Internal Monologue

Ooh! Ooh! In another edition of "famous people saying what I said after I said it", we have this 4/30 Greenwald post : Warning that anonymity makes bloggers so "scary" and "irresponsible," while demanding anonymity to voice that criticism, is ingenious. And the anonymous quote is predictably being touted in right-wing circles as proof of how savage liberal bloggers are. Which says basically the same thing I said here on 4/28: There you have it: Anonymity supposedly amplifies the "totally mean and irrational" parts of the blogosphere. But this reporter (one Carla Marinucci) is willing to grant this "key state Democratic strategist" anonymity so that this strategist can...launch a "mean and irrational" smear against bloggers in general. This has been a general refrain of the mainstream media and political pundits: Demanding that bloggers be held to standards that they themselves do not adhere to. We are not impressed. And to ...

If cops kick in enough doors, crap like this is bound to happen: ATLANTA — Two police officers pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid last fall. A third officer still faces charges. [...] The charges followed a Nov. 21 "no-knock" drug raid on the home of Kathryn Johnston, 92. An informant had described buying drugs from a dealer there, police said. When the officers burst in without warning, Johnston fired at them, and they fired back, killing her. [...] Assistant U.S. Attorney Yonette Sam-Buchanan said Thursday that although the officers found no drugs in Johnston's home, Smith planted three bags of marijuana in the home as part of a cover story. (via C&L ) Major kudos from Internal Monologue to any politician, Republican, Democrat, or other, brave enough to suggest a new approach to this. The War on Drugs: just as stupid as our occupation of Iraq, but it's been going on longer and probab...

Photo from SFGate.com (SF Chronicle) John Baynham mapped the collapsed section with Google maps (via NWZCHIK ) New York Times : SAN FRANCISCO, April 29 — A fiery pre-dawn tanker truck accident caused the collapse of heavily used freeway overpass near downtown Oakland early this morning, sending hundreds of feet of concrete and steel roadway crashing down onto a highway below, and probably complicating the lives of thousands of Bay Area commuters for months to come. [...] The damaged sections of the interchange are likely to take months to repair. Bay Area Rapid Transit, the railway system connecting San Francisco tothe East Bay whose tracks run nearby, was not affected by the accident, though additional trains were being added today to accommodate travelers unable to drive through the area. The freeways in this area, the "MacArthur Maze", are so tangled I'm not sure exacly which freeways are blocked by this accident. But it's going to be a huge pain in the ass for ...

Well, it's time once again to break out the popcorn. I know "serious" people are not supposed to be jazzed by salacious sex scandals, but c'mon , who isn't? Apparently, the DC Madam who supplied prostitutes to the head of Bush's foreign aid programs is going to start naming other names : She not only intends to identify more of her high-profile clients, but has also threatened to call them as witnesses at trial to back up her claim that the services provided never crossed the line to prostitution. “I am a ferocious fighter when need be,” she wrote in an e-mail message this year to a Justice Department official involved in the case. “I can state with unequivocal certainty this situation will be a very long and unpleasant one.” (via theyrereal on DailyKos ) Here's a deal I'll make: if any politician comes out publicly for legalizing prostitution, or even a general re-thinking of our society's approaches and attitudes towards the sex industry, and d...

Atrios quotes the SF Chronicle : But one key state Democratic strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of concern for riling the netroots crowd, warns that such efforts are potentially positive and negative. Netroots commentary can frequently be intensely personal, even "totally mean and irrational," the strategist said, with some bloggers finding power in their ability "to assassinate political characters online." " It's amplified by the anonymity , and it can be scary that it's so irresponsible," the insider said. "And it's pulling the mainstream media in that direction." There you have it: Anonymity supposedly amplifies the "totally mean and irrational" parts of the blogosphere. But this reporter (one Carla Marinucci) is willing to grant this "key state Democratic strategist" anonymity so that this strategist can...launch a "mean and irrational" smear against bloggers in gen...

