Category — ‘pocalypse

Lord, I love Truth-Out.

Conservatives believe in individual responsibility alone, not social responsibility. They don't think government should help its citizens. That is, they don't think citizens should help each other. The part of government they want to cut is not the military (we have 174 bases around the world), not government subsidies to corporations, not the aspect of government that fits their worldview. They want to cut the part that helps people. Why? Because that violates individual responsibility.

But where does that view of individual responsibility alone come from?

The way to understand the conservative moral system is to consider a strict father family. The father is The Decider, the ultimate moral authority in the family. His authority must not be challenged. His job is to protect the family, to support the family by winning competitions in the marketplace, and to teach his kids right from wrong by disciplining them physically when they do wrong. The use of force is necessary and required. Only then will children develop the internal discipline to become moral beings. And only with such discipline will they be able to prosper. And what of people who are not prosperous? They don't have discipline, and without discipline they cannot be moral, so they deserve their poverty. The good people are hence the prosperous people. Helping others takes away their discipline, and hence makes them both unable to prosper on their own and function morally.

via What Conservatives Really Want.

In Michigan as well as elsewhere, I've heard the attempted anti-union argument that "teachers make too much money anyway".  Now, I know a few teachers (experienced, in difficult subjects like science) and they do pretty well, so it's easy to see how some people might find that argument (i.e. "teachers make too much money, so there's something wrong with unions") at least a little convincing.

Thanks to my iFriend zentiger (via kataplexis), today I can kill it dead for good.  Behold, simple high-school math:

Suppose that teachers are making too much money. OK, that's fine. Let's treat them like babysitters, and pay them less than minimum wage. Say, $3/hour. The conversation wandered from there, but I decided to put some numbers on it and see what happens.

Now, teachers don't work full-time; around 180 days a year for around six and a half hours a day. (Lunch? No, you don't get paid for lunch. Or grading. Or planning.) On the other hand, teachers deal with ~30 students at a time, so that's something — your average babysitter deals with one, or maybe two, at a time. Let's call it 1.5.

Now let's do some math. $3/hour/1.5 kids is, shockingly enough, equal to $2/hour/child. And each day is, as we know, 6.5 hours, so it looks like we should have (in a given day), $13/child. Multiply that by the (sadly small estimate of class size) 30 kids each teacher deals with, and we're at $390/day. $390/day * 180 days/year = $70,200/year. That seems like a reasonable introductory salary for a schoolteacher, no? If not, where did I go wrong in my math? I mean, I'm doing this all in my head, so I might have screwed up somewhere.

This result is especially interesting given that, according to salary.com (I don't actually know if this is a good source), the median salary of a high school teacher is $53,558. If that website is accurate, it looks like we're paying our teachers, on average, $20,000 per year less than we'd pay a 14-year-old for the same service. Oh, and the teachers also, y'know, educate our children. So that's a plus.

What the hell, America?

As someone who has been involved in the protests in Madison for the past six days, I find the news media coverage of the momentous events in this town to in no way portray the reality of what is going on here. In their attempts to constantly be balanced, the news media seem to have lost all ability to be accurate.

via From the Front Lines in Madison, WI | Common Dreams.

Information is power.

"Wow, really?" a family member said recently, in response to the news that Afghanistan was now the longest-running war in American history.  "That's funny…you just don't hear that much about Afghanistan."

No.  No, you don't — and furthermore, it was "hearing about" Vietnam that directly contributed to ending that war.  People started protesting because journalists started (disobeying the government and) bringing back pictures of the atrocities being committed there, which were then shown on the national news.  The protests eventually sapped all political will to keep the war going.  (Financial damage is key:  Wars make money, tons of money for the right people.  But protests cost it — in damage, cops, courts, lost work, boycotts, and political donations.  You can almost see, if you read up on things that protesting has worked for, when the money-balance tipped.) 

There aren't many American protests of Afghanistan, especially compared to Vietnam, and it's not, I hope everyone is smart enough to realize, because this is the world's first miraculously atrocity-free war.  It's because American journalists have been pretty thoroughly cowed this time.  The shocking news, the graphic pictures, may make a few blogs and Wikileaks, but the mainstream news sticks with a) Lady Gaga and b) discrediting Wikileaks, pretty much exclusively.

