Internal Monologue

UPDATE: Douglas Hofstadter contributes to the discussion of this pressing issue! New post coming shortly. Here it is! When other artists cover Bo Diddley 's song "Bo Diddley" should they actually sing the words "Bo Diddley" or should they substitute their own name? I sort of think they should use their own name. Part of the charm/weirdness of this song is that it's about the singer himself, and that he refers to himself in the third person. If you're singing about somebody else, it changes the whole nature of the song. Here are the lyrics : Bo Diddley bought his babe a diamond ring, If that diamond ring don't shine, He gonna take it to a private eye, If that private eye can't see He'd better not take the ring from me. Bo Diddley caught a nanny goat, To make his pretty baby a Sunday coat, Bo Diddley caught a bear cat, To make his pretty baby a Sunday hat. Mojo come to my house, ya black cat bone, Take my baby away from home, Ugly ole moj...

A social worker laments : As I contemplate how to pry a few dollars from these systems designed to humiliate and degrade my clients, already struggling with being social outcasts, chronic illness, drug addiction and mental illness I sigh audibly. I read of billion dollar bailouts and disappearing pallettes of cash as I ponder how to help a family with $400.00 so they will not be homeless in three days. I am so very tired. We are not very caring as a nation. I want that to change. And as for stimulating the economy: nobody spends money faster than someone who needs to pay the rent to avoid getting kicked out of their home. The bank bailout has been severely hampered by the fact that the banks are often just sitting on the funds and not telling anyone what they're doing with them. Our priorities are completely out of whack, and our politics barely begins to address our needs as a nation. Obama, as far as I can tell, is only a small step in the right direction. Must there be massive s...

Once upon a time there was a little boy. The little boy loved his birthday because he didn't have to do any chores and he got lots of presents and everyone did nice things for him. The little boy loved his birthday so much that he tricked God into making it his birthday every day. The little boy was so happy: every day was his birthday and he lived happily like a prince. But the little boy died of old age in less than three months, and God was like "Ha ha ha ha!"

I'm 35 years old today. If anything, I feel I've aged more than one year this year: I started a full time job for the first time in over 7 years, and we discovered that Quinn had fragile X syndrome. It's been very hard, but I think we've all grown a lot. One bit of evidence I offer for this is that the holidays have actually not been particularly difficult for us this year. Once you've been trained in caring-for-special-needs-kids boot camp, other sorts of domestic obligations do not loom as large. I got some great presents, and I have a surprise outing this afternoon, and steak dinner tonight. Yum! Thanks so much to my wonderful wife Sarah and all my family for contributing to birthday wonderfulness!

One of the first South Park cartoons ever. Still one of the best.

" The Datsun and the Shoe Tree ": I was changing planes at the new airport in Jakarta the other day, on the way to Stockholm from Vladivostok. Three young Bangladeshi boys sat in the passenger lounge, watching The Power Rangers on satellite TV. Their mother--garbed in the traditional sari--talked to her cousin, a migrant worker who sold German-designed Walkman knockoffs in Hong Kong, on a shiny new Samsung cell phone. Sitting to one side of them was a young Chinese émigré on his way to Toronto to work for a software company, and on the other a business-suited Rastafarian making a connection to Bratislava. Meanwhile, a couple of Tuareg tribesmen sat cross-legged in front of the ticket counter, cooking yams over a flaming mound of ticket stubs. What's my point? I don't actually have one--but opening my columns with strings of clichéd cultural juxtapositions really cuts down my workload. via liberal on Balloon Juice . I've actually enjoyed reading Friedman, but...

We have proof : The Obamas attended a private memorial service for Madelyn Dunham , who lived in a modest apartment here and died of cancer at age 86 two days before the presidential election. The service was held at the First Unitarian Church of Honolulu, a two-story house converted into a place of worship. The service was closed to the media.

Some people might be creeped out by this : Babysitting robots, once the province of speculative fiction, are on the market. They make conversation, recognize faces and keep track of kids. They're not a replacement for TV or games, but for personal care — and some researchers worry that kids will be harmed. "If you leave a small child in front of the TV, you have to keep popping in to make sure they're OK. But these are so safe that people will eventually leave their children in the care of robots," said Noel Sharkey , a University of Sheffield roboticist. But I welcome it. Here's a dirty little parenting secret that isn't a secret to anyone who actually does the work of parenting: a lot of the work of childcare is dull, tedious, and unfulfilling. And dull, tedious, and unfulfilling work is exactly what robots are for. Our current practice of using exploitable immigrant labor instead of robots rests on a foundation of economic systemic inequality, and I don...

