Dear Eric Staib

Dear Eric,

I read your article on Mises and I just wanted to thank you for writing it.

Here is my favorite part:
"As discussed earlier, from the very fact of their abstention from the purchase of healthcare services, we know a posteriori that millions of individuals in this country do not desire health insurance more than other goods or services."
--http://mises.org/story/3666

See? Amazing! I laugh with glee every time I read it. It's like you are reading the mind of the American citizen...how do you do it? I mean, I'm sure people DO prefer paying rent and buying groceries to buying health insurance. So, obviously, they don't want health care or health insurance as much as those things! Your insight has really floored me.

I see that you are studying economics. That's so cute! But it must hurt your head. You look very cute in your picture, so I recommend you look into modeling or acting instead. You will meet many people who will think you are just as smart as you think you are-- maybe even smarter!

Anyway, thank you again. You--and others like you--provide a consistency that I have come to depend on from the 'libertarian school of thought'. It's like having a cantankerous old grand-dad you can always count on to use the 'n-word' and I love it! Keep 'em coming!

--Your Biggest Fan

Astroturf

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?