Month: October 2010

Sara Novak is a fan of Eben Bayer's TED talk on the possibility of using the mycelium found in mushrooms to form a new plastic/Styrofoam replacement:

We currently spend $20 billion a year to produce all sorts of Styrofoam, from coolers to carryout containers and it takes 1.5 liters of petrol to produce just one cubic foot of the stuff. Currently, according to Bayer, Styrofoam occupies 25 percent of our landfills. Instead, we need to come up with a material that fits into nature's own recycling system.

A hard line from the Georgian hot-head:

Should Republicans takes the House, Gingrich urges them, in the “very first week,” to pass a ‘no tax increase on any American during the recession’ bill and send it to the president in January.

My sense, and it is a deeply depressing one, is that the Republicans have absolutely no intention of proposing, let alone making, any serious cuts in entitlement or defense spending if they gain control of the House or Senate, that they will try to stop any increase in taxes for those earning over $250,000 a year, and that their goal will be to destroy Obama personally and politically as they tried with Clinton. They have no constructive agenda. they have no interest in actually tackling the debt – just using it as a political ammunition. Listen to this rhetoric:

“Maybe the liberals felt this way about Nixon during Watergate, but I have never seen this level of conservative anger at somebody, the way [they’re angry] with the president.” “Radical elites are in such denial about reality right now, whether it’s the president, Speaker Pelosi, or Senate Majority Leader Reid,” Gingrich says. The frustration with Democrats, he says, is “bigger and deeper than in 1994.”

And will his subsequent over-reach be just as deep?

Alistair Harkness interviews writer/director Olivier Assayas about his new mini-series, "Carlos", based on the Venezuelan-born, pro-Palestine terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez:

The film certainly uses Carlos as something of a focal point to explore this. Set against the backdrop of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Cold War, the rise of Saddam Hussein (he was an admirer of Carlos's methods) and the birth of Islamic extremism, it can be viewed as a prehistory of modern terrorism.

"The film is pretty much about how terrorism is interconnected with geopolitics," says Assayas, "meaning it can only be understood if you have the bigger picture. The similarities are that terrorism is really about one state sending a message to another and all the noise in the media is somehow collateral to the reality of what's going on."

E.D. Kain pines for better conservative journalism:

I would love a more reasoned, measured conservative journalism to take root – a Fox 2.0 that abandoned all the antics and dishonesty and stated its case for conservatism forcefully and cogently, but I’m not at all sure there’s a market for that – or at least a large enough market for that. And therein lies the rub: the point of Fox may not be to create an emotionally driven television station, but the market has spoken, and Beckian hyperbole is what the people want. And so it’s what the people will get.

One caveat: the Fox audience includes many people who aren't in on the joke that the network's hosts aren't always speaking in earnest. O'Reilly camp, like Coulter camp is just that, at times – like Lou Dobbs' erstwhile man-of-the-people schtick. People don't actually want to be misled about reality by entertainers who pose as journalistic guardians of their best interests, but that is what's happening.

Have these people forgotten what it's like to be children?

COLUMBUS, Ohio — When bad weather hits this winter, students in a rural western Ohio school district will hit their home computers as part of an experiment. With the Ohio Department of Education looking on, the Mississinawa Valley Schools in Darke County will try to replace days off for snow and other inclement weather with online learning.

The notion that today's kids need Internet time more than outdoor playtime is itself suspect, but beyond that, can anyone possibly value a day's worth of online instruction more than the memories of childhood snow days?

(Photo: Etta Kenare/Getty.)

Balko puts American incarceration rates in perspective:

In 1970 one in 400 American adults was behind bars or on parole. As of 2008, the number was one in 100. Add in probation, and it's one in 31. The number of people behind bars for drug crimes has soared from 40,000 in 1980 to about half a million today. States today spend one of every 15 general fund dollars on maintaining their prisons. According to the King's College World Prison Population List (PDF), the U.S. is home to 5 percent of the world's population but nearly a fourth of its prisoners. Judging by these official numbers, America's incarceration rate leads the developed world by a large margin, although it's doubtful that authoritarian regimes such as China's are providing accurate data, especially about political prisoners. But among liberal democracies, the competition isn't even close: As of 2008, the U.S. incarceration rate was 756 per 100,000 people, compared to 288 for Latvia, 153 for England and Wales, 96 for France, and 63 for Denmark.

How did we get here?

As New York Times reporter Adam Liptak pointed out in a 2008 article, America's soaring incarceration rate may be largely due to the fact that we have one of the most politicized criminal justice systems in the developed world. In most states, judges and prosecutors are elected, making them more susceptible to slogan-based crime policy and an electorate driven by often irrational fear. While the crime rate has fallen dramatically since the early 1990s, polls consistently show that the public still thinks crime is getting worse.

A reader writes:

Don't forget James Buchanan, our 15th president. Lifelong bachelor, lived with William Rufus King, and at least a couple people at the time referred to them as the "two queens." This could play into the taboos you were talking about; people are more willing to associate Buchanan with being gay because he's one of the worst presidents in American history.

Another writes:

Buchanan lived with King for 15 years prior to King’s election as vice president under Franklin Pierce.  King died before being inaugurated, and Buchanan was so bereft, some have suggested, that President Pierce sent him to the Court of St. James to be away from the sad memories connected with the house the two bachelors had shared together.

More details from Wikipedia:

Buchanan and King's close relationship prompted Andrew Jackson to refer to King as "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy", while Aaron V. Brown spoke of the two as "Buchanan and his wife". Further, some of the contemporary press also speculated about Buchanan and King's relationship. Buchanan and King's nieces destroyed their uncles' correspondence, leaving some questions as to what relationship the two men had, but surviving letters illustrate the affection of a special friendship, and Buchanan wrote of his communion with his housemate.

Buchanan wrote in 1844, after King left for France, "I am now solitary and alone, having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection."

And America's next top infomercialist:

If only.