Month: August 2012

by Chris Bodenner

Oops @alecmacgillis: Globe: Ryan denied on air requesting stim $$ for WI, after writing 5 letters seeking funds. mobile.boston.com/art/35/politic…"

— Michael Powell (@powellnyt) August 16, 2012

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Since getting a cat, Carina, with a remarkable resemblance to Tibs (from the video you of my apartment, and since I signed a form from the shelter that I would keep her an indoor cat, I opted for a leash. I have become the crazy lady who takes her cat out on a leash two to three times a day at half hour intervals. We explore the backyard, the perimeter of the house, she sniffs and swats at bugs, she yearns to climb trees and has attempted the occasional fence. Oh and she loves to eat grass! The neighbor's cat, who is allowed to run free, gets into cat fights and has depleted the local bunny population by at least three, by my neighbor's account (I no longer see bunnies eating clover in the yard next door, so it is likely more) and earlier this week Carina and I spied a fly-invested bird carcass in the backyard. My kitty longs for this sort of blood sport, too. I see it in her soft yellow-green eyes, especially at twilight, the witching hour, when they turn red and black and she wants to lurch at my ankles. Then we play chase the furry ball that looks like a small rodent.

Another:

One solution I was told, was if your cat wears or tolerates a collar, put a bell on it. It will warn potential prey of the cat's movements.

That seems like a dubious solution:

A fact sheet put out by the Mammal Society but unfortunately no longer available on their website showed that putting bells on cats does not limit their hunting ability, in fact belled cats in one particular study caught more wildlife than their unbelled equivalents. Some reasons given were that belled cats learn to move even more stealthily, the bells are not loud enough to alert wildlife of danger anyway, and inertia holds the clanger stationary and therefore silent when the cat makes the final attacking leap. At least two other studies have highlighted that the belling of cats has no effect on number of birds caught. "The efficiency of fitting cats with bells is contentious. Barrette (1998), found that belling of cats has no significant effect on the amount of prey caught."

Other possible solutions:

Wildlife experts have told cat owners they need to regularly change their cat's bell to stay one step ahead of their pet. They are also calling for owners to give their cats garishly coloured collars and to install sonic devices in their gardens to scare their pets indoors.

More tips here.

(Photo by Matt Bodenner)

by Patrick Appel

A dispatch on Chinese cities describes "smog the color of gargled milk":

The air in Harbin was so polluted that I felt as though the coal dust had sunk into my lungs, and a fine layer of black soot seeped in through our windows overnight. But even Harbin wasn't as filthy as Linfen, a city of 4 million people in central China's Shanxi province thatTime in 2007, on a list of the world's 20 most polluted cities, said made "Dickensian London look as pristine as a nature park."

Relatedly, Robin Hanson chronicles the costs of dirty air:

The US Federal EPA standard for air pollution in the form of particles of size 2.5 microns or smaller is an annual average of 15, and a 24 hour average of 35, micrograms per cubic centimeter. Many places are not in compliance with these standards (check your area here and here).

A 2009 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that decreasing this pollution number by 10 units on average increases lifespan by 0.61±0.20 years. A 2006 paper in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine estimated that such a change would decrease mortality by about 15%, adding about two years of lifespan. … These are huge gains, which could be achieved at a modest expense, especially compared to the vast costs we pay for tiny health gains via medicine. More should be done.

by Gwynn Guilford

A reader weighs in on the Romney chortle:

I always think of this scene from Anchorman when I see Romney's "laugh" (starts around 0:33).  I imagine him going through the steps in his head … "Ok, someone made a joke and people are starting to laugh.  Time to smile and chuckle.  Keep going, they're still laughing.  Ok, they're slowing down, let's bring it down a notch.  Are we done yet?  Ok, it's dying down.  Reduce it to just the smile.  Ok it's over, back to the script.  Really great job Mitt, you're a winner."

by Chris Bodenner

A Marine and two-time veteran of the Iraq War writes:

I just had a look at Wesley Clark Jr.'s defense of his dad, and I've got to say that I'm monumentally unimpressed.  Nobody begrudges General Clark a vacation from his busy schedule.  What we veterans begrudge him is his participation in a show that exploits public esteem for the members of the U.S.military for the private corporate benefit of NBC and the celebrities it recruited for the show – all of whom chose, for one reason or another, not to serve their country in uniform when they had the opportunity to do so.  General Clark's participation in the show may have been a "vacation" to him, but the general's presence makes the show look like some sort of quasi-official charity event, rather than the ridiculous example of reality TV it is.  This conduct may be legal, but it clearly is unbecoming of a 4-star general and a genuine national hero.  

