Hosted by an Elvis tattoo.
Dear Leader
President Obama wants to tell school children to set goals and study hard, and the conservatives go nuts: "He's trying to indoctrinate our children with his socialist agenda!" and instill a cult of personality around him.
Well, they should know all about developing a cult of personality:
Glenn Greewald reminds us of Monica Goodling, the deputy at the Bush administration's Department of Justice who interviewed potential employees with questions like:Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.
Or this exchange with DOJ aide Sara Taylor before the Senate Judiciary Committee:
[W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?
Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire."I took an oath to the president, and I take that oath very seriously," Sara Taylor said in answer to a question early in the hearing.
And of course there were the "public meetings" hosted by the Bush White House where attendees were required to sign loyalty oaths or risked expulsion for arriving in a car without the appropriate bumper sticker.
And right after a break, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked her if she was sure about that. "Did you mean, perhaps, you took an oath to the Constitution?" Leahy asked. It was a telling exchange.
But let President Obama speak to school children? Oh, the horror, the horror.
---
As Mr. Greenwald points out in his post, it is possible that some people on the right were unaware of the cottage industry that was built up around the aura of George W. Bush, including those who claim that God had a hand in electing him as our leader during those perilous times, or the shelves of books that were written about him that turned him into the Warrior Prince. If so, I'm relieved that they have recovered from their eight-year coma and wish them a speedy recovery.
HT to Rick.
Crossposted.
A Very Happy Birthday to My Sister!
TheLadyEve: "either this baby is plastic or my stethoscope's stopped!"
TheLadyEve: The Early Years
It was September 5th at around 9:30 AM* when my little sister was finally born, after not just nine months but nine years of waiting. Our parents had been working on a third child for about as long as I can remember. I started to read very young, and a fair number of the books I pulled out of the shelf were about conception (The Origin Of Johnny), fetal development (A Child Is Born), or sex selection (Girl Or Boy: Your Chance to Choose). Our parents probably had hopeless moments, but for me, it was more a question of when than whether I would have a little sibling.
I remember the first grainy ultrasound picture going up on the fridge. Our mother wrote “Charlie” in pencil on the back. Not long after, she had an amniocentesis due to her “advanced maternal age” of 42. The results were 46, XX . Baby’s first practical joke.
Sometime in that last hot California August before TheLadyEve's birth, my sister E. and I rode our bikes to The Shirt Stop and had a big yellow T-shirt made for Mama with a red warning label across the lower belly: Caution: Contents Under Pressure!
We waited at Stanford Hospital for ten hours, harangued by another pair of nervous siblings who were acting out in the waiting area. Our mother’s obstetrician, Dr. Baldwin, had a wry, conspiratorial grin as he motioned us at last into the delivery room to watch our little sister get washed and weighed. She was bright red and kicking; even her hair seemed enraged.
Damn, I thought. She looks pissed off.
Our father brought champagne to Mama’s room and we got to try it, not in Dixie cups but in real plastic champagne glasses, the kind with the bowl and stem that snap together.
It did not take long for that angry little mop top to become TheLadyEve: auteur, entrepreneur, publisher, pastry chef, humanitarian, and humorist. Her early attempts at humor (“Hey, S., how many chickens does it take to change a light bulb?....Two!”) did result in the following injunction from our father: “No jokes ‘til you’re six, LadyEve!” But her work quickly gained speed. She gave Dr. Johnson a run for his money by age four, when she expanded the English language with such rich new words as inducive (which means “when you bend it, it hurts”: my hand is inducive) and disolovent (“soft, snuggly, and comfortable to lie on”).
Always questioning, TheLadyEve’s thirsty intellect provided hours of entertainment: “E.? What are chicken slacks†? And why is he dancing with them?” (see 23 seconds in for context). Or, “why did she dream there were clowns in her office‡?” (see 1.20 and 2.20).
My sister’s early forays into publishing revealed her prescience. Her newsletters, which were hand-delivered to the family mailbox, foreshadowed the tenor of today’s MSM: “Some sources say that President George H.W. Bush is actually a chicken!” Her interest in non-profit ventures began around the same time, with the creation of the David “Pinpoint” Jones Foundation for Eight-Year-Olds. The Foundation, headed by David “Pinpoint” Jones and his brother Elliot “Whiplash” Jones, sent fundraising flyers admonishing us to “Please remember to support your local 8-year-old. Mr. Jones says, ‘get on the stick!’”
