Strong Hearts for the Arts

It's not one of those laughably bad web addresses (such as therapist.com), but I still found this one hard to read:


Fort Hearts. That's what I got out of that.

Tweets of 11-2013

Lots of election night tweets near the end of the list, but I removed the ones that were only good in the heat of the moment.

Farmer denied permit to build horse shelter. So he builds giant table & chairs which don't need permit. I love this.
By Shervin Pishevar

Tell you what, Twitter: maybe I'll "grow my presence" if you grow your command of transitive verbs.
By Merlin Mann

Yes, I'm here, Margaret. I'm just ignoring you.
By God

Is the toy for boys or girls? A handy flowchart:


By Joelle Burdette

Who is not part of the aging population?
By Chris Steller

If birth control is against your religion, then you need to consider the possibility that your religion is stupid.
By almightygod

An SEO expert walks into a bar, bars, beer garden, hangout, lounge, night club, mini bar, bar stool, tavern, pub, beer, wine, whiskey...
By Shaun Moynihan

Internet comments would be great if you could filter them by “Has this user accomplished anything? Anything at all?”
By Zach Holman

hahaha! RT @thewetmale: "A friend and I took care of a graffitied swastika in our town the only way we knew how."


By whitney erin boesel

Someone will always be saying you're a fool to choose meaningful work over higher pay. Look closely at their lives.
By Erin Kissane

In Microsoft Word, "track changes" is actually a device to slow down I HATE YOU I HATE YOU IT'S BEEN 20 YEARS JESUS CHRIST FIX IT FIX IT FIX
By Paul Ford

If we're looking for ways to cut the deficit, maybe stop invading countries for absolutely no reason.
By Andy Borowitz

This tweet brought to you by the I Know Right Foundation (formerly Word and Groovy), agreeing with what you just said for more than 45 years
By Chris Steller

End-of-world prophecies for 2012 are hoaxes perpetrated by the scientifically illiterate on the scientifically under-informed
By Neil deGrasse Tyson

It's strange that UFO sightings are less frequent now that we all carry HD video recording equipment with us 24/7.
By Schmoodles

Let's just all agree to never put another "computer" scene in a James Bond movie ever again.
By John Siracusa

Capitalism is so efficient that even in the "advanced" U.S., cars sleep in heated garages and oil-war veterans sleep under the viaduct.
By Free Public Transit

#1212 - Crazy Norquists's awful tax pledge makes governance job hell. (51 letters) dailypangram.tumblr.com
By Craig Eliason

i before e, except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor.
By Louie Mantia

Tomorrow I will be giving thanks that when I watch the news I never hear the phrase, "Romney Transition Team."
By Frank Conniff

Stop calling "public relations" "brand journalism". It's not journalism. It's PR. It sounds ridiculous. Stop.
By Matt Lindner

I wish more of the centralized Internet treasures like Twitter would be run by foundations like Wikimedia rather than venture capitalists.
By DHH

RT @Walkonomics: For the cost of 1km of urban freeway you could build 10,000km of bike lanes
By Richard Florida

"Wow! You've got windows!" First-time visitors to our office seem to have modest expectations.
By TC Daily Planet

"Abortion on demand" only sounds militant because women aren't supposed to make demands.
By Stacey Burns

"I am successful. Therefore, the system is fair."
By Greg Knauss

Whoa. If you are under 28 you have never lived through a colder-than-average month.
By Ken Jennings

The word is "bawl." If you're "balling like a baby" then these officers would like to have a word with you.
By Fake AP Stylebook

How many dollars does your city export every day for oil? A million? What would #freetransit save you?
By Free Public Transit

Welcome mats are a gateway rug.
By Megan Amram


Chinchilla, having its chin scratched while chillin'
By Emergency Cute Stuff

A more modest proposal: People with names ending in S are not allowed to possess anything or associate with family members.
By Bill Walsh

The people in my FB feed who complain about "taxes and big govt" are the same people talking about their Black Friday shopping plans.
By Molly Priesmeyer

Fuckin A. I once wrote a check to buy a Walkman… at a store.
By Albert

Onion Editor Struggles to Make Body of Story as Funny as Headline
By jim windolf

"No one needs outlets these days, so let's hide all of them behind beds and heavy tables." --The World's Only Hotel Interior Designer
By Rebecca Watson

The 10 commandments were written by guys that thought rape, slavery and pedophilia were less of a crime than banging the neighbor's wife.
By Goldburn

National vote total finalized. Hilariously, Mitt Romney got 47 Percent.
By Nicholas Thompson

$13 billion is all that it takes to provide basic healthcare for everyone on the planet.
By Injustice Facts

Governments in the world spend $1300 billion each year on military expenditures while it only takes $13 billion to feed the world's hungry.
By Injustice Facts

Applebee's says they won't build more restaurants because of the Affordable Care Act. Clearly we should have passed that thing years ago.
By keithlaw

Papa John's. Domino's. Godfather's. Pizza Ranch. What is it with right wingers & mediocre pizza?
By Charlie Quimby

Minnesota Republican legislative staffers rejoice to be free to look for work in their beloved private sector.
By Avidor

Mathematicians look down on Physicists, who look down on Engineers, who look down on Designers. And Designers look down on everyone.
By Naval Ravikant

Heuristic: if a place has sidewalks, it votes Democratic. Otherwise, it votes Republican.
By Nate Silver

Progress, people! Todd Akin is no longer on the House Science Committee and an actual physicist was elected to Congress.
By pourmecoffee

Omar comin' …to the chapel and he's gonna get married.
By Erika Hall

Man it feels good to wake up to potsmoking, sodomy-bonking, abortion-having, gay-marrying, socialist sharia law!!!!!
By Xeni Jardin

