Facts of the Day

Depressing Fact of the Day:

Roughly as many Americans have a favorable (45%) as unfavorable opinion (44%) of Sarah Palin. http://tinyurl.com/ktenya

Uplifting Fact of the Day to Balance that Depressing, Unbelievable Fact:

USA Today published a great piece on AT&T, the iPhone and the big telecoms' hopefully impermanent but always incessant attempts to limit mobile users' freedom: http://bit.ly/1BvUD8 #freemyphone

Dear cnn

Open letter to the editor(s)

Dear cnn,

I understand that as a business, you "need" to include all sorts of infotainment and trashy celebrity stories to make ends meet, or to raise ratings and web hits for advertisers, but that is no excuse for the shockingly offensive story you ran on your homepage on March 31st, 2009 called "Man punches blond woman on bus." Clearly it was so striking that I am devoting an email and a blog post to it more than a month later. Maybe I need to get out more.

I'm not saying that KCPQ's James Lynch is not equally responsible, but I really was surprised cnn would run a story that was framed in that way, let alone feature it. Any responsible reporter would see that story for what it was-- a sad case of someone with mental illness who was not receiving the help he needed.

If anything, this was a chance to report national news that would raise awareness of an important issue in the U.S., such as the ever-diminishing funding for mental health services that is leaving so many in need without access to the care they need. In fact, you could even report on how the growing need for care is further exacerbated by the current economic crisis. Oooh, timeliness! And since you are apparently so fond of running homey, 'local' stories without doing any work of your own, I asked my friend google to help me and it turned up this lovely press release on America's Mental Health Care Crisis from the National Council for Community Behavioral Health Care-- it's written and ready to go!

Instead of educating voters on an important issue, however, Lynch made that story about yet another 'faceless black man' committing a random violent act on a defenseless white citizen. Really, cnn?

Your friend,

Rachel

P.S. yes, I heard the mumbled last line about "a man out there with a mental past.." in the last 3 seconds of the video. Bravo.

Sitt Marie Rose by Etel Adnan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Possibly one of the most powerful, passionate works of fiction I have ever read. Adnan's Sitt Marie Rose is both an attack on and an interrogation of her own history, her own identity, just as much as it is an attack on the tribal and religious justifications for the violence and terror of the civil war in Lebanon. She rails against an Islam that forgets "the divine mercy affirmed by the first verse of the Koran... human mercy" and a Christianity in Lebanon that's "not in communion with any force other than the Dragon." It is these two forces that she sees at work in the conflict, supported by fear and tribalism, or as she puts it, "idolatry towards the group you belong to."

Genius and awesomeness :)

I kid you not

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? [...] You've heard about some of those pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to pet projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

O discordia.

After months of neglect, I decided I couldn't let this board die.

Check out this revealing exhibit that Dialog:City had at the DNC in Denver.

An artist made 'sight test' charts out of words from Presidential State of the Union addresses by frequency of word usage. There was one from FDR, Lincoln, Dubya, etc. Kinda neat.

Can you guess which President this one was?

You Can Change Congress

Help Larry Lessig and friends Change Congress. Doesn't it make you sad that legislators can legally take campaign contributions from the industries they regulate? Look up some in your home state and see if they would like to take the pledge at Change-Congress.org.

Pardon Me, Congressman, but you dropped your crown...

In a timely pre-game show to the launch of Larry Lessig's Change Congress campaign, Ken Silverstein published a delightful piece in the March issue of Harper's, entitled Beltway Bacchanal: Congress lives high on the contributor's dime . Apparently, the only service our elected officials perform for the public anymore is creating "campaign" jobs for needy college grads, ahem, friends and relatives. Also, I just realized that you can't read the article unless you subscribe to Harper's, which I highly recommend! :)

Despite my post, which is the opposite of timely (March is now nearing an end and Lessig actually launched CC last week), you can still learn a lot about PAC Leadership funds and campaign treasuries from Silverstein's article.

For example, I learned how useful contributor's funds can be when one wants to spend

• $32,036 to golf at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort (Rep. James McCrery, R-LA), or say, slam down
  
• $66,146 on luxury hotels over the 2006 election cycle (Congressman Steny Hoyer, D-MD)