Thinking of warmer climes...
The Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report – T100209
Time for another Teaspoon Report, brought to you by Shaxco, proud publishers of the thrilling sequel to Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying: Ethel the Aardvark: Assistant Manager of Quantity Surveying for Northwest Region! Available now in bookstores near you, and some which are sort of on the net, so they're near in a way, but not really like you could go over and get a cuppa and sit down and read them.
Leave comments here that describe an act of teaspooning you encountered or committed. They don't have to be big, world-shaking acts; by definition, a teaspoon is a small thing, but enough of them together can empty the ocean.
If you would like to discuss the teaspoons here reported, or even offer congratulations or your admiration to a fellow Shaker, we ask that you do so over here in the Discussion Thread for today's NQDTR.
Shaker bgk has been kind enough to get a Twitter-pated version out there for you young twittersnappers (and by the way, get off my lawn, you meddling kids! *shakes cane*). You can find the details about the Tweetspoons project right here. That runs all the time, as far as I'm aware (*grumblenewtechnologygrumble*), and we encourage you to let other people know that there's at least one tweetstream talking about just going out and doing good things for the human species.
Teaspoons up, let's hear 'em, Shakers!
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NQDTR Discussion Thread – T100209
Hiya, Shakers, time for another Discussion Thread for the Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report!
This is the thread in which you may offer congratulations or admiration for a teaspoon or teaspooner. If you're posting with just congrats or admiration, though, do take a moment and check the thread to see whether other people have said so a number of times already. Remember that no one is required to read here just because they posted over there, so there's no guarantee you'll get a response to a given comment.
Bread and Teaspoons Twenty-Two
Good morning (unless it isn't where you are, in which case I wish you Good $TIME_PERIOD), and welcome to this week's installment of Shakesville's networking post, Bread and Teaspoons*.
This is a (theoretically) weekly post, usually Tuesdays, providing a spot for Shakers to network a little with one another, see if we can help each other out some.
Sorry for missing last week's instalment, depression sucks big rocks through a garden hose sideways.
Also remember, if you’re running or part of a small business, you’re encouraged to drop links here for that. I’m happy to see Shakers makin’ their own way in whatever manner that is.
Question of the Day
What question would you like to see asked as a future Question of the Day?
(Try to resist answering the good ones; that defeats the purpose!)
"Where are 1% of American adults?"
by Shaker Anitanola
That was one of Stephen Fry's questions in a recent episode of the BBC's long running comedy show QI.* The answer, of course, is jail.
Five percent of the world's population is American; twenty-five percent of the world's prisoners are American. The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the history of the world.The QI researchers are no mere wiki-wanderers and I do not question their skills; indeed even a cursory google produces shocking information. For example, there has been an explosion of the prison population since 1980. The percentage of the adult population in the penal system—in prison, on parole or probation—is 3.2%. The Sentencing Project shows racial disparity in incarceration rates throughout the United States.
The rate is three times that of Iran, six times that of China. More than one in a hundred adults in the United States is in prison. One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 is in prison.
What followed makes me wonder about taking pride in things "Made in the USA." I know our society is not post-racial but I must now wonder if we are actually even post-slavery. QI's answer continued:
It is illegal to bring into the United States any goods produced by forced labor or by prisoners, yet American prisoners make 100% of the military helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags as well some other items used by the US military. Although a prisoner is not technically forced to work, solitary confinement is the punishment for refusal. They also make 93% of domestically produced paints, 36% of home appliances and 21% of office furniture.Those are manufacturing jobs. We're told that it helps our economy to outsource many jobs, even if it feels painful to those workers who are affected, but I can't recall being told about penal labor in relation to our economy.
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* Unfortunately, QI is not available on BBC America but you can search YouTube for QI Series G Episode 11 Gifts. See part 3.
Blame the Mothers, Part Wev in an Infinite Series
CNN reports, in huge big black letters: "Older mothers' kids have higher autism risk, study finds."
