Tuesday morning roundup

The U.N. gets a lot of undeserved flack, but in this case, there hasn't been enough accountability.

Even though Spain serves as an example of how not to embrace solar power, the town in question is still better off than before.

No one (at least not I) is saying that elections are everything or that the Iraqi elections, in particular, will solve everything, but I suspect these critics are just jealous.

Eugene Robinson on what I hope will become neoMcCartygate.

Google's translation tool have improved since the "green onion thing" days.

Frivolous lawsuits or not, immediate damage or not, eating at McDonalds is dangerous.

Students across VA protest against the Attorney General's BS.

The Zoo has a new, less cuddly baby.

Monday morning roundup

Big Sugar influences what was originally a conservation deal. On a related note, hat tip to Wendy for this striking graphic.

By structure and strategy, the French economy had fared well in the global downturn.

The Times urges against scoring cheap political points at the expense of the Constitution.

It's almost as if fish have aesthetic sensibilities.

Why a rough patch in your past can be a good thing.

Home ownership as a critical component of national identity.

I don't know whether I agree with Ross Douthat's point in general, but I know that yoga doesn't really fit the argument.

Alice indeed

Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is actually "Alice in Wonderland" meets "Chronicles of Narnia" meets "Lord of the Rings" meets "300" meets "Wizard of Oz," but I really enjoyed it. It could also be called "Don't Marry Him: The Case for Not Settling for Mr. Not Good Enough." Manola Dargis had actually called out a level of creepiness of the Mad Hatter's checking out Alice at one point, but is it lost on everyone that finally we have a strong female heroine who's action role isn't a vehicle for a skimpy outfit?

***
I recall an interview with Ricky Gervais, from years ago, where the interviewer asked him what he liked to eat in a cinema and he said he didn't: it's rude. Watch the f*ing movie. And I do have to say that while it's perfectly socially acceptable for people to crunch on popcorn and rattle candy wrappers in a cinema, it's still annoying, and I have to ask why we have to do it. Can't people go two hours without food?

***
One of the previews made me think, "if I want to see someone get hit in the balls, I'll just watch "Idiocracy.""

No need to share

I'm often under the impression that I should get out more, until I do, and remember why I don't.

I went to see the amazing Suzanne Farrell Ballet last night. I enjoyed it, even though the guy to my left--like the guy to my right on Friday night at Aurelie's Oratorio--seemed to think that his space included not only the entire shared armrest, but the space over my seat. I deliberately reasserted my space in both cases. I am not a spatial socialist; I do not subscribe to 'to everyone according to his need.' If you cannot, or choose not to, comfortably contain yourself in one seat, buy two.

And more importantly, shut the f* up. Why do I have to bitch about this every time I go out? Who ARE you people? What is so important that it cannot wait two hours? Does it even cross your mind, how rude it is not just to other theatergoers but to the performers? When a ballerina lost her balance and fell flat on her face in the final act, I wanted to blame the talkers, but I suppose that wouldn't be fair. There was a fair amount of shushing, and people were quiet most of the time, but why do they even need to be shushed?

More on this later, but I also wanted to mention that a number of elderly people came onto the shuttle bus from the Foggy Bottom metro when all the seats were already taken. I was already standing, but one young person and one not so young person got up to offer their seats. A very young woman just sat there. An older woman on the bus, wearing ginormous, dangly, real or very convincing diamond earrings, commented in French that the bus was awful and that they should have taken a metrobus, which was only fifty cents with a transfer.

Most of the people were going to "War and Peace." The music is supposed to be amazing, but you could not pay me to sit for four hours (not including intermissions).

Also: enough with the jeans and cuords: show some f*ing respect.

***
I may be the wrong person to ask why people feel the need to communicate during a performance. I mean, it would be rude in any case, but I don't understand the motivation. Then again, I go to the ballet by myself. I don't necessarily prefer to, but I don't mind. Last night, it was a last-minute decision and it was too late to even ask anyone if they wanted to go. But I've never been that much of a 'sharer.'

