Gonna wait till I read more, but for now it seems like Justice Roberts saved the day and reasoned like a reasonable man and though I'm not sure I fully understand the early analysis that suggests that the reasoning was based on interpreting the individual mandate as essentially a tax (which congress has the power to impose)--and yet one in which the individual has the right to comply or not comply.  Maybe I'm reading the wrong stuff, but I'm not aware of any federal, state or commercial taxes that are voluntary.  I assume the actual text of the decision will help to clarify.  Gonna make for some dry holiday reading.    Whoa...I think this clears it up...just got copy of the decision...and this seems to be the key section

 Second Paragraph, last sentence..." Instead, the Government asks us to read the mandate not as ordering individuals to buy insurance, but rather as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product."  So by defining the mandate as a tax on those who do not comply, the act is deemed constitutional.  Boy, I can just see the Fox guys reaching for their matches to light the fuses on their "taxation without representation" fireworks--gonna be a dandy of a Tea Party July 4th Weekend in Punditville! 

And Mitt will either:

a.  Play the populist and support a burgeoning Tax Boycott movement

b. Announce that if elected, will have Justice Roberts tarred and feathered

c. Meet secretly with insurance industry bigwigs and promise them approval of massive increase in premiums in exchange for more campaign $$$. 

It's just too much like shooting fish in a barrel, but it's hard to avoid or ignore this guy--

From the Mouth of Mitt

"My sons are all adults and they've made decisions about their careers and they've chosen not to serve in the military and active duty and I respect their decision in that regard. One of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."

"You sit down with your attorneys and tell you what you have to do, but obviously the president of the United States has to do what's in the best interest of the United States against a potential threat." --on whether he would consult Congress about invading Iran

Maybe it's because I'm around graphic designers and art directors all the time, but I'm inclined to believe that both metaphorically and literally, we judge 'books' by their covers all the time.  Like Oscar Wilde said:  "Only shallow people don't judge by appearances."


I was also intrigued by an article about Woody Allen's movie Midnight in Paris  which was a huge hit around the world.  The article cited both the poster art and the title as major factors.  Naturally, if the movie was really bad, it wouldn't have done well, but with another title or different key art, it may not have performed as well as it did.  After all, entertainment choices are often made quickly, and driven by impulse and intuition and sometimes the imagery/implications of the advertising can tip the buying decision one way or the other. Or at least that's what we tell ourselves at work in order to justify our jobs.  It's also fun to see how a single property is treated differently for different markets--sometimes with taste and skill, and sometimes with a shameless disregard for the actual qualities and substance of the work.   A la:

Original Hard Cover

And...Something tells me that this book here on the right would hold no surprises for me and would just be preaching to the choir in my hands, but I'm tempted to pass it along to my fellow Drifters in hope that it might help bring them closer to my congregation. 

Speaking of graphic artists...many many posts ago (if memory serves) I featured some of the work of graphic artist Craig Damrauer from his (former) site:  New Math--which Damrauer says was his “quixotic attempt to quantify the world. To refresh your memory, here's a few examples not previously included:

Back in 2002 when he started his series I would check in from time to time and sometimes send him some New Math of my own...we corresponded a few times and I had  fun trying to come up with equations he'd like and consider adding to his collection.  He no longer maintains the site, but he's still active doing all kinds of stuff and that includes some new equations...so I'll turn you over to him now and catch you up on his recent additions...

Boy, cutting and pasting other people's stuff is time consuming, but it's a lot easier than writing...I gotta remember that.

Taking a break for a long weekend...hoping it helps recharge my blogging batteries  

HAPPY 4th!

Those of us who were born and bred “Red” have all at some point in our lives had to figure out how to square the values and assumptions we inherited from our parents with the world we grew up in and in which we make our lives.  Now that’s an awkward sentence ( I was even tempted to find a way to include the word ‘circle” so I could “square” it), despite the fact that I took some time writing it…but I’ll press on.

 During the time when my parents were young, America went through a boom (roaring 20’s) a bust (30’s depression) and a recovery (40’s war and post war).  Capitalism itself also went on a similar roller coaster ride.  Massive unchecked power in the hands of the “Robber Barons” ultimately led to the inevitable  massive collapse which in turn led to a restructuring with new rules (anti-trust, Fed. Deposit insurance, Social Security, trade restrictions, collective bargaining  etc.) which then slowly morphed and alternately grew and degenerated in various ways to create our current state of affairs. To be “Red” in America back in those days was like being Green today… though “Green” doesn’t carry with it the stigma or suspicion of treason or sedition.  

