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youtubearchive for April of 2006
Propaganda I agreed to spread
Anyone for whom Planned Parenthood’s mission is not something you’d want to read about, don’t read the extended entry.
An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend to one of Indiana’s Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called “crisis pregnancy center” run by an anti-abortion group, one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.
The group took down the girl’s confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their “other office” (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there. The “crisis pregnancy center” had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.
The “crisis pregnancy center” staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl’s home and calling her father’s workplace. Our clinic director reports that the girl was “scared to death to leave her house.” They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.
The anti-choice movement is setting up these “crisis pregnancy centers” across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but they dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to a recent article in The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers. What’s more, these centers have received $60 million in government grants. They’re being funded by our tax dollars.
A bill has just been introduced in Congress to stop the fraudulent practices of fake clinics, but it desperately needs more support. Tell your representative to take a stand: anti-choice extremists must not get away with this any longer!
TV stand
I got this entertainment center at Ikea yesterday. It was cheap, and it looks awesome.
I’m especially pleased with how I filled the awkwardly sized shelves in the center. Behind the starry fabric on top is my center channel speaker, which is ugly no more, and the silk irises are a placeholder until I acquire the other two seasons of Buffy, which will fill the space nicely. The daffodils are just for pretty.
It replaces two pieces of furniture I was sick of and that didn’t fit my needs anyway: my dad’s old stereo cabinet, which I estimate to be 25 years old and which is now next to the dumpster (sorry, Dad), and an Ikea TV stand I’m hoping to find a good home for.
It looks like this:
Here it is with a DVD on it so you can see the size.
Here’s the back.
It’s really very nice, too nice to put in the dumpster (again, sorry, Dad). Anyone in the DC/Baltimore metropolitan area who wants this can have it. Email me.
So. Much. Fun.
You have to play Google’s Da Vinci Code Quest game. There’s only one puzzle a day (started April 11, total of 24 days), but there have been seven so far, and they’re awesome. The “symbol challenge” ones are just variety Sudokus, and the “curator” ones are a twist on jigsaw-type puzzles that I’ve never seen before. There are also chess and geography puzzles, but all the answers are easily available from Google (of course).
I’m just really enjoying it.
I’ve also been enjoying the “enigma” puzzles on www.11somerset.com, but the actual TV show they’re related to, and the service that tells you in email whether you got the answer right, seem to have been abandoned. Still, the game works, and there are 13 stages, and they’re fun too.
I was missing this type of game the other day (you know, like Grow and Grow Cube and Samorost), and found (my Google search was “creepy flash games”) this page that has links to lots that are of the same caliber (and many that aren’t).
spring meetings II
Mark asked why they’re protesting. Because the first time I asked that question, the person I was asking rolled her eyes and said “Don’t ask,” I’ve decided to actually answer it.
This Wikipedia article is about the movement(s) that protest. The protests are MUCH smaller than they used to be. In Seattle, in 2000, there was a very large to-do. Like all peaceful protests can, it got violent after the involvement of the authorities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-globalization_movement
The following is my own understanding from my work. I haven’t actually read the Wikipedia article above; this is just what I’ve learned over the last few years working on publications in this area. It’s entirely possible that I’m wrong on much of it.
The World Bank lends money to developing countries and consults with rich country governments on grants and trade. The IMF keeps track of exchange rates and of which countries owe money to who (the “balance of payments”). Aid comes in three forms: trade, loans, and grants. Grants are loans that don’t have to be repaid. Many loans to developing countries are converted to grants, or forgiven, sometimes due to default and sometimes as a reward for developmental milestones.
Basically, these nongovernmental international organizations, and to a lesser extent the United Nations, are very big on promoting free trade between industrialized (“rich” or “developed”) countries (like the US, Japan, Canada, Australia, and western Europe) and developing (poorer) countries (like those in southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa). Free trade agreements are seen by some as a way to make it easier for cheap import goods to displace home-grown goods in the local market.
The problem is that these developing countries NEED developed countries as trading partners; without the ability to export goods to countries with the means to pay for them, they’re caught in a cycle where they can’t get any richer. Developing countries need money to establish better infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals) in order to improve conditions. Improved conditions, especially for women and children, lead to better-educated mothers, which leads to a healthier, longer-lived, better-educated population, which leads to an end to despotic governments and civil wars.
But it all comes down to trade, because none of that great stuff, like well-fed children, accessible schools, smaller families, and healthy (read: HIV-negative) teachers, can happen unless developing countries have money coming in year after year after year: money they earn through selling exports. Some of the anti-globalization groups make the very good point that rich countries’ efforts are better spent building ways for developing countries to trade with *each other*, because most of the existing trade groups meant for that purpose are outdated, ineffectual, and corrupt.
