what was lost

This week’s Times magazine has an excellent (and long) article on the medical ethics battlefield that memorial hospital in new orleans became in the hours, months, and now years, after katrina. amazingly, it doesn’t throw the blame on anyone (i say ‘amazingly,’ because the scene at memorial was truly apocalyptic: overweight patients left behind, families of patients turned away, doctors administering lethal doses of morphine as the electricity, and then patient respiratory machines went out); instead, it represents a clearheaded call for resisting/rejecting the insularity and opaqueness of medical ethics boards and a plea for more thorough emergency action plans. read it. and give Dr. Sherry Fink a Pulitzer. Or better yet: put her on the new MedPAC advisory committee. This is what journalism should be:

“Father John F. Tuohey, regional director of the Providence Center for Health Care Ethics in Portland, Ore., said that there are dangers whenever rules are set that would deny or remove certain groups of patients from access to lifesaving resources. The implication was that if people outside the medical community don’t know what the rules are or feel excluded from the process of making them or don’t understand why some people receive essential care and some don’t, their confidence in the people who care for them risks being eroded. ‘As bad as disasters are,” he said, “even worse is survivors who don’t trust each other.’ “

podcasts

these are the ones I listen to religiously… which makes up for the paucity of religious sociology/theology podcasts out there.

(click post title for bigger version)

sanity

Gail Collins is the voice of it. She makes a point in her column today that lawmakers supportive of health (care, insurance, drainage) reform only wish they could throw back at the crazies: how can you be worried about something audacious as a “death panel” when you have zero confidence in congress’ ability to pass a law that crosses even one special interest group in their constituency?

the ethics of those foiled “terrorist plots”

Last week’s “This American Life,” exploring the trial of Hemant Lekhani, a septuagenarian “terrorist” who was strung along by a U.S. informant into buying a (fake, and provided by the State Department) stinger missile, stirred up feelings that I last experienced when several young men were arrested in may for a similar “terrorist plot.” Before I completely expend my air quote quota, here are those thoughts:

1) entrapment has a very clear definition. as does torture. and terror. these definitions are not blurred by emotions—they are blurred by the exploitation of emotions for political gain.

2) we are not safer because these men are in jail. if anything, they have demonstrated to enemies of america the importance of a. not getting caught, and b. using unconventional tactics. these cases make future FBI/CIA investigations more difficult.

3) if you claim that, “after 9/11, we had to take drastic measures [read: ignore civil liberties, the geneva conventions, etc] to maintain the safety of the american public,”  any and all political gains you chalked up during that period should also be ignored… b/c, you know, it wasn’t about you… it was about saving our “country,” right?  That means you, Chris Christie—public prosecutor in the Lakhani trial and current gubernatorial candidate for Jersey.

4) criminal justice / jail reform needs to happen. soon. or stuff like this will continue.

the return of dave eggers

i’m ridiculously excited about the eggers/spike jonze-written “Where the Wild Things Are.” Now mr. heartbreaking work of staggering genius has thrown these two paper-airplane-light stories into the thermals of goodness already rising from the reviews of his new non-fiction book, Zeitoun. summer reading is not over.

india, solar power, and gender politics

Articulating my thoughts about india is a stream-of-consciousness affair. None of the following is meant to be coherent in any way.

India has committed in principle to the country’s (world’s?) largest solar endeavour, setting the goal of increasing solar capacity from 3 megawatts to 20 gigawatts by 2020. Most of the blogosphere has pointed to the upcoming copenhagen climate talks to interpret this as a giant slammer (please get this elementary school reference) to the wimpy pogs (ie, the US cap n’ trade bill) the west has laid out in the place of emissions bargaining chips.

Regardless of the global realpolitik maneuvering here, the utter hugeness of this plan reminds me of the utopia/dystopia (depending on your gender) of RS Hossein’s “Sultana’s Dream,” in which women not only run india on solar and water energy, but use it to subdue armies of men. the deeper message of the story is that men irrevocably mess things up when any sort of power—electrical or political—is involved.

Which, in turn, makes me think about Secretary of State Clinton’s visit to the subcontinent, wherein the (mostly male) government pretty much dismissed Hillary’s calls to get their emissions standards under control. Their (completely fair) argument goes like this: how did the west develop? massive, polluting industry. and we (india) can’t? A recent princeton study looked at this problem and suggested that we should structure carbon taxes and caps around individual high-emitters, not whole countries. At a certain level, these uber-emitters are doing more damage to their country than good. It’s a broad framework,  but it should be the center of the copenhagen talks.

If that fails, we can always just hand things over to the Sultanas of the world… after all, Clinton’s speeches over the last month and a half have served as an amazingly effective palliative to the screeches from the (male, white) Right in our own country. If you’ve paid any attention… God knows the media hasn’t.

depressing graph of the day

the u.s. has a higher percentage of torture supporters than china:

(click for bigger version)

identity in iran

…is something outside of the dialectics (religion/secularism, east/west, nationalism/global-market-ism(?), culture/scripture) through which both iranians’ and the west’s images of the country have overlaid photos, videos, and headlines from this “troubled” country. i use “troubled” not in its usual, disdaining and clinical sense—iran is “troubled” in the same way a pebbled agitates a pond, each bending ripple revealing the imperfections, the differences hiding beneath and along the shore of the formerly homogenous, glass-like water.

iranians love poetry, roy mottahedeh writes in his excellent historical analysis of the ‘78-79 revolution (and prescient descriptor of the underlying causes of this year’s events in iran), the mantle of the prophet. this makes sense: the poet’s work is to both create something undeniably personal and affecting… and to hide the evidence that they, themselves, created it. the revolution of ‘79 (and ‘09) are powerful moments precisely because, to many of their actors and viewers, the passion and emotions they recognize within themselves are both new and familiar; they are powerful historical moments because they neither fit perfectly into, nor can be discarded as chance anomalies from, the trace of iran’s written and psychological past.

mottahedeh’s work ends with a discussion between a deeply religious mullah and a university professor. this is iran: [The Mullah says,] “I defend the reasonableness of the law for the world in which the Koran was revealed. but i recognize the variety of human situations, and i want not just a principle that suspends the law when necessary for the general good—I have that already—I want a principle that allows us to seek the spirit and intention of the la and to apply it accordingly. this principle should be something that doesn’t destroy the Koran by allowing people to read into it whatever they want, as some of our young people do. It should be a principle that preserves the substance as well as the name of religion and also preserves everything good that centuries of careful study of the law have given to us. I haven’t found it.”

iran’s identity is “the strive”—that stretch for what was once thought unachievable. we should not castigate, but encourage iranians in this yearning to constantly question and reinvent their identity and history. their leader, and his ambitions, do not represent those of its “troubled,” but enlightened people. khamenei’s actions (and the global community’s inaction) are just troubling.

