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Posthuman Blues —

UNDERNEWS —

UNDERNEWS — DAN EGGEN WASHINGTON POST - The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into recent disclosures about a controversial domestic eavesdropping program that was secretly authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, officials said yesterday. Federal prosecutors will focus their examination on who may have unlawfully disclosed classified information about the program to the New York Times, which reported two weeks ago that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to monitor the international telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and residents without court-approved warrants, officials said.
 

UNDERNEWS — EINSTEIN ON RACE & RACISM
 
Fred Jerome & Roger Taylor
 
FRED JEROME & ROGER TAYLOR - More than one hundred biographies and monographs of Einstein have been published, yet not one of them mentions the name Paul Robeson, let alone Einstein's friendship with him, or the name W. E. B. Du Bois, let alone Einstein's support for him. Nor does one find in any of these works any reference to the Civil Rights Congress whose campaigns Einstein actively supported. Finally, nowhere in all the ocean of published Einsteinia -- anthologies, bibliographies, biographies, summaries, articles, videotapes, calendars, posters and postcards -- will one find even an islet of information about Einstein's visits and ties to the people in Princeton's African American community around the street called Witherspoon.
 
One explanation for this historical amnesia is that Einstein's biographers and others who shape our official memories, felt that some of his 'controversial' friends, such as Robeson, and activities, such as co-chairing the anti-lynching campaign, might somehow tarnish Einstein as an American icon. That icon, sanctified by Time magazine when it dubbed Einstein the 'Person of the Century,' is a myth, albeit a marvelous myth. In fact, as myths go, Einstein's is hard to beat. The world's most brilliant scientist is also a kindly, lovably bumbling, grandfather figure: Professor Genius combined with Dr. Feelgood. . .
 
Despite Einstein's clear intention to make his politics public -- especially his anti-lynching and other antiracist activities -- the history-molders have seemed embarrassed to do so. Or nervous. 'I had to think about my board,' a museum curator (who doesn't want his name used even today) said, explaining why he had omitted some of the scientist's political statements from the major exhibition celebrating Einstein's one hundredth birthday in 1979.
 
When it came to how to handle Einstein's ashes or his house on Mercer Street, everyone involved meticulously adhered to his wishes. But when it involved his ideas, and especially his concerns about what he called America's 'worst disease,' the fact that Einstein wanted his views made as public as possible seems to have slipped past his historians.
 
ORDER

2020 Hindsight —

The story of the lowest of the low, and the leukemia patient who got outta bed with a backpack of IV drips and meds, to track down his identity thief: The lowest scam [via Amy Alkon]

Science Blog - News from Science, Medicine, Space, Physics and More —

"Where have all the bloody teaspoons gone?" is an age old question in the workplace. Researchers at the Burnet Institute in Australia have attempted to measure the phenomenon of teaspoon loss and its effect on office life. They purchased and discreetly numbered 70 stainless steel teaspoons (54 of standard quality and 16 of higher quality). The teaspoons were placed in tearooms around the institute and were counted weekly over five months. During the study, 56 (80%) of the 70 teaspoons disappeared.

Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment — Since my last post on the elusive perfect home-cooked Kung Pao chicken, I have pursued this grail a half-dozen more times, and I believe I have achieved my goal, or as close as I expect to get in this lifetime.

I started working from a recipe I found here -- the photo looked somewhat right, and the ingredient set was close to my preference for a simple chicken, scallion and peanut dish.

I tried out a variety of modifications, including the use of hoisin sauce instead of sugar for the sweetening, but in the end found the simpler white-sugar approach, combined with a switch from light to dark soy sauce, did the trick. I added scallions, eliminated some extra salt, brought the cornstarch level way down (I've never been able to put a whole tablespoon of cornstarch into any dish without ending up with muck), and tinkered with the sauce ingredients -- adding rice wine and black vinegar. The result is just what I was after. Here's the full recipe.

waiterrant.net —

Here are some bits of wisdom I picked up over the years from people, books and film. Wherever possible I’ve made attribution.

“Never make a decision when you’re high in the sky or down in the dumps.” – my high school principal.

