Death toll reaches six digits; market up in heavy trading

Swimsuit model survives tsunami; toll at 60,000

I think this headline speaks volumes about the state of the union today.

Since I've been home on vacation, I've either become more exposed to mass culture and the news, or have been ignoring it less. This is probably the first sizable exposure I've had to television news in five years or more, and it's just haunting. Maybe it's just me, but I detect a pronounced bias in the news these days. Detect isn't even the right word to describe it, since it connotes some level of subtlety. It's more like I've been unable to avoid it.

Perhaps this is a reflection of the supposedly rightward shift of the country signified by the election. I'm sure that's how the media want to explain everything, but the startling consensus in the mainstream media that the country is deeply divided by with a slight right-wing majority hellbent on moral values (nice paradox, no?) makes me inclined to think that they've gotten it all wrong. Maybe that's me simply projecting my hopes, but I think such a quick rush to judgment that cites such an amorphous yet oversimplified explanation is bound to be wrong. It's more complicated than that. There are too many nuances not being considered, and anyway is the country really that much different on Nov. 2 than it was on Nov. 1? Doubtful. Perhaps there's been a sea change (though you'd really have to find something novel to support that contention), but any change is more gradual, evolutionary rather than sudden and discontinuous.

Nonetheless, that's another rant....

To return to my main point, it's just alarming to see how transparently right-wing, or at least pandering, the media agenda seems to be these days. There's little questioning of the status quo. The ascendancy of evangelical Christianity and traditional family values is not contested. (As an aside, there's no essential link between those two as I've known many an evangelical who liked R-rated films, downloaded porn and had the vocabulary of a trucker. Hypocrisy knows no values except for depravity.) There's also a definite racial prejudice, if not quite on the surface.

The wrath of the earthquake and tsunamis that have truly and utterly devastated areas of the Indian Ocean coast has really illustrated this. And while I'm pleased to see newspapers and broadcast news devoting considerable ink and airtime to the story, their coverage is less than spectacular. Perhaps the headline cited above is a bit harsh, coming as it does from ESPN, but traditional news organizations are no better. Countless times I've heard news reports about how two Americans have died in the aftermath and many hundreds more are missing. Sure, this is tragic. And it has a local angle. But consider the scale. This could be an unprecedented natural calamity in the number of human lives lost, but our media prefer to dwell on the handful of American tourists caught up in the devastation who really amount to little more than a footnote in the grand scheme. Or take most of the interviews with witnesses and survivors. As often as not, they feature white faces, whether Americans or just English-speaking Europeans. There are plenty of English speakers in the countries severely affected, yet they don't get nearly so much face time. And when they do, it's presented in a condescending manner. Like the tendency to include subtitles for people from India or Sri Lanka who are speaking in English. Sure, they have unfamiliar accents. But they aren't impenetrable. If I close my eyes I can easily understand their speech. But since they're dark skinned, they must not speak our language well, so we have to include subtitles. Or there's the smugness with which most news organizations point out that a lot of the hard-hit countries lacked any sort of tsunami warning system, which the U.S., naturally, has. Of course, few point out that such systems are not only fairly expensive for poor countries, but also aren't necessarily effective, and that the Indian Ocean is hit by tsunamis much less often than the Pacific Ocean.

Prior to the disaster, I was feeling pretty cheesed off by the trends I noticed in this country in the last couple of weeks. This episode has only sharpened those views. I just feel increasingly estranged from American society. I don't share its values or prejudices, which I find ever more appalling. It's just amazing how truly bad things can be. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think I'd prefer to retreat to my ivory tower while I contemplate it.

Sheep go to heaven, Greenspan goes to hell

Dollar Reaches New Record Low Against Euro

The currency speculator in me rejoices for having bought up large quantities of Euros last month in anticipation of my March trip to Europe.

Musings on California

Last week as my seminar was enjoying some libations at our local public house to commemorate the end of the class, one of my classmates remarked upon learning that I was from California that she had won some contest where the prize was a week in Anaheim. Our professor/my adviser, perhaps not realizing that I would brook no offense, inquired whether second prize in this contest was two weeks in California....

As I was walking out of LAX yesterday, I saw a California-themed gift shop peddling t-shirts depicting Ah-nold with the caption "The Governator," which caused me to roll my eyes and wonder the best way to promote the state is really to tout its worst qualities....

Tonight I went to see a flick at the Block, which really is the pit of hell. Every time I go (which admittedly is maybe once a year) there's always a crop of new, poorly conceived stores, like this one I saw tonight, which evidently sold apparel and accessories to make your pets more hip. That'll last....

I would say the one redeeming factor my state was getting to see Lake Tahoe from the air, pristine and chilled, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, but that was from the Nevada side. Oh well, at least the weather's warm.

Ahead of my time

If only I was about five or six years (or more) ahead in my course of study (i.e., Ph.D. in hand):

Oxford University - Tenure-track position, 19th and 20th century German (excluding the Nazi period), 19th and 20th century Central and East European, or Imperial Russian history

You'll note that the salary is in British pounds. Which means that at current exchange rates, that's close to $90,000. Per annum.

[Drools]

Animal husbandry

News from the Steppe: Biologists are trying to use artificial insemination to help offset inbreeding and increase the genetic diversity of the reindeer population.

Hear hear.

Of course the profit motive leads to better innovation: just look at Microsoft

Mr. Schare of Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer. By the same reasoning, the security problems created by a car's broken door lock could be solved by buying an entirely new automobile. The analogy comes straight from Mr. Schare. "It's like buying a car," he said. "If you want to get the latest safety features, you have to buy the latest model."

In this case, the very latest model is not a 2001 Internet Explorer, but a 2004 Firefox.

From a deliciously smug article heralding Firefox and relegating IE to the dustbin of browsing.

When it comes to nativity scenes, never let it be said that Catalonians don't give a shit

In Catalonian nativities, you'll find a character not seen in any other culture's nativity: a caganer, or defecator.

That little dumpy-looking figurine in the corner is fertilizing the earth, thereby making him a symbol of prosperity and luck for the new year.

Of course, the Catalonians have a sense of humor about this. Stand-in caganers depict devils, celebrities and Spanish royalty. The caganer: not your garden variety nativity figure.

Just desserts

A newly released book asserts that Abe Lincoln, one of America's most beloved presidents and the father of the Republican Party, was gay. Maybe this will end all those stupid appeals by contemporary Republicans to being the "party of Lincoln." At the very least, it's another fitting example of the rampant hypocrisy of the GOP.

Ha!

Surprise, surprise.

Missile-Defense Test Fails

In a related story, space invaders from Mars penetrated the earth's atmosphere this afternoon to establish contacts with al-Qaeda. Um, sure.

Who let the dogs out?

It's not exactly letting the fox guard the chicken coop. More like letting the chicken try to guard the fox den.

Democrats Say They'll Assume Watchdog Role

There's something in the water

Turns out that metamorphic rocks historically have been the greatest natural resource in the Czech lands:

Pilsen, in what is now