this is just wonderful

“i shot a man in reno / just to watch him die”:

congratulations, gop, this is your base…

on climate change: while views differ on a spectrum from “it’s just god hugging us closer” to “it’s just an excuse for big government to regulate patriotic coal companies, causing millions of americans to lose their [unsafe, low paying, intellectually suffocating, and outdated] jobs,” the republican base agrees on one thing: science doesn’t prove anything. they’re right… sort of: scientists only test hypotheses—but they can reject really stupid ideas. from the guardian:

Pictures that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months. The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice – a record loss – were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.

on obama’s place of birth: i’ll let jon stewart take this one. but i think the larger question at stake here is whether the republican party is willing to embrace the (debunked) history of our country as something shaped by a homogeneously white, christian(ist), and male population—as texas textbooks might be claiming in the near future. the question is, should we care if obama was born in kenya (which he wasn’t), or if he’s truly “black,” or muslim—should that matter? in a word, no. the nature and timing of birth, be it of an individual or country, is at its core an accident. identity is something we form through sharing (not demonizing) the experiences and emotions of others.

on health care reform: NO. (that’s productive, guys)

on what it means to be a leader: “it would be apathetic to just hunker down and go with the flow. nah, only dead fish go with the flow.” – the GOP’s 2012 frontrunner, pictured above.

so congrats, party o’ cheney, you’ve got 25% of the country secured—and you only had to give up your integrity and embrace incoherence.

china ↔ africa

evan osnos, the new yorker’s reporter in china, files a story from guangzhou, where there is a large sub-population of african laborers:

the men who live and work there paint a picture of a bitter way of life, a limbo fraught with fragile potential. China had shimmered with just enough opportunity to lure them over, but business proved difficult and unreliable. Moreover, they had trouble getting long-term visas. As a result, many of them have overstayed their visas and spent months or years dodging police (or, even more difficult, trying to get back to Africa without paying Chinese immigration fines, which they cannot afford, for overstaying their visas)… Last week, that tension boiled over. When a rumor spread that a Nigerian had died jumping out a window to elude police, a hundred or so African traders mounted a protest outside the Kongquan police station. It is virtually unheard of for foreigners to protest in China, and this was a small, angry, but peaceful affair.

this struck a disturbing but not discordant tone with a piece i heard on bbc radio last night:

China needs Africa’s mineral resources like oil, copper, zinc, and cobalt to help fuel its industrial expansion. Some African countries need China’s investment to provide financial support for their economies. But critics claim that Chinese companies exploit the African nations they do business with. There have been riots over poor working conditions and rock-bottom wages at Chinese-owned mines and factories. Now the government of Zambia has signed a deal worth $3.6bn with the private Chinese mining group Zhonghui.

I bring these stories up because I think they’re indicative of the larger cyclical, or perhaps spiral, trend of a-chinese-market-becomes-attractive-to-foreign-investors/laborers –> china-feels-pressure-to-protect-native-chinese-workers-and-not-so-gently-pushes-back-at-ethnic-or-national-”others” –> labor/human-rights-protests –> suppression-of-protests –> slap-on-the-wrist-from-western-news-outlets –> china-exploits-other-countries’-burgeoning-markets –> western-media-cries-foul –> china-says-”uhh…isn’t this what you did (still do) to get where you are in the world economy?”

this is not to deny the hardships of groups like the nigerian workers of guangzhou or the uighurs in china’s western province; this is not to excuse the gross neglect of laborers’ human rights in chinese-owned zambian mines. the point is: we lose the moral upper hand every time we pass limp bills like waxman-markley (cap ‘n’ trade), or hold people indefinitely without charges in bagram, or soak nigeria for its oil…or our newspapers conflate “china” and theindividual, independent, often western-funded companies that exploit laborers both inside of and outside the world’s most populous country—instead of reporting, as the b and mr. osnos do, on the human cost of the world economy’s shared growing pains.

quote of the day: creepy but true dept.

from a review of the economist tyler cowen’s book create your own economy:

“placebo effects can be very powerful and many supposedly effective medicines do not in fact outperform the placebo,” Cowen writes. “The sorry truth is that no one has compared modern education to a placebo…What if we just gave people lots of face-to-face contact and told them they were being educated?” He reluctantly provides the terrifying conclusion: Maybe that’s what current methods of education already consist of.

evolution of god

robert wright’s exploration of “god,” and everything contained within and represented by those quotation marks, was—how should i put this?—dense. wright’s central argument—the presence (or absence) of capital G God, being beyond our cognitive capabilities to confirm, does not preclude some sort of moral meta-arc to be traced across history (like natural selection is the master narrative of evolution) that resembles something like “god.”

“god” has been and will always be an illusion, wright asserts (agreed); but it is a shared invention—or, rather, mankind’s collective invention. the evolution of god does a superb job at ripping any layers of specialness that the big three (judaism, christianity, islam) have wrapped this universal illusion in. and it does so by connecting, via fun (really… at least for the first hundred pages) biblical translation wordplay and in-depth analysis of the sociopolitical drivers behind the creation and revision of the bible and the koran.

in wright’s detangling of the historical and textual “god,” we get surprising (Muhammad dabbled in polytheism for a bit) and not-so-surprising (Isaiah and other old testament kings adjusted their theology to help maintain their growing empire) revelations. but the book never seriously engages with the idea of bible stories or the koran’s revelations as historiographical foci. i wanted more discussion not of the interpretations of the big 3’s texts (at a certain point, the innumerable layers of interpretation obscure any causal or pedagogical point to the story), but of the way these texts’ histories have been altered in modern times for political or social ends. what does the state of current textual or theological (over?) interpretation say about our society?

like too many “serious” books out these days, the evolution of god seems to try to preempt any arguments against its thesis—leaving its truly transformative message unspoken; an afterthought only pointed to in its final pages. wright leaves us with a fascinating discussion (that’s the actual afterword in the link… it’s worth a read) of the possibility of objective belief: if scientists construct the physical world out of building block (the electron) they can’t see or can’t call matter or wave, why do we chastise religious individuals who base their morals around a similarly unknowable but safe invention?

What’s left unsaid is this: natural selection may yield, on the whole, a beautiful and interdependent biosphere—but it’s m.o. is mutation, chance mistakes; similarly, throughout the evolution of god, wright shows that mistakes are the key to moral growth of mankind’s shared illusion… but these setbacks or mutations in the moral meta-arc of history are, at their core, conscious, human decisions. knowing (objectively) that we’re on a divinely ordained path, while eloquently supported and legitimized by wright, is not worth the surrender of our agency to make, for better or worse, our own future. “god” started, in our ancestors’ minds, as a subjective truth—and we’ll be a better society if He/She/It remains in those quotation marks.

this week in shitty news reportage

reading the top 10 (or 5) “news” stories on the websites of u.s. papers is illustrative these days of the general worthlessness of traditional current events outlets. a sample:

Ahh… the wall street journal. their calculus is almost beautiful in its infantile simplicity: puff piece with fake gravitas + glenn beck as your editorials’ ghost writer + karl rove and john yoo as guest columnists = news that’s as fair and balanced as your spawn of murdoch conjoined twin fox news.

