Not Dead Yet

News broke this morning that Daniel Schreiber of Flatlander Chocolate died unexpectedly last night. Rest assured, I am a different Dan Schreiber. I've not been put on the ox cart yet, and if I am, I'm pretty sure I still have the energy to scramble off before they hit me with a shovel.

Unfortunately for CU, the loss of "the other Dan Schreiber" (as I refer to him), is a bigger loss to the community. Providing fine chocolate to one's neighbors is no doubt more valuable than providing cranky left-wing opinions. 

We've both been in town for a few years now and I'm sad that I never got to actually meet him.  My heart goes out to his friends and family. I hope he has chocolate waiting for us all on the other side.

Fox strikes again

I've gotten used to the lying, the fear-mongering, and the hypocrisy. It's the shamelessness that continues to baffle me. Rachel Maddow does a servicable job of recounting the damage (too bad Jon Stewart is on vacation this week):

As Roger Ebert just put it: "Fox News has more alibis for itself than a drunk-driving moonshiner."

Why Soccer Sucks

Usually, I enjoy watching soccer. And then I see stuff like this:



A guy kicks the air in the direction of another player who looked liked he was going to throw the ball at the first guy. The second guy, without even being touched, flops down and writhes in pain, drawing a red card for the first guy from an out-of-position umpire. The first player is ejected, his team is now down one player, and the other team scores two goals to win 2-1. 

In any other sport, it would be considered at least unsportsmanlike and at best unseemly to flop down on the ground and writhe in pain without being touched.  Why do soccer players embarrass their sport like this?  I hope someday that soccer players will become as brave and manly as tennis players or bowlers, who manage not to writhe on the ground when people come near them.

God is Angry

If God's wrath is revealed through lightning strikes and other natural disasters, He or She is just swinging wild punches at this point. All three of these stories are getting airplay right now:

Fire on Containment Ship Halts Oil Spill Collection

Arkansas Flash Flood Kills 19

And the Pièce de résistance: 
Touchdown Jesus Destroyed by Lightning

Touchdown Jesus before God's Wrath:

Touchdown Jesus after (or during) God's Wrath:

I'll leave the theological implications of God being angry at oil cleanup efforts, Arkansas campers and Touchdown Jesus to the comments sections.

Some Ebert Frisson

I knew my love of obscure quotes from an almost-forgotten 17th Century French mathematician would eventually pay off with some love from Roger Ebert:

Background: Roger Ebert wrote a blog post a few weeks back about frisson, a french word that means a brief intense reaction, usually a feeling of excitement, recognition, or terror. The article was about the internet, our increasingly short attention spans, the rewiring of our brains, and twitter's enablement of our collective and questionable daily search for frissons. In other words, another entry in a great series of blog posts Roger has been cranking out.

This particular post very much resonates with me, as I try to make progress on a book-length project while parenting three kids and constantly getting sidetracked by the daily frissons of the internet. It made me remember one of my favorite quotes by Blaise Pascal, so I included it in a comment to his article. The comment itself got some love by Roger, who made a comment to my comment that sitting quietly has never come easy to him.

He apparently liked the quote enough that he tweeted it.  This was a couple weeks ago.  Just two days ago, I set up a twitter account.  I didn't set it up to enter the world of tweeting, but to verify that, yes indeed, all the things that I told my 15 year-old daughter that she should not say on Facebook, she has instead been saying on Twitter. She calls it "spying on her."  I call it "parenting."  She's a great kid (like all my kids), but we sometimes have generational issues.

Anyway, I was catching up with my friend Pat Gabridge yesterday, and he congratulated me on being "quoted" by Roger Ebert. I had no idea what he was talking about until I searched my shiny, brand new twitter account, and found the quote above. Talk about a frisson.  I knew that being a good parent would eventually pay off. My twitter feed now consists of three people: Roger Ebert, Barack Obama, and my daughter. They are all quite prolific.

