Month: September 2013

Music Monday: Pinching Pennies

Before me in line at a suburban Super Wal-Mart was a woman, somewhere around 30 by my best guess, and her son, who I supposed might have been ten. In a nation where 2 out of 3 people are overweight, they were skinny. Their clothes were clean and in keeping with the unspoken dress code of suburbia, but showed signs of wear. Her sandals didn’t fit quite right. Her son’s hair was done neatly in an urban style, perhaps at home. I’d been dodging young people darting about the store with a sense of entitlement all through my shopping voyage — including the kids behind me loudly begging their parents for candy — so I was struck by his remarkably good behavior. He patiently put checked groceries into their cart while mom watched the display of scanned items like a hawk.

They had a small order. Food included four loaves of the cheapest house-brand bread available, a case of ramen, a family-sized package of house brand hot dogs, American cheese, and a small can of baby formula — the only name brand item on the conveyor belt. No fruits or vegetables of any sort. They also had a comb, store-brand maxi-pads, pencils, and a couple cheap children’s backpacks. There was no baby with them, so I had to assume there was somebody at home watching the baby and whoever was waiting for the second backpack. I found it curious that they were buying school supplies at the very end of September. Perhaps they were waiting for a clearance sale? She paid with a combination of cash and some sort of scan card before leaving.

In Closing: A few links on Obamacare, the impending government shutdown, and birth control pills (and reproductive rights in general); the media and graphs.

Strange Epidemic

In the last week, I’ve read two completely unrelated stories about two women who came down with one very rare but very serious medical condition while participating in the same activity. That’s the kind of coincidence I don’t like hearing about.

The condition: Rhabdomyolysis. I’ll let WebMD tell you more about it, emphasis mine:

Rhabdomyolysis is a serious syndrome due to a direct or indirect muscle injury. It results from a breakdown of muscle fibers and release of their contents into the bloodstream. This can lead to complications such as kidney (renal) failure. This occurs when the kidneys cannot remove waste and concentrated urine. In rare cases, rhabdomyolysis can even cause death. However, prompt treatment often brings a good outcome.

They go on to say that among the more common causes are “Extreme muscle strain, especially in someone who is an untrained athlete.” Think on that for a moment.

The activity is CrossFit. Here’s the story that started me thinking, and for balance here’s a rebuttal. While I was still digesting this bit, another article on CrossFit induced Rhabdo came across my RSS reader! What a horrible coincidence. For pity sake, they’ve nicknamed this potentially fatal syndrome Uncle Rhabdo! An excerpt from the original item:

A quick search of the Interwebs [sic] reveals copious amounts of information about rhabdo purveyed by none other than CrossFit trainers. Scouring the scientific literature in mainstream medical journals, however, reveals a only a few peer-reviewed papers. The science confirms that exertional rhabdomyolysis, as this form is sometimes referred to, is uncommon and normally reserved for the elite military trainee, ultra-endurance monsters, and for victims of the occasional psychotic football coach. Rhabdomyolysis isn’t a common condition, yet it’s so commonly encountered in CrossFit that they have a cartoon about it, nonchalantly casting humor on something that should never happen.

As you may have guessed from the rebuttal to article one, CrossFit people are passionate about it. I would love to link you to, say, a nice balanced Wikipedia page about CrossFit, but it “has been identified as posing a potential copyright issue….” Here’s some of their WODs, or Workout Of the Day. These are the ones Men’s Health considers the “most brutal.”

Yes, they do this stuff pretty much every day. Yes, they encourage beginners to join them, and the quality of training those beginners receive varies wildly according to the skills of the trainer. I’ve thought about doing it myself, but then I keep running into Youtube videos that convince me I want nothing to do with it, and not just this blooper reel — notice that some of these people are doing it in the gym where somebody should have corrected form. Do you really think these people received adequate training before trying to lift that? Maybe we should work on basic presses and lunges before trying a clean and jerk?? Look at these women being encouraged to“kipp” — cheat! — at pull ups. I’d rather do 5 pull ups Tony’s way, Mark’s way, or Scooby’s way than 50 CrossFit’s way; healthier for my shoulders and back, and more honest too. I don’t have room in my life for “Uncle Rhabdo.”