(On relationships) “If it isn’t fun in the beginning – forget it.” – female coworker

“When you first get married you should be having sex in every room of the house.” - same female coworker

“Marriage is society’s recognition of a deep spiritual and psychological process that occurs between two people. Most couples skip the process and just get married.” – my therapist

“Don’t get too wrapped up in dogma. Who knows? When we get to heaven there might be a Big Buddha laughing at us while we’re all running around going ‘Oh shit……!’” - a Catholic bishop

“The biggest asshole in a community is the guy who doesn’t change the toilet paper.” – a Trappist monk

“Look out for Number One.” – an old cop

“I never trusted a man who never smoked or drank.” – Abraham Lincoln.

“It’s easy to love people in China. It’s tougher to love the person living next door.” – I heard that one in confession

“Sometimes pathology matures into ability.” - a psychiatrist

“Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” - Yoda

“It’s just a feeling. You don’t have to act on it.” – spiritual director

“Depression is anger turned inward.” - my shrink again.

“Sex isn’t life. But life’s impossible with out it.” - unknown

“Beware of the guy praying loudest in the amen corner.” – Harry S. Truman?

“Fighting should always be the last resort. But sometimes you just have to punch a guy in the nose.” – Unknown.

“No amount of money in the world is worth not being able to look at yourself in the mirror.” – Dad

“Some times the right thing is the terrible thing.” - unknown

“Love isn’t a feeling. It’s an act of will.” – spiritual director

“Count to ten.” – Mom

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” – William Congreve

“Never underestimate the power of giving a girl flowers.” – Unknown.

“No man is an island; but some are peninsulas.” – Robin Williams

“When you stare into an abyss for a long time, the abyss also stares into you.” – Nietzsche

“Suggesting evil is human doesn’t mean we can always understand it.” – Kanan Makiya

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” – Steven Weinberg

“When you’re young you want to change the world. When you’re older you just want to understand it.” - Unknown

Please feel free to leave your own little nuggets of wisdom in the comments section…………….

Backwards City —

Cosmic Variance —

This famous photograph was taken on Christmas Eve, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders. It’s usually rotated by 90 degrees, but apparently this view is what Anders actually saw. (Don’t ask me how they know that.)

Peace on this tiny little ball!

The Huffington Post | Raw Feed —

The context in which Christianity, and thus Christmas, was formed was the Roman Empire. The Romans honored Saturn, the ancient god of agriculture, each year beginning on December 17. In a festival called Saturnalia, they glorified past days when the god Saturn ruled. This festival lasted for seven days and included the winter solstice which by the Julian calendar fell on December 25. During Saturnalia the Romans feasted, postponed all business and warfare, exchanged gifts, and temporarily freed their slaves. Such traditions resemble those of Christmas and are used to establish a link between the two holidays. These and other winter festivities continued through January 1, the festival of Kalends, when Romans marked the day of the new moon and the first day of the month and the beginning of the religious year.

Each year as the days got shorter, early cvilizations feared that the sun would disappear completely. They celebrated the 25th of December each year because the days began to become longer 4 days after the winter soltice. Science has now clearly explained the seasons as a phenomenum caused by the movement of the earth around the sun and the tilt of the earth at 23 degrees relative to the sun.
As Isaac Asimov comments in his Guide to the Bible, “Converts could join Christianity without giving up their Saturnalian happiness. It was only necessary for them to joyfully greet the birth of the Son rather than the Sun."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas

I recently posted an article called “Organized Religion and God.” The post was actually meant to be a commentary about the early belief systems of civilizations before science had advanced enough to explain unexplained phenomena. Modern science has explained and swept away many of the fears of the past including the imminent disappearance of the sun. Many of these fears have been adopted by religion as a means to explain what has not yet been understood by humans and someday may be explained by observation and science. The most prominent fears that religion tries do deal with are death and the meaning of life. Both are not yet understood in tangible scientific terms.

The recent debate about whether it is appropriate to say “merry Christmas” or “happy holidays” is yet another argument made by thoughtless religious people. It is yet another means to create a debate about the nature of Christmas in America. Those who advocate saying “merry Christmas” to a Jew or a Muslim are inconsiderate, thoughtless, and are advocating the superiority of their religious beliefs. Many of these people believe that the Founding Fathers were religious Christians. They were not. Most of them were Deists and abhorred the very teachings of Christian fundamentalists. A Deist is one who believes in the existence of a God or a supreme being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason. Christmas was not even a national holiday until 1885.