To make it even more complicated, there’s another organization, called the WTO, the World Trade Organization. The WTO is actually supposed to have oversight over international import tariffs (there are also export tariffs, by the way, meaning a country charges a fee to allow producers to ship goods overseas instead of selling them at home). They’re supposed to approve tariffs before they go into effect, and give poorer countries a forum to contest tariffs they see as unfair. Unfortunately, richer countries are better-represented to and within the WTO, and the organization has a tendency to produce policies and rulings that favor rich countries over poor ones.
Many rich countries charge poorer countries huge tariffs for the right to import goods into their markets. For instance, Egypt produces cotton. Egypt can produce more cotton more cheaply than, say, the USA can. But the USA *does* have its own cotton farmers. Through lobbying efforts and “protective” legislation, the USA has laws that mean Egyptian cotton exporters have to pay fees just to compete against American cotton in the marketplace. For many smaller countries with smaller exports, tariffs are so high and take so much profit away that they simply cannot compete; they can’t afford to place their goods into markets where they’re wanted.
Catfish from southeast Asia, shea butter from Africa, and exotic woods from South America are the same way. American catfish farmers were extremely successful in their efforts a few years ago; I don’t know if it’s true in Canada, but here, if you look at catfish at the grocery store, catfish from outside the USA isn’t even *called* catfish. It has a much less familiar name. The reason? Catfish from outside the USA is cheaper, and the catfish farmers’ lobbyists got Congress to pass a labeling law to encourage American consumers to buy the more expensive, more profitable American fish by convincing them the fish from Asia isn’t the same thing. Which it basically is.
The Bank and the IMF are seen by some as working in the interests of large corporations. Outsourcing of tech jobs to India and manufacturing jobs to China is a huge cost-saver for corporations based in rich countries. On the one hand, it leads to better infrastructure and more productive employment for the people living in those countries; on the other, it’s perceived as taking jobs away from people in more affluent countries, where the standard and cost of living are much higher, who are justified in refusing to do them as cheaply. On the one hand, international corporations do developing countries a favor by employing their people. On the other, they do tend to keep to themselves, sometimes maintaining beautiful, modern office campuses right next to the slums where their employees may live, with no effort to improve conditions *around* their own installations. It’s obvious why this can bother people.
The Bank and the IMF are concerned with fixing what’s broken. They were established by a meeting called the Bretton Woods Initiative, which occurred in 1945, when everything WAS broken. These days, the stated mission is an end to poverty. So a good point can be made: both organizations have a mission to ensure their own obsolescence; that is, a world where the Bank and the IMF are successful is a world in which they’re not necessary, and why would they work towards that at all?
spring meetings
I feel I should mention that today is the first (and will be the only) time in my tenure at the IMF that there are actual protesters and newscasters outside.
It’s kind of weird walking past more than the usual number of security guards with my all-access pass. I feel like a cog.
the Beatles
5ives » Five amazing Beatles bridges
This one single blog post inspired me to organize all the Beatles songs in my iTunes library, putting in proper tags for which albums they were on, what years they were released, and whether they were Lennon/McCartney songs or Harrison songs. (I have one Ringo Starr song, “Octopus’s Garden.”)
My Beatles songs were in disarray because most of them were copied from my CDs of the 1967–1970 compilation (the “Blue Album”), which came out in 1975 or thereabouts, and many were downloaded, meaning they weren’t properly tagged in the first place. The only Beatles album I have on CD is Rubber Soul, even though Revolver is a better album, so that was the only album I had reliable track info for.
So I headed over to allmusic and started my research. It doesn’t help that until Sgt. Pepper every Beatles album released in the UK was repackaged for the differently perceived American audience. My vinyl collection, therefore, doesn’t match the “real” albums. I have a copy of Meet the Beatles, but Please Please Me was the album whose track listing I wanted. Things like that.
I discovered I didn’t even have most of the Beatles songs I love. So I started getting them. It took me four hours to download every Beatles song I wanted (they’ll be on iTunes soon, which is hilarious given the Apple v. Apple fiasco) and organize them all with album and track and composer listings. But I now have eighty-two Beatles songs in iTunes, and I can finally read the blog post linked above and appreciate it properly.
For one thing, he’s using “bridge” to mean “chorus.” Fine, as long as we understand each other.