Eleven paragraphs in: "The study authors emphasize that while autism rates have risen 600 percent in the past two decades, older women having children contributed to only 5 percent more cases of autism." Emphasis mine.
Nowhere does the article make any effort to distinguish between an increase in autism and an increase in the diagnosis of autism.
Who cares anyway. Mothers suck. That's the important thing.
How Xciting
Cromcrast is changing its name to Xfinity.
That literally sounds like a joke name I'd come up with if someone asked me to rename a monolithic corporate entity that wanted to sound "cool."
Blog Note
Just a quick update on the progress in getting the blog back in working order...
As you may have already noticed, Space Cowboy has got "read more" working again (although Blogger no longer supports our in-page dropdown), and links open in new tabs/windows again. Also: The Big McLargehuge text in the sidebar has now been restored to regular size.
We're still in the process of bringing back author pix and making some other tweaks.
Again, thank you for your patience.
RIP Representative John Murtha
Think Progress reports: "Democratic Rep. John Murtha (PA), who served in Congress since 1974, passed away today. Murtha had been in intensive care after complications arose from his gall bladder surgery a couple of weeks ago."
My condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues.
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
Strips One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110. 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.
Blah Blah Bipartisan Blah
Obama Plans Bipartisan Summit on Health Care:
President Obama said Sunday that he would convene a half-day bipartisan health care session at the White House to be televised live this month, a high-profile gambit that will allow Americans to watch as Democrats and Republicans try to break their political impasse.My gut feeling is that Obama expects to be able to make the GOP look like assholes the way he did recently at their annual conference. That isn't going to happen. They will come prepared with their usual arsenal of half-truths and outright lies delivered in spectacularly simplistic soundbites, gunning to definitively tank healthcare reform once and for all—and make the President look like a dipshit in the process.
Mr. Obama made the announcement in an interview on CBS during the Super Bowl pre-game show, capitalizing on a vast television audience. He set out a plan that would put Republicans on the spot to offer their own ideas on health care and show whether both sides are willing to work together.
"I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats, to go through systematically all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward," Mr. Obama said in the interview from the White House Library.
Lots of potential to backfire with little potential gain, methinks.
Quotes of the Day
"We don't work with a lot of women on our films. When I do work, it's always one woman and a bunch of men in my casts—maybe my character has a friend in the script, but not always. It's odd. So on this film, it was great to have someone like Jessica around, even though most of our scenes as best friends were over the phone."
"And do you find this true, Jennifer? I know I do: You never really bond with all the guys in your cast like they do with each other."
—Jennifer Garner and Jessica Biel, on their scenes together in the new film Valentine's Day, in the new issue of Marie Claire, the cover of which, in addition to featuring Garner and Biel, informs us that "PRETTY IS BACK!" and advertises a "must-read" article entitled: "I agreed to a threesome for my husband's birthday."
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, distributors of the Liss Line of Fatsronaut Spacesuits, for the corpulent cosmonaut.
Recommended Reading:
Rayedish: The 21st Down Under Feminists Carnival
Thomas: This Man Was Raped
Renee: What Counts as a Disability?
Jennifer: President Obama's Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2011 Receives Mixed Reactions from Global Health Community
Andy: Anne Hathaway Left Catholicism Because It's Anti-Gay
Thea: General Larry Platt's "Pants on the Ground" and the Intersection of Race and Comedy
Leave your links in comments...
Book 'em, Danno!
Generally speaking, I am against TV shows and movies being remade. Most of time, these remakes suck ass, and not in a good way. (Occasionally, a remake will be better than it's original, but those are few and far between.) That aside, I am against them on general principals alone: Hey, Hollywood, come up with some new ideas.
All of which is to say, Daniel Dae Kim has signed on to CBS' Hawaii Five-0 remake, due this fall. Good for Daniel!
