Need a Downer?
Try going here and plugging in "Ph.D." and "7.5 years or more of experience" to this teacher salary calculator. The children are our future, indeed.
She's Not that Jenna-Cent
I've already been taken to task for going too easy on Bush's Girl Who Just Wants to Have Fun. I refuse to retract my expression of sympathy for any 19-year-old Texas dingbat who just wants to, y'know, chill out listening to the Dixie Chicks and having a few dozen wine coolers, but can't -- just because our insane, power-mad Supreme Court put the electoral fix in.
I'm of two minds about today's New York Post headline, Jenna and Tonic. On the one hand I take the expectable pride in whatever shame and opprobrium can be heaped on Bush, and if his daughter's "wild streak" provides some pain to The World's Smuggest Underachiever, then I am made all the happier.
On the other hand, why should I wish ill to Jenna Bush? She's almost certainly someone I wouldn't like very much -- but how good could you turn out with a father like that? In Midland, TX? And now she has Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Secret Service agents following her around, and when she tries to join in the completely expected binge-drinking of her cohort, she's called a boozehound in the press. It'd drive anybody to using their friends fake ID to get a margarita (frozen, no salt) or three down at Chuy's. OK, maybe she's got to take responsibility for wearing "pink Capri pants and a toe ring" in court (showing a little more respect to the Texas judiciary might have saved her a few hours of that bo-ring community service) -- but beyond that, I'm willing to understand if you are. You hear me, Rupert Murdoch? Lighten up.
Some exciting new features appearing today. On your left, some places worth visiting. And an inaugural Peregrination in what I do in fact intend to make an ongoing series.
I received a copy of The Adventures of Action Item via the 7:25 Express Air-Ship from the good folks down in the Melbourne office. While this document, work of one Neil McAllister and plenty old by now, has probably shown up in the e-mail of everyone but me already, I must attest to the simple truth: it does very little exaggerating. Across the hall at the Bizness Buzzword Factory, the night shift manager indicated that panel #6 is particularly envied by his staff. They work tirelessly to get the same effect, but McAllister has it down cold.
Outside World Notices Wombat File
It would appear that Rory Ewins of Walking West has been here. He has a much more attractive and regularly updated webpresence, so don't waste any more time reading my description of it, but simply go there.
Memo to self: do all that stuff with the site you've been meaning to.
As Prof. G. has remarked before in this space, Slate's Scott Shuger is a great resource, trolling through the morning's headlines for the meatier news. This Wahington Post article on the problems with the civilian "police" the U.S. is supplying to Bosnia is pretty eye-opening.
[sarcasm]Another win for the privatization of public service![/sarcasm]
This strikes me as a good example of the way that a reporter and/or editor's interest in an irrelevant detail can create a "news story" out of nothing. Found, incidentally, through Plastic.
I don't follow this kind of stuff on Slate much, but Timothy Noah raises some interesting questions in Question for an Interior Nominee . A nice story to go along with tales of a Vermont Senator on the Fence.
Hopefully true, and not just another coincidence.
Rootnode.org has obligingly created a FAQ about the Kaycee Nicole imbroglio. If the explanation below piques interest but leaves you with your head scratching, by all means check it out.
Tonight For One Night Only: Dave willing, my best friend from childhood -- or more specifically, that pivotal 9-14 span of childhood -- will be performing his Stupid Human Trick on The Late Show. Jack: good luck, and here's hoping the cheese sticks to your face for just exactly the right amount of time.
Either Matt Haughey (Mr. Metafilter) has come up with a very funny page designed to temporarily deal with service overloads (caused by the arglebargle described below), or someone is superdetermined to have a laugh at the expense of same. Wonder how long it'll be up. [The answer: about two hours]
Mysteries of the Internet:The Kaycee Affair
There's been a recent blogsplosion on Metafilter over the revelation that the supposed recent death from lukemia of a 19-year old weblogger named Kaycee was a hoax. As was her entire(ly web-based) life. She never existed, turns out – and the person or persons who created her personality for the "Living Colours" weblog which tracked her illness, published her poems, and so forth, is a riddle wrapped in an enigma; people all over the world had e-mail, IM, and even phone conversations with both the supposed dying teen and her supposed mother.
When Kaycee's "death" was announced about a week ago, there was a lot of grieving in weblogging circles – there was a note on Blogger about it, with a link to her site, which is where I first heard about it. But as more and more people who had communicated with Kaycee (hash marks around the name can be taken, I hope, as understood) tried to inquire where condolences should be sent in the physical world, and were rebuffed, suspiscions were shared, and this was more or less the picture that the people who were curious started to put together.
