Under the Weather
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Scratching Sounds | Leave a Comment
No, this morning it’s not about global warming — I’m sick, or feeling like I’m sick, or feeling/looking like shit, whichever applies when all else fails.
Despite some good sleep, I awoke this morning still feeling ‘under the weather,’ an odd term covering a lot of ugly:
somewhat ill or prone to illness; “my poor ailing grandmother”; “feeling a bit indisposed today”; “you look a little peaked”; “feeling poorly”; “a sickly child”; “is unwell and can’t come to work” ailing, indisposed, peaked, poorly, unwell, sickly, seedy
ill, sick – affected by an impairment of normal physical or mental function; “ill from the monotony of his suffering”
(Illustration found here).
Not at death’s door, but just not at the prime — I really couldn’t give a fat-rat’s-ass about any news this morning — sick and tired of hearing about the bat-shit crazy GOP.
A appologize to the handful of readers of this humble blog — but I’m much-too involved with Boiron's Oscillococcinum this morning, along with downing BC powders (845 mg of aspirin) every few half-hours.
Maybe better tomorrow — but at least it’s Friday!
Table Scraps
Filed Under Bullshit, Scratching Sounds | Leave a Comment
Just surfing the news this early Saturday morning, which dawned like a warehouse-of-other-Saturdays, though some would gullibly think it special, and rightly so, mainly due to the nasty fact it’s been so proclaimed for so long by just about everybody, people believe it hook, line and old, bearded-guy in a red costume.
An example of the tipping of the cowshit bowl — in a new poll on the laughingly-fabricated controversy on how to greet one another during this particular time period, it’s young people vs the old: Older generations were also more likely to choose “Merry Christmas (74 percent),” while 50 percent of millennials (people ages 18-30) preferred to make merry with “Happy Holidays.”
And all make merry with the dollar.
(Illustration of Picasso’s ‘Poor People on the Seashore‘ — often called The Tragedy — found here).
Meanwhile, beyond the millions of those American dollars US peoples don’t have but spent anyway the last few days, a car bomb in Syria yesterday might spark some bad shit — and the whole episode right now is mighty confusing.
As per here and here and here if so inclined.
The most puzzling, though, was a story from Reuters, which carried this lede: Thousands of Syrians chanted “Death to America” on Saturday during funeral processions in Damascus for at least 44 people killed in twin suicide bombings that rocked the capital.
There’s absolutely nothing, however, not even a hint, in the rest of the piece on why ‘Death to America‘ was featured — just more cranked-up hatred for “humanity and religion” for whoever carried out the bombings, but zero information on how America played into the whole thing.
Syria is a nasty piece of work right now.
Along with…Russia.
Arab Spring set as Moscow’s Winter?
From the BBC this morning:
Tens of thousands of people have rallied in central Moscow in a show of anger at alleged electoral fraud.
They passed a resolution “not to give a single vote to Vladimir Putin” at next year’s presidential election.
Protest leader Alexei Navalny told the crowd to loud applause that Russians would no longer tolerate corruption.
“I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and [Government House] right now but we are peaceful people and won’t do that just yet,” he said.
Demonstrators say parliamentary elections on 4 December, which were won by Mr Putin’s party, were rigged. The government denies the accusation.
And like all good government organs:
At least 28,000 people turned out in the capital, according to the Russian interior ministry, but rally organisers said the true number was around 120,000.
…
Mr Putin poured scorn on protesters during a recent live chat on Russian TV, calling them “Banderlog” after the lawless monkeys in The Jungle Book, and likening their protest symbol, a white ribbon, to a condom.
However he also said protesters had the right to demonstrate if they kept within the law.
Yeah right.
Dear Mr. Putin could have been taking some talking points right out of the mouthpiece-playbook of America’s rich and nefarious — rich US peoples think the “imbeciles” of the relentless Occupy movement are nothing more than a gnat to be swatted away.
Last Thursday, I posted a blog on a particular Bloomberg article transcribing the various attitudes of US wealthy in regards to the rest of America — they want respect for being rich, and they’re all “fat cats” and really just don’t care.
The reason is that don’t have to, as per this look at the current economic set-up:
In terms of types of financial wealth, the top one percent of households have 38.3 percent of all privately held stock, 60.6 percent of financial securities, and 62.4 percent of business equity.
