June 2012 archive

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

     Tamae Watanabe, a 73-year-old who broke her back in 2005, became the oldest woman to scale Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain. (Or, for fans of Monty Python, “The mountain with the biggest tits in the world.”)

   For the first time since stats were kept in 1988, the number of cellphone subscriptions in Japan is greater than the population of the country at 128,205,000, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has revealed.

   Many teachers at Japanese junior high schools are reportedly shakin’ all over since the education ministry made dance compulsory, with hip hop among the options. “Some of the teachers faced with the prospect of busting their moves in front of classes full of skeptical 12- to 14-year-olds are getting nervous,” said a report on The Asahi Shimbun website.

   Masaru Shishido, a 43-year-old actor who formerly played a superhero in the Super Sentai series on TV, opened a bar called Crystal Sky in Tachikawa where he has his waitresses dress like characters from the show and he “insists they call him Taicho (captain of the squad).”

Contributing editor for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi and Yves Smith, creator of the finance and economics blog Naked Capitalism appeared with Bill Moyers on his PBS program, Moyers and Company to discuss How Big Banks Victimize Our Democracy.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s appearances in the last two weeks before Congressional committees – many members of which received campaign contributions from the megabank – beg the question: For how long and how many ways are average Americans going to pay the price for big bank hubris, with our own government acting as accomplice? [..]

Taibbi’s latest piece is “The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia.” Smith is the author of ECONned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism.

Full transcript

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

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I wanted comforting food this week that would showcase the wonderful late spring/early summer vegetables that are appearing in markets all over the country right now – great big bunches of chard with wide stems and lush leaves, tender leeks, the last of the fava beans, first of the green beans and the first of the summer squash, still small and delicate. I didn’t have a lot of time, and I wanted to make dishes that I could serve as the main dish for dinners throughout the week, so I did what the French do: I made soup.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

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New York Times Editorial: The Anti-Union Roberts Court

The Supreme Court’s ruling this week in Knox v. Service Employees International Union

(pdf) is one of the most brazen of the Roberts court. It shows how defiantly the five justices act in advancing the aggressive conservatism of their majority on the court. [..]

The court said the union infringed on the free speech rights of the nonmembers by not giving them the chance to prevent the use of their dues to support expressions of political views unrelated to collective bargaining. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed with this narrow judgment only.

This produced a 7-to-2 ruling on that specific question. But Justice Samuel Alito Jr., writing an opinion representing the conservative five only, went far beyond this principle, which has been settled law since 1986.

David Cay Johnston: America’s Long Slope Down

A broad swath of official economic data shows that America and its people are in much worse shape than when we paid higher taxes, higher interest rates and made more of the manufactured goods we use.

The numbers since the turn of the millennium point to even worse times ahead if we stay the course. Let’s look at the official numbers in today’s dollars and then what can be done to change course. [..]

We need to recognize that the tax cutters were snake oil salesmen, the Federal Reserve an enabler of damaging debts and that bilateral trade deals are written of, by and for global financiers, not workers.

To paraphrase the Huey Lewis song, we need a new policy.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge.

June 23 is the 174th day of the year (175th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 191 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin. Hopes for better U.S.-Soviet relations run high as U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, for a three-day summit. The meeting ended inconclusively, however, as issues such as Vietnam and the Middle East continued to divide the two superpowers.

Background

With the United States gradually losing ground in the Vietnam War, the administration was looking for other solutions to the conflict.