Koch Zero
By David Roberts

All right, America. We done good. For extra credit, please get rid of Michele Bachmann while I sleep. Good night.
By delrayser

Things to start working on tomorrow: ① New, improved ballot design, to be deployed on a national level. ② Eliminating the electoral college.
By Nick Sherman

The Republicans are running out of archetypes. War Hero didn't work, nor Millionaire. Who's on for 2016? Survivalist? Civil War Re-enactor?
By Clay Shirky

Get this one clear message, @SpeakerBoehner: This is a mandate against paralyzing, mindless obstructionism.
By pourmecoffee

I can haz carbon tax grand bargain?
By Christopher Hayes

Dear Koch Brothers: You cannot buy this country. You cannot. And now we are coming after you cause you tried
By Claire Potter

How pissed do you think Paul Ryan was when his own state didn't vote for him but elected the first openly gay senator in US history?
By JOE HOLLYWOOD

We're seeing the difference btwn mid term electorate and general election electorate. More who showed up, than country's mind changing
By Christopher Hayes

Always been fascinated that in any state, counties with big cities or institutions of higher learning, tend to vote Democrat.
By Neil deGrasse Tyson

Good God did a lot of fruitcake right-wing billionaires waste a lot of money.
By David Roberts

When I was 5, my teacher explained the electoral college to me and all I could think was “that’s stupid” … 24 years later I still think so.
By Nick Sherman

"The Rape guy lost" "Which one?" Your party has serious issues if people have to ask "Which one?"
By Alex

I want the congress to work like James Carville and Mary Matalin's marriage.
By Kristen Schaal

For those saying "if Obama wins I'm going to Australia" our PM is a single atheist woman & we have universal health care & mandatory voting.
By Justine Larbalestier

I respect ALL those who step onto the field and compete 4 public office. Much harder than yapping on a blog, Facebook or Twitter.
By Rep. Pat Garofalo

Fox News just now: "God created pollsters to make astrologers look accurate"
By Guy Adams

Paul Ryan talking about "religious freedom" being at risk under Obama is like Wal*Mart saying shopping is at risk under capitalism.
By Molly Priesmeyer

It is really sad that 90% of "urban planning" is nothing more than trying to make the private auto system work.
By Free Public Transit

The US economy added 184,000 private sector jobs in October and lost 13,000 government jobs. When will this socialist tyranny end?
By Sum Nums

People scoffed, but I think having a climate disaster in the heart of America's media brain moves the lines on the issue dramatically.
By Gerry Canavan

RT @ChrisRRegan: Romney endorsed by Kid Rock, Nugent, Meatloaf. He's running for President of Your High School Wrestling Coach's Camaro.
By Brent Burket

Aren't you glad we have an economy that allocates capital to Groupon and Zynga instead of next-gen power grids right about now?
By umair haque

Which Other Door?

I tried to enter a fast-food restaurant today at lunch. There was a pair of doors, and I (being an American, drive-on-the-right-side pedestrian) pulled on the right door handle. Which got me nowhere. There were two guys waiting somewhat patiently behind me. Flustered, I pulled on the right-side door again, thinking, This place can't be closed at this time of day.

No dice. So I tried the left-side door, which opened.

I have no idea why they had one of their main entrance doors locked. It was probably just an oversight during unlocking, since there wasn't a sign to tell customers to use the other door.

But in the case of a broken door, even if you put up a sign saying "Use other door," there can be a bit of confusion as to which door is the other door. Or at least that appears to have been the case for this set of doors I recently saw during a visit to Washington state:


I imagine the sign was modified after the receptionist, who sits just inside the door, saw one too many people pulling on the left door.

Tabs of Thanksgiving

Do more suds = better? -- Marilyn vos Savant's column in Parade magazine last Sunday featured a question about whether it makes sense to double or triple the amount of laundry detergent per load "to get more suds." vos Savant answered:

Why would any manufacturer ­direct consumers to use less than the optimal amount? Their laundry might not get clean, and the company would sell less product. That doesn’t make sense!

…Americans love suds so much that manufacturers use high-­foaming formulas whenever they can. Shampoo is a good example. The froth does nothing but make a mess in the sink that takes time and effort to wash down the drain. …The suds ... do not reflect their cleaning action.

In fact, using too much ­detergent can make laundry a bit dingy and stiff. Also, the suds can cause problems with the machine long-term. Some washing machines even have software designed to overcome our tendency to use too much detergent. They sense the ­excess suds and add extra rinses!

___

Is your phone a container or a conversation? A New York Times story (reprinted in the Star Tribune) related a series of court cases based on privacy questions about cell phones. Believe it or not, there is a legal question as to whether the contents of your phone are private. The story contained assertions and questions like this:

• "A court in Washington compared text messages to voice-mail messages that can be overheard by anyone in a room and are therefore not protected by state privacy laws." What?! Voicemail isn't overheard by anyone unless you put it on speakerphone, just like any other conversation. Was the court thinking of an old-fashioned answering machine? Or have they based their knowledge of voicemail on how it is portrayed in television shows and movies, which need it to be played aloud so the audience know what was said?
• "In Louisiana, a federal appeals court is weighing whether location records stored in smartphones deserve privacy protection, or whether they are "business records" that belong to the phone companies." Does any individual seriously think their movements are information that belongs to the business that provides their phone service? Does it make any sense to say I have to give up that most basic level of privacy in exchange for having a cell phone?
• A federal law passed in 1986 contains a provision that makes emails older than 180 days open for warrantless surveillance. The Senate is currently considering an amendment to get rid of that bit of stupidity.
• Courts have diverged on how to deal with cell phones. Ohio has ruled (logically, in my opinion) that a search warrant is needed to search phones because they are not like a piece of paper found in a suspect's pocket. California's Supreme Court, on the other hand, "said the police could look through a cellphone without a warrant so long as the phone was with the suspect at the time of arrest."