Amanda Marcotte has an interesting thought I hadn't considered before: I can safely say that I think Santa is for adults, and specifically for making universal the pleasure of lying to children because they’ll believe anything you say. Not all of us are skilled bullshitters who can come up with cockamamie stories on the fly, like Calvin’s dad, or my dad, who told us that Parmesan cheese was made up from ground-up dirty sweat socks. Santa democratizes the process of exploiting child credulity so that any adult, no matter how unimaginative, can participate. She concludes: None of this is to say that I strenuously object to Santa. I’m not a parent, and it’s not my place to say one way or another if you choose to engage in what is a relatively harmless tradition. But I do think that I’d like the whole thing a lot more if people quit spinning self-serving tales about how Santa is there for the kiddies. I realize that parental sadism is not P.C., and so in order to engage in it, pa...

The " Please Don't Divorce... " picture project from the Courage Campaign. If we had been this direct and unashamed in the anti-Prop 8 campaign, it might not have passed. Instead, all the anti-Prop 8 ads acted like they were ashamed to talk about same sex people loving each other. But that's the whole point. You don't get to vote on someone's marriage. Especially if it already exists. Alas, some think otherwise : Infamous prosecutor Ken Starr has filed a legal brief -- on behalf of the "Yes on 8" campaign -- to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November of 2008. It's time to put a face to Ken Starr's shameful legal proceedings. To put a face to the 18,000 couples facing forcible divorce. To put a face to marriage equality. Because, gay or straight, YOU are the face of the Marriage Equality Movement. I'm going to give Courage Campaign a small donation . This is something I want to be on the rig...

I don't normally link to The Weekly Standard , it being way off the cliff in terms of its right-wing politics. But this portrait of ruined Detroit is extremely moving: Wilcox drives me all over the city, pointing out missed urban-planning opportunities and eyesores. He takes me downtown to what the locals call "Skyscraper Graveyard," where the clock seems to have stopped in the Art Deco period and high-rise after high-rise sits empty. He points out the landmark Book Tower, a 38-story building finished in 1926, which he says is now vacant except for Bookies Tavern on the first floor. Wilcox's lawyer told him he'd been "the last tenant there. He had to downsize. People are too broke to sue people. He's now switching to bankruptcy law to try to save his house." I come to think of Wilcox as the curator of a museum that's been overturned and looted. The prize of his collection, or what could have been his collection, is the detailed production note...

Sales of the model of shoe thrown at Bush have gone through the roof : The shoe hurled at President George W. Bush has sent sales soaring at the Turkish maker as orders pour in from Iraq, the U.S. and Iran. The brown, thick-soled “Model 271” may soon be renamed “The Bush Shoe” or “Bye-Bye Bush,” Ramazan Baydan , who owns the Istanbul-based producer Baydan Ayakkabicilik San. & Tic. , said in a telephone interview today. “We’ve been selling these shoes for years but, thanks to Bush, orders are flying in like crazy,” he said. “We’ve even hired an agency to look at television advertising.” I hope Muntadar al-Zeidi, the journalist who threw the shoes, is getting a cut of the sales. After all, he's the one responsible for popularizing them. Maybe I should throw one of my company's brain-computer interface headsets at him. It's not on sale yet, but we could always use the publicity.

I signed it . I'm not sure how much good it will do. Every fiber of Washington D.C. culture will be against it. But that culture needs to change. If we just let this stuff stand, the Republicans will do it again once they are in power. Or Obama may decide that he is free to commit the same sort of crimes, since Bush got away with it. There must be pressure against this. Too many people are willing to turn away when the victims of torture are from another place, speak a different language, or have a different religion. And people are afraid. And people think it shows "toughness" to throw aside our moral principles and our knowledge of what actually works when faced with a threat. It does not. Sometimes I despair at human nature. It's so hard to give a damn about other people with whom we don't identify. I guess that's why we have laws, and that's why we need to uphold them.

