Internal Monologue

If what I'm hearing is correct, I'm very scared of the latest supreme court ruling. Here's digby : A century of campaign finance law was thrown in the trash today and that is going to be the result. These corporations have virtually unlimited money to spend on this --- ad campaigns are chump change by their standards and well worth every penny if they deliver politicians who will represent them in the congress. The deal is now explicit and it will be very difficult to unseat them if their elections are financed entirely by special interests. Meteor Blades on DailyKos is similarly gloomy: With this ruling, the concentrated big media will now be a megaphone for even more of the oligarchs' points of view. As if we weren't already inundated. As if they didn't already have us by the short hairs. As usual, the class war will be blamed not on the guys who started it, but on those who resist. Here's a brief blurb in The Atlantic's online politics section: Cit

Here's a strange idea explored in this New York Times Magazine article : as American ideas about mental illness spread, the symptoms that mentally ill people around the world suffer are actually changing, becoming more like the symptoms Americans suffer. A snippet: For more than a generation now, we in the West have aggressively spread our modern knowledge of mental illness around the world. We have done this in the name of science, believing that our approaches reveal the biological basis of psychic suffering and dispel prescientific myths and harmful stigma. There is now good evidence to suggest that in the process of teaching the rest of the world to think like us, we’ve been exporting our Western “symptom repertoire” as well. That is, we’ve been changing not only the treatments but also the expression of mental illness in other cultures. Indeed, a handful of mental-health disorders — depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and anorexia among them — now appear to be spreadin

I once told a friend that going back to Yale felt like visit the set of a movie about my college years. After viewing this, I'll probably feel even more like that. And now my precious college memories have been contaminated by feel-good musical theaterism. Note to prospective Yale students: THE SUN RARELY SHINES THERE (and generally only during spring semester finals). My life at Yale rarely had the feeling of musical theater. Some of it was quite wonderful, but it wasn't musical-theater wonderful. Anyway, if you went to Yale, you might get a kick out of this: I did feel good that when they were listing all the cool stuff Yale has, they mention "8 Comedy Groups." I was a founding member of one of them ( The Fifth Humour ).

A letter to the StarTribune about Pat Robertson's recent comment that Haiti made a pact with the devil (HT: Pablo via email) Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Boto

During the movie, I was sure Jake and Neytiri were going to join their interface tendrils. But it never happened. Apparently the scene was deleted from the movie: EXT. WILLOW GLADE He puts his face close to hers. She rubs her cheek against his. He kisses her on the mouth. They explore each other. Then she pulls back, eyes sparkling. NEYTIRI Kissing is very good. But we have something better. She pulls him down until they are kneeling, facing each other on the faintly glowing moss. Neytiri takes the end of her queue and raises it. Jake does the same, with trembling anticipation. The tendrils at the ends move with a life of their own, straining to be joined. MACRO SHOT — The tendrils INTERTWINE with gentle undulations. JAKE rocks with the direct contact between his nervous system and hers. The ultimate intimacy. They come together into a kiss and sink down on the bed of moss, and ripples of light spread out around them. THE WILLOWS sway, without wind, and the night is alive

Via Crooks and Liars .

I grew up in a light green three-bedroom house with a two-car garage on a moderately busy tree-lined street in a nice, urban, residential neighborhood with a grid street plan and flat terrain, within walking distance of picturesque water and a busy commercial district. I now live in a light green three-bedroom house with a two-car garage on a slightly busier tree-lined street in a nice, urban, residential neighborhood with a grid street plan and flat terrain, within walking distance of picturesque water and a busy commercial district. I have exchanged Irving Avenue for Broadway, East Isles in Minneapolis for Otis/Broadway in Alameda, Lake of the Isles for San Francisco Bay, and Hennepin Avenue for Park Street. Congratulations, Zac, you have reproduced your childhood home as accurately as one can in the Bay Area. This is a good thing, I think. That was a very nice house. Funny though, how we come back to what we know, what we find comfortable and familiar.