Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Another reason not to eat meat
This article is gross and kind of scary.
"Houseflies...are vectors of what we leave behind, carrying it back to us, as though to say, “Over here! You forgot something…” They are the messenger nobody asked for, bearing the messages nobody wants, whether about the overuse of antibiotics or some other of our failings."
Read the entire article here.
"Houseflies...are vectors of what we leave behind, carrying it back to us, as though to say, “Over here! You forgot something…” They are the messenger nobody asked for, bearing the messages nobody wants, whether about the overuse of antibiotics or some other of our failings."
Read the entire article here.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Can American education replicate Finland's success?
I was reading an article about why Finland's school system is the envy of the world when I came across a telling paragraph. First, a little background.
Apparently (I haven't seen the movie yet), Waiting for Superman, the documentary about the "failure" of the American education system, holds Finland up as the model for effective education. The statistics tell the story. According to the article, "In 2000, ...a standardized test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues revealed Finnish youth to be the best young readers in the world. Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of 57 countries (and a few cities) in science." The country's results pay off later too: "Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States."
These numbers are so impressive that Smithsonian Magazine attempted to find out what made the system so great. See if you can figure out why America will never replicate Finland's success:
Apparently (I haven't seen the movie yet), Waiting for Superman, the documentary about the "failure" of the American education system, holds Finland up as the model for effective education. The statistics tell the story. According to the article, "In 2000, ...a standardized test given to 15-year-olds in more than 40 global venues revealed Finnish youth to be the best young readers in the world. Three years later, they led in math. By 2006, Finland was first out of 57 countries (and a few cities) in science." The country's results pay off later too: "Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States."
These numbers are so impressive that Smithsonian Magazine attempted to find out what made the system so great. See if you can figure out why America will never replicate Finland's success:
It’s almost unheard of for a child to show up hungry or homeless. Finland provides three years of maternity leave and subsidized day care to parents, and preschool for all 5-year-olds, where the emphasis is on play and socializing. In addition, the state subsidizes parents, paying them around 150 euros per month for every child until he or she turns 17. Ninety-seven percent of 6-year-olds attend public preschool, where children begin some academics. Schools provide food, medical care, counseling and taxi service if needed. Student health care is free.That's right. We'll never replicate their success because Finland practices Socialism, and every red-blooded American knows that Socialism doesn't work!
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
So let me get this straight...
I'm trying to figure this out. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The reason Congress had so much trouble getting an agreement on the debt ceiling was that Republicans were opposed to raising taxes. Their mantra was, and is, "Don't Raise Taxes."
Now, they are proposing raising taxes on 47% of all Americans.
They can't have it both ways. They are being complete hypocrites. Or am I missing something?
The reason Congress had so much trouble getting an agreement on the debt ceiling was that Republicans were opposed to raising taxes. Their mantra was, and is, "Don't Raise Taxes."
Now, they are proposing raising taxes on 47% of all Americans.
They can't have it both ways. They are being complete hypocrites. Or am I missing something?
The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight
"In a political debate you feel like the other side just doesn’t get your point of view, and if they could only see things with your clarity, they would understand and fall naturally in line with what you believe. They must not understand, because if they did they wouldn’t think the things they think. By contrast, you believe you totally get their point of view and you reject it. You see it in all its detail and understand it for what it is – stupid. You don’t need to hear them elaborate. So, each side believes they understand the other side better than the other side understands both their opponents and themselves."
This is asymmetric insight, and many psychological studies have shown this is true. Read about it here.
This is asymmetric insight, and many psychological studies have shown this is true. Read about it here.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Movies in School
Two liberal magazines (Mother Jones and The New Yorker) have reported with obvious disapproval that the charter school Michelle Bachmann founded would not allow students to watch Aladdin because it involved magic and paganism.
I think Bachmann is a lunatic, but I agree with her school's decision. That's right, she and I align on this one.
However, though I agree with the school's decision, I don't agree with the reasoning behind the school's decision. I think schools shouldn't show Aladdin because THERE'S NO CURRICULAR REASON TO SHOW IT.
I think Bachmann is a lunatic, but I agree with her school's decision. That's right, she and I align on this one.