Here's a diary from kktlaw on DailyKos called "From $350K per year to $0: How I am Living (Happily) on Welfare": I am unable to work. I can't drive due to the leg and arm injuries. I can hardly type, so this diary is a stretch with only one hand. I can't read books or newspapers because that requires use of both arms. (I listen to a lot of music.) I receive $760 per month on which to live (social security disability income.) This used to be my golf club dues. Or my entertainment budget. Or my car payment. (Car has been repossessed so I don't have to worry about that one any longer.) The $760 per month is now my total income! So, how can I live happily being totally disabled and poor? Well, first of all, I know it sounds trite but I'm really grateful and happy to be alive. The work load I undertook before, with a serious incurable disease, was stupid and irresponsible. The total disability due to the Panama fall brought me abruptly to my senses that bein...

When there's lots of crazy stuff going on, Intrade can be a useful shorthand for determining the conventional wisdom on an outcome. Right now, they have Coleman at 23% likely to win. The price has been extremely volatile in recent days, though.

Here's the Wikipedia definition of teratoma : A teratoma is a kind of tumor ( neoplasm ). Definitive diagnosis of a teratoma is based on its histology : a teratoma is a tumor with tissue or organ components resembling normal derivatives of all three germ layers . Rarely, not all three germ layers are identifiable. The tissues of a teratoma, although normal in themselves, may be quite different from surrounding tissues, and may be highly inappropriate, even grotesque: teratomas have been reported to contain hair , teeth , bone and very rarely more complex organs such as eyeball , torso , and hand . Emphasis added. It's of course the latter type that get all the attention. This ABC news story might be about a teratoma: A doctor in Colorado found a surprise when removing what he thought was a benign growth from a newborn's brain. Instead of a microscopic tumor, out popped a tiny foot, partially formed hand, a thigh and another partially formed foot. "It would be a ...

The California budget process is completely messed up. As far as I can tell, this is because of two things: Any budget requires 2/3 of the legislature to pass. This makes it easy for a wacky minority to hold the process hostage. Due to Prop 13, any tax increase also requires a 2/3 majority to pass. Of course, it doesn't take a 2/3 majority to lower taxes or to increase spending. So during good times, the legislature hands out the goodies with abandon, but when revenues dip they can't compensate with revenue increases. So they usually resort to gimmickry to avoid drastic spending cuts (that in a recession would further worsen the economy). Question: why can't states go into debt the way the federal government can go into debt? Maybe that power would be used unwisely, but it might also be a good tool for avoiding this kind of crisis.

Why is Obama chosing this guy to give the invocation at his inauguration? I know Obama isn't the great progressive hope we on the left want him to be, but this is a pretty big "fuck you" to the left. I hope this is some sort of political ju-jitsu where he's delibrately pissing off the left on symbolic issues to somehow build capital to fight the right on substantive issues, but I'm not so sure.

If you're willing to lend money at an interest rate between 0.0% and 0.25% , you're basically giving it away. Let's hope this helps (and doesn't create another bubble somewhere in the process).

It's never too early to start, kid. This device sends pre-natal kicks to Twitter . If it works, that could actually be useful. Instead of sending the kicks to Twitter, they could be sent to some medical logging service that would trigger an alert if kicks started happening with insufficient frequency.

Even a die-hard anti-Bush person like me has trouble really letting it sink in that Bush is a war criminal. But the SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY makes pretty clear that "Senior Officials" authorized torture. Sullivan and Greenwald are reacting appropriately. But few others seem to care. I can understand: we don't want to think that we allowed this to happen. The impulse is to turn away. But we can't. We (I guess I mean the Obama administration) should appoint a special prosecutor to determine if crimes have been committed. Or maybe the incoming attorney general could do so. If what I'm reading in that Sentate report (and what other people are saying about it) is true, crimes have been committed at the highest levels. The partisan right will scream "witch hunt" of course. But it seems as though the facts point pretty strongly to guilt.

I just want to point out that I was onto the CIA's plot to kill Castro via old age before The Onion radio network picked up the story. Of course, a Google search reveals I am not the first to uncover this. HT: Grishnash, who pointed this out to me via email.

From NewScientist : Brain scanning can now extract information directly from the brain: the subject read the word "neuron" at the top, and software working with the brain scan images reconstructed the word (below) (Image: Neuron/Cell Press) Dude, this is way cool: Now Yukiyasu Kamitani at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan has gone a step further: his team has used an image of brain activity taken in a functional MRI scanner to recreate a black-and-white image from scratch. "By analysing the brain signals when someone is seeing an image, we can reconstruct that image," says Kamitani. This means that the mind reading isn't limited to a selection of existing images, but could potentially be used to "read off" anything that someone was thinking of, without pri...

