Poetry and Scotch

This 120-person strong insurgent troop is drawn from the base’s own Blackhorse Regiment, a division of the U.S. Army that exists solely to provide opposition. Whatever the war, the 11th Armored is always the pretend enemy. According to Ferrell, their current role as Afghan rebels is widely envied: They receive specialized training (for example, in building IEDs) and are held to “reduced grooming standards,” while their mission is simply to “stay alive and wreak havoc.”

If they die during a NTC simulation, they have to shave and go back on detail on the base, Ferrell added, so the incentive to evade their American opponents is strong.

via The Atlantic

A road-building company recently bulldozed the Noh Mul Mayan temple in Belize, turning the remains into gravel. According to Professor Normand Hammond, emeritus professor of archaeology, “bulldozing Maya mounds for road fill is an endemic problem in Belize.” But this pre-Colombian temple was first established around 350BCE and was one of the largest and most unique in the country. At one time Noh Mul occupied about 12 square miles of privately owned sugar cane fields, though all archeological treasures are owned and protected by the national government. Today only a small core of limestone cobblestones remain. “It’s a feeling of incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity … they were using this for road fill,” said the head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe. “It’s like being punched in the stomach, it’s just so horrendous.”

via Evening Edition

Charles Pierce on the NFL

Euphemism is no longer adequate. Euphemism is, in fact, an insult to our collective intelligence and a cruel mockery of our collective morality. At its highest and most lucrative level — at the very apex of its slow dance with the institutions of American corporate power — it is at its most savage, which is fitting, because we are in an age of organized (if somewhat more polite) corporate savagery unseen since the days of Jay Gould and the rest of the Gilded Age brigands. Euphemism is no longer sufficient camouflage. Football is about breaking human beings, preferably on the cheap, and replacing them with human beings who, for the moment, are unbroken — or, at least, less broken. The only even remotely interesting question remaining is whether the nation can simply admit this to itself and — if having done so honestly — whether it can live as an ethical and moral culture in which the savagery is allowed to prosper.

via Grantland

Your Green Choices Don’t Matter

All the green lifestyle changes in the world don’t alter the fact that fossil fuels are safely embedded at the center of our global energy system…

Energy is a systemic issue. If you want to change it, you have to start at the level of systems — not with the downstream effects.

That’s why economists think carbon taxes are such an important idea. There are multiple benefits. Taxing carbon means accounting for currently ignored costs of fossil fuels — in 2009, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that Americans spend $120 billion every year dealing with the health effects of air pollution. Carbon taxes also incentivize and simplify sustainable personal decisions — instead of doing lots of research to buy just the right green product, all you have to do is buy the thing that’s cheaper.

via The Atlantic

In the religiously plural society of the United States, sectarian faith is optional for citizens, as everyone knows. Americans have rarely bled, sacrificed or died for Christianity or any other sectarian faith. Americans have often bled, sacrificed and died for their country. This fact is an important clue to its religious power. Though denominations are permitted to exist in the United States, they are not permitted to kill, for their beliefs are not officially true. What is really true in any society is what is worth killing for, and what citizens may be compelled to sacrifice their lives for.

[source]

Proportionality in American Response

There’s something quite fitting and ironic about the fact that the Boston freak-out happened in the same week the Senate blocked consideration of a gun control bill that would have strengthened background checks for potential buyers. Even though this reform is supported by more than 90% of Americans, and even though 56 out of 100 senators voted in favour of it, the Republican minority prevented even a vote from being held on the bill because it would have allegedly violated the second amendment rights of “law-abiding Americans”.

So for those of you keeping score at home – locking down an American city: a proper reaction to the threat from one terrorist. A background check to prevent criminals or those with mental illness from purchasing guns: a dastardly attack on civil liberties.

-via The Guardian

Wednesday

9:00 AM- Leave apartment to head to the airport for an 11:35 flight to Chicago, where we’ll have a one hour layover before heading to Frankfurt, where we’ll have 55 minutes before leaving for Venice, arriving Thursday morning at 9:30 AM.

9:15 AM- Flurries turn into snow showers. Highway visibility reduced. Traffic slows.

9:40 AM- Check in at the United gate, as they’re operating the first leg of our Lufthansa flight. Heading through O’Hare to meet Dr. Girlfriend’s sister before heading to Venice.

9:45 AM- Inquire about expected delays and switching planes. We’re 15 minutes too late to catch the earlier Den-Chicago flight. Attendant says, “That’s why you should come two hours early.” Our flight is at 11:35 AM.

10:00 AM- Breeze through heightened security checkpoints. Fight is showing as on-time. Start search for donuts.

10:30 AM- No donuts yet. Fuck scones.

11:00 AM- Flight shows as 10 minutes delayed.

11:30 AM- Board flight. Scheduled for a 12:05 PM departure.

12:00 PM- Notified that Chicago thunderstorms are affecting departures. Optional deplaning allowed.

