Month: October 2010

Using as her main piece of evidence the health insurance reform bill, Megan concludes

I worry that if Republicans get in, we'll end up with a huge budget problem. And I also worry that if Democrats retain control, we'll end up with a huge budget problem.  I see no evidence at this point that I should worry more about one than the other.  We have a huge deficit problem.  And I'm pretty sure that whatever batch of politicians we elect next Tuesday is going to make it worse, rather than better.

I will make my call depending on each party's and the president's responses to the Debt Commission proposals. But the record of the past couple of decades, especially the last one, leads me to believe that the greater threat to America's fiscal future lies with the GOP. But the Dems have yet to show any spine on entitlement cuts. Seeing how health insurance reform's Medicare cuts fare will also be a revealing moment. The Dish remains fiscally obsessed with balancing our books. We'll happily credit either party for making the biggest effort to get us there.

“Since the true things about Jonah Goldberg are more than adequate to make the case that he’s a waste of space on a crowded planet, there’s no need to invent false ones,” – Mark Kleiman.

To me, the column was simply a college Republican at 3 am in a dorm room, making a debater’s point rather than confront any sort of reality. The kind of adolescent attitude that would prompt someone during a high-point of unaccountable executive power, presidentially-authorized torture and pre-emptive warfare, to write a book called “Liberal Fascism.”

“Joe Miller – do not give up. It’s you against the machine. This is it. ‘Lost causes’ are the only ones worth fighting for,'” – Sarah Palin, tweeting.

That's the crowd-count contrast that seems about as solid as these statistics come. Now how many op-eds, feature stories, and front-pages are going to be commissioned about the sensible, but clearly mobilized, sane middle in this country?

(Image via Buzzfeed)

Photographer Sarah Sudhoff "creates large-scale color photographs of stained fabrics from trauma scenes and discusses the invisibility of death in our culture":

At the Hour of Our Death from Mark & Angela Walley on Vimeo.

(Hat tip: Devour)

The following advice to Christian college students applies to secular ones as well:

Be deeply intellectual. We—that is, the Church—need you to do well in school. That may sound strange, because many who represent Christian values seem concerned primarily with how you conduct yourself while you are in college; they relegate the Christian part of being in college to what is done outside the classroom.

The Christian fact is very straightforward: To be a student is a calling. Your parents are setting up accounts to pay the bills, or you are scraping together your own resources and taking out loans, or a scholarship is making college possible. Whatever the practical source, the end result is the same. You are privileged to enter a time—four years!—during which your main job is to listen to lectures, attend seminars, go to labs, and read books.

It is an extraordinary gift. In a world of deep injustice and violence, a people exists that thinks some can be given time to study.

Maynard, Massachusetts, 12 pm

David McRaney explains why we never watch the "smart" movies on our Netflix queue:

Many studies over the years have shown you tend to have time-inconsistent preferences. When asked if you would rather have fruit or cake one week from now, you will usually say fruit. A week later when the slice of German chocolate and the apple are offered, you are statistically more likely to go for the cake.

This is why your Netflix queue is full of great films you keep passing over for “Family Guy.” With Netflix, the choice of what to watch right now and what to watch later is like candy bars versus carrot sticks. When you are planning ahead, your better angels point to the nourishing choices, but in the moment you go for what tastes good.

While reading a book on innovation by Steven Johnson, several questions occured to Alan Jacobs:

Under what circumstances does a given society need strategies of conservation and preservation more than it needs innovation? … Do the habits of mind (personal and social) that promote innovation consort harmoniously with those that promote conservation and preservation? Can a person, or a society, reconcile these two impulses, or will one dominate at the expense of the other?