Photo of Randall Tobias from CommonDreams.org Oh dear. The Bush administration scandals are coming faster than we can blog 'em: Randall Tobias, head of the Bush administration's foreign aid programs, abruptly resigned Friday after his name surfaced in an investigation into a high-priced call-girl ring, said two people in a position to know the circumstances of his departure. [...] Tobias, 65, who is married, told ABC News there had been "no sex" during the women's visits to his condo. His name was on a list of clients given to ABC by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who owns the escort service and has been charged with running a prostitution ring in the nation's capital. Um, I'm finding that "no sex" part a bit difficult to believe. If you just want a massage, why are you paying $200-$300 a session? It's the Ted Haggard defense : I bought the meth but didn't use it from a prostitute I paid but didn't have sex with. Yeah right. Oh get this: he w...

Could the person on the left arrest the person on the right ? YES! (Images from his alma mater , Michigan State University , and from Slate.com ) Recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she will defy a Congressional Subpoena issued by a House Committee investigating the administrations pre-war claims about Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Now, defying such a subpoena is illegal, and she could be prosecuted for that. But who would be in charge of prosecuting such a case? U.S. Attorneys. Yes, the same U.S. Attorneys who have been purged to ensure political loyalty to the Bush administration. The person defying the subpoena (Rice) and the people in charge of enforcing it (U.S. Attorneys) are pawns of the same bunch of wannabe authoritarians. So Congress and the American people are S.O.L. , right? Wrong! It turns out that each chamber of Congress has its own Sergeant-at-Arms, who under some seldom-used provisions actually has the legal power to go out and enforce Congress' rules....

At least according to this gender genie thing that analyzes prose for certain gender keywords and gives you a score. If you put my latest Atheist of the Day post or my post on Obama's reaction to the Senate passage of the Iraq bill into it, it guesses I'm female. But if you put my post on the alternative BYU commencement in there, it says I'm male. (HT: Sullivan )

Image from here (probably stolen) Enough of politics! It's time for another Atheist of the Day! Once again, it's a porn star Atheist of the Day, this time Nina Hartley! You'd be amazed how difficult it is to find a photo of a multi-award winning pornstar that is a) of decent quality, and b) not pornographic. She must have had her lawyers scour the Web and purge it of all unapproved images or something. But thanks to the dilligence of your author, I managed to scrounge up this one, which should serve. (Side note: Yahoo image search turns up a lot of stuff that Google image search doesn't.) The documentation of her atheism, however, is quite straightforward. I'll just quote from the defunct Celebrity Atheist List, still with us thanks to the Google Cache version : "...I would like to know about Jewish religion as history, but as an atheist, I see no reason to practice any religion... because it is organized superstition...the opiate of the masses." "Op...

Very funny. How about instead of me posting links to these , everyone just checks Crooks and Liars regularly? I hope people in other countries see these segments and realize that we aren't all deluded warmongering dry-drunks.

The spending bill with the timetable to begin withdrawal has been passed by the Senate. Now it's on to George Bush's desk, where it will probably get vetoed. Here's Obama's quote on the situation : We are one signature away from ending the Iraq War. President Bush must listen to the will of the American people and sign this bill so that our troops can come home.[...] [Emphasis added.] (HT: turneresq on DailyKos ) One signature away. Unfortunately, that signature is Bush's. The sense of shame and futility I feel when I think that this man is President of the United States and Commander-in-chief of our military. All my representatives in Congress: please impeach this sorry excuse for an executive. If concern for the good of your country doesn't motivate you, can you not act out of a personal sense of shame that this contemptible, stubborn, uncaring thing is our head of state? Wake up out of your torpor: he has no clothes. He is not salvageable . I agree with...

...or not. In response to this recently released public opinion survey of four predominantly Muslim countries, Kevin Drum asks : So here are some questions for every one of the 2008 presidential candidates: Do you care about Muslim public opinion? Do you think it impacts U.S. national security? Which aspects of American foreign policy do you think contribute to these attitudes? What concrete steps would you take to change these parts of our foreign policy? Aside from making jokes about bombing Iran, that is. There will be an open book test on January 20, 2009.