At age 9, TheLadyEve made the local paper by stirring shit from our cousin’s miniature pony up with water and carting it around the neighborhood in a little red wagon, marketing it as “Liquanure” fertilizer.
These early ventures, and all of her grand projects since, are marked by a crystalline focus and dedication that has left her at various times passed out covered with powdered sugar next to a flawless linzer torte for her high school English class, or practicing TaeKwon-Do with a fractured toe, or tackling two jobs and two majors in college. Everyone associated with these ventures—Prevention Point Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Northwestern, Chicago Lakeshore Hospital—has benefitted almost as much as I have. Almost. And, she still finds time to make us laugh.
I have much more to say, but perhaps it's best if I keep it for another day, and just say Happy Birthday, M.—you're the best thing that ever happened to me.
Love, S.
________________
*I think it was 9:36 AM; I’ll have to check my diary from the time, but it’s in another state at the moment.
† He's dancing with the chick in slacks/She's a-movin' up and back/Man there ain't nothing like/Twistin' the night away
‡ I had some dreams/They were clouds in my coffee/Clouds in my coffee and/You're so vain...
Saturday Morning Cartoonery: Baton Bunny (1959)
"Baton Bunny" (1959), directed by Chuck Jones and Abe Levitow. Mel Blanc is credited with voices, but the only vocal effect is a cough from the audience. This is the only Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs is entirely silent. And even being entirely silent and having nothing to hand but musical instruments, Bugs still manages to work in violence and cultural stereotypes there towards the end.
Facepalme D'Or: Lancôme's Génifique
So, it's been a long week, and once again, I've seen something mind-numbingly stupid come out of the cosmetics industry. Of course, I've seen plenty of stupid things lately, but this one wins the prize for the dumbest thing that someone expected me to believe this week: Lancôme's Génifique "Youth Activating Concentrate". From their website:
Youth is in your genes. Reactivate it.1
Discover the skin you were born to have.
Lancôme invents our first skincare that boosts the activity of genes.2
At the very origin of your skin's youth: your genes.
Genes produce specific proteins. With age, their
presence diminishes.
Today, for every woman, Lancôme creates our 1st Youth Activator - GÉNIFIQUE. Now, boost genes' activity2 and stimulate the production of youth proteins.3
See visibly younger skin in just 7 days.
1 Activate skin's youthful look.
2 In-vitro test on genes.
3 Clinical study on skin proteins, associated with young skin - France.
This ad copy plays off the scientific concept of gene activation. And while it is possible to control gene activation with some experimental methods, there is nothing you can put on your face that will switch on "youth protein" genes, even if "youth protein genes" meant anything. Notice, too, that the copy admits the "effects" of its product on genes was in vitro.
The video embedded in their product page starts off by exploiting the terms genomics and proteomics and gets worse from there."Certain genes produce 'youth proteins' responsible for youthful-looking skin", they claim, and promise to deliver skin that looks "lit from within" and is returned to "ideal youthful quality" in seven days. All for the low, low price of just $78 per fluid ounce.
Codswallop. Except for the $78--that's real enough.
What's actually in it? Lancôme's website does not list the ingredients, but here is a list from a customer who reviewed the product:
Aqua/Water/Eau, Bifida Ferment Lysate, Glycerin, Alcohol Denat., Dimethicone, Hydroxyethylpiperazine Ethane Sulfonic Acid, Sodium Hyaluronate, Phenoxyethanol, PEG-20 Methyl Glucose Sesquistearate, PEG-60 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Salicyloyl Phytosphingosine, Amonium Polyacryldimethyltauramide/Amonium Polyacryloyldimethyl Taurate, Limonene, Xathan Gum, Caprylyl Glycol, Disodium EDTA, Octyldodcanol, Citric Acid, Citronellol, Parfum/Fragrance.
So aside from thickeners, "slip"-producers, and basic humectants, Génifique is water, yogurt or other bacterial ferment product, denatured alcohol, glycerine, HEPES buffer for pH, dimethicone (which can help reduce water loss from the skin and is available in many drugstore skin products), and "Salicyloyl Phytosphingosine", which is salicylic acid combined with an alcohol from ceramides (why?). Sodium Hyaluronate does hold moisture in the surface of the skin and so it's a good humectant, but it's not new or expensive. Heck, you could just get some yourself and add it to your moisturizer. Products with salicylic acid and ceramides are also pretty easy to find at drugstore prices. Finally, if you want to put a bifida ferment on your face, try plain yogurt--it will also provide the exfoliating properties of lactic acid.
