Having just refreshed the playlist on my non-iPod music player, which can not play any of the music I’ve bought from iTunes, I was happy to see Steve Jobs say he’d just as soon not have anything to do with the whole Digital Rights Management thing. It’ll be interesting to see if the music labels listen. Can’t say I’m holding my breath.
I’ve been watching numerous people on liberal/progressive blogs get worked up over the Senate Democrats’ proposal for a nonbinding resolution against Bush’s escalation plan, arguing that it was a purely cosmetic bill that accomplished nothing.
The weird thing is, today, Senate Republicans filibustered the nonbinding resolutions. The Republicans who sponsored the bills even joined the filibuster. Now, if this nonbinding resolution is no big deal, why would the Republican leadership go to such great lengths to stop it? Yeah, it’s mainly a PR stunt. But perception becomes reality so often in politics, maybe PR matters.
That said, the big confrontation is going to come up when Congress has to take action on Bush’s request for more funding for Iraq and Afghanistan. If Congress is going to substantially affect Iraq policy before 2008, funding measures are probably the only they’re possibly going to be able to get past filibusters and presidential vetoes. We’ll see who gets tagged as an obstructionist then.
Crazy weekend, so not much time to post. All I’m gonan say is, we got our stand mixer up and running this weekend – it was a Christmas gift from my mom, but we had to figure out where to put it. I went a little crazy, and tried to make homemade sticky buns and pizza this weekend.
Crazy, but tasty. Oh yeah. I just gotta figure out how to spin the pizza dough a little thinner. Then I can start tweaking recipes.
All I’ll say is, the America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks are money well spent.
I know I’m only about the nine billionth guy to blog about this, but the synchronicity is worth it, so bear with me.
I was flipping through the Music Choice stations on my digital cable, and one of them was playing Sick of Myself by Matthew Sweet, from 100% Fun. I distinctly remember when I bought that album (the first time), because I’m pretty sure it was the last time I didn’t know that one of my favorite artists was working on a new project well in advance. I just went into the record store one night, and bam, there was a new Matthew Sweet CD. An unexpected gift. Well, one that I had to pay for, anyway. But it got me thinking a little bit about the release-date-knowing, web-site-reading, from-Amazon-preordering entertainment culture of today.
And then I did some blog surfing and discovered that Joss Whedon has announced that he won’t be working on the Wonder Woman movie after all – he just couldn’t come up with a direction that he and the studio both liked. Whedon announced this on the Whedonesque fan site, and the comments thread to his posting contained a lot of people upset, because they had built up their expectations and were really looking forward to a Whedon Wonder Woman movie. There are some folks who are finding a bright side, though – now Whedon has time to work on the other movie project he’s announced, a film called Goners. Whedon is still polishing the script to this movie, but it apparently has earned many devoted fans since it was first announced.
And the cycle begins anew.
OK, so Philadelphia has a big mayoral election coming up. Technically the election is in November, but right now no one has even announced they’re running on the Republican side. So the Democratic primary in May is probably for all the marbles.
Now, due in part to our last mayoral election involving an eavesdropping device discovered in the mayor’s office, the city instituted campaign finance reform that limited the contributions candidates could receive. This was a big deal in Philly, where officials routinely hit up unions, companies, and wealthy supporters for tens of thousands of dollars, if not more.
Then a millionaire named Tom Knox announced he was running for the nomination, and that he’d spend his own money as need be. He put $2 million into a getting-to-know-me campaign. And a recent Daily News poll shows that he’s rocketed up to second in the polls. Within days, a Philadelphia councilman was working on a bill to suspend the contribution limits if anyone put $2 million into his or her own campsign. (Wonder where he came up with that number.)
The councilman that introduced this bill already has close to enough cosponsors to get it passed. The councilman is also apparently a supporter of Bob Brady, the congressman and city party chair who recently entered the race. Brady apparently supports the measure, while several other mayoral candidates do not.
I would hesitate to point this out, but in Philadelphia politics it really tends to matter, since voting often breaks down along racial lines: Brady and Knox are the two white candidates in the mayoral primary.
It’s worth checking out Young Philly Politics, where the debate and discussion have flown fast and furious. Members of Council comment on the site.
I’m going to punt a little bit with tonight’s entry, and provide a couple of links that I think make for an interesting contrast.
Here’s the Library of Congress page on the Bill of Rights. You can even check out the two proposed amendments that were rejected (at least initially).
And here’s the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948.
I think if you read these two documents back to back, you get a pretty clear idea of how some people’s conception of what constitutes a right has changed. In no way am I diminishing the ideas in the Bill of Rights, but I kind of conceptualize them as a way of saying “Leave me alone” to the government. The UN Declaration goes beyond that – by the time you get to the part about rest and paid holidays, you can see that the view here depends on the idea that human beings have certain minimum requirements for a life of dignity and liberty.
And right there I think you have one of the most significant political and moral debates of the 20th and 21st centuries.
