To no one's surprise...

This week I am boycotting The New Yorker AND The Economist because they have been getting on my nerves. The New Yorker's penchant for the pretentious seems to have become more pronounced of late, manifest by the one and only thing I read in it during the week: the first 3/4 of the first page of this short story by Sam Shepard that is completely tired and boring. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere; it's not even luridly poetic (ie, art for art's sake); and its focus on Xanax obviously makes it Hip and Cool. Perhaps the only redeeming value is that it is perfectly illustrative of the fact that waiting in an endless line REALLY IS THAT DULL.

The Economist, meanwhile, has incurred my wrath by arriving on Thursday, five days late, every week of the past three. It's not news at this point, it's editorial retrospective. For that reason, I am going to type up three of the news blurbs of world events you may have missed hearing about for the week of October 17-23.

"In Russia, to no one's surprise, the ruling United Russia party won nationwide votes to local and municipal councils by a landslide. More surprisingly, opposition politicians walked out of parliament, complaining of vote rigging, and threatened to demonstrate in protest."

"Cuba's government denied Yoani Sanchez, a blogger, an exit visa for her to travel to New York to receive a prize from Columbia University's graduate school of journalism."

"Romania's government collapsed after a vote of no confidence in parliament. The vote was connected to political infighting before presidential elections due next month and may jeopardise the cash-strapped country's relations with the IMF."

The most stimulating thing I read all week (aside from finishing Imperial Life in the Emerald City) was "Timewarp: how your brain creates the fourth dimension". The way we perceive time as it's happening and the way remember it after the fact may or may not process separately in the brain. Ergo, experimenters decided to drop people from an eight-storey harness into a safety net and have them look at a special device that rapidly flashed a light - so quickly that, under normal conditions, the human eye would simply perceive it as a solid light. Researchers theorize that frame rate governs our perception of time, and that during certain traumatic moments, the phenomenon of "time slowing down" is actually due to an increase in the number of "frames" your mind takes in. Later on, your brain remembers all those frames but conceives of them with the normal frame rate, which makes them take up more space time. This also means that we may be on the verge of a cure for schizophrenia, if we can figure out why schizophrenic's brains don't have the same frame rate processor as the rest of us, and how to fix it - if that is in fact the reason for their delusions. The article does a much better job of explaining how this all is connected, so just go read it.

Apparently, if we can somehow figure out a way to make free-floating sea ice go where we want it, "We still have a chance to save the polar bears." All it depends on is international cooperation and a commitment from every country in the northern hemisphere not to promote economic development in the Arctic.

Poor polar bears don't stand a chance.

And finally, according to "Multiply universes: How many is the multiverse?" there may actually be a Discworld out there somewhere. Now, I'm not going to lie, I've read this three times and I still don't quite understand how this is science and not philosophy, but they assure me that it is, so we'll go with it. What it comes down to is perspective and observability and obviously we need to find the subtle knife to cut into one of these other universes and see what it's like. Duh.
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Three Hopeful Thoughts

1. As you might have noticed, that goal countdown up in my header now reads "99" instead of "100." That's right, folks, on Tuesday evening, in a magnificent confluence of cosmic factors, the room shook and trembled, and in a sudden rush, the rain beat down upon us. I, properly attired in a rain-frolicking-approved sundress and already downstairs, threw open the door, rushed out across the yard, and finally, finally danced in the downpour I'd been waiting so very long for. The rain was thick and heavy, and the lightening frequent, extended, and close. I would say the whole experience was rapturous, but I feel like you have to be aware of rapture while it's happening for that to be possible. It just felt overwhelmingly and ambiguously good to be out in it. Goal #90 is complete, but it was something I've done before and it will certainly be something I do many times again.