The top 10 percent have 80 percent to 90 percent of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75 percent of non-home real estate.
Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10 percent of the people own the United States of America.
And worldwide, the the US is worse in income equality than nearly all of West Africa, North Africa, Europe, and Asia. We’re on par with some of the world’s most troubled countries, and not far from the perpetual conflict zones of Latin American and Sub-Saharan Africa.
A real-sorry state of affairs.
One rich fat cat, Stephen Schwarzman, blubbered out that one needs to “have to have skin in the game” in order to be like him — rich, successful.
One of the most-right-on views of this ‘skin game‘ for the rich vs poor came this morning from the comments section at Balloon Juice off a post on Matt Taibbi’s piece in Rolling Stone last week:
Talk about skin in the game.
I am bored to death with the rich not having skin in the war game.
They were the ones who started these wars.
The next time your wingnut uncle whines about high taxes, ask him the following: “Do you believe that all those soldiers who are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan are patriotic?
Is it patriotic to give your life for this country?”
When he inevitably says “yes” then ask “Then why don’t you think that it is patriotic for you to give your money to pay for the soldier’s salary, and healthcare, and burial, and family?
Is your money worth more than his life”
Exactly, asshole.
One bad element for having way-too-much money (among a shit-mile-long list of bad elements) is blind hypocrisy, that smug inability to see beyond that mug in the mirror — an invisible, false shield of self.
Taibbi pretty-much nails that whole whining-rich motif, and also looks at that ‘skin in the game’ routine (Taibbi is one of the better observers around right now), and concludes that the 1 percent/rich lack any shame — a trait of any portion rightly characterizes any decent human — but also carry an extra set of balls in proclaiming self-centered bullshit.
They acquired those balls to replace the void created by the absence of concern.
However, others elsewhere always think of the less fortunate, even if dead.
Via AFP:
Kim Jong-Il’s “loving care” for the North Korean people lingers even beyond his death, with residents in the capital enjoying a special treat of fresh fish, official media reported Saturday.
The late leader took steps on the eve of his demise to supply the rare luxury, and his son and successor Jong-Un ensured the fish was rushed to the people while in mourning, the ruling communists’ Rodong Sinmun daily reported.
“Salespersons and citizens burst out sobbing at fish shops in the capital city on Friday,” it said.
The newspaper carried pictures of housewives shedding tears of gratitude at shops in front of large plastic basins filled with what appeared to be pollock. Fish is a luxury in the hunger-stricken country.
Commercial sector officials in Pyongyang pledged their loyalty to the successor, “saying the history of loving care for the people continues and no people on Earth are as blessed with leaders and generals as the Koreans,” it said.
It said the deceased leader worked with his “heart and soul” to supply the people with fresh fish all year round, giving tireless field guidance.
One must remember, however, because of the late, great Dear Leader, North Korea has been suffering for a long time in the getting-enough-food category — in the mid 1990s, it’s been estimated that three million North Koreans died in a famine, a 29 percent overall death rate: The heaviest death rates are among children between 0-6 years old at 45 percent and elderly people above 60 at 74 percent.
The dead Kim at the time had to stop downing expensive Hennessy cognac due to health concerns.
Scraps of sugar-plums visions danced in their hungry skulls.
Calling the Corpulent
Filed Under Economy, Scratching Sounds, Work | Leave a Comment
Even as the US economy tanks, there’s still 300 million mouths wide open for a burger and fries — how fat has this country’s people’s become — does fear about the future cause one to consume more junk food?
In the past, on occasion being fat was also a sign of wealth, but nowadays it’s a pure symbol of the poor and uneducated.
Obesity is defined as a body mass index, or BMI, of more than 30, which translates to upwards of 197 pounds on a 5-foot, 8-inch person, but the normal definition doesn’t sometimes tell the whole story.
Fat is in the fat itself.
One major problem is kids are not as active in school any more — budget cuts have eliminated many PE teachers, cut backs in programs and the couch-potato culture pushed the hamburger and fries to a three-time-a-day experience.
(Illustration found here).
In a new report, aptly titled ‘F as in Fat: How Obesity Threatens America’s Future 2011,’ declares the US might be beyond the ‘tipping point‘ in an obesity surge/epidemic the past 15 years with 16 states showing fat increases.