On 5 June 1967 the Six-Day War began between Israel and the Arab states. The war led to an increase in Soviet-US diplomatic contact and cooperation; there were some who hoped this could continue to help the US solve the Vietnam war and other pressing international issues. Several days later the Soviet Union sent Premier Alexei Kosygin to New York to hold a speech on the then-ongoing Middle Eastern crisis at the United Nations headquarters. When the United States government was informed of this the Americans gladly welcomed Kosygin to a meeting between him and President Lyndon B. Johnson. On 13 June 1967 Johnson sought out J. William Fulbright, a Senator, at a White House reception. Llewellyn Thompson, then US ambassador to the USSR, believed that a conference could “start the process of moving toward an understanding with the Soviets”. Fulbright even believed that Johnson was reconsidering his Vietnam strategy. Later Fulbright wrote two letters to Johnson about the importance of a summit between the two nations. Johnson agreed, and wrote a letter in return, which said they were waiting for a Soviet response for US invitation. Walt Rostow, the National Security Adviser at the time, said it was a 20 percent chance of the summit having a good effect on Soviet-US relations, and only a 10 percent chance of the summit going awry.

The Soviet Political Bureau (Politburo) were divided over the usefulness of the summit. Andrei Gromyko, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time and still not a member of the Politburo, was able to win support for it. Gromyko noted that Soviet-US dialogue which had been suspended in 1963 should be reactivated, despite the Vietnam War putting a great deal strain on the two countries’ relations.

Kosygin agreed to address the United Nations wished to conduct the summit in New York. Johnson, wary of encountering protesters against the war in Vietnam, preferred to meet in Washington, D.C.. Roughly equidistant, Hollybush was selected as a compromise. The summit took place at Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in Glassboro, New Jersey.

So, do you want to talk about tires?

Me either, but the engineers want to talk about tires because they’re very unhappy, calling them ‘unpredictable’.

Pirelli, for their part, deny this, saying that not only are they utterly reliable in their performance, but that durability and speed are consistent (though variable) throughout the range of racing temperatures which are beyond their control (being weather based and all).

All of this precipitated of course by Alonso’s spectacular late race, 7 place fold in Canada as he attempted to execute a skip pit advantage strategy that went disastrously wrong.

Please forgive my complete lack of sympathy for the Maranello crybabies of Scuderia Marlboro UPC.  The sad fact of the matter is that the Rules Committee is getting exactly the kind of competition they designed with 7 different winners in 7 races so far.  It’s a personal disappointment to me also since I’d prefer to see the possibility of a two stop vs. three stop, but I’d like a fuel weight strategy too and longer stops mean less ability to run away and hide in the lead.

So I entirely disagree with the concept that when you pit and for what is the dominant factor- they are like the weather, sucking equally and for everyone at the same time.  It’s still about qualifying to the extent of balancing saving tires and getting good position, a good start, and staying within a stop of the lead and out of trouble.

And if pit idiocy were eliminated McLaren would have a good team, so count your blessings.

Tomorrow’s broadcast is going to be challenging.  Tape delayed @ noon on Faux it makes my life miserable because the Speed Racecast at 8 am and that’s where I get my in-race positions.  I expect I’ll suffer through it like silent radio, taking periodic measurements.  Speed.com is supposed to live stream it too.

• Formula One Official Site
• Valencia
• Guardian Interactive Circuit Guide

Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth, 1955

Wikipedia–

(I)n this novel corporate lawyers… have gained a stranglehold on the world. Business Law is an extremely lucrative career, while Criminal Law pays enough to afford some of the luxuries of life but not enough to save for the future.

Success means living in a luxurious automated “bubble home” constructed by “GML”, a corporation which is nominally public but whose shares are never traded openly. All work contracts include GML housing as part of the pay scale. Not having a contract job means having to live in a community such as “Belly Rave”, originally a post-war suburban development for returning soldiers, now a slum ruled by teenage gangs. Its original name was “Belle Rêve”.

For the common people, there are bread-and-circuses entertainments in the form of gladiatorial games of various kinds, with monetary rewards for the winners. Some games pit elderly people against each other armed with padded clubs, but others are more deadly.

…

(T)he “public assistance” system … ensures that nobody starves, without actually making life worth living. … (R)esidents indulge in a kind of barter, or petty theft, extortion, and gang crime, or simply anaesthetize themselves with liquor.

…

Wall Street… has become a hybrid stock-market and public casino.

