What happens when you combine Auto-Tune with clips from old PBS science shows? You get this surprisingly lyrical music video featuring Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking. The sound they create is a melding of trip-hop and nerdcore that Kanye West would be hard-pressed to top. It makes me want to spend the rest of the afternoon on Hulu watching old Cosmos episodes.
Thanks to Kottke for the tip.
Matt Yglesias is right on when he writes “[h]anding Barack Obama an oddly premature Nobel Peace Prize puts the liberal blogger in your life in a bit of an awkward position.” I’ve spent much of today sorting out my own feelings on the topic. The prize committee seemed intent on expressing their relief that Bush is no longer president, but I don’t think Obama is being rewarded just for being the un-Bush. I can’t imagine Hillary Clinton receiving this award if she occupied the Oval Office.
Obama has relatively few accomplishments as president thus far, but he still has great potential to leave the world a better place than he found it. Awarding him the Peace Prize is a somewhat clumsy attempt to both acknowledge his potential and pave the way for future successes. Having a Nobel laureate for a president won’t make it any easier to pass a health care bill, but it might grease the diplomatic wheels just enough to get us through whatever international crises lie ahead.
I don’t spend my nights lying awake and fretting about the H1N1 virus, but I do plan on getting both the seasonal and H1N1-specific flu vaccines. A handful of kids and adults in Minnesota have died in recent weeks after contracting the H1N1 virus and I have no desire to let it have a go at my unaugmented immune system. I had a garden-variety flu that landed me in the hospital about ten years ago and I’ve been punctual about getting vaccinated every year since then. If I had my way, I would carry a syringe and stash of vaccine serum with me wherever I went for purposes of jabbing anyone coming within a three-yard radius of me, but that’s probably overkill. Instead, I want everyone who doesn’t “believe” in vaccines to wear biohazard stickers on their foreheads so I know who to avoid on a daily basis.
The Times‘ Media Decoder blog provides a brief update on the ongoing efforts to reach a settlement in the Google Books case. For those of you who haven’t been following this story, Google is attempting to scan millions of out-of-print books into a ginormous digital library. The federal government, along with publishers, authors, and others, has blocked this initiative out of legitimate concerns that Google would have a monopoly over access to these digital books. The parties are now trying to reach a settlement. Most of the post is about the judge in the case setting a deadline for a settlement agreement, but the last graf contains an interesting tidbit. Under the current draft of the settlement, Google will be required to create audio editions of every book it scans. That would be a huge boon to readers who are blind or visually impaired. What’s not clear is whether the audiobooks will be available for free. The deadline for an agreement is November 9th, so hopefully we’ll have more details soon.
If I’m going to found my own island nation, I’m going to need a flag. Something distinctive that will set it apart from the 193 other flags that are already out there. Something that will instill respect–nay, fear–in the hearts of U.N. General Assembly delegates. Something that will very clearly and elegantly lay out the consequences for illegally occupying a disability parking spot. Something like this:
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It gets the point across, doesn’t it? Nitpickers will probably point out that this was once the flag of the Benin Empire, which faded from the scene in the late 19th century. I’m pretty sure that a flag can’t be copyrighted, so I’m going to appropriate it for my own purposes.
Next step: hire a Project Runway cast-off to make me a badass general’s uniform.
As we saw in the last election, people vote with their pocketbooks. Democrats won big because the economy was in tatters and they didn’t trust Republicans to make things better. But hopes for a quick recovery have largely vanished and Democrats may be just as likely to feel voters’ wrath if unemployment keeps hovering at 10% or higher (and most economists seem to think that’s pretty likely until well into next year). To put current job losses into perspective, take a look at the chart below:
The solid red line shows job losses for the current recession that began in 2007. The dotted red line shows what job losses will really look like once the Department of Labor updates its statistics. Our country faces the gargantuan task of replacing eight million jobs and counting. Liberal economists may have been right when they argued that the stimulus package should have been larger, but passing another stimulus just isn’t going to happen–not after the Democrats move heaven and earth to pass a health care bill. There are other ways for the feds to create jobs, as Robert Reich points out, but I’m not sure any silver bullet exists to get people back to work other than a gradual restructuring of the economy. A lot can happen between now and next November, but Democrats need to put their collective shoulder to the wheel and give voters concrete reasons to believe they will be better off with a continued Democratic majority. Otherwise, the Know-Nothings (a more accurate appellation for the remnants of the GOP) will be swept back into power on waves of demagoguery and fear.
I took a break from health care blogging while the Senate Finance Committee went about the ponderous business of crafting its own version of a bill, but expect me to start wonking out in the coming days and weeks as the debate moves from the committees to the floors of both chambers as well the closed-door conference rooms where the real negotiations will take place. I’d love to see every bargaining session broadcast on C-SPAN, but our form of representative democracy has never trusted the electorate enough to be comfortable with full transparency. Still, I’m expecting the floor debates to provide the kind of theater that will have Daily Show writers clapping their hands with unrestrained glee. I also expect that the media will declare negotiations deadlocked at least once before a bill gets signed. I remain confident that a bill will get signed and it might even be a pretty good bill.
I’m not sure how the politics of this will play out, though. Most bill provisions don’t take effect for a few years and it seems really awkward to tell voters that they need to hold on for a while longer before they can get health care. I’m sure Obama’s advisers are paying attention to the problem, but I hope they come up with something that will provide tangible benefit to people in the short-term.
The credit card companies, which are experiencing declining revenues as more people default on their balances or simply stop using credit, are becoming more reliant on fees as a profit booster. I have firsthand knowledge of this trend after I discovered that, in my haste to get ready for my trip to California, I forgot to pay my Chase bill and my corporate masters hit me with a $39 late fee. I’m a punctual bill-payer, so I called Chase in an attempt to get the fee waived. Both the customer rep and a supervisor flatly denied my request. I just e-mailed Chase with the same request, but I doubt I’ll get a different result.
My own experience is a minor nuisance compared to the incessant phone calls my pro bono clients are receiving from credit card companies. For many of them, the calls start in the early morning and don’t stop until late in the evening. It’s unlikely they’ll collect anything from my clients, which only illustrates how desperate these corporations are to maintain their bottom lines.
Oh, to be young, articulate, and scary-smart. M.I.T. is employing student bloggers to write posts about student life, which can be read by interested high school students who are considering applying to the school. And check out this snippet from the article:
The M.I.T. student bloggers have different majors, ethnicities, residence halls and, particularly, writing styles. Some post weekly or more; others disappear for months. The bloggers are sought out as celebrities during the annual “Meet the Bloggers” session at Campus Preview Weekend.
Clearly, I was born a couple decades too soon. Imagine the fanbase I could have accumulated as my school’s blogger-in-residence. Imagine the groupies! Then again, the Catholic liberal arts college I attended might not have been thrilled with frequent references to fishnets and other such subversive content.
I’ve written before about my plans to establish an island haven for fellow cripples, but I’ve made little progress in actually realizing this goal. A group of Chinese little people appear to have appropriated my idea for their own purposes. They’ve established a sort of little-people enclave in southern China and have turned themselves into a tourist attraction by living in mushroom houses and dressing up like fairy tale characters.
I really need to get on the ball with my island nation idea, if for no other reason than to get these people some foreign aid so that they can stop humiliating themselves. I may be forced to send in humanitarian forces if this kind of thing continues.