...and this is what we might end up with: A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5) B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21) C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21) D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30) E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9) F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to...

What does throwing your shoe at someone mean in Iraqi culture? It's not a compliment : Iraqis had begun tearing down portraits of Saddam and throwing shoes -- a grave insult in the Arab world -- and chipping away at the base of the statue with sledgehammers after a column of Marines advanced into the square Wednesday afternoon. (HT: Yglesias ) How about Bush appoints Obama secretary of state, the senate confirms him in a special session, and then Bush and Cheney resign and Obama becomes president right now.

The Smoking Gun has at long last obtained the holy grail of outlandish contract rider clauses: Here's a justification that I was unaware of: While the underlined rider entry has often been described as an example of rock excess, the outlandish demand of multimillionaires, the group has said the M&M provision was included to make sure that promoters had actually read its lengthy rider. If brown M&M's were in the backstage candy bowl, Van Halen surmised that more important aspects of a performance--lighting, staging, security, ticketing--may have been botched by an inattentive promoter. Snopes has a slightly different version, quoting David Lee Roth. According to Roth, the "no brown M&Ms" stipulation was buried among various technical requirements about electrical and structural requirements. Maybe different riders were used, or maybe Roth misremembered. (Given the amount of booze specified in the rider, I wouldn't be surprised.) But the story is subst...

...from our house to the El Cerrito Plaza, about one and a half blocks. This has been a goal of ours for a long time.

If you haven't tried Pandora Radio yet, it's pretty cool for listening to music at your computer. It's free and you create custom radio stations centered around songs or artists. Lots of media services (like iTunes and NetFlix) have this sort of thing. But getting stuff free is always nice.

Here it is : HT: Grishnash via email

I did not know this .

...except it's for questions you want to put to Obama . Presumably, he'll do something with the ones that percolate to the top.

Some interesting parallels : For starters, not only people, but dogs, wolves, and bats -- animals traditionally associated with vampires -- can be infected with the rabies virus. Because the virus affects the limbic system, part of the brain that influences aggressive and sexual behavior, people with rabies tend to be aggressive, may attempt to bite others, and are "hypersexual," he writes. Since rabies also affects the hypothalamus, part of the brain that controls sleep, many patients suffer from insomnia, and are up and about in the middle of the night. Rabies causes hypersensitivity to strong stimuli, as well, so patients are often repelled by light, by bright things -- such as mirrors, and by strong odors -- including the smell of garlic. Rabies victims may vomit blood, Gomez-Alonso explains. And since the disease causes hydrophobia, or aversion to water, they do not swallow their saliva, which can froth at their mouths, flecked with blood. The disease can also cause faci...

Why did I see so many helicopters hovering over the Bay Bridge entrance? [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typographical errors.] --Zachary Drake

Bwahahahah : Joe Wurzelbacher lashed out at former GOP presidential nominee John McCain Tuesday, the man who made Wurzelbacher famous as “Joe the Plumber.” Wurzelbacher told conservative radio host Glenn Beck that he felt “dirty” after “being on the campaign trail and seeing some of the things that take place.” Of course, he likes Palin: While Wurzelbacher was critical of McCain during the interview, he had nothing but praise for his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. “Sarah Palin is absolutely the real deal,” he said.

This is a fun little soap opera with threads in both Second Life and "first life". Here's a snippet: Disgusted, Taylor ended Laura Skye's relationship with Barmy but chose to stay with Pollard in real life. In an effort to test his commitment, Taylor hired a private investigator on Second Life named Markie Macdonald. Macdonald hatched a plan whereby a female avatar flirted with Barmy in an effort to lure him to her cyber-bed. Instead of succumbing to temptation, Barmy spoke of his strong feelings for Laura Skye. HT: George Gonzales via Facebook.

When Douglas Coupland wrote in Generation X that Hello Kitty had surprisingly large brandwidth , did he imagine that it could go as far as this : The 30-bed Hau Sheng Hospital in Yuanlin in central Taiwan is reportedly the world's first Hello Kitty themed medical establishment. From blankets and birth certificates to cots and uniforms worn by staff, every aspect of the Hello Kitty hospital is emblazoned with the feline motif. Patients are welcomed by a statue of Hello Kitty dressed in a doctor's uniform, before travelling in a Hello Kitty elevator to a pink examination room with Hello Kitty posters on the wall. HT: punky the cat . Somehow, this embodies a certain idea I have about Japan.