Ebony and Ivory... fom CNN Wow : ASHBURN, Georgia (CNN) -- Students of Turner County High School started what they hope will become a new tradition: Black and white students attended the prom together for the first time on Saturday. In previous years, parents had organized private, segregated dances for students of the school in rural Ashburn, Georgia, 160 miles south of Atlanta. "Whites always come to this one and blacks always go to this one," said Lacey Adkinson, a 14-year-old freshman at the school of 455 students -- 55 percent black, 43 percent white. (HT: Feministing ) I live in a bubble. Heck, any prom I attend is ipso facto multi-racial.

Charmingly old-fashioned illustrations from the Wall Street Journal , of course. Who else produces such things anymore? Obama is catching up : ...a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows Mr. Obama trailing Mrs. Clinton by just 36% to 31%; 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards runs a solid third with 20%. Last month, Mr. Obama lagged behind by 12 percentage points. The telephone survey of 1,004 American adults, conducted April 20-23, carries a margin for error of 3.1 percentage points. (HT: Sullivan , who seems to be favoring Obama these days.) Why does the Wall Street Journal continue to use those weird "dot art" illustrations instead of photographs like every normal newspaper?

Image from OutaLance Shipyards It looks like we've found an earthish-sized planet in the "habitable zone" of a red dwarf star only 20.5 light years away: A rocky planet not much larger than Earth has been detected orbiting a star close to our own neighborhood in the Milky Way, and the European astronomers who found it say it lies within the star's "habitable zone," where life could exist -- possibly in oceans of water. The terraforming crews will have their hands full though: David Spergel, chairman of Princeton astrophysics department, noted that the new planet, if it is indeed rocky, must be "tidally locked" to its sun the way our moon is to the Earth -- which means that it must always show its same face to its sun, and that while one side would be too fiercely hot to support life, the other side would be too cold. But at the terminator -- the margin between the hot and cold parts of the planet -- Spergel agreed that liquid wa...

Photo by Christopher Irion I will be performing Dust Storm : Art and Survival in a Time of Paranoia at the Oakland Museum on Friday June 1st at 7:00 pm and on Sunday, June 3rd at 2pm. See their June calendar for more information. The play is written by Rick Foster with art by Chiura Obata . More information will be coming as the dates approach. Now I gotta re-memorize 75 minutes worth of text!

Thanks to the DailyKos diary I linked to yesterday , the BYU students looking to fund their alternative commencement have r eached their $20,000 goal only 4 hours after the diary went up: The Daily Kos is such a huge and popular blog, that I expected my entry to quickly disappear into the woodwork. But this was not the case. Within minutes, people from around the nation started pouring in supportive comments to what I had written. And, within a few more minutes, money donations started gushing into the Alternative BYU Commencement website . Hundreds upon hundreds of people started discussing this issue and we suddenly became the top most talked about Daily Kos Blog Entry of the day. Hundreds of dollars became thousands of dollars. The "donation" meter exploded from about $9,500 to $15,000 in 2 hours. And then, just 4 hours after the post went up, the $20,000 goal was annihilated. And people just kept giving and giving and giving. FEEL THE POWER OF THE NETROOTS! I'm sure...

I like what Lizard at Journal of Applied Misanthropology has to say: America is, as a nation, pretty much oblivious to politics, on any level beyond what fits on a bumper sticker. A tragedy of this sort forces a moment, however brief, of reflection and debate. The media, desperate to fill up minutes and keep eyeballs, will seek out pundits and commentators and wags from all across the spectrum, and they will have a few brief minutes to toss the seeds of ideas onto the rocky, dry, infertile soil of the American mind, hoping to find some tiny oasis of acceptance. It takes a lot to get America's attention -- might as well make the most of it while you can.