So yeah, “untrained athlete” plus extreme workouts every day equals a high chance of injury.

Alert the media.

More NSA

I’m going to start with the revelation that an NSA employee stalked 9 women before being detected by logging and sometimes listening to their phone calls. They called it “spied on,” but let’s get down to brass tacks. That’s just one of a dozen “substantiated” cases of the NSA abusing their abilities. The Guardian says they are “technically breaches of the law.”

No! Going 56 MPH in a 55 MPH zone is “technically” a breach of the law! Listening to not one but nine different women’s phone calls without a warrant is “absolutely” a breach of the law, absolutely a violation of her 4th and 5th Amendment rights, and arguably a damper on her 1st Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly! Let’s stop splitting hairs and call that waddling, quacking thing a duck!

Let’s not forget that other details dropped in the last week include the fact that they’ve tapped effectively the entire internet, and have used phone metadata not for catching terrorists, but for catching people who try to tell the truth to the media.

So, with all this information out there, it should be no surprise that some in the Senate think it’s high time to reform the program. I’d rather it was deleted, but there will still be people out there who know where the back doors are, so I’ll concede that somebody needs to be monitoring that until such time as secure devices can be deployed.

The NSA of course doesn’t want that to happen. Shame Mr. Alexander shot himself in the foot by admitting he’d like to have legal cover for having all our phone records. Um, yeah. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that in public. Alarmingly honest for a change.

Follow Up: Meat Loaf!; on normal people in today’s economy.

In Closing: climate change; debt ceiling; what not to wear at work, duh; looting public pensions; the real sodomites; and way to show you “care.”

On Poverty

Let me begin by apologizing for the recent lack of substance around here. Between classwork and increasing frustration with both political parties, it’s been hard to get inspired.

So, poverty is up again this year. It’s almost un-news this time. Reuters calls it “the latest sign that an economic recovery marked by a stock market boom has not trickled down to ordinary Americans.” Not just the sign or a sign: the latest sign. And gee, surprise surprise, keeping the interest rate that banks can charge one another low doesn’t seem to help Joe Average pay his bills! Imagine that! Here’s some facts for you:

Numbers released this week by the Census Department show exactly how pervasive poverty is in the U.S. To be defined as poor by the government, a single person can earn no more than $11,490 per year, while for a family of four the threshold is $23,550. About 46.5 million Americans, or 1 in 7, lived at or below that level last year. Extend the definition just slightly to 125 percent of the poverty level — $14,362 for one person and $29,437 for a family of four — and the ratio drops to 1 in 5, fully 20 percent of the population.

Almost 42 percent of U.S. households below the poverty line are headed by single women, that’s up from 28 percent in 2007. Many of the people who live close to or below the poverty line have jobs: More than 30 percent of working-age adults earning 125 percent of the poverty line or less worked year-round in 2012, according to the Census Bureau. Roughly a quarter of the officially impoverished worked part-time, while 5.5 percent worked full-time. Nearly 9 percent of those working part-time earned less than half of the poverty level.

So no, we aren’t talking about lazy slobs who don’t want to work. We’re talking about 1 out of every 7 people you’re likely to encounter on the street, more if you know people of color. Even if you live in some “nice” suburb somewhere. And for those people, advice like “Max your 401k contribution” or “have savings of at least three months of living expenses” are sick jokes. How do you save that kind of money when you aren’t even sure you’ll cover the rent on the first of the month?

The Japan Times recently published a commentary titled “Politicians hardly ever mention America’s poor.” Now think about that a moment. The Japanese know we have a poverty problem. This isn’t an article about poverty in Bolivia or India, but America and it’s poor. And our politicians are too busy to talk about them. That’s actually probably for the best, seeing as their challenges are often misunderstood, the solutions are sometimes tangential, and Washington appears to be doing their very best to push them [further] under the bus.

And that brings me to food stamps — or as it is officially known, the SNAP program. As we all remember, the House voted to cut $4,000,000,000 ($4 billion with a b, or $4000 million if you’d like to think about how big that is) from SNAP, while the Senate only wants to cut $400,000,000 ($400 M). Mighty nice of them Senators. The House also wants to let states impose work requirements despite the fact that many of the poor have jobs (and many more are disabled) and drug testing (proven to be a waste of money, but it does serve the primary purpose of humiliating the person in poverty further). It’s hard enough to feed yourself on SNAP, but the politicians who never mention the poor directly want to make it harder.

