January 2011
29 posts
The Hot Spotters →
For a thirty-year-old with a fever, a twenty-minute visit to the doctor’s office may be just the thing. For a pedestrian hit by a minivan, there’s nowhere better than an emergency room. But these institutions are vastly inadequate for people with complex problems: the forty-year-old with drug and alcohol addiction; the eighty-four-year-old with advanced Alzheimer’s disease and a pneumonia; the...
Ugly law →
bestofwikipedia:
From the late 1860s until the 1970s, several American cities had ugly laws making it illegal for persons with “unsightly or disgusting” disabilities to appear in public. Some of these laws were called Unsightly Beggar Ordinances. The goal of these laws was seemingly to preserve the quality of life for the community, similar in spirit to current homeowners association regulations...
Model predicts 'religiosity gene' will dominate... →
“Provided the fertility of religious people remains on average higher than that of secular people, the genes that predispose people towards religion will spread,” Rowthorn told PhysOrg.com. “The bigger the fertility differential between religious and secular people, the faster this genetic transformation will occur. This does not mean that everyone will become religious. Genes are not...
WatchNaomi Klein: Addicted to risk | Video on TED.com
Dennis Kucinich Sues Congressional Cafeteria Over... →
House Votes to Gut Presidential Public Financing →
The House of Representatives voted 239 to 160 on Wednesday, along party lines, to eliminate public financing for presidential elections. The bill to axe the Presidential Election Fund, as it’s known, was brought to a vote without any committee hearings or expert testimony, and after only a day’s worth of floor debate. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a staunch advocate of public...
Watch
“It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the...”
– Full text: bin Laden’s ‘letter to America’
How Billionaires Rule Our Schools →
The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national...
What Is Health Care Repeal Really About? →
If the repeal vote was “really about” putting some different reform into place, then it would have had some different reform in place. It doesn’t. It has nothing. Why? Because agreeing on an alternate plan that can unite even just the Republicans (let alone win 60 Senate votes) and win public approval is really hard. I’m sure many Republicans truly think that...
Crazy Talk →
Shortly after Jared Lee Loughner had been identified as the alleged shooter of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, online sleuths turned up pages of rambling text and videos he had created. A wave of amateur diagnoses soon followed, most of which concluded that Loughner was not so much a political extremist as a man suffering from “paranoid schizophrenia.”
For many, the investigation...
Our Desperate, 250-Year-Long Search for a... →
givemesomethingtoread:
The 1970s saw the next wave of pronoun debates—not coincidentally, in the wake of a second women’s movement. There was a volley of new pronouns, despite the fact that none of the 19th-century ones had gotten anywhere. By the end of the 1970s over eighty new gender-neutral pronouns had been coughed up, including en, thon, hir, hesh, hizer, hirm, sheehy, and sap. As well,...
“For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is,...”
– -Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
'To form a more perfect Union,' but reading sparks... →
House Republicans, who orchestrated the symbolic exercise as an early gesture to the tea party movement, touted it as a way to bring the new Congress, and the people they represent, back to America’s roots.
But they didn’t want to go all the way back.
They skipped several passages that no longer apply, including those that condoned slavery, angering some Democrats. On a day...
If Homelessness Were Genetic →
by Sean Spence
If homelessness were genetic, Institutes would be constructed With tall white walls, And ‘driven’ people (with thick glasses) Would congregate In libraries
And mumble.
If homelessness were genetic Bright young things Would draft manifestos ‘To crack the problem’
Girls with braces on their teeth Would stoop to kiss Boys with dandruff At Unit discos
While dancing...
Sworn in as 40th governor, Mark Dayton pledges... →
“I believe we all share the same aspirations for a better Minnesota,” Dayton said in his inauguration speech. “We may disagree on the details, but we never forget that our honest disagreements and our freedom to express them are the essential rights and great strengths of our democracy.”
He said, “My proposed budget solution will be reasonable, balanced and painful, because I see no easy...
WatchDon’t Invite This Congressman to Your Kid’s Elementary School