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Seven Hundred and Thirty One Nights/Stories of The Sultan - Vol. 1 (Prologue) سلطنة

2009-08-20T22:05:00.002-04:00

All the disparate peoples of the First Unified Sultanate were restless and frustrated. The new sultan had risen to power two years ago, seemingly out of nowhere. He seduced both the population and the leaders of the ummah with vague promises of golden nuggets while slowly amassing more and more power until all other competitors fell under his spell and flocked like Zoroastrians to Allah. The Sultan did this so skillfully it seemed almost subconscious. Despite some initial trepidation that immediately followed the fall of the previous regimes, the people were happy with The Sultan. What his people felt when they gazed into his big hazel eyes only the greatest of poets could describe. It was hope! Passion! Love! Not being a poet myself nor having witnessed in person the events of our story or The Sultan, your humble storyteller can only suppose it must have been ecstasy. Things did not remain in this state for long though. The Sultan could be many things. One day he'd be restless, others simply lazy. He also had a cold streak interrupted only by episodic storms of temper. The people were constantly questioning just who The Sultan was.

In spite of the opulent and entertaining nights with choice members of the populace that began following his rise to power, the people began to notice that his nuggets had yet to materialize. The Sultan sent slaves to the far reaches of the known world in search of exotic spices and mysterious recipes. Whole rooms in the palace were filled with these gastronomic secrets, but like the rooms themselves, those epicurean treasures were never opened but were instead hoarded away in dark cool cellars. The pittances he handed out were meager, and his attention was focused solely on himself.

To save the sultanate (not to mention The Sultan himself), The Grand Vizier and His most trusted advisor arranged to have a story told every night before bed. This story would illuminate the problems of the last two years without offending the man with the power over who would live and who would die...

سلطنة

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

2009-08-07T12:37:00.004-04:00

The documentary that won't be televised (in the U.S.)...

The Healthcare Post Part Deux

2009-07-25T11:36:00.005-04:00

...I knew the care was expensive, but I didn't have to worry about that. I needed the care and I got it.... My family has had the care it needed. Other families have not, simply because they could not afford it....
- Senator Kennedy in Newsweek

Dennis Kucinich has added an amendment in The House that would allow states to run their own single-payer systems, but who knows if that addition will survive all the deal making and compromises that we'll see in the next few months. "Everyone won't be satisfied—and no one will get everything they want," Kennedy writes, but he is optimistic. "If we don't get every provision right, we can adjust and improve the program next year or in the years to come. What we can't afford is to wait another generation." The battle for health care is old, and the arguments against it are tired. Kennedy's piece in Newsweek provides some context. "In 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third term as president, the platform of his newly created Progressive Party called for national health insurance," Kennedy notes. "Harry Truman proposed it again more than 30 years after Roosevelt was defeated. The plan was attacked, not for the last time, as 'socialized medicine,' and members of Truman's White House staff were branded 'followers of the Moscow party line.'"

Meanwhile the mudslinging going on is in full force, and the reformers are hitting back. "At this moment -- when 72 percent of the nation supports a public plan option and 14,000 people lose their healthcare every day -- the House Blue Dogs and conservative Democratic Senators are doing just about everything they can to cripple real health care reform," Katrina Vanden Heuvel wrote recently in her blog at The Nation.

'Though issues with The Blue Dogs may be exaggerated, The Finance Committee's compromise bill would cover too few people and shift the costs to the middle class. That bill would certainly sustain the "torment" Senator Kennedy recounts of the individual families who have to sell everything they own to pay for health care in "the richest country in the world."

Most Americans expect the U.S. to lead the other advanced nations. Why are we so far behind in keeping our citizens healthy?

An editorial in The Globe by Paul Dutton proposes France as a model:

Although the French system faces many challenges, the World Health Organization rated it the best in the world in 2001 because of its universal coverage, responsive healthcare providers, patient and provider freedoms, and the health and longevity of the country's population. The United States ranked 37....
Moreover, in contrast to Canada and Britain, there are no waiting lists for elective procedures and patients need not seek pre-authorizations. In other words, like in the United States, "rationing" is not a word that leaves the lips of hopeful politicians....