However, though I agree with the school's decision, I don't agree with the reasoning behind the school's decision. I think schools shouldn't show Aladdin because THERE'S NO CURRICULAR REASON TO SHOW IT.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
The Debt Crisis
I'm a liberal in almost every way, but I don't really follow politics. In my opinion, it's just a bunch of posturing from people who are more concerned with making money to get reelected than they are with passing good laws. So I haven't followed the debt ceiling "crisis." Yes, it's important, but I just get pissed every time I read about it.
Now, as the post-mortems get written about the "compromise," I have been reading all my liberal media like Slate and the New York Times, and I get angry. "This compromise has ruined the economy. We're doomed," they all seem to say. When I read this, I get pissed again, this time at the Republicans.
But when I really think about it, what do I know about macroeconomics? I don't know enough to make a judgment about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I have FEELINGS about how I think this will turn out, yes, and I have SUSPICIONS that it won't turn out well, but I don't know a damn thing about this really, nor does anyone else.
If you say you do, you're full of it. Unless you have studied economics, then read the same amount of propaganda from EACH SIDE of the aisle, you don't know enough to make a sound judgment. This assertion is not a challenge to people that I love who feel passionately about this issue (and I do love people on BOTH sides of this issue). Rather, this is a call for calm.
The sky is not falling. Or it is. Nobody knows for sure.
Now, as the post-mortems get written about the "compromise," I have been reading all my liberal media like Slate and the New York Times, and I get angry. "This compromise has ruined the economy. We're doomed," they all seem to say. When I read this, I get pissed again, this time at the Republicans.
But when I really think about it, what do I know about macroeconomics? I don't know enough to make a judgment about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I have FEELINGS about how I think this will turn out, yes, and I have SUSPICIONS that it won't turn out well, but I don't know a damn thing about this really, nor does anyone else.
If you say you do, you're full of it. Unless you have studied economics, then read the same amount of propaganda from EACH SIDE of the aisle, you don't know enough to make a sound judgment. This assertion is not a challenge to people that I love who feel passionately about this issue (and I do love people on BOTH sides of this issue). Rather, this is a call for calm.
The sky is not falling. Or it is. Nobody knows for sure.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Ouch
From Anthony Lane's review of "Bad Teacher" in The New Yorker. What a devastatingly great opening.
Waiting for “Bad Teacher” to begin, I caught a trailer for the upcoming “Horrible Bosses.” What is it with these titles? Studios may think that they can palm us off with flat, sour recitations of what their products contain, but, back in 1975, no one would have paid to see a Spielberg film called “Nasty Fish.” In the words of Raymond Chandler, whose ear for a good title was the sharpest of the twentieth century, the names of books and films should conjure “a particular magic which impresses itself on the memory.” “The Maltese Falcon,” as he said, “makes the mind ask questions.”
No danger of that here.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Saturday, April 02, 2011
The Globes!!
I saw The Globes last night at the A Club. Holy crap they're good! Their new record comes out at the end of the month, but until then, I HIGHLY suggest you download this EP. Support a Spokane band before they hit the big time--and they WILL hit the big time. Hell, they just played SXSW in Austin, and they're playing Sasquatch in May.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Winner Take All
In a review of the book Winner-Take-All Politics, Ezra Klein notes that the gap between rich and poor has grown not because of economic changes, but because of political ones:
Perhaps the most shocking study the authors cite comes from Martin Gilens, a political scientist at Princeton University. Gilens has been collecting the results of nearly 2,000 survey questions reaching back to the 1980s, looking for evidence that when opinions change, so too does policy. And he found it—but only for the rich. “Most policy changes with majority support didn’t become law,” Hacker and Pierson write. The exception was “when they were supported by those at the top. When the opinions of the poor diverged from those of the well-off, the opinions of the poor ceased to have any apparent influence: If 90 percent of poor Americans supported a policy change, it was no more likely to happen than if 10 percent did. By contrast, when more of the well-off supported a change, it was substantially more likely to happen.”It seems we are moving toward a winner-take-all society? Is this what we want? The answer seems to be no:
In part, this is because politicians began to need money more than they had before, as the costs of campaigns started skyrocketing. The predictable outcome? Both parties have been relying more on wealthy donors and less on labor unions. Where unions had substantial support among the Republican Party in the middle of the twentieth century—then-Senator Ted Stevens, we learn, ended up backing the labor law reforms that the business community eventually killed—today the Club for Growth primaries anyone in the GOP who forgets to refer to union presidents as “bosses.” Meanwhile, the Democrats have had to embrace the business community to remain financially competitive. As Hacker and Pierson show, Democrats were at a massive funding disadvantage in the 1960s and ’70s. In 1981, the Democratic National Committee was still paying down debt incurred during the 1968 election. There was only one place to turn to close the gap: corporate America, and the (mostly) men who ran it, or lobbied for it. And so they turned there, which meant turning away from the middle class, at least somewhat. As Hacker and Pierson say, today’s Republican and Democratic parties are not black and white. They’re “black and gray.”