Please feel free to share your own Facepalme D'Or nominees. Your nominee needn't be pseudoscience--there's a whole universe of stupid out there, folks!
Former winners: "Structured Water"
Now That's a Stretch
Actual USA Today headline: "Women gain as men lose jobs."
Actual content of the story: Women have been "gaining" in the sense that they're paid less, work fewer hours, and are more likely to work part-time and in low-paid fields like health care and education—and so are less likely than men to get laid off. How that works out to a "gain" over men baffles me. One man's union manufacturing job is not another woman's crappy $7-an-hour retail gig. And until we as a society address the underlying problem here—women's work is undervalued, and women are underrepresented in employment sectors that actually pay a living wage—we won't be anywhere near the "equality" that stories like this one crow about.
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, manufacturers of Big Gay Robots: Serving your needs for the 21st century and beyond!
Recommended Reading:
Joe My God: Quebec: Schools Must Teach About ALL Religions! Christians: Stop Oppressing Us!
Rolling Around In My Head: Go On Guess
Archie McPhee: Announcing Monkey Goggles!
Doobybrain: Are You Happy?
Dispatches from the Island: Man I Have a Problem
Tom Colicchio: Top Guns on Top Chef
Mondo Rick-o: The Fires This Time Around
Towleroad: Minnesota Teacher Accused of Anti-Gay Harassment Speaks
Leave your links in comments...
Random YouTubery: Where the Hell Is Matt?
We've totes posted this like 9 gazillion times before, but wevs.
It's awesome every. damn. time.
More Filler
More random pictures. This time from the Deeky Gashlycrumb Photographic Arts Library Archive and Bathhouse.
Sunset view from backyard.
Fire-breathing chicken.
Bun Boy Motel. (Insert own entendre here.)
Electric palm trees.
Deeky the wolfboy (self-portrait.)
[Cross-posted.]
Feminism 101: On Anger
Here's the thing: To a subjugated person (yes, this, like most of my F101 posts, can be easily modified for application to most oppressed groups), anger is perfectly rational.
If you have even the merest capacity of imagination, it shouldn't be difficult for you to conjure your emotional reaction if you were, for example, told your entire life that you are equal, only to have the opposite be communicated to you in big and small ways every minute of every day, or if, as another example, there were people who argued that they should have control over some significant function of your body, that they needed to rob you of personal autonomy because they can make better decisions for you than you can for yourself, or if, for instance, you made less money for doing the same job someone else is doing for more, just because of some arbitrary physical feature, like, say, the color of your eyes.
If you are indeed in possession of the capacity of imagination, you have no doubt concluded by this juncture that these scenarios, coupled with a lack of immediate recourse, might make you angry.
So the idea that a feminist/womanist with demonstrable anger is somehow nutz is actually quite stupid.
Here's the other thing: If you are a genuine ally to feminists/womanists, you will never, ever, criticize a feminist/womanist's tone for being "too angry."
And you will never do this because, if you are a genuine ally, not only will you have internalized an understanding of the perfect rationality of the anger expressed by feminists/womanists, but you will also share that anger.
How can you look at a cultural landscape of institutionalized inequality and not be angry, right? I mean, if you're a genuine ally and all.
And, if you are, you'll be glad for that anger, because you know that the opposite of anger, for a progressive, is complacence—and there can be no progress if everyone is perfectly complacent with the way things are.
Progress is dependent on people who get angry, because anger—productive anger, motivating anger, directed anger, rational anger—is the root of all progress.
Feminists/womanists and their allies know that change comes by virtue of anger.
Progress ain't fueled by rainbows and gumdrops.
If you're not angry, you're probably not helping.
[Originally posted May 20, 2008.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
Strip One, Strip Two, Strip Three, Strip Four, Strip Five, Strip Six, Strip Seven, Strip Eight, Strip Nine, Strip Ten, Strip Eleven, Strip Twelve, Strip Thirteen, Strip Fourteen, Strip Fifteen, Strip Sixteen, Strip Seventeen, Strip Eighteen, Strip Nineteen, Strip Twenty, Strip Twenty-One, Strip Twenty-Two. In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.