First they came for the Muslims. I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Muslim. Then they came for the mentally ill. Then I started to take things personally. -from Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Greenwald : The expansion of the Surveillance State is endless. Buried within an ABC report on the Virginia Tech shootings is this paragraph (h/t reader DT): Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government's files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search. Is there any good reason whatsoever why the federal government should be maintaining "files" which contain information about the pharmaceutical products which all Americans are consuming? The ...

I was worried the Democrats in the conference committee would take out the binding dates to begin troop withdrawal from the Iraq/Afghanistan funding bill. They didn't : 8The deal, which will come to final votes in the House and Senate Wednesday and Thursday, sets up a veto clash with President Bush by week's end. Congressional Democrats had considered making all dates for withdrawing U.S. troops advisory, hoping to persuade Bush to sign the bill, which would provide more than $100 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan . But once the president made it clear a veto was inevitable, Democratic leaders decided to stick to binding dates, at least for the initial troop pullouts. Bush "is the only person who fails to face this war's reality -- and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq's future, but for ours," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared in a speech this afternoon. Good for the Democrats. Maybe they read my post telling them to...

Photos from BYU Alternative Commencement ...well, it's actually students and faculty who attend a Mormon University, so they aren't necessarily LDS themselves, but probably a large number of them are. At least the one in the photo below is...anyway, why would the author of Internal Monologue throw a few dollars to a bunch of people who attend Brigham Young University? Because they are trying to avoid having to listen to Dick Cheney at their commencement , that's why. And what nobler cause could there be than that? (OK, maybe impeaching him would be nobler, or dedicating your life to serving the poor. But avoiding Dick Cheney at your commencement ranks pretty high on my scale of nobility.) So if you want to show these brave folks some love, you can PayPal them a few bucks . They're trying to set up an Alternative Commencement with Ralph Nader, Pete Ashdown, and Jack Healey as speakers. They'd been having trouble booking a space, as apparently they were blacklisted...

Photo from Earth Day Energy Fast I suppose it would be a shame to let Earth Day go by without a mention. So here's a quote: The first time someone complains about needing a better road and a politician answers "Tough. You're the one who moved to a subdivision fifty miles out of town and three miles down a country lane," I will cheer. -from Devilstower on DailyKos

Feministing : Still my favorite logo in the blogosphere Three items from Feministing 's weekly feminist reader : A brief Time article on outsourcing breastmilk . I guess we outsource just about everything else in our culture, so why not? They say "cross-nursing", where you feed each other's babies, is making a "minor comeback", but they don't cite any statistics. Guardian Unlimited talks to Jessica Valenti about her book Full Frontal Feminsism , which is about how feminism can benefit the young women of today. It's the book she wishes she had when she was a teenager. A frightening excerpt from Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters , about the connection between perfectionism and body image and eating issues among the high-achieving young women of today. This stuff scares the crap out of me, because I can see its effects but I don't feel I can do anything about it. It's very strange to me because it's a whole universe of pressures that I...

I just discovered this " Talking to Americans " video, a Canadian cousin of Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" series. Of course one can't place too much stock in these sorts of "getting people to say dumb stuff" shows as of course they're edited to show you people at their stupidest. But it is frightening when you see Americans saying they'd be OK with bombing Saskatchewan or sending troops to Gilles Duceppe (which is not a place, but rather a Quebecois separatist politician). (HT: Progressive Gold )

I have resisted the urge to use Google image search to find a photograph that would adequately illustrate the topic of this post. Sometimes I am astounded by the levels of decorum and restraint I am able to achieve. Capitalism is everything people feared Communism would be: an hyper-powerful global ideology that completely upends all moral structures, traditions, and power arrangements with which it collides. Fortunately, it has some beneficial side-effects, one of which is that the entrepreneurial spirit is great at finding unsatisfied needs, and, provided that the unsatisfied have enough money, coming up with a way to satisfy those needs, however abstruse or specialized. (The fact that capitalism is equally good at creating unsatisfied needs is a topic for another post.) Which brings us to today's article from The Register , which I think was probably custom-tailored to catch my attention: God alone knows it's going to be difficult, but we promise we will keep an absolutely...