But that stigma wasn’t in place from the outset. Millions of Americans were active and sympathetic to the struggle for economic and social reform and many millions more were the beneficiaries of improved working and living conditions. 

For some, Communism was not much more than a set of principles and ideas that addressed the issues of social equality and economic justice in a way that made sense and promised a better world and future, and regardless of political persuasion or understanding of world history and events it remained (for a time) more utopian intellectual theory than real world reality. 

Then real world reality set in. The Russians blew it. Mao blew it. Castro blew it. The Radical Left in America blew it. I guess them's fightin words for some and I confess to a little glibness in the pronouncement, but let's just say for argument's sake that the promises made v. the promises kept were in sufficient imbalance to turn many ardent believers skeptical and turn a great many more into reformed reformers. 

And for the children, like me and my sibs, whose parents continued to devote much of their energy and time to keeping the faith and remaining dedicated to causes (many of which over time not only ceased to have relevance, but ceased to even exist) and ideas that no longer applied in a fast changing world--trying to understand our place in it given the values we inherited was no small concern.  In fact, for me it was an almost an obsession.  

I grew up taught that those with money and power were evil because they were deliberately and conscientiously taking it away from others more deserving—and they were doing it by cleverly exploiting others in order to feather their own nests.  All true perhaps after a fashion, but to say that's a simplification is beyond understatement and it took me a while to sort out the gray areas and look beyond what I read in copies of The Daily Worker and Soviet Life that constituted the standard reading matter in our household. 

I did learn a few things from  I.F. Stone though...and his stuff stood out since he wasn't ideological, but rather was concerned  with the day to day machinations related to the real world current events and issues and the dirty political games and  players who determined the outcomes. 


His book  The Trial of Socrates was an eye-opener for me and provided one of those early Eureka moments  when you realize that "History" is a slippery subject and is oftentimes more fiction than not. 

I’ve seen some of the bad guys in action, and for the most part they’re a bunch of bullies, hustlers, cheats and fear driven pansies.  They go where the money is flowing and they jump in with their buckets and try hauling out as much as they can as fast as they can before the well runs dry or someone (or something) gets the jump on them and diverts the flow in another direction. And it always seemed to me that  the best ways to resist them and their influence was to simply not play their game--even though their game could end up playing you.  


Jerry Garcia said: " We're not trying to change anybody, we're just not joining in."

I’ve met (the nice looking fellow on right was a client)  CEO’s of companies that rose high and fell fast  —and never blinked  even as the day of reckoning arrived and the greater forces of the marketplace determined the inevitable endgame. I saw Kozlowski address an auditorium of employees and tell lie after lie to keep everyone in the dark so he could hang on for as long as possible (and keep the stock from tanking prematurely) .  I didn't know he was lying at the time, but like Ken Lay, he seemed so transparently corrupt that it was hard to believe anything he said.  But again I mistake my digital dais here for a sudsy soapbox so I'll put the brakes on my lecturing and get back to the random sampling style of found objects that has kept me and my very exclusive entourage of readers so delightfully entertained for (drum roll please) over 200 posts.

As long as I got Jerry  started, might as well let him keep going...

“We're like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”


"I read somewhere that 77 percent of all the mentally ill live in poverty.  Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 percent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves."


Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets. PAUL KRUGMAN, "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?" New York Times, Sep. 2, 2009

She's Back...

Richard --

I'm sad to say this is probably the last dinner with supporters that Barack and I will be able to host together before the election.

Today's the last day you can chip in to be automatically entered for the chance to join us -- and I hope you will. You can donate all the way up to midnight tonight, when the campaign will randomly select the winners:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Meet-Us-for-Dinner

Thanks for everything you're doing. Every little bit makes a difference.

Hope to see you at dinner,

Michelle

Could this be the last I ever hear from her?

Why do I think not? 


Finally took sister Deb's advice and snapped some pix of some of my homegrown woodcraft:


These are the Hiking sticks...

Center foreground is my Tribute to Herman Melville with combo of Whale Tail and Catskill Eagle figure atop rolling ocean waves. 

Most include a recessed compass and one has removable top with mini-flashlight inside.

Canoe was one of my first pieces.  Center piece is filled with (once fragrant) wood shavings.

Present for Ellen. Heart shaped Bowl of Hearts and Soles.  

 that's enough for one day.

