Month: August 2012

by Patrick Appel

A reader corrects the record:

"America is still #1."

I clicked on the link embedded in that sentence and read the article. No where in that article does it state or imply that the US is the fattest nation on Earth. It states that 35.7% of adults in the US are obese. But a quick Google search indicates that half of all adults in Qatar are obese. Another hit shows that the US is only ninth where the criterion is overweight or obese (BMI > 25), with the US (74.1%) not even close to the top 4, all of which are over 90%: Nauru (94.5%), Micronesia (91.1%), Cook Islands (90.9%), and Tonga (90.8%).

The study (pdf) showed that America is the fattest OECD country, not the fattest country. Apologies for the mistake.

by Gwynn Guilford

Alexis Hauk describes how radio programming is bringing dying languages to younger audiences:

Following centuries of oppression that have marginalized minority languages, radio represents a modest but surprisingly promising way to reinvigorate the traditions keeping those languages alive. In the Maori community of New Zealand, for example, the combination of 21 radio stations and rigorous early childhood immersion programs have brought Maori-languages speakers from an all-time low of 24,000 in the 1980s to 131,000 in 2006, according to Mark Camp, deputy executive director at Cultural Survival. "If you don't have some sort of media—and radio is the best in our opinion—to counterbalance the predominant commercial media that is all in Spanish or in English, it makes language less of a modern, living thing. It becomes something that you might do with your grandparents."

Though they're behind New Zealand and Ireland, efforts in the US helping Cherokee and Hopi as well.

(Image from FlowingData, capturing the fascinating interactive map of endangered languages on the Endangered Languages Project site.)

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Many analysts assume there will be a war between the generations regarding who benefits and who pays for social programs like medicare and social security, both programs open to the vast majority of elderly, retired, or disabled Americans.

This misses a key point of both programs.

My own case as an example. I get both medicare and social security now that I'm 67 years old. But my first benefit from the programs came when I was 19. My parents sent me off to college, and sent my sister the next year. This would not have been possible without social security and medicare, which were available to my grandparents – the first generation to come of age under these programs. Without these programs, my family's money would not have stretched to cover my college costs. It would have gone, as it did in countless generations before, to taking care of elderly parents and grandparents.

When I was in my 50s, both of my parents died after relatively long illnesses. My sister and I worked hard to ensure that our parents died with dignity and compassion; however, without the supplements provided by medicare and social security, we would have had to "rob" the next generation to cover costs of aging parents.

These two programs have broken the chains that bound younger generations with the health and welfare of parents and grandparents. So, if you give the younger generation the option of paying into social programs or having their parents, grandparents, old maid aunts and uncles move in with them, the choice is easier.

by Chris Bodenner

Skip to the 1:50 mark for an entrancing encounter:

Update from a reader:

There is widespread speculation that this is a viral marketing video for the GoPro, and possibly computer generated. I find it very strange that there are no shadows of the turbulent water on the tops of the dolphins themselves, and I am very skeptical …

GoPro denies any involvement, "but that's exactly what they should say if they want it to go viral."

by Chas Danner

This week "former Democrat" Artur Davis was given a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Ed Kilgore explains Davis' political transformation:

A very early supporter and personal friend of Barack Obama, and once (despite a pro-business and socially conservative record that discomfited some national Democrats) a passionate advocate of universal health coverage and stronger federal support for public education, Davis set his sites on the audacious goal of becoming governor of Alabama (as he told me years earlier, just after giving an inspiring speech on how conservatives were starving the public schools and the economic opportunities of his very poor majority-black district). Having done so, he systematically began adjusting his ideology to the views of his state’s conservative general electorate, to the point of becoming a national spokesman against the Affordable Care Act and a voice of open contempt towards Alabama’s embattled pro-Democratic interest groups, presumably believing his race and the radicalism of Alabama’s GOP would maintain his base of support.