I remember when I realized for the first time that American media was censored:  It was when I read a speech by John Paul II, the then-Pope of all Catholicdom, and in it he described very frankly why, according to Christian values, Capitalism the way America practices it is evil.  This was on the Vatican's own website.  I was confused, and did some searching — and yes, actually John Paul II had that opinion over most of his tenure, and he wasn't quiet about it.  Jesus said "feed the poor", "heal the sick" and was pretty clearly against allowing wealth to coagulate into the top 1% of the population while everyone else struggled…hence, American capitalism flies in the face of Jesus' teachings, and the head of the Jesus-worship clan was not okay with it.  (Other prominent Xtian scholars remain not-okay with it — one speaks on-camera in "Capitalism: A Love Story", for instance.)

Number of times I have ever heard the John Paul II's opinion of capitalism talked about on a major American media outlet:  Zero.  And the only possible way that could be true is that Americans are being flat-out censored.  So ever since then, I've known it, and just kept that knowledge under my hat with a whole bottle of salt for use whenever I'm around mainstream media.

I don't suspect I'll get much argument from most thinking people on this, so rather than hammer on the point, I'd like to offer a little salve:  The Independent (a British news company) ran a brilliant article yesterday, describing "The Under-Appreciated Heroes of 2010".  I highly recommend everyone read the article, but for now I'm going to do what blogs do best:  Condense the pertinent information from the article into bits you have time for, even if you can't read the whole thing.  It's amazing, even in snipped form. 

Also, let's face it — something like this may be taken down eventually, or Americans may lose access to it.  In those cases (and they happen — and recent changes to government powers and oversight of the Internet will make them happen more), it's important to have "backup data".  I'm happy to devote some virtual-estate to this.

So here you are — see if you've heard the juice on these heroes (an especially interesting exercise if you're not in the U.S.) and enjoy having your mind blown at least once, I promise.  And Viva la fuck censorship!!  ;)

(Snips under the cut)

[Read more →]

I know it's Donald Rumsfeld and yes, I would slap him if I ever met him…but he actually didn't do a bad job stating the epistemological truth, there.  There are knowns; known unknowns; and importantly, unknown unknowns.  Socrates (or his fans) would have said that the more you're aware of the probable existence of unknown unknowns, the more clearly you can edge the map — marking not just the islands you know you haven't been to, but also the places your map doesn't even attempt to cover — the wiser you are.

Mind you, I don't think Rummy had a fucking clue what he meant when he said that.  I think serious pondering of that idea for about ten minutes has to result in an unwillingness to conduct a fucking war, for one thing.  The sheer number of unknown unknowns involved, the unbelievable likelihood of screwing yourself in the long run, you'd think would paralyze any red-button-pusher with half a working synapse.

But I digress.  Hell, I begin by digressing — is there some kind of extra credit for that?

It's Monday morning.  This past weekend was full of ups and downs…I'll call it "brilliant" overall, with the caveat that brilliant things are blinding, can hurt, can make you walk into a wall when they shut off.

Sleep-wise, I slept 8 hours Thanksgiving night, after getting no naps that day.  Woke up feeling sore and sluggish; ew.  After that, I managed to get two naps on Friday and Sunday, and sleep 4.5 hours at night — going to bed at 11:30, and waking up at 4am feeling fine.  On Saturday I only got one nap, and I tried to sleep 4.5 hours but slept six instead (my body was Not Playing Games about getting the rest it needed, in the face of all the running around and emotional upheaval).

Still, it wasn't anywhere near the failure I had feared…my schedule survived, and I have every reason to expect that I can pick this week up like nothin', get right back to it.  Woot.  