Believe me, I understand the multiple layers of irony of this blog post.  I am quoting someone who quoted me in quoting someone else on the topic of spending too much time noticing what everyone else is noticing. On the other hand, it is nice to get a small sliver of notice from someone I admire so much and who is well-known and respected by so many others.  On the other, other hand, this just underscores how addicted I am to the frissonedness of the internet. And why my long, book-length project is going sooooo slowly. After all, it takes time to write about yourself being noticed by someone quoting you quoting someone else.

The Real Axe Market

I've always wondered who buys Axe. The ads for the body deodorant don't just subtly suggest that women will love you if you buy their product. They go for a more direct approach: If you buy Axe, thousands of scantily-clad, beautiful women will run you down to have their way with you.



Sure, the commercials are funny, in an offensive, sexist sort of way. But who would fall for this kind of advertising? Certainly no one with any experience with actual women.

Of course, that describes a decent percentage of young males. And once you throw skateboarding into the mix, it becomes obvious who they are marketing to: 11 year-old boys.



A product that makes you irresistible to the ladies and helps you with impossible skateboard moves? My son was sold on the spot. He bought some with his hard-earned allowance money. Not only does he love his Axe, but he is of the opinion that if something is good, more of it is better.

So, in addition to spraying it all over his body, he has also been known to use it:

• On his clothes, as a substitute for washing them
• On his bedsheets, as a substitute for taking a bath before bed.
• Directly at his sisters, as a weapon when they annoy him.

The last bit seems counter-productive if girls love Axe so much that they will run you down on a beach to make out with you. But, like all boys everywhere, he does not consider his sisters to be girls.

So, I'm impressed that Axe has found a natural market. I'm just sad that my son's room now smells even worse than 11 year-old boy.

The Heart of the Graystone

My oldest friend in the world (because I've known him since kindergarten, not because he is so old) has finally gotten his book published. That would be Mike Brown, or M.K. Brown if you believe book titles, or Brownie or Delicious Cipher if you believe blog commenter names. His novel is The Heart of the Graystone, an fantasy story about a young man who finds a jewel with magical powers, then the bad guys who are looking for it and then a full-on adventure after that.

So, do your part to fix the economy by buying more stuff. Specifically, buy Mike's book, available at Virtual Book Worm, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

This makes me happy

I should do this every morning:

Rand Paul is against racism everywhere except in Capitalism

Below is a really long interview by Rachel Maddow of Rand Paul. He's the new Kentucky Republican senate candidate and Tea Party adherent.

He doesn't directly answer her one essential question, which is: Do you think businesses should be allowed to not serve black people? Instead, he uses lots and lots of words, says he thinks racism is abhorent, that he would never support anything or anyone who is, but that, in the end, yes, the part of the civil rights law that allows black people to eat at countertops with white people is government intrusion into business.



This is like saying that you are a big environmentalist, that you totally support people who take care of the earth, and would not support any business or organization that pollutes. But also, it is government intrusion to have laws that make it illegal for businesses to intentionally dump poison into rivers.

He quickly retracted what he said today, but I actually find it refreshing that he would say what he actually believes for a news cycle. I wish more Tea Partiers would do that. I still wonder why they don't angrily denounce Social Security and Medicare as the biggest examples of the socialism they hate so much.

Nazi Tourette's

Lewis Black on Glenn Beck's NTS (Nazi Tourette's Syndrome):

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Back in Black - Glenn Beck's Nazi Tourette's
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

For those keeping track at home, here are the times it is appropriate to make comparisions to Nazis and the times it is just crazy talk:

Appropriate:

• Including empathy as a desirable characteristic in a judge
  
• Providing health care to the poorest among us
  
• References to the term “social justice”
  
• Attempts to address climate change
  
• Teaching kids about climate change
  
• Government support of the arts
  
• TARP funding
  
• The Peace Corp
  

Crazy Talk:

• Invading another country to gain access to their natural resources
  
• Requiring police officers to demand identification papers from people
  
• Wiretapping citizens
  

It’s Obama’s Karma, not his Katrina

It looks like a narrative is emerging that the massive oil spill in the gulf is now Obama’s Katrina. This makes sense, if you don’t remember much about Katrina, or know much about this oil spill.

It is true that this oil spill is likely to exceed the environmental damage and human cost that even Katrina dished out.

