Prometheus 6

The NY Times has a nice video tribute in their multimedia section.

Odetta, Voice of Civil Rights Movement, Dies at 77
By TIM WEINER

Odetta, the singer whose deep voice wove together the strongest songs of American folk music and the civil rights movement, died on Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was 77.

The cause was heart disease, said her manager, Doug Yeager. He added that she had been hoping to sing at Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Odetta sang at coffeehouses and at Carnegie Hall, made highly influential recordings of blues and ballads, and became one of the most widely known folk-music artists of the 1950s and ’60s. She was a formative influence on dozens of artists, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin.

Some Federal Workers Lose Bargaining Rights
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — President Bush issued an executive order on Monday that denies collective bargaining rights to about 8,600 federal employees who work in law enforcement, intelligence and other agencies responsible for national security.

Mr. Bush said it would be inconsistent with “national security requirements” to allow those employees to engage in collective bargaining with respect to the conditions of their employment.

Of course it only became inconsistent with national security requirements after eight years of Bush...

I'm certainly in favor of bettering our education system, but the Capital Gains program is completely ridiculous on many levels, and it doesn't even aim to fix the underlying problems in the D.C. public schools.

Paying kids for school doesn't add up
By: Kyle Whitney
Posted: 11/20/08

As one of the prime purveyors of the bullshit "Black people think gaining knowledge is acting white" meme, hopefully this means McWhorter will shut the fuck up.

Revenge of the Black Nerd
Finally, an end to the myth that being bookish means you’re “acting white.”
By John McWhorter

The average modern child spends nearly 45 hours a week with television, movies, magazines, music, the Internet, cellphones and video games, the study reported. By comparison, children spend 17 hours a week with their parents on average and 30 hours a week in school, the study said.

Media Bombardment Is Linked To Ill Effects During Childhood
By Donna St. George
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 2, 2008; C07

In a detailed look at nearly 30 years of research on how television, music, movies and other media affect the lives of children and adolescents, a new study released today found an array of negative health effects linked to greater use.

The report found strong connections between media exposure and problems of childhood obesity and tobacco use. Nearly as strong was the link to early sexual behavior.

The Gun Lobby’s Loss

The gun lobby has long intimidated politicians with its war chest and its trumpeted ability to deliver single-issue voters, especially in tight races. After this year’s election, those politicians should be far less afraid and far more willing to vote for sensible gun-control laws.

The National Rifle Association directed much money and bile against Barack Obama. In false, misleading and, fortunately, ineffective ads, fliers, mailers and Web postings, the group said that Mr. Obama posed a “clear and present danger” to Second Amendment rights and that his election would mean a gun ban.

Despite that harsh barrage, Mr. Obama won states with heavy gun ownership, including Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. That success should send a signal to other politicians: consistency matters.

Continuity We Can Believe In
By DAVID BROOKS

The 2008 election results did not fundamentally change American foreign policy. The real change began a few years ago in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It began with colonels and captains fighting terror on the ground.

No, Brooks. It began when Bush invaded Iraq. If he hadn't done that, those colonels and captains wouldn't even have been there.

Furthermore, Brooks, you seem to have mistaken the central message of the Obama campaign. It was not "we can believe in"...especially given all the Bushisms YOU have said you believe in. Nope. The central message was "change."

You know why I think G.M., at minimum, is stupid?

The automaker said it plans to sell its Saab division and would begin discussions with Saturn dealers to fold or sell the brand.

Saturn had the most favorable rating and loyal customer base of all GM cars. And much like my questions from yesterday, I have to ask...if, after being asked for a game plan for investing the funds from a big bailout, they come up with a much bigger number, how did they come up with the first request?

Auto Industry Rescue Could Exceed Initial Requests
Executive Proposals Push Funding Past $25 Billion
By Kendra Marr and William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 2, 2008; 5:02 PM

Detroit's Big Three automakers painted a bleak outlook for Congress today in making their case for federal funding.

The price tag to sustain the industry through a prolonged economic slump could skyrocket past the $25 billion in emergency loans that the companies' top executives pleaded for last month, according to documents submitted by the automakers.

 

In the telecom immunity challenge, the government argues that the telecoms should not be punished, or suffer the threat of punishment, for a surveillance program that the Bush administration claims was designed only to fight terrorism. The government also denies the lawsuits' allegations that the surveillance was a broad dragnet that sucked down Americans' communications on a wholesale basis.