What I understand about the story-so-far emerges from the Metafilter threads on the subject, which begin here. I can't direct you to the original site, because the guy who was running it, a weblogger himself who was *apparently a hoax victim himself*, a has taken it down, upon getting an admission from the person who claimed to be the dying girl's mother. But I saw the site while it was still up, before the hoax was revealed, following a link from elsewhere. Rainbows and inspirational poetry: that sort of thing. I didn't read too deeply, nor linger too long, so I'm not a reliable source about what was on the site, but there was a long note from "Debbie" mentioning the girl's recent death, and how the family thanked everyone for support but would not be going into detail about how she'd finally died, or the funeral arrangements.
But there were a great number of people who had corresponded with Kaycee and even spoken with her on the phone, and they started sharing information, and bits and pieces didn't add up, and people started querying the guy who helped the mother publish the site. Some short amount of time later, a person whose name may or may not be Debbie Swenson posted her confession which said, in short, the persona of Kaycee was a composite of three people she had known who had died of cancer, and she created the site out of a misguided attempt to uplift and inspire. And now she'd rather not talk about it.
Posters on MetaFilter quickly established some reasons not to believe that's the end of the story – why, for example, would she carry on such an elaborate hoax over a period of apparently more than a year's time? There are "friends" of Kaycee's who emailed and instant-messaged (pardon the ugly, ugly neologism) with what they thought was this person: the effort involved to maintain the illusion would seem to have been burdensome to say the least.
Now MetaFilter itself is getting so many hits that its server is apparently down. There's nothing like the spectacle of a gruesome auto wreck to clog traffic.
That which is happening, and that which is not so much happening as it is contextualizing that which happens, is nicely chronicled for us Gothamites now at Blankspot. Yet another Gary In the Know.
Chicago bureau take note of this restaurant recommendation. If it's half as good as she says it is, well, it'd still be pretty good.
Not much else to contribute to the genetic testing discussion. I agree with BT and MG--we need to pool our resources so that those who succumb to misfortune (genetically based or not) aren't totally screwed. Not just because it could happen to us, but because we believe in a just society (um I threw that in because Mike's digging for justice).
If you want to start getting paranoid, when I was doing my bone marrow research, there were tales (probably NOT apocryphal) of the military trying to get access to the National Bone Marrow registries
in order to create databases of names and human leukocyte typings (of those who were typed, not just those who donated), just in case soldiers got some radiation poisoning (i.e., nuclear bomb/waste/uranium shell casings) that required bone marrow transplants. This would be required in the name of patriotism, of course. Or just plain required.
So, who wants to have their genetic information recorded somewhere? Not that I thought GATTACA was all that great.
I know we're supposed to be done with the All Your Base jokes. But this proves that there's a little life in it yet.
I don't know why I keep making the same kind of typo -- or rather, not checking for the same kind. This is what comes of trying to post on the fly, and not checking your work. Considering the number of times I have berated students for just that sort of thing, I am doubly embarrassed.
But no more! Care and craftsmanship shall be the hallmarks of all my future posts!
Concerning your argument: exactly. I thought the Reason piece elegantly showed why the fabled efficiency of the market works very well for managing social policy, so long as you discount real human needs. The absurdity was revealed in the notion that the genetically healthy are not obligated to do anything to help the less fortunate. This is an argument that is only appealing so long as you (a) never wind up a victim of a bankruptcy-producing medical condition yourself and (b) can view everyone around you with the kind of "them's the breaks" coolness of, well, a moral midget. Of course, most of us cherish a touching faith that we'll continue to inhabit condition (a). And I don't care to speculate about how many of us are cabable of (b).
The argument about genetic testing is a good one, just not for the conclusion he wants. He points out that if insurance consumers have information about their genetic predisposition to disease that insurance sellers don't have, you will have a problem of adverse selection: people who learn they are likely to get sick will buy a lot of insurance and people who learn they are not likely to get sick will drop their insurance. That will undermine the insurance system. The insurance companies won't be able to pay off the sick if the only people paying in are those who are sick: sick people who wish to collect from insurance schemes depend on healthy people to "lose" their premiums by virtue of staying healthy. The insurance company is a middle man with a lot of expertise in setting prices.
The author draws the conclusion that insurance companies should be allowed to have the same information about genetic predispositions to disease that consumers have so they can adjust the rates they charge to those who are likely to be healthy or sick. But that's not going to help the sick: the companies will try to charge them as much as they anticipate paying out (plus some extra for their services, of course). But what's the point of buying insurance if they're going to do that?