Read the entire article here.
Behavioral economist Dan Ariely and psychologist Michael Norton recently asked people to estimate wealth inequality in this country. As it happens, most Americans think wealth is distributed vastly more equally than it actually is, and yet they would like something more equal still: When given a choice between various options, they chose the one most closely resembling Sweden, followed by the world in which every quintile has exactly 20 percent of the wealth. Only 10 percent chose our world. But the problem, as Hacker and Pierson point out, is that the political system isn’t listening. It’s time it did.
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Why Hollywood is Struggling
"Let's look ahead to what's on the menu for [Hollywood] this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children's book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.
...Now, to be fair, in modern Hollywood, it usually takes two years, not one, for an idea [like the breakaway sleeper hit Inception] to make its way through the alimentary canal of the system and onto multiplex screens, so we should really be looking at summer 2012 to see the fruit of [Inception director Christopher] Nolan's success. So here's what's on tap two summers from now: an adaptation of a comic book. A reboot of an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a sequel to an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a reboot of an adaptation of a TV show. A sequel to a sequel to a reboot of an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a young-adult novel. And soon after: Stretch Armstrong.
Read the entire article here. (and find a list of all the movies described above)
...Now, to be fair, in modern Hollywood, it usually takes two years, not one, for an idea [like the breakaway sleeper hit Inception] to make its way through the alimentary canal of the system and onto multiplex screens, so we should really be looking at summer 2012 to see the fruit of [Inception director Christopher] Nolan's success. So here's what's on tap two summers from now: an adaptation of a comic book. A reboot of an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a sequel to an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a reboot of an adaptation of a TV show. A sequel to a sequel to a reboot of an adaptation of a comic book. A sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a cartoon. A sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a young-adult novel. And soon after: Stretch Armstrong.
Read the entire article here. (and find a list of all the movies described above)
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Travels of the Constitution
In this time of the Tea Party's overheated reverence for the Constitution, the tale of the document's travels from the Pennsylvania State House to its modern home in the National Archives might provide some perspective.
"...the secretary of the convention carried the original to New York to present it to Congress, which met, at the time, at City Hall. Without either endorsing or opposing it, Congress agreed to forward the Constitution to the states, for ratification. The original Constitution was simply filed away and, later, shuffled from one place to another. When City Hall underwent renovations, the Constitution was transferred to the Department of State. The following year, it moved with Congress to Philadelphia and, in 1800, to Washington, where it was stored at the Treasury Department until it was shifted to the War Office. In 1814, three clerks stuffed it into a linen sack and carried it to a gristmill in Virginia, which was fortunate, because the British burned Washington down. In the eighteen-twenties, when someone asked James Madison where it was, he had no idea.
In 1875, the Constitution found a home in a tin box in the bottom of a closet in a new building that housed the Departments of State, War, and Navy. In 1894, it was sealed between glass plates and locked in a safe in the basement. In 1921, Herbert Putnam, a librarian, drove it across town in his Model T. In 1924, it was put on display in the Library of Congress, for the first time ever. Before then, no one had thought of that. It spent the Second World War at Fort Knox. In 1952, it was driven in an armored tank under military guard to the National Archives, where it remains, in a shrine in the rotunda, alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights."
Read the entire article here.
"...the secretary of the convention carried the original to New York to present it to Congress, which met, at the time, at City Hall. Without either endorsing or opposing it, Congress agreed to forward the Constitution to the states, for ratification. The original Constitution was simply filed away and, later, shuffled from one place to another. When City Hall underwent renovations, the Constitution was transferred to the Department of State. The following year, it moved with Congress to Philadelphia and, in 1800, to Washington, where it was stored at the Treasury Department until it was shifted to the War Office. In 1814, three clerks stuffed it into a linen sack and carried it to a gristmill in Virginia, which was fortunate, because the British burned Washington down. In the eighteen-twenties, when someone asked James Madison where it was, he had no idea.