Except, obviously, I am, because I share articles with you guys all the time. Except I don't share on demand. I remember reading the New Yorker profile of Peter Orszag months ago, and RM was sitting in the same space (it was before I moved to my office). I laughed out loud, and RM said, "share! share!" and I just rolled my eyes. I don't want to share. I'd have to explain to much context. Read the f*ing article if you want. I offered a few sentences that explained nothing, and he fake-laughed. Similar thing happened when I was watching How I Met Your Mother and he wanted to watch with me, only to produce inane commentary until I glared at him to indicate that I was more interested in watching the show. I've watched TV with other people and enjoyed their non-inane commentary, but it's just different when it's forced. I guess the issue does come back to the fact that we weren't friends. But in any case, when you're at a ballet, you're not in your living room. Shut the f* up, and share LATER.

Sunday morning roundup

Finding inspiration despite tragedy.

Ouch.

A lost Jewish tribe appears in Zimbabwe.

Nicolas Kristof on industrial ag and the rise of superbugs.

Porn may be bad for you.

Frank Rich rekindles the Obama message debate; the Times profiles Axelrod; and the Post's Ombudsman steps in to mediate Rahm/Milbankgate.

Is my namesake book really all about math? That would explain why my parents like it so much.

I wish this were funnier, but it's still pretty good. At least we finally have a hilarious Shouts & Murmurs.

Priorities

Do you want to hear something hilarious? I'm going on vacation in less than a month and I've done jack-$hit recently to plan for this trip, apart from play with Rosetta Stone. The last e-mail I sent Jay was a link to this:

Response to comment

Purvi, I totally appreciate the content of your post: my mom does that as well, i.e. calls and then gets frustrated that there's not much I have to say, at the time she opted to call me.

However, your comment brings up a more important issue: WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE? Every time I see both you and Allen offline on google chat, I think maybe this is it. I mean, seriously, Baby--I know first babies tend to arrive late, but your mommy and daddy can't wait to meet you. Neither can I.

Saturday morning ramble

Like a good Jewish girl, I've been feeling guilty about snapping at mom the other night. That is, incidentally, just about the only thing that makes me a good Jewish girl, so I guess it's good for something. But I digress. Feeling guilty made me wonder about what had transpired and why.

If you'll abide a shameless mixing of metaphors, I'll tell you Thursday night was a perfect storm of snap-ready ingredients: just before bedtime of a long day of a long week, combined with mom's complete insensitivity thereto (as demonstrated by the timing of the call and screaming into the phone) and asking about my internet for the gazillionth time. I'm not kidding: see here and here, for example. I don't think I'm deluding myself: I've genuinely concluded that if my mother had 'met me half-way' by calling at a reasonable time and/or not calling to ask me the same question, I wouldn't have snapped.

Mom had no way of knowing that Thursday was a bad day, but, like equally obtuse RM, she might have understood by now that even though I'm not in bed by 9, I'm at least thinking about getting ready for bed, and I'm in no mood for BS conversations. I can talk substance; I can talk logistics; but I don't want to answer questions about my internet that I've already answered numerous times. I would not be annoyed if anyone called to talk about a problem or ask for help, but my tolerance for small talk plummets proportionally to my level of exhaustion.

Of course, I'm what mom might call the undeserving tired: it's not like I walked to work through ten feet of snow, carrying a fifty-pound handbag, and then performed any sort of manual labor before undertaking the same arduous journey home, only to make dinner for five kids before taking off for a second job. Nonetheless, there are some days when I'm just tired. Especially tired. As in, I'm-going-to-snap-at-you-if-you-come-between-me-and-my-bedtime-with-stupid-questions tired. Thankfully, the regular occurrence of that scenario declined when the live-in extroverted social idiot moved out, and even though I was almost that tired the night he put his hands on my feet, that would have been equally ridiculous any day. But I digress, again (hey, it is a ramble--that subject heading absolves me of any obligation to be coherent).

This also ties into mom's wondering why I don't call more often during the week, and I have to wonder whether she's made the connection--she did pick up on how tired I was. I'm not going to call when mom's being herself--which I've come to see as endearing--is going to push me over the edge. I'll call today to smooth things over. Because I'm a good Jewish girl.