It is amazing to me how much American religious tradition has regressed since the “age of enlightenment.” That was the period in which both the American and French Revolutions occurred. It was a time in which the power of centralized religion was rejected. It is also a period in which many social movements began to advance the cause of humanity here on earth. Hopefully, the rest of the 21st century will bring upon us a rebirth of the enlightenment period in the spirit of our Founding Fathers. And when our Supreme Court Justices try to interpret the meaning of “freedom of religion” as written into the Bill of Rights, they will think about the intent and beliefs of those who were the writers of our Constitution. They were in the main Deists who rejected the dictates of organized religion.

Godlorica —

UNDERNEWS — GARY YOUNGE, GUARDIAN - There are two things people really want to know about the cartoonist Aaron McGruder. The first is precisely what he said to Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, at an awards ceremony three years ago. Rice and McGruder, 32, were both being given an award by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the oldest civil rights organisation in the country. Beforehand, McGruder had told anyone who would listen that Rice was a mass murderer (it was not long after the invasion of Afghanistan) and that he would have no qualms about telling her so to her face. With McGruder's help, rumors about their subsequent exchange became legend. "I was never as cavalier with her as I sounded," he says now. "I had a brief encounter with her and I knew I had to say something. I said something like: 'I don't want you guys to kill me so I'm just going to mind my own business.' I was eminently aware when I met Condi that she could make my whole family disappear. I have never been fearless. I've always had a healthy fear of this government."
 
The second is precisely how a young, left-wing African-American has managed to sell the Boondocks, a syndicated cartoon strip that combines the messages of black power and liberal-left politics, blended with hip-hop humour, to more than 300 newspapers. . . At the beginning of our interview, the question of how McGruder has managed to pull this off prompts a shrug. By the end of it, he has what seems like the beginning of a thesis. "When you consider how quickly and how forcefully the extreme right came into power in the last few years - not just in terms of war but the clampdown on American journalism . . . well, ultimately, some counter-voice gets through. It will always be somewhat limited and marginalized. It's just fortunate for me that my voice was allowed to continue. There is a silent majority that is opposed to the direction of the country and my strip gives them a small outlet every day to feel like they're not crazy. . .
 
McGruder also has the dubious honour of creating the strip most likely to be censored. During the Rice episode, the Washington Post pulled the strip, claiming it was inappropriate. The Post's editor, Leonard Downie, said in a statement at the time: "The Boondocks strips in question commented on the private life of the national security adviser and its relationship to her official duties in ways that violated our standards for taste, fairness and invasion of privacy." The paper's ombudsman disagreed, arguing that: "The sequence of strips [was] within the bounds of allowable satire.". . .
 

A Man with a Ph.D.- Richard Gayle's Weblog —

Studying the fate of drugs in wastewater. Acetaminophen is the most widely used pain reliever in the United States, and a study of 139 streams by the US Geological Survey found that it was one of the most frequently detected man-made chemicals. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have found that the drug readily reacts in chlorine disinfection to form at least 11 new products, at least two of which are known to be toxic. [EurekAlert! - Biology]

The presence of pharmaceuticals in our environment will become a much more question over the next few years. People will be getting drugs in ways that we do ot expect. And these drugs will also be altered in ways that are hard to predict.

Beyond the Beyond —

If you've got time to kill today, check out the interactive web graphics on this "Gapminder" site. Never mind the data, which is interesting enough: just check out the color choices and the interface. Man, who are those guys? Why haven't they already redesigned everything on the net?

http://gapminder.org/ Bells and whistles that actually work

Bootleg fark.com rss feed — Disaster survival cookbooks the next big thing. Enjoy some "Shiitake Happens Mushroom Soup," or "Duck and Cover Tortilla Bake"

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog —

Yes. I know that blatant mendacious stupidity is not an impeachable offense. But in this case I'm willing to make an exception. Kevin Drum writes:

The Washington Monthly : BLACK IS WHITE, UP IS DOWN....Via the Carpetbagger, Treasury Secretary John Snow explains why a president who has vastly increased the federal deficit is more fiscally responsible than a president who vastly reduced it:

Sipping a latte at a Starbucks coffee shop with reporters in Washington two days ago, he said that "the president's legacy will be one of having significantly reduced the deficit in his time," and said Clinton's budget was a "mirage" and "wasn't a real surplus."

Snow said the Clinton surplus was inflated by a stock-price bubble and that Bush will be remembered for cutting the gap from a record $412 billion in the 2004 fiscal year.

You can't make this stuff up. Consensus reality just doesn't exist for these guys anymore.