I did get way too much food and not enough exercise, but such are holidays I suppose…it occurs to me that humanity has been doing the feasting-in-the-winter thing for hundreds upon hundreds of generations by now, and it's entirely likely that it's just not that bad for us anymore.  ;)

This morning, I decided to pursue a little education with my three pre-work hours…I watched "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train", a documentary of Howard Zinn — which I really enjoyed; I've read some of Zinn's work but after learning more about him, I'll totally read more:  awesome guy!  Then I followed it up with "Capitalism: A Love Story" — I know that Moore's movies express a biased point of view, but I also know that it's the opposite bias of the one I hear 90% of the time in other media (taking this opportunity to metaphorically slap anyone who claims that mainstream media equals a lack of bias) — which I'm not sure I'll be able to watch all of, but it's definitely food for thought.  I do think it's funny that Moore is seen as so slaveringly radical, when everything I've ever seen of his is a pretty basic rallying cry for more democracy.  It's not PhD-level, but then again neither is anything I've seen from the opposing view.  And it's not radical…radical is saying, in all seriousness, that it might be completely fair to get some fucking guns and tell the banks that if they want these houses, they can come take them the old fashioned way.

I still have nightmares about foreclosures in Michigan. 

And I think I have actual Survivor's Guilt; I can't look that way without shuddering, without the organic food going sawdust in my mouth.  I feel like I left my family in a war-zone, even if I left to get help.   It's slowly occurring to me that it's not an accident that I stopped listening to NPR, have been avoiding news almost completely, and avert my eyes from for-sale signs as if they burn.  It's stupid on a level, but on another level, it ought to say something that this economic climate is actually bad enough to cause PTSD.

…

And this is why documentaries before 7am are not always a good idea.  ;)

Think of what we’ve come to. It is one of the great testaments to the intellectual—and moral, and spiritual—poverty of American society that it makes its most intelligent young people feel like they’re being self-indulgent if they pursue their curiosity. You are all told that you’re supposed to go to college, but you’re also told that you’re being “self-indulgent” if you actually want to get an education. Or even worse, give yourself one. As opposed to what? Going into consulting isn’t self-indulgent? Going into finance isn’t self-indulgent? Going into law, like most of the people who do, in order to make yourself rich, isn’t self-indulgent? It’s not OK to play music, or write essays, because what good does that really do anyone, but it is OK to work for a hedge fund. It’s selfish to pursue your passion, unless it’s also going to make you a lot of money, in which case it’s not selfish at all.

via Dangerous Minds | Creative, Intellectual Lives are Not Self-Indulgent.

Go read the whole article; seriously, it's massively worth it. (And thank you yet *again* to Psuke for the awesome links!)

You could kinda knock me over with a feather right now. ;)  Where I grew up, it was "wasting money" to go to college unless you had a clear idea of the money-pumping career you were aiming for (trade school was much preferred); and my decision to go for philosophy because I was passionate about it was met with….well.  And whenever I considered moving to Boston, where my writing &etc. had a better chance of becoming a more solid and meaningful part of my life, someone was always there to frown at me for "acting like a child" and wanting silly, inappropriate things.  Once I had a child the opinionating doubled…now that I was a mom, the theory went, all my passion and art and weirdness should have been finally fully subsumed to my womanhood, leaving nothing but a burning desire to clean the house, and a firm preference for tasteful clothes from Sears.

Of course, as many of you know, I did eventually move to Boston…because I could no longer get work amid the financial devastation wrought by the exact industry-obsessed attitudes that insisted on the primacy of work and money.  I found a job — not just a good job, but a great job, making more than anyone in my family by a good long bit –  and I'll be darned if my husband and I *still* didn't get frowned at for moving to a place that was "more artsy", that had a better music scene for him and writing groups for me…even IF you're going to make a bunch of money, if anyone suspects (as they doubtless do with me) that you're going to make that money in some way SO you can pursue things that you're passionate about, "useless" things like art and music and philosophy, then you're still suspect.

We are living in a dark age.  If you doubt me in historical terms, go watch Terry Jones' Medieval Lives for a few episodes.  ;)  But if you have any awareness in you at all, you won't doubt me in social terms, especially not after the article above clears it up for you.

Don't worry.  Galileo lived in the dark ages too, and he did alright.  They may lynch us eventually, but if in the meantime we've pursued our passions, we'll be alright anyway.

