Random Blogging – Page 379

Welcome to Never-Neverland

I know my posts sound increasingly frustrated these days. Here is just one example of why that is.

According to Talking Points Memo,

“Thirty-one Republicans on the House Energy And Commerce Committee — the entire Republican contingent on the panel — declined on Tuesday to vote in support of the very idea that climate change exists.

Democrats on the panel had suggested three amendments that said climate change is a real thing, is caused by humans and has potentially dire consequences for the future. The amendments came on a Republican bill to block the EPA from offering regulations to mitigate the results of global climate shifts. The global scientific community is in near unanimous agreement that climate change is real, and that humans contribute to it.

None of the 31 Republicans on the committee would vote yes on any of the amendments..”

I know that every legislative body and every political party has its nuts and ideologues. But thirty-one members of the GOP and U.S. Congress voting against reality really boggles the imagination. There are plenty of aspects of reality that I don’t like–beginning with the fact that science denial is making the world more dangerous for my children and grandchildren–but that doesn’t mean I can blithely pretend they don’t exist. Refusing to acknowledge facts in evidence is suicidal for individuals and societies alike.

The fact that these people were elected in what I can only assume were fair and free elections is infinitely depressing. But it really happened and their decisions have real consequences.

And whether they choose to ignore it or not, climate change is accelerating, and the consequences of their refusal to acknowledge that reality and deal with it will affect believers and nonbelievers alike.

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Customer Disservice

It must be nice to be Apple.

I keep hearing that the economy is still depressed, but the news clearly hasn’t reached the purveyors of cool. Like many others, I have been waiting for the release of the IPad 2. I was not sufficiently techno-crazy to line up on the first day they were released, so I figured I’d wait until the middle of the following week. Today was the day.

Now, I live downtown, and the only Apple store in Indianapolis is on the far north side, so I did what any prudent person would: I called. And called. And called. Fifteen times, as a matter of fact. The phone was never answered. So (despite my husband’s prediction that they wouldn’t have any in stock) we drove the 86 blocks to the bedlam that is the Apple Store.

When I finally found one of the numerous clerks to help me, he confirmed my husband’s prediction: No IPads in stock. When would they get another shipment? “We get stuff every day, but we don’t know what’s coming–sometimes there are IPads, sometimes not.” Could I order one? No, all orders needed to be handled online. Was there some reason no one was answering the phone? “We only have one operator, and when new products come out, she can’t keep up. Happens all the time.” Has it ever occurred to you to put extra operators on duty when new products come out? No.

I think Apple’s marketing strategy is: make them beg for it. The more arrogant we are, the more they’ll want it.

So I came home and–like the consumerist sheep I have become–I ordered online.

It will be four to five weeks for the IPad to be delivered. No estimates on when I’ll regain my self-respect.

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Padded Bras and Evan Bayh

A hoax story circulated over the weekend about an Islamic council in Pakistan protesting the use of padded bras. Fox “News” doesn’t fact-check, as we all know, so it reported the story as fact.

Also today, Fox announced that Evan Bayh would be joining the network, as a “Democratic” commentator.

Kevin Drum summed up the situation perfectly. Noting Bayh’s abrupt resignation from the Senate (a resignation that cost his party that Senate seat), Drum noted:

“Even at the time, Bayh’s move was tough to understand. He implored Americans to take seriously the “challenges of historic import” that “threaten America’s future,” while at the same time announcing that he would stop working on these challenges altogether.

And what would he do with this time? Bayh said he had a few ideas in mind, including possibly teaching and/or philanthropic work. He added at the time that he hoped to do something “worthwhile for society.”

That was a year ago. Today, the former senator who decried “strident partisanship” and “unyielding ideology” will be paid by a ridiculous cable news outlet that exists to spew “strident partisanship” and “unyielding ideology.”

Not to mention his lobbying gig.

Facebook posts have registered a number of reactions to this latest news, but surprise has not been among them. Anyone who has followed Evan’s career can appreciate how appropriate it was that the announcement came on the same day as the debunking of the story about padded bras.

Fake boobs, fake Democrat–it’s all about pretending to be more substantial than you really are.

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Waking the Sleeping Giant?

I just returned from a rally at the Indiana Statehouse. I joined several hundred people protesting HR6–the measure that would amend the Indiana Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

This marks the second time in my life I’ve attended a rally; the first was Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” a few months ago. I went through the tumultuous sixties without ever feeling the urge to demonstrate, although I certainly had opinions about the issues of the day.

I thought about my late-in-life expression of civic activism during several of the speeches, but especially during a rousing talk by State Senator Vi Simpson. She urged those in attendance to join with so many others who are being targeted by unfair legislation–working people, women, teachers and others. And she predicted that the demonstrations we have been seeing in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio over the past month would continue, because “those in power have overreached, and they have wakened a sleeping giant.”

I think she’s right, and I’m a good example.

I grew up in a household that was anti-union; my father was a small businessman in Anderson, Indiana, and when unions called strikes, his business suffered. My husband is an architect, and no fan of the building trades unions. Our daughter served three terms on the school board, and often was impatient with the Teachers’ union. None of us would be the people you’d expect to side with the unions in the attacks brought by the Governors of Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. Probably, had those Governors engaged in a less all-out assault, we would have been conflicted on the issue. But when they chose to attack the right to bargain–when they tried to strip away the right of workers to band together to negotiate for wages and benefits–we all recoiled from the abuse of power. We were offended as citizens. We became pro-Union.

When the GOP in Congress attacked Planned Parenthood, I was outraged as a woman. When the GOP at Indiana’s Statehouse proposed to constitutionalize second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians, I was outraged as a mother. When the legislatures in Wisconsin and Indiana dissed the public schools and criticised the “elite” who teach in them, I was outraged both as a former high school English teacher and a citizen.

The Republican Party as it exists today is nothing like the party I supported for 35 years. It is short-sighted and mean-spirited.

If the current GOP agenda has radicalized someone like me, Vi Simpson is right. It really has awakened a sleeping giant.

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Where are the Men in the White Coats When You Need Them?

News flash! The Congressional Subcommittee on Energy and Power has recently voted that human activity does not cause climate change. The GOP majority was evidently unmoved by the scientific consensus to the contrary, so they simply voted to overturn it.

Reminds me of Indiana’s action (in 1897) to repeal the value of pi.

"Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of
     Indiana: It has been found that a circular area is to the square on
     a line equal to the quadrant of the circumference, as the area of an
     equilateral rectangle is to the square on one side. The diameter
     employed as the linear unit according to the present rule in
     computing the circle's area is entirely wrong, as it represents the
     circles area one and one-fifths times the area of a square whose
     perimeter is equal to the circumference of the circle. This is
     because one-fifth of the diameter fils to be represented four times
     in the circle's circumference. For example: if we multiply the
     perimeter of a square by one-fourth of any line one-fifth greater
     than one side, we can, in like manner make the square's area to
     appear one fifth greater than the fact, as is done by taking the
     diameter for the linear unit instead of the quadrant of the circle's
     circumference.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry......

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