The new york times… let’s see: witty columnists? check. front page article on driving while texting? check. actual news? it’s somewhere in here… wait—does “news analysis” count? oh, i have to go to the “global edition” for that?

The SF Chronicle. A story of someone self-described as a “total idiot” wandering aimlessly through life… reminds me of a certain profession.

The Washington Post… okay, so besides the pet obsession and unhealthy nostalgia for the days of nixon, they actually do their job (sort of). just stay away from the editorial page (where a certain not-a-dead-fish alaskan governor was a recent contributor). which is still not as bad as:

Columbus’ Dispatch, the “voice of ohio”. umm…yeah.

bradford cox + noah lennox = total summer jammage

“walkabout,” from the upcoming atlas sound cd.

pasta primavera

those who think ahead are rewarded: so the next time your carnivorous friends are doing a little saturday barbeque, and not wanting to inconvenience anybody, you bring your own veggie burgers… snatch a zucchini and asian eggplant, too—for a sunday pasta primavera. once they’re sufficiently blackened, throw ‘em in foil and hide ‘em away. then, the next day:

1) add crushed garlic, half a yellow onion (chopped coarsely), marjoram, oregano, and a glug of olive oil to a medium pan. simmer until the onions are a little browned and almost cooked through.

2) add one red tomato and a handful of yellow baby tomatoes to the mix and cook until their skins begin falling off.

3) take out those grilled veggies. slice and dice the eggplant into 1/4 inch cubes, and grate the zucchini. add to the pan with salt and pepper (to taste).

4) add just enough pre-cooked pasta for the sauce and veg to evenly coat it. lower the heat. fresh basil. lots of it. wash and chop and add it a few minutes before serving.

enjoy!

potter!

pretty…pretty…pretty good.

sorry the labels are illegible/cut off. they should read (top to bottom): snogging, malfoy looking emo, really bad acting by daniel radcliff and rupert grint, really hilarious (but still awful) acting by daniel radcliff and rupert grint, tonks and lupin!, gratuitous cgi effects, dumbledore being badass.

most ridiculous sub-header of the day:

“Fox attacks on endangered penguins have led Australia’s wildlife authorities to post snipers at night to protect the birds.” – FP

I have nothing against measures (albeit extreme) taken to protect endangered species. We’re probably in the middle of the sixth big, sweeping global extinction. Every species on the margin tells us something about the causes (or cause = us) of such a depletion of biodiversity. I don’t like penguins. I’m not completely sure why—maybe because there was a 18 month stretch there when every movie seemed to be about penguins acting all anthro… surfing penguins, marching penguins, &c.

this is a start…

From the NYT: ”The Obama administration announced Monday that it would seek to ban many routine uses of antibiotics in farm animals in hopes of reducing the spread of dangerous bacteria in humans.” It looks like the only way to pass this is to hitch it to the health reform wagon… fine by me. michelle obama, can you please be the face and voice of food reform? (you’re already walkin’ the walk with your organic garden)

on repeat: passion pit

okay, so when i first heard the name of this nyc band, the image that immediately popped into my head was that of a shirt with really atrocious underarm sweat stains (aka banana clips). click on the graph below for a bigger version.

obesity, soda tax, & calorie counts

The above graph (“% rise in health expenditures 01-06 for people classified as…”), posted on ezra klein’s blog this morning, was one of those visuals that you look at, think “that seems about right,” then realize a few hours later how incredibly depressing and unsustainable the trend it represents (oh, and our nonchalance towards the  backwards reality it depicts) is. so i blog:

1) why/how did we get to this point? pollan (omnivore’s dilemma): massive subsidization of corn and the substitution of food products for, you know, actual food. me: the backwards food industry + inadequate health education + delayed food stamp reform + lack of health insurance –> lack of periodical checkups –> no early interventions + the proven idiocy of fad diets + consumer ambivalence/ignorance towards/of the above.

2) will the soda tax—either 5 or 10 cents—proposed in the house version of the health reform bill to help fund increased coverage (& a public plan, please?), do anything to combat this? not really… unless: a) there are also tax breaks/incentives for buying healthy food, and b) there’s a trigger for a greater tax if the above graph doesn’t change (the fallacy of a straight-up tax is that it doesn’t adapt to the shifting trends of an undeniably dynamic epidemic), and c) it’s labeled, on every bottle. my suggestion: “to accurately represent the actual public and personal health costs associated with drinking soda, the price you see includes a _ cent tax.” seriously.

3) while you’re on labels, should the whole country follow new york’s lead and put calorie counts next to every fast food menu? YES. the faster the better. public awareness is raised when people simply become conscious of the choices they make on a hourly/daily/monthly basis about their food consumption. ever wonder why fast food restaurants give their meals a number? it’s not for their convenience—it’s to alienate you from the simple fact that what is most convenient is not always the best thing for you.

I know, it’s all very rant-y and elitist-as-arugula—but I direct none of my frustration towards the millions of americans who are obese, or the subset of that population that indeed considers these arguments and struggles with their family and doctors to find their own solution.  I was challenged once by some buddies of mine who couldn’t understand why I kept giving a mutual friend of ours a hard time about his eating habits. I apologized for the (unnecessary) anger with which I criticized him, but I added that yes, it was ultimately his choice what he ate—but his decisions now directly contribute to whether or not he is, down the line, given a choice about the clinical options in treating type II diabetes or heart problems or any other obesity-derived condition. and i asked him: which choice did he want to have agency over? the US legislature should be asking themselves that same question as they’re given the choice between what’s politically safe when it comes to health reform and what could be transformative.

the savage detectives

roberto bolano’s novel, following the “visceral realist” poets arturo belano and ulises lima, relies on the stories of more than two dozen narrators. the result is an inventive, if incomplete, biography of the dream of eternal youth. it ends up drawing a more complete picture of its narrators and the places they describe—mexico city, spain, tel aviv—than the poets they try to explain. “visceral realism,” like imagined cities and civilizations scrawled out in a notebook during a middle school social studies class, is both a joke and a revelation upon reflection. and bolano’s novel captures, in both its broad narrative strokes and its smallest details, this flawed but liberating innocence of creating something we think is truly original.

depression and persistence

this week’s economist highlights the recent work of researchers on depression. the progression of mild symptoms of depression to chronic depression in young adults may be linked to an inability to let go of some of our loftier goals. “mild depressive symptoms [are] a natural part of dealing with failure in young adulthood.” the researchers assert, while also hinting at an evolutionary basis for these isolated lows: “in this period of low motivation, energy is saved and new goals can be found. if this mechanism does not function properly, though, severe depression can be the consequence.”