***
I called home shortly after posting the above.

Mom: Have you done your taxes?
A.: I have--a while ago, actually.
Mom: Did you use software?
A.: Online version of Turbotax.
Mom: There are some free ones out there...
A.: My taxes were especially complicated this year because of the roommate, so it didn't make sense...
Mom: Didn't "make sense!" [Correcting my Russian]. You really need to take a night course in Russian or something--you truly are losing the language!
A.: Well, it didn't make sense.
Mom: I don't see what's complicated about having a roommate.
A.: It's a source of income not represented on a W2, and it entailed converting part of the property to a rental property. I wasn't about to f* around with a cheap tax program.
Mom: Whatever works. What else is up?
A.: Not much.
Mom: Work is fine?
A.: Yup.
Mom: Well, if you do anything else interesting, let me know.
A.: Will do.

Saturday morning roundup

How do you observe the strictest laws of Orthodox Judaism--a religion that originated in the dessert--under the weather conditions of snowmageddon?

Crazy people are coming out of the woodwork.

Virginia's attorney general doesn't think public universities owe legal protections to all people, but there's reason to believe most of the state is more enlightened on this matter.

Here's even more bull$hit coming out of VA's state government, and it's truly unbelievable. It's enough to make me want to march on Richmond with a wire hanger in hand, and I don't have a wire hanger.

Dana Milbank writes that Rove's new book reflects an alternate universe. Some conservatives accuse Liz Cheney of channeling McCarthy.

Friday evening roundup

Is psychiatry a science? Either way, that's a great article.

WTF is wrong with these people? I.e., the neighbors, not the sculptors.

Take that, RM!

An awesome perspective on the settling debate.

I don't know what about Aurelia's Oratorio was family friendly, but it was a joy to watch.

For not the first time, I've caught myself in the same perverse thought: woohoo, it's going to be nice out--I can take my compost out!

Friday morning roundup

What about these real estate blurb would lead you to believe it relates to the People's Republic of China:

The spacious duplex comes with crocodile-skin bedposts, hand-carved bronze doors inlaid with Swarovski crystals — and a $45 million price tag.

and

“Look at this bronze door,” said Wang Yaodong. “That costs $50,000! Look at these Gaggenau appliances. They were made in Germany.” The glasses were imported from Belgium, the Jacuzzi from Italy. And don’t worry about losing your key, he said, “This lock can read the palm of your hand.”

I love Shanghai, but you get a lot more for your money in Tokyo.

David Brooks compares the Tea Party to the New Left of the 1960s.

Virginia threatened to close rest stops, too, to great popular revolt. Services cost money, people. And states raise money through taxes.

The FTA report on Metro's safety is scathing.

Phone call

As you may gather, 9pm is not actually my bedtime, but my mother thinks it is. Sometimes she thinks it's 8pm. Basically, whenever I don't pick up the phone for whatever reason, after 7pm, she figures it's because I've turned in. So why she insists on regularly calling me close to or past her idea of my bedtime is beyond me. Why she insists on calling me past her idea of my bedtime to ask me questions to which we've discussed the answers many times, is doubly beyond me. And no, it wasn't when I leave for vacation or whether I've put on weight, but it was close enough to what should be my bedtime that I was in no mood for a regurgitated conversation.

A.: Hello?
Mom: Hello. [To my father, but into the phone] PICK UP THE PHONE!
A.: Mom, could you not scream in my ear please?
Mom: Must you take that tone?
A.: How many times have I asked you not to do that??
Mom: So?
A.: So, it hurts my ear. Please don't do it anymore.
Mom: Anyway, do you have cable?
A.: No.
Mom: No?? What do you have?
A.: Mom, we've discussed this. I don't have a TV.
Mom: I'm not talking about a TV, and so what if we've discussed it. How do you get internet?
A.: DSL.
Mom: What's that?
A.: You know what DSL is, and not only because we've had this conversation several times.
Mom: It goes through a modem?
A.: Yes.
Dad: So, you plug it into the phone jack?
A.: Well, I could, but I use wireless. By way of DSL.
Dad: I see.
Mom: That's all. Goodnight, then.
A.: Goodnight.