It's a model that even the insurance industry could get behind:

...Private health insurers are also central to the system as supplemental insurers who cover patient expenses that are not paid for by Sécurité Sociale. Indeed, nearly 90 percent of the French population possesses such coverage, making France home to a booming private health insurance market....

Whether Senator Baucus's vision eventually wins out in The Senate remains to be seen, but an article in The New York Times airs concerns about the economy - "even if a health overhaul does pass, it may not include the tough measures needed to bring down spending. Ultimately, the only way to do so is to take money from doctors, drug makers and insurers, and it isn’t clear whether Mr. Obama and Congress have the stomach for that fight. So far, they have focused on ideas like preventive care that would do little to cut costs."

Do these "tough measures" address the fact that we spend more money than we should (or need to) on health care? Dutton admits health care in France is expensive. "At $3,500 per capita it is one of the most costly in Europe," but the price for our inefficient and broken system is "$6,100 per person in the United States." Kennedy succinctly counters the cynics who fret about the price tag:

What I haven't heard the critics discuss is the cost of inaction. If we don't reform the system, if we leave things as they are, health-care inflation will cost far more over the next decade than health-care reform. We will pay far more for far less—with millions more Americans uninsured or underinsured....

This would threaten not just the health of Americans but also the strength of the American economy. Health-care spending already accounts for 17 percent of our entire domestic product. In other advanced nations, where the figure is around 10 percent, everyone has insurance and health outcomes that are equal or better than ours. This disparity undermines our ability to compete and succeed in the global economy. General Motors spends more per vehicle on health care than on steel....

The United States is the greatest country in the world, but we don't have the best health care. That is an embarrassment. It's a burden on the economy, and it's a burden on families. When millions of Americans cannot afford to be healthy it's injustice. Opponents of reform often talk about freedom and choice. Dutton points out something that these opponents need to remember:

The link between employment and health security is a historical artifact whose disadvantages now far outweigh its advantages. Economists estimate that between 25 and 45 percent of the US labor force is now job-locked. That is, employees make career decisions based on their need to maintain affordable health coverage or avoid exclusion based on a preexisting condition.

That is not a statistic that supports the freedom inherent in a small government role. It's time to mend this crack in our liberty. Universal coverage will expand opportunity in average Americans who aren't lucky enough to be born into a rich family or get elected to Congress and will make the pursuit of happiness much easier. Let's hope this is the year that The Federal Government will finally provide every American the chance to be healthy regardless of the conditions that he or she is born into.

The Death of Rock in Boston?

2009-07-15T23:44:00.003-04:00

WBCN is dead. If you're not sure why this is important, The Globe and Herald both give CliffsNotes versions of the history and influence of what Howard Stern called "the most legendary rock station ever" on his show this morning.

The bad guy here is CBS Radio, which has mismanaged it's properties across the country. According to The Howard 100 News, former program director, Oedipus, claims it was "the suits" that ruined 'BCN, and the station could have survived by letting "the inmates run the asylum."

104.1 switched formats from underground to corporate a long time ago, and the station's soul has slowly withered away. The latest by CBS Radio just sweeps away what's left. The saddest part is the music. While New York City has long struggled to support rock formats, the genre has thrived in Boston with three alternative rock (not including New Hampshire's Rock 101) and one classic rock station. A big reason for that is WBCN spawned imitators. At least for a while, however, those imitators did a better job. The obituaries forget to mention how little rock there was at "The Rock of Boston." Stern ruled the mornings, Patriot games were added, and then so were Opie and Anthony. For the year they spent on in the afternoons, the chatty Nik Carter handled mid-days. After Stern moved to Sirius XM in 2006, CBS saddled 'BCN with David Lee Roth and then the Opie and Anthony redux - both failed.

Dan Kennedy is succinct:

Along with alternative papers like the Phoenix, Boston After Dark and the Real Paper, WBCN was my main source of information on leftist politics and the counterculture.