In 1875, the Constitution found a home in a tin box in the bottom of a closet in a new building that housed the Departments of State, War, and Navy. In 1894, it was sealed between glass plates and locked in a safe in the basement. In 1921, Herbert Putnam, a librarian, drove it across town in his Model T. In 1924, it was put on display in the Library of Congress, for the first time ever. Before then, no one had thought of that. It spent the Second World War at Fort Knox. In 1952, it was driven in an armored tank under military guard to the National Archives, where it remains, in a shrine in the rotunda, alongside the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights."
Read the entire article here.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Romantic Comedies are Warping Children's Minds
Hollywood’s romantic comedies aren’t just innocuous cinematic tripe. They’re actually warping children’s minds (pdf), according to new research from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. The films, including Notting Hill and You’ve Got Mail are skewed portrayals of relationships with “both highly idealistic and undesirable qualities,” the researchers write, where romantic problems or transgressions “have no real negative long-term impact on relationship functioning.” The films tend to focus on the early stages of relationships, but the characters displayed emotions that generally develop over time, including deep feelings of love and emotional support. Adolescents sometimes use these films as models for their own relationships, which could lead to unrealistic expectations and disappointment.
Monday, January 24, 2011
The Role of the Film Critic
We [critics] can talk about composition and cutting and long takes vs. short takes and video vs. film endlessly; God knows I have. And we can put movies in context of the industry or TV or the Internet or wider trends in the arts. And we should; we absolutely should. But it's also important for critics to remind themselves daily of the fact—the fact! not opinion, fact!—that most viewers don't give one-hundredth a damn about any of that stuff.
They should give a damn. One of the reasons mainstream movies are so generally mediocre to awful is because the ability of the average viewer to read images is only slightly better than their ability to read text. And the system likes it that way; it's much easier to crank out variations on cheeseburgers than to challenge moviegoers' aesthetic palates and expand their range of acceptable cuisine. But viewers won't give a damn about the aesthetic, political, and social components of filmgoing if we don't open the door of personal response—emotion, minus the whithers and wherefores and qualifiers, the wearily above-it-all routine—to lead them to a consideration of films outside their comfort zones.
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How can we critics do this? By starting at the core and working our way out; by talking first about the heart of the film—what the movie is saying about the characters and world it depicts; whether or not what's on screen bears the slightest relation to the truth as we have experienced it; the feelings the movie evokes in us and why and how it evokes those feelings. Emotion is the gateway drug to all cinephilia—and I don't just mean the "That movie rocked!" variety or "Dude, that blew!" variety. I mean real cinephilia, which is endlessly curious and always on the search for the next innovation, the next curveball, the next epiphany. That comes from feeling—from personal response. Nobody falls in love with movies because some director framed a shot in a particular way or slyly quoted F.W. Murnau. That stage of appreciation always comes second or third or tenth in a cinephile's evolution. No, people fall in love with movies because they speak to them honestly and directly and with eccentric conviction, like new friends they really didn't expect to make—people who just sort of came out of nowhere and made them realize, "Oh my God … I'm not alone! Somebody else gets it."
excerpted from Matt Zoller Seitz's "Emotion is the Gateway Drug to All Cinephilia" on Slate.com
They should give a damn. One of the reasons mainstream movies are so generally mediocre to awful is because the ability of the average viewer to read images is only slightly better than their ability to read text. And the system likes it that way; it's much easier to crank out variations on cheeseburgers than to challenge moviegoers' aesthetic palates and expand their range of acceptable cuisine. But viewers won't give a damn about the aesthetic, political, and social components of filmgoing if we don't open the door of personal response—emotion, minus the whithers and wherefores and qualifiers, the wearily above-it-all routine—to lead them to a consideration of films outside their comfort zones.