OK now: Bob Kimmitt, Mark Warshawsky, anybody else in the Bush Treasury who wants to retain ties to the reality-based community, or to avoid losing their own reputations to the Clown Show--now is time to start thinking about whether you want to bail out.

Bootleg fark.com rss feed — Scientists find tiny magnetic particles on cats' wrists that help them find their way back home. In other news, cats have wrists

A Man with a Ph.D.- Richard Gayle's Weblog —

Molly Ivins: The Constitution Does Not Apply. Bush is not above the law, so why is he acting like a God-appointed king? [AlterNet.org: Columnists]

Always like Molly. Glad our government is checking out those terrorists hiding in the Quakers and vegans. Makes me sleep better at night. Why do some conservatives distrust what the government does with their money but has no distruct that surveillance will be abused? Why is the government incompetent in one area but not the other?

NewMexiKen —

Talking Points Memo notes that “[A]s near I can tell there hasn’t been a single one since election day.”

Science Blog - News from Science, Medicine, Space, Physics and More —

Brain size matters for intellectual ability and bigger is better, McMaster University researchers have found. The study, led by neuroscientist Sandra Witelson, a professor in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine, and published in the December issue of the journal Brain, has provided some of the clearest evidence on the underlying basis of differences in intelligence.

UNDERNEWS —

The Huffington Post | Raw Feed —

“Democrats think the glass is half full. Republicans think the glass is theirs.” Yup, that pretty much says it. Where did I find this witty retort? From none other than a small bumper sticker company hailing from Minneapolis, MN, Northern Sun Merchandising.

Just now you may be thinking, “Finding that one must have taken some research or a lucky encounter while sitting in traffic.” If you thought the former, you’re right on. Finding that tag line did take some serious research, but I didn’t do it. Aaron Rudenstine and Olivia Greer did.

In their first book, Actions Speak Louder Than Bumper Stickers, these up-and-coming progressive commentators, take on America’s right-turning political climate in a way that will let you laugh, but won’t let it ride.

Rudenstine and Greer, Harvard and Skidmore graduates respectively, ask us to page through this often hilarious compilation of political bumper stickers, but to do so while smiling with an ironic wince: the coffee-table style book features each sticker complemented by a factoid or two on an adjacent page – factoids that ground the comedy of the stickers in some of today’s most concerning social and political realities.

For instance, accompanying the bumper sticker, “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people,” is the factoid, “The Equal Rights Amendment has been introduced in every session of Congress since 1922, but has not been ratified.”

Agree or disagree with the political opinions expressed throughout the book, the smile and wince dynamic created by Rudenstine and Greer gets your attention.

I can’t tell you if these two twentysomethings will help make up the next crop of Bill Mahers, Al Frankens, Maureen Dowds or Jon Stewarts, but I can tell you that it is exciting to see young blood publishing in the political satire arena.

Actions Speak Louder Than Bumper Stickers fits somewhere between Jon Stewart’s America, the book, and Josh Weisberg’s Bushisms. While not going into the historic depths that America traces for its satire, Actions Speak offers important factual context for its gaffs. At its roots, the work is classic gallows humor. It asks us readers to face the music in a slightly more serious tone than Josh Weisberg’s pill popping pages of presidential misspeaks – pages you have nonetheless got to love for that 5 second, “I gotta be sharper than the President” high.

I asked Mr. Rudenstine, who worked for over a year out of Kerry-Edwards Campaign headquarters in Washington D.C., what the major inspirations were for the idea that became Actions Speak Louder Than Bumper Stickers. He responded, “After the campaign, I was having a hard time reading the news; I was angry. Olivia and I wanted to illuminate current political realties and vent frustration and found it really effective to do so through ironical humor.”

With their first book, these satirists are not out to recreate the universe; they are out to thoughtfully stir the pot. After a first read, the book’s sardonic tone left me asking, is this comedy or tragedy? I was stumped; stumped because I asked myself very much the wrong question – comedy is not exclusive to tragedy. In Action Speaks, Rudenstine and Greer show us the truth of this construction and offer up what can only be understood as comedy within a tragedy. The bumper stickers are the comedy, conceived as brief respites for the some of the more unfortunate aspects of today’s political landscape covered in the pages of Actions Speak.

I, for one, look forward to hearing more from these two, and in a larger sense, the generation of progressives they represent. This is my generation and its time we step to the plate.

Posthuman Blues —