Later On

From B. J. Keltz’s Enriched by Words:

1.  Read; not just your genre, but a wide sampling of styles, subjects, and voices.  Read for pleasure.  Read to learn.

2. Move your body. Walking and exercise are great ways to work loose the log jams of the mind.  In addition, since writers tend to be sedentary, it helps keep your body fit.

3. Breathe. Practice breathing every day, not in a new age way, but to become aware.  Breathe deeply to nourish your body and to connect with the present.  Let your thoughts wander.  Sometimes you get the “click” just through breathing.

4.  Cross Pollinate. Take in art in all its forms:  dance, painting, music, you name it.  Enrich your writing compost pile with a variety of art experiences for your mind and senses.

5.  Get enough sleep. Seriously, it will help your mind stay alert and ready to write.

6.  Pay attention. See the world around you in terms of the five senses and with a writer’s eye.

7. Laugh. See the humor and joy in everyday life.  This makes you a more positive person, is fun, and releases tensions.

8.  Stretch. Long periods of time spent writing or thinking can be hard on your body.  Stand up, stretch, work the kinks out.  It is not a coincidence that moving the body can also frequently move your mind, bringing you the perfect phrase or fresh idea.

9.  Cultivate support from your loved ones and mentors.

10.  Write daily. Set a time or page goal.  Work from a prompt or free write.  Write every day without fail.

She omits:

a. Learn Esperanto

b. Learn to cook

c. Pay attention to your diet: “Eat food, mostly plants. Not a lot.” (Michael Pollan’s slogan)

d. Don’t learn Go (otherwise you’ll be spending lots of time that way)

I have several readers from Oz, and they might well be interested in this post that shows clearly the warming trend there. Global warming continues to advance.

Peter Wallsten in the LA Times:

Slowly over the last few weeks, some of Barack Obama’s most fervent supporters have come to an unhappy realization: The candidate who they thought was squarely on their side in policy fights is now a president who needs cajoling and persuading.

Advocates for stem cell research thought Obama would quickly sign an order to reverse former President Bush’s restrictions on the science. Now they are fretting over Obama’s statement that he wants to act in tandem with Congress, possibly causing a delay.

Critics of Bush’s faith-based initiative thought Obama had promised to end religious discrimination among social service groups taking federal money.

But Obama, in announcing his own faith-based program this month, said only that the discrimination issue might be reviewed.

And Obama’s recent moves regarding a lawsuit by detainees have left some liberal groups and Bush critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, feeling betrayed, given that Obama was a harsh critic of Bush’s detainee policies when running for office last year.

The anxiety is also being felt in the labor movement, one of Obama’s most important support bases. Some union officials and their allies are frustrated that at a crucial point in negotiations over his massive stimulus package, Obama seemed to call for limits on “Buy American” provisions in the bill aimed at making sure stimulus money would be spent on U.S.-made materials.

Obama has been president for less than a month, and his liberal critics concede that the economic crisis has understandably taken the focus off their issues. But some of the issues in play were crucial to building excitement on the left and mobilizing grass-roots support for Obama’s candidacy.

“He made very clear promises, and he should live up to them,” said Arthur Stamoulis, director of the Oregon Fair Trade Campaign, which received an unqualified “yes” from Obama on a campaign questionnaire last year when the group asked if he would support “Buy American” requirements. “The fact that he’s hedging on this is not promising. He’s catering much too much to the desires of Republicans who are not going to support the change that voters wanted.”

Thea Lee, policy director of the AFL-CIO, said, …

Continue reading. Of course, what’s too slow for progressives is too fast for conservatives. OTOH, I don’t think conservatives will be placated by simply slowing the pace of change: they want no change.

This is absolutely terrible:

School Library Journal looks at school and public libraries that aren’t adding potentially controversial books for young people to their collections.

In the first survey of its kind, School Library Journal (SLJ) recently asked 655 media specialists about their collections and found that 70 percent of librarians say they won’t buy certain controversial titles simply because they’re terrified of how parents will respond. Other common reasons for avoiding possible troublemakers include potential backlash from the administration (29 percent), the community (29 percent), or students (25 percent), followed by 23 percent of librarians who say they won’t purchase a book due to personal objections.

From Russ Kick at The Memory Hole:

From Wikileaks:

Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress.

The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to the financial collapse. Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990. The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices. The CRS is Congress’s analytical agency and has a budget in excess of $100M per year.

Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO.

They’ve added all those reports to the Open CRS system, which should mean that they’re now searchable at that site.

