Haley Stevens Isn’t Sitting with the Democrats
3 hours ago
Thursday, January 29, 2009
coming of the snus
I tried this Swedish version of chewing tobacco a couple of years ago and actually enjoyed it. It focuses your mind like nothing else and forces your brain to pump out creative juices by the gallon. Looks like it might become widely available in the states.
religion is the new class
Compare this map to the electoral map in 2008.
What I want to know is, does any other country in the world vote this way?
What I want to know is, does any other country in the world vote this way?
Monday, January 19, 2009
Now reading
I've been wanting to read this book after having read this review in the Atlantic Monthly. The review said that the author gave a thrilling and thorough account of the role corn plays in our food industry, and that's something I've been wanting to learn more about after I finished Fast Food Nation. The review was pretty critical of the book because of the way it justified men's position at the top of the food chain. While I share the reviewer's concern for animal welfare, I'm curious to see what a carnivore who chose to engage in ethical debates about eating animals with vegetarians would say.
Although I've been devoting more and more portions of my waking hours in the acquisition and creation of good food, I still shy away from wearing the label "foodie." For a long time, the gourmand's appetite for more seems like an addition, while his insistence on being specific in the choice of ingredients and methods of preparation struck me as a little dandy. I used to think back in college that since everything we put in our mouth comes out the same, it's almost criminal to spend too much time on eating. I got into cooking mainly because I needed a hobby that doesn't require too much brain power while at the same time has a relatively quick payoff.
The first chapter was interesting. Pollan promises to trace every element of the three food chains that we have today: industrial, organic, and primitive (hunting and gathering your own food). Can't wait to finish it.
Inauguration fever
I have a colleague who's taking tomorrow off to watch Obama's inauguration ON TV. She's a black woman in her late fifties who didn't talk about politics a single time in the two years I know her. Barack's my man and I'm glad that he won, but it looks like I underestimated the effect of his win on the average African-American.
surprise
I took the cat to the vet over the weekend and found out that my cat is in fact a neutered MALE. I don't really know how to react to this. The person I adopted Kitty from and the first vet who saw Kitty all thought she's a female cat. Do cats change gender over their life time? Or maybe I took the wrong cat home that time in the cat hotel. Oh well, I guess now that she's a he I can get off Kitty's case about losing weight.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Just Finished
American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. An excellent read IMHO. The author used to be a Republican strategist who used to work for Nixon, but has since became critical of the GOP. In this book, he slammed three core constituency of the modern Republican Party: big oil, the Christian Right, and the Financial Services industry.
The third section was the most prescient one. This book was published in 2006, when the DOW was over 13000 points, but the author predicted a catastrophic crisis caused by novel financial instruments like CDOs and CDS's. I wish more people in Washington had read this three years ago, when it might've made a difference.
The middle section about religion was the main reason I bought this book, and it did not disappoint. Phillips described, in painstaking detail, the rise of the radical religious right and what it means to our country. Backed by numbers and graphs on almost every other page, this is by far the most thorough account of this recent chapter of our history.
The part about the dominance of the oil industry was also enlightening. Most of us already knew that US foreign policy in the Middle East was dominated by Big Oil, but most didn't know that the history of this entanglement goes back to the turn of the 20th Century when the British and the French were the ones invading the Middle East.
In each of the three sections Phillips drew analogies between the challenges the US faces today with those faced by former imperial hegemons - Spain, the Netherlands, and Britain. Each of these three powers became successful through early adoption of a new energy source, were weakened as financial activities replaced manufacturing and commerce, and each of these nations turned to a form of religious radicalism as its fortunes decline. Not all of these comparisons were apt, as history doesn't repeat itself perfectly, but there's enough force in these analogy to make me worry. Let's hope that Phillips will write a book about what can be done about these problems.
The third section was the most prescient one. This book was published in 2006, when the DOW was over 13000 points, but the author predicted a catastrophic crisis caused by novel financial instruments like CDOs and CDS's. I wish more people in Washington had read this three years ago, when it might've made a difference.
The middle section about religion was the main reason I bought this book, and it did not disappoint. Phillips described, in painstaking detail, the rise of the radical religious right and what it means to our country. Backed by numbers and graphs on almost every other page, this is by far the most thorough account of this recent chapter of our history.
The part about the dominance of the oil industry was also enlightening. Most of us already knew that US foreign policy in the Middle East was dominated by Big Oil, but most didn't know that the history of this entanglement goes back to the turn of the 20th Century when the British and the French were the ones invading the Middle East.
In each of the three sections Phillips drew analogies between the challenges the US faces today with those faced by former imperial hegemons - Spain, the Netherlands, and Britain. Each of these three powers became successful through early adoption of a new energy source, were weakened as financial activities replaced manufacturing and commerce, and each of these nations turned to a form of religious radicalism as its fortunes decline. Not all of these comparisons were apt, as history doesn't repeat itself perfectly, but there's enough force in these analogy to make me worry. Let's hope that Phillips will write a book about what can be done about these problems.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
condensed Medical drama
I used to watch ER, House, and even Grey's anatomy pretty regularly, but now I get my weekly medical drama requirements from these little pills.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
pita pizza
I was reading a magazine at the doctor's office and I came across a recipe that uses Pita bread to make pizzas. These are my very first attempt. The one on the right is anchovies, the other mushroom and pepperoni. They taste as good as they look.
Boy do I feel like a kid locked inside a candy store.
60 second film reviews
Quantum of Solace - there's nothing Bond-like about this film at all. There's nothing original here - the action sequences were lifted from the Bourne series, the "grit" from the rebooted Batman films, and even the plot was based on a true story.
Milk - interesting biopic about the life of Harvey Milk. I was surprised that as late as forty years ago the gays have no right, not even in San Francisco. An interesting coda to events in the film led to the infamous "twinkie defense" case.
Encounters at the End of the World - this movie is supposed to be about the quirky characters that inhabit the southern continent, but the most interesting scenes of the movie are shots of the landscape above and below the ice. In one of them, an ocean floor full of giant starfish "danced" to the currents while bioluminescent jellyfishes flutter around. Even the reefs of Maui and Cozumel could not hold a candle to its beauty.
Milk - interesting biopic about the life of Harvey Milk. I was surprised that as late as forty years ago the gays have no right, not even in San Francisco. An interesting coda to events in the film led to the infamous "twinkie defense" case.
Encounters at the End of the World - this movie is supposed to be about the quirky characters that inhabit the southern continent, but the most interesting scenes of the movie are shots of the landscape above and below the ice. In one of them, an ocean floor full of giant starfish "danced" to the currents while bioluminescent jellyfishes flutter around. Even the reefs of Maui and Cozumel could not hold a candle to its beauty.
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