I left a word out, which I hate, because you should read Josh Olson's recent piece in the Village Voice:
You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it's not a huge imposition. It's not your choice to make. This needs to be clear--when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you--gratis--the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours.
Or, my favorite lines: "It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't. (By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)"
Patrick Smith ("Ask the Pilot") wonders why we still can't get airport security right:
[T]he primary threat to commercial planes is, was and shall remain explosive devices. The Sept. 11 skyjack scheme is today unworkable for a variety of reasons. Yet those who run airport security refuse to acknowledge this, wasting time and resources ransacking people's luggage for what are, in effect, harmless items. Has anybody at the Transportation Security Administration bothered to peruse the air crimes annals of the past 50 years? The agency, along with too many Americans in general, seems to exist in a world that did not begin until 2001, oblivious to the long record of terrorist sabotage against civilian airliners.
My ranting on this topic might be redundant, but remember there are hundreds of lives, and tens of billions of dollars, at stake. A bombing, or multiple bombings, would be devastating to the U.S. economy and possibly catastrophic for the airline business. In the past, airlines were able to pull through after incidents of sabotage. People recoiled in horror, but they didn't stop flying. Nowadays our mind-set is very different. We are, I'm afraid, more predisposed to panic and rash behavior.
The entire column is worth a read.
My senior U.S. Senator responded yesterday to a letter I sent in July. He writes:
Thank you for contacting me about giving Americans the choice of a public health insurance option that will compete with private insurance plans.
I support a public option and appreciate hearing from you. We need health care reform that reduces costs for families, businesses, and the government; protects people's choice of doctors; and assures affordable, high-quality health care for every American.
We are crafting a reform bill with these goals in mind. Those who like the health insurance they have should and will be able to keep it. However, a public option will provide a valuable alternative to today's private health plans. Too many Americans do not like or cannot afford the health insurance offered by today's for-profit insurance companies. A public option will provide competition that will hold private plans accountable and help moderate the price of health insurance.
I will continue to work for a reform plan that provides stable and secure coverage, stable and affordable costs, and better quality care. We face a difficult challenge gathering the 60 votes necessary to move legislation forward in the Senate, but I will continue to work for the inclusion of a public option in the final legislation.
Keep in mind, Senator Durbin is the Majority Whip, the second-highest-ranking member of the Senate, so his views carry some weight.
U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday formally apologized to Alan Turing, the gay cryptogropher who broke the German navy's codes in World War II, saving the lives of thousands of British sailors:
Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely.
In 1952, he was convicted of "gross indecency" – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.
It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we're sorry. You deserved so much better.
It's about bloody time. But good job, Prime Minister.
Lots of interesting (to me, anyway) items on the Intertubes today:
- Chicago really did have one of the coolest summers ever this year, complete with the longest stretch of sub-27°C temperatures in 124 years.
- Via The Expired Meter, Chicago ranked first in a list of the worst cities to drive in, because of our lovely red-light cameras paired with 3-second yellow lights. Before you get smug, the entire state of Florida made the list, too.
- The International Olympic Committee president said the vote will be close, and it's down to Chicago and Rio for the 2016 games. Meanwhile, the White House denies rumors that the President will go to Copenhagen to
lean on show support for Chicago.
- The Dubai Metro opened on Wednesday, but will it help? At least it goes to the airport, a feature whose importance the two largest U.S. cities have still failed to grasp.
- A story appeared in the Washington Post about a D.C.-area school that squandered a $50,000 grant, after squandering a $27,000 grant just a few years ago.
- Via Andrew Sullivan, a report that Margaret Thatcher told Mikhail Gorbachev in a secret meeting that the U.K. did not want German reunification because it would destabilize the U.S.S.R.
Whew. Back to accounting homework.
Apparently Illinois has its own rude Congressman:
Rep. John Shimkus, a Republican from Illinois, walked out.
"Congressman Shimkus was frustrated that the president was not offering any new ground and left with just minutes remaining in the speech," spokesman Steven Tomaszewski said today in response to our question about the late-speech walk-out.