But the station had long since disappeared into the cog of corporate radio. It's not that it won't be missed. It's that the time to miss it expired about 20 years ago.

Although I'm too young to know Danny Schechter, he has a longer and more passionate take than Kennedy. In short:

The station’s legacy and importance–the reason it built a national reputation and worldwide respect– was deliberately buried in the need to meet quarterly revenue projections and serve its corporate masters. Their goal was to compete with commercial drek by becoming commercial drek. And they did.

And where did it take them? To the radio graveyard. Shame.

Both paint an accurate picture of what happened at 104.1, but are stained by a lens of nostalgia. Some of their differences are generational as things had improved recently with the talented Toucher and Rich moving their funny show to the mornings. While the independently owned 'FNX might feel more like the original, I have to admit the corporate 'BCN still played music I loved when I had it on. Sure my generation missed the underground WBCN, but many of us have great memories of the station. They played The Beatles Anthology in its entirety, Radiohead's show at Great Woods, and Nine Inch Nails' radio performance with Peter Murphy (here's one of the songs). Losing 'BCN is losing one more venue for these things to air at the local level. How much of channel's troubles were due to mismanagement, however? The pessimist in me wonders if The Rock of Boston's death is actually the latest casualty in The Death of Rock in Boston.

True Health Care Reform

2009-04-23T18:59:00.004-04:00

Most Americans would agree that access to health care is a civil right. Our inalienable right of life isn't possible without it, and the pursuit of happiness is a lot tougher when you're sick. Most if not all would also agree that the system we have is broke. Well, if we want everyone covered with better care while spending less, what kind of system do we create to fix it? The answer is Single Payer. Because our debt as a nation is so high, this is a reform we need to implement now. We are spending too much and getting too little. Joe Conason illuminates in Salon:

Although the public share of health expenditure in the United States is much lower than any other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) country except Mexico, the public expenditure on healthcare is much higher per capita than in most OECD countries. So we pay a lot more in taxes devoted to medical care -- not including insurance premiums, co-payments, fees, and other health costs -– than taxpayers in those 27 countries that have universal coverage. Our public expenditure provides coverage only for the elderly and some of the poor (through Medicaid and the SCHIP program for children) while other countries provide universal coverage while spending less.

How much less? Nations with comparable standards of living like France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, and Japan spend roughly between half and two-thirds per capita what we spend annually. They cover everyone and their results are measurably better. And the supposed downsides of universal coverage, such as lack of access to sophisticated medical technologies, are belied in many of these countries. For instance Japan has lower per capita health expenditures than the United States (and universal coverage,) but its citizens have greater access to MRI machines, CT scanners and kidney dialysis equipment than Americans do.

It's clear that health care is one of the areas that the public sector is better than the private. It's cheaper, more effective and based on an American study comparing the health between different races, ethnicities, and education levels, it's also more equitable. What I found most surprising is that we already have a successful model of how all this would work. "The VA hospitals represent the most successful large-scale reform in the delivery of health care that this country has seen in decades," explains Timothy Noah in Slate. So, why is this more effective and more efficient system never brought up?

It... stems from a conviction that has seeped deep into the political culture that anything run by the federal government must be inferior to market-based alternatives. The Obama administration and Congress are utterly terrified that in crafting health care reform they will run afoul of this infantile prejudice. They will therefore move heaven and earth to avoid acknowledging the VA's pioneering use of computerized medical records, its avoidance of the justly lamented fee-for-service model (VA physicians are salaried), and the efficiencies it realizes by treating patients over the long term. The implications of this success are too terrifyingly pinko. The VA is, after all, a system in which the role of insurer, physician, and hospital are all assumed by the U.S. government.

Wow

2009-03-30T21:11:00.003-04:00

Divided We Fall

2009-03-29T23:37:00.002-04:00

I haven't read all of this article in Salon (it seems pretty boring), but there are a couple golden nuggets that validated my interest.