Without waiting until it writes new rules to carry out the Supreme Court’s controversial January ruling lifting campaign finance curbs,  the Federla Election Commission on Thursday approved formation of two new groups that will raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to try to directly influence congressional elections this year. One of the new groups is an offshoot of a Republican-leaning organization that has raised and spent millions in federal elections in recent years; the other is an entirely new group formed by individuals long associated with Democratic campaigns.  There was a lone dissent as the five other FEC members approved both.

–The official Supreme Court of the US blog

 

…In better and completely related news, Futurama is back on. Yay for the exceptions that prove the rule (that television sucks)!

So I was recently on a website, nothing special or important to me, just somewhere I landed to look up something, as often happens.  On the right sidebar of this site is a quotes widget, kind of like mine except with more general, popular quotes and it refreshed like every two seconds — fast enough that you had to work to keep up with reading them.

Naturally this would be an exercise my brain (especially in its current depleted state — more on that in a minute) would enjoy, so I stared at the thing for a minute, watching the wisdom go by.

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

You know you're in love when you don't want to sleep because finally, reality is better than your dreams.

He's like a drug to you, Bella.

…Wait, what? 

What's that simple sentence doing there?  It's a plain, ineloquent statement made to some character, with no context, no profundity, and no poetry.  Why is that quotable?

My eyes latch onto it long enough to get the name.

…Oh god.  Really?  Really?

Some days it's an actual, difficult chore to maintain any faith in humanity.

(In other news, I'm working pretty much constantly for a month, so please forgive me falling off the planet.  Things changed radically again, now I'm moving again, and I really need the money so I took on a ton of work to help pay for it.  It's going to be a crazy few months!  But good crazy, progress-crazy.  At the moment I don't even have a sleep-schedule, and "stimulants" are my new middle name, so I apologize to all the sleepers for whom I'm being a horrible example right now; I assure you it's temporary, and I'm very excited about finding out where I can fit polyphasic sleep in my new lifestyle, once I settle into it.  Thank you all for your support and comments and questions and attention, and I will post again when I can.  –I know I said weekends, but now I'm working the next three or four, so unfortunately now I'm no longer sure.  But I will absolutely try.  Thank you again!!)

Stolen in its entirety from the marvelous jblaque's LJ.  I urge you to steal it too, because…well.  Yeah.

• Experts say that the Gulf's highly endangered sperm whale population is in serious peril, and the loss of as little as three females (by inhalation and/or ingestion of the crude and its fumes) could ultimately wipe them out forever.

• Whales are just one of the many endangered species facing total devastation.

• Several media outlets are now reporting that their access to the spill area is being "strangled off" by BP as the oil giant continues to suppress and/or misrepresent the truth about the magnitude of the disaster.

• Americablog reveals the serious, growing health hazards to those involved in the clean-up efforts (and, ultimately, thousands of people living along the coast).

• Energy expert Mark Simmons is just one among many who posit that nuking the site may be the only way to stop the gusher.

• Craig Medred covers the technology that the oil industry (most notably, BP) doesn't want to talk about.

• Gulf fisherman are now describing the event as "the apocalyspe" of their industry and way of life.

• Alabama and Mississippi – helplessly and hopelessly – await the inevitable.

• Independent scientists and researchers say it's not the oil at the surface that poses the biggest danger to our ecosystem, it's what lies beneath.

• NPR gives us a haunting (and horrifying) preview of what will forevermore be known as "The Summer of Oil."

• Meanwhile, BP's latest grasp at straws could make matters far worse than they already are.

• At least one Gulf fisherman – stricken by oil-related illness – has BP's number. We need 10,000 more just like him.

• Already facing more than 100 lawsuits, BP has wasted little time in shopping for sympathetic judges.

And finally – please read David Gergen's plea to President Obama to take command of the situation (including many steps the White House can take right now to help manage this nightmare).

P.S. Please pass these updates along in your LJ, Facebook, Twitter, etc. This very well could be the most important news story of our lifetimes. Don't let it die.