Also note this post at The Memory Hole:

This afternoon the Pentagon posted several new documents released due to Freedom of Information Act requests:

• Detainees: Incident Reports of Detainee on Detainee Assaults at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Release Date: February 2009 (22 MB)  (Posted 11 Feb 09)
• Global War on Terrorism: Memo from USD-P Douglas Feith to Director, DIA, dated Feb 2, 2002, “Request for Support” (7 MB)  (Posted 11 Feb 09)
• Global War on Terrorism: DoD Answers to The New Yorker Magazine (7 MB)  (Posted 11 Feb 09)
• Detainees: Sampling of Mass Disturbance Incident Reports from NOV 8, 2005 through DEC 2, 2007. Release Date: January 2009 (7 MB)  (Posted 11 Feb 09)
• Detainees: List of Mass Disturbances at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from NOV 8, 2005 through DEC 2, 2007. Release Date: January 2009 (10 MB)  (Posted 11 Feb 09)
• Detainees: Documents relating to Australian and British citizens detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Release Date: January 2009 (Posted 11 Feb 09)

And another—as you can see, The Memory Hole is an invaluable resource for researchers.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has issued a major new report, “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience” (available here).

CNN reports:

The report says the U.S. government “had neither the established structure nor the necessary resources to carry out the reconstruction mission it took on in mid-2003.”

It weaves interviews, facts and vignettes detailing the use of a “sea of taxpayer dollars” from mid-2002 through autumn 2008.

“Hard Lessons” also looks to the future. It stresses the importance of developing “an agreed-upon doctrine and structure” for reconstruction “so that the United States is ready when it next must intervene in a failed or failing state.” …

“The overuse of cost-plus contracts, high contractor overhead expenses, excessive contractor award fees, and unacceptable program and project delays all contributed to a significant waste of taxpayers’ dollars,” the report said.

One more:  Searchable Supreme & federal appellate cases online for free.

The LA Times reviews Stuffed:

Author Hank Cardello was a food industry insider for 30 years, holding executive-level positions at some of the nation’s largest food and beverage companies, including General Mills and Michelob.

Jacket Copy caught up with the author to talk to him about his new book, "Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s Really Making America Fat," which takes a historical look at the power of the food industry. The book describes how the American public is swayed by their mega-marketing machine, the current controversies surrounding America’s eating habits (i.e. how we got this fat and why we argue over cupcakes) and how we can turn this whole thing around for good (i.e. how we all lose the weight and keep it off!).

JC: What was the impetus for writing this book? You write about a personal health issue (possibly being diagnosed with cancer) in your preface. Can you talk a bit about that?

Cardello: It’s unusual. I really didn’t want to write about this. But it helped people to understand. I made myself one of those proverbial promises at that time. I wanted to make an impact and help people live a little longer through food.

JC: You were in the food industry for 30 years, holding various executive-level positions, witnessing marketing tactics and general practices. Was there ever a moment that struck you as odd? Or shady? Or strange?

Cardello: When I first got into the business, obesity wasn’t on the radar. They want cake? Give it to them. Those rules are long gone … two-thirds of this country is waddling around.

People have changed, their waistlines have changed, so we have to change.

When I was at Michelob — the world’s greatest job for a 30-year-old guy — we came out with a malt beverage. It was marketed in inner cities. Looking back, I don’t think I would have done that. You’re selling to groups of people and communities who a) can’t afford it and b) shouldn’t be drinking it.

JC: How is your book different from "Fast Food Nation"? …

Continue reading.

Obama Foodorama has an excellent post by Eddie Gehman Kohan, complete with photos and warranted snark. It’s lengthy, and it’s worth reading. It begins:

Wednesday’s Congressional hearing on the ongoing peanut butter contamination scandal reminded Obama Foodorama of life back home in Hollywood. There were lights, cameras, props, a script, celebrities (albeit Washingtonians), mobs of fans and screaming photographers chasing people down the streets. But the event was not so much a movie premiere as it was the opening of a tired sequel to what’s turned into the longest running film franchise in American history: Apocalypse Chow, a bizarre, hyper-modern murder mystery mashed up with that excellent comedy Dumb & Dumber.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee investigative hearing was called The Salmonella Outbreak: The Continued Failure to Protect The Food Supply, and that was the perfect title for this sequel, because it was exactly the same as every other Congressional hearing on food safety in the last decade–which each House member actually pointed out in their opening statements. Last year alone, during the 110th Congress, there were eight different hearings, and the same ground was plowed again and again, with no legislative action taken. Food safety oversight in the US has an ongoing identity crisis, but the questions remain the same year after year: Why is it de facto policy to allow 76 million Americans to become ill annually from food borne disease? Why are we content with 5,o00 food borne deaths annually? Why are our food safety standards trapped in the year 1900? Who is actually monitoring the food supply, the Centers for Disease Control, the Food Safety Inspection Service, the Food and Drug Administration, no one and everyone? What exactly do these agencies monitor, why is there a new food recall every week, and what are we going to do…? Please repeat these questions 1,000 times in a flat, droning voice, then repeat again. And again. In a couple hours, you’ll have replicated all of the House and Senate food safety action that’s gone on in recent memory.

