decision to replace these top federal prosecutors was a political purge and, if so, what Congress can do about it.” Let me tell you what Congress an do about it: Since even “senior” Senate Republicans think this stinks, this is the time for the Senate to act by demanding Gonzales’s resignation. Now.

In closing, Follow-Up Friday is a little early: Pediatricians warn that the kind of insurance policies President Bush and the “free markets fix everything” crowd favor may make kids sicker; Washington Post tells us the bleeding obvious, Health Care is already a huge issue in the 2008 elections; NYT and IHT tell us even more obvious news, the self employed don’t have employers to provide health insurance, and therefore they often must do without; Arnold and Eliot; NYT/IHT are calling it a “home mortgage crisis”; Al Gore says the EU must lead where the USA doesn’t; big diet study says no sugar low carbohydrate diets help people lose weight; and an item I’ve not covered before, internships are so competitive there are companies to help young adults (whose mommies and daddies have money) get them (thus widening the gap between haves and have-nots by expanding the “experiences” and rolodexes of wealthy young adults).

Shorti3s

Come on Hollywood; horror movie titles with more than one word?

To Your Health: I know it isn’t a new article, but start with the nice folks at Alternet telling the truth, Private Health Insurance is Not the Answer. I used to think that letting people be in charge of their own insurance would bring rates to a manageable level and fix the problem, and that might have been true a decade ago. But I’m not sure it’s true now, and I am very sure that the Bush plan — which would as a side effect raise taxes on working Americans by over half a Trillion with a T dollars over the next ten years alone — won’t fix much of anything but insurance company profits. This problem has gotten so bad that Healthcare is the number one domestic concern of Americans according to a recent poll. In fact “Nearly two-thirds said the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans and half said they would be willing to pay as much as $500 more in taxes a year for universal coverage…” For more data from that poll, try the New York Times, who add that “Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush’s handling of the health insurance issue, despite his recent initiatives, and 62 percent said the Democrats were more likely to improve the health care system.” Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the wild card in health insurance reform: Eliot Spitzer. Yes, the esteemed Governor Spitzer is taking aim at the Big Health Groups that want to keep taking more and more money from the people and state of New York. So he invited them all to a nice little breakfast, and showed them a little powerpoint presentation, rebutting all their objections to his proposed cuts. I respected Mr. Spitzer — as the AG for New York — for standing up and taking care of the voters who put him in office, and for using whatever tools he had at his disposal. He’s not the sort who whines that he needs new laws to fight injustice; he figures out how to use the ones he has (makes you wonder if he isn’t the basis for this fictional character).

“You probably don’t want to have them in your slippers. They’re kind of spiky,” the Scientist Announced: No, really! Scientists have discovered at least 11 complete fossils of an ocean creature who lived about 505 Million years ago. “Orthrozanclus had no eyes and no limbs and apparently moved along the ocean floor with a muscular foot, like a snail does, while dining on bacterial growths, the researchers said…. It was covered in a shell and had almost three dozen long, pointy, curved spines sticking out from the edge of its body, and many smaller ones, too.”

Mortgage A-GoGo: AFP tells us that “Those exotic, high-risk mortgages that fueled the US real estate boom are now showing high rates of failure, prompting concerns that the housing market may come crashing down faster than expected,” (duh) and “[M]any people who got subprime loans in 2005 are now seeing their monthly payments jump by 30 to 50 percent. And with payments due, fears are rising about widespread defaults and that a general collapse in the subprime lending sector could spill over to the broader housing sector, and perhaps to the broader economy.” Subprime delinquencies are up to 12.8% (ARM delinquencies 13.2%) compared with a national average of 2.44% mortgage delinquency. Freddie Mac — Fannie’s little brother — is headed into the fray, announcing that “it would no longer buy those high-risk home mortgages that it deems to be the most vulnerable to foreclosure,” and “it was developing new fixed-rate and hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages to provide lenders with more choices for subprime borrowers.” Ironically, as sensible as this move is, it may cause an even bigger headache for certain homeowners as mortgage companies that collapse may result in homes being lost through no fault of the “homeowner”. Oh, and I should not neglect this article from the Washington Post entitled “A Growning Chorus on Risky Mortgages.” Some European economists are concerned that this may ultimate result in massive economic disaster. You have to love a serious economic article willing to refer in bold type to “Subprime Idiots.” It is worth reading the whole thing, including the section titled “US Steps Towards Banana Republic.”

Fashion Police: Can anybody corroborate this story? This is the only version I can find, and something in the back of my head is quoting Carl Sagan… something about extraordinary claims and extraordinary proof. Boston Police allegedly blew up a man in a bulky coat for loitering by a lamppost for more than 10 minutes. After all he might have had a bomb. His girlfriend said “There was a long line at Starbucks, and Evan wanted to smoke so he waited outside for me. Next thing I know I look up and I see police blowing him up. I always told him that down jacket made him look puffy.” Officer Charlie O’Hara of the bomb squad says “I’d blow up a hundred innocent people if I can prevent another 9/11.” Yeah, I’m not sure the citizens are with him on that. You don’t suppose he’s related to Gotham City’s Police Chief O’Hara, do you?

Yoink! UPS decides it doesn’t need no French airplanes when we make perfectly good jumbo cargo jets here in the United States.

It’s the Economy, Stupid! Poverty is getting worse. Not only are more people poor, they are poorer. One out of every 6 Americans depends on some program for the poor. It’s bad enough that some people are starting to correctly think “Too many people – including those who live in the suburbs and in the rural areas – are descending into it too fast for that to be the sole explanation. All of those people aren’t lazy or stupid.” Gee, do you think?

Good job reading those books, Johnny. Now you get to drag your parents out for pizza: Critics are just now catching on to a program called Book It, which rewards kids who read a target number of books with food that manages to be both fatty and starchy (i.e., fattening no matter whose paradigm you like). Now, leaving aside for a moment that this is a slap in the face for families that are vegan or deal with several major common food allergies, “The program is now under attack by child-development experts who say it promotes bad eating habits and turns teachers into corporate promoters.” It also takes control away from parents, who now have the choice of negating little Johnny’s award, or eating food they don’t want from a company they have not chosen to support. Of course some critics say that a major purpose of public schools is to take away parental control…..

You may not like him, but he has a point: Guess who said this? “The prevailing powers today are in the hands of those who have economic and military power which puts fear in others. They can make you starve. They can close the doors for your exports of raw materials such as coffee or oil.” How about this? “Those who threaten you with military power or with the (U.N.) Security Council are the people who are controlling the world and if you go against the tide you might be destroyed.” And this, about strings attached to international aid? “This is an international dictatorship that is being practiced against people, especially poor people.” Give up? Muammar Gaddafi.

Reality, Real ID, and You: The ACLU calls it a Real Nightmare. Wired calls it an internal passport. The good news is that the deadline for states to implement a Even better, the actual implementation rules have been released, so we can all quote chapter and verse on what it really says.

And finally, on a related note: Ron Paul’s essay, “It Can’t Happen Here”.