Image from here . UPDATED BELOW UPDATED AGAIN: Gore people are saying this story is bunk . An interesting article from U.K.-based Telegraph : Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House. Two members of Mr Gore's staff from his unsuccessful attempt in 2000 say they have been approached to see if they would be available to work with him again. [...] The former aide, who has himself signed up with Sen Edwards, said: "The question is: where have all the Kerry people gone? The answer for most of them is nowhere. Now ask yourself why." (HT: anoodle on DailyKos ) I like the idea of Gore running. At the very least, it would put Climate Change at the center of presidential politics. UPDATE: Chris Bowers at MyDD thinks the Telegraph article is crap: To be perfectly frank, I think the continued speculation on a possible Gore run is based on some of the most utterly...

There have been all kinds of rumors flying about that the bill the Democratic Congress is going to send to Bush will be stripped of time tables for withdrawal . This would be stupid, stupid, stupid. Why are Democrats doing anything that will give them more "ownership" of an occupation that is stupid, wrong, and hugely unpopular? Who the fuck are these "Blue Dog" Democrats who want to have "advisory language" or "goals" instead of "get out by date X" provisions in the bill? Who is their constituency? They can't be catering to voter sentiment, because voter sentiment is against Bush and against this occupation. Are they beholden to some interest group that has a stake in prolonging our involvement in the catastrophe? Or are they just so bamboozled by the Washington D.C. culture that they still feel they can't do anything sensible without looking weak? I can't believe they actually think our occupation has any chance of succes...

From here , via Pandagon .

Image from biblia.com After looking around Conservapedia, I've come up with a new theory about the Rapture: It's what will occur when the alternate reality the Bush administration and its supporters have been constructing out of pure bullshit for the last decade or so finally becomes big enough for them to move there physically. My only worry about this is that they may decide to nuke the Reality-Based Community on the way out, for sheer spite. - Consumer Unit 5012 , in a comment on Slacktivist. [some typos corrected] (HT: Mad Latinist via e-mail) By the way, if you want to read a great scene-by-scene fisking of the first "Left Behind" novel (those novels that place the Christian "Rapture" in modern times, with the anti-Christ as Secretary-General of the U.N--No, really), Slacktivist is the place to go.

R.I.P. (Image from Answers.com ) R.I.P. (Image from Answers.com ) In an example of how small things close to us affect us more than big things that are not close to us, I just read that the magazines Dungeon and Dragon will be ceasing publication in September: Today, Wizards of the Coast and Paizo Publishing announced the conclusion of Paizo's license to publish Dragon and Dungeon magazines. The magazines will cease publication following the release of the September issues, which ship to subscribers and newsstands in August. The final issues will be Dragon #359 and Dungeon #150. These magazines have been part of my life for decades. I am in shock. It makes sense I guess. That kind of content (D&D articles and adventures) will be moving to the web or to other publications. Paizo is launching Pathfinder which will sort of be like Dungeon but will be OGL and contain linked adventures only. But...but...but...it's just not the same. Wow. Dude. I feel ancient. Here'...

Sometimes people make themselves very easy targets for ridicule. Head over to Crooks and Liars to hear The Daily Show 's take on Gonzales' Senate testimony: After weeks of mock testimony, there you have it. Alberto Gonzales doesn’t know what happened, but he assures you what he doesn’t remember was handled properly. Other "serious" journalists have been just as scathing; see this DailyKos post for a round-up. Here's a sample, from Byron York: Judging by his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, there are three questions about the U.S. Attorneys mess that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wants answered: What did I know? When did I know it? And why did I fire those U.S. Attorneys? (By the way, if you ever want to laugh at some political videos, Crooks and Liars has an almost endless supply. I link to many of them, but there are many I pass on.)