Advertisement
How can we critics do this? By starting at the core and working our way out; by talking first about the heart of the film—what the movie is saying about the characters and world it depicts; whether or not what's on screen bears the slightest relation to the truth as we have experienced it; the feelings the movie evokes in us and why and how it evokes those feelings. Emotion is the gateway drug to all cinephilia—and I don't just mean the "That movie rocked!" variety or "Dude, that blew!" variety. I mean real cinephilia, which is endlessly curious and always on the search for the next innovation, the next curveball, the next epiphany. That comes from feeling—from personal response. Nobody falls in love with movies because some director framed a shot in a particular way or slyly quoted F.W. Murnau. That stage of appreciation always comes second or third or tenth in a cinephile's evolution. No, people fall in love with movies because they speak to them honestly and directly and with eccentric conviction, like new friends they really didn't expect to make—people who just sort of came out of nowhere and made them realize, "Oh my God … I'm not alone! Somebody else gets it."
excerpted from Matt Zoller Seitz's "Emotion is the Gateway Drug to All Cinephilia" on Slate.com
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Science Proves You're Stupid
Author Joe Quirk takes a tour through modern psychology and brain science to come up with some of the latest thinking on cognition. Here are some of the claims he makes:
Your memories are fiction.
Your memories can be selectively erased.
Reason is never the reason you do things.
You're the worst judge of yourself.
You don't know why you like or dislike people.
A highly thought-provoking read can be found here.
Your memories are fiction.
Your memories can be selectively erased.
Reason is never the reason you do things.
You're the worst judge of yourself.
You don't know why you like or dislike people.
A highly thought-provoking read can be found here.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Idling Engines are the Devil's Workshop
New York City has made it illegal to let your vehicle engine idle for more than a minute in a school zone. With the new ordinance, the city joins several other cities and states in going after idling engines as a pollution source and health hazard.
Saturday, January 08, 2011
The Quality of Forgiveness?
If [the Philadelphia Eagles] do go all the way to the championship game, expect it to become one of the biggest sports stories of the year. And be prepared for a debate that ranges far beyond football – to the quality of forgiveness, to whether the depravity suggested by his crimes can ever really be exorcised, to the age-old truth that despite the commercial myth connecting character and the playing field, great athletes and great human beings are not necessarily the same thing.
Excerpted from this article in Britain's "The Globe and Mail"
Excerpted from this article in Britain's "The Globe and Mail"
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
A Billion Dollar Idea
I have a great idea. Let's organize a "Junior Broadway" program across the nation. Let's let college drama programs compete against each other for the right to perform on Broadway stages. If we like the touring Broadway productions now ("The Lion King" was sold out virtually its entire run here in Spokane), let's expand them, and have these productions run in cities across the nation.
For instance, if the USC drama program wins, they could start a touring company of "Oklahoma!", bringing it to theater-starved audiences across the nation. Heck, we could even sell TV or video rights. Think of all the money this could bring in for the organizers, for the colleges, and for the cities that host the productions.
I've got an even better idea. Let's not pay the performers anything. After all, they're amateurs. Under the guise of keeping college theater "pure," we can take all the money for ourselves.
Seem unfair? Something like this is going on right now. It's called big-time college athletics.
For instance, if the USC drama program wins, they could start a touring company of "Oklahoma!", bringing it to theater-starved audiences across the nation. Heck, we could even sell TV or video rights. Think of all the money this could bring in for the organizers, for the colleges, and for the cities that host the productions.
I've got an even better idea. Let's not pay the performers anything. After all, they're amateurs. Under the guise of keeping college theater "pure," we can take all the money for ourselves.
Seem unfair? Something like this is going on right now. It's called big-time college athletics.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
If Our Machines Use Less Energy, Will We Just Use Them More?
"Jonathan Bloom, who runs the Web site wastedfood.com and is the author of the new book American Wasteland, [said] that, since the mid-nineteen-seventies, per-capita food waste in the United States has increased by half, so that we now throw away forty per cent of all the edible food we produce. And when we throw away food we don't just throw away nutrients; we also throw away the energy we used in keeping it cold as we lost interest in it, as well as the energy that went into growing, harvesting, processing, and transporting it, along with its proportional share of our staggering national consumption of fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation water, packaging, and landfill capacity. According to a 2009 study, more than a quarter of U.S. freshwater use goes into producing food that is later discarded."
...from an article in the New Yorker exploring the idea that, paradoxically, with increased efficiency comes increased waste. For instance, the use of CFCs instead of incandescent bulbs may lead us to save more money, but we use that savings to keep lights on longer, thus negating the savings. It's a fascinating concept explored in depth in this article (subscription required...sorry)
...from an article in the New Yorker exploring the idea that, paradoxically, with increased efficiency comes increased waste. For instance, the use of CFCs instead of incandescent bulbs may lead us to save more money, but we use that savings to keep lights on longer, thus negating the savings. It's a fascinating concept explored in depth in this article (subscription required...sorry)
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