And get this: "Judges have written tomes about whether a cellphone is akin to a 'container' -- like a suitcase stuffed with pot that the police might find in a car trunk -- or whether, as the judge in the Rhode Island murder case suggested, it is more comparable to a face-to-face conversation. That judge, Judith C. Savage, described text messages as 'raw, unvarnished and immediate, revealing the most intimate of thoughts and emotions.' Citizens should expect them to be private, she said."

Obviously, a modern phone is full of conversations, let alone notes to self and who knows what other personal information about medications, diet, and so on. It has about as much in common with the trunk of your car as it does with the trunk of an elephant.
____

Shaking off the no-tax pledge -- In the stories about Republican members of Congress beginning to shake off Grover Norquist's grip upon their voting power, I thought there were some interesting rhetorical moves. First, we had Georgia's Saxby Chambliss saying "I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge." This was followed by an even stronger statement by New York Rep. Peter King, who said, "A pledge you signed 20 years ago, 18 years ago, is for that Congress. For instance, if I were in Congress in 1941, I would have signed a declaration of war against Japan. I'm not going to attack Japan today. The world has changed and the economic situation is different." Wow, that's such fast footwork, it almost sounds like the work of Frank Luntz.

(Before we make heroes of these guys, let's not forget that Chambliss got into office by defaming his opponent, wounded Vietnam veteran Senator Max Cleland. Or that King is the House committee chair who held hearings on Muslim fanatics, refusing to include any testimony about fanatics from other religions.)
____

Is homework necessary? Alfie Kohn, summarizing some recent research in Psychology Today, is doubtful, at least when it comes to correlations between homework and outcomes on standardized tests. Even in math. Even in high school.
____

Vulnerability 101 -- I caught most of the public radio show On Being last Sunday. The guest was a social work professor named Brené Brown, whose research area is vulnerability. I recommend listening to it, particularly  the parts about gender roles, and also watching Brown's TED talk.
____

You have to give to get -- NPR yesterday carried a story about the psychology of reciprocation. It started with the story of a professor who sent out 6,000 Christmas cards to people he didn't know… and who got over 1,200 in return, including ones with three-page, hand-written letters. As we all know, receiving return address labels along with a fundraising appeal from a nonprofit makes it hard to not send them money. But the fact in the story that I didn't know was this: When restaurant servers present mints along with the check, their tips increase 3.3 percent. And if the server looks you in the eye and gives you an extra mint, tips go up over 20 percent.
____

Just because pharma is bad doesn't mean science is bad -- Science-Based Medicine's excellent pharmacist-in-residence Scott Gavura gives the best review I've seen of Ben Goldacre's book Bad Pharma. As he did in Bad Science, Goldacre does a thorough job of pointing out all the problems with his subject, especially, in this case, how drugs are evaluated and marketed. Gavura fairly summarizes Goldacre's points, yet grounds his review and the book in the science-based approach to medicine, rather than allowing it to become a launching pad for unproven alternative treatments.

Wear a Skirt When You Change that Diaper!

I knew I couldn't be the only one who noticed the iconography of diaper-changing tables. Nation writer Jessica Valenti recently posted this to her Tumblr:


With the comment: "Dudes are the default…until there’s a diaper to change."

She saw these on a Jet Blue flight. Although to be fair, how many women need to be told to put their trash in the container? And I still can't figure out why anyone needs to be urged to sit in the seat.

Share the Wealth, Walmart

In recognition of the nascent efforts to organize workers at Walmart, I thought this cartoon by Barry Deutsch was called for:


As the blogger Edushyster put it,

Could Walmart really afford to pay its workers more, without cutting into the profits that are used to fund essential education rephorm work?

Former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget calculated that Walmart could give every one of its 1.1 million associates a $5000 raise and still be left with an operating profit of $18 billion per year. As for the six members of the Walton family, they have the same net worth as THE BOTTOM 41.5% of AMERICANS COMBINED.

Edushyster's post takes a look at the Walton family's support for education reform (sometimes called rephorm or even deform), pointing out that raising the wages of Walmart's workers would have more positive effects on kids' educational outcomes than funding testing, closing schools, and firing teachers.

Living the Dream Unknowingly

Much as I love Steven Johnson, I haven't yet read his latest book, Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age. But if this article/excerpt is any indication, it's well worth reading:

The public sector doesn't have billions of dollars to spend on marketing campaigns to trumpet its successes. A multinational corporation invents a slightly better detergent, and it will spend a legitimate fortune to alert the world that the product is now "new and improved." But no one takes out a prime-time ad campaign to tout the remarkable decrease in air pollution that we have seen over the past few decades, even thought that success story is far more important than a trivial improvement in laundry soap.

That blind spot is compounded by the deeper lack of interest in stories of incremental progress. Curmudgeons, doomsayers, utopians and declinists all have an easier time getting our attention than opinion leaders who want to celebrate slow and steady improvement.

--

I suspect, in the long run, the media bias against incremental progress may be more damaging than any bias the media display toward the political left or right. The media are heavily biased toward extreme events, and they are slightly biased toward negative events -- though in their defense, that bias may just be a reflection of the human brain's propensity to focus more on negative information than positive, a trait extensively documented by neuroscience and psychology studies.

--

The one positive social trend that did generate a significant amount of coverage -- the extraordinary drop in the U.S. crime rate since the mid-'90s -- seems to have been roundly ignored by the general public. The violent crime rate (crimes per thousand people) dropped from 51 to 15 between 1995 and 2010, truly one of the most inspiring stories of societal progress in our lifetime. And yet according to a series of Gallup polls conducted over the past 10 years, more than two-thirds of Americans believe that crime has been getting worse, year after year.

