Later On

At some point, even politicians will realize that redoubling failure does not produce success. This video is via a blog post at Transform.

More info on Stop the Violence BC.

I learned at least one thing in each of the three videos—actually a few things. I particularly liked the garlic techniques and the omelet.

Take a look. I’m going to use the garlic tricks today.

I never did much care for her comic strip, but her current work sounds interesting and rewarding. Dan Kois writes in the NY Times Magazine:

Dorie Cox left her little house by the Fort Lauderdale airport at 7:15 a.m. on a Wednesday morning this past summer to take a three-train journey to Miami. The Tri-Rail zipped along beside I-95 into the city; the Metrorail took her past the hospital where her best friend died; the elevated Metromover looped, conductorless, around downtown and dropped her off at Miami Dade College.

Around the same time, Vanessa Moss caught the No. 95 express bus from Golden Glades. Each trip to and from the four-day creative-writing workshop she signed up for would cost $2.35. So the previous day, she went to the credit union and asked the teller for eight allotments of $2.35.

Moss, a divorced postal clerk with a grown daughter, had never heard of Lynda Barry until the local NPR station mentioned her seminar “Writing the Unthinkable.” She’d always thought she could be a writer — she has ideas about food and faith and romance — so she wanted to figure out, through Barry’s course, whether it was something she could even consider.

Cox works at a monthly trade journal about megayachts. She has been reading Barry’s cartoons since the early 1980s, often clipping and trading with her best friend from high school, Sandie Brown. Last year, Brown died of dengue fever, and Cox got a small tattoo on her left rib: a telephone, copied from Barry’s comics, in remembrance of the hours the friends spent talking to each other. Now she hoped to write about that friendship.

In a drab fourth-floor classroom at Miami Dade, the two women, each in her late 40s, joined the 33 other students assembled — mostly women, mostly middle-aged and mostly creatively frustrated. At the front of the class, Barry wore an Emily Dickinson T-shirt, a red bandanna knotted atop her head. She was preparing to sing. “Singin’ ’s the scariest thing you can do in front of people,” she told her new students. “I figure I’m already nervous” — indeed, her deep voice shook a bit — “so what the hell.”

“I hope you’re nervous, too,” she added. When someone nodded, Barry broke into a grin. “Good!” she exclaimed. “I want you to be terrified.”

She closed her eyes and sang to the tune of “Coal Miner’s Daughter”: “I was born a meat cutter’s daughter/My mom was from the Philippines; she was a janitor/I ate TV dinners at night/I grew up by the TV light/While Dad drank vodka in the basement and Mom hollered.”

Barry opened her eyes and smiled. “I’m gonna work you like mules on the Erie Canal,” she said.

Here are some details about Lynda Barry that didn’t appear in her autobiographical song. . .

Continue reading.

From the concluding part of Paul Krugman’s NY Times column today:

. . .

Now, however, the results are in, and the picture isn’t pretty. Greece has been pushed by its austerity measures into an ever-deepening slump — and that slump, not lack of effort on the part of the Greek government, was the reason a classified report to European leaders concluded last week that the existing program there was unworkable. Britain’s economy has stalled under the impact of austerity, and confidence from both businesses and consumers has slumped, not soared.

Maybe the most telling thing is what now passes for a success story. A few months ago various pundits began hailing the achievements of Latvia, which in the aftermath of a terrible recession, nonetheless, managed to reduce its budget deficit and convince markets that it was fiscally sound. That was, indeed, impressive, but it came at the cost of 16 percent unemployment and an economy that, while finally growing, is still 18 percent smaller than it was before the crisis.

So bailing out the banks while punishing workers is not, in fact, a recipe for prosperity. But was there any alternative? Well, that’s why I’m in Iceland, attending a conference about the country that did something different.

If you’ve been reading accounts of the financial crisis, or watching film treatments like the excellent “Inside Job,” you know that Iceland was supposed to be the ultimate economic disaster story: its runaway bankers saddled the country with huge debts and seemed to leave the nation in a hopeless position.

But a funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.

So how’s it going? Iceland hasn’t avoided major economic damage or a significant drop in living standards. But it has managed to limit both the rise in unemployment and the suffering of the most vulnerable; the social safety net has survived intact, as has the basic decency of its society. “Things could have been a lot worse” may not be the most stirring of slogans, but when everyone expected utter disaster, it amounts to a policy triumph.

And there’s a lesson here for the rest of us: The suffering that so many of our citizens are facing is unnecessary. If this is a time of incredible pain and a much harsher society, that was a choice. It didn’t and doesn’t have to be this way.

The choice always seems to be to protect the wealthy and powerful from the consequences of their actions regardless of the suffering that then results for the mass of people. That’s why Iceland is so unusual. Their citizens somehow have kept power under their government. What’s their secret?

This:

J Med Ethics. 1992 Jun;18(2):94-8.

A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder.

Bentall RP.

Source
Department of Clinical Psychology, Liverpool University.

Abstract
It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains–that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.

PMID: 1619629
PMCID: PMC1376114 Free PMC Article

Shaving with a straight razor offers the possibility of getting a fine shave from a razor a couple of centuries old: it’s a very old style of razor. Here’s how they are made in a modern factory:

And here’s the post on an artisanal straight.

The lid is upside down, I notice (now). That’s what comes of setting up the shoot just after getting up in the morning.

I liked the fragrance quite a bit—tea tree and rosemary combine for a warm scent—but the lather was frail. Okay shave, but this will not make the list of favorite soaps.

I really enjoyed using the Rooney Finest again. A commenter on Wicked_Edge was wondering about the grade “finest,” asking whether that was a standard grade or just something the manufacturer made up. (We were actually discussing a Frank Shaving Finest brush.) As I explained, there are no standard grades: every manufacturer grade is made up by the manufacturer. Some customs have arisen: the silvertip bristles are evident by the white tips of the bristles, and “silvertip” is used for that—but also used are the terms “best” (by Simpson, for example), “super silvertip”, “finest” and doubtless others, at the maker’s decision. For badger without the white tips, we see “pure”, “best”, “Chinese grey”, and others. The different names when used by a single maker normally designate gradations of quality within the categories, but the exact nature of the differences is undefined. Like many natural products, variation is immense and ultimately you have to pick out one that appeals to you—by its appearance, performance, price, or other combinations of consideration.

That said, the Rooney “finest” is quite good: silvertip, as you see, with good resilience. Excellent brush. But today: so-so lather. I don’t blame the brush, and I also am reluctant to blame myself, though that could be it…

At any rate, the Eclipse Red Ring performed like the little champ it is, and the Swedish Gillette blade is still in good shape.

The Nancy Boy balm, with the signature scent, is a very fine balm with enough menthol to cool the face. Excellent shave, overall.

Tomorrow I’m using a soap I like better, and I’m going to go through a band of boars over the next few days…