The city of Martinez creates a short artificial sledding run as a fundraiser. Here's Sarah & Quinn after a successful run.

Quinn at Tumble & Tea

Henry Blodget : So what can we learn from all this? In the words of the great investor Jeremy Grantham, who saw this collapse coming and has seen just about everything else in his four-decade career: “We will learn an enormous amount in a very short time, quite a bit in the medium term, and absolutely nothing in the long term.” Of course, to paraphrase Keynes, in the long term, you and I will be dead. via Sullivan . Human nature in a nutshell, really. Until we can change our essential nature, we're doomed to blunder from avoidable crisis to avoidable crisis. But even though we will soon have the power to change our essential natures, will blunderers like us be wise enough to do so constructively?

George W. Bush is still President of the United States of America. Fortunately, Jon Stewart is still mocking him mercilessly .

Photo stolen from Sullivan My entry: Senator rips latex mask of GM CEO's face, revealing him to be conservative activist Grover Norquist.

I just started reading the blog Calculated Risk . A lot of bloggers have praised it for incisive reports on the current economic troubles. It did NOT cheer me up. Nuthin' but doom and gloom. Here's a sampling of post titles: ISM Non-Manufacturing Index Plunges in November More Bad Employment News Chrysler sales off 47% GM Sales Off 41% GM Sales Off 41% Credit Crisis Indicators Mortgage Delinquency Rate to Rise Sharply in 2009 Paulson Speaks, Market Crashes It just goes on and on. (For an explanation of what the heck the A2/P2 spread is, see here .) On an even sadder note, one of the primary bloggers at Calculated Risk recently passed away. Tanta was beloved by many and even the mainstream media has taken note of her passing. So sad.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die This video features Allison Janney (C.J. Craig on West Wing ) John C. Reilly, and Jack Black. If more stuff like this had gotten oxygen before the election, Prop 8 may have gone down to defeat. Internal Monologue is as guilty as other sources in being more Obama focused than Prop 8 focused, but I do recall advising my readers to shift their activism away from Obama and towards influencing close congressional races and defeating Prop 8. Given how close the Franken/Coleman senate race in Minnesota is, I wish I had followed such advice earlier. Of course, I'm also very glad Obama won decisively and convincingly.

Some great writing in this Rolling Stone piece, "Requiem for a Maverick" by Matt Taibbi : E lection night at the Biltmore in Arizona is a hilariously dismal scene, like a funeral for a family member nobody liked, who died owing everyone money. The rats here are already bailing off the ship with lightning speed, like L.A. Dodgers fans leaving a playoff game to catch the latest episode of Entourage . The exodus, in fact, begins about eight seconds into John McCain's concession speech, which incidentally starts off on the classiest of notes: with the remaining crowd cursing the name of the new president.

That's an Onion headline I just made up.

I'm sure recent events won't help end this conflict: Volatile India-Pakistan Standoff Enters 11,680th Day Contrary to this video, I don't think we can rely on plate tectonics will solve the India-Pakistan dispute. The plate India is on is heading north , not southeast. It's that motion that is scrunching up the Himalayas.

This is pretty depressing. It's an Aaron David Miller article outlining the difficulties facing any Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement: What's changed is that a conflict-ending agreement between Israelis and Palestinians may no longer be possible. I choose my words carefully here. Varying kinds of accommodations cease fires, informal cooperation and temporary arrangements may still be possible. But an agreement now or perhaps for the foreseeable future that revolves conclusively the four core issues (borders, Jerusalem, refugees and security) isn't. He gives three reasons: First, the parties are too far apart on core identity issues (Jerusalem, return of Palestinians). Second, the Palestinians don't have control of all their armed factions, so even if there was a comprehensive agreement, it could be broken by Hamas or another group interested in sabotaging the process. Third, the current generation of Israeli leadership lacks the "founder cred" and moral st...

When I hear stories like the one in this article about the Turkish government banning YouTube because of a few anti-Attaturk videos, my contempt for humanity meter goes through the roof, and I'm tempted to say all sorts of disrespectful things just to watch people's heads explode. There is no right not to be offended. There are things on the Internet that will piss off you, your government, your religion, your sports team, your ethnicity. There's plenty out there that pisses me off. But I don't go clamoring for my goverment to block this or that site to protect my oh-so-delicate sensibilities. What's legal and acceptable in one place is illegal and unacceptable in another. The best solution is to not care, or to put up your own content showing how stupid/immoral/offensive the other content is. The world is getting smaller all the time, and we're all going to have to get better about caring less about what other people are doing and saying, or there's going ...