The thing about being in the military is not so much that we do things that are dangerous – although we sometimes, even often, do.  It's that as long as you are in the service, you have to go wherever you are told to go and do whatever you are told to do. 

Even if a lawful order doesn't look like it's in your personal best interest – say, because it looks dangerous or uncomfortable or boring or deadly – it is still an order, and it still has to be followed.  The quasi-celebrities on "Stars Earn Stripes" are indulging themselves in all the fantasy-glamour side of the military without ever shouldering the duty side of it, and that ultimately makes them as phony as Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo movies.  The fact that Todd Palin and Nick Lachey are going to be all over TV, getting famous for doing this stuff, while thousands of actual servicemen do the real thing in dangerous anonymity in various random shitty places around the world is what makes the show so thoroughly disgusting.

As for the "at least it's for a good cause" excuse: not gonna fly.  There is nothing preventing NBC, or Dean Cain or Leila Ali, from making a donation to the USO, the Marine Corps League or the Tillman foundation on their own, without all the hoopla.  Instead, NBC is going to reap enormous profits from the show, the show will glorify a bunch of unimpressive celebrities, and in return some lucky military charity will get a drop in the bucket.  Frankly, it's demeaning to the organizations themselves to have Todd Palin or Nick Lachey use the show for self-promotion in return for a token donation.

My suggestion, for what it's worth, is that the last episode of the show ought to feature military recruiters from the services who come in with a standard 8-year military contract for each one of these jokers, so America can see what excuses they come up with for not signing on the dotted line.  (Yes, you have to be 35 or younger to join the service, but we ought to be able to get an age waiver for the highly fit and well-trained participants, right?)  And Mark Burnett can get a close-up camera for that magic moment when the recruiter says, "Well, you're telling me you honor and respect our servicemembers.  You've proven that you're good enough to be one of us.  What are you waiting for?"  That would be entertainment I would watch.

by Chas Danner

As mentioned yesterday, a new dark-money 501(c)(4) named the Special Operations Education Fund has released a web ad(ocumentary) called "Dishonorable Disclosures" to attack President Obama over the Bin Laden op. In less than 24 hours the video has more than 200K views on YouTube. Battleground TV-length versions are apparently on the way as well. John Hinderaker gushes:

It is dynamite: the production values are excellent, and the message is overpowering. The video is 22 minutes long, but trust me: it is riveting, and goes fast. You should watch the whole thing, to appreciate how dishonorable the Obama administration is when it comes to national security.

Joyner, who thinks it won't have any impact on the race, yawns:

The film is very slick in terms of production values, looking very much like something produced by one of the major television networks. But the pacing and message are rather weak, compounded by overwrought dialog and Shatneresque delivery. The links between the importance of good intelligence of military operations, the sacrifices made by those who serve in the armed forces, and the Obama administration’s leaks of classified information are, at best, tenuous. Nor, frankly, are they unique; politically motivated leaks have been standard operating procedure in Washington for decades.

TAP's Jamelle Bouie is equally unimpressed, calling the video "the worse-ever attempt at swiftboating." The Guardian has done a side by side analysis of the OPSEC video to the original swiftboat video.

by Gwynn Guilford

Jared Bernstein breaks down the core elements of the Medicare debate:

[T]here’s been a lot of confusion generated by the $700 billion in cuts that both the President and Gov Ryan have in their budgets. I’ve written about this as have others: see here and here. The numbers may be the same, but…[i]n the Affordable Care Act, they’re derived from seeking efficiencies in way health care is delivered, and they’re used to provide health care to beneficiaries of Medicare and Medicaid.