(cartoon accompanying essay below in The New Yorker )

WHY SMART PEOPLE ARE STUPID

Posted by Jonah Lehrer

Editors’ Note: The introductory paragraphs of this post          appeared in similar form in an October, 2011, column by Jonah Lehrer for the Wall Street Journal. We regret the duplication of material.

So it reads on New Yorker page, and so began the literary/journalistic teapot tempest swirling around the small circle of interested parties.  Seems the bright young Lehrer was caught plagiarizing himself  and
repurposing various sized chunks of his own prose in an effort to keep pace with his overflowing In Box of assignments and deadlines in print and online.  Moral of the story is Don't Blog if you've already got a gig, cause at some point you're gonna start looking for shortcuts and it's all downhill after that...especially in NYC.

Irony is that I read the article before the New Yorker appended it with the disclaimer and I enjoyed it and even discussed it with another writer here at work.  It's worth checking out:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html

It's stimulating stuff and I like him a lot more than the similarly pseudo scientifically inclined Malcolm Gladwell .  Too bad Lehrer had to resort to self theft --but I assume since they didn't fire him, and he apologized and the only aggrieved party is him, it'll all blow over.

I guess I can relate too, since I often pad this space with liftings from all corners of the digital planet, but I try to make it clear when I do so by either referencing the source or using quotation marks or italicizing as well.  Fact is, the internet is such a fast and efficient way to find whatever you want whenever you want that it's almost irresponsible and egocentric to go it alone when you've got so much available at the click of your mouse.  And the art of cutting and pasting has become as much a part of the creative process as composing and revising.  No question that it's changed the way journalists and essayists work today, and it's even finding its way into fiction.

Jennifer Egan's Pulitzer and National Book Critics Circle Award winning novel A Visit From the Goon Squad was a kind of random (seemingly) collection of interrelated short stories (some from previous works) and featured a long chapter written entirely as a Power Point presentation (of which I couldn't make head or tail)--but considering the awards and sales, it's seems to be popular and a trend...despite the fact that they never figured out how to translate that PowerPoint chapter into the audio version.

AND NOW, FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON AND IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER...

Portmanteaus

Affluenza: Sneezing on the food at Dean and DeLuca

Anecdata: Treating random events as projectable samples.

Bankster:  A legally protected criminal.

Bleen:  The color of most of the earth’s oceans

Celebritie: The wedding of two people famous for being famous.

Flavoritism:  Judging the value of food based entirely on taste.

Povertunity: A low paying job offer with potential to lead to something better.

DID YOU KNOW ?  Chortle  comes from chuckle and snort (coined by Lewis Carroll)

There’s probably dozens of versions told …and one was made famous by Stephen Hawking who cited Bertrand Russell as the source…but the essence of each is the same and one example goes something like this…A religious guru affirms that the earth is supported on the back of a tiger. When asked what supports the tiger, he says it stands upon an elephant; and when asked what supports the elephant he says it is a giant turtle. When asked, finally, what supports the giant turtle, he is briefly taken aback, but quickly replies "Ah, after that it is turtles all the way down."

That just about sums up everything coming out of Washington DC on a daily basis.  Whatever the issue or debate --it’s either Democrats “all the way down” or Republicans “all the way down”. 

Nate Silver, The New York Times polling guru whose roots are in Baseball Prospectus, a website publisher devoted to sabremetrics. 

"… politics is intrinsically a somewhat reality-denying enterprise and a business in which candidates and campaign officials compete on the basis of how much they can spin the truth," he explained. "Anything that threatens to connect political operatives with reality is therefore likely to be viewed with some suspicion."

Q. Why are the margins in this post narrower than previous? 

A.  I'll never know, you'll never know, only Google knows and they're not telling. 

(Self) Horn Toot. Move over Derek Jeter, thanks to a few loyal readers and some mysterious and culturally deprived (or depraved?) tribe in Russia, The Drifter is now a member of the 3000 hit club--with 3009  and counting.  

    What  he (Bloomberg) was thinking...

Hmmm...we’ve made progress. Jobs (albeit for unskilled workers) are still being created, and yet unemployment numbers are up.  I’ve straightened out the Board of Ed. but kids are coming out of school without the skills to compete.  I got some of my friends on Wall St. to cool it for a while and chip in a bit to close the deficit but they’re dragging their feet and it’s not nearly enough. Gulp.  Gulp?  Gulp!  Eureka!  That’s it!  It’s the Big Gulp!  People aren’t working, kids aren’t prepared, Wall St. is slow and lazy--cause….
Everyone’s fat from too much soda!  Wow.  Am I good or what? 