2. Yesterday afternoon, exactly three weeks to the hour after the Foreign Service test, I received a letter (a pdf which I had to download, after being given the link to the site with the pdf via email. Unnecessarily convoluted? I think yes.) informing me that my performance has qualified me for the next round of the application process. Five personal narrative responses, in which I have 1300 characters each to describe variously that time I was a leader, that time I lived with a foreign kid in college, and so forth. They also gave me the fax number for ACT, tantalizing me with the promise that I could get a breakdown! of my results by post in just four to six weeks, but two attempts to do so have returned a failed transmission. I'll try again on Monday. I. Need. That. Breakdown.

3. Letters to Washington, goal number 73, has officially been moved to the "In progress" column. I sent my first letter to my brand-new placeholder senator, George LeMieux, in response to this article in today's New York Times. Sure, there's a war on, and a health care reform debacle, and stuff, but obviously some idiot from Louisiana needs the spotlight to stump against immigrants for next year's election. And obviously the proposal in question is so obscenely ludicrous that I simply had to voice my opinion and make sure LeMieux, GOP loyalist extraordinaire (seriously, he's holding Mel Martinez' seat for less than two years under the tacit condition that he not seek reelection so Charlie Crist, our great governor, can run instead), doesn't fall in with this fringe crowd. The grimy flipside of having a solid Democratic majority in both houses is the ability of Republicans to pick up on whatever insignificant issue they think will help their odds with their constituents - not taking into account that such petty issues could hurt real people if passed. Anyway, it's a fairly lengthy letter, so I've put it down below the cut.

Dear Senator LeMieux,

The New York Times published an article today about the push of your fellow senator, David Vitter, to forbid the census from counting non-citizens as residents of the several states and, by extension, our nation. This is not only an outrageous proposition because of the social, economic, and political ramifications such a census would cause, but also thoroughly unconstitutional. I sincerely hope that, as my representative, you will not support Senator Vitter's proposal.

As I'm sure you know, Article 2 of the Constitution empowers the Congress to count every ten years "the whole number of persons in each state" in order to properly apportion representatives. This particular passage has already been amended once in our history, with the idea that government should include more people, not fewer. Originally, the census formula was taken from the whole number of "free persons" plus three-fifths of "all others," i.e. slaves, further diminished the status of certain Americans. With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the three-fifths clause was removed, rightfully establishing non-whites as full citizens worthy of equal representation.

As a representative democracy, America was the eighteenth-century beacon for Europe’s feudal monarchies. Oppressed for centuries by the noble classes, the hard-working serfs rose up and wrenched political power out of their silk-gloved hands. The story of democracy is the story of power continually spiraling downwards and outwards, into the hands of the people. This is where Senator Vitter’s proposal becomes truly farcical.

The Times writes:

“Appealing to his colleagues in states with fewer noncitizens, the Republican senator, David Vitter of Louisiana, warned this month that a vote against his proposal would ‘strip these states of their proper representation in Congress,’ while including noncitizens would ‘artificially increase the population count’ in other states.”

His proposal would strip states of their proper representation – those that are the major entry points for immigrants into our country, like our own Florida. As for “artificially increasing the population count,” I would have to say that people who work, reside, and raise families in our communities are, in fact, part of the American population. They may not have yet acquired citizenship, but we can rest assured that the children they bear and bring here have or will. Not only would this proposal be unfair to today’s immigrants, it would create an unquantifiable backlash with the next generation, as they witness their parents treated unfairly. Worse, measures like this can be used to justify the xenophobic behavior of Americans towards immigrants, both legal and illegal. (Those who would condone or commit violence or hateful speech towards immigrants likely don’t care to see the difference.)

The census began as a device for apportioning government representation– and that remains its primary purpose today. Yet it also serves another important function when it counts residents, and not just citizens: it is one of the most important historical records of who lived where when. My own great-grandparents would not have been counted under such an exclusionary census during their first decade in this country, despite the fact that they worked hard to contribute to America all the same and build a nation their children would proudly call their own. The exponential growth of illegal immigration in the past few decades is certainly an issue that needs to be addressed, but discriminating against all immigrants by excluding non-citizens from the census is neither the right way, nor an effective way, to do so.

Sincerely,

Caroline Leonard


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Two more dollars!