His extreme “triangulation” didn’t work, and he was absolutely trounced in the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial primary by an underfunded white candidate who swept Davis’ own majority-black congressional district. Practically from the moment of his concession speech, he left his party and his state behind, and soon surfaced as a columnist for National Review and then a transplanted Virginian expressing interest in a future congressional race as a Republican. The one-time champion of better-funded public education recently emerged as a vocal defender of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s radical Christian-Right-based school voucher program in Louisiana.

Davis says he intends to "make a succinct case about why 7 million Americans who voted for Barack Obama have left his camp". Previous Dish on Davis' 2010 race here and here.

by Chas Danner

Isobel Coleman details the continuing conflict between the religious and the secular within Tunisia's burgeoning democracy:

In Tunisia, arguably the most secular and progressive of the transitioning countries, worryingly violent protests have marked the deep tensions that exist between religious and secular elements in society. Unsurprisingly, these tensions are playing out not only in the streets, but also in cultural spaces like art galleries, in the media, and in the courts. Last fall, protests erupted after a Tunisian television station showed the acclaimed movie Persepolis–a coming-of-age story set in Iran that depicts God in a human form, something that Islam forbids. The head of the station's home was ransacked by demonstrators in the ensuing demonstrations. What really alarms secularists is that the court fined the executive $1,600 for "disturbing public order" and "threatening public morals."

And one of the areas of biggest concern is in regards to women's rights:

New language in the draft constitution, and negative reactions to it, also highlight Tunisians' conflicting views about the role of women. The language describes a woman as a "complement with the man in the family and an associate to the man in the development of the country." Out of the 20-person committee overseeing the drafting of this language, twelve members voted for it, nine of them from Ennahda. Yesterday, thousands of Tunisians protested against the language, some of them demanding that the language from the 1956 constitution be used instead, as it holds men and women equal (among other progressive measures).

by Patrick Appel

Dave Weigel defends progressive rock:

We’re too hard on the artists who try big things, show off their prowess, and occasionally screw it all up.

The laugh-and-gawk-and-parody approach is fun but doesn’t explain why this music was popular, much less why critics liked it. Progressive rock, in its various forms, evolved out of psychedelia, out of classical music, and out of jazz fusion. In every case, its practitioners became obsessed with sounds and technologies and song structures and took them as far as they could. Pop songs became four- or five-part pop symphonies, with preludes and codas and repeating themes. Wasn’t this where music was supposed to go?

Weigel continues this argument in parts 2, 3, 4, and 5. From the latest entry:

I don’t want to lionize everything that came out of this movement. The DIY, punk, and new wave backlashes wouldn’t have happened if the progressives hadn’t made some music worth lashing. When that backlash started, though, they were in many ways remarkably in the spirit of the prog revolution that had come before. Prog had demoed the electronics, pioneered the found sounds and use of empty space. They’d tweaked the synthesizers and parodied the three-minute pop song. This was the result of a “remarkable explosion of the creative impulse in popular music,” said Robert Fripp in a 2012 interview. Early, experimental progressive rock “came from these young men who didn’t know what they were doing, yet were able to do it.” You could say the same of the punks.

by Gwynn Guilford

Indie band Silversun Pickups is the latest band to rail against Republican use of their music – but there are always a few of these throughout the campaign. Andrew Kirell offers some advice:

Note to Republicans: musicians tend to dislike you — whether that be for political reasons or for fan-pleasing purposes — so avoid playing their music at any point during a campaign event because you will likely get called out, and you will likely be embarrassed.

He rounds up the most recent rounds of reprimands:

Notable musicians Jackson Browne, Foo Fighters, John Mellencamp, John Hall, and ABBA(?!?!) all demanded Sen. John McCain quit using their tunes during his 2008 campaign; the Wilson sisters from Heart famously reprimanded Sarah Palin for using “Barracuda” to promote herself that same year. Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist was sued by his doppelgänger David Byrne for using a Talking Heads song in 2010. And, of course, George W. Bush made a fair amount of enemies in Mellencamp, Tom Petty, and Sting.

Maybe try Megadeth?

