Month: June 2010

While arguing for a soda tax, Leonhardt digs up a study:

Mr. Goldman and his U.S.C. colleagues have made an estimate that takes into account both higher short-term spending and reduced longevity (including the fact that the government does not have to pay for as many years of Social Security when someone dies prematurely). In their work, they assume that obesity returns to its 1978 level. If that happened, the federal government would save about $17 billion a year. That’s equal to about 3 percent of Medicare’s and Medicaid’s current budget.

An Iranian fatwa against keeping dogs and pets. I'm guessing a blogging sodomite with two beagles wouldn't last very long in Qom.

Josh Block continues the new campaign by the pro-Israel lobby to demonize Turkey and equate this critical bridge between West and East with Ahmadinejad and Assad. Why? Because Turkey has criticized Israel, of course. Here’s the email:

From: jblock@aipac.org [mailto:jblock@aipac.org]

Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 10:38 AM To: xxx@xxx.com

Subject: Funny Video!! The Three Terrors – Erdogan, Ahmadinejad, Assad sing in a trio

OK, this is another video, but a really funny one:

The Three Terrors – Ahmedido Domingo (aka Ahmadinejad), Erdogano Pavarotti (aka Erdogan) and Assad Carreras (aka Bashar Assad) singing about the benefits of terrorism.

full text:

Based on Funiculi Funicula

Sung by the Three Terrors:

Erdogano Pavarotti, Assad Carreras and Ahmedido Domingo

Erdogan: I say — it’s time that I restore the Empire

Let’s get to work (let’s get to work!)

Because in Europe everybody knows that

I’m just a jerk (he’s just a jerk!)

Assad: And I , the serial killer who should spend all

his life in jail (oy vey oy vey)

To reach the hearts of all the world media

We found the trail (hurray hurray)

Erdogan: Terror, Terror, that’s my cup of tea

Terror gains us love and sympathy

To beat the West, to be the one

From Tripoli to Teheran

Yalla yalla, ya — Jihad is sweet, Jihad is fun

All: Terror, Terror, that’s how you convince

That you’re cool and charming as a prince

To beat the West, to be the one

For Hezbullah and Erdogan

Yalla yalla, ya — Jihad is sweet, Jihad is fun

B.

Ahmedi: So now, the UN has imposed the sanctions

(Ironically) Oh my, oh my… (oh my, oh my)

Together here we stand, no opposition,

I hung them high (he hung them high)

I wish to thank Obama for his patience,

For playing dumb (for playing dumb)

Coz now I got the peace of mind to build me

The nuclear bomb (The nuclear bomb)

Terror, terror, that’s my cup of tea

Assad: Terror gains us love and sympathy

Erdogan: To beat the West, to be the one

From Tennessee to Teheran

Yalla, yalla ya, Jihad is sweet, Jihad is fun

All: Terror, Terror, gets us all the grants

Terror makes you all piss in your pants

To beat the West, to be the one

From Tennessee to Teheran

Yalla yalla, ya — I hit the switch and you are gone

And you end up with Ahmadinejad-style arguments like this one:

Tony Perrottet checks out the housing market and land deals throughout the ages:

The colonial era is full of subversive deal-making, but the world’s most notorious real estate coup occurred in 1626, when the energetic Dutch settler Peter Minuit, as an agent for the West India Company, purchased the unimproved woodland “island Manhattes,” covering 15,000 acres, for 60 guilders worth of goods (around $24 today). The 300 resident Native Americans, referred to in documents as the Manhatesen, were not aware they were selling their island paradise at all, thinking instead they were simply allowing the Dutch to share it. As related by Russell Shorto in The Island at the Center of the World, the chief, Sackimas, deemed that the Dutch access to Manhattan’s resources was a reasonable exchange for a valuable array of European items — knives, axes, hoes, awls, cloth, and coats, but probably not beads — and the additional promise of support by the Dutch against enemy tribes. For 40 years, the casual sharing arrangement worked well, with Indians still hunting and fishing in the forests and river-fronts. But then the Manhatesen were squeezed out to a less enviable site off-island — forests in the north, now known as the Bronx. Still, the Dutch were no visionary real estate geniuses: In 1644, they traded Manhattan for Surinam.

Roger Scruton defends negative thinking:

In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. I don’t go along with Schopenhauer’s comprehensive gloom, or with the philosophy of renunciation that he derived from it. I have no doubt that St Paul was right to recommend faith, hope and love (agape) as the virtues which order life to the greater good. But I have no doubt too that hope, detached from faith and untempered by the evidence of history, is a dangerous asset, and one that threatens not only those who embrace it, but all those within range of their illusions.

"Epithalamium"

Without silence there would be no music.
Life paired is doubtless more difficult
than solitary existence –
just as a boat on the open sea
with outstretched sails is trickier to steer
than the same boat drowsing at a dock, but schooners
after all are meant for wind and motion,
not idleness and impassive quiet.

A conversation continued through the years includes
hours of anxiety, anger, even hatred,
but also compassion, deep feeling.
Only in marriage do love and time,
eternal enemies, join forces.
Only love and time, when reconciled,
permit us to see other beings
in their enigmatic, complex essence,
unfolding slowly and certainly, like a new settlement
in a valley, or among green hills.

In begins from one day only, from joy
and pledges, from the holy day of meeting,
which is like a moist grain;
then come the years of trial and labor,
sometimes despair, fierce revelation,
happiness and finally a great tree
with rich greenery grows over us,
casting its vast shadow. Cares vanish in it.

– by Adam Zagajewski.

The poem is from this collection, which you can (and should) buy here. For more discussion of wedding poems, see here. A review of Zagajewski's work here.