And what were these guys (had to have been mostly guys) thinking?

Alabama

State code allows only 5 minutes to cast your vote.

Arkansas

No person shall sound the horn on a vehicle at any place where cold drinks or sandwiches are served after 9:00 p.m.

California

In LA,  It is not legal to bathe two babies at the same time in the same tub.

In Riverside, Kissing on the lips, unless both parties wipe their lips with carbonized rose water, is against the local health ordinance.

In Walnut, No person shall wear a mask or disguise on a public street without a permit from the sheriff.

Colorado

(Former) Colorado Water laws prohibit the use of rain barrels or any methods to catch rain for use. They claim the rain has already been legally allocated to the state and individual may not capture and use water to which he/she does not have a right. New Laws passed in June 2009 eradicate this law.

Illinois

A state law requires that a man's female companion shall call him "master" while out on a date. The law does not apply to married couples.

In Zion, It is illegal for anyone to give cats, dogs, or other domesticated animals a lighted cigar. 



Indiana

In Indianapolis, No horse shall be driven or ridden on any street in the city at a speed in excess of ten (10) miles per hour

Iowa

In Ottumwa, It is illegal for any man, within the corporate city limits, to wink at any female with whom he is "unacquainted." 



Kansas

In Topeka, Servers are forbidden to serve wine in teacups. 


Kentucky

A female shall not appear in a bathing suit on any highway within this state.

Louisiana

In Mansfield, Anyone caught wearing sagging pants that expose underwear will be subject to a fine of up to $150 plus court costs

 or face up to 15 days in jail. A court later overturned the law, declaring it unconstitutional.

In New Orleans, Fire Code outlaws the cursing of firefighters while they are in the performance of thier duties.

Maryland

In Baltimore, It is illegal to take a lion to the movies. 



Minnesota

Many municipalities in Minnesota (including Anoka County) still have a Vagrancy law on the books that makes it misdemeanor for a person, with ability to work, who is without lawful means of support, and does not seek employment, and is not under 18 years of age.

Mississippi

A state law prohibits the seduction of a female over the age of eighteen by promised or pretended marriage

Nebraska

It is not legal for a tavern owner to serve beer unless a nice kettle of soup is also brewing. 


New York

It is against the law to throw a ball at someone's head for fun.

A fine of $25 can be levied for flirting. This old law specifically prohibits men from turning around on any city street and looking "at a woman in that way." A second conviction for a crime of this magnitude calls for the violating male to be forced to wear a "pair of horse-blinders" wherever and whenever he goes outside for a stroll.

In Carmel, A man cannot be seen in public while wearing a jacket and pants that do not match.

In Greene, During a concert, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on the sidewalks.

In Ocean City, It is illegal to eat in the street in residential neighborhoods, and the only beverage you can drink on the beach is water in a clear plastic bottle.

In Ocean City, It is illegal for men to go topless in the center of town.

In Staten Island, You may only water your lawn if the hose is held in your hand.

In Staten Island, It is illegal for a father to call his son a "faggot" or "queer" in an effort to curb "girlie behavior." 



New York City

You may not smoke within 100 feet of the entrance to a public building.

Women may go topless in public, providing it is not being used as a business.

It is illegal to permit dancing in an establishment that sells food without a cabaret license.

It is illegal for a woman to be on the street wearing "body hugging clothing."

Citizens may not greet each other by "putting one's thumb to the nose and wiggling the fingers". 




Ohio

In Oxford, It is unlawful for a woman to appear in public while unshaven. This includes legs and face.

In Youngstown, You may not run out of gas.

Oklahoma

It Is Illegal To Have A sleeping Donkey In Your Bathtub After 7pm

Tennessee

You must believe in god to be elected into office. You also are not permitted into office if you were in a duel.

 Vermont

Public Nudity is allowed. But it is against the law to disrobe in public.


West Virginia

State code deems it unlawful for any person to have in his possession or to display any red or black flag.


Wisconsin

The serving of colored oleomargarine or margarine at a public eating place as a substitute for table butter is prohibited unless it is ordered by the customer.

In Sun Prairie, No rider of a bicycle shall remove both hands from the handlebars or practice any trick or fancy riding in any street in the city nor shall any bicycle rider carry or ride any other person so that two persons are on the bicycle at one time, unless a seat is provided for a second person..



And finally....in China,  Drivers of power-driven vehicles who stop at pedestrian crossings are liable to a fine of up to five yen. -Article 40 of the Beijing Traffic Laws.  

I guess that helps with traffic control and population control simultaneously.