what’s most impressive about these studies—and i think this is a positive trend emerging in scientific research as a whole—is their researchers’ candidness and vigor in explaining, and placing their own study within, the evolution of scientific thinking on a particular subject. the breakthrough-plateau-breakthrough paradigm of research just isn’t applicable to the local, specialized nature of the problems science is asked to resolve.

re: the “r-word”

awesome and not-so-awesome album covers of ‘09

AWESOME:

Wilco / Wilco (The Album): I want a camel at my otherwise orange-themed birthday party.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs / “It’s Blitz”: I’ve always wanted to do this (bonus: the disc is a pizza)

Major Lazer / “Guns don’t kill people… Lazers kill people”: Mummies… check. Skeletons… check. army personnel with lazer arms… check.

not-so-awesome after the break.

wow

From the times: “The outlines of a miraculous story began to emerge Wednesday as French officials and her relatives related details of how the sole survivor of the crash of a Yemeni airliner, a girl from the southern suburbs of Paris, had managed to cling to wreckage in the Indian Ocean for more than 13 hours until she was rescued.”

beet pancakes

what you’ll need: 10″ pan, butter, 1 large beet, grater, lemon, thyme, sea salt, flour, two small plates.

what you do: 1) wash, peel, and grate the beet into a medium mixing bowl. there will be beet juice. everywhere. 2) start heating your pan. add 1/4 cup flour and lemon skin grating into the beet shreddings. mix. 3) add sea salt, thyme. add enough extra flour for massive clumping to occur. split the mix in two. 4) add a thin slice of butter to the pan, and swirl until almond-y brown. add half of the mix to the pan and flatten to a pancake shape. 5) cook for 5 on one side. plate the ‘cake. put the other plate on top. flip. add another slice of butter to the pan. return ‘cake to pan. cook for 3-5. 6) repeat step 5 for the other ‘cake.

yum.

service

i’m back from my michigan vacation with the fam. to make up for the lack of recent posts, here’s my (long) take on service learning:

I am furious. If they laugh one more time when John asks a question, I think, I am going to say some things that would make my Grandmother faint. “Kami,” I start, taking off my glasses and biting the edge of the frames, “Can you translate John’s question for me?”

“We already answered it.” He says, grinning like a fourth-grader whose spitwad just hit the back of a classmate’s neck. “It was a silly question.”

“I’d still like you to translate the question, Kami…there’s a reason he asked it—and even if the question was out of line, we can at least consider some of the ideas or opinions that John has about HIV/AIDS that are making him ask it.”

“It’s silly, though.”

“Sure… but so is the cap you’re wearing.” Kami adjusts his hat so that the word Hustla, with a $ where the S should be, faces away from me.

“…And we’re all here to learn.” I add, somewhat arbitrarily, like the line a politician falls back on in the middle of a heated debate—Country First, or Change We Can Believe In.

“He asked—“ Kami pauses, letting out one last giggle, “How you would know if your condom fell off during sex?”

(CLICK BELOW FOR MORE)

2000 words

Paris, 1968:

Tehran, 2009:

The riots against Khamenei and “Ahmadi”  are not completely led by young, male iranians (they are widespread, too–reports continue to come in from throughout the country, not just the capital); I choose the above photo because of its eerie similarity to the paris snapshot. As Roger Cohen reports:

Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square.

youtube crack

click on the pics for the videos.

all together now…

the times’s excellent “room for debate” blog has a great roundtable on health care reform, highlighting the importance of adjusting doctors financial incentives to lower costs in an industry that receives one out of every 5 dollars americans make. i distill some of the arguments/suggestions/rants below:

Dr. Fisher (Dartmouth): “An underlying cause of this overuse [of certain diagnostic or surgical procedures] is a fragmented and uncoordinated health care system where each physician only focuses on a tiny piece of the patient’s care. Most physicians, even those in primary care, have become “partialists.” And the payment system that rewards overuse by physicians and encourages hospitals to compete in a local medical arms race to offer every possible profitable service.”

Dr. Pho (N.H): “Physician payments need to be divorced from the volume of care and instead associated with evidence-based quality measures and a reduction in medical errors. [D]octors should be “incentivized” to take the time to counsel and guide, along with improving their communication with patients, not only in person, but over the phone and on the Internet.”

there’s more below…

oil!

in this week’s new yorker, surowiecki looks at the interconnected phenomena of oil price spikes and, um, recessions.  ”It wasn’t just that, as many people assume, higher gas prices functioned as a tax increase, taking money out of people’s pockets.” the author suggests. “More important was the fact that four-dollar-a-gallon gasoline dramatically changed the way people spent their money.” Oil up, SUV’s down, GM down, jobs down, housing down (overpriced, high-transportation-cost ‘burbs less attractive)… you get the picture. surowiecki argues that a gas tax could be implemented to soften the effect of future oil price spikes. yuck! tax! maybe if we called it recession insurance premiums…

oh, ps… a barrel’s over 70 buckeroos again.

rational rationing

an excellent piece by david leonhardt in the times suggests that, like most issues in the larger health care reform movement, debate over the equitable distribution of scarce health care resources becomes a battle of words, not ideas. the result is something petty and counterproductive: “The choice isn’t between rationing and not rationing.” Leonhardt writes. “It’s between rationing well and rationing badly. Given that the United States devotes far more of its economy to health care than other rich countries, and gets worse results by many measures, it’s hard to argue that we are now rationing very rationally.”

in related news, bob dole and tom daschle save health care reform? seriously?

quinoa taco filling

even my carnivore father enjoyed this…makes: ~4-5 tacos

what you’ll need: 1/2 cup dry quinoa; small red onion, chopped; 1/2 red bell pepper, chopped; anaheim chile, chopped; 2 garlic cloves, crushed; olive oil; one tomato; vegetable stock and water (tbd); cumin seeds; paprika; cayenne; ground ginger; salt n peppah, to taste.

what you do: 1) in a small bowl, soak the quinoa with 1 cup of water for 20-30 minutes, 2) add onion to a medium (and deep) skillet with a couple glugs of olive oil; smash the garlic cloves and break them up in the skillet as well (they’ll taste almost sweet this way), 3) add pepper and chile and cumin seeds, saute the bunch, 4) add diced tomato (yellow while it’s summer!), and let the mix simmer for 3-4 minutes, 5) while you’re waiting, drain the quinoa, refill with another cup of water, and then add the quinoa + water to the pan, 6) keep the mix on a medium simmer, adding water or stock periodically as the base boils away; when the quinoa grains unfold and begin clumping like cous cous, you’re probably there.

the grizz

my assessment of the brooklyn quartet’s latest (click for bigger version).

happy bloomsday!