The administration also says the immunity is warranted because the lawsuits threaten to expose government secrets.

Secrets like, "we lie and break the law because we can hide it by calling it a government secret."

In Courtroom Showdown, Bush Demands Amnesty for Spying Telecoms
By David Kravets December 01, 2008 | 5:59:26 PM

SAN FRANCISCO — The Bush administration on Tuesday will try to convince a federal judge to let stand a law granting retroactive legal immunity to the nation's telecoms, which are accused of transmitting Americans' private communications to the National Security Agency without warrants.

At issue in the high-stakes showdown — set to begin at 10:00 a.m. PST — are the nearly four dozen lawsuits filed by civil liberties groups and class action attorneys against AT&T, Verizon, MCI, Sprint and other carriers who allegedly cooperated with the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program in the years following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The lawsuits claim the cooperation violated federal wiretapping laws and the Constitution.

Not to mention that I don't find "the Bush administration and some in Congress" the most credible witnesses.

Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security
By Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 1, 2008; A01

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

The difference, of course, is that the country entered a recession exactly one year ago, at least according to the Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is made up of seven prominent economists, most from the academic sector. The group made their official announcement on Monday that the economy entered a recession in December 2007.

“A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators,” the members said in a statement. “A recession begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough.”

What about this nonsense about a recession being two quarters of reduced economic activity. If the recession started in December 2007, why didn't we hear this judgement six months ago?

We've got our own little disaster here in the the Western Hemisphere. Haiti has been excluded from trade and culture since its African slaves overthrew their masters. 

For what reason does Haiti suffer while the Dominican Republic does not? And don't start fucking with the D.R., I'm just making a point.

Life gets worse for Haiti's hungry children
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES

The slow road to death runs high above the scenic coastline, past the crumbled bridges and buried rivers. It traverses a jagged trail passing green slopes and red fertile dirt before arriving here: an isolated mountain village where little Haitian girls dream of eating rice and the doctor is a three-hour walk away.

This is the place where children, suffering from stunted growth, look half their age, where struggling mothers cry that their half-starved babies with the brittle orange hair -- evidence of malnutrition -- neither crawl nor walk.

Matthew Yglesias

In addition to being a booster of the two actual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bill Kristol and/or his publication has, at one time or another, also called for the United States to go to war with North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Sudan. And now he’s got another war he’s like to start:

And while [Bush is] at it, perhaps he could tell various admirals to stop moaning about how difficult it would be to deal with the pirates off the coast of Somalia (isn’t keeping the shipping lanes open a core mission of the Navy?) and order the Navy to clobber them. If need be, the Marines would no doubt be glad to recapitulate their origins and join in by going ashore in Africa to destroy the pirates’ safe havens.

Credit and Blame
Author: Charles Tilly
asin: 0691135789
Binding: Hardcover
List price: $24.95 USD
Amazon price: $16.47 USD

Judgment Call
By ALEXANDER STAR

Tilly suggests that we possess something like an “all-purpose justice detector.” When something good or bad happens, we measure the magnitude of the change, identify an agent who helped bring it about and assess how the agent’s skills, knowledge and intentions figure in the result. How much blame does the Ford Motor Company deserve when an Explorer rolls over on the highway? The answer, Tilly writes, depends on how badly the driver or passenger was injured, whether Ford should have known the crash was likely to happen and whether it intended to build the car the way it did. Lawyers argue this way in civil suits, but couples apply similar rules of thumb when they argue over who left the car windows down.

Of course, lawyers, like the rest of us, use stories in order to apportion credit and blame. And that makes sense, because we respond to just about any sequence of events by evaluating the actors who seem to have brought it about. If we hear a story about an accident or battle or sporting event, our first questions are likely to focus on who deserves honor or dishonor. While stories enable judgment, however, they also distort it. When television news reports about poverty focus on an individual’s situation rather than on poverty more generally, “viewers look for someone (the poor person or someone else) who caused the hardship.” But this, Tilly argues, is to avoid “the whole complicated process that brought someone grief.” Stories call our attention away from chance, the influence of institutions or social structures, or the incremental contributions that different factors typically make to any outcome. And they follow conventions that verge on melodrama: events are caused by individuals who act deliberately, and what those individuals do reflects their underlying character. This, to put it mildly, is not how most things happen. 