Thursday evening roundup

Broder on Rahmgate. Or should that be Milbankgate?

I'm ginormous by Japanese standards.

Awwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!

Thursday morning roundup

In Yemen, too, brave girls who have had enough, together with journalists, are catalyzing social change. Unlike in the tragic story I posted yesterday about India, at least in Yemen, the legal system worked.

A genocide is a genocide, regardless of whose country has the better paid lobbyists.

Documents left on floors to be picked up by journalists can be interesting.

The vote to censure Marion Barry reflects a paradigm shift in DC politics. Robert McCartney says it all in the closing lines of his column: "We can only hope that such enthusiasm for accountability and high standards will have real impact and ultimately spread to all parts of the city's government."

Political accountability is not the only kind lacking in the metro region: apparently, area dog owners aren't great about cleaning up after their dogs.

Project Runway comes to Wii.

Who knew: advertising on Facebook can be creepy.

What about Facebook isn't creepy?

I'm not on Facebook, because I don't need to know what my "friends" are doing every minute of the day, and I don't need anyone to know what I'm doing at the same frequency. I resent that I can't turn off e-mails from Facebook--it's one thing to get them from friends, and quite another to be invited to join not only by people you don't even know, but by people you've interacted with once. No, I don't want to be "friends" with a contractor I invited to offer an estimate for the gate. Linked In at least gives you the option of saying, 'I don't know this person.'

Google ads are too absurd to be creepy, but Picasa's facial recognition tool is cutting it close. Still, it was funny when it asked me to identify a statue of Buddha. I wondered whether, had I complied, it would have applied the formula to other pictures of statues of Buddha.

The Post's Peep Show

I've made the case many a time that I am not a food snob (exhibit A being the lack of truffle oil in my pantry). Just because I eschew ingredients shown to alter the gender of frogs, doesn't mean I'm elitist in my food choices. True, I've become increasingly discerning over the years, particularly as age eroded my once-formidable ability to metabolize like a chinchilla. But there were a few foods that made me want to gag long before I found politics, foremost among them, peeps.

Now, I know one of you has admitted, on your blog, feeding peeps to your kids. I'm not proselytizing. I'm just telling you they make me sick. Unless they're used to recreate a murder scene from a musical. You have to admit, these are f*ing awesome (check out the fourth slide, for example). If you think you can do better, and you have a lot of time on your hands, you have just over a week to get your submissions in.

Wednesday morning roundup

The Saudi pot calls the Israeli kettle black.

I see both sides of the Kopassus issue, and they're not unbridgeable: you can have engagement and accountability.

India's 24-hour news cycle is apparently a force for accountability, at least if you're middle-class and telegenic. It's too late for one girl and her family, but it looks like the system is changing.

Our days have become just over a microsecond shorter.

What 16-month old would Jesus deliberately starve?

Tuesday evening roundup

I thought this guy was exaggerating until I read about this load of hippie crap. Nothing wrong with slightly processed foods. You can make your own tofu, whereas it takes a lab to make non-maple syrup. Staying away from high fructose corn syrup is self-preservation, not hippie crap. Meanwhile, some say obsession with healthy food, or orthorexia, is an eating disorder. But let's be careful with our terminology: the behavior described in that article does not constitute healthy eating.

On a related note: the cost of unsafe food.

Tuesday morning roundup

I know that the Grey Lady is busy exposing the misdeeds of New York State governors, for example, but the Times' coffee party coverage represents at least the fourth time, just by my informal count, that the Post has scooped the Times in the past few weeks. Nonetheless, it's a different angle, and an important one. I wonder if the coffee party will co-opt some of the non-fringe tea partiers.

While we're (figuratively) on the topic of hot beverages, I'm going to recommend Safeway's organic mint tea--it's quite good. I also really like Bigelow's Plantation Mint, which comes in decaf should you want to partake in the evening. I don't know what's out in LA, but surely there's a specialty store like Teaism that will have Moroccan Mint, maybe even in decaf.