1. You Won’t See Me
2. Here, There, and Everywhere
3. I Feel Fine
4. Help!
5. We Can Work It Out
“You Won’t See Me”: Ah, yes. I do love this song. The chorus is a dream, too. As I realized last night, not for the first time, in the early years (that is, when they were still actually collaborating), whenever John and Paul picked a minor key, the song came out stunning. “Time after time, you refuse to even listen. I wouldn’t mind if I knew what I was missing.” The backing vocals in this song are also a treasure.
“Here, There and Everywhere”: I just can’t get over Revolver. This, “Eleanor Rigby,” and “Got to Get You Into My Life” are all on the same album. It doesn’t seem possible. “Eleanor Rigby” sounds like a White Album–era song. “Got to Get You Into My Life” feels earlier than 1966. And “Here, There and Everywhere” sounds later. The song’s opening few seconds are even reminiscent of “Live and Let Die,” which was a decade away! “Everywhere, knowing that love is to share, each one believing that love never dies, watching her eyes, and hoping I’m always there.”
“I Feel Fine”: Okay, I forgot to get this one. I’m a moron. It’s because it was only a single. It’s only on 1962–1966 (the “Red Album”) and a couple of the fake US-only LPs.
“Help!”: “Help me if you can, I’m feeling down, and I do appreciate your being round.” A lot of the song and album reviews on allmusic, which I didn’t mean to read last night but had to, recognize an urgent melancholy in John’s songs, masked behind pop fronts. If ever there was a song as full of quiet desperation as this one, I don’t know what it is.
“We Can Work It Out”: One of my five-star Beatles songs. Desperation here, too. “Life is very short, and there’s no time for fussing and fighting, my friend. I have always thought that it’s a crime. So I will ask you once again.”
Crossing things off my list
I have a list. It’s a long list, though it isn’t supposed to be, and even though I’m on my third Palm PDA, I still keep it on paper. I’m a little ashamed.
Tonight I will cross off at least half of it. Most of it is things I notice online while I’m at work but can’t really deal with until I get home. Sometimes it’s things I want to blog. One of the items on it is “Blog the card behind this page.”
Said card is covered in arithmetic. I saw that Sony has a 32“ widescreen Bravia LCD TV (the 32U100M) for under a grand, and that seemed interesting, so I decided to figure out the increase in area between my existing 27” set and a 32“ widescreen.
Any child who professes that junior-high math is something they’ll never need in real life should be reminded of this type of thing. This is a word problem. This is algebra. And I use it all the time.
Behind the card is this sidebar from The Economist about the cherry blossoms. I was aware they celebrate the coming of spring in Japan in much the same way they do in Washington—namely, with cameras, documenting the exact sameness of this year’s cherry blossoms as compared to those of prior years—but I was not aware they do it while drinking.
I document this … uh, document … mostly for the phrase ”Open a Bud beneath the opening buds.“ Love it.
Pesach
When I was growing up, one of the snack foods that was almost always present in our pantry was matzo. Giant unsalted crackers. Manischewitz. Unleavened bread. Forty years in the desert. Manna from heaven. You know what I mean.
I would break them into pieces and spread butter on them and eat them like toast. They’re crunchy and good, and nothing else—crackers, bread, tortillas, anything—tastes quite the same.
For some reason, despite the fact that we’re not Jewish, we had them all the time. I don’t know why my mother bought them, though I’m sure she’ll tell us. It may have just been because it was New Jersey, and you could buy matzo all year round.
I live in the South now. You can’t.
But this week, it’s Passover! So at the store last night I picked up a box. I had forgotten how much I like them. They taste exactly the same as when I was a kid. My desk is covered in crumbs, and there’s butter on my keyboard, and I love it. I should stock up.
nerddom ascendant
Yesterday’s FoxTrot was a great example of what I love about this strip. Yes, it’s repetitive, and yes, the characters are not particularly dimensional (though sometimes [not in recent years] Peter has done and said things that make me think he’s the character Bill Amend really speaks the most through). But when most comic strips have scientific gibberish in them, it’s really gibberish. Calculus, gibberish. Formulas, gibberish. Video games, fictional.
Jason Fox wouldn’t get away with that. Every piece of math and science in FoxTrot is on the up-and-up, and nothing happens in World of Warquest that isn’t happening in World of Warcraft that week. It’s really quite lovely, and it makes me feel like I’m in a club.
But yesterday. Sunday.
Original strip: http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2006/04/09/
When I saw this, of course I immediately opened it in Photoshop and colored it. Of course I did. Just as I squinted at the Magic Eye puzzles he printed in his strip years ago, and just as I try to make sense of the differentials he sticks in every once in a while.
The result:
I have to admit, I had help. This page was invaluable.