This is sad . I guess that I should reduce or eliminate my consumption until tuna can be fished sustainably or farmed without depleting the wild population: No one is concerned that we're on the verge of eating cows into extinction. We have managed to transform cows into a sort of plant: We can, given sufficient land and nutrients, grow virtually as many of them as we'd like. This is true with certain types of fish, too. Farmed salmon has its problems, but fundamentally, we know how to make lots of it. Not so with bluefin tuna and a variety of other wild fishes, where the question is whether current consumption patterns might lead to the fish's wholesale extinction. The problem, for now, is that no one knows how to breed bluefish tuna in captivity. They take about 12 years to reach sexual maturity, and they don't like to breed outside their natural habitat. Bluefin tuna are nevertheless farmed, but that means capturing them in the wild and then fattening them in captivi...

Patrick Ruffini takes an admiring look at Left Blogistan : T he four-year ascent of Barack Obama from state senator to president marks not just the triumph of a man, but the coming of age of a movement. That movement belongs to liberal (or “progressive”) Democrats, who in less than a decade have remade themselves. Once respected only in academia and the news media, they have become a fighting force. They systemically digitized the means of political organization and strategy, with the ultimate goal of dominating the political system — “Crush their spirits!” was Daily Kos blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga’s pre-election rallying cry. The Left’s online movement is consciously modeled after the Goldwater-and-Reagan-era conservative movement. To those trying to build the Left, the vast right-wing conspiracy was an object not of scorn, but of admiration. They studied the Right’s network of think tanks, issue groups, and talk-show hosts, looking for clues on how to push a message with brutal e...

Quinn loves to slide.

Greenwald : This is really exceptional news on multiple levels -- the best political news I've heard since the election: Brennan out of running for top intel post John Brennan, President-elect Barack Obama's top adviser on intelligence, has taken his name out of the running for any intelligence position in the new administration. Brennan wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to Obama that he did not want to be a distraction. His potential appointment has raised a firestorm in liberal blogs who associate him with the Bush administration's interrogation, detention and rendition policies. "The fact that I was not involved in the decision-making process for any of these controversial policies and actions has been ignored," he wrote, in a letter obtained by The Associated Press. . . Obama's advisers had grown increasingly concerned in recent days over online blogs that accused Brennan of condoning harsh interrogation tactics on terror su...

Jim Martin , from his campaign website The Dec 2 runoff between Martin (D) and Chambliss (R) is turning out to be quite close . Runoff elections are notoriously difficult to poll, because it's hard to find precedent for who will turn out to vote. You can contribute to the Democrat here . Every Democrat we put in the Senate will make it easier for Obama to implement things like a stimulus package, better health care, energy policy, etc.

linc on DailyKos points out that the civics test I linked to earlier has a right-wing ideological slant to it: Yes, many of the 'test's' questions appear to be completely innocuous, but that's not the ISI's purpose. By getting our 'elected representatives' to take the damn thing and by getting us to take the damn thing without much critique of its purpose, we are solidifying, if even in a small way, their ideas on 'free-enterprise' and what 'american civics' are all about. It takes just one question in such a survey to help further their quite obvious agenda and in the very least, make us look like quite silly for playing along. Here are some choice examples, with my own, quick take on their purpose: The Bill of Rights explicitly prohibits: A. prayer in public school B. discrimination based on race, sex, or religion C. the ownership of guns by private individuals D. establishing an official religion for the United States E. the pr...

Glad to hear about one evangelical Christian preacher who is sex positive : Mr. Young, an author, a television host and the pastor of the evangelical Fellowship Church, issued his call for a week of “congregational copulation” among married couples on Nov. 16, while pacing in front of a large bed. Sometimes he reclined on the paisley coverlet while flipping through a Bible, emphasizing his point that it is time for the church to put God back in the bed. “Today we’re beginning this sexperiment, seven days of sex,” he said, with his characteristic mix of humor, showmanship and Scripture. “How to move from whining about the economy to whoopee!” [...] This is not a gimmick or a publicity stunt, Mr. Young says. Just look at the sensuousness of the Song of Solomon, or Genesis: “two shall become one flesh,” or Corinthians: “do not deprive each other of sexual relations.” “For some reason the church has not talked about it, but we need to,” he said, speaking by telephone Friday night on his wa...