The poorly educated, along with being just plain poor, and ethnic groups continue to have the biggest fat rates among US peoples, and the biggest weight gainers were in the deep South:
Mississippi has the highest obesity rate among adults with a rate of 34.4 percent.
Alabama is next at 32.3 percent, followed by West Virginia (32.3 percent), Tennessee (32.2 percent) and Louisiana (31.6 percent).
Colorado is the lowest at 19.8 percent and that would have been the highest rate in the nation in 1995. The District of Columbia is the next lowest at 21.7 percent, followed by Connecticut (21.8 percent), Massachusetts (22.3 percent) and Hawaii (23.1 percent).
This was the eighth such “F as in Fat” reports from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, but there was a glimmer of thin amongst the lard in the latest installment: From 2006 to 2008, 30 states experienced an increase in obesity, so the drop to 16 states this time is seen as a small positive.
Hung chow fat.
And the cost of all this obesity?
One off-the-wall outlay is in transportation: Transportation costs are severe as well, since heavier people simply require more fuel to transport (one study found that in 2000, the extra fuel costs to airline caused by obesity totaled $275 million).
So mounting medical expenses, the grinding destruction of the undercarriage of cars and trucks, even lost time in schools, putting all these together “suggest total annual economic costs associated with obesity in excess of $215 billion.”
That’s a lot of fat.
To further inflame the bowels, another new study suggests one single approach to the corpulence of US peoples would not work — there’s too many obstacles.
Fast food fat:
The authors found that having grocery stores and bigger supermarkets nearby did not considerably alter people’s eating habits.
However, having fast food restaurants in one’s neighborhood appeared to increase fast food consumption among lower-income men.
Eat your peas, please.
And use much bigger utensils.
Another study in food consumption suggests use a big fork, a seemingly not-too-scientific process in which eating out differs much from eating in.
Via Raw Story:
Researchers have found a new way to control the amount we eat: use a bigger fork.
While numerous studies have focused on portion sizes and their influence on how much we eat, researchers Arul and Himanshu Mishra and Tamara Masters looked at how bite sizes affect quantities ingested.
…
Two sets of forks were used to tinker with bite size: a larger fork that held 20 percent more food than the fork usually used in the restaurant, and a smaller fork that held 20 percent less than the usual utensil.
Over two lunches and two dinners in the restaurant, tables were either “large fork” or “small fork” tables.
Servers, including one of the study’s authors, took customers’ orders, and weighed the full plate of food that they had ordered before serving it to them.
At the end of the meal, the plate was brought back to the kitchen and weighed again, and the researchers found that diners who used the bigger fork ate less of their food than those who used the smaller one.
But the big fork, less eaten theory only worked in a restaurant setting.
A study conducted in the lab, which also used Italian food, found that people who used big forks actually consumed more.
…
The restaurant diners felt that the small fork gave them “a feeling that they are not making much progress” towards their goal, and this resulted in them eating more of the food on their plate than the large-fork group, the researchers reasoned.
“Grandma’s advice tells us to consume small bites, but remember, she also tells us to chew well so that our body has enough time to let us know that we are full,” the researchers conclude.
“Given people’s busy lives and the growing trend of eating in restaurants, if we are not chewing longer, then consuming from a larger fork may actually be more helpful in controlling overconsumption,” they write.
Big fork, little fork: Super-shovel size me.
Fake for Real — And We’re Better Off Because of It
Filed Under Media, Scratching Sounds | Leave a Comment
Someone asked why I invited Jon Stewart to be the first guest on the Journal’s premiere in 2007.
“Because Mark Twain isn’t available,” I answered.
I was serious.
Like Twain, Stewart has proven that truth is more digestible when it’s marinated in humor.
– Bill Moyers
A sad state of journalism when its top program and its most-popular individual is a fake — I’m not faking it though, when I laugh my ass off at Stewart and company’s take on the horrid events of our time.
(Illustration found here).
Moyers was on Stewart’s show last week and they discussed that 2007 interview, while concluding the current situation with US journalism is shitty at best, and near-criminal at worst.
And the bottom line, Moyers says: “a lot of news organizations no longer do much reporting.”
However, who gets the last, real laugh?