In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Ebay established an optional $1 donation you can add to any and all of your purchases made during October. I bought two really adorable dresses last week, so my new breast cancer donation total is a whopping THREE WHOLE DOLLARS.

Do I rule or what?
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Rocket-powered unicorns and other, slightly less interesting, things

These are the articles from the last two weeks. Oops. Oh well.

Remember Goodnight, Moon? Blueberries for Sal? Little Bear and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Apparently today's toddlers are being lulled to sleep (or not, actually) by bedtime stories that, as the New Yorker puts it, are initiating them into a Gossip Girl reality. "The Defiant Ones" reveals a number of these stories to those of us momentarily without a little bundle of snot in our lives, analyzing the psychological effects their themes have on the children and the parents reading them along the way. Very, very interesting stuff.

An interesting turn of events in the business world lately has been the defection of a number of high-profile corporations from the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby in the country. "Exit Through Lobby" awkwardly tries to contrast this new trend with the historical reluctance of American individuals to resign their posts, even when asked to do something they feel goes against their morals. It's a good piece about how Big and Small Business are fighting over the cap-and-trade system, though, and, if anything, that tie-in is just another example that corporations don't behave like real people (their resignations from the Chamber are likely more financially motivated than morally) and don't deserve "personhood."

According to "Meet future woman" and the longitudinal study of a Massachusetts town it's covering, human women will genetically "evolve" to be shorter, plumper, and more fertile over the next 40 generations. Really, it's just because women who have more children tend to be shorter and hold onto their baby weight, and - look at the Duggars - pass on the proclivity to breed more and start having babies earlier. There doesn't actually seem to be a genetic advantage to being shorter or heavier, except that perhaps it is easier to carry children comfortably.

Down in the comments section to this article there's a good debate going on about the reliability of the study's findings. Some people find fault with the selection of a smallish, ruralish American town to generalize about the entire human race. (The study's defenders rush to point out that it was important to find a relatively closed population, as it is a genetics study, so that they could look at multiple generations of women from the same family easily.) Others have a problem with, as I mentioned, the idea that being short and heavy causes you to reproduce, rather than - a radical proposition here, I know - babies changing the way your body is shaped. Another point that really stuck out to me is that Americans and others in developed nations have actually grown taller and wider in the last few decades because of better nutrition (or overconsumption). Height is an interesting variable, but it's really no mystery that women with lots of children tend to be homebodies more than their unchilded counterparts, and homebodies eat more and exercise less. Maybe there should be a study done on the heritability of homebodiness.

"Blanche Lincoln's balance" and "Ready, set, go" are from the Economist of two weeks ago. Blanche Lincoln is a Democratic senator from Arkansas - one of those 'Blue Dogs' who are very, very centrist liberals from states that you normally wouldn't envision would even consider electing electing a Democrat to a national office.She voted for the health care bill; let's move on.

"Ready, Set, Go," provides a contrasting image of the plan for Chicago's - and all of America's - schools. Arne Duncan, as everyone knows, is the Education Secretary and the former superintendent of the Chicago school system. He has been giving a sizable chunk of stimulus money to invest in our generally painfully underfunded schools; what he has done to try to ensure that the money is most effectively spent, however, is to allow states to essentially rid themselves of the No Child Left Behind rules and test their schools against international benchmarks AND try and reduce the influence of teachers' union contracts. By stopping the freefall of testing standards and making teacher pay and promotions based on their ability to actually educate their students, Duncan hopes to prove that just $4.4b can change the way we view education in America. The best part? States that refuse to use students' test results to even partially evaluate the teachers won't see a dollar of the new money. Obviously, it's not the only reason there are huge gaps between rich and poor and minority and white kids, but it's a step. PS We aren't funding abstinence-only sex ed anymore, either.

An Awesome Book! is awesome and completely redeems the modern children's book from the bile depicted in that first New Yorker article. Click the link and scroll sideways, not down, to read the whole. entire. thing. Then click on the store; I'm thinking of buying the poster of rocket-powered unicorns. Thoughts?