A Little Health Sciences Reading
Fear not, there will be a Friday Blogaround. But as a bonus, here are a few health science-related stories I've come across this morning, in case you want a little not-so-light reading for the weekend.
Public Library of Science's PLoS Medicine: PLoS Medicine and The New York Times Unseal Ghostwriting documents
PLoS Medicine and The New York Times intervened in a court case against the pharmaceutical company Wyeth and helped release documents that showed Wyeth paid ghostwriters to generate papers highlighting the benefits and understating the risks of taking hormone therapy.PLoS Medicine's blog, Speaking Of Medicine, has a number of posts on the issue.
ScienceDaily: Scientists Begin To Untangle Root Cause Of Alzheimer's Disease
ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2009) — "N60" might not be the first thing that comes to mind when people think of Alzheimer's disease, but thanks to researchers from the United States, South Korea and France, this might change. That's because these researchers have found that the N60 section of a protein called "RanBP9" might be the key that unlocks an entirely new class of Alzheimer's drugs, and with them, hope.The research was published in FASEB Journal on 3 September. If you have access you can read the paper. Even if you don't have access, the abstract is free.
ScienceNOW Daily News: A Breathalyzer for Cancer:
By Sam KeanHaick et. al. are essentially figuring out how to do electronically what dogs can do already. This gold nanoparticle technology is a big improvement over the last generation of electronic noses, which used carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are affected by humidity, so breath to be tested often had to be dehumidified first.
ScienceNOW Daily News
31 August 2009
A team of researchers may have come up with a golden idea for diagnosing lung cancer. By coating tiny nuggets of gold with a thin layer of organic material, the researchers have developed an "electronic nose" that, with some additional work, could spot lung cancer instantly by analyzing someone's breath.
Hossam Haick and colleagues at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa embedded the 5-nanometer-long gold nanoparticles in a silicon wafer and then collected exhaled air from 40 cancer patients and 56 people with healthy lungs. All the subjects had to breathe deeply through a purifying filter for 5 minutes. After this "lung washout," they filled five 750-milliliter Mylar bags with air. A machine blew this air over the silicon-gold circuit, and the electrical resistance of the gold nanoparticles rose or fell depending on the presence or absence of certain compounds.
Cancer cells exude different compounds than healthy cells do, Haick explains, and the circuit picks up this difference. Tumor growth causes stress in cells, leading to a build up of free radical molecules that attack the lipids in cell walls, tearing out molecules with long chains of carbon atoms. The team identified 42 such molecules and settled on four to track with the nanoparticles: decane, trimethylbenzene, ethylbenzene, and heptanol. These four molecules appear at relatively high concentrations and, after binding to the organic coat on the nanoparticles, cause the resistance to electric current in the circuit to fluctuate in a predictable way. The sensors respond rapidly and are completely reusable, the team reported online 30 August in Nature Nanotechnology.
More on this story from Reuters Health.
Skwerl Fu
(Skwerl-on-skwerl violence below the fold.)
Cape skwerlz in Etosha, Namibia, defend their colony from interlopers:
Ouch!
[Cross-posted.]
Radio Shakesville
What The Hell?
Shaker phdintraining
Nice black prom dress. At least it's not taffeta.
[See also: Deeky, Liss, evilsciencechick, katecontinued, ClumsyKisses, Mistress Sparkletoes, Liiiz, Reedme, Mama Shakes, Mustang Bobby, RedSonja, MomTFH, Portly Dyke, SteffaB, Icca, Christina, Orangelion03, Car, Siobhan, InfamousQBert, Maud, Rikibeth, MishaRN, CLD, Cheezwiz, MamaCarrie, Temeraire, somebodyoranother, goldengirl, Liss (again), summerwing, yeomanpip, Susan811, bbl, Deeky (Part II), A Daily Shakesville Fan, Sami_J, liberalandproud Temeraire: Redux, Mama Shakes II, Bonus Deeky, OuyangDan, J.Goff, Iain, Talonas, The Great Indoors, gogo, kiwi_a, em_and_ink, and Tik_bev.]
Question of the Day
Who is your favorite painter?
I don't know if they're strictly my favorites, but I am quite fond of Jack Vettriano and Edward Hopper, prints of whose work hang in our home, partly because they are Scottish and American complements, much like Iain and I, and partly because I am a philistine and like pictures of people captured in moments that inspire me to daydream stories.