TV viewers ain’t faking it, though.
From Raw Story:
Comedy Central and “The Daily Show” both surged in the May Nielsen ratings, posting their best numbers yet. “The Daily Show” dominated its time slot across all of television, cable and broadcast, and boasted a very impressive 19 percent increase in viewership in May alone.
Meanwhile, according to Mediabistro’s TV Newser, Fox News suffered an overall decline in viewers in the highly sought-after 25-to-54-year old demographic for May, with total ratings down 10 percent.
Bill O’Reilly’s viewership dropped 9 percent, Sean Hannity’s 6 percent, with Greta Van Susteren and Glenn Beck suffering the steepest losses with Van Susteren’s “On the Record” losing 12 percent of its audience and Glenn Beck sliding a whopping 17 percent.
…
The new Nielsen numbers show that “The Daily Show” averaged 2.3 million viewers, beating every program on Fox except Bill O’Reilly’s average of 2.8 million.
“The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” beat all other cable and broadcast programming in a number of categories, including having the most affluent viewers and the most active web-sties.
The story also points out the drop in the ratings for fringe, bat-shit crazy ranters off the right wing: Some of the fall-off in Beck’s numbers may be attributable to the fact that his show is going off the air, but it has been a consistent loser in the ratings for several months. The drop in public interest is echoed in ratings for radio shows hosted by Beck and Rush Limbaugh, which have each lost a third of their listenership in the last year, according to the radio polling group Arbitron.
US peoples are apparently getting sick and tired of all the bullshit.
And what do the all those figures mean?
From tvbythenumbers: For the month of May 2011, “The Daily Show” averaged 2.3 million total viewers and a 1.2 P18-49 rating. Versus May 2010, “The Daily Show” grew an astounding +19% in total viewers, with incredible double-digit ratings growth across all key demos including P18-49 (up +21%), P18-34 (+22%), P18-24 (+21%), M18-34 (+18%) and M18-24 (+21%).
One just can’t beat that, and it is an indication not only how well the Daily Show is performing, but also how shitty every other media outlet is doing.
And Fox News not only sucks at journalism, but the organization is obviously plain, dumb-ass stupid.
In a story this weekend on Sarah Palin’s latest adventures, and to illustrate the segment, the Fox graphics department showed a photo of Tina Fey imitating the former Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008.
A news organization that’s not really a news organization using a illustration of an actress faking a display of a presidential candidate that’s really not a presidential candidate.
Well, gosh, darn, that is so not Paul Revere.
Who?
Climate Endgame — Beyond the ‘Tipping Point’
Filed Under Environment, Scratching Sounds | 1 Comment
Here in the wee hours of the last day of May 2011, the world keeps spinning, the rain keeps coming down (along the northern California coast) and bad shit keeps filling CBS’ early-morning-looped-news program, ‘Up to the Minute‘ — repeated stories that’s just flutter in the breeze compared to the horror coming via climate change.
All the evidence harshly points to the planet being near the midpoints or closer to the bad end of a catastrophic break down of the natural world enhanced by mankind’s arrogant, greedy desire for civilization’s tiny, tiny perks.
(Illustration found here).
One of the biggest differences between climate change and other worldly problems is about like the difference between a skeptic and a denier — one has room for change, the other no room at all.
Despite the overwhelming evidence from many divergent sources that indeed the planet is going through a shake-and-bake downsizing, there’s an enormous amount of denial, in other words, denying reality and truth, from a whole shitload of people.
A good look at the skeptic and the denier can be found at ABC News’ The Drum: Genuine skeptics consider all the evidence in their search for the truth. Deniers, on the other hand, refuse to accept any evidence that conflicts with their pre-determined views.
The horror of this: The biggest mouth can make the biggest impression on the enormous mob of unwashed masses.
Another good post on denying the undeniable is at Transition Voice, where Erik Curren now thinks even horrible, weird weather won’t change people’s minds about climate disruption:
When it comes to climate change “denial is still the dominant response,” writes Paul Gilding in The Great Disruption.
“We won’t change at scale until the crisis is full blown and undeniable, until the wind really kicks up speed. But then we will change.”
When I read Gilding’s book I thought it would take something like this year’s historic storms and floods in the Midwest and South to wake Americans from their stupor on climate.
