May 07, 2008
XKCD: Stove Ownership
For me, cheese omelettes. Damn.
People. People Who Don’t Need People
... by Walter Brasch
From a pool of about seven billion, those hard-working geniuses at People magazine have managed to find the hundred most beautiful people in the whole wide world. And—get ready for the surprise—almost every one of those beautiful people are rich American celebrities.
For almost two decades, People’s editors believe they have been given the divine right to anoint who they believe to be the most beautiful people on the planet. The ethnocentric celebrity-fawning People editors are so secure in their self-imposed knowledge that they don’t even tell us what criteria they used to make their determinations. Not even an “editor’s note,” common in most magazines.
For the first few years, People etched their version of reality into our minds by attaching cutesy capsulated biographies to full page color pictures of the most beautiful. This year, the writing is minimal, the design is almost to the level that a good college journalism or graphics arts student could create and, except for a few full page and two-page spreads, most pictures are no bigger than thumbnail size.
Leading off the 69-page special section is actress Kate Hudson. Advance stories about her selection appeared in just about every American newspaper and major website, all of which think stories about celebrities are more important than stories about the recession. Also on the list are Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, Ashton Kutcher, and Norah Jones. The seven member cast of TV’s “Gossip Girl” made the list. “Onscreen,” People told us, “they are gorgeous, scheming, backstabbing high schoolers.” Just what America needs. More future business executives and politicians.
The first few years, when the magazine editors could find only 50 beautiful people, there was a fairly even split between men and women. This year, about 90 percent are women. Except for six athletes (three men and three women), the rest are actors, singers, dancers, and models.
Three years after the first list came out, People recognized the elderly. Of course, the elderly were Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, and Barbara Babcock. This year, there’s a special two-page black-and-white spread deep in the magazine on pages 174–175 for 40 celebrities, 10 in each of the categories of 20s, 30s, 40, and 50s.
May 06, 2008
How Low Will They Go?
Calculated Risk links a 2005 Orange County Register front page article that highlighted an Orange Country home on its way up the leading price curve (just over $600,000).
In 2008, the house once again represents the larger story in Orange County. CR has a chart that shows what the house value would have been if the price had tracked with inflation instead of a bubble. If the house price falls back to the inflation adjusted value, it would need to fall over 50% (from $603,000 at it's peak to it's early May price of $439,000 to reach the inflation-adjusted price of $239,000).
So how much lower will prices go? The indicators seem to say that they will go a whole lot lower.
May 04, 2008
John McCain Won’t Be Looking for the Union Label
... by Walter Brasche
Don’t expect any labor union to endorse John McCain for president in the general election. The wounds from the Bush–Cheney Administration are just too deep. But, their reasons aren’t because of social justice issues that once pervaded the labor movement, but on bread-and-butter issues that have dominated unions the past five decades.
“Our economy is in crisis after years of failed Bush Administration policies that Sen. McCain has adopted as his own,” says Karen Ackerman, AFL-CIO political director. McCain, says Steve Smith, AFL-CIO senior media outreach specialist, “assails working families from worker health care and safety to trade policies.” McCain, in agreement with Bush, has voted against protecting overtime pay and for trade deals that consistently send American jobs off-shore, often to countries where sweat shop labor is common. McCain has also voted against health insurance for children and worker safety and health. American labor also opposes his votes to privatize Social Security. McCain, who has cultivated a media image as a straight-shooting maverick, during the past seven years supported Bush 89 percent of the time, with a record high of 95 percent support last year, according to data published in the Congressional Quarterly. The only reason McCain “has some appeal to working class voters,” says Smith, “is because they haven’t had a chance to learn about his policies.”
The 56-union federation, which represents about 10 million workers, intends to change that perception. It has developed a $53.4 million education campaign, largest in its history, to give its members information about McCain’s policies. The “McCain Revealed” campaign includes more than 425,000 flyers, a massive door-to-door canvas on May 17, a strong worker presence at all McCain events, and a website (www.mccainrevealed.org) with information not only about McCain, but also about the political beliefs of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Ron Paul.