I'm Not Post-Racial
By Krissah Williams Thompson
Sunday, November 30, 2008; B01

As a 29-year old rookie campaign reporter, I was too much of a political novice to predict how far the Illinois senator would go, but after my experience that day, I was sure that the country had been moving steadily away from our historical racial paradigm. It shook me to think that I hadn't noticed it in my own life. That auditorium full of rural Iowans felt post-racial. It gave me a chill. I liked it.

Still, as exciting as it was to see that all-white Obama-maniac crowd, and the multi-racial crowds that later rallied for him and celebrated his victory, the term post-racial itself has become disconcerting. It means moving beyond something -- and I don't want to move beyond everything it suggests. Post-racialism is relatively easy to understand in a standing-room-only sports arena or at a campaign rally, and it will probably be evident at Obama's inauguration celebrations, where people of all different backgrounds will stand together and cheer. But post-racialism outside that political pageantry gets more complicated. It means the loss of so much that I cherish about who I am and where I come from. Is a colorblind America really what we are striving for? Isn't the point to live lives that are open to differences but still celebrate our unique cultural heritages, family traditions and religions?

I asked those questions in the dozens of cities and towns I traveled to after I visited Iowa and back in the predominantly black Maryland community where I live. And I discovered that the wonder of that Iowa auditorium -- like the diverse mass rallies Obama held in Austin, Portland, Denver, Chicago and other cities -- was short-lived. In everyday life, the people I interviewed in beauty salons, office parks, churches, American Legion halls, suburbs and small-town squares had hardly moved beyond the boundaries of race. And I had to acknowledge that neither have I.

He's Not Black
By Marie Arana
Sunday, November 30, 2008; B01

He is also half white.

Unless the one-drop rule still applies, our president-elect is not black.

By that measure there are no Black people. So stop being stupid.

Of course there is much to celebrate in seeing Obama's victory as a victory for African Americans. The long, arduous battles that were fought and won in the name of civil rights redeemed our Constitution and brought a new sense of possibility to all minorities in this country.

...which would not be the case if Obama were anything but a Black man. So stop being stupid.

We Hispanic Americans, very likely the most mixed-race people in the world, credit our gains to the great African American pioneers of yesterday: Rosa Parks, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr.

You should be glad I'm not in the myth-writing business anymore.

Ah, Mr. Blow...

We now know that blacks probably didn’t tip the balance for Proposition 8. Myth busted.

Then there's no point to your article.

There was one very telling (and virtually ignored) statistic in CNN’s exit poll data that may shed some light: There were far more black women than black men, and a higher percentage of them said that they voted for the measure than the men.

Oh, I see. It's not Black people's fault,  it's Black women's fault. But wait, Black people didn't tip  the balance, as Mr. Blow's fellow Conservatives reflexively claimed, right? So this is just a means to restart the debate about Black folks' morality, I guess. makes sense...follows the pattern...

Born to Run? Little Ones Get Test for Sports Gene
By JULIET MACUR

BOULDER, Colo. — When Donna Campiglia learned recently that a genetic test might be able to determine which sports suit the talents of her 2 ½-year-old son, Noah, she instantly said, Where can I get it and how much does it cost?

“I could see how some people might think the test would pigeonhole your child into doing fewer sports or being exposed to fewer things, but I still think it’s good to match them with the right activity,” Ms. Campiglia, 36, said as she watched a toddler class at Boulder Indoor Soccer in which Noah struggled to take direction from the coach between juice and potty breaks.

“I think it would prevent a lot of parental frustration,” she said.

Parental frustration, huh?

Doesn't that say everything you need to know about this?

Wait until they figure this kid out. It'll be intrauterine gene  therapy for all rich kids, let me tell you...

The Labor Department regulates occupational health hazards posed by a wide variety of substances like asbestos, benzene, cotton dust, formaldehyde, lead, vinyl chloride and blood-borne pathogens, including the virus that causes AIDS.

The department is constantly considering whether to take steps to protect workers against hazardous substances. Currently, it is assessing substances like silica, beryllium and diacetyl, a chemical that adds the buttery flavor to some types of microwave popcorn.

Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Safety Rule Obama Opposes
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON — The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.

The company also drafted a scientific abstract on Risperdal for Dr. Biederman to sign — as if he were the author — before it was presented at a professional meeting. And it sought his advice on how to handle the uncomfortable fact, not mentioned in the abstract, that children given placebos, not just those given Risperdal, also improved significantly. 

Expert or Shill?