I've done the skimming:

If Juanita and Chris are casualties of the intensified war of attrition businesses are quietly waging on workers, Rodney represents a deeper unraveling of jobs and job security, thanks to a globalized economy in which the hard-pressed workers in this country are pitted against cheaper labor pools in Latin America, South Asia, China and even the American South. In such a job environment, what is one to do?

Someone I interviewed prior to my job center visit described her reaction when she heard that her company had recently closed a plant in the Midwest: "The first thing I thought, and I felt bad for thinking it," she recalled, somewhat sheepishly, "was that means more work for us -- at least for the time being."
Quantcast

Her comment speaks volumes, as does her request not to be identified. Who needs union busters, patroling shop stewards, or legions of high-paid lawyers fighting wage and hours claims when a worker is so anxious about job security that she responds positively to the laying off of those she imagines as potential competitors? When employees police their own behavior for fear of the ax -- monitoring their time checking e-mail or using the bathroom -- bad times distinctly have an upside for management....

A look at corporate opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), whose passage in Congress is a central demand of organized labor, offers a glimpse of how persistently companies seek to disadvantage their workers. EFCA would allow workers to form a union when a majority of them sign union cards in a given workplace. "Card check," as it is frequently called, enables them to organize unions without the need for an election. In a November column surveying the business elite's response to the act, Wall Street Journal Op-Ed columnist Thomas Frank wrote: "Card check is about power. Management has it, workers don't, and business doesn't want that to change."

The author concludes that there are two business wars being fought - the second covertly eliminates employees that would otherwise have been retained in better financial times. He asks at what point the press will finally acknowledge this less reported war. Isn't asking how one side is supposed to fight without an army the more important question?

Operation Comix Relief

2009-03-27T20:52:00.003-04:00

A Framingham man who runs a program that sends comic books to military personnel overseas says he may have to cut back because his mailing rates have doubled.

Chris Tarbassian of Operation Comix Relief tells The MetroWest Daily News the price jumped from $2.58 per shipment to more than $5 after he was told he could no longer ship comics at the less expensive media mail rate.

The nonprofit sends comics to about 500 men and women each year.

I've sent some comics here and plan to send more. Hopefully something will be done to make this easier for Tarbassian to get more comics to more troops. Are you listening Senators Kerry and Kennedy?

More info:
Original Boston Globe article

More extensive MetroWest Daily News story

Operation Comix Relief

Interesting Article For Those Into Birds

2009-03-19T13:08:00.002-04:00

Check this out from National Geographic:

Peruvian warbling antbird couples harmonize to warn rival couples away from their territories. But put a single female nearby and the duet turns into a musical shouting match....

The songs of warbling-antbird pairs usually begin as evenly spaced series of couplets. Females can either meld their tunes to their partner's—or jam the other's signal by jumping in at the wrong time....

Threatened by rival pairs, the couple put up a united front, singing rhythmic and coordinated duets. But cooperation broke down when solitary rivals came around.

"Specifically, females responded to unpaired sexual rivals by jamming the signals of their own mates," (Joseph) Tobias and (Nathalie) Seddon wrote.

"Perhaps the most striking result is that males don't like females 'jamming' their song," Tobias said. Males "try to avoid [the females'] jamming, suggesting that they perceive it as costly in some way."

Gov. Jindal's Rebuttal

2009-02-28T21:13:00.002-05:00

If Gov. Patterson of New York had spun a similar tale regarding his actions on September 11th, wouldn't it be big news? While Bobby Jindal has been panned for his callow performance the other night on national T.V. (Happy Mardi Gras), I don't think much has been made of the fact that he made up the story of his role in cutting through the bureaucratic red-tape during Hurricane Katrina.

Here's what he said:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

Here's what happened:

When the storm made landfall on August 29, Jindal was on a foreign trip. His family was evacuated to his parents' house in Baton Rouge, and when he returned, he went straight there to join them. In a September 1st CNN interview given from Baton Rouge, Jindal talked about taking an aerial tour of the disaster area, but didn't mention anything about having been on the ground personally. We've reviewed Nexis and other sources, and can find no news reports putting Jindal on the ground in the affected area during the few days after Katrina struck when people might still have needed boats to rescue them from rooftops.