today is the day leo bloom walked mopingly around dublin while blazes boylan did body shots off of his (bloom’s) wife, and stephen dedalus pretended he was hamlet. there — the entire plot summary of james joyce’s ulysses. apparently, people dress up like bloom (above–ugh… williamsburg reenacter flashbacks) today and drink themselves into a stupor while trying to read 200-word sentences. Huzzah!

cable news ≠ journalism

by channel:

CNN: Initiation of my spiral of disillusionment? mumbai bombings (thanksgiving ‘08), when “the situation room” and wolf decided to run live footage of the burning raj hotel instead of, you know, talking to people on the street, reporting on the dozens dead at the downtown railway station, etc. Nail in the coffin? Their non-coverage of the iranian elections/riots this weekend. Hope? Anderson Cooper still knows how to talk to people. Chances that I willingly watch them again? 5% (on the rare chance Jon Stewart appears on crossfire)

FOX: Initiation of my spiral of disillusionment? When Bill O’Reilly opened his mouth. Nail in the Coffin? Simultaneous. Hope? Shep Smith standing up against the hate O’Reilly stirs up. Chances that I willingly watch them again? 10% (if i need to shout at an inanimate object for awhile)

MSNBC: Initiation of my spiral of disillusionment? Olbermann tries to do the Edward R. Murrow look-into-the-camera-thing and ends up sounding like this . Nail in the Coffin? Scarborough doesn’t get the joke. Again, non-coverage of Iran. Hope? Rachel Maddow and tea-bagging jokes. Chances that I willingly watch them again? 10%

iran, ctd, ctd

george packer on how the US should respond:

With riot police and armed militiamen beating and, in a few reported cases, killing unarmed demonstrators in the streets of Iran’s cities, for the Obama Administration to continue parsing equivocal phrases serves no purpose other than to make it look feckless. Part of realism is showing that you have a clear grasp of reality—that you know the difference between decency and barbarism when both are on display for the whole world to see. A stronger American stand—taken, as much as possible, in concert with European countries and through multilateral organizations—would do more to improve America’s negotiating position than weaken it. Acknowledging the compelling voices of the desperate young Iranians who, after all, only want their votes counted, would not deep-six the possibility of American-Iranian talks. Ahmadinejad and his partners in the clerical-military establishment will talk to us exactly when and if they think it’s in their interest. Right now, they don’t appear to. And the tens of millions of Iranians who voted for change and are the long-term future of that country will always remember what America said and did when they put their lives on the line for their values.

word.

medicare

any real reform to our nation’s health care system must take a close look at medicare, the current health “safety net” for millions of americans. tyler cowen’s piece in the sunday business times argues for the creation of an independent medicare expense review board, an idea supported by the white house. before any new public plan is implemented, cowen asserts, we need to get the costs of medicare down:

“67 percent of Americans believe that they do not receive enough treatment and [only] 16 percent believe that they have received unnecessary care. If the Obama administration covers more people with government-supplied or government-subsidized insurance, the political support will broaden for generous benefits, their continuation and, indeed, expansion of current expenditures.”

The line of thinking goes like this: if we are already over-treating patients (and we are), and unnecessary care is responsible for skyrocketing costs, we will see expenditures spiral out of control if we treat the 67 percent of the nation who don’t think they get enough care like the 1/3 who do. as a solution, Cowen proposes–coupled with the medicare review board–a one-time tax on health benefits. OK. That creates incentives for both the public and private sector to demand more efficient, lower cost care… but it will also undoubtedly lead to medicare cuts (something Obama proposed on friday as a possible source of funding for a new public option), which creates an even higher, perhaps unscalable, barrier to care for groups like the homeless, drug users, and illegal immigrants who depend on hospitals with medicare support.

i reject the premise that fiscal responsibility and moral obligation are mutually exclusive in the ongoing health care reform debate. we can have equal and efficient care–politicians need to realize that they are the ones who must make sacrifices, not their constituents.

iran, ctd.

via andrew sullivan: “the good guys are the ones who help bewildered riot police.” i stared at this picture for about 3 minutes.

a glimmer

the most creative (read: destructive of the english language/geneva conventions) of bush’s DOJ lawyers, john yoo, will be appearing in court soonish. disbar this guy. for a complete recounting of yoo’s involvement in extradition-gitmo-torture triple-threat cheney believed/still believes was protecting americans, read jane meyer’s the dark side. it reveals cheney’s arguments to be morally, legally, and historically indefensible.

infinite jest

1079 pages. no discernible chapters. 386 endnotes spread over one hundred pages. It took me three weeks to work through david foster wallace’s novel–not exactly an enjoyable experience. but it was refreshing to live with wallace’s characters for awhile (and i’m sort of in withdrawal right now from  jest’s hyperconscious and unceasingly witty world).

almost every review of the novel I’ve read started its second paragraph by saying something like “any attempt at a plot summary would do a disservice to the utter aesthetic wholeness of the novel”. whatever: Infinite Jest is about that strange, vivid, and shared memory that families tend to develop. The inside jokes, the nicknames, the invented aphorisms of the novel’s two families–the incandenzas and the occupants of an addiction recovery house–are so personal they become universal. Jest is, simply, these families’ scrapbook: fragmented, multivocal, busy, the narrative seems nostalgic for a time when family videos weren’t edited like a michael bay movie and slapped on a dvd. Wallace sees memory as a visceral (and potentially redemptive) thing.

the novel shares its title with a film, made by the youngest incandenza’s father, so entertaining it renders its viewers comatose. the film’s protagonist is a both a mother figure and a deathly Shade. throughout the novel, but especially when discussing this ‘deadly film,’ wallace reveals our obsession with deriving our life’s meaning from the endings and beginnings of things. jest is about the demands and rewards of living in-between these arbitrary, artificial markers: a beautiful/sad novel that captures just how much we depend on others to pull us through.

neko case

…is a force of nature, i.e. not to be messed with. her act, which i caught tuesday night at the warfield, was a study (despite THAT voice) in tempo: drawing mostly from this year’s excellent middle cyclone, neko played with the pacing of her songs–every note was true (in tone) to the recording, but was stretched or condensed at will. her vocal range is 3D, shifting not only along the hi/lo and loud/soft axes, but along the molasses/bubble-gum-pop-fast continuum. her band was a bunch of pros, but neko could have been up there with an ipod–only once or twice in the set were they able to show off their chops… a little. disarmingly funny in between songs, neko’s face became vacant while performing highlights like “red bells,” “margaret vs. pauline,” and “this tornado loves you”–like it was just a vessel for that voice. you sort of wish she would at least look like she was having fun.

this is…

… a maple seed (from “Leading-Edge Vortices Elevate Lift of Autorotating Plant Seeds.” By D. Lentink, W. B. Dickson, J. L. vanLeeuwen, M. H. Dickinson. Science, Vol. 324 Issue 5933, June 12, 2009.)