Obama Foodorama had an excellent seat at the 4-1/2 hour screening of the 2009 version of Apocalypse Chow, thanks to world-renowned food poisoning attorney Bill Marler. A founding partner of Seattle’s Marler Clark law firm, Marler has represented clients in every actionable food borne disease outbreak for the last fifteen years. The subject of frequent excoriation by his many critics as an ambulance chasing mofo who dines out on suffering, Marler’s actually a brilliant fellow with a big heart. He’s a tireless champion of food safety, and writes Marler Blog, the best food safety blog on the internets. He also runs Outbreak!, a non-profit entity that funds global food safety education projects. He’s donated thousands of hours of his time to promoting The Cause, and generously finances dozens of non-profit projects that do the same. Two of Marler’s clients—one a family with a deceased father, and one a family with a gravely ill three-year-old child—testified at the hearing. As of today, Marler represents six different families in the salmonella outbreak, with perhaps thirty more to come. And he’s no stranger to Congressional testimony: He’s done it three other times, and he commented repeatedly that the hearing would be exact to other hearings he’s attended. (In pic: Bill Marler, standing center, during a break in the hearing) …

Continue reading.

Very cool. The story includes a useful interactive graphic. The story begins:

The bicycle, one of the world’s most resolutely human-powered machines, will join the long list of devices that have switched from the manual to the electronic when a new gear system makes its debut this weekend at the Tour of California.

Although the battery-powered derailleur by Shimano promises to bring ease and accuracy to changing gears by enabling riders to shift with a light touch to two electronic switches, traditionalists worry that it may erode the basic tenets of the sport.

“People choose bicycles precisely because a bicycle’s motion requires only human effort, and nothing could be more simple, independent and autonomous,” Raymond Henry, a cycling historian in St. Etienne, France, wrote in an e-mail message. “Any source of external energy, however weak, runs counter to this philosophy.”

Whether the gear system becomes the next iPod and redefines bicycle technology or ends up as the sport’s version of the eight-track tape will hinge on a number of factors, the most obvious being performance, reliability and cost.

Two earlier attempts at electronic gear changing by a French company, Mavic, often malfunctioned in rain. Another company, Campagnolo, has delayed bringing its version to market because of the economic downturn.

Shimano’s version, known as the Dura-Ace Di2 7970, is being used by three professional teams competing in California: Columbia High Road, Garmin Slipstream and Rabobank. About 10 riders will race with the system even though they have used it on only one or two training rides after receiving them late this week. …

Continue reading.

Good post at Balloon Juice by Tim F, in which he quotes a lengthy and highly interesting communiqué from a friend. An extract from the post:

A friend of mine who’s a senior manager at a hedge fund wrote to me about this a few weeks ago (this is long, but I found it worth reading):

Imagine the panic among regular consumers if this FDIC insurance did not exist! Bank runs would most likely be weekly in the current environment. The government thought up a solution, and it is working great right now.

The government fixed the bank to consumer confidence issue, now it needs to fix the bank to bank confidence issue. What is effectively happening right now is that the way we are “fixing” the bank to bank confidence issue is we are just giving banks money. It’s moronic and stone-age in its methodology compared to the relative cheapness of the FDIC insurance scheme. We need a way to ensure that if a bank has a dealing with another bank, that a bank CAN go bankrupt and the other banks or hedge funds can quickly regain any assets they had stored with that bank.

The CEOs of a lot of banks oppose this. Why? …

Continue reading.

Daphne Eviatar in the Washington Independent:

Amid the Democrats’ boostering and the Republicans’ assaults on the final stimulus package, almost no one is focusing on a key part of the bill that will be critical to making it work: accountability for how that $787 billion is spent. In fact, a look at the final bill reveals that to a large extent, the Democrats who drafted it and the Obama administration that pushed for it learned important lessons from the billions of dollars wasted by the Bush administration in Iraq. Some important provisions, however, were lost in the negotiations process.

