How do I know I’m getting old? Doom is 20 years old this month. I’m fairly certain this was the first game that I downloaded, even if it was with a dial-up modem. My mom scowled whenever she saw my brother and I playing Doom, but she didn’t seem too concerned for our mental health.
For a truly exhaustive examination of all things Doom, check out this epic Metafilter post.
Iowa may be the latest Republican controlled state to expand its Medicaid program. The federal government is poised to approve a waiver that will allow Iowa to use federal funds to purchase private insurance for individuals eligible for the expansion while charging some a premium for their coverage. I’m not thrilled with the idea of requiring people who live near the poverty line to pay a premium for Medicaid. But if this is the kind shell game conservatives need to play to convince themselves that they’re remaining true to their skewed free-market principles, then fine. It’s a better option than completely denying health coverage to people for no other reason than geography. And perhaps the feds’ flexibility on the mechanics of the expansion will encourage other red states to follow suit and do the right thing for their citizens.
My cousins in South Africa came of age at a time when apartheid threatened to tear the country apart. Thanks to the monumental efforts of Nelson Mandela, they and their children know a country at peace. Much work remains to be done before South Africa can be called a truly equitable nation, but Mandela assured that work could begin.
If you want a 5-minute summary of the state of pop music at the close of 2013, you could do worse than DJ Earworm’s latest annual mashup. It has that same-y club sound found in most of his mashups, but I do respect his ability to assemble a coherent track from so many sources. And I recognized most of the artists (including Lorde, whom I admire quite a bit), so I’ve managed to fend off the creeping forces of fogey-dom for another year.
Here’s the video:
The Times ran a great piece over the weekend that pulled back the curtain on the unfolding disaster that was the healthcare.gov website. It details the bureaucratic bungling and poor oversight that led to the disastrous rollout of the site. The website’s performance seems to have improved as a result of the administration’s intensive repair effort, but problems could still crop up on the backend components that are responsible for transmitting enrolling information to insurers and for processing subsidy payments to insurers.
As President Obama has already admitted, he and his appointees badly mishandled this crucial task. Presidents shouldn’t be micromanagers, but Obama’s hands-off approach and the general insularity of this administration only served to undermine his credibility when it counted most. The politics of this clusterfuck are transitory; what really matters is whether the underlying policy succeeds. I still think success is likely, but I worry about our collective willingness to take bold action on other issues like climate change and income inequality. Government must constantly demonstrate its effectiveness and relevance to people’s lives. Unforced errors like this only give fodder to those who would be too happy to live under a government that stands an army, paves the roads, and not much else.
I hope all of my readers enjoy a wonderful Thanksgivukkah tomorrow. I’ll be enjoying some football and mashed potatoes while doing my best not to splurge too much on the Steam Autumn Sale. As ever, I’m grateful for your continued patronage and forbearance. I’ll post again on Friday to accompany your noshing on leftovers.
For most people, climate change remains an abstraction that is dwarfed by more pressing daily concerns. And even when we are confronted with glaring evidence of a drastically altered environment, we may not be able truly grasp the cataclysm it represents. That’s what happens to Dellarobia Turnbow in the beginning of Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful novel Flight Behavior. Dellarobia is walking through the Tennessee woods near her home, on her way to making a rather poor life choice, when she stumbles upon a strange and breathtaking sight: millions of monarch butterflies in the trees and sky above. She turns back home, transformed in ways that she can’t explain.
Dellarobia is a smart woman who hasn’t been able to escape the crushing poverty that envelops her small Appalachian town. She married too young to Cub, a sweet man without a curious bone in his body. They have two children together, the only bright spot in Dellarobia’s otherwise bleak life. When news of her butterfly discovery spreads around town, Dellarobia becomes a minor celebrity. Some of the people at her church view the monarchs’ sudden appearance as a divine sign and Dellarobia as a prophet. But then she meets Ovid Byron, a professor and biologist who has come to study the butterflies. Byron helps Dellarobia understand that these insects do not belong in Tennessee and that their displacement is the likely the result of climate change. Byron hires her as a lab assistant and she begins to imagine other possibilities for her life.
Kingsolver belongs to a small group of literary writers who can weave science into their stories without resorting to eye-crossing blocks of expository text. Flight Behavior is a book about systems, both natural and social, and how those systems can collapse under duress. But this isn’t an entirely bleak novel. Dellarobia is a funny and quick-witted woman and by the end of the book I was a bit in love with her. I wanted better things for her. Whether both the monarchs and Dellarobia will endure is left open to interpretation.
Fellow Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans may remember the annual Turkey Day marathons that aired during the Comedy Central years. I missed out on these because I didn’t catch the fever until the Scifi Channel era. Fortunately for me, creator Joel Hodgson will be hosting an online Turkey Day marathon this year to mark the show’s 25th anniversary. Hodgson will be selecting the episodes and I can only hope he chooses Pod People and Final Sacrifice, the best episodes from the Joel and Mike eras respectively. Depending on whether Aaron Rodgers returns in time for next Thursday’s game against Detroit, this may be my best option for Thanksgiving entertainment.
Senate Democrats went “nuclear” today and voted for a rule change that ends the filibuster for most judicial and executive nominees while preserving its use for Supreme Court nominees and legislation. This change has been a long time in coming, given the constant Republican filibustering of Obama nominees over the last few years. Republicans will almost certainly reap the rewards of this change whenever they take back the majority, so their caterwauling about a Democratic power grab should be taken with a ginormous grain of salt.
Even though this move will ultimately make it easier for conservatives to enact their agenda once they’re in power, this is the right thing to do for the long-term health of our body politic. Elections should have consequences that cannot be undermined by the minority. Most parliamentary democracies operate under this assumption and none of them seem in danger of falling into tyranny. Any hope of passing major legislation in this Congress is long gone, but at least the Senate will fulfill its obligation to approve nominees for critical executive and judicial posts.
Some Star Trek fans like to dress up as Klingons or Starfleet officers. Others like to write long-form essays that posit an economic theory of Star Trek. Rick Webb does an excellent job of explaining how a post-capitalist, post-scarcity economy might evolve from democratic traditions and a greatly expanded welfare state. In such a society, it could be perfectly acceptable for people to not work since everyone has access to the resources needed to live comfortably. Instead, people are motivated to seek personal enrichment and fulfillment. For some people, this might mean joining Starfleet. For others, it might mean becoming a competitive 3-D chess player.
It’s an economic theory that perhaps relies on an overly sunny view of human nature, but Webb makes it sound plausible. As he points out, we already are on the threshold of a post-scarcity economy, but we do a crappy job of allocating those resources. If we look at Star Trek through Webb’s critical prism, the implications are clear: humanity can do better.