I love that bit about the public sector lacking effective PR efforts. Aside from the funding question, I think we resist that type of effort because it smacks of Soviet propaganda.


We're Living the Dream; We Just Don't Realize It

Olympia Scribbles

At the New Moon Cafe in Olympia, Washington, they place small notebooks on each table for the patrons to write or draw in. Here is a nonrandom sampling.


This was the nicest piece in the book.


This is all made from one continuous line.


Funny!


The story above the lettering is worth a read, too.

Random Shots of Vancouver

A brief sojourn in Vancouver, B.C., for Thanksgiving resulted in just a few photos of things that caught my eye.

First, the best among several clever candy bars in a display:


(That's the Last Supper Bar just below it.)

The Granville Island area is a big tourist attraction with artisans and a big public market, but this sign from its previous life as a working part of the city was perhaps the most interesting thing there:


Inside the marketplace, there were these nifty gourds:


I understand that Vancouver's population is roughly divisible into one-third Chinese, one-third Indian (from the subcontinent), and one-third European. This poster -- mimicking the look of old monster movie promos -- caught my eye because the terrified woman is Asian:


Since the early 1980s, I've been wishing for retro artwork that reflects the diversity of modern life, so I'm always happy when I see an example of it.

Finally, a bit of greenery. Vancouver is rainy, as you may have heard. When we were there, it was not only rainy but dreary, with the clouds sitting so low you couldn't see any of the scenic mountains that surround it (or so they tell me... I couldn't see them, so maybe they don't exist!). But its climate is advantageous to certain kinds of plants we can't grow in Minnesota, so it has its advantages.


This is a monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana), which is clearly an evergreen but not a conifer. It's an ancient species, sometimes referred to as a living fossil, from South America, particularly Chile. Those aren't needles -- each branchlet is more like an Echeveria or Sedum, only very sharp. I didn't know what it was without asking, since the only ones I've seen in person were tiny seedlings. This one was about 40 feet tall.

MST3K of the Past

Here's a blast from the past, or, at least, my past: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day bits from their Turkey Day marathon about 20 years ago.

It appears it's not set up to allow embedding, so you'll have to follow the link to view it. It's about 5 minutes long.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What Is the Fleron Signaler?

At first glance, I thought it was a Kodak box of some kind, based on the colors, but I soon figured out it wasn't.


A little research revealed that it was a Boy Scout toy (or tool), used for teaching Morse code in the early days of radio. Aside from the lettering, which is beautiful, the thing that I like best about the package is the wording on the left side: "It's interesting • It's profitable • It's fun."

Profitable?

A Big Pointer

Centralia, Washington, is a place with a lot to recommend it to visitors, but for today all I can tell you is that there's a huge pencil there.


It was built by the owner of the house, which is the office of a writing business, the Freeman Center.


The eraser is made from foam rubber, the rest in wood and metal.

Next: Full Metal Bagels

One of the obvious rules when creating a trademarkable product name is that it can't use words that already have a meaning. That's what brought us the SuperValu grocery store chain, Diet Rite cola, Nestle's Quik, Tastee Freeze, and that infamous Midwestern chain of convenience stores, Kum and Go.

But I guess these guys didn't hear about the addendum to that rule: The spelling you use can't be a word that means something else:


That is some shiny salmon.

The Biggest T-Rex of All

This cartoon by the Chicago Tribune's Scott Stantis ran in today's Star Tribune:


It sums up my feelings about the unimportance of the Petraeus hubbub, but the thing that I would correct is the labels on the dinosaurs. Or maybe I'd add an even bigger dinosaur that threatens not just Uncle Sam but all of the other dinos: Climate change. Seems like a pretty big omission.

Kirk Lyttle: Grace Under Fire

It's been a while since I've heaped any praise on Pioneer Press illustrator Kirk Lyttle, one of a few reasons I still subscribe to the increasingly strident, right-wing newspaper that covers our capital city. The other reasons are economics columnist Ed Lotterman and David Steinlicht's In This Corner cartoon. Oh, and Hilary Price's Rhymes with Orange and Dan Piraro's Bizarro comics, too. I appreciate Julio Ojeda-Zapata and Ruben Rosario, as well, but it seems as though neither one writes very frequently, Rosario for obvious reasons.

But I digress. The subject was Kirk Lyttle.


Yesterday's illustration is a cheeky mix of subversive feminism and artistic talent. I couldn't help laughing at Polly pilgrim's crazed expression and how perfectly it captures the feeling I've had when  cooking for a crowd.

Completely undermining the headline (unless her name is Grace, I don't see any grace in this image), the art also pokes fun at the year-in, year-out tradition of newspapers writing up the same damned story about Thanksgiving preparations.

A+ for Kirk Lyttle this Thanksgiving.

No Bushes, No Kennedys

This is enough to make me gag (click to enlarge for maximum regurgitation reflex):


I feel exactly the same way about the passel of Kennedys and Shrivers. We don't need you, so please don't try to "help" us.

I've got a deal for Republicans: If you promise not to support second-, third- or fourth-generation politicians in your party, I promise not to in mine. This is not what democracy looks like.

When Is Good Bad?

I had an odd moment this morning while listening to MPR's Morning Edition. Local anchor Cathy Wurzer interviewed an energy analyst about ethanol production. Basically, demand is down for gasoline and therefore also for the ethanol that is mixed into the gas. This is decreasing profit margins dangerously for many ethanol producers in Minnesota, and will soon force some of them to go bankrupt.