On a slightly less-exciting note
The part of Detective Steve McGarrett has not yet been cast, though Moonlight star Alex O'Loughlin continues to be in talks for itbecause, yeah, what the world really needs is another show with a white dood in the lead. I'd have rather seen Kim in the lead, but maybe our post-racial world just ain't ready for that yet.
[Cross-posted with a hatch-tip to Liss.]
Brace Yourselves, Fatsronauts
During the President's State of the Union address, he announced that First Lady Michelle Obama would soon be launching a national anti-obesity campaign centered on childhood obesity. Lynn Sweet reports that the campaign will be elaborately debuted tomorrow:
Mrs. Obama's East Wing said she will be "joined by members of the president's cabinet, as well as media, sports, entertainment, and business leaders," plus mayors, member of the medical community and others at the White House event. On Tuesday evening, Mrs. Obama will sit down with CNN's Larry King for an interview about obesity and her first year as first lady. She will take questions from viewers.Right from the get-go, the messaging on this is flatly atrocious. Positioning this as an "anti-obesity" campaign is just going to reinforce—and justify—fat hatred. Obama (and anti-obesity crusaders like her) can argue from here to Kingdom Come and back again that "anti-obesity" campaigns aren't about hating fat people, but the reality is that "obesity" doesn't exist outwith people. And, unlike a disease like, say, diabetes, there's an endemic institutional prejudice against fat people. There's a reason why "fat joke" is a term with which everyone's familiar, and "diabetic joke" isn't.
"Over the past three decades, childhood obesity rates in America have tripled; nearly one third of children in America are now overweight or obese," the East Wing said in a statement. "The First Lady will announce the elements of the nationwide campaign, which will put us on track to solve the problem of childhood obesity in a generation."
Recently, Iain—who is fat, diabetic, and athletic—began training for the Chicago Marathon. To me, this is wholly unremarkable, because I know how fit he is. But of those who know him and have expressed surprised, their shock was not that a diabetic person who has experienced symmetrical peripheral polyneuropathy was training for a marathon, but that a fat person was training for a marathon.
"Obesity" simply defines fat people in a way that most other physical differences (rightly or wrongly) called disease don't.
I am a fat person; being fat is a defining part of who I am because fat-hatred is something with which I contend on a regular basis—and my reaction to it determines how I am perceived by the world.
That's not something over which I, or any fat person, has any control.
And as long as we are externally defined by our fatness, "anti-obesity" is, quite literally, an attack on a part of us, on us.
"Anti-obesity" will remain functionally indistinguishable from "anti-obese person."
How about an "anti high-fructose corn syrup" campaign? How about an "anti feeding families shitty food is cheaper than feeding families healthy food" campaign? How about an "anti farm subsidies" campaign?
Oh. Right. Because that might hurt the feelings of corporations. Better that we spare the delicate fee-fees of corporations and make life even harder for fat kids.
[Commenting Guidelines: I support a Health at Every Size model. Commenters wishing to debate about fat, the aesthetics of fat, the ethics of fat, DEATHFAT!, or in any other way engage in fat-hating and/or the shaming/blaming of fat people, will find no harbor for that in this thread. We have debated "fat" before here; we're not doing it again.]
Between Storms
Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas are digging out from the big snowstorm on Friday/Saturday. Snowfall totals around Allegheny County were between 15 and 23 inches. In Pittsburgh, we got 20 inches and Friday's 11.4-inch snowfall beat the one-day total of 10.4 in. It was 4 degrees Fahrenheit when I got up this morning, so this snow is not going anywhere on its own.
My internet connection was out for a day and a half this weekend, and another winter storm advisory takes effect tomorrow morning. So, in case I get cut off again, here are a few images from between snowstorms.
On Saturday morning, I awoke to find that my usual view of downtown Pittsburgh looked like this:
There was about 14 inches of snow on the roof next door, and the tree, which usually does not obscure the window at all, was bent all the way down to the neighbor's roof with snow.