The lead story in The New York Times Sunday serves as a sobering reminder of what can happen when government tries to spend a lot of money quickly, but doesn’t bother to keep track of where it’s going. In Iraq, no-bid contracts and nonexistent oversight led not only to brand-new trucks abandoned on roadsides and $45 cases of soda, but also to tens of thousands of dollars in cash delivered in pizza boxes and distributed as payoffs in paper sacks at drop-off spots around the Green Zone, according to a widening government investigation detailed by The Times.

The stimulus package goes a long way to keep that particular history from repeating itself.

For example, the bill creates a new board to oversee and coordinate federal spending and prevent “waste, fraud and abuse.” Any agency’s inspector general can review concerns about spending under the program, and the General Accountability Office (GAO) will conduct regular and reports on how the money is being spent. All this, plus a summary of the contracts themselves (the House bill had promised to put the entire contracts online—this was a concession to government contractors) are required to be posted online at www.recovery.gov.

The bill also requires the government to put most contracts up for competitive bidding  — a sharp departure from business-as-usual under the Bush administration — and if for some reason the contract is not competitive, the government must publish a  justification for the exception.

But it’s disappointing that Congress scaled back its pledge to post the final contracts…

Continue reading.

This is his idea of transparency? Daphne Eviatar reports:

The Obama administration, under pressure to turn over key memos written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, has asked the federal judge in New York for another 90 days to consider its position on a Freedom of Information Act case brought by a coalition of civil liberties advocates.  But the judge may not be inclined to grant the request.

As I reported earlier, the three memos at issue were written by then-OLC director Steven Bradbury and reportedly authorized abusive interrogations of suspected terrorists and decided that such extreme tactics would not violate the law. The Bush administration repeatedly refused to turn them over, but given President Obama’s promises to open government and increase disclosure under FOIA, the Justice Department now is under considerable pressure to change its position and release the documents, which could be critical to any future investigations or prosecutions of Bush officials.

The New York Times reported in October 2007 that the memos provided “explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.” These did not, the memos concluded, amount to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” — which would have been banned by international law, as well as a bill Congress was then considering.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued for the memos along with several other organizations, argues

Continue reading.

Disgusting:

Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA) has reaped a profit of more than $200,000 from political contributions by charging interest on money she loaned her own campaign, according to an analysis by Bloomberg. The congresswoman initially loaned herself $150,000 in 1998, and has since repaid herself from campaign contributions. Because the loan was given an unusual 18 percent interest rate, campaign funds have paid a staggering $221,780 in interest while only reducing the principal by $64,727. The interest charges were the subject of a 1998 complaint by her primary opponent but were allowed by the FEC. (Bloomberg)

The NY Times Editorial today points out the failure:

… On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama made clear that he would extend the faith-based initiative started by former President George Bush to help social service programs run by religious and other charitable groups obtain federal grants and contracts. But he also pledged that unlike Mr. Bush, he would provide meaningful safeguards to avoid the blurring of church-state boundaries, including a firm rule barring discrimination on the basis of religion. The rule is notably missing from his new decree. …

Glenn Greenwald today makes the case that treaties signed by the president (specifically, Ronald Reagan) and ratified by the Senate require that the US prosecute those involved in torture and other war crimes. It’s a good effort, but unfortunately the US has long simply ignored treaty obligations that it didn’t like. Ask surviving Native Americans, for example. The US is not a trustworthy partner.

Physics Nobel Laureate Robert B. Laughlin in The Crime of Reason:

The growing efforts of governments, corporations, and individuals to prevent competitors from knowing certain things that they themselves know has led to a stunning expansion of intellectual property rights and the strengthening of state classification powers… Broad areas of two sciences, physics and biology, are now off-limits to public discourse because they are national security risks. Our society is sequestering knowledge more extensively, rapidly, and thoroughly than any before it in history. Indeed the Information Age should probably be called the Age of Amnesia because it has meant, in practice, a steep decline public accessibility of important information.

I need to learn to hold my camera level, I see. A great shave today. The Rooney Style 3 Size 2 Super did a good job, but I have to admit that it’s too large for my shaving style. Perhaps I should sell that one. But the D.R. Harris lather was exceptional, as always, and the Slant Bar was a dream: an easy and surpassingly smooth shave. Lustray Spice is a very nice aftershave, which was quite satisfying on a dark, cold, rainy day—and the power keeps flickering. Thank goodness I just replaced the battery in my UPS.