I guess none of them paid much attention to the plot of last year’s critically acclaimed movie, Les Misérables. Desperate people do desperate things.

I’m not a Catholic by any stretch of the imagination, but I do believe Pope Francis speaks words Jesus would have approved of when he said “We want a just [economic] system that helps everyone.”

In Closing: I like “will cost much less than expected”; perspective; I bet more of us use math regularly than play football regularly; “The Tithe” is worth reading, here’s part one; maybe the start of a someday HIV cure?; and may you never have to choose which bills go unpaid.

Island of Lost Shorties

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The Tall Shop? Boy are they barking up the wrong tree! Anyway, Shorties.

Let’s not forget about these guys: FISA, NSA, privacy, cracked crypto, due process, hearings designed to make the people feel all warm and fussy fuzzy (sometimes typos are funny) about something being done even though nobody in a position of authority is even thinking of changing anything.

Rain Falls on the Rich and the Poor Alike:  the income gap between the ludicrously wealthy and all the rest of us is continuing to get wider, now sitting at levels not seen since the Roaring 20s. Oh what is to be done, asks a member of the financial press.

Senate wants to decide who actually has “Freedom of the Press”: yeah, that’s right.

Whatever became of Tax and Spend Liberals?: On the debt and the deficit.

Right: Because I totally think of 7 Eleven when I want a healthy snack. And surely this will make 7 Eleven more attractive to the one in 20 kids and teenagers who are not just fat, not just obese, but severely obese.

Pointing out the Glass House: America and chemical weapons.

Entertainment: ThinkProgress has some brief info on the new TV shows, like which ones are skippable and which ones are abominations. Or, you could check out this ridiculous book.

Conflicted Feminist

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I’m a feminist. By that I mean that I believe in equal –not better — rights, opportunities, and safety for men and women within biological limits. I am not a man hater or a bra-burner. I realize that this might well put me out of step with parts of the modern feminism movement and I don’t give a [expletive]. Moving on now.

Labor Day is over and the Halloween costumes are on the store shelves. Sure it’s early September, but gotta move those costumes early so there will be room for Christmas decorations in October. Do not question retail-logic. Hence, the lovely little Wonder Woman costume above. The package contains a shirt, headband, and cape.

I have mixed feelings on this item.

There are a number of things I like very much about it. First, it does avoid sexualizing a child. The costume is much more modest than that worn by Linda Carter years ago, shows infinitely less bust than this version, even if it’s not as “hip” as some of the most modern interpretations. The shirt doesn’t even hint at skin above that golden WW. Second, it’s practical as a costume. Sure, it can be worn with a cute little short skirt, or blue leggings suggested by the package, or even jeans. This is double-good considering the fact that Halloween is at the very end of October. Oh yeah, Halloween can be cold up north. If the jersey is of sufficient quality — no way to know from the packaging — the shirt can even circulate into school-wear after the big day. Finally, it’s simple. There’s nothing fiddly that will take a half hour to get into place before going out in this costume. No fancy accessories that are likely to get lost or broken. No pressure to buy a “completer kit” like those damnable Star Wars costumes from a few years back. No complicated stage make-up. Put on shirt, put on headband, add cape if you feel like it, and go!

Now for the one, single thing I hate. Would you just look at that silhouette? This Wonder Woman is built to Barbie proportions. It’s not a figure that a healthy adult woman has, even if she works out and eats right, even if she gets a boob-job. Even most cartoon women are drawn more realistically than that. I’ve never been one to over-react to body image issues, but this might just be sending the wrong message: “Sweetie, you’re never gonna look like Wonder Woman so don’t even try. Just put on this tent with a sexy chick drawn on it.”

So what’s the verdict: am I supposed to love or hate this costume?

In closing: “a growing number of sailors feel more comfortable reporting an assault and believe something will be done about it when they do;” nevertheless, I think I’ll just roll my eyes next time somebody says America has a “culture of rape“; glub; food; HIV; some random items on employment.

Oh, and one more thing. This guy told me one: “What’s the difference between 9/11 and a cow? You stop milking the cow after 12 years.”