Month: July 2008

By Patrick Appel
A 1936 article on the Social Security Act (it was signed into law just the year before) details the circumstances which spurred its creation:

The depression has shown a marked increase in the number of aged dependents. We find that, although older men are not often discriminated against when work slacks off in industrial plants, it is much more difficult for them to be reemployed when once off the payroll. The problem of old-age security is intensified because, while physical life is reaching further into the sixties and seventies, the economic life of the industrial worker is dropping back toward the fifties. This situation is not a product of the depression.

By Patrick Appel

Strangemaps covers the state that never was.

By Patrick Appel
Conor Clarke:

…the question stands: would you rather live in a world in which politicians and their minions can show the outside world what’s actually on their minds — and suffer the occasional monster — or a world in which we spend two thirds of waking life trying to get Mark Penn or Samantha Power fired?

By Patrick Appel
Tamsin Osborne summarizes a study on male and female life-time happiness levels:

Apparently, women are happy with their lot earlier in their lives, whereas men have bigger financial goals and tend to be unfulfilled during their 20s, both financially and in their family lives, which makes them miserable. But by middle age, men have fulfilled their financial and family life goals and have cheered up, whereas women are more likely to be unfulfilled and unhappy. The authors think a major factor underlying this is the shift in the proportion of men and women in relationships: men are more likely to be single in their 20s, and women are more likely to be alone in middle age.

By Patrick Appel
McCain changes his tune, and then semi-corrects himself:

BLITZER: So why do you think he said that 16 months is basically a pretty good timetable?

McCAIN: He said it’s a pretty good timetable based on conditions on the ground. I think it’s a pretty good timetable, as we should — or horizons for withdrawal. But they have to be based on conditions on the ground.

As Mark Murray says: "calling 16 months a "good timetable" is something McCain hasn’t said before — and probably never would have said a week ago." Obama welcomes the change in a press conference:

In terms of his comment about — that maybe 16 months sounds good — we are pleased to see that there has been some convergence around proposals that we’ve been making for a year and a half. The fact that John McCain now thinks that we should put more troops into Afghanistan I think is a good thing and that the Bush administration acknowledges that as well…The fact that John McCain now thinks that it’s possible for us to execute a phased withdrawal — I think that’s a positive thing and if the administration believes that as well, then I will, I will be fully supportive.

By Patrick Appel

A bit of David Samuels’s article in the New Yorker on medical marijuana in California:

The limited legal protections afforded to pot growers and dispensary owners have turned marijuana cultivation and distribution in California into a classic "gray area" business, like gambling or strip clubs, which are tolerated or not, to varying degrees, depending on where you live and on how aggressive your local sheriff is feeling that afternoon. This summer, Jerry Brown, the state’s attorney general, plans to release a more consistent set of regulations on medical marijuana, but it is not clear that California’s judges will uphold his effort. In May, the state Court of Appeal, in Los Angeles, ruled that Senate Bill 420’s cap on the amount of marijuana a patient could possess was unconstitutional, because voters had not approved the limits.

Luang Prabang, Laos, 10 am.

By Patrick Appel
Part of an opinion piece against internet classes in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

At the most basic level, to be a student has always meant actually dragging one’s exhausted body into class with readings in hand, being (more or less) awake, alert, listening, and ready to open one’s mouth. And to be a teacher, for me, means seeing the faces of the students and how their bodies reflect their thoughts and emotions, hearing the timbre of their voices or the lilts in their dialects, experiencing them before me in the rich mix of ideas.

By Patrick Appel
An art project in New York:

Jake Bronstein recently bought a toy vending machine off the Internet. He filled the toy capsules with ideas of fun things to do and started placing the machine in various spots around New York. For 50 cents you get the original toy, an idea, and a map to guide you to the location for your idea. Each capsule also contains a quarter, refunding half of your purchase price (the machine wouldn’t let him charge less than 50 cents.)

(Image from here)