Remember When You Were Asking the Definition of Hypocrisy?

2009-01-27T20:43:00.005-05:00

Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority.

Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill....

Hyperbole ensues...

"This is the demise of a civilization," said (Home Depot co-founder Bernie) Marcus. "This is how a civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm watching this happen and I don't believe it."

Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued, to prevent America from turning "into France."

"If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out their goddamn jobs," Marcus declared.

The sky is falling! We are in a recession and these people want to unionize?! They need to stop thinking about what's in their own greedy self-interest and start putting the country's economy first. Wait - not so fast - Bank of America's own research document states that 'though it could increase labor costs for retailers it would be a "de facto wage and benefit increase" that would increase the amount poorer consumers could spend. Plus, I think that $25 billion was meant to keep the economy floating not line pockets.

Read in full at The Huffington Post.

P.S. Blog sarcasm sure makes you look like a smug prick.

The Hermit's Fiddle (I)

2009-01-27T20:26:00.004-05:00

I haven't posted much of anything for a long time partly because of other priorities and partly because I'm not sure what I want to do with this strand of web. At first, I just wanted to use this space to post articles in lieu of sending out time consuming mass e-mails. Just posting links seemed stupid, so I started writing more analysis, but this presented me with the classic question not asked by the many narcissistic bloggers out there - who cares? The last few months I've posted only what I felt I had to. For now, that's enough until I figure out what else to do.

P.S. Just kidding Alexis.

A Moratorium On Brains or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Be Selfish

2008-11-23T21:50:00.003-05:00

First, a word of friendly warning: I'm reading Atlas Shrugged and finally after 558 pages light has dawned on my marble head. In order to better promote Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, I've decided to rewrite a portion of the novel using the real world example of Hurricane Katrina's impact on New Orleans.

A Moratorium On Brains or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Just Be Selfish

As the storm crept closer, they saw, at the edge of the sky to the south, in a void of space between concrete buildings, an American flag twisting in the wind. They did not know what it represented and did not care to learn. That day, Mayor Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation, that many chose to ignore.

It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the citizens of New Orleans were not guilty or responsible for the thing that happened to them.

The man on South Rendon was a bus driver who believed that the storm would not be so bad, that his home was strong enough to withstand the wind, that he had "seen worse" and no storm could be as terrible as Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

The woman on Rhodes was an elderly school teacher who had spent her life turning class after class of helpless children into pathetic beggars, by teaching them that the circumstances of their lives are no fault of their own, that slavery and the machinery of the state have denied them their rights, and that they are owed anything they can take from it.

The man on Dumaine was addicted to drugs and never considered whether the city would maintain a levee system that would protect its residents, or whether it would evacuate those who did not have the means to leave, but instead worried only about how he was going to find enough drugs to keep him doped for the next couple of days.

The woman on Filmore Avenue was a mother who had put her two children to sleep, carefully tucking them in; a mother whose inept and inexperienced husband held a government job that maintained a state supporting only those who could support themselves, which she defended by saying, "I don't care, it's our taxes that are being spent. After all, I must think of my children."

The man on Vermillion was a small business owner who stayed to protect his property. He believed that men are evil by nature, that their basic interests if left unchecked, are to lie, to rob and to murder one another - and, therefore force was the only means of keeping men within the bounds of order and justice.

The woman on Touro was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge.

The man on Dauphine was a writer who had said with a laugh, "All politicians are corrupt. At least here, we know it."

Among these citizens there was not a man remaining who did not share one or more of their ideas. As the levees broke, the water was the last thing they saw on earth.

Curley's Shadow

2008-11-23T21:36:00.002-05:00

Dan Kennedy has an article in The Guardian about the long shadow Curley has cast on Massachusetts politicians. It's less about Curley and more about the current state of things in the Commonwealth, but I figured it's worth noting given my last post.