while i was listening to “merriweather post pavilion” for the 20th time…

… these albums were released, and are quite wonderful in their own ways:

actor / st. vincent: annie clark supposedly wrote the music for this album with garageband’s little composing tool, and then had her friends perform the parts live. the result is something uniquely and completely imagined, whole–perfect, until you notice how odd some of the compositions are. “laughing with a mouthful of blood” and “marrow,” coming back-to-back on the LP’s second side are perhaps the best (and strangest) of the bunch–clark’s guitars (clean on “laughing” and distorted on “marrow”) weave in and out with lush orchestration on these songs, yet her voice pierces through everything, never raising in volume while getting the point across, like a professor who knows she’s right. a taste: “actor out of work”

face control / handsome furs: dan boeckner, one half of wolf parade’s writing team, is often self-referential–if not outright self-plagiarizing: a lot of these tunes have similar riffs to WP’s at mount zoomer; still, they have more breathing room on face control. boeckner tends to carry a single chord progression throughout his songs, letting layers of keyboard and muffled guitar add complexity, and on this album, he builds tension by withholding or burying certain melodic lines. their eventual reemergence providing the thrill of face control’s somewhat understated songs. the 3 short interludes on the album are completely self-indulgent on boeckner’s part, but are tiny gems–bringing sparkle to the precise, utilitarian goodness that is the rest of the album.  the best of the set: “radio kaliningrad”

little hells / marissa nadler: though hopelessly front-loaded, nadler’s latest actually deserves the often heavy-handed adjective attached to her music–’haunting’: not quite a song-cycle, little hells is populated with repeated themes and lyrics that, like the ghosts in nadler’s songs, are both familiar and eerily distant. this phenomenon is not limited to the album as a whole, though–within songs like “the hole is wide,” you struggle sometimes to differentiate between perceived and actual distortions of repeated piano or guitar lines. chalk it up as great production, maybe, but echos have a strange vitality in nadler’s songs. exhibit a: the title song

iran

something big is happening in the run-up to iran’s national elections. FP has a fascinating photo essay about the campaign. it is, if not a result of, an affirmation of barack’s cairo rhetoric: the complexity and diversity of middle east issues demand something above an analysis of “good” and “evil”. and leaders who fail to accept this are on their way out.

treating cancer as a chronic disease

breast cancer cells

(b/c apparently it’s health care week on this blog) In a recent nature publication, a researcher suggests that we eschew the “war on cancer” paradigm that has dominated treatment regimes for 20+ years. why do we try to kill all the cancerous cells in the short term in a patient, robert gatenby asks, if we know the cancer is fatal and doctors can prolong life by treating the disease chronically? gatenby’s essay asserts that by eliminating only the most active and destructive cells, and leaving a reservoir of active cancer cells in the patient, we can perhaps limit the number of cancerous bodies resistant to chemo or radiation.

of course, there should be continued “magic bullet cure” research going on, and this is a tough ethical question to consider as well, but such I think chronic treatment has a positive secondary effect: it forces more patient-doctor interactions and promotes (often more cost- and treatment- effective) lifestyle changes in the patient. it attempts to break down the larger, more expensive “disease as something to be treated” health care paradigm and shift us more towards a healthier “managed care” way of thinking.

obama reads his new yorker

blogs are abuzz over the news that barack made his closest advisors read an excellent article by dr. atul gawande on the skyrocketing health care costs tied to the entrenched view of insurance companies that profits, not–you know–better patient health, should be a doctor’s paramount incentive. the president should add a previous gawande article to his advisors’ must-read list. it takes a slightly different, but equally pointed, argument–we can’t scrap the entire system, gawande says:

[b]ut we can build a new system on the old one. On the start date for our new health-care system—on, say, January 1, 2011—there need be no noticeable change for the vast majority of Americans who have dependable coverage and decent health care. But we can construct a kind of lifeboat alongside it for those who have been left out or dumped out.

here’s a suggestion: let the public option first insure all children. we already have SCHIP (= kiddie medicare), and this is a population that needs a safety net. (can we please stop making parents choose between bankruptcy and their child’s health?) if it works, great, you can then keep them in the system as they turn eighteen and extend the option to the greater population.

from: yrstruly

zach galifianakis

…is hilarious. a quick guide to his ridiculousness:

zach’s interview with michael cera (“too much fun…”)

lip syncing with fiona apple’s “not about love” and kanye’s “can’t tell me nothing”

umm… sunbathing?

kids say the darn funniest things (“i don’t like children”)

‘characters‘ (forgetful vegan…yes)

journalism

Amidst the swirling abortion debates triggered by Tiller’s murder, Julian Sanchez calls for a new type of news analysis:

Not just a clash between two confident but opposed views—we get plenty of that all the time, and it’s part of the problem—but an examination (assuming good faith) of what’s keeping these smart jousters from reaching consensus. Not “the case for policy A” vs “the case for policy B” but “the epistemic problems that make it hard to choose between A and B,” as though (I know, it’s crazy) the search for truth were more than a punch-up between mutually exclusive, preestablished conclusions. The message is not (to coin a phrase) “we report, you decide” but “we report on why you’re not actually competent to decide, unless you’re prepared to devote a hell of a lot more time, energy, and thought to it.”

This is what the best bloggers out there right now–Sanchez, Sullivan, DeLong, Yglesias–are doing. They are open about their biases, and link more than they write, trying to capture the intricacy and complexity of the arguments out there. Not to make this too much of a grab-bag post, but you get the feeling–especially after the cairo speech–that Obama’s head works this way too.

a dark side to altruism

A new study looks at warfare and the evolutionary origins of altruism. One quote jumped out at me: “Lethal hostility toward other groups could thus underpin cooperation and support within human communities,” writes Ruth Mace, a University College London anthropologist. Does the drive to protect the common good emerge from the creation of a common, generalized (read: imagined) evil? Do we have to create “the other” to conceptualize, through its negation, what is exemplary, what is good?

I’ll stop myself before the obligatory third rhetorical question, and say this: our reasons to evolve, not just how we evolve, are constantly shifting; altruistic behavior now need not be covertly selfish simply b/c of its origins. We should be cognizant, though, of how shaky and shifty perceptions and identity become when we help others.

tienanmen

it’s the twentieth anniversary of the brutal government crackdown on a peaceful june 1989 protest (in a square that has been blockaded today by the current Chinese gov’t). the times‘ lens blog has an explanation of the above picture–a long-lost snapshot of the famous tank man from a unique angle.

obama: gay rights important, just not right now?

It’s LGBT pride month, and as with any “pride” month, you get the obligatory presidential proclamation monday about the importance of our country’s diversity, complete with a call for “the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all.” Pointedly, Obama referred to the 40th anniversary of the stonewall riots. The riots constitute a game-changing couple of weeks for the Gay Rights movements–suddenly, Gays were a visible (if still voiceless) political force to be reckoned with. The LGBT community unified around the selfless, courageous actions of these men in NYC. 