And finally, our science lessons for the week. Both "Underwater town breaks antiquity record" and "Stone age hunting traps found deep in Great Lakes" discuss the living habits of prehistoric humans. "Underwater town" is particularly intriguing because, like Pompeii, Pavlopetri is an extremely well-preserved ancient city, complete with streets and home foundations - except that new artifacts show that it may have been settled during the early Bronze Age, making it three thousand(!) years older than Pompeii. There are also a few cool pictures attached to the article, with the little foundation stones in neat lines. It reminds me of Roxaboxen, one of my favorite books from elementary school.
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Never trust the Swedes.

So this post is the SPT for October 15th, even though they were actually taken on the 17th and 18th, and the post prior to this is the picture from yesterday that was actually taken today because it was a much more pleasant day for picture-taking. For real.

Once upon a time, three lovely maidens set out from the sleepy hamlet of Bushwick in search of the mythical relics rumored to lay in the far off Temple of IKEA. They bundled up against the cold, mounted their trusty steed, Subaru, and enlisted the help of a local guide who called himself Garmin. They traveled on and on and on, twisting and turning through the trails of the Lyn of Brook, stopping only for provisions of bagels and extra sweaters. Finally, thanks to Garmin's expertise, they arrived at the fabled place.

But much to their surprise, thousands upon thousands of other brave adventurers had made the very same pilgrimage! The three maidens refused to believe they had come this far for nothing. Determined not to depart empty-handed, they marched forth into the relentless waves of people entering the temple in search of relics of their own.

As they trekked through the upper levels of the magical IKEA, the energy of discovery and delight was palpable. The maidens beheld strange and glorious wonders of home furnishing the likes of which they had never before dared dream. They wandered from one cavernous chamber to the next, in awe of the sights and sounds laid out resplendently before them. The maidens yearned to collect every single relic IKEA held, but they knew it would be unfair to overburden poor, aging Subaru. They had to make some choices.

At that moment, the wonderland of delights transformed into a hellish pit of fire and brimstone stacked from floor to hundred-foot-ceiling. Suddenly, all their happy co-pilgrims became vicious competitors, each vying for the blessing of a temple priest so they could cart off their chosen relics. The maidens stood faithfully at no less than three different altars as they waited their turn to collect their beautiful relics.

And lo, the maidens were rewarded for their patience and persistence. Having used their cunning to navigate the secret shortcuts through the temple, and their disproportionate strength to lift their own relics onto their carts, they proved themselves superior to all the obstacles the great Temple of IKEA had thrown at them.

After saddling Subaru up with their prizes, and directing Garmin to bring them back safe and sound to Bushwick, the maidens enjoyed a peaceful ride all the way home.

And they lived happily ever after, until they realized they had to transport their relics up to the highest tower of their castle all by themselves!

And then they realized that the relics had to be assembled before their magical powers could be utilized. There were a lot of pieces for the maidens to sort through!

The maidens quickly worked out how to fit the strange-looking components together into something that vaguely resembled the floor model at the temple.

But their most magnificent relic, an item that would provide amazing moving pictures and yards and yards of parchment filled with wise and wonderfully enlightening words, was not to be so easily had. A demon had slipped through the temple priests' defenses and broken a vital piece of the relic! Without it, the maidens realized, the relic would never come to life as they had hoped. Forlorn, they gave up for the night and vowed to begin anew on another relic the next day.

Reinvigorated the following morning, the maidens set upon their second-favorite relic, an enchanted wardrobe that would keep all their garments in tip-top shape as soon as they put them inside of it.

As with the first relic, construction proceeded swimmingly - but only for a short while. When the time came to place the special shelf that would keep their handbags and miscellaneous medium-sized fashion accessories organized, the maidens realized that yet another demon had ingratiated itself into the very particle board of their beloved relic. The shelf simply would not follow the laws of geometry as the priests' holy instructions declared that they would.

But the maidens were fierce and tenacious. Defeated once already by the demons plaguing the temple IKEA, they wrestled with the evil one until at long last, they had forced the demon out and the shelf in. Proud of their hard work, they were at last able to pour themselves a well-deserved glass of enchanted grape juice and admire their precious relics.