"You did a heckuva job at that Senate hearing, Gonzo!" Image from The Conservative Fighter , who opines that since Bush has expressed "unwavering support" for Gonzales, it will be about a week before Bush fires him. Greenwald takes up a theme on which I've been harping a bit here at Internal Monologue : As pleasant as it was to see that torture-endorsing mendacious flunky of an Attorney General raked over the coals and made a fool of, Gonzales isn't really the problem. Bush is. Gonzales is just one of many loyal hacks who've made a career of doing whatever Bush needs them to do, legality and morality be damned. If he resigns, there will be some other person like him taking his place. What other kind of person would agree to take the position? (Of course, one can argue that Cheney is the real problem, but if Bush were decent and connected to reality, Cheney would not be able to exercise the power he does.) Here's a brief snippet of what Greenwald ...

Image from Nostalgiaville at gono.com . I couldn't find Dec 1900, so here's Jan 1901. The Ladies' Home Journal from December of 1900 had an article with predictions about what life will be like in 100 years (HT: Daily Dish ). Some of them are quite accurate, in spirit if not in the details: Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors. Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with a...

...and with the condescending theist rhetoric of wackjob Dinesh D'Souza: Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found. Every time there is a public gathering there is talk of God and divine mercy and spiritual healing. Even secular people like the poet Nikki Giovanni use language that is heavily drenched with religious symbolism and meaning.[...] mapantsula, an atheist professor at Virginia Tech, responds on Kos: It is hardly surprising that Dinesh D’Souza is once again not only profoundly mistaken but also deeply offensive. But I thought it worthwhile to say something in response, not because most people would put the point in the same morally reptilian manner as D’Souza, but because there is at least some vague sense amongst people that we atheists don’t quite grasp the enormity of Monday’s events, that we tend towards a cold-hearted manner of thinking, that we condescend to expressions of community, meaning, ...

Photo from Allen and Unwin Today's Atheist of the Day is also from show business. Ricky Gervais is best known for writing and acting in the British version of TV series The Office . He tells a great atheism conversion story (from rickygervais.com ): I remember the day I became an atheist," says Gervais. "I was doing my homework. I'd been to Sunday school from the age of five to eight. I had gold stars and used to win Jason in the Lion's Den books, and everything was great. And, er, I fÇÇ"ing loved Jesus, I thought he was brilliant. What a great man." Then his brother Bob, who was 19, came in and took an interest in the homework. He asked Ricky why he believed in God 'and my mum got nervous. My mum went, 'Bob' [in a warning voice] and I thought, something's up. Then he went, 'Well, what proofis there?' My mum said, 'Of course there's a God.' He went, 'No, I'mjust asking.' And I said something ludicrous: the...

This discussion of atheism on CNN was just pathetic. Not only did they not have anyone who actually was an atheist explaining our views, the level of the discussion was very "Jr. high." (HT: VLWC ) I only managed to get through about half of the clip, it was so painful to watch. Fortunately, there's been a lot of push-back in the blogosphere. You can start at about.com or at the VLWC link above. I didn't realize our national discussion of this issue was so lame. Sometimes I wondered if my talking about atheism all the time on this blog was unecessary. But after seeing that clip, my sense of mission is renewed. I should apply myself to the "Atheist of the Day" feature of this blog with greator vigor.

For all of us pro-choicers, today's verdict is bad news . That's what happens when a Democratic Senate won't stand up for women (and all Americans who believe in reproductive rights) and allows Bush to get his wingers on the court. Ginsberg dissented from the 5-4 decision: Today's decision is alarming. It refuses to take Casey and Stenberg seriously. It tolerates, indeed applauds federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). It blurs the line, firmly drawn in Casey , between previability and postviability abortions. And, for the first time since Roe , the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman's health. [emphasis from Feministing . ]

Photo of my son Quinn at 6.5 months taken by his grandpa, Red Taylor If you're a parent seeking to maximize your own happiness, there's some research to suggest that one is the optimal number of children to have: Interestingly, second and third children don't add to parents' happiness at all. In fact, these additional children seem to make mothers less happy than mothers with only one child—though still happier than women with no children. "If you want to maximize your subjective well-being, you should stop at one child," concludes Kohler, adding that people probably have additional children either for the benefit of the firstborn or because they reason that if the first child made them happy, the second one will, too. (HT: Ross on Sullivan's Daily Dish ) Also, the happiness gains are not necessarily immediate: What seems to happen over time, says Kohler, is "you look forward to having a child, then you have it and find it really difficult and you...