It is precisely action that’s missing from Obama’s Gay Rights agenda. He celebrates the bravery of the LGBT community in “mobiliz[ing] the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic,” yet has let legislation that would override the current ban on HIV positive visitors to the U.S. stall in the HHS department. 60 Canadians on their way to an HIV/AIDS conference were turned away at customs on the day of Obama’s proclamation. 

Obama recommits in the proclamation to supporting measures “ending the existing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security.” He also nominated a republican congressman for Army Secretary who supports an end to DADT. But more could be done: A temporary suspension of all DADT hearings until a way forward is drawn out? A sit-down with recently discharged officers like Dan Choi?

Yes, the president has a lot on his plate, and special interest groups at his doorstep with innumerable–and often conflicting–’asks’. But this is not a special interest movement. It is the civil rights movement of our time. There is urgency and pride and anger in the majority of voices of Gay Rights supporters. If you’re not yet ready to commit to action, Mr. President, at least let the inflection and emotion in your speeches match that of the sons and daughters of Stonewall.

bitte orca

…is streaming over at npr. just a fantastic, fantastic record.

summer flicks

click for bigger, readable versions. the trailers (release dates):

the hangover (6/5), whatever works (6/19), public enemies (7/1), bruno (7/10), harry potter and the half blood prince (7/15), inglourious basterds [sic] (8/21)

sweet potato hash browns

secret ingredient: crack rock.

so it’s officially summer potluck season, which means it’s time to perfect a dish that’s (relatively) healthy, but (more importantly) is facebook-level addictive… so you only have to learn to cook one side for the entire summer bbq schedule. i made this the other day:

what you need: *sweet potatoes, rinsed, peeled (2 taters = 4 servings)* *olive oil* *sea salt* *peppah* *grated orange skin* *big ol’ frying pan* *cheese grater*

what you do: 1) grate (over the large holes) the taters into a large mixing bowl–they should resemble carrot gratings, 2) spread the gratings evenly along the bottom of the pan, so you have a 1/8-in thick layer (*you usually have to cook the taters in shifts, so have an extra bowl ready to put the finished product in; you can always add it all back to the pan for a quick reheat), 3) heavy peppering and salting, plus 7 or 8 grating thrusts with an orange over the small holes of your grater, 4) pour a couple o glugs of olive oil evenly over your taters, 5) cook on med-hi and taste until you’re doing more tasting than cooking (8-10 min usually–i like them a little blackened)

snapshots

glorious

The Times has a great new blog, “Lens,” and collected readers’ polaroids for an article. There’s a movement afoot to reboot polaroid film after its unfortunate dissolution last year, apparently. Joy. You never took a shitty polaroid pic–the film was too damn expensive, the shake-it-shake-it-shake-it-like-a-polaroid picture dance too delightful, the slow reveal of the snapshot too awesomely suspenseful/hilarious to ruin whatever was captured in the cheap electric flash of the camera. Check out the article link.

from: yrstruly

if saturdays = youth, phoenix = summer

click on the graph for a bigger, readable version

strunk and white

…are hilarious. Elements of Style is now fifty years old, and though some of the passages are undeniably dated (/misogynist/hopelessly elitist), you get the feeling that unwitting college freshmen will continue to be force fed this little book (as I was), as spinach is stuffed into kids’ faces, for a long time to come. Yet, these future students will realize, as I have, when rereading S&W, the ridiculousness of grammar is nothing compared to the unfortunate hilarity of misused language. some samples:

wrong: the taming of the shrew is rather weak in spots. shakespeare does not portray katherine as a very admirable character, nor does bianca remain long in memory as an important character in Shakespeare’s works. right: the women in the taming of the shrew are unattractive. katharine is disagreeable, bianca insignificant.

nauseous vs. nauseated : the first means “sickening to contemplate”; the second means “sick at the stomach.” do not, therefore, say, “i feel nauseous,” unless you are sure you have that effect on others.

this week’s new yorker cover…

… was drawn on an iphone. pretty neat.

netherland

Finished Joseph O’Neill’s quiet, thoughtful novel last week. It made a lot of year-end lists in ‘08, and garnered several “Gatsby-esque” comparisons from reviewers enthralled by the “scene” of Netherland. It deserves its accolades–for its depiction of New York not as a sprawling mass of humanity, but rather something human itself: A lover, a friend, a therapist, a spouse. It is the relationships (though, as O’Neill points to, the word seems more of a place-holder than lived experience) of the novel that are sticking with me. 

Netherland plays with the idea and action of the sport of cricket, and the reader quickly notes in the intermittent pocks of the cricket bat, the never-ending tedium of groundskeeping, and the strange things the game does with time, that O’Neill sees in this sport a metaphor for those incommunicable, mundane, and odd  things we call relationships.

The novel circles around the subject  of 9/11–confronting the events of that day only once, in a terse cocktail party conversation. We emerge from that exchange with the disconcerting and sobering observation that “normalcy”–whether in our jobs or friendships or marriages–simply doesn’t mean the same thing anymore.

while you wait for the others

here’s my current fav from the excellent new album by the Grizz, released today. i’ll come up with a chart-y thingy one of these days for Veckatimest

“while you wait for the others” / Grizzly Bear

o.k., california, time for…

… A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. The governator’s ridiculous special election ballot measures were about as economically sound as they were grammatically cogent–which is to say, not very. The economist suggests a way forward, supported by many political action groups in the state:

The plan is to introduce voter initiatives in next year’s ballot calling for a constitutional convention, to have the convention the following year, and to put the new constitution on a ballot in 2012, when it would take effect.

Working with ChildrenNOW, a health policy advocacy group, last summer, I was stunned by how much money and time were spent on devising a game plan for future ballot initiatives. Yet, we would still send out “action alerts,” like this one, which demanded–to be honest–immediacy only when it came to fundraising. Which is, I guess, the main point of the economist article: despite our state’s drive for progressive, long-term change to social programs, we’re crippled by immediate budget demands stemming from accounting-by-popular-vote.

maternal mortality in africa

“Why don’t we have a global fund for maternal health, like the one for TB, malaria and AIDS?” A doctor asks the author of the lead article in sunday’s times, a sobering look at the (non)treatment of pregnant women in Africa.

When volunteers with minimal training are performing caesarean sections, when 13,000 mostly teenage mothers die per year, when overcrowded orphanages have a new mouth to feed almost on a daily basis, improvements in prevention campaigns–not just the dispersal of treatment–become essential. (In its first meaning: absolutely necessary, fundamental.) The solutions go beyond the “education” or “empowerment” of women–beautiful words or ideas often (but not always) lacking measurable action: frequent blood pressure checks, vitamins or food supplements, and pre-birth “waiting hospitals” should be expected, not exceptional, services for these women.