But the problem with Katrina was that we knew it was coming. Then we knew it came. Then we knew the levees broke. Then we knew that people were stranded and starving and desperate. Only after a day or so of chaos did the Bush government swing into action to help actual people in immediate crisis.

The problems this time around are:

• The oil platform explosion was unexpected
• Bad weather hampered initial efforts to figure out what was happening
• British Petroleum totally underestimated the extent of the problem it reported to the government.
• There might not even be a fix to this for 3 months, until they can drill another pipe into the oil field to drain off the leak. That's not a government response problem, it is a science problem. Perhaps it is a government policy problem not to have stricter guidelines when doing off-shore drilling.
• People have been working around the clock on the problem, but since it’s in the middle of the gulf and underground, no one is seeing it, so it gives the impression nothing is being done.

Even if you rewound time, it isn’t clear what the government should have done differently. Throwing a bunch of helicopters and food at it is not going to fix it. See Media Matters for a complete timeline. And compare it to the Katrina timeline if you think they are comparable.

The most ironic thing about this is that the people complaining about the government’s response are the same people that don’t want any government involvement in their lives. Make up your mind, folks. About the only mistake you can say the government made is in believing its profit-oriented industry partner about the extent of the spill. Sounds like a case for more government regulation, oversight and involvement to me. Katrina, indeed.

I say if you want to blame something, blame Karma. Obama reversed himself a month ago to suddenly support more off-shore drilling, which conservatives had been demanding since Sarah Palin started the chanted "Drill Baby Drill" at the Republican National Convention. Now we get to learn why potential environmental disasters should factor into our resource-use policies, just like all the tree-huggers say they should. Like Earl, Obama should not have messed with Karma.

More Fun Signs

All I can say for these folks is that they should be happy that citizenship is not tied to passing an English test:

Finally, this gentleman seems to be saying we should not, not be France (the circle with line across indicating that we don't want what is said on the sign). Or maybe he's asking where to find Not France. Or not asking where to find Not France. Whatever it is, it's too deep for me.

Ebertfesting

It's Ebertfest time here in Champaign-Urbana, and usually I spend the week watching movies and then typing about them as fast as I can afterward. I'm taking a break this year, because it is very exhausting and I decided to just enjoy the festival this year.

But I did agree to do one day of regurgitation for Smile Politely, which was yesterday's batch of movies. It's available here.

Now, back to the Virginia for more fun.

The Difference Between Girls and Boys

My 7th grade daughter is in an all-girls math class this year.  She has struggled with math over the years, and 6th grade was especially tough for her.

But the school decided to do something different this year and segregate by gender.  It's made a huge difference for her -- she has always said she's not very good at math, but this year, we've heard her say things like "I'm smart at math."  Night and day difference.

Some researchers came to the different classes to see what the girls and boys thought about it.  The girls were all highly enthusiastic, saying things like "It's great!", "No boys to distract us!" "Girls Rule! -- WonderSister Powers, Activate!!!"

And the 7th grade boys?  At least one of them said "Oh.  There aren't any girls in our class?  Huh."

Did I Miss Anything?

I’m back from spring break, where I spent some quality time on our fine socialist highway system. Also, since traveling internationally, I’ve been enjoying our socialist water quality standards and our socialist sewer systems. Of course, I’m using the term "socialist" the way it is commonly used these days, to mean anything that is in any way connected to the government.

What happened while I was away? Health insurance reform was passed. Death threats were issued. Glenn Beck went ballistic because John Lewis acted like a civil rights activist. He must have missed the history lesson where John Lewis got his head busted open for … being a civil rights activist.

So, I missed some history and also missed some more of the same.

But I’ve definitely not been feeling very bloggy lately. I’m about as down on our democracy as I was when we invaded Iraq. I’m depressed that it is so easy to spread so much fear and so many lies. And I’m depressed that it works so well. Yes, a weakened version of healthcare passed, but look at how much effort it took. When a plan that is more conservative than Richard Nixon’s is believed by so many people to be some kind Marxist plot, I just have to sigh.

At least Obama has a sense of humor about it. Watch him below make fun of the crazy that so many people have been peddling. Sometimes, I just love that guy.

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