…

The plan Bliss hatches is to bankrupt GML rather than indulge in a proxy battle. Mundin is dispatched to sabotage certain GML houses, including the model in the Smithsonian, at the same time spreading rumors through his political connections.

…

(T)hey return to Wall Street where Mundin starts a run on the market by carefully selling off large chunks of the GML stock. After a while the selling takes on a life of its own.

…

As the market collapses, the plotters are left with large amounts of cash, which they use to buy up GML and other companies at bargain prices. At the end they are counting their riches and savoring their triumph.

Not currently in print.  Copies in very good+ condition available @ Rudy’s Books for $2.50.

Last time we discussed the peak and decline of The Moody Blues and in particular the studio part of the album Caught Live + 5.  I was going to stop with their studio material at that point, but several readers asked me to complete the Mark II band by including the music and my critique of Octave, Mark II’s eighth studio album.

For details about the production, release, and artwork on this record, please use the link just provided.  I think that you can already tell that I am not wild about this record, but it does have its moments.

I do find it to be exceedingly weak in comparison with their canonical material, and the passing of the Mellotron and Chamberlin leaves it without the signature, hauntingly beautiful sound of The Moody Blues.  Another thing that really bothers me is that they had a studio musician to sit in, and to me that is the antithesis to the canonical albums.  His name was R. A. Martin, and he played the exceedingly annoying saxophone parts and some less annoying horns.  In any event, we should just jump into the music.

As Mubarak Lay Dying

Posted by Lawrence Wright, The New Yorker

June 20, 2012

Sixty years ago, a group of military officers, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, forced Farouk I, an Ottoman leftover who styled himself King of Egypt and Sudan, Sovereign of Nubia, Kordofan, and Nubia, to rush to his yacht and seek exile in Monaco. In this effort, they were assisted by the C.I.A., which was dismayed by the decadence and corruption that characterized Farouk’s reign. The operation was known informally as “Project FF”-Fat Fucker. It was one of the many attempts to steer Egypt in what American policymakers think might be the right direction. They must look back at that period with a sense of woe-if, indeed, they ever reflect on history at all.

…

Nasser’s charisma and energy awakened the entire region to the postcolonial era, but he failed to find an accommodation with the Islamic trend, and he turned to Israel as a scapegoat. Sadat, his successor, had the courage to reach a peace treaty with Israel. He saw the foolishness of depending on the Soviet Union as an ally and socialism as an economic model. He also tried to find a way to incorporate the Islamists into civil society, at least by letting them out of prison, and they responded by murdering him.

Hosni Mubarak, who now may be dying-Tuesday, he was briefly reported clinically dead-was an excellent military officer, and a capable bureaucrat, but he had no independent vision and no idea how to escape the impediments to progress that the original coup had imposed. Immediately after Sadat’s assassination, in 1981, Mubarak imposed emergency rule, which essentially authorized unbridled dictatorial power masked by a façade of democratic elections. Under his rule, freedom of speech and assembly were tightly constrained. These restrictions on liberty crushed other forms of political expression, so that the Islamists-the Muslim Brotherhood and more radical forms of political Islam-became the only real way to voice opposition to Mubarak’s reign. Military dictatorship and Islamism became the axis upon which Egyptian politics revolved.

…

The decision by the Egyptian military to dissolve a freely elected parliament earlier this month-predicated on a court decision by Mubarak holdovers-amounts to a second military coup. Once again, it has been assisted by the American decision to continue to support the antidemocratic forces that have retarded the development of Egypt. A moderate Islamist government, responsive to the social needs of the country, is the best that the U.S. can expect now, and what the people of Egypt have demanded by their votes.

America is unlikely to have any influence on the future of Egypt if it continually opposes and demonizes the longing of Egyptians to achieve real democratic expression, with all its hazards. Sixty years of unaccountable military dictatorship have shown how sterile the alternative is. … (I)t’s time to pull the plug on American support of this antidemocratic, military regime.

Of course it could merely be a bathroom slip and fall.  Nothing to see here.