The AFL-CIO itself has not endorsed any candidate—two-thirds of its unions must endorse a specific candidate for the federation to make an endorsement—but several member unions have already supported candidates.
Hillary Clinton has endorsements from 12 major national unions, representing about 4.9 million members. Lined up behind the New York senator are the Amalgamated Transit Union; American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; American Federation of Teachers; International Alliance of Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians and Allied Crafts; International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers; International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers; International Union of Painters and Allied Trades; National Association of Letter Carriers; Office and Professional Employees International Union; Sheet Metal Workers International Association; United Farm Workers; and the United Transportation Union.
Although Barack Obama has endorsements from only seven major unions— with most endorsements coming after the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday election that pushed him into both popular vote and delegate leads—they represent about 6.3 million members. Only the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Transport Workers Union, and the United Association of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters are affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Obama’s other support comes from powerful independent unions—the 1.3 million member United Food and Commercial Workers Union; the 1.9 million member Service Employees International Union; the 500,000 member Unite Here, which represents workers primarily in the hospitality, gaming, textile, foods service, and laundry industries; and the 1.4 million member International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The Teamsters’ endorsement may seem unusual. Obama’s support among college-educated youth, affluent professionals, and liberals is a contrast to the working blue-collar class, a large number who are conservative Democrats or Reagan Democrats that is the core of the Teamsters’ membership. Seldom has the union supported liberals, and would be more inclined to support McCain. During its 28 year expulsion from the AFL-CIO (1957–1985), the Teamsters endorsed Richard Nixon in 1972, the year after he pardoned Jimmy Hoffa. The Teamsters that year were one of only three unions to endorse Nixon. However, many unions didn’t endorse anyone that year, a slap at Democratic policies that were pushing for stronger integration of minorities within the largely White male-dominated unions, and at George McGovern, the party’s anti-war nominee who was seen as too liberal for the rank-and-file membership. The unions also had learned during the first term of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration that it was beneficial to have a friend in the White House; later presidents and front-runners, even if they weren’t labor-friendly, were able to exploit this strategy. The Teamsters also supported Ronald Reagan, who went from being a liberal Democrat and president of the Screen Actors Guild to being a thorn in labor’s side. Not satisfied with being bruised by anti-labor policies, the Teamsters then supported Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush. Although most unions supported Al Gore in 2000, the Teamsters gave only lukewarm assistance, and then cozied up to George W. Bush and his decidedly anti-union policies after the election.
For the 2008 election, the Teamsters’ Galen Munroe says, “We felt that Sen. Obama was the best choice.” He would not give specific reasons why Obama was the “best choice.” However, the union’s refusal to support Hillary Clinton could be a reaction to fall-out from Bill Clinton’s support of NAFTA as well as a feeling that he didn’t adequately keep the Teamsters close enough during his eight-year presidency.
Not endorsing either Clinton or Obama, but expected to endorse whoever becomes the party’s nominee, are several unions that had endorsed Christopher Dodd (International Association of Firefighters) or John Edwards (the United Steelworkers, United Mine Workers, and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters; the Transport Workers Union had endorsed Edwards prior to switching to Clinton after Edwards dropped out of the race). Edwards and Dennis Kucinich were probably labor’s strongest allies.
The National Education Association, with one-third of its 3.2 million members Republicans, will probably endorse a Democrat by the general election. However, the day after Super Tuesday, NEA president Reg Weaver said that neither Obama nor Clinton “has made the case that would earn them the Association's recommendation.” Also holding off their endorsements are the Communications Workers of America, with about 700,000 members, and the United Auto Workers, which represents about 1.4 million active and retired workers.
May 01, 2008
Eggs
If there's no cheese and no onions, then what's supposed to go in the eggs?
At least I don't live in Iraq, or apparently now Afghanistan, where I might have to worry that there was uranium contamination in the environment where my food was grown. Definitely, I have a better problem.
