Palestine – Shortwoman.com

News

Even though the stats say people read this little site regularly, the fact is not many people comment. One of the few people who I’d call a “regular commenter” was Cynthia.

It is with great sadness that I must report that Cynthia passed away this morning. She leaves behind a long-term boyfriend, assorted distant relatives, a grandson, and one daughter. That would be me.

In Closing: rubble bucket challenge; an interesting and relevant graph; on inequality and impounded cars; cop cams; one less one less problem; Karl calls ’em as he sees ’em; shhh, ancient oligarch secret; and thanks to bankruptcy “reform,” there is no hope of this getting better until the previous item miraculously vanishes; I still wonder why insurance companies haven’t put their considerable clout behind this; and won’t somebody please think of the children (unless of course they are brown).

Huh, maybe the old fashioned way that used to work still does work.

The other day, results from a study on diets for diabetics were published. In short, it said that the low fat diets that have been recommended for many years don’t work very well to control diabetes, but the low carbohydrate diets that came before them did:

The authors point to the specific failure of the prevailing low-fat diets to improve obesity, cardiovascular risk or general health, and to the persistent reports of serious side effects of commonly prescribed diabetes medications. By comparison, the authors refer to the continued success of low-carbohydrate diets in the treatment of diabetes and metabolic syndrome without significant side effects.

“Diabetes is a disease of carbohydrate intolerance,” said Barbara Gower, Ph.D., professor and vice chair for research in the UAB Department of Nutrition Sciences and one of the study authors. “Reducing carbohydrates is the obvious treatment. It was the standard approach before insulin was discovered and is, in fact, practiced with good results in many institutions. The resistance of government and private health agencies is very hard to understand.”

Emphasis added.

This summary goes on to point out not just one or two, but twelve research-backed facts to support their point of view. Go ahead and read them for yourself. Although these points include the fact that dietary intervention doesn’t have side effects the way drugs do, they did not include that food is relatively cheap compared to medicine. Nor did they point out that metabolically, complex carbohydrates are little more than chains of sugars.

In closing: NSA, War on the NSA, War on Terror, War on Brown People, War on Schools that Work, War on Marksmanship, War on the Middle Class, War on the Working Class, War on the Palestinians, Here a War, There a War, Everywhere a War on War. Old MacDonald had a War, EIEIO. Cosigning is a bad idea. Kids will eventually eat what they are served. And let’s close with friendly Satanists.

Music Monday: Well, it’s a start

Ladies and Gentlemen, Tim Minchin’s Peace Anthem for Palestine.

In Closing: Get the latest juicy NSA, privacy, surveillance, War on Terror, and the impact it all has on the world you live in; Oops, they pissed off the Witches and Wizards; worth less; this could be bad; all about the banksters and plutocrats; civil forfeiture; and maybe more of us are left of center than we thought.

Put the Outrage where it Belongs

So, this story has been making the rounds: a worker at a Subway sandwich shop was allegedly fired because she left sick. More specifically, she went outside to puke some more and a worker at a nearby Pizza Hut noticed her, calling an ambulance on her behalf. Cue the outrage and petitions saying she should get her job back. As the article points out, Subway has a history of labor violations, so the story is plausible but not confirmed. Remember that the overwhelming majority of these shops are franchised.

Let’s assume that the allegations are true.

Sure, be outraged that this worker was fired for leaving her shift sick. Be outraged that American workers can’t afford to be sick, even on so-called days off.

But remember to be really outraged at the manager. Oh, not for firing a sick employee. Be outraged that he was willing to endanger the health of every employee and every customer of that store.

Justice would not simply be hiring that employee back. Justice would not even be firing that manager. Justice would be random weekly inspections by the local health department every freaking week until they are absolutely sure there will be no more problems. This would, by the way, send a message to every restaurant and fast food joint in town: don’t play games with customer safety.

In Closing: Aw no it’s time for some more NSA and terror related links; more reasons not to like that sportswear company with the three L’s in the name; the DEA somehow thinks FedEx can be responsible for knowing whether or not a package contains prescription medication for which there is no prescription; pretty much the conclusion I reached; funny how the news media refers to Hamas as “militants” when in fact they are the democratically elected government (and shame on the media that a freaking CARTOONIST has to point that out); but it makes a pretty scatterpoint graph; a couple Affordable Care Act links; and LEGO Beach.

Oh, Oh, It’s Magic

On my most recent trip, I had a unique book to read while lounging by a beach of white sand and impossibly blue water. That book was The Magic Room by Jeffrey Zaslow. No, not a fantasy novel for young adults, but a book about women — oddly bereft of feminism. It’s a book about brides and a very special bridal shop in a small Michigan town. You’ll want to keep some tissues close by while you read it. You can get a little taste of it right here.

How did he end up in a bridal shop? When Mr. Zaslow set out to write “a nonfiction book about the love we all wish for our daughters,” he went looking for “a place with great emotion.” His wife suggested a bridal shop. And it’s not just any bridal shop, not one of those big chains or the boutique tucked in an obscure corner of a big department store. Becker’s Bridal has a long history: 4 generations of women in one remarkable family have worked here, in an old “small town” bank building, creating “magic.”

