Month: September 2009

Carl Franzen asks:

Will the internet replace broadcast TV as the primary launching pad for new show concepts? Will big-name actors propel the genre into the mainstream, or is that just a pipe dream?

Increasing numbers of very qualified and very accomplished American citizens are being forced to relocate abroad. Here's why:

I didn't move to the UK because I was a huge fan of the weather, or the food [1], or the transportation [2], or the dentistry. I moved here for immigration reasons. When people ask me why in the world I left San Francisco to move to England, the typical answer I give is "family reasons." Which is true, but not incredibly descriptive. I think it's time to give a fuller story, and in the process out myself. [3] When I moved here I was in a long term relationship with a British citizen. He had moved to the US with an L-1 Treaty Trader visa [4], and was hoping, nay praying, that this could be upgraded to an H1-B. Unfortunately, although he was an extremely experienced financial software pre-sales consultant, with a BS from a quite reasonable UK university, and paid quite significant taxes for precious little in return, this wasn't going to happen. We lived for several years under the threat that if his firm decided to let him go for whatever reason, he had two weeks to leave the country forever. Given that his firm wasn't doing particularly well at the time, this put a major strain on his life, and thus our relationship. After New Labour was elected here in the UK, one of their first actions on taking power was to rationalize gay immigration rights. Essentially, they said that if you were in a same-sex domestic partnership akin to marriage, that would be considered as though you were married for immigration purposes. Thus, I was able to move to the United Kingdom based on our relationship [5]; the converse was not true. We didn't have the option to get married in the US or the UK, and even if California had same-sex marriage at the time, it didn't matter for immigration purposes. [6]

I've been in the US for a quarter of a century, have paid taxes when I was working, am married to an American and have never asked for a dime of public help. But the US – alone among developed nations – still persecutes non-Americans for having HIV and regards my civil marriage as null and void and my husband as a total stranger to me.

Britain doesn't persecute people with HIV and never has; moreover, Britain would allow my husband and I to relocate together to England at any point. I'm not sure people fully understand what it's like to build a life with someone and to do all you can to contribute to a society – and yet be vulnerable at any moment to having your family torn apart by the government. But it's a strain that eventually becomes crippling: you have no security, no stability, no guarantee that you have a future you can count on. And that affects an American citizen, my husband, as well.

Why has America become such a callous outlier on these matters? Why is the government forcing more and more able, qualified, productive and talented citizens into a diaspora to protect their families? And why, even after a big victory for Obama and a Democratic Congress, is there not the slightest chance of any progress for the foreseeable future?

Because it's about gays. And we are still, in the eyes of the federal government, sub-human.

Bruce Bartlett gets brutal confirmation of his poor view of George W. Bush from Matt Latimer.

As summer ends (although this week has been glorious on the Cape) here’s a look back with Ben Wiggins, who “shot a beautiful time-lapse video of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area over the summer using a Canon 5D Mark II. The music featured in the video is “Revolve” by hisboyelroy.”

Another Cloud Reel… from Delrious on Vimeo.

Wired's Brandon Keim highlights a new study review:

[Neuroscience researcher Shane] O’Mara derides the belief that extreme stress produces reliable memory as “folk neurobiology” that “is utterly unsupported by scientific evidence.” The hippocampus and prefrontal cortex — the brain’s centers of memory processing, storage and retrieval — are profoundly altered by stress hormones. Keep the stress up long enough, and it will “result in compromised cognitive function and even tissue loss,” warping the minds that interrogators want to read.

What’s more, tortured suspects might not even realize when they’re lying. Frontal lobe damage can produce false memories: As torture is maintained for weeks or months or years, suspects may incorporate their captors’ allegations into their own version of reality.

Only Dick Cheney believed that brain-washing techniques devised by the Communist Chinese could deliver accurate intelligence.

The 1970s had nothing on the 1770s.

Nate Silver wonders if opposing health care reform will hurt Republicans in the house:

2010, more likely than not, will be a year of some political upheaval. The question is whether that upheaval will be directed at Democrats alone, or rather, incumbents of all stripes. If the former, then Democrats are in for a world of hurt. If the latter, Democrats will still almost certainly lose seats, simply because they have more incumbents running (at least in the House; this is less so in the Senate). But they might be able to knock off a Richard Burr in North Carolina, maybe a Grassley in Iowa (although I wouldn't place money on that one), possibly someone like a Thad McCotter in MI-11, or maybe a Michelle Bachman or Joe Wilson.

Since Bachman and Wilson weren't ousted even with the Democratic boost Obama provided, it seems unlikely they will lose their seats in 2010.

At least Ed Morrissey is honest about the time-frame:

If we hope to prevail, we will need a political commitment for more resources over a much longer period of time than most politicians have been willing to report.  Michael Yon has insisted that means decades of Western involvement, to make sure that an Afghanistan we eventually leave will not slide back into the Afghanistan of the post-Soviet period, where radical Islam prevails and terrorist networks build central offices for attacks on the world.  Either we commit to this fight, or we should pull out altogether.

I agree. The choice is between a form of empire in one of the most ungovernable places on earth or retreat and regrouping around a more sustainable (if no more guaranteed) strategy of damage-control.

A mixed bag in this new report from al-Jazeera. The racism among some Israeli Jews is pretty striking. The way they speak contemptuously of "the Arabs" is not the equivalent of some of the vilest anti-Semitism among their neighbors. But it is disturbing nonetheless.

"The Gay Days visitors are really no different from other Oktoberfest revellers. Except for the fact that they do give us better tips and they are less likely to throw beer glasses at each other when the evening gets going," – Claudia, a long-time waitress at Oktoberfest in Munich.