Oh, wait.
In Denver, a professor was fighting plans to send wastewater from a Superfund site through sewage treatment and apply the sludge as Metroglo fertilizer on a fifty-two-thousand-acre, government-owned wheat farm. The Superfund site contained industrial solvents, petroleum oils, pesticides, and radioactive materials, including plutonium, americium, radium, and strontium 90. Adrienne Anderson, professor of environmental affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was the lone dissenting voice on Denver's Metro sewage agency board of directors. She called the recycling plan "a ruse to foist toxic waste onto the nation's farmlands and onto our dinner plates."
In Gore, Oklahoma, a uranium-processing plant was disposing of low-level radioactive waste by spraying it on company-owned grazing land. They used ordinary farm sprinklers to spread it. Three and a half years after the shutdown of the Sequoyah Fuels Uranium Processing ficility, workers were still sprinkling wastewater from a holding pond, diluted by rain, at the rate of ten million gallons a year. John Ellis, Sequoyah Fuels president, told me the company sprayed the liquid on seventy-five acres of Bermuda grass. Hundreds of cattle grazed there. The liquid was called raffinate and was registered as a fertilizer with the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, though the chief fertilizer regulator told me she was not aware of this. Other officials had approved the fertilizer plan in 1986. Raffinate, the main waste from a solvent used to extract uranium for nuclear-plant fuel, is slightly radioactive and contains eighteen heavy metals. ...
- Duff Wilson, Fateful Harvest, 2001.
Fateful Harvest described how heavy industry saves costs on the disposal of toxic materials by repackaging them as fertilizers that can then be spread legally on crop land and home gardens. Mine tailings, coal ash, all these and then some can be sources for fertilizers that don't have to be disclosed, and whose toxic elements can be considered "inactive ingredients" that don't have to be listed.
And I guess my point is, don't think it's just the little people 'over there' that government and industry don't give a **** about. They don't give a **** about you either. They want you to go to work, watch television, buy an identity for yourself among the mass-produced goods that they've marketed to your demographic, and shut the **** up.
Especially, they want you to stfu.
April 30, 2008
Thought for the Day
I was feeling very insecure, but I didn't say anything about it for a while. Then I realized it was just me projecting my own fears and I was worried for nothing.
If there's any sense of relief that's better than that, it's been a while since I've felt it.
Update
Hey folks, sorry I've been absent. In addition to posting elsewhere, I've been moving and attempting to get a life. (And, kow, that seems to be working out all right so far, thanks, with a few tenable bumps along the way.)
I plan to get around to cross-posting a few things that I've written elsewhere, but upcoming, will definitely be adding the latest Global Suicide Pact story to the mix here. I feel like I should start turning it into a book by now, been prodding at it for well over two weeks.
If you write, maybe this has happened to you: 1) Get an idea for something that you *must* write. 2) Start writing it. 3) Something comes up. 4) You return to it sporadically, mostly everytime you get a new idea (or in my case, find a new article to link in or remember another reference that I simply must quote, and consequently track down in the middle of packing,) but never quite seem to get that "solid couple of hours I need to put it all together" to spend on it. 5) Find that you can now barely write anything else, because everytime you think about writing something, your mind circles it back around to this all-encompassing project that you've already sunk all this time into.
Gaaah.
But I will write it. And I will put it here. As soon as I'm moved in. And sort this job thing. And get that Ikea cabinet issue adressed. Anyway, I think you see where this is going.
I'll try at the least not to be such a stranger ;)
April 29, 2008
Ikea
A company with relentlessly bad customer service, terrible phone menus that eat up cell minutes like they're going out of style, the paranoid delusion that I could get a stack of boards that's supposed to be an Aspvik cabinet off the back of a truck on a random street corner, and operating under the preposterous assumption that an order of 15 items is going to be completely assembled by the recipient within five days of receipt.
Can I help you with anything else today? Yes. Tell your managers to go ******* ***** ***** ************ **** ** **** *** *********. Twice.
Frakking Ikea.