Click image (or here ) for full Tom Tomorrow cartoon. (HT: Crooks and Liars )

Photo of E. coli from CD-Writer.com Health Search In this article, entitled " E. coli Conservatives ", Rick Perlstein links the recent recalls of contaminated food (spinach, peanut butter, pet food) to reduced FDA inspection regimes that are the result of conservative "slash government" (except those parts of it that enrich us) ideology: The Associated Press studied the records and found that between 2003 and 2006 the Food and Drug Administration conducted 47 percent fewer safety inspections. FDA field offices have 12 percent fewer employees. Safety tests for food produced in the United States have gone down by three quarters—have almost ground to a halt —in the previous year alone. [...] As Dr. Phil would say: How's that working out for you? Not so well, it turns out. It was months later before we learned the eminently preventable reason our peanut butter had been poisoned: a leaky roof and a faulty sprinkler provided the culture for the salmonella bug at t...

Photo from Virginia Tech's website It's hard to know what to say. We'll be digging through this incident for meaning for a long time. It's almost too awful to think about. Some good commentary on this can be found at Balloon Juice, where Juan Cole counters some of the fantasy machismo that's floating about out there. He also describes some of the heroic things people at Virginia Tech did to save themselves and others. Via Sullivan's blog , we have reports on the killer's suicide note and a couple violent, disturbing plays he wrote . It's also worth noting that though this mass killing is a horrible tragedy here in the US, it's a pretty typical day in Iraq. I don't know exactly what to do with that information. Other than to be mad at the Bush administration and everyone who enabled it to screw things up so badly. And that includes myself for not fighting harder to oppose it. The political issue of gun control is of course already in the air. I...

Via Feministing , we have this great little YouTube video of Saudi newscaster Buthayna Nasser decrying sexism, oppression of women, and the mindless rote memorization of scripture.

This is as good a take as any I've seen on the whole Imus affair. Slacktivist : "Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." That's what good preachers, and good journalists, do. It makes sense that comics, who sometimes preach and sometimes report the news, would follow this motto as well. Imus "broke the power equation," Rogers says. He afflicted the afflicted, which made him a bully instead of a comic. That's not funny. UPDATE: Another good take from Phil Nugent here : With Imus's career meltdown this past week, he managed to demonstrate one thing worth knowing, which is that the rules regarding racist behavior among celebrities are kind of the reverse of the ones governing politicians. We've reached the point where racism is simply an unaceptable trait in a public figure, but there are some openly bigoted celebrities, such as Mel Gibson, who are simply too rich and famous to be swept off the map--it would be too unnerving and would f...

Detail of photo taken from sorabji.com . This warning, found on dumpsters, has always struck me as stupid and counter-productive. As a kid, I had never wanted to play on or around a dumpster until this yellow warning label put the idea into my head. Now that I know about the concept of framing , I can explain in more detail why this warning label is stupid. Here are two mistakes the warning label makes: Moral 3: Negating a frame evokes the frame. By saying "Do not play on or around", you're actually activating the frame of playing on or around the dumpster. It's the equivalent of "Don't Think of an Elephant". Reading that label, you can't help but thinking of playing on or around the dumpster. Various games you might play or stunts you might attempt spontaneously leap into your brain. This is why ads for Coke don't say "Don't drink Pepsi": that would just evoke the Pepsi frame. Moral 4: Evoking a frame reinforces that frame. By evok...