Decreased demand for fuel was never recognized as a good thing -- only as a problem.

What is that about, MPR?

I had a similar thought during an episode of Up with Chris Hayes last month. In it, a miner from southeastern Ohio was on to talk about the effects of decreasing coal demand on his area and livelihood.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We can all empathize with people who work at an ethanol plant or in a coal mine and who lose their jobs because of decreased demand. But isn't decreased demand the point?

Another recent article touched on this in a different way -- an AP story titled Meeting the Transportation Needs of Aging Baby Boomers Could Once Again Change Society. The story points out that it was baby boomers who made the U.S. into a culture of two-car families, and as well as two-income families as the rule, doubling the number of miles driven (even accounting for the rate of population growth). As boomers retire, we will drive less for work and in at least some if not many cases, move closer to amenities we need on a daily basis.

Combined with the increased fuel economy standards planned for the next 10 years, gas demand should stay down for the foreseeable future. Adding some free public transit wouldn't hurt either.

It's time to start recognizing this is the reality we live in, and deal with it. The need is to plan for these transitions, rather than let the market run rough-shod over people's lives. We can't spend time mourning what's lost in our unsustainable lifestyles.

Where the Money Comes From

Wired has a new widget that lets you see who's bought your legislator or Congressional reps. Neat!
 

Here's the scoop on my reps and a few others nearby:

• Al Franken isn't even on the list. I guess that means he hasn't taken any money.
• Amy Klobuchar (our other senator, who was just reelected) got $7 million, making her number 26 out of 100 senators. Her top ten include four banks and two law firms (she's a former prosecutor).
• My representative, Betty McCollum, is ranked 432 out of 435 members of the house in terms of money received. More than half of her top 10 are Native American tribes, whose main interest is probably in protecting their state-approved mandate on gambling, but could also be because she's on an Appropriations subcommittee devoted to the interior and environment.
• Conversely, Michelle Bachmann raised the most money of any member of the House.
• Minneapolis Rep. Keith Ellison is ranked 122nd. His top 10 list includes several individuals, and no overall pattern.

What about your representatives?

Tabs for the First Day Like Winter

It must have been the election, but the number of tabs open in my browsers has proliferated to the point where nothing is working. So it's time to close as many as possible and consign them to the great filing cabinet in the sky.
____

The Star Tribune's excuse for a conservative columnist, Jason Lewis, published one of the silliest pieces of writing I've read in a long time yesterday. Every point he makes about the voter ID law's defeat is stupid or wrong. I'll let MinnPost's Eric Black do the full critique, but I have to point out the thing that made me exclaim aloud: Lewis's labeling of Republican former Governor Arne Carlson as the "accidental" governor. While that adjective could be used to describe how Carlson got into office, it doesn't change the fact that Carlson is widely regarded as the best governor Minnesota's had in the past 50 years, one who built consensus across party lines in a way that is almost never done. Even people like me agree with that assessment. But, of course, working with the other party makes Carlson a RINO to extremists like Lewis.
____

To make up for running Lewis, the Strib outdid itself on page A13, compiling stories from a range of sources and on a bunch of science and health topics:

• The most recent thinking shows that predictions of global warming are likely to come out on the high end of the ranges that have been modeled -- 8 degrees or more, rather than 3.
• A report showing evidence that exercise may be more important to longevity than maintaining a normal weight.
• Preliminary evidence that statins, which are used to treat high cholesterol, may also inhibit reduce cancer deaths.
• Clear indication that fish oil supplements don't decrease the risk of stroke, though eating fish does have a small effect, although it may not be causal relationship, as indicated in my favorite quote: "When you eat fish more frequently, you eat smaller amounts of potentially bad proteins like red meat." (same link as the statin story).
• Resveratrol (that thing in red wine we've all heard about) has no effect, good or bad, on healthy, non-obese women (same link as the statin story).

____

Did you know that the federal government spends about $7 per senior for each $1 it spends on kids? That's according to Ron Brownstein in the National Journal.
____

This is getting lots of coverage, but in case you didn't hear, at the same time Occupy Wall Street is digging in to help people after Hurricane Sandy, it has also started the Rolling Jubilee.

Someone at OWS had the brilliant idea to buy up debts for pennies on the dollar -- just like the debt collection sharks do -- but instead of collecting it, the new "owners" will forgive the debt. They're raising money through donations and a concert scheduled for November 15. The approximately $100,000 raised so far is enough to cancel over $2 million of debt.
____

The Rockaways area of Queens was particularly hard-hit by Sandy, and the recovery there is very slow. In fact, it sounds like it can't even be called a recovery -- it's still in triage. Doctors Without Borders has even set up one of their field clinics. The Huffington Post today published a super-long piece on all of the areas of New York and New Jersey that were flooded, and how those places were developed in spite of clear knowledge that they were flood zones. Development in the Rockaways stands out for its utter disregard for human life:

On the eastern end of the peninsula, the city built huge public housing complexes. The Rockaways contained 57 percent of all low-income housing in the borough of Queens by 1975, though it contained only five percent of its population, according to a history of the region in the publication City Limits.

Nursing homes, many established in the pre-air conditioning era when ocean breezes were welcome, crowd the narrow peninsula. Today, half of all such facilities in the city are in the Rockaways, many directly adjacent to the ocean. (emphasis added)

____

The 100th anniversary of World War I is coming up, and British Prime Minister David Cameron has plans for celebrations. The Guardian reminds us why it's not something to celebrate, and what was behind it in the first place.
____

There's a documentary in production about food co-ops, and here's a 15-minute clip about our Twin Cities food co-ops. I'm one co-op stalker who can't wait to see the whole film!
___

I loved the story on NPR Weekend Edition Saturday about composer John Williams. He's recently turned 80, and shows no sign of slowing down. "I'm happy to be busy," he said. "I'm happy to have a wonderful family. And I think also, especially for practicing musicians, age is not so much of a concern because a lifetime is just simply not long enough for the study of music anyway. You're never anywhere near finished. So the idea of retiring or putting it aside is unthinkable. There's too much to learn."