But what should a hypothetical UN or IMF program do about those women who never leave their homes for their child’s birth, like the Maasai teenage mothers I met two summers ago? I can point to a few paths forward: increased training and certification programs for community midwives, better basic hygiene and nutrition support, church- or community-supported women’s health education groups.

The stopgap efforts of physicians and volunteers in Tanzania are admirable, but further national or international aid should take steps to expose the government’s blindness to the systemic issues contributing to this disturbing trend, and demand political and economic investment in the future of the young women of Tanzania. 

fava beans

favas were at my local farmer’s market yesterday. they are ugly as sin and about as fun to extract as wax globules from your ears. still–so worth it. here’s a simple recipe:

1) you’ll want a couple of handfuls per person. pop the individual beans out, throw ‘em into a large pot with SALTY water, and boil them for 3 minutes. get a bowl of ice water ready while you wait.

2) dump the hot beans into a colander, drain, and deposit into the ice water. now comes the fun part. if you gently squeeze the flesh of the bean (moving your thumb and middle finger in the motion normally used for a snap), out pops a wonderful bright green nugget of goodness. 

3) add olive oil, salt, peppah, grated orange skin, 1-2 smashed garlic cloves (garlic becomes nice and sweet when you cook it as a smashed whole), and a dash of vegetable broth to a skillet with the favas. I added spinach, b/c i’m iron-depleted, but feel free to keep it simple. shake and shimmy for 5-7 minutes. serve.

best overlooked album of ‘09

click on it for bigger, readable version

quote of the day

virginia woolf (from a 1927 BBC interview):

Books ought to be so cheap that we can throw them away if we do not like them, or give them away if we do. Moreover, it is absurd to print every book as if it were fated to last a hundred years. The life of the average book is perhaps three months. Why not face this fact? Why not print the first edition on some perishable material which would crumble to a little heap of perfectly clean dust in about six months time? If a second edition were needed, this could be printed on good paper and well bound. Thus by far the greater number of books would die a natural death in three months or so. No space would be wasted and no dirt would be collected.

summer music

click on image to see bigger, readable version

spinach and eggplant tortellini

I made this last night for din din.

1) cut up half of an eggplant into 1/4 x 1/2 x 1/2 inch cubes, unleash a couple of glugs of olive oil over the cubes in a pan, add salt, peppah, basil. Cook until evenly browned, throw onto a paper towel to soak up extra oil.

2) spring onion, whole garlic (2 cloves, smashed), and spinach–toss em in the pan and cook until the onion gets translucent. pour marinara sauce over the bunch. add the eggplant, simmer.

3) boil tortellini for 5, drain, add to the sauce. turn up the heat for 3, plate, add feta.

tvotr + dirty projectors @ the fox

 

dirty projectors

Dave Longstreth is a lucky man. Not only is he on a ridiculous artistic high right now, he gets to hang out with Angel Deradoorian (purple shirt) who, after last night’s ridiculous dirty projectors set, replaces Annie Clark on my indie rock goddess pedestal. Sure, she just stood behind her synth and plucked a chord or two on a guitar while Longstreth laid down tasty lick after tasty lick of reggae-dub-spazz-rock wonderfulness–irrelevant. As Garth might say, She’s a babe-raham lincoln, Wayne. The projectors played all new stuff, and it was stunning: like animal collective, they build on a single riff (or note!) that spirals inward and outward (in both dynamics and complexity) like a kaleidoscope–it would be maddening if it wasn’t so catchy and danceable.

 

TVOTR were high energy, if not particularly focused. They drew mostly from dear science and return to cookie mtn., and frontloaded a lot of the hits–”wolf like me” and “halfway home” roared out during the first thirty minutes. Dave Sitek stood in the back trying to look like he wasn’t playing sixteenth notes for 90 minutes; Kip’s vocals were sadly off; the sax player was a little too into it. The best moments on the band’s record come in transitions–where kinetic and potential energy are exchanged, where the tempo shifts into a different gear–and this remained true for their live act. Which, I guess, made their missteps in between that much more of a bummer.

the satanic verses

 

so good.

I finished Rushdie’s Satanic Verses earlier this week. It is, of course, a story about religion…and the immigrant experience… and love… and the devil, terrorism, india, sex, movies, fantasy, poetry, and food. The point being, the world of Rushdie’s novel–not unlike our own–laughs in the face of categorization. But perhaps more importantly, this is not our world: it is, like the dreams, or something like the negation of dreams, of Gibreel and Saladin, respectively, a fiction. Rushdie creates a novel without completely knowable, typified characters–a novel that seems to defy the imaginary borders we place around “the self” and “the other.” When everything is illusion, when “you throw everything up in the air,” the two become confused, transformed. Maybe, Rushdie suggests, human connection becomes easier, if not more transient, in this world of imaginary borders. And its eventual dissolution that much more painful, haunting.

when bible quotes replace excerpts from the constitution…

 

ugh...

…you get something like this. Rummy’s briefings make the same mistakes that you see in 7th-grade reports: cluttered, overloaded slides; heavy-handed imagery; quotes-as-arguments; and the unfortunate belief that “good” and “evil” are distinguishable, expressible entities. 

 

On quoting from the bible: any exegesis of that palimpsest of a text is, at its core, flawed–unless it is analyzed as a part of an overarching Christianist historiography. Orwell almost got it right: Language’s history is the first thing tossed out by power-hungry governments. Everything is distilled into this weird, contemporaneous monologue of ideology.

oatmeal chocolate death cookies

 

oatmeal chocolate death cookie

what you need: 

*1.5 sticks of butter*    

*2 1/2 cups of original quaker oats*    

*3/4 cup flour*

*2 tablespoons of vanilla

*2 eggs*    

*cinnamon*      

*4 ghirardelli choc. squares* 

 *1 1/2 cups packed brown sugah*    

 *1 cup of semisweet mini morsels*    

*big ol’ bowl*    

*2 ungreased cookie sheets*

what you do:

preheat oven to 350 F.

give the butter 15 sec in the microwave, mix in bowl with sugar until most of the butter magma blobs disappear.

add eggs one at a time; dump in the vanilla. whip up goo until its fluffy.

add flour, cinnamon, oats and mix until your arm is about fall off. then mix some more.

shave chocolate squares (dark or semisweet works best) over the bowl. when you’re about to lose a finger, break up the remaining chocolate into chunks and add to the dough.

add the morsels, stir. add some more cinnamon or vanilla to taste.

place small (the smaller, the better–you don’t feel guilty when you eat a dozen of these guys in one sitting, and it maximizes the chocolate-to-oatmeal ratio), messy looking balls onto the ungreased sheets. bake 8-10 minutes.