Will the maidens ever return to the great temple? Will the demon yet plaguing them ever depart? WAS IT ALL WORTH IT?

The world may never know.

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I can ride my bike with no handlebars

No handlebars.

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Longest. Hiatus. Ever.

Apologies, I was in New York from Thursday until Monday and I'm happy to report that I accomplished very, very little in terms of my list but do sort of feel like I'm winning at life. I had an excellent time with all my friends from school. We ate at some wonderful restaurants, drank a lot of wine, made a loaf of cake, laughed more than should be legal, bought tasty cheese at the farmer's market, stood in line at IKEA for hours, assembled IKEA furniture for hours, and had a brunch with my uncles during which I signed the DNR for one of their friends. I KNOW, AWESOME, RIGHT? I only lost one metrocard all week AND bought a four dollar skirt at a thrift store that looks AMAZING. I have an exciting series of pictures to upload for last week's SPT (actually taken on Saturday and Sunday, but whatever), and hey, I did read 75% of the Economist at the airport. Regular updates will resume shortly.
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Dang, I totally should've added Yakutsk, too...

Last week, before the FSOT, I printed out a blank world map and colored it in with highlighters and set to work labeling all the countries on it from memory. In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you that Oman and Yemen are reversed, as are Cambodia and Laos; I completely blanked on Burkina Faso and Senegal; I had to look at a map to see what the islands between Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji were (more French crap); I neglected to label Moldova, Suriname, Guyana, and French Guiana because of space issues, and most of the Caribbean islands because I just hate them. The Bahamas were left off entirely by accident, although I remembered to color them. They're off my coast and I've been there at least twice; it's not like I didn't know what they were. Final note: former Yugoslav nations are in the middle of the Atlantic because it was easier for me to write them in an order I would remember that way. So, there.

Check check it. Clicking will take you to a zoomed-in version.

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Dreadful Murder

This week's articles are, if I'm counting correctly, all here. My favorite, about halfway down, has been copied in its entirety because it is Just That Awesome. You should probably put down any beverages you might be consuming when you read it - especially if it's milk - because you will certainly do a spit-take if you don't. It's seriously that hilarious. A preview: a murder suspect is described as "a fine young man."

However nihilistic it might be, "How the planet will recover from us" explores global warming from an epochal perspective. Rather than using this longest of long-term analysis to decry the "myth" that humans are causing the Earth's climate to change dramatically, however, the author examines periods of rapid carbon and methane gas release, long before the dinosaurs, that led to mass extinctions. The fossil record gives a surprising - but very clear - picture of how life on Earth strives to hold on as the planet rights herself into a stable biosphere once again.

In "Two legs good, 24 better," NS interviews Aimee Mullins, an actress/model/athlete who also happens to be a double amputee. Mullins also happens to be more articulate than your everyday model, and discusses passionately why equal rights for persons with disabilities hinges on viewing them apart from their disabilities and seeing what they can do - which, incidentally, is a lot.

The new "Chicago School Violence Plan" hopes to prevent off-campus shootings of students by assigning statistically-calculated "high risk" kids with life coaches, psychological counseling, job opportunities, and other things that, hopefully, will lead them to see the error of their gang-banging ways. It'll be interesting to see how this turns out, especially since there are far more kids actually "at risk" of being involved in a shooting than the program's $30m will initially be able to reach.

So, yeah, it's a New York Times article, but I think it's pretty important and the one New Yorker piece below is really long and involved, so... yeah.

"The Last Mission" is a highly detailed account of Richard Holbrooke's rapid rise - and subsequent decades-long plateau - in the ranks of the State Department. Now on the verge of retirement, he's answered President Obama's call to oversee State's mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or Af-Pak, as he's dubbed it. Of equal interest to me is the conspicuous system of patronage and apprenticeship at State, the network of people who care as much about who you know and have served under as what you know and where you were stationed when you learned it. It worries me a bit that I'm not coming out of Yale or Harvard, but I know that I can connect with my superiors and force my way into that web of who-knows-who if I get the chance.