The real lesson is that the healthy have to be forced to join an insurance scheme with the sick. If the healthy can't opt out, that solves the problem. That's socialized medicine, thank you very much.
On a technical note, you need to close the quotation marks in the anchor to FEED. This just goes to show that it's too darn hard to make a link using this software: you have to type it out. Or it shows that we don't know how to use the easy stuff. Either way, get that quotation mark in there and all will be jake.
I found a link to this argument against "genetic privacy" on FEED. This seems specious to me -- but I'd like to hear from the experts.
The ubiquity of Urinetown. The local rag of the Chicago desk has a story about that "Loopy musical with a risque title." True to its booster ethos, it plays up the fact that it was written by a University of Chicago graduate (who immediately left town for bigger things). I would provide a link, but the registration page is so onerous that I didn't make it all the way myself. This will almost get you there.
In other news from the middle, it's digging for justice day. Tasks include: digging through generally neglected passages in Rawls's A Theory of Justice to finish a paper and digging through all uses of "just" and "justice" in Hobbes to see if a paper idea might pan out. Wish me luck!
Aargh. Aargh. I had fixed the old one and promptly mistyped the colon in the new post. I am humbled and feel I should renounce editorship of the File in favor of someone more perspicacious.
Re the substance of Mike's earlier post -- I do like the "Today's Papers" feature, and that's a terrific catch he makes about the China story. Oddly resonant with today's Filler.
Of course, I'm not being called into meetings. So I can tell you that yer fix isn't one. It still comes up as "http://www.asan.com/users/tipper/http//:www.urinetown.com". That said, it's not too hard to figure the real URL out and so I can now say that I've been there.
Sorry Mike -- I was in the midst of fixing that link for Urinetown when I got called away into a meeting. It should work properly now.
Scott Shuger is indispensable. In this column, he digs into the 32nd and 35th paragraphs of a Washington Post story to bring out a couple of really interesting details about China's nuclear program.
Just to prove I'm not utterly boring, I tried to read about Urinetown, but the link is broken. Actually, does that prove I'm not boring or that I am?
Phew!
Just when you think you'll get your life back...again, apologies for the lack of new features. But I am full of promises: an essay on mental looping soon to come. The return of List-O-Mania! And much more, dear hearts.
For now, I offer the suggestion that you run, don't walk to see this show at the wonder-filled New York Historical Society. And if you are one of our many readers situated outside of the Archipelago, what better reason to make an impromptu trip to NYC in glorious May?
Homeward, into the falling night all pollen-ambered and pretty.
Sorry there's been such a lag. First I was traveling, and then Blogger was down. We should be back on a regular Filing schedule now.
I used to think that hotel rooms were sexy – the privacy, the big bed in the middle of the room...but even a small amount of business travel cures you of that: I now think that Hotel rooms invite solely recumbency and the viewing of television. I almost naturally turn it on when I come into the room; it was an effort just before typing this to switch it off. I think these places are owned by the networks as research and indoctrination facilities. Only in a hotel room do I ever watch even five minutes of Good Morning America..
From a piece in the Nation on the inadequacy of public defender systems in many parts of the country, comes this paragraph, which I think unfortunately serves to do further damage to the person mentioned...:
'One of the few people in Greene County who told me they were innocent was Julian Daniels, 21, a smallish man who works on a quail plantation hanging birds by their legs on a conveyor belt so they can be shocked and have their heads sawed off. He said he had physical proof that the drugs found in the back of his friend's car weren't his, but after calling [scandalously overbooked defense attorney] Surrency three times and receiving no calls back, he resigned himself to paying a $925 fine during the two years he's on probation. "I don't got no choice," he said.'
I'm mesmerized by that job description: that has to be in the top ten of worst vocations ever.
Business Owner Finds Jabez's Paw--Makes Wish
Jabez and Mammon Sign Historic Peace Treaty
Jabez Shows Way Through Needle's Eye
Jabez Gets 1 Million Hits Per Day
Republicans Relieve Guilt Through Bible Reading
My post of yesterday, (see "Self-Applied Sucker Punch" below) had a broken link; click here if you're at all interested in the Dirt Cheap Airline to which I was referring.
Thought-experiment for today: read this article from today's Times, meditate for two minutes, then quickly write down five Onion-style headlines for the same story.
By the way, I think you need the free online subscription to the Times to read the piece online.
Amazing color photographs, made using a three-color process, before WWI. Kind of a double-take to look at these.
Thanks be to MeFi for the reference.
Does "self-applied sucker-punch" mean you're back in my fair city?
