« February 2009 | Home | April 2009 »
March 30, 2009
Bees nutz.
Hey how about that, we're in the L.A. Times.
Urban beekeepers' pastime isn't just about honey and money, as concern about pollination and 'colony collapse disorder' spreads.Beeswaxing poetic about their hobby hives (LA Times)
It's Backwards Beekeeping, homesqueeze.
March 27, 2009
George Packer on The Paranoid Style.
A New Yorker writer outlines some of the differences between conspiracy theorists on the right and those on the left:
[Jonah] Goldberg accurately brings up various recent left-wing conspiracy theorists, from Naomi Klein to Spike Lee (he might have mentioned Michael Moore as well), and concludes, “By all means, dust off your dog-eared copies of “The Paranoid Style.” But spare me the lectures if you can only find things to worry about to your right.”There’s plenty of criticism of Klein, Moore, Nicholson Baker, and other paranoid stylists of the left in my book on Iraq, “The Assassins’ Gate.” I didn’t mention them in discussing [Richard] Hofstadter and the current reaction to Obama for this reason: Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck have far more power in the Republican Party (it sometimes seems to include veto power) than Klein, Lee, and Moore have in the Democratic Party. The views of right-wing commentators in the grip of the paranoid style (Obama is a stealth radical, the Democrats are imposing socialism) are much closer to mainstream conservative and Republican belief than the views of their counterparts on the left (the levees in New Orleans were blown up by the government, the White House had something to do with 9/11) are to mainstream liberal and Democratic belief. The reasons are complex, but I would list these: the evangelical and occasionally messianic fervor that animates a part of the Republican base; the atmosphere of siege and the self-identification of conservatives as insurgents even when they monopolized political power; the influence of ideology over movement conservatives, and their deep hostility to compromise; the fact that modern conservatism has been a movement, which modern liberalism has not.
This is not to say that the more destructive forms of populism and outright paranoia can’t appear on the left. They have, they do, and they will, especially in times of extreme distress like these. It’s only to say that the infection has been more organic to the modern right.
Goldberg would have even more basis for his complaint if I were the author of a book called “Conservative Fascism” and he were not the author of a book called “Liberal Fascism.”
"More Paranoia" (Interesting Times, The New Yorker)
Via Andrew Sullivan.
It's a real time saver!
Take a moment to marvel at how three enterprising young men have squandered their USC Theatre/Cinema degrees.
Still, the lore at UCLA Film School back in the day was that Francis Coppola once edited porn in Melnitz Hall to make extra cash. Who am I to judge?
Via B3ta.
March 24, 2009
Secret instructions, interrupted.
Via B3ta.
March 19, 2009
Floss your monkey.
This is a post about dental hygiene. But it begins with this New York Times article from 1913:
CHICAGO, May 7. -- Some hard-pressed organ grinder has turned burglar and is using his trained monkey as an accomplice, according to the theory advanced by the police to-day to account for certain mysterious robberies committed recently in the northern part of this city and in Evanston.
The fine lady and I had heard about incidents like this occurring much more recently in Asia; tourists' hotel rooms were being burgled by trained monkeys who entered via small, barely-open windows.
She decided that the best way to thwart this menace would be to leave a small pair of cymbals in one's room, right out in plain view. Imagine the monkey-trainer's despair when, anxious minutes after sending his charge in to steal your valuables, he hears only the distant sound of tiny, crashing cymbals.
That's one of my favorite ideas of hers ever.
Now, seeing this video of monkeys' fascination with dental floss, it occurs to me that protecting your stuff might be even easier—just leave out some of that tasty waxed spearmint.
Video via Andrew Sullivan.
March 16, 2009
I've got a dollar on the corner, and a lazer in my shoe.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that only one restaurant in Los Angeles played Meat Puppets II in its entirety this morning.
That restaurant was Eagle Rock's Auntie Em's Kitchen.
An egg sandwich with roasted summer vegetables and melted gruyere, accompanied by "Plateau" and "Magic Toy Missing", is the sort of breakfast that must (or should) be fully USDA-approved.
March 14, 2009
Careful what you wish for, dead-enders.
An excerpt from a letter to the editor in today's L.A. Times:
Because we have given politicians power over virtually every aspect of our lives, almost all disagreements become legal battles to be settled by judges.If we limited the scope of legislation to the protection of human rights, politicians would have little power, judges' caseloads would be small and a nominee's politics would be mostly irrelevant.
Jim Johnson
Hemet
One assumes that limiting "the scope of legislation to the protection of human rights" would preclude such government intrusion as, say, a semi-equitable distribution of natural resources. So Jim, should you get your wish, here's what you have to look forward to:
QUILLAGUA, Chile—During the past four decades here in Quillagua, a town in the record books as the driest place on earth, residents have sometimes seen glimpses of raindrops above the foothills in the distance. They never reach the ground, evaporating like a mirage while still in the air.
What the town did have was a river, feeding an oasis in the Atacama desert. But mining companies have polluted and bought up so much of the water, residents say, that for months each year the river is little more than a trickle — and an unusable one at that.
Quillagua is among many small towns that are being swallowed up in the country’s intensifying water wars. Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than here in Chile, experts say, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment.
Private ownership is so concentrated in some areas that a single electricity company from Spain, Endesa, has bought up 80 percent of the water rights in a huge region in the south, causing an uproar. In the north, agricultural producers are competing with mining companies to siphon off rivers and tap scarce water supplies, leaving towns like this one bone dry and withering.
But the shrubs surrounding the town's Ayn Rand statue are no doubt thriving.
March 13, 2009
Demons in doggy's brain.
Do not miss the ending.
March 7, 2009
This is painting your president, on drugs.
For appreciators of the naive (and occasionally near-psychotic) in art, BadPaintingsOfBarackObama.com turns every click into Christmas morning.
Via the fine lady.
March 5, 2009
The fat guy in the creepy gangster suit doesn't help either.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, on why it's all going wrong for The Other Party:
I think one of the biggest problems with the GOP is that they they mistake their deepest held beliefs for mainstream American beliefs. The root of the current conservative crack-up probably lies in Iraq, but the one event that exposed it all, for me, was Terri Schiavo. Here you had a sitting President, a gaggle of Senators and congressmen bending over backward to argue that government was a better arbiter of a woman's fate, than her husband and her doctors. The moment Bill Frist decided to give a diagnosis via video tape, I felt the wind shift. When it comes to the end of their days, most Americans would want their spouse--not the Senate Majority Leader--to be the final authority.The point is that you have to be able to distinguish your deeply held beliefs, from the electorates. I think much of the GOP's trouble stems from the inability to discern the difference. That whole "Real America," "Real Virginia," small-town snobbery bit, isn't an act--they actually believe it. I've never understood the whole "Center-right country" meme, because it's ultimately self-serving--and then self-defeating. It blinds you to the hard work of arguing, cajoling and fighting with the electorate, until they see your point. It's interesting that so many of their most dominant voices of the GOP (Steele, Gingrich, Limbaugh) have either never won an election, or haven't won one in a decade.
"Some Off The Cuff Analysis" (Ta-Nehisi Coates, theatlantic.com)
And though I disagree with virtually every political position David Frum has ever taken, his noble (and so far, totally futile) effort to bring sanity to the Republican party is most admirable.
And yes, it's fun to giggle while the opposition tears itself apart. But finally, wouldn't you rather have intelligent people to argue with?