On a much lighter note, "There's gold in them there bacteria!" Apparently, there's a certain class of bacteria that's allergic to gold, and has evolved a way to break it down in its system to neutralize its harmful effects and, due to the law of conservation of energy (or something), this process causes them to emit a light which prospectors can then use to determine whether or not a particular patch of soil holds a gold deposit.

And on a more dreadful note, The Economist has transcribed its first issue and published all the articles online. For some reason, they decided not to do the ads. I feel like this is a huge oversight; very few things in this world are more entertaining than pre-Victorian print ads. Except the stories running alongside them. This one is short enough that I'm actually going to paste in the full text.

Dreadful murder

Sep 2nd 1843

Since Tuesday morning the beautiful seat of the Earl of Darnley, at Cobham park, near Gravesend, in Kent, its village, and the surrounding suburbs, have been the scene of much excitement in consequence of the perpetration of a murder, attended with circumstances of a truly distressing character. The victim is Mr Dadd, sen., 55 years of age, a person who a few years ago carried on a most extensive business at Rochester, as a chemist and druggist. He had lately, however, retired, and had gone to London, where he has since resided, in Suffolk street, Pall-mall East, and gained some notoriety by the manufacture of an improved oil for artists. He was found lying by the roadside, with his throat cut, and a knife not far from his body. It has since been ascertained, beyond a doubt, that the murderer of the unfortunate gentleman is no other than his third son, Richard Dadd, a fine young man, 24 years age, and that he committed the act whilst labouring under an aberration of intellect. He was an artist of some celebrity, and has gained several prizes at the Royal Academy. A year or two ago this unfortunate youth accompanied Sir Thomas Phillips, the late Mayor of Newport, on a tour through Italy, Switzerland, Germany, &c., for the purpose of improving himself in his art. Owing to his arduous studies and constant exposure to the sun, his brain became affected to such a melancholy extent as to produce insanity. The circumstances attending the dreadful deed have not yet been correctly ascertained, nor has the youth been apprehended.

I hope I never live in New York long enough to be this uppity. Some New Yorker blogger decided to do his weekly column on the recently-published list of art the Obamas have pulled from the national collection to display in the White House, and judge them, heavily, for their choices. They like what they like. Deal with it.

Finally, there was an entire issue full of good Economist articles, but the ones that I want to share are "How many Mexicans does it take to drill an oil well?" and "Please do feed the bears", mostly because of their titles. The first is about Mexico's state-run oil companies and their rapidly declining production capability. The latter is a caveat to government regulators to remember that it was bulls, not bears, that caused the market bubbles. Their trading habits should not be restricted, nor should their frequents portents of financial disaster be ridiculed without careful examination of their reasoning. A good policy to hold in general, I'd think, but sure, let's keep it to just the stock market for now.
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Busy little bee...

Another busy sort of week. There's that whole thing about pictures and a thousand words, so... here's me first thing Thursday morning, and a bonus picture of my current work in progress.

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Toward a Red

Two weeks ago, I went back to Mandala with my friend Michelle so she could sell some books, and while I was there, I, as I do, found another postcard to add to my collection. The reason for its extreme delay is that I have found, amazingly, something that is not on the internet. Anywhere. For real. I have searched high and low, working with the artist's name and the title of the painting given on the back of the postcard, to figure out if this abstract piece is meant to be viewed vertically or horizontally. I have googled his name, its name, both of their names; combed wikipedia for any reference to it, and even gone to the website of the museum that printed the postcard to see if they had a picture - nothing. So, I present, with a 1/3 chance of correct orientation, Sam Gilliam's Toward a Red.

If you know think you have a good eye for aesthetic sensibilities, let me know which way you think is up. You should be able to click the picture and be taken to a much larger version, if you'd like to study it more in-depth.

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Oddly refreshing...