UPDATE: Warning, this test actually has some right-wing motives behind it . I sure hope so, because they're pretty dumb, if this story is to be believed. Or more precisely, they are sadly under-informed on issues that bear immediate relevance to their work. Take the quiz yourself and find out. I got 33 out of 33 correct. A few questions I wasn't quite sure of, but I guess the guessing gods smiled upon me. Apparently our elected officials didn't do so well : WASHINGTON (AFP) – US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday. Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). "It is disturbing enough that the general public failed ISI's civic literacy test , b...

Kevin Drum : I will just say this. If this turns out to be right — if Al Franken really does win by 27 votes — then I suggest we eliminate elections entirely and simply allow Nate Silver to tell us who our congressional and presidential winners are in the future. It would be a lot cheaper, and probably just as accurate. Heh. Stepping back a bit, I'm going to make a prediction: As the amount of data available on the Internet increases, there will be more and more "Nate Silvers" in different areas: geeky individuals who use publicly available data to equal or outperform the professional priesthood of a given sector. Calling market fluctuations, predicting what movies will be hits, who knows what else. In the past, the information necessary to do this was locked in expensive reports that only insiders had access to. These days, the information available publicly is often good enough to make professional level decisions. Also, people who post their models and predictions on t...

This is Roubini saying we need a $500 billion fiscal stimulus package immediately. Every economist I've heard basically agrees. Even defecit hawks are saying that a looming depression overrides their customary squeamishness about government spending. Why can't congress get its act together and do this? Our government is fucking broken, and it's not just Bush's fault. Congressional Democrats can't just wait for Obama. We need action now. http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dz6cyOtGnhyQ&v=z6cyOtGnhyQ [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typographical errors.] --Zachary Drake

James Fallows has a good discussion of something I didn't know about: Benford's Law: It turns out that if you list the population of cities, the length of rivers, the area of states or counties, the sales figures for stores, the items on your credit card statement, the figures you find in an issue of the Atlantic , the voting results from local precincts, etc, nearly one third of all the numbers will start with 1, and nearly half will start with either 1 or 2. (To be specific, 30% will start with 1, and 18% with 2.) Not even one twentieth of the numbers will begin with 9. This doesn't apply to numbers that are chosen to fit a specific range -- sales prices, for instance, which might be $49.99 or $99.95 -- nor numbers specifically designed to be random in their origin, like winning lottery or Powerball figures or computer-generated random sums. But it applies to so many other sets of data that it turns out to be a useful t...

Narrative one: There was nothing special about this election, it was determined by large scale phenomena that neither candidate had much control over: Demographic trends are shifting towards the Democrats. The Republican coalition of 2000 and 2004 just doesn't add up to electoral victory anymore When the sitting president is unpopular, the party of that president won't do well. On economic issues, voters favor the Democrats. Economic issues were salient for voters. When economic times are difficult during an election year, the party of the sitting president is at a disadvantage. Narrative two: This election was the result of highly specific circumstances unique to this particular election and could have gone the other way had the campaigns done things differently: Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime uber-being who has superpowers of rhetoric, organizing, and political manoevering that no one else could possibly equal. John McCain shot himself in the foot so many times: Palin, not kno...

Nobody in Left Blogistan wants Obama to put John Brennan in charge of the CIA, due to his support of torture. People who have been particularly forthright about denouncing Bush's torture regime, like Sullivan and Greenwald , are particularly outraged at the possibility. Greenwald : But John Brennan is a different matter. To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction. Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due p...

In response to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' support for California Proposition 8, and taking a cue from the Mormon practice of posthumous baptism, RfrancisR on DailyKos has decided to embark on a program of posthumously converting Mormons to homosexuality: My first Conversion is Joseph Smith. Dear God of the Homos, With your great and everlasting love that blessed the covenants of Achilles and Petroclus, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and of Jonathon and David, bless then the soul of Joseph Smith of Sharon, Vermont with your divine penis. Let it pierce the anus of his soul, and let you be forever joined to him, since on this oppressive earth, he was denied the pleasure of the male sex. Forever and ever, our brother Joseph Smith has now joined our family ( We Sing the Hymn to Praise God of the Homos! ). Blessed be God of the Homos, Amen