In addition to reading about the strong women of the Becker family and their business, we also follow a number of brides on their journey through the process. This does cause a bit of a muddle towards the last third of the book as the reader jumps from bride to bride, finishing out what happened between their trip to Becker’s and the wedding itself: is Courtney the one who decided not to kiss anyone until she got married? The kindergarten teacher who was in a car wreck? The widow who is getting remarried even though her kids are unhappy with the arrangement? The independent woman who is finally getting married for the first time in her 40s? Or is she the one with rheumatic heart disease? With many brides comes some confusion for anyone without a photographic memory.

As I consider the idea of my second wedding, I found the idea of a “bridal industry” somewhat creepy. No mistake, I understand and respect that there are people who make a living making sure I have a dress that makes me “princess for a day,” seeing to invitations, attiring my entire wedding party, putting together memorable services and receptions. I can’t imagine spending “between $19,907 and $33,178” as most American couples do. Even the cheapest sale dresses at Becker’s are more than I can justify spending on a gown I will — hopefully — only wear once.

Like the “funeral industry,” it doesn’t quite sound right to have an “industry” grow up around profoundly personal moments in somebody’s life. What’s next? Calling religious institutions part of the “faith industry”?

This being said, Mr. Zaslow comes up with some very interesting observations, presented in a rather dry, tangential, New York Times sort of way: brides used to be “smaller,” oh no not because of obesity, but because they “didn’t work out” and “didn’t lift weights” and “didn’t eat the way Americans eat today”; roughly 15% of mothers of the bride want dresses that are “too revealing and sexy,” and 35% have to be reminded that they aren’t the grandmother of the bride; sometimes the boss has to “be a bitch”; and oddly enough, “advances in box-making helped fuel the computer revolution.”

In this world of Brides Behaving Badly, it’s refreshing to see that getting married doesn’t have to be a three ring circus. On the other hand, there’s something odd about a man writing a tear-jerker book about the bridal industry, and saying it’s about “the love we all wish for our daughters.”

Want to discuss this book more? Go check out the conversation already flowing over at the Blogher Book Club.

Disclosure statement: I read this book for the Blogher Book Club. In return for my participation I was given a copy of the book (e-book in this case) and I will receive $20. Nevertheless, the opinions expressed here are my own.

Ok then, who wants a heaping helping of In Closing?: made up words; moron; Anonymous does good; if school was a job, students would get more break time by law; it’s never too early to eat right and move your body; cult; and security theatre.

No Russian

Some of you may recognize that as the title of a controversial level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which a group of Russian ultra-nationalist terrorists shoot up unarmed civilians in an airport terminal while pretending to be Americans in a bid to start a war. I thought about calling this post “No Terrorism” but decided that the meta-reference was a bit too obscure.

see more Epic Fails

A lot of people talk about stopping terror attacks no matter how rare they may be, preventing terrorists from having access to things with which they could hurt innocent people, and whatnot. What we do not have the stomach to talk about is preventing people from thinking terrorism is a good idea. In short, we don’t look at what causes terrorism.

Consider a place where there has been a catastrophe. It doesn’t matter right now what caused the catastrophe, only that the people are in dire conditions which continue to deteriorate for a whole year. Only 3% of factories still function, which means that unemployment is over 40%. A large portion of the residents have no electricity and no running water. The sewage plant doesn’t work. People have resorted to building homes — such as they are — with mud. International donors from all over the world have pledged thousands of millions of dollars to help rebuild the region, and sent such diverse supplies as building materials, medicines, textbooks for destroyed schools, and even food for the people who live there.

However, due to political problems, very little of this aid is reaching the people who need it. Nor is the problem related to bribes, kickbacks, or some other form of corruption as is common in so many parts of the world; unfortunately there is every indication that the intent is to prevent the region from rebuilding, by “imposing Kafkaesque rules that bar entry to vital reconstruction materials and items as bizarre as glass, most schoolbooks, honey and family-sized tubs of margarine.”

The troubled region I describe is Gaza. And the oppressive regime preventing a rebuilding effort is the United States’ staunch ally, Israel. It should be obvious to anybody with a functioning brain cell that, in the words of a UN official, “Palestinians are becoming more desperate and more extreme.” I challenge anyone to avoid becoming more desperate and extreme under such circumstances. Such things are the root cause of terrorism; when there is no non-violent way to change things, violent ways invariably arise. Just ask the Iranians about that.

There are those who will disagree with me, including all those who feel Israel can do no wrong, and those who consider the Bible infallible. If the Israelis are trying to finish the genocide laid out in Deuteronomy 20, let them be honest about it.

In Closing: Reproductive rights are human rights (and not incidentally, the most effective way to fight poverty world wide); two programs that teach kids to read and read well; obligatory health insurance reform items; a word about why your city is scaling back services; corporate control of food; “Centrist” Democrats eying retirement?; a practical joke for the FPS player in your life; JurassikPork gets even more cynical (and we love him for it); the role of innumeracy in our banking and foreclosure crises; the decade in food, and the decade in buzzwords.