In the Ryan budget, they’re at least partly used to pay for tax cuts weighted toward wealthy households.

After musing on Romney's ostensible rejection of the Ryan budget, he keeps up the full-court press on hypocrisy:

Republicans and other alleged chicken budget hawks are constantly complaining that the President is failing to lead on fiscal issues because he refuses to tackle the entitlement “crisis.”   Then, a sentence or two later, the nail him for cutting $700 billion from Medicare!

Josh Barro's view:

Cutting more than $700 billion out of Medicare over 10 years is hard. Ryan's position is that he will make those cuts, but they won't be through an IPAB or an IPAB-like mechanism. And they won't be through premium support.  And they won't hurt seniors. But we don't get to know how they will work. It is no surprise that defenses of this position fail.

Scott Galupo chimes in, referencing a post by James Capretta:

Never asked, let alone answered, is the question that if Romney’s Medicare reforms are so painless, why not demand that current beneficiaries accept them? Why is it necessary to spare them from structural reforms that are so self-evidently “sensible” (Capretta’s word)…?

That this Orwellian gambit is being pitched as the bold, courageous, grown-up alternative to politics as usual is, on its face, pretty astonishing.

Previous coverage here, here, here, here, and here.

by Zoë Pollock

Boo:

The three-Martini lunch fell into decline in the 1970s, the victim of sober economic times that demanded clear-headed executives, and also of political pressure: Jimmy Carter made it an issue in the 1976 presidential campaign. Morgan Stanley’s New York bankers, for example, were instructed to avoid the drinks cabinet except when entertaining European clients (who could hardly be expected to make it through the day without a snifter).

The case for bringing it back:

[A] recent paper from the journal Consciousness and Cognition by psychologists at the University of Illinois confirms what many have long suspected: a couple of drinks makes workers more creative. Tipsy employees, they say, find it hard to focus on a task, but this makes them more likely to come up with innovative ideas. This may help to explain the success of Silicon Valley, one of the last workplaces in America where hard and soft drinks still jostle for space in the company fridge.

by Gwynn Guilford

Readers sound off about "pink boys":

Lisa Wade is far off the mark in her evaluation of boys with female gender presentation. The problem is that a key element of the girl gender role is "dress up" in general and mimicking adult female presentation in particular. Tomboys don't run around in business suits because boys don't, part of being a boy is not wanting to play fussy dress-up, not even a sailor suit.  But they all run around in minimalist but still hyper-masculinized sports drag, and with gusto.

While it is not true of all girls, one need only point to the widespread phenomenon of girl beauty pageants to conclude that there are an awful lot of girls to whom one could apply the extremely loaded label of "hyper-sexualized drag queen" also.

As for observing the boys at a camp for gender-variant children, let's also keep in mind that must be a special occasion for them when behaviour still often suppressed is given full liberty.  One must expect that in such a situation, the play may be a bit more elaborate and energetic than on a day-to-day level.

A different spin on that point:

There's an easy answer to why "gender-variant" (oooh my, what a term!) boys want to be women and their gender opposites want to be boys. It all comes down to toys and marketing.

Think about it. Most of the girl toys out there has to do with aiming the females towards adulthood. Think of kitchen sets, make-up sets, Barbies, even Bratz. There's a very concerted effort out there to convince girls that where the fun is, is in adulthood.

Now watch advertising for boys/men. Even for men, the fun stuff are meant for boys. I saw this growing up and hence my refusal to engage in any girl toys. I'm not surprised that "gender-variant" boys want to be women. As you pointed out, "77% of women in Generation X say they were tomboys as kids." Even girls don't want to play with girls' toys.

Another:

Yet another NYT magazine niche story. No real data, not a huge issue, very specialized and involving only a handful of cases.  Not minimizing the challenges these kids face or the issues of how their parents handle them, but this seems like another NYT magazine story in search of a non-existent trend to a very minimal problem.

Plus, the backstory on Raising My Rainbow, which the previous post linked to, here.

Previous videos of Barney Frank here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. “Ask Anything” video archive here.