More evidence has emerged of appalling conflicts of interest that throw into doubt the advice rendered and the research performed by two prominent psychiatrists who have received substantial funding from the pharmaceutical industry. The revelations prove, once again, the need for universities and professional societies to crack down on conflicts of interest, and for Congress to pass legislation that will bring hidden conflicts into the open.

What They Hate About Mumbai
By SUKETU MEHTA

In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.

And now it looks as if the latest terrorists were our neighbors, young men dressed not in Afghan tunics but in blue jeans and designer T-shirts. Being South Asian, they would have grown up watching the painted lady that is Mumbai in the movies: a city of flashy cars and flashier women. A pleasure-loving city, a sensual city. Everything that preachers of every religion thunder against. It is, as a monk of the pacifist Jain religion explained to me, “paap-ni-bhoomi”: the sinful land....

Member TKG brought to my attention an interesting prospective symposium that I'd like to share with you.

Call For Proposals:
Papers to be published as articles in Econ Journal Watch
Symposium Title:
Economic Notes from Underground

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from Underground (1864) is a classic of introspection and confession. The symposium takes its title from Dostoevsky’s work.

The prospective symposium will consist of confessional essays by social scientists about their existence as social scientists. We aim to have a preponderance of economists, but other social scientists are also welcome. Only genuine narrative and sincere reflection are welcome. However, essays may be anonymous.

In a rich body of highly regarded work, the Duke University economist Timur Kuran has developed a theory of preference falsification: the individual may publicly express views or attitudes that are false to his or her true private views or attitudes.

The symposium will be edited by Professor Peter Gordon of University of Southern California. Authors who wish to remain anonymous in print will nonetheless disclose their true identity to Professor Gordon, who will serve as confidante of such authors. No one else will be privy to such information. Authors may need to disguise specific facts. Professor Gordon will verify all facts that are reasonably verifiable.

Professor Kuran will serve as an advisor to the project. In that capacity he may review some of the manuscripts at an advanced stage. He will not be privy to the identity of the authors.

The impetus of the symposium is to provide an outlet for exploring preference falsification and other forms of moral or intellectual compromise within the economics profession. Authors are encouraged to be introspective and personal, and yet impartial. The purpose of each essay should be to share experiences that speak to situations to which many can relate. We seek biographical essays that will help others understand widely shared problems.

In his or her essay, the author should clarify the kind of preference falsification in which he or she has engaged.

Note: preference falsification = lying,

"Many of the names that we have heard floated for deputy attorney general for civil rights and the Department of Education make us feel good that he's taking his responsibility seriously to restore the federal government's role in enforcing civil rights," Jealous said this week. "So far, so good."

But most of Obama's Cabinet picks are still up in the air, leaving interest groups and activists crossing their fingers.

Minority Advocates Watching Obama
President-Elect Tries to Balance Racial Diversity, Gender, Ideology as He Picks Team
By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 29, 2008; A02

Ethiopian forces have remained almost entirely in Mogadishu, along with a small African Union force that has just 2,600 of the 8,000 troops it was intended to have and has largely been confined to urban bases.

The insurgents, meanwhile, have taken control of towns near the capital and move freely inside it.

Remember how all this started.

Ethiopia to Pull Its Troops From Somalia by End of the Year
By Mohamed Olad Hassan
Associated Press
Saturday, November 29, 2008; A09

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Nov. 28 -- Ethiopia announced Friday that it will pull its forces from Somalia by year's end, leaving the ravaged capital vulnerable to the Islamist fighters who have seized nearly all of the country.

The decision ends the unpopular two-year presence here of the key U.S. ally much as it began -- with the fighters in near-total control of a failed state beset by a worsening humanitarian crisis.

It's kind of absurd, the way political competitors unleash the hounds of hell on each other's reputations, and must be polite and respectful to each other afterward.

Obama Team Repackaging Clinton After Campaign Digs
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 8:27 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It wasn't too long ago that Barack Obama and his advisers were tripping over one another to tear down Hillary Rodham Clinton's foreign policy credentials. She was dismissed as a commander in chief wanna-be who did little more than sip tea and make small talk with foreign leaders during her days as first lady.

''What exactly is this foreign policy experience?'' Obama said mockingly of the New York senator. ''Was she negotiating treaties? Was she handling crises? The answer is no.''

That was in March, when Clinton was Obama's sole remaining rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Now, Clinton is on track to become Obama's secretary of state.