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

A bell on a cat will scare away the birds? Not. I grew up with a castrated and de-clawed basic gray cat who wore a collar with a jingly-jangly bell, and he still killed a seagull. A smallish, year-old seagull, but a seagull none the less. I'm not sure the cat weighed as much as the seagull. We watched with anticipation of something absolutely hysterical happening as he stalked the bird, and to all our horror, he killed it in about three seconds.

Another tops that:

Despite being deaf, declawed, and wearing a bell, our cat still killed mice, rabbits, and probably birds; we don't know how many. After being affronted that my dad "wasted" a good baby rabbit by burying it in the back yard, she gave up on bringing us her kills and at some point learned to eat them herself from a feral cat that spent a summer in the neighborhood.   She also figured out that drinking from a guppy bowl would entice the poor dumb things to come check out her tongue.  Mom caught her at it one day after wondering where the guppies disappeared to.

Another:

I’ve been reading the posts on cats’ killing instincts with bewilderment. That’s because I regard my cat as a working animal whom I expect to go outside and kill all sorts of vermin.

I live in the country in an early 19th century farm-house w ith a rubble foundation that allows mice and other critters to easily invade my house.  I’m also a gardener, so I view rabbits, chipmunks and such not as cute little critters but damaging nuisances.  Thus, I love it when I open the door in the morning to find my cat’s, "gifts" to me of dead mice, moles, voles or other creatures that regularly invade my house, tear up my gardens or ravage my vegetable plot.   To me, that’s the whole point of owning a cat, and why I typically adopt "barn cats," that have been shown how to hunt by their mothers.

After all, the very reason why cats were domesticated in the first place was due to their propensity to kill.   Cats kept the vermin in check that otherwise ransacked food supplies and carried nasty things like the plague.   Even now, by killing vermin my cat helps to keep in check the mice that carry Lyme in my area. 

Another:

Having grown up in the Texas hill country, with wildlife all around, my parents kept several cats around the house. Now, my dad really didn't like cats, but soon after we moved into our house he realized that, one, we had a mouse problem, and two, there were a lot of rattlesnakes around. With two small children in the house, he decided the best way to deal with these problems was to keep some cats, and he promptly went to the animal shelter and picked up a couple kittens.

And the strategy worked marvelously. After the first few months, the mice disappeared completely. And over the years of my youth the cats killed at least four rattlers, one of which was caught and killed right in front of me in our large garden, seconds before I was headed in there to pick tomatoes and cucumbers.

Of course cats are killers. That this is so surprising to people indicates to me that some city folk need to get out more.

More stories at our Facebook page:

My cat's retired now – if he's killing, he's not bringing them home often anymore. But he used to bring home kills, and artistically gut them, laid on their backs, belly splayed-out, guts neatly placed to the side. Sometimes he'd leave just hands, feet, and tail. One time, a rabbit-head. One time, on the welcome-mat, square with the edges, he lined up, all neat and parallel: a lizard, a hummingbird, a fish, and a rat. All in one night. (The fish was the neighbor's koi – he's brought us at least 3 … I think they just gave up restocking.) He's tried to train our younger cat, but she can't even succeed with moths. She tries so hard, bless her heart.

(Photo from the site What Jeff Killed)

by Patrick Appel

Nate Cohn thinks Romney should have attacked Obama's attacks:

If you don’t have a response to attacks and your own attacks aren’t effective, the best alternative is to take the high ground and attack negative campaigning itself. I’m not even close to the first to make this observation, but that’s because it is not hard to see how this could be a powerful message. Attacking Obama’s campaign style jives well with the “Obama disappointed me” meme that Crossroads has been pushing since May, and that could be convincing to voters in battleground states who have already endured three months of advertisements at saturation-levels. 

He goes on to point out that "Romney's ability to transition to this new message is complicated by his own relentlessly negative campaign," and that "not only was the Romney campaign's early strategy ineffective by focusing on the wrong candidate, it's now complicating their efforts to make a mid-course correction."