This guy and his statue figure prominently in the New Yorker piece on Ukraine that I recommended yesterday. And even without that excellent article, the Times' oversimplification is striking:

Nationalists in the west speak Ukrainian and loathe Russian influence. In the east are Russian speakers who feel a kinship toward Moscow. With Mr. Yanukovich’s inauguration, Ukraine has gone from one pole to the other, and the question is whether a Yanukovich presidency can change this dynamic.

It's not East/West, Russian-speaking/Ukrainian speaking, nationalist/pro-Russian. There are threads of those things, but they overlap. If identity politics throughout Eastern Europe are complicated, they're ever more so in Ukraine. The country hasn't gone from one pole to another in an election. People didn't elect Yanukovich because he was pro-Russian; they elected him because the incumbents drove the country into the ground.

Now for another country with an identity crisis and one foot in Europe: Turkey.

The power of infrastructure, strong building codes. And poetry in the face of disaster.

The Rahm debate rages on. The pretext of some of the rumblings quoted in that article annoy me: what about leadership? I can't find it, but the other day Nancy Pelosi pointed out that governance was about more than ensuring reelection. Speaking of Rep. Pelosi, she comes up in Robin Givhan's piece on what the Italians have done for women's power dressing.

Virginia's governor accepts stimulus funds in spite of himself.

Whose benefits would Jesus deny?

Now next time mom yells at me and insists on calling me an idiot, every two minutes, for washing and drying clothes in a hotel room, I'll let her know that Paul Krugman does the same. Actually, his wife has a practical suggestion for more efficient drying.

Verlyn Klinkenborg offers practical suggestions as well (you'll learn how to better adjust your side mirror, which, with my Corolla CE, I have to do manually). More interestingly, he explores the idea that learning is about changing some very fundamental ways--by having bad habits first pointed out to you and then unlearned, and then replaced. This idea has been on my mind since I've started learning a language completely distinct from the ones I know. It's quite challenging to do something mindfully when you've been doing it intuitively for so long, but it's also fascinating.

Monday evening roundup

This post references the Atlantic article on Walmart I posted the other day. My obstacle is the same as the writer's: Walmart is just too far away, whereas I can walk to Whole Foods.

I know that some people don't feel the same way I do about walkability. If you'll recall, RM used to drive everywhere, and expressed amazement that I walked to the nearest supermarket, which was a five-minute walk and longer drive. Here's another guy who clearly isn't a walker.

It's not like we need health care reform. Who said costs weren't reasonable?

Monday morning roundup

Change may or may not be coming to Egypt. How change came and went in Ukraine. The latter article actually offers an insightful look at Eastern European identity politics, for those interested in that sort of thing. It also reminded me of an incident a few years ago, when the Y was my gym, and I found myself in the sauna with a woman who, like me, was annoyed at the head-up-the-ass parenting in the place (which was particularly visible in the sauna, where parents would let their kids jump up and down on the benches; they'd even open the door, even though others were in there, because the kids complained it was 'too hot.' But I digress). She made some sort of comment like, 'I'm European! We do saunas right.' Fair enough. I know that--a good friend of mine is Swedish, and her family, whom I visited years ago, has a sauna in their backyard. But this woman clearly wasn't Scandinavian. I detected an Eastern European accent, and, besides, you won't find anyone from France or Germany, or Switzerland (or pretty much anywhere in Western or Central Europe) calling themselves 'European,' at least not as an initial statement of identity. I asked her where she was from; she answered 'Ukraine,' and then repeated that she was European. Anyway, that article touches on Ukraine's Europe-or-Russia identity crisis.

Do we not have more seriously persecuted people to whom to grant asylum? I've read the Refugee Convention; I'm pretty sure it doesn't cover persecution on the basis of a preference for home schooling.

There is something very, very wrong about this incident, and it's not that the girl got off without charges.

Empathy and health care reform.

Working mothers don't have it easy in South Korea, which, among other things, has the largest gender wage gap in the world.

Learning Russian is hot again.

I alluded to resistance to antibiotics, as exacerbated by factory farming, the other day. Here's another biproduct of unsustainable agriculture, and it's choking the Chesapeake Bay.