I have also gotten clarification of the British way of doing things:
Language and expressions used in the Chamber must conform to a number of rules. Erskine May states "good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language". Objection has been taken both to individual words and to sentences and constructions ‐ in the case of the former, to insulting, coarse, or abusive language (particularly as applied to other Members); and of the latter, to charges of lying or being drunk and misrepresentation of the words of another. Among the words to which Speakers have objected over the years have been blackguard, coward, git, guttersnipe, hooligan, rat, swine, stoolpigeon and traitor.
The context in which a word is used is, of course, very important. The Speaker will direct a Member who has used an unparliamentary word or phrase to withdraw it.
Members sometimes use considerable ingenuity to circumvent these rules (as when, for instance, Winston Churchill substituted the phrase "terminological inexactitude" for "lie") but they must be careful to obey the Speaker's directions, as a Member who refuses to retract an offending expression may be named or required to withdraw from the Chamber.
Still, our side disagreed with the President about a war that has cost thousands of lives and close to a trillion dollars and we behaved ourselves. What is it with the GOP today, anyway?
President Obama's speech last night demonstrated pretty clearly that he's committed to health-care reform, and most of Congress will support him. One Congressman, Joe Wilson (R-SC), decided to channel his inner Preston Brooks and...well, here's what the papers say:
Help me out here: does anyone recall the last time a congressman called the president a liar to his face during of a joint session of Congress?
He’s the face behind the off-camera shout of “You lie” after President Obama declared that his proposed health care legislation will not—repeat not—provide health care to illegal immigrants. Psst! Somebody please tell Rep. Wilson this is the U. S. Congress, not Question Time in Britain’s Parliament or a Town Hall meeting in Beaufort.
(One should note, of course, that while MPs may heckle each other during Question Time, none would do so during an actual speech. Also, during Parliamentary debates, members are forbidden to address each other, and can be expelled for doing so. "You lie!" would get the member tossed out; "Mr. Speaker, the Honorable Member from Basingfolly-on-Turdswallop lies!" is the correct form.)
Rep. Wilson has since apologized (sort of; watch the video and let me know what you think), though some want him to do so on the floor of the House.
As one observer remarked, the opposition have mistaken the United States Congress for a College Republicans convention.
The President has since said of the flap, "We all make mistakes. He apologized quickly and without equivocation. We have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big, important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name calling, without the assumption of the worst in other people's motives."
Thank you, Mr. President.
Quick update: In the few short hours since the outburst, Wilson's Democratic opponent has raised over $100,000, and pulled ahead of Wilson in fundraising. Talk about a career-limiting move.
Via Tom Hollander comes Strange Maps, a blog I will have to read through when I get a free moment next year. The blog supports Frank Jacobs' forthcoming book, Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities. The blog starts with "Lunatic Asylum Districts in Pennsylvania," moving through "The Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World" and "Heineken's 'Eurotopia'" on its random walk through maps. Very cool blog.
Example: a map showing the best beer in America, based on the number of medals won, with a handy refiguring of the results by population:
The top 10, reshuffled to reflect the number of medals per million of inhabitants, looks quite different, reflecting a dominance by states with a strong micro-brewing tradition:
- Colorado – 64.4
- Oregon – 42.5
- Wisconsin – 38.6
- Washington – 16.2
- Missouri – 15
- Pennsylvania – 13.5
- Massachusetts – 12.6
- California – 12.8
- Texas – 5.6
- New York – 5.1
Also from Hollander, a report that Samoa changed sides:
As sirens and church bells wailed across Samoa just before 6am on Monday, drivers obediently stopped their cars. Then, after instructions issued over the radio by the Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, they shifted to the other side of the road and ushered in history.
"After this announcement you will all be permitted to move to the other side of the road, to begin this new era in our history," Mr Tuilaepa told his people, warning: "Don't drive if you are sleepy, drunk or just had a fight with your wife."
Good advice, that.
Not my phrase; that's from Mark Twain. I thought of it as I dipped one more time into the well of James Fallows' blog and came up with this:
Rock out, Joe Biden.
Clarification: "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." Well, I get mine from The Atlantic and other similar places. Thus, frequent re-posts from Fallows and Sullivan.