Sometimes I think the future of humankind can be seen in musicians.
____

There are lots more tabs sitting open... but I think that's enough for now.

Too Many Maps

I came across this map last week:


Originally from a White House educational website, it was shared around Facebook by liberals with some pointed text asking people if the map's regions reminded anyone of anything. This map of Obama and Romney votes by state is what they were referring to:


There are definitely a large number of correlations between slave states/Romney votes and free states/Obama votes. But what's interesting is the parts that don't correlate -- Colorado; New Mexico; Florida; Virginia, for goodness sake; and (in the 2008 election) North Carolina. Maryland, too, but Maryland left the South in the Civil War. And let's not forget to point out that Indiana now correlates in the opposite direction.

Looking at a county-by-county version of the election map from Mark Newman at the University of Michigan begins to shed some light on those differences:



Look at all the blue clusters inside former slave states that have turned from red to blue, and even in the states that still turn out as red. Clustered around college towns and cities, they've been adding Democratic-leaning voters in recent years. Often, these cities are exactly the kinds that Richard Florida talks about as the engines of the creative economy of the future. (My favorite blue islands on this map, though, are the Indian reservations in states like the Dakotas, Arizona, and New Mexico. As Louise Erdrich wrote last week, reservations may have supplied the margin needed by Democrats like Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota.)

Even more interesting than the geographically accurate county map is this population-adjusted county map from Mark Newman:


Here you can see how little red there is in terms of population in the West, particularly, and see how the Midwestern blue pockets that seemed lost in a sea of red balloon up and become more substantial. Texas, you'll note, is becoming much more blue than it looks on the geographically accurate county map; it's predicted that with the growth of Latino voters, Texas will soon be purple if not blue. (50,000 Latinos turn 18 every year, and a lot of them are in Texas.)

All this makes me think of Colin Woodard's excellent book American Nations. I read it last summer and the length of time it's taken me to write about it is in reverse proportion to how great I thought it was. I first heard about it in an Alternet article analyzing how the values of the deep South have come to dominate American politics. (A scary bit of writing, that.)

As Woodard's subtitle puts it, North America has eleven rival regional cultures, and these are largely what's driving the electoral map. His argument is that the cultures of each nation were established centuries ago, usually at or soon after the first European settlement (or invasion, depending on your point of view, since one of the Woodard's nations is Canada's First Nation area). The first settlers, based on their ancestral cultures in Europe, established the tone in their approach to civil society and its institutions, its attitude toward taxation, education, and even what constitutes liberty (or freedom -- even these words have different historical resonances). These areas then spread their populations westward, resulting in outbreaks of New England Yankeedom in Minnesota or Midlands Philadelphia in Kansas.

Woodard splits the main part of the South into three nations:

• Tidewater -- eastern Virginia and North Carolina (plus parts of Delaware and Maryland)
• Deep South -- South Carolina to northern Florida, running west into Texas
• Greater Appalachia -- the mountainous western portions of Virginia and North Carolina, running west through Oklahoma and northern Texas

I've never thought much about the differences among Southerners, so this was probably the most revelatory part of the book for me. Tidewater was settled by younger sons of British gentry who started plantations and owned slaves. They believed they were better than everyone else, a natural elite, but they also believed in a classical republicanism (as in ancient Greece, where the elites got to participate in a democracy).

The Deep South, on the other hand, was settled later, starting in South Carolina by younger sons of Barbados slave-holders (who had themselves been younger sons of British gentry). On top of their belief in their natural aristocracy, they brought from Barbados the most brutal slave-holding culture the world has known in recent centuries.

Appalachia was settled later than these two coastal areas, and became home to Irish and Scottish immigrants who were tired of being pushed around by the British. They had lived for centuries in a state of constant warfare and wanted to get away from authority. The coastal aristocracies were all too happy to have them settle the mountainous areas that bordered Indian country, happy to have them as an armed shield. The Scots and Irish were not interested in holding slaves, and in fact mostly fought with the North in the Civil War (which is what created West Virginia; eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama also tried to secede).

The Left Coast -- the farthest west parts of Washington, Oregon, and California -- were settled by Yankees and Midlanders, while the huge, less-populated area of the Far West is made up of people from all over, but whose unique relationship to their wide-open land, with its corporate control by railroads and mining operations, not to mention huge swaths of government-owned land, makes them contrarian to almost everything.

El Norte is an important nation in Woodard's book as well, and its effects were clearly in evidence in the 2012 election. Made up of the parts of the U.S. that were under Spanish or Mexican rule into the 19th century, it's growing into parts of the Far West and the western end of Greater Appalachia, and hence the growing purplish tone in Texas.

There's a lot more to say about American Nations, which makes me think I should write another post about it with some quotes. It appears I have left out any details about the northeast, for instance. But perhaps you'll have a chance to read it for yourself before then. I recommend it.
____

Update: Colin Woodard just wrote his own analysis of the election results and the 11 nations for Bloomberg News, reprinted in the Star Tribune.

The New Coalition

The post-election conversation on MSNBC's Up with Chris Hayes this morning was all about the new racial and ethnic realities of the American electorate. The panel brought together three from the left -- Atlantic writer Ta-Nehesi Coates (African-American), Grio writer Goldie Taylor (African-American), and undocumented-immigrant organizer Lorella Praeli of United We Dream -- with Avik Roy, an Indian-American former Romney adviser on health care.

