“ With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics (via Rileydog)
dirtier fingernails & cleaner minds
Of the United States of his day, the American Indian Cowboy Humorist and Trick Roper Will Rogers said: "What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds." It's what I need too.
Topics include: News, political and otherwise; media (bad news cloaked in optimism or vice versa); food & drink; places: mostly Mexico.
Freda: Even I can shout a full-throated amen to this…a beautiful illustrated op-ed by Maira Kalman.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
The Ballad of Lucy Jordan
That bastard “Twenty Five Things About Me” that’s circulating on Facebook has provoked an attack of the Marianne Faithfulls.
"Writing these extra 375 words per day, to fill in middle management, will 'increase' the 'productivity' of the reporters."
Freda: I grow more afraid by the day.
(via maura)
How Did Elvis Get Turned Into a Racist?
I watched Do the Right Thing for the first time last night, spurred by a recent Spike Lee profile in the New Yorker. But I was annoyed before the movie even began.
Because I was nine when Do the Right Thing came out, and because I was raised in a small, rural, white Northern California town (Public Enemy wasn’t on my adolescent radar), I’d never heard the song that plays through the movie’s long, strange opening sequence:
“Fight the Power” is a odd backdrop to Rosie Perez hate-fucking the audience in a electric blue unitard. But it was the chorus, and a passing reference to Elvis, that struck me.
Elvis was a hero to most
But he never meant shit to me you see
Straight up racist that sucker was
Simple and plain
Mother fuck him and John Wayne
Mother fuck Elvis? For being a racist!
“Well, he was,” Tim says, sending me on a fact-finding mission (a Google search for “Elvis + Racist”) that led to this op-ed in the New York Times on the 30th anniversary of Elvis’s death.
Of course, one editorial isn’t enough to set the record—or the King’s reputation—straight. But that’s hardly the end of the world. There are more persistent rumors, conspiracy theories and pieces of misinformation to dispell. Elvis is dead, after all.
But, still, there’s something frightening about the fact that these ideas, however baseless or often denied, can outlive their subject — to think about how often truth doesn’t defeat ignorance, willful or otherwise.
Google Earth is the new Swiss drug czar.
Swiss police stumbled across a large marijuana plantation while using Google Earth, leading to the arrest of 16 people and seizure of 1.2 tons of marijuana as well as cash and valuables worth 900,000 Swiss francs ($780,000).
The Angela Peralta Theater in Mazatlan is exhibiting anti-American comics from around the world. If ever there was cause for shame and self-loathing, it’s viewing room after room after room of condemnations of ones country. It’s worse when you agree with the criticisms.
Obama on abortion rights: rejecting the "Mexico City Gag Rule"
Freda: A sane U.S. policy on international aid for family planning? This is a brave new world.
The Mexico City Policy, also known as the Mexico City Gag Rule and the Global Gag Rule, is a United States government policy which requires all non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that receive federal funding to refrain from performing or promoting abortion services in other countries. Named for the venue of the United Nations International Conference on Population where it was announced, the Mexico City Policy was instituted by U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1984. (Thank you Wikipedia)
Freda: We fly out of Mexico City at 9am tomorrow, arriving in DC just in time for Tuesday’s inauguration. I’m cautiously optimistic about Obama. But I’m elated to see Bush go. For me, it’s as much of a “goodbye-and-good-riddance” party as a “welcome home.”
(via stevemakesnoise)
Sanjay Gupta on Medical Marijuana
“I’m here to tell you, as a doctor, that despite all the talk about the medical benefits of marijuana, smoking the stuff is not going to do your health any good.” (via sexartandpolitics: absurdlakefront: notthatkindagay)
Freda: I’m underwhelmed by the “marijuana is medicine” argument for legalization. It’s not that I doubt pot’s ability to spur an appetite or help with pain, but there are better reasons for decriminalization. As a Mendocino County native, I can’t help but feel this is one of them:
Northern California’s Mendocino County has been known for marijuana growing for at least 30 years. Part of the state’s legendary Emerald Triangle of high-grade pot production along with neighboring Humboldt and Trinity counties, Mendocino has long profited from the underground economy. Last week, a local newspaper, the Willits News, tried to gauge just how large the profits may be, and the result is startling.
According to the News, the local marijuana industry will add $1.5 billion to the county’s economy this year. With Mendocino’s legal economy estimated at about $2.3 billion, that means the pot economy is almost two-thirds as large as all other legal economic activities combined. When combining the aboveground and underground economies, the marijuana industry is responsible for roughly 40% of all Mendocino County economic activity, a figure approaching the proportions of the Afghan opium economy. (via)
Freda: Negrito is all over Mexico, where references to the big guy in your office (el gordo: fat man) or the Korean girl at the corner store (la china, because all Asians are Chinese) are blunt, but rarely mean spirited. It’s symptomatic of a decidedly less politically correct culture than the hyper-sensitive (sometimes with good reason) United States.
I bought a Negrito from the vending machine at work today. A Negrito it basically a chocolate filled éclair. I told one of my coworkers, “this is an example of what you cannot do in the US.” His response, ”Right, because Obama would get mad.” (via: significantothers)
Freda: Oh hell yeah.
(via mmryan)
“ If you’re saying that there needed to be scenes of the Internet interacting with journalism and bringing down journalism, I will now write you a scene: Interior, garden apartment anywhere. A white male, mid-30s, sits at a laptop computer in his underwear, linking to a Baltimore Sun story. He then scratches his left testicle until satisfied and continues to type commentary about that story onto his blog. Cut to drug corner, and on to the next scene.
Freda: Speaking of the Wire…and the death of journalism.
Interview with David Simon, creator of “The Wire”; “The Wire” series finale | Salon Arts & Entertainment (via fred-wilson)
“ Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon (D) was charged “with 12 counts of felony theft, perjury, fraud and misconduct in office, becoming the city’s first sitting mayor to be criminally indicted,” the Baltimore Sun reports.
via Taegan Goddard.
Freda: The Wire lives.