I imagine there are quicker ways to make a fool of yourself than to make comments about a fellow Democratic senator that sound racially-tinged, on the very day that you officially announce you’re pursuing the presidency. For example, you could do all of that, and then be scheduled to go on The Daily Show later that day.
In other words, you could be Joe Biden.
I really oughta go upstairs and set the DVR.
In other campaign news, the blogosphere rumor mill is buzzing that Wesley Clark will announce his run later this week. A couple of months ago, this news would have gotten me very enthused. Now, I think I’m more inclined to wait and see if he can really get his campaign moving before I jump fully on board. (And yes, I know, if everyone takes that attitude, failure is guaranteed. I’m willing to take a little risk on being a free rider for now.)
If there is one philosophical device I am absolutely sick to death of, it’s the dialogue. Apparently some writers figure that no one wants to read a boring treatise about some kind of abstract theory. So instead, they write a boring play in which multiple characters debate the abstract theory through stilted dialogue. Maybe it’s the fiction-reader in me, but I read these things and I just want to scream “exposition dump!” Characters don’t sound natural, they have to contort themselves to drop names and establish theories, and usually there’s clearly one character who’s destined to be right. (In Plato, it was Socrates.)
I remember in college our professor had us watch a movie called Mindwalk, in which Sam Waterston plays a senator who’s just dropped his campaign for the presidency and so his poet friend takes him to a beach in France, and while touring a castle they meet some French woman who decides to start talking to them bout how the Cartesian worldview has affected Western society for hundreds of years. On the one hand, the characters had their own existential crises they were trying to get through. On the other, they had to recount hundreds of years of Western philosophy while they traipsed around the beach. By the end of it I was begging for a lecture.
I am reminded of all this by one of my education textbooks, which is full of dialogues. And boy oh boy are they stilted. And full of stereotypes – the author has apparently decided to be “edgy” by occasionally having one character call another a racist or a conservative idiot or what-have-you. At least there’s no clear voice-of-the-author character.
In the end, I think I’d rather read or see a work of fiction, with fleshed-out characters delivering compelling dialogue, that illustrates a philosophical conflict rather than make the philosophical debate the centerpiece of the story. It’s not like anyone’s breaking down my door to start a philosophy reality show – these conversations are interesting to participate in, but not much of a spectator sport.
Given the complaining I did the other day, I figure I ought to share this link to a story that ran in today’s Inquirer, in the Health and Science section. It’s a feature piece, where you’d expect some more in-depth reporting, and for the most part the story delivers – it tells the story of a woman who’s been taking care of her paralyzed husband since he had a stroke 11 years ago, and whose own health is getting steadily worse – she’s in a wheelchair herself.
On the one hand, the story is a human interest story. On the other hand, it raises questions about our insurance and safety-net programs, our reliance on family and friends to care for the sick, and the support we provide – or don’t – to those caregivers. Those questions don’t get much exploration, but then I don’t take that as the main purpose of the piece. Still, the wonk in me wonders how we could do better.
On the third hand, I found myself wondering about the guy, and what he’s doing to try and make his wife’s burden a little easier. The story says she’s resisted putting him in a facility, even for a few days so that she could get a break, but it doesn’t mention whether he’s urged her to take a break or not. I guess, even from the human interest side, that’s one side of the dynamic I would have liked to see more about. It gets me thinking about the question of how much of a burden we can realistically ask our loved ones to take on on our behalf, and at the same time it gets me thinking that it’s important to know our own limits and ask for help every once in a while.
Every so often I remind myself I need to keep better track of those little expenditures that add up and explain why my bank balance isn’t where I wanted it to be at the end of the month. By far one of my biggest financial sins is paying for fast food or snack food while I’m away from home. I bought a 2-liter bottle of Coke at the grocery store today for $1.25. At the checkout counter, the store was selling chilled 20-oz bottles of Coke for somewhere around $1.25-$1.50. I could have bought 24 bottles of Snapple iced tea for $13 – or a single cold bottle for 2-3 times as much as a single bottle from the case. A little thinking ahead can save a lot of money.
Actual meals are even worse. If I don’t eat, that’s obviously bad. But once I leave the house, my options are school cafeterias and fast food courts. Most of the time I don’t even enjoy the food I get from these places, but because I didn’t bother to pack anything, they’re my only option. (A caveat – there’s a food court at Temple where I can get either a really good cheesesteak or a really good chicken kebab sandwich. Treating myself to one of these places every once in a while is actually one of my favorite things about being back at Temple.) I was stuck at 30th Street Station a few weeks ago, and in trying to eat something but eat cheap, I grabbed a couple of tacos from Taco Bell. Not only did I not enjoy that meal very much, but a few days later the e. coli story hit. Great timing, eh?
So part of my resolve to eat better and spend more wisely is to cook in bulk on the weekends. I made two batches of tomato sauce, some fried chicken for the fridge, and shredded beef for tacos. (That last dish owes much to Rick Bayless’s cookbooks, and is really in an entirely different universe from the unfortunate Taco Bell incident.) I think it’s a good habit to get into, but the next trick is going to be making sure I save enough of the food to last through the week.