It was a raw discussion, the kind of conversation that should happen more often in this country. (The video is sliced up into various segments here, here, and here. There may be even more segments than that -- it was the first hour of the show.) Roy did his best to hold up the conservative standard in the face of the life experience and skepticism among the other panelists.

All of them acknowledged that a pro-Obama coalition formed for this election that included African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, the unchurched, GLBT folks, and unmarried white women. But they also agreed with this statement made by Roy:

To conservatives who are panicking…and thinking we're demographically doomed…[remember] there are no permanent majorities in politics. Because people do adapt. It's too competitive, people will figure it out, Republicans will figure it out.

My opinion is that Republicans will be quick to figure out a way to throw a virtual bomb into the middle of the coalition, driving apart blacks and Latinos or white women and blacks, or what have you.

To prevent that from happening, I want to remind everyone of the final verse of the song "Talking Union," which spends most of its verses setting up the problem of workers organizing against oppressive bosses, but ends with its best effort at a solution:

If you don't let Red-baiting break you up
If you don't let stool pigeons break you up
If you don't let vigilantes break you up
If you don't let race hatred break you up
You'll win.
What I mean: take it easy, but take it.

Some of the divisive topics may have changed -- sexual orientation and religion particularly come to mind -- but the point stands. Be aware of when Karl Rove or Frank Luntz or whatever part of the Right's brain trust applies a lever designed to drive us apart and don't let it work.

A couple of other notes:

Ta-Nahesi Coates should be on every episode.

Race is a weird, weird category, which would be objectively meaningless if it weren't for all of its historical and cultural underpinnings. As an illustration, look at this image of Taylor and Roy, sitting side by side. One is African American and the other Indian American. But they look like they could be cousins. How can anyone insist that race is anything but a construct?

What It Was Like to Be There

A great moment in citizen-captured video from 1:40 a.m. on Wednesday at the Minnesotans United for All Families election party.

Be sure to get to the 3:00 minute mark.



Wow.

Free Public Transit

My brain is still punch-drunk from the election, but here is a short piece from Free Public Transit, some activist folks I've been following on Twitter: It's the Demand, Stupid.

The payback [of free public transit] is immediate and greater than the "lost" revenue. Free transit is simple and easy to see. There are no complicated carbon-pricing indexes to be manipulated. And the myriad benefits are out in the open for all to see: less noise, less congestion, less parking problems, fewer collisions, lower medical costs

I wonder what Maggie Koerth-Baker would think of these guys' ideas?

After the Deluge of the Election

I used up most of my mental energy commenting about the election on Twitter and Facebook last night, under my uncloaked identity, so there's not a lot left to say here. Obviously, I am thrilled that Minnesota defeated both of its retrograde constitutional amendments! (Yes, that is an exclamation point from me.) Looks like those phone calls were worth it.

Other favorite outcomes:

• Democrats retaining the U.S. Senate
• Minnesota Democrats retaking both houses of our legislature
• Binders full of women getting elected, including Tammy Duckworth, Tammy Baldwin, Krysten Sinema, Elizabeth Warren, and Heidi Heitkamp
• Defeating Missouri's Todd Akin and the other rape apologist from Indiana
• Passage of same-sex marriage in three states and marijuana legalization in two
• Getting rid of Three Strikes sentencing in California
• Allen West losing his seat in the House (too bad we couldn't quite get rid of Michelle Bachmann; sorry about that)

I'm sad that Henry Waxman and Pete Stark both lost their seats, but in some ways, I have to think almost 40 years in office is enough, even for great members like they have been. Guys—make like Barney Frank and retire to write a book.

A few fun tweets from the blizzard:

• @robpegoraro: Hey, when do all the CEOs who tried to intimidate their employees into voting for Romney start the promised mass firings?
• ‏@drgrist: Billionaires wasted more money trying to get rid of Obama than any reasonable carbon policy would have cost them.
• ‏@AliVelshi: If GOP senators hadn't prevented Elizabeth Warren's nomination to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she'd never have run for Senate
• @Alex: "The Rape guy lost." "Which one?" Your party has serious issues if people have to ask "Which one?"
• @kristenschaaled I want the congress to work like James Carville and Mary Matalin's marriage.
• @guyadams: Fox News just now: "God created pollsters to make astrologers look accurate"

John Scalzi wrote one of his usually bracing posts relaying his opinions. A not-bad comment thread follows, especially if you kind of blur your eyes when you encounter the couple of trollish guys who escaped the Mallet of Loving Correction®. There was one comment I particularly want to call attention to, by a woman named Aunt Vixen, responding to the trolls who repeated the "Obama and Democrats think everyone should suck at the teat of big government" refrain:

Do I want everyone (for whatever values you assign to “everyone”) to be dependent on the government? Of course not. Self-sufficiency is a marvelous thing, for those who can achieve it. No: what I want is for everyone to be able to rely on the government.

Language is so important. Dependence vs. reliance. Look it up. Oh hey: it works with the co- prefix also. Co-dependence is bad for everyone; but wouldn’t it be great if, given a citizenry who could rely on their government, we also had a government that could rely on its citizens?

And to conclude this election coverage, here's a brief essay (poem?) delivered by Melissa Harris-Perry during her Sunday MSNBC show on why she votes:

I vote because it took so long for so many of us to be included in "We the people."
We the people who tilled the soil, cleared the forest, harvested the crops -- for no compensation.
We the people who endured the horror of redemption after Reconstruction and carried the weight of Jim Crow.
We the people who swung from Southern trees and stood on the front lines of foreign wars.
We the people who taught our children to read even when the schools had no books.
We the people who worshiped a god of liberation even as we suffered oppression.
We the people who gave America back its highest ideals with our nonviolent struggle against injustice.
We the people are Americans, and we prove it by voting. That's why I vote.