I should add one qualification to the Ditka story: I really dragged my heels about going into the resto/bar. Silly me. Had I gotten my way, we would never have seen the head and the man. BT would have returned to Gotham story-less. I still regret not having allowed the head mockery to ride, nay, joined in. That would have been a real story: Mike Ditka kicked all of our asses for mocking his wooden head.
Self-applied sucker-punch
Who is the bright boy who scheduled me on a 6 AM flight to Chicago this morning? Who's the guy who didn't think very hard about the fact that this does not entail getting up at six, but rather in the godforsaken hour before five o'clock, the time when the human body is at its metabolic low point, the time when waking up to an alarm means accessing one's Emergency Reserves, vague panic and dread naturally following: what the hell is going on? Fire? Earthquake? Wolf attack? Oh, right – that plane I have to catch...
The rest of the story – cancelled flight, interminable line at the Dirt Cheap Airline ticket counter, the haste to the gate for the flight I've been transferred to – well, I should have predicted that too. In any event, now that I'm looking down over the wild uplands of New York State, looking forward in a ridiculously eager way to whatever version of "breakfast" is about to land on my tray table, my poor serotonin system is beginning to recover from the shock; my neurotransmitters, which have been sparking as if some kind of national emergency were underway, have now concluded that there is Nothing Important Going On...I am feeling remarkably like I did that morning in college when I woke up in the back seat of a 1970 Dodge Swinger, parked off of an extremely bleak stretch of Virginia Beach, and waiting for my roommate to wake up too, so that we can go look for a tire shop and get the car fixed, so that we can turn around and head back to school. Then, as now, I wonder how it was that I failed, the night before, to predict what the morning would be like.
I watched "That's My Bush" last night -- a nifty idea in some ways, that didn't really produce, for me, any laughs. Anyway, Our Bush keeps providing me with such snippets of Black Humor that it deflates even the most outrage-oriented of lampoonings.
The following ruminations on Memento should probably not be read in advance of seeing the film itself.
I completely disagree that the film only makes "some rather simplistic points about memory itself." First off, I think those points are far from simplistic, especially in re questions of to what extent Leonard creates his own memories. But I think Leonard faces a very interesting moral moment at the end of the movie (or the beginning of the movie's timeline): he discovers he has been a golem, a machine carrying out another man's murderous desires, and he finds a way to end that amoral life. I think a golem's-eye-view is a provocative notion, myself.
Northern Regional Wombat Strategic Meeting Conference Report: The Head of Ditka Lives
The weather in America's Meat-Packery has proved most auspicious, and the WF staff in Hyde Park came out in force to make the Gotham team feel right at home for our recent two-day visit. On Monday night, after a brief tour of the outdoor-dining party scene in Streeterville, which is apparently a favorite haunt of our laid-back Midwestern bureau, the entire crew retired to the "Bistrot Zinque" for a sumptuous repast. The welcome of new Executive Producer Sara Austin was announced and toasted by all; Michael Green led the entire tour on a traditional Mockery Walk through the characteristically windy streets.
The highlight of the evening came as we briefly entertained the idea of a nightcap at Ditka's, the bar/steakhouse owned by the legendary coach. Upon entering this Chicago institution, we were stunned with wonder, for lo, in the gift shop in the lobby, atop the shelves of commemorative t-shirts, there stood an object whose totemic potency still haunts my dreams – a massive wooden Head of Ditka, carved at approximately twice life-size. The artist's method was presumably to indicate Ditka's more-than-individual personal stature by generalizing his features, and adding touches of that Howie guy (you know, the one who announces football on Fox and does those stupid radio shack commercials with Teri Hatcher) plus a bit of Sgt. Rock from the comics.
This immediately prompted visions of Easter Island-like formations, a phalanx of brooding Ditka-heads glaring out to sea. Like characters in an H.P. Lovecraft story who have stumbled on some lost artifact of a hidden and terrifying lost cult, we staggered and fled whence we came. Yet, in our confusion, we babbled of the Head, and our nervous laughter nearly got us into troubles only hinted at by that bust's horrible, knowing gaze; for as we were standing outside, feverishly debating the import of what we had seen – it was then that, catlike, He crept up behind us. All unknowing, I raved of the Head while its fleshly inspiration, the Ditka himself, stood behind us. Dr. Green, with his preternatural sensitivity to the presence of danger, steered us away and murmured to me of our close encounter with the D-Man.
Sobered, I returned to my hotel. Only the matchbook in my pocket – adorned with a smiling face rendered blasphemously familiar to me now – mocks my attempt to dismiss what happened as merely the nightmare caused by one too many frites taken on an empty stomach.
