Month: April 2013

“Whiskey And Women”

Tara Clancy tells a coming out story:

When I called my dad and told him I was gay, I expected it to go okay for one specific reason: he had a couple of very good gay friends, pals from his local bar in Queens whom he lovingly called “old-school gays” and about whom he sometimes bragged, “And they don’t make ‘em like that anymore!” But apparently the way he felt for his gays didn’t much matter. When I told him I was gay, he flipped out and insisted I fly to Atlanta to talk in person—”Now!” Click.

Three days later, we got in his car and drove, his only words “We’re going to a hotel.” Two hours passed, he and I silent and motionless, the pope swinging left and right. Another hour, and we were on a one-lane road in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then I started to think what you might be starting to think: “Hotel, my ass!” Just as I started to imagine how he’d shoot me—or worse, throw me into some “pray-the-gay-away” Jesus camp—a billboard appeared. A woman not unlike the St. Pauli girl, with blond braids and huge, ahem, beer steins, smiled down at us. Next to her, in giant German Gothic lettering, it said, “Welcome to Helen, Georgia! A recreated Alpine village.”

The story is better heard than read, especially with Tara’s thick Queens accent, so check out the above video from The Moth. Watch more of her storytelling here.

Boston’s Finest: Not Just The Cops

Sarah Kliff is amazed that, as of now, all of the marathon’s wounded have survived. Atul Gawande identifies reasons why Boston’s hospitals were ready:

Talking to people about that day, I was struck by how ready and almost rehearsed they were for this event. A decade earlier, nothing approaching their level of collaboration and efficiency would have occurred. We have, as one colleague put it to me, replaced our pre-9/11 naïveté with post-9/11 sobriety. Where before we’d have been struck dumb with shock about such events, now we are almost calculating about them. When ball bearings and nails were found in the wounds of the victims, everyone understood the bombs had been packed with them as projectiles. At every hospital, clinicians considered the possibility of chemical or radiation contamination, a second wave of attacks, or a direct attack on a hospital. Even nonmedical friends e-mailed and texted me to warn people about secondary and tertiary explosive devices aimed at responders. Everyone’s imaginations have come to encompass these once unimaginable events.

Cool Ad Watch

A schmaltzy but powerful project in self-perception:

Longer version here. Update from a reader:

The first problem, clearly, is that the artist knew the intent of the project (and no doubt was being paid handsomely by Dove).  That’s strike one.  What’s more, in every case he knew whose face he was drawing, be it “I” or “she”.  That’s strike two.  Strike three is that the artist couldn’t help but be influenced by the varying tones used to convey, on the one hand, mild self-criticism and, on the other, a warm admiration for others’ features.

Sorry if I seem cynical about this whole thing.  There may in fact be both a really interesting and a really poignant story to be told here about self-image.  But, for that to happen, you’d need a legitimate study.

Owning The Genome

A case before the Supreme Court this week addresses the question of whether companies should be able to patent specific genes:

The biotech company Myriad Genetics is defending patents that give it exclusive control over two genes linked to breast cancer. Critics have argued that Myriad merely “snipped” the genes from the human genome, and that this no more deserves patent protection than “snipping” a leaf from a plant or removing a liver from a human body. … Justice Elena Kagan compared Myriad’s patent to finding a rare plant in the Amazon with medical properties. “It takes a lot of ingenuity and a lot of effort to actually find that plant, just as it takes a lot of effort and a lot of ingenuity to figure out where to snip on the genetic material. But are you saying that you could patent that plant because it takes a lot of effort and a lot of ingenuity to find it?”

Jerry Coyne views Myriad’s patent as “exploitative, greedy, and unfair”:

No company should own a gene, and this is an explicit violation of patent law, which argues that natural substances cannot be patented. … Yes, Myriad discovered that these genes were associated with cancer, and developed a way to assay mutations, but what should be patented is the diagnostic process, not the gene itself. Others can—and have, in the case of cystic fibrosis—developed and patented tests without patenting the gene, so several companies offer diagnosis for that gene.

Feeling Others’ Rage

In the wake of the Boston bombings, Greenwald asks Americans to empathize with individuals in countries regularly bombed by the US:

[W]hatever rage you’re feeling toward the perpetrator of this Boston attack, that’s the rage in sustained form that people across the world feel toward the US for killing innocent people in their countries. Whatever sadness you feel for yesterday’s victims, the same level of sadness is warranted for the innocent people whose lives are ended by American bombs. However profound a loss you recognize the parents and family members of these victims to have suffered, that’s the same loss experienced by victims of US violence. It’s natural that it won’t be felt as intensely when the victims are far away and mostly invisible, but applying these reactions to those acts of US aggression would go a long way toward better understanding what they are and the outcomes they generate.

I note only that today, more than 55 Iraqi civilians were killed by a wave of terrorism, a function of the botched invasion, occupation and sectarian disintegration the US set in motion. On the day of the Boston marathon, a new post-occupation record of 65 deaths was recorded.

Pot Polling Update

DC supports legalization:

A poll conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) and co-commissioned by the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) and the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) found that 63 percent of D.C. residents support taxing and regulating marijuana like alcohol, and that 75 percent of residents think the drug should be decriminalized.

In fact, no matter which liberalization scenario PPP presented–a $300 fine for cultivation with no jail time, a $100 fine for possession with no jail time, tax-and-regulate, unregulated legal possession for adults over 21, broadening the criteria for medical marijuana–a majority of respondents favored lessening or eliminating penalties for marijuana offenses.

The Media Frenzy In Boston

Told in four tweets: