Stories to tell …
I'm such a sucker for a whimsical set of tragic photos.
How knowledgable are Americans?
Click this link and watch all ten minutes. Unbelievable stuff. Hysterically sad.
Real campaign finance reform: dilute the bad money with lots of good money
In his recent article at Salon.com, “How to fix campaign financing forever for $50,” Farhad Manjoo explores what should be a national priority: campaign finance reform.
Why should it be a priority? Because private money corrupts all political dialogue. It makes us think that politicians are taking The People seriously, when they aren’t. Our current system of private political donations give birth to the ubiquitous Orwellian political sound bites (e.g., the Clear Sky Law).
Presidential candidates must now start raising at least $2 million a week, or $286,000 every day, including weekends, until the election. And the sales pitch for the contribution is not anything like this:
Please give me LOTS of money. In return, I won’t invite you to special gatherings of political and corporate elites. I won’t answer your phone calls any more than I answer the calls of people who don’t contribute anything. I won’t have my staff flock to hear your legislative proposals. All I’ll do is continue representing the interests of all the people.
What doesn’t work to fix the campaign contribution system? Contribution limits. Manjoo argues that getting around the limits “has become a huge Washington business.” Here’s another thing that doesn’t work: Making politicians disclose who gave what to whom. Manjoo suggests that “sunlight just isn’t so great a disinfectant.” Information is freely available, but there’s too much of it for the public to digest, or maybe we’re just apathetic. As if we don’t know that huge energy and …
Shopping for Sex: wasteful consumerism and Darwin’s theory of sexual selection
A few weeks ago I ate dinner with friends. One of the friends mentioned that, a few weeks earlier, he had attended a party in an upscale neighborhood. At that party, one of the guests announced that she had brought her own bottle of wine because the host’s expensive wine wasn’t good enough. From my end of the table, I blurted out that it is not necessary to have expensive wine to have a meaningful gathering with friends or family. In fact, I added, “wine is not necessary at all.” I was about to elaborate when I noticed that the other adults at the table were staring at me like I had three eyes. “That’s not correct,” they told me, almost in unison. I know that “look” well. I have received that same “look” from various people on other occasions. On one occasion I got “the look” from someone who was trying to justify that an ordinary car wasn’t sufficient, so he needed to buy a BMW. Another person who gave me “the look” was trying to convince me that her $75,000 kitchen remodeling was “necessary,” even though all of the appliances in her existing kitchen functioned perfectly. The problem with her current kitchen was that it was “old.” I have also received that same look from fundamentalists when I explain that the earth is billions of years old. The “look” is a “we-will-pretend-you-didn’t-say-that” look. It shouldn’t surprise me to draw the same “look” from both consumers and Believers, given that wasteful and pretentious spending is the de facto national religion of the United States. We’ve moralized extravagant spending to such an extent that “living the good life” means buying lots of things we don’t really need.
Check out that other world not far from where you live.
You can see many well-done microscopic images taken by the blogger who runs (what else would you call it?) Micro Images Blog. The author indicates that he has taken most of these images himself. It all makes for a thought-provoking micro-distraction.