Today I woke up at 7:30 and left for work a little after 8. I spent the next four hours as tense as a pregnant cheerleader's boyfriend at the father/daughter purity ball, trying to review everything I'd ever learned about international politics in my head while making copies of rich people's tax forms. The only thing that got me through it - and only just, at that - was cranking up Ben Folds' Rockin' the Suburbs and dancing the Charleston to "The Secret Life of Morgan Baker." Seriously, ask my dad. It was one of the more raucous one-girl dance parties an Ormond office building has ever seen. So I left just before noon, stopping only to get gas (um, also discovering that my gas cap is missing? I feel like that's something I would have noticed last month when I bought gas. (Oh yeah, that's right, I bought one tank of gas in September. 320 miles was all I drove, bitches.)), and pushing Bea for the first time above 70mph to get to the Foreign Service test in Orlando.

She handled it well enough, though I guess four years of not driving very often made me forget that just under 4000rpm at 80mph is normal for a stick - that worried me for a while. The test itself was alright, and by law I'm not allowed to tell you ANYTHING that was on it, but I think I'm allowed to say that I was not asked to write either an awesome essay nor an articulate tirade about corporate greed responsibility (winkwinknudgenudge). I'm slightly less confident about the biographical section, insofar as it really comes down to whether they're looking for entry-level people or those with more practical experience for higher-level positions. I'm betting the recession made them slow down on their new hires, so in the next year, when I'm hoping to be placed, all the old entry-level kids will be promoted, leaving lots of openings for me!

Anyway so that was my FSOT adventure in a smallish nutshell. Now that it's over, I need to make a new deadline for a big project to keep my motivation up. I work so much more efficiently under pressure than without. Stupid college.
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I don't think a brisket really counts as an ethnic recipe. Right?

It's been two weeks since the last articles post and although I was collecting their links, and for some, even got around to writing responses, I couldn't get around to posting them. Too much other stuff was in the way... hello, I had a FAVICON to make? But seriously, the reason the last two weeks of articles is being folded into a three-day-late weekly update post is that this weekend, my computer died. Entirely. It's a long and complicated story involving the power supply and the battery, but it's on right now because I literally forced it into place, and everything important is all backed up to an external and all that... but it's been time-consuming, and I honestly wasn't motivated to write posts on my dad's ancient Windows ME laptop (complete with Firefox version 1.0!). Plus side- I rediscovered (for the umpteenth time) an old DOS game called Lexicross, which running on a semi-modern processor is like Wheel of Fortune and Scrabble's crack baby, on speed, and meth, and... you know, those genes that gave Superman his super speed. Good times.

I also had a four-hour brisket to make on Saturday, as well as apple bread for dessert, in honor of either Rosh Hashanah (if you ask my grandmother) or my sister coming home for the weekend (if you ask her). It turned out splendidly, I think, and because the recipe calls for a cup of red wine, I had (almost) an entire bottle to myself to nurse for the afternoon while it roasted. Extra good times.

So with all that, I forgot to mention that I started writing actual! scenes! of screenplay. I'm still completely unsure about the beginning, so I decided to just skip ahead a bit and write a crucial intermediate exposition scene. I'm actually remotely satisfied with the way it's coming out so far, although it's very awkward getting used to the screenwriting software. It helps you autoformat everything more easily, so you don't have to spend so much time typing mundane things like the characters' names over and over. Theoretically a good idea, but apparently the guild-approved format calls for reentering the character's name after they have direction and speak if you want to add more direction. Anyway, perhaps when it's finished I will put it up. (Probably not.)

I also began reading a book I purchased a few years ago, right after the author was promoting it on the Daily Show, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Aside from having an awesome title, this very well-researched book exposes the realities of both life in Baghdad's "secure" Green Zone in 2004-05 and the political conflicts that did not just hinder, but visibly set back the progress of rebuilding Iraq as an independent nation. The author lived in Baghdad, across the river from his interviewees, all of whom were employees of the various US agencies represented in the occupation government. The storytelling is so smooth that it reads almost like a novel, and I'm excited to jump back into it tonight. So I'm going to. Below the cut are links to the articles I did end up reading (and, in the case of the Economist, bothered gathering links for) and, yes, I know, it's very light on the New Yorker. Sue me.