Certainly, some of our problems result from our long indulgence of one-party rule. The reason I've omitted the fact (up until now) that every pol I've mentioned is a Democrat is not because of liberal bias on my part. It's because there are no Republicans in Massachusetts.

But it's in our political DNA, too. We have long lived with the myth that although James Michael Curley was corrupt, he also had a heart of gold and ultimately did more good than harm. In reality, as Jack Beatty makes clear in his biography of Curley, The Rascal King, Curley did little other than line his own pockets.

Unfortunately, the spirit of Curley lives on. All we can do is laugh.

Read it in full.

Curley As Visionary

2008-11-16T09:53:00.004-05:00

James Michael Curley (more info from The Herald) was many things (and this includes "crook"). Unfortunately for his legacy visionary is not usually remembered as one of them. I'm reading The Rascal King by Jack Beatty right now and learning some of the reasons why he isn't (Yankee racism) as well as some of the reasons he should be (Curley was calling for a New Deal as mayor in the '20's). While he was infrequently a profile in courage (his early endorsement of FDR an exception), he had many great ideas for the city of Boston. It was because of this political cowardice (not to mention calculation) that many of his visions went unrealized. Boston Magazine has a good article on one of them, which because it's short, I include in full:

James Michael Curley spent six decades in Massachusetts' public eye, including four terms in Congress, four as mayor of Boston, and one as governor. In that time, he became known for a lot of things—including going to jail twice—but never for serving as a "master builder." He should have been, say local historians C. J. Doyle and Larry Overlan, who are writing a book on Curley. They argue that the politician, who died 50 years ago this month, had more influence in shaping Boston's public transportation system than anyone in the city's history. But when he left office in January 1950, other pols and transit planners ignored his vision and pushed for endless expansion into the suburbs. With gas prices and commuter fatigue on the rise, Curley is now more relevant than ever. Here, Doyle and Overlan describe his failed plans that the city would do well to resurrect today.

MORE SUBWAY, LESS TROLLEY

Today, Huntington Avenue's E Line west of Northeastern is a streetcar route, but if Curley had gotten his way, the line would have stayed underground to South Huntington Avenue (or even beyond), making for a faster commute and preventing countless car-on-trolley accidents. Curley also would have put the B Line, which slogs its way through Commonwealth Avenue traffic, below ground either to the BU Bridge or out to Packard's Corner in Allston, thus saving BU students—and the people forced to share trolley space with them—untold travel hours.

ELBOW ROOM ON THE GREEN LINE

In 1933, Mayor Curley wanted to put light rail under Stuart Street, from Huntington to Tremont. And in 1948, he pushed unsuccessfully for a second tunnel between Park Street and Government Center. This would have doubled the Green Line's capacity, giving it four tracks from North Station to Copley Square. The most contentious issues involving the Green Line today (from the fate of the former A Line to Watertown to the MBTA's decision to give the South End the Silver Line) have revolved around this very question of subway capacity.

A REAL SOUTH END LINE

Everyone knows the Silver Line is a joke, which is what makes Governor Curley's 1935 proposal so intriguing: He wanted the Orange Line to go underground from Sullivan Square in Charlestown to Dudley Street in Roxbury. Curley's plan called for a subway under either Washington Street or nearby Shawmut Avenue—a move that would have spared South Enders from ever having to complain about getting stuck with those Silver Line buses all the way to Dudley Square.

The Cradle of Innovation

2008-10-07T06:48:00.003-04:00

Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, was the first to understand that we live in a knowledge economy. Drucker might have seen Boston today as the equivalent of a factory of the future, where smart people use their minds, fueled by investors who match ideas with market needs, producing green, clean, and sustainable products for the world.

Drucker also said that "the best way to predict the future is to create it."

The Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship is being officially launched today at MIT to help curb poverty across the world. Today's Globe has a great editorial marking that launch, and I think it will be of interest to you. It's positive and optimistic, so of course it was written by a Bostonian living in California. Here's a little:

There's an old saying that the three favorite pastimes in Boston are sports, politics, and revenge - and not necessarily in that order. And with mob trials, successful sports teams, and the flood of political commentary flowing out of Boston, perhaps there is a comparative advantage from being so competitive, passionate, and personal.