12:15 PM- Dr. Girlfriend rebooks us on the next Chicago-Frankfurt departure as we’ll miss the first connection. Estimated Venice arrival time is now 1:30 PM (4 hours behind).

1:00 PM- Chicago has a full ground stop. Entire plane is deplaned. Three hours of flex time to make new connection. Eat a quesadilla. United agent tells us we can’t switch planes as they can’t pull bags off the plane, and that they can’t follow us internationally without being on the EXACT SAME PLANE WE ARE due to customs.

2:00 PM- Ground stop still in effect. Waiting for a decision to be made at 3:00 PM. Head to United customer service desk to start plans for alternative arrangements.

2:05 PM- Get in line.

2:40 PM- Dr. Girlfriend leaves the queue to go back to the gate and wait for news.

2:57 PM- reach help counter. Told no decision can be made until we are delayed so long our working itinerary is impossible. Also told that the 5:40 Den-Frankfurt flight is full.

3:03 PM- leave desk.

3:04 PM- Phone call from Dr. Girlfriend. New departure decision will be made at 4:00 PM. Our working itinerary is now impossible.

3:10 PM- head to secret overflow United help line discovered while queued up in main line.

3:45 PM- D. Thornton at United help line rebooks us onto the 5:40 Denver to Frankfurt flight. Will still make original Frankfurt-Venice flight. Still on track for a 1:30 PM Thursday arrival. Abandon any plans to meet Dr. Girlfriend’s sister, who has now been rerouted to Indianapolis.

6:10 PM- board flight. Need to leave ASAP to avoid missing connection.

6:30 PM- head to deicing line.

6:50 PM- Lady five rows up passes out. Frantic search for doctors on board. Six report before Dr. Girlfriend can.

7:30 PM- back to gate to deplane sick lady.

8:30 PM- back the deicing line.

9:30 PM- We’re flying to Germany! No way in hell we’ll make our Venice connection though.

Thursday

3:00 PM- Reach Frankfurt. Head to customer service. Lufthansa has already booked us on the next flight. German efficiency is noted. United inefficiency is also noted.

3:15 PM- Issue with new boarding passes as agent can’t find us easily due to the number of booking/rebookings.

3:20 PM- Boarding passes printed.

3:30 PM- Pretzels are bought. Scotch is bought. Pretzels are delicious. Dr. Girlfriend’s sister is called. Her new estimated arrival time is now Friday morning, 24 hours late. Her bags will meet her there, though on a different plane.

4:15 PM- Board plane for Venice.

5:30 PM- Arrive in Venice.

6:00 PM- Discover our bags have not arrived in Venice.

6:20 PM- Make it to baggage agent. Her English is *touches fingertips on right hand together* “notta the good”.

6:25-6:45 PM- cannot explain to agent why the fact that no one answering the apartment phone when she calls doesn’t mean we won’t be able to. Lots of iterations of “No one is there right now. We’ll be there tomorrow.”

6:50 PM- head to water taxi.

7:15 PM- watch water taxi leave while we approach. Next one in thirty minutes. Beautiful sunset over lagoon.

7:45 PM- catch water taxi. Head to Venice.

9:00 PM- reach apartment. Bathroom break, then off to find dinner. We haven’t eaten since breakfast was served on our morning flight.

9:10 PM- Dr. Girlfriend turns the ancient key in the ancient lock. It breaks in the lock. #freebonz hashtag is created for real-time Twitter updates.

9:45 PM- apartment owner in San Francisco starts calling for a locksmith.

10:15 PM- Fire department is called.

10:45 PM- Fire department arrives. #freebonz hashtag discontinued.

11:00 PM- Shower time. Full body dish soap lather achieved.

Friday

Bags? Sightseeing? Stay tuned.

In the final paragraph of the novel Middlemarch, George Eliot pays another kind of tribute to the dead. Eliot writes, “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

James Kwak on Increasing Social Security

Now we could have an argument about whether, at the margin, Social Security is a net negative or a net positive from an economic standpoint. On the negative side, it is a forced savings program, meaning that people do not have full control over their money, meaning it distorts economic choices. On the positive side, it is an insurance program that provides valuable protection to people of all ages against the risks of not making a lot of money or outliving your savings, and for this type of insurance program to work, mandatory participation is essential. Social Security may look like a naked tax-and-transfer program when you look at it in retrospect, after you know how everyone’s life turned out. But if you look at it from the perspective of a new college graduate and compare expected contributions to expected benefits, it looks a lot more like insurance you want but can’t get anywhere else.

via The Atlantic

An Oral History of Jurassic Park

LAURA DERN Dr. Ellie Sattler I was talking with Nicolas Cage, and we had just done Wild at Heart together, and I said to him, “Nic, they want to put me on the phone with Steven Spielberg, but they want to talk to me about a dinosaur movie…” And he was like, “You aredoing a dinosaur movie! No one can ever say no to a dinosaur movie!” I was like, “Really?” And he’s like, “Are you kidding? It’s a dream of my life to do a movie with dinosaurs!” 

via EW