"What to do with Moody's, S&P, and the rating agencies?" I was attracted to this New Yorker piece because I was only vaguely aware of the rating agencies' role in the financial system, not knowing much beyond the fact that they had rated AIG AAA - apparently a good rating - right before it collapsed. This article explores that theme further while demonstrating the history of increasing the entrenchment of these agencies into the system. (That very system also writes the agencies' paychecks, which is why the ratings are so slow to change.) It also advocates for a "divorce," removing the government seal of officiousness from the agencies themselves.

What's most interesting about this is the grade inflation that went on over the last three decades without anyone appearing to take notice. When AAA becomes the standard and not a way to differentiate truly low-risk investments from the rest - and when the supposedly perpetually-secure real estate busts nationally - there's no question that America's major disease is greed.

If, in high school history class, we had been given "Trial of the Century" instead of half a paragraph in our textbook to learn about the infamous Dreyfus Affair, I would almost certainly have retained enough of the details to not have clicked on a New Yorker book review to quench my curiosity. This six-page review, after giving a short summation of the book's main point - that the historical context that enabled Dreyfus to be wrongly convicted (twice) of treason by supposedly spying for the Germans before finally being allowed to return to his home - gives a detailed history lesson about that very context. The review does a very good job of it, so I won't paraphrase. Just go read it.

Normally, I wouldn't really care to read a biographical piece about the prospective new owner of the NY Nets. But any article that begins, "Being a Russian oligarch these days isn't easy" is, in my opinion, one worth taking a peek at.

"Rethinking the bees' waggle dance:" so it turns out bees might not actually be as smart and communicative as we thought. Waggledance is still fun to say, though...

"Overconsumption is the real problem" is one article in a large special feature NS published about the looming specter of overpopulation. The whole feature is good, but this is the one that spoke to me most.

"Economic Vandalism:" an anti-American-protectionism tirade. Sort of. Apparently we pissed off China by putting a tariff on shoddy tires instead of letting the market sort it out - never mind that when tires fail, BAD THINGS LIKE ACCIDENTS happen.

"The power of mobile money" explains the new trend of mobile banking in Kenya, and how it's helping jumpstart the economy there. It's a pretty nifty system; people can transfer small amounts of money from one another, which they can then withdraw at local convenience stores - useful in a nation with a very small banking infrastructure.

"Set Angela free" is a little dated now, but this piece is still an informative primer on the dynamics of Germany's multiparty government.

Last, but certainly not least, "The Best of the Ig Nobel Prizes" is best described as the Razzies for science. Two of them involve innovative applications for alcohol, so... just read it.
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Puppy

I sort of forgot to do SPT yesterday, what with all the excitement of creating the favicon, and today I made sure to keep my camera with me at all times - but I never really found a good opportunity for a shot. Until my family got back from dinner and our dog, Lucky, looked more adorable than usual on the top of the couch. (Yes, she's fully-grown; yes, we sometimes think she's a cat. In actuality, she's half Chihuahua, half Yorkie.) She's not normally this shy, though. Maybe she just didn't like the flash...

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Drumroll, please...

I guess it's finally time to declare goal 42, Learn how to program a website, officially underway. First, I tweaked the code for this blog in the weeks before launching it. Then, I completely modified a different template for my friend Chelsea's blog. And now, I am proud to present, for your bookmarking pleasure, the official Swingsets and Cathedrals favicon! Apparently, that is the term the internet, with its seemingly infinite ability to portmanteau, has thought up to label the little icon next to the web address up in the address bar there, and on your bookmark toolbar. Look! See! Isn't it adorable? It was actually surprisingly easy to add to the blog; much more difficult was the actual making of it in Paint.

Anyway, time to hit up at least a thousand grains of rice's worth of capitals before bed. Bamako, Mali! Antananarivo, Madagascar! Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia! Conakry, Guinea!
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