Voting, 2012

I'm too distracted by the election to write much, but here are a couple of links that everyone should read:

• From Salon, a careful look at the outrageous, last-minute, secret software updates to the voting machines in a bunch of Ohio counties. The changes were initiated by that prince of a guy, John Husted, the Republican-first secretary-of-state-second. (Not to mention the changes he made to provisional balloting, also at the last minute.)
• From The Atlantic, an essay on seven-hour early voting waits in Miami and a plaintive cry to fix this.

What would it take to have a national voting system that guarantees polls are open from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. everywhere (or even better, all day Saturday and Sunday instead of Tuesday)? With the same number of voting booths and polling workers per capita registered voters, so there aren't short-to-no lines in some places and hours-long waits in others?

My voting experience today -- in a heavily white, well-to-do area of Saint Paul -- was no waiting at all at 9:10 a.m. A friend who voted in South Minneapolis's Central neighborhood left the line at her polling place in the morning because she had an appointment. When she returned around lunch time to try again, she found the door to her polling place locked:

I abandoned the completely unexpected voting line this AM because I had an appointment. I just went back over the lunch hour and WAS TURNED AWAY! I don't know if I will get a third opportunity to try to vote today.

I was told the building was "at capacity." They had the doors locked and only because I [pounded on the door] did they open them to give me that excuse.

Who knows how many people just walked away when they couldn't get in, given the demographics (e.g. high non-English speakers, many new voters, high poverty, etc.) of my neighborhood.

This voter is pretty tied in and made a series of calls, including to her city council member, who responded to the Facebook post: "they have long lines at Green Central. Elections staff is conferring with the judges to makes sure things are more smooth at that location. Also, park staff will be coming out more frequently to talk to voters and let them know why there is a line outside. They also are going to see if they can get coffee or chairs or something for people who have to wait outside the building."

But locking the doors? What? Let a line form outside and manage it, for pete's sake.

Let's all make a pledge to not to forget about this once the election is over -- I, for one, promise! And I'm going to sign up to be an election judge, too.
____

Minnesota Public Radio has a live blog going for the night, already chock full of stuff I haven't read yet. It's being compiled by Jon Gordon, who created the excellent Future Tense podcast.

National Popular Vote

Tomorrow night or definitely by Wednesday (right? right?), we'll know who's won the presidency.

It may be one of those cases where one candidate wins the popular vote while another wins the electoral college. But even if it isn't, I hope everyone will seriously consider the ideas of National Popular Vote.

This is a grassroots effort to pass laws, state by state, to allocate that state's electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote, regardless of how the state's vote totals. The laws, which have been passed in eight states and the District of Columbia so far (including California, for a total of 132 electoral votes), do not go into effect unless and until enough states have passed comparable bills to ensure 270 votes.

This is a way of eliminating the electoral college without amending the Constitution. It has been endorsed by the League of Women Voters and a range of newspaper editorial pages. There are Republicans and Democrats on its advisory board.

Imagine -- no more swing states inundated with ads and attention from the candidates while the rest of us might as well not be voting. No more repressed turnout in "safe" states. No more possibility that the total vote count is meaningless.

The Minnesota sponsors are Rep. Frank Hornstein and Sen. Ann Rest. I'll be in touch with them soon to see what I can do to help.

Here is a list of frequently asked questions. 

They Is at Fault

Driving through Sheboygan, Wisconsin, I saw a billboard with a headline that looked like this:


I couldn't get a photo in time, but take my word for it — this is what it said and what it looked like, down to the Times Roman Bold with they in bold italic. Below the headline was the URL www.great-marriages.org.

As I've written before, I'm ambivalent about the use of they as a gender-neutral pronoun. We definitely need one in this language of ours, and it's generally fine in spoken language, but when it gets into writing, they has a few problems, as this sentence shows.

First is just the nonsensicalness of it. In such an intimate question, the use of a plural is so jarring that  I almost thought I was supposed to ask my spouse if some other group of people feels loved. You know how we have a tendency to use an anonymous they when talking about authorities? (As in "They say we're young and we don't know/Won't find out until we grow.") They probably feel very unloved, since everyone is always talking about them behind their backs.

The next most prominent problem is the lack of agreement, not just between the noun and the pronoun, but between the pronoun and the verb. If they is standing in for the singular she or he, then why not use feels instead of feel?


Nooo, not for a minute, right?

Maybe the billboard's sponsors should have reworded it, which is usually the best option:

• Does your spouse feel loved? Ask.
• Ask your spouse: Do you feel loved?

I kind of like that second one. It's very active and gets the message across more clearly. The Great Marriages folks are welcome to use it.

Risqué Business in Wisconsin

From the road in Wisconsin, a few photos of the amusing visuals I found in the Badger State.


A classic. Not sure if it's meant to be titillating or just ingratiating.


Finally, someone got us right!


You'll just have to look this one up.

More Aliens Among Us

It's been a while since I posted an example of diaper-changing-table iconography. Seems like the ones I see lately are all the same.

Until today. This one was seen on the outskirts of Green Bay, Wisconsin:


And just in case you can't get close enough to that scary iconography, here it is larger than any of us could possibly enjoy:


Babies. They inspire the greatest art.

The Exuberance of Child Paintings

I had the chance to wander through an elementary school tonight, and came across these three paintings hung on a bulletin board. They were just the tonic for my late-in-the-election, post-Sandy mood. (Click any image to see it larger)

I like to call this one Green Snow:


This one might be called Space Bear:


And this one is possibly called If Music Were Colors:


Thanks, kids, for brightening my day.