Very interesting post, via Chadd. It begins:

The following talk was given on February 13, 2009, at Cowell Theatre in Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, to an audience of 550 people. Audio and video of the talk will be available on Long Now Foundation web site.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for showing up. It’s certainly nice to travel all the way across the North American continent and have a few people come to see you, even if the occasion isn’t a happy one. You are here to listen to me talk about social collapse and the various ways we can avoid screwing that up along with everything else that’s gone wrong. I know it’s a lot to ask of you, because why wouldn’t you instead want to go and eat, drink, and be merry? Well, perhaps there will still be time left for that after my talk.

I would like to thank the Long Now Foundation for inviting me, and I feel very honored to appear in the same venue as many serious, professional people, such as Michael Pollan, who will be here in May, or some of the previous speakers, such as Nassim Taleb, or Brian Eno – some of my favorite people, really. I am just a tourist. I flew over here to give this talk and to take in the sights, and then I’ll fly back to Boston and go back to my day job. Well, I am also a blogger. And I also wrote a book. But then everyone has a book, or so it would seem.

You might ask yourself, then, Why on earth did he get invited to speak here tonight? It seems that I am enjoying my moment in the limelight, because I am one of the very few people who several years ago unequivocally predicted the demise of the United States as a global superpower. The idea that the USA will go the way of the USSR seemed preposterous at the time. It doesn’t seem so preposterous any more. I take it some of you are still hedging your bets. How is that hedge fund doing, by the way? …

Continue reading. More by Orlov:

Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century
Thriving in an Age of Collapse
Our Village
The New Age of Sail
The Despotism of the Image

Tonight’s dinner was typically delicious, and since I took a photo, I thought I might as well blog it. The photo is for a letter to the Grandsons, to show them how I’m using their Christmas present of paprika.

3 rashers thick bacon
8 oz halibut
olive oil
vinegar (I used cherry wood aged organic white balsamic)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 bunch beet greens (from the beets used in yesterday’s salad), chopped
1/2 bunch of bok choy (I figure I had already used half), chopped
1 slug homemade pepper sauce
1 splash mirin
1 splash Eden Organic Imported Shoyu Sauce (I buy it by the case)
salt
pepper
paprika

Put the bacon in a large (4-qt) sauté pan over Low heat. Sauté bacon, turning frequently, until browned. Remove and drain on paper towels and set aside.

Pour off all bacon fat from pan, add a splash of olive oil, and sauté onion until transparent. Add a splash of vinegar to deglaze the pan, then add the greens, pepper sauce, pepper sauce, mirin, soy sauce, salt, and pepper. Sauté for a few minutes over medium heat, then cover and let simmer briskly for 15 minutes, stirring once or twice.

Put halibut atop the greens, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and paprika, and cover again, simmering briskly for 12 minutes.

Remove cover, chop the bacon into squares, and sprinkle over the halibut and greens. (I took the photo just before this step.)

This makes two good-sized meals for me. When it comes time for dinner, spread shredded cheese over what’s left, cover, and heat until cheese melts. You can also sprinkle the cheese with crushed red pepper.

That’s the recipe. Light on carbs, but for dessert for lunch I had several clementines, and for dinner two red pears, perfectly ripe, with goat cheddar: superb!

More info here.

Fascinating article by Michael Hirschorn in the Atlantic, which begins:

Around the same time NBC announced that Jay Leno, instead of decamping to do late-night comedy for ABC, would remain at NBC and move to a 10p.m., Monday-through-Friday slot, the creator of the network’s fading hit series Heroes took a public swan dive into hard concrete.

Speaking at a screenwriter expo in Los Angeles, Tim Kring struggled to defend his sci-fi-tinged show, which has endured two seasons of faltering ratings. Heroes is presented in a serialized format, meaning that stories “arc” over the course of an entire season rather than conclude at the end of each episode, as in a sitcom, or a police procedural such as CSI or Law & Order. The serialized format is “a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now,” a blogger quoted Kring as saying, “because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialized TV] was, you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on-air.”

Then, in a fit of pique for which he is still apologizing, he said: “So on-air is [relegated] to the saps and the dipshits who can’t figure out how to watch it in a superior way.”

Kring later claimed that his quote had been “slightly mangled,” but the damage was done. He was blasted by fans and critics (“Try, you know, not sucking,” Time’s television blogger, James Poniewozik, bloggishly advised him), and certainly there was something gloriously self-destructive about a 50-something show creator, at the apex of his career after decades of slogging through hack work, publicly attacking the very people who are keeping him in business. But his profane evisceration of his own viewers is of a piece with NBC’s decision to sully the sanctum sanctorum of prime time with a talk show: both are signs of an old television order dying and a new one starting to come into focus. …

Continue reading.