But now I’m not so sure if even climate disaster will be enough.
Curren concludes: The weird weather is here. But the climate denial still isn’t gone. So we clearly can’t count on weird weather to do our political dirty work.
There is some light shining in the darkness.
In a Washington Post editorial earlier this month: Climate-change deniers, in other words, are willfully ignorant, lost in wishful thinking, cynical or some combination of the three. And their recalcitrance is dangerous, the report makes clear, because the longer the nation waits to respond to climate change, the more catastrophic the planetary damage is likely to be — and the more drastic the needed response.
Even as the denials are shown to be dumb-ass, assholes, the world continues to contort, rumble and get more, and more dangerous.
Next week is the annual World Oceans Day, which has been going on since 2003 in order to celebrate and honor the body of water which links us all, for what it provides humans and what it represents.
However, the oceans ain’t pretty anymore.
From the BBC:
Findings from a “natural laboratory” in seas off Papua New Guinea suggest that acidifying oceans will severely hit coral reefs by the end of the century.
…
The oceans absorb some of the carbon dioxide that human activities are putting into the atmosphere.
This is turning seawater around the world slightly more acidic – or slightly less alkaline.
This reduces the capacity of corals and other marine animals to form hard structures such as shells.
Projections of rising greenhouse gas emissions suggest the process will go further, and accelerate.
…
“The results are complex, but their implications chilling,” commented Alex Rogers from the University of Oxford, who was not part of the study team.
“Some may see this as a comforting study in that coral cover is maintained, but this is a false perception; the levels of seawater pH associated with a 4C warming completely change the face of reefs.
“We will see the collapse of many reefs long before the end of the century.”
And the situation is getting worse.
From AFP (via Raw Story):
“Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history, according to the latest estimates,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a statement.
After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record 30.6 gigatonnes (Gt), a five percent jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 Gt, the IEA said.
…
“This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than two degrees C,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist.
The only skepticism I have about climate change is time.
Although in the goodly chunk of those scientific papers on climate there’s talk of real-real-bad shit coming in 2015, or 2020, or the end of the century, etc., but based on evidence outside my window, I think in my total-non-science brain this stuff is already here.
Yes, Virginia, Chicken Little is right on, the sky really is falling.
In a thorough post at the Daily Beast, Sharon Begley, science columnist and science editor of Newsweek, takes a mean-and-nasty look at climate change, taking in account the current freakish US weather — record tornadoes and flooding — and shit going down worldwide, from the heat wave in Russia, floods in Australia and Pakistan to a months-long drought in China.
Some highlights:
From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty.
The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone.
Which means you haven’t seen anything yet.
And we are not prepared.
…
The game of catch-up will have to happen quickly because so much time was lost to inaction.
“The Bush administration was a disaster, but the Obama administration has accomplished next to nothing either, in part because a significant part of the Democratic Party is inclined to balk on this issue as well,” says economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
“We [are] past the tipping point.”
The idea of adapting to climate change was once a taboo subject.
Scientists and activists feared that focusing on coping would diminish efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
On the opposite side of the divide, climate-change deniers argued that since global warming is a “hoax,” there was no need to figure out how to adapt.
“Climate-change adaptation was a nonstarter,” says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center.
“If you wanted to talk about that, you would have had to talk about climate change itself, which the Bush administration didn’t want to do.”
In fact, President Bush killed what author Mark Hertsgaard in his 2011 book, Hot, calls “a key adaptation tool,” the National Climate Assessment, an analysis of the vulnerabilities in regions of the U.S. and ideas for coping with them.
The legacy of that: State efforts are spotty and local action is practically nonexistent.
“There are no true adaptation experts in the federal government, let alone states or cities,” says Arroyo. “They’ve just been commandeered from other departments.”
…
So what lies behind America’s resistance to action?
Economist Sachs points to the lobbying power of industries that resist acknowledgment of climate change’s impact.
“The country is two decades behind in taking action because both parties are in thrall to Big Oil and Big Coal,” says Sachs.
“The airwaves are filled with corporate-financed climate misinformation.”
Maybe, the only thing we can actually do now is “hold on to your butts.”
Or be like the next US president, Sarah Palin, blubbering nonsense again this past weekend while astride a big, ole Harley, “I love that smell of the emissions.”