...The real business of the city is ideas.

Think of all its firsts. The first public school. The first college. The first bank. The first public library. The first telephone. The first use of ether. The first subway. The first mutual fund and the first venture capital fund. The first safety razor and the first instant camera. Firsts that transformed the world.

In trying to explain this to a neighbor in California, I said simply, "there must be something in the soil back in Boston."

...perhaps the long, barren winters are the mothers of invention. How could the Pilgrims possibly create their "city on a hill" and become a beacon to all mankind if they didn't quickly apply some Yankee ingenuity to what otherwise was a pretty bleak place, largely devoid of natural resources? Maybe the notion of stewardship and common wealth helped Bostonians to think they needed, more than others, to look out for each other, or that the only way to leave things better for the next generation would be to invent something of enduring value.

Read the rest here.

Palin's Reading List

2008-09-17T03:05:00.003-04:00

RFK Jr. has a short item in The Huffington Post:

Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."

It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.

When The Levee Breaks

2008-09-01T19:11:00.003-04:00

While everyone is hoping Gustav doesn't do too much damage,Wired has a great article on the history of the song "When The Levee Breaks."

...because, like almost every Led Zeppelin tune ever created, "When the Levee Breaks" builds upon a former song. In this particular case, the Delta blues classic of the same name created by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie.

Zeppelin's tune is by no means derivative, however. For one, it amped up the proceedings considerably, and was filtered through technology within an inch of its life.

"You've got backwards harmonica, backwards echo, phasing, and there's also flanging," Jimmy Page told Uncut Magazine in 2008, "and at the end you get this super-dense sound, in layers, that's all built around the drum track. And you've got Robert, constant in the middle, and everything starts to spiral around him. It's all done with panning."

The coolest part was hearing the original for the first time. Portions of two newer recordings (including Zeppelin's) are also posted, but those clips are too short. Read it in full here.

Sigh

2008-08-23T17:06:00.005-04:00

"What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history," said Tim Doody, the president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, a consolidated regional levee board created after Katrina to improve levee protection.

"What happened after Betsy? Katrina," Doody said. "And what's going to happen after Katrina? Pick a name and put it on it and it's going to happen again unless we pull together to make sure."

Just in time for hurricane season, things are depressingly as ridiculous as ever in New Orleans. It's hard to stay abreast of what's going on from faraway as the media has pushed the rebuilding of the city further and further from the public consciousness. Sometimes actually following the city's progress is even harder.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.

"People forget, but they cannot afford to forget," said Windell Curole, a Louisiana hurricane and levee expert. "If you believe you can't flood, that's when you increase the risk of flooding. In New Orleans, I don't think they talk about the risk."

..."All the human instincts post-Katrina are the same (as) post-Betsy," said Oliver Houck, a natural resources law professor at Tulane University and longtime New Orleans resident who participated in many of the fights since Betsy.

All of the city's anger at FEMA doesn't seem to have plagued the Army Corps of Engineers. Worse, people actually trust these people who are as arrogant as ever.

At every step in the scramble to correct the engineering breakdowns of Katrina, independent experts have questioned the ability of the corps, an agency that has accumulated ever more power over the fate of New Orleans, to do the right job.

On the road to recovery, the agency has installed faulty drainage pumps, used outdated measurements, issued incorrect data, unearthed critical flaws, made conflicting statements about flood risk and flunked reviews by The National Research Council.

I may write a lengthy Katrina post some day, but for now I still feel too aggravated and powerless whenever I think about what has happened (and continues to happen). It's certainly easier not to think about it. Unfortunately, the people who can least afford this ignorance seem to be similarly infected by it.

Click here for the exhausting, frustrating details.

Down But Not Out In Suffolk Downs And Wonderland

2008-08-09T11:59:00.004-04:00

My beloved Suffering Downs and the subsidized money sink Wonderland are working out a deal.

By joining forces, the tracks would gain significant economic benefits they lack as separate entities. Wonderland would gain the greater financial strength of its East Boston counterpart, while Suffolk would gain access to potentially lucrative development opportunities in Revere.

Dog Racing has to end. It's a dead business. There are probably more employees at Wonderland than patrons. There are at least 4 days a year that the sporting world takes notice of horse racing gambling or not. Why pay to care, train and race dogs when people who want to gamble can easily watch a video version of the same thing or play keno? I know at least a few people who enjoy the sport of kings. Fortunately, businessmen are considering putting this model to sleep:

Still unclear, even to the parties involved, is whether Wonderland, which is financially struggling, would remain open or be shuttered if a deal is struck. One person familiar with the discussions said Wonderland might remain open in the short term until a decision is made by state officials about granting slot machine licenses to race tracks. If that bid fails, the property could well be converted into a commercial or residential development, that person said.

Orwell's Journals

2008-08-09T11:54:00.002-04:00

This looks cool, or interesting rather. The unread entries of George Orwell's journals are being published/posted online. Here's a snippet from May 18, 1942 that I can admit to being guilty of:

It is clear from what American papers one gets hold of that anti-British feeling is in full cry and that all the Isolationists, after a momentary retirement, have re-emerged with the same slogans as before. . . . What always horrifies me about American anti-British sentiment is its appalling ignorance. Ditto presumably with anti-American feeling in England.

Iron Fists

2008-08-07T19:20:00.003-04:00

For those of you that like art and design - a cool review about a new book.

How did a practice as vile as branding become so valued, indeed, the very mark of value? Officials in the past have branded slaves and criminals... Steven Heller’s “Iron Fists” makes a sophisticated and visually arresting comparison between modern corporate-branding strategies — slogans, mascots, jingles and the rest — and those adopted by “four of the most destructive 20th-century totalitarian regimes”: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin, and Mao’s China. As he pursues his four “case studies,” Heller, by means of unsettling images and shrewd analysis, amply restores the vileness to branding.

Raising Fares at the T (again)

2008-08-06T17:49:00.003-04:00

The T has been saying for a week now that they are going to have to raise fares again in a couple years. The fares are already expensive enough (especially if you are buying monthly passes), and the service is not good. Today we have some analysis from The Globe:

Current fares don't even come close to keeping the T alive, let alone funding improvements and extra services.

So, instead of a world class system, we are left with the prospect of one with major problems - crowding, crumbling infrastructure, and too much debt to fix inevitable problems.

...A hefty fare hike would make our public transportation system one of the most expensive in the country, but it would make little difference to the agency's bottom line.

The MBTA needs a major bailout. Only the state hasn't got the money to do it.

This has been pretty obvious for a while now. My guess is that the T knows it needs that bailout and is playing this in the press because frothing riders are the only defense from angry taxpayers and scared politicians.

P.S. The article makes a mistake that is continually being made by the press - claiming increased ridership will take cars off the road. Whenever you take cars off the road, the road becomes more attractive, and other people flock to fill those empty lanes. The key to increasing ridership is that you can more easily increase commuters by public transportation than you can by car. Also, idle riders pollute less than idle cars.

Speaking of Green...

2008-08-05T23:50:00.003-04:00

Cool article from Wired recapping the Absinthe legalization. Relevant quotes:

To date, there are four brands on US shelves: Lucid (Breaux's formula), Kuebler, Green Moon, and St. George Absinthe Verte. "The US is lucky in that its first absinthes are high-quality products, distilled from whole herbs," Breaux says. "In the European market, 80 to 90 percent is industrial junk."

More info here.

It's Easy Being Green

2008-08-03T17:47:00.004-04:00

Lately, at least. From today's Globe:

Tally up the crush of bills passed during the Legislature's 19-month formal session and it's hard to find a politician or interest group with bigger bragging rights than environmentalists...

Activists hope the successes not only burnish the state's reputation as a green leader, but pay long-term dividends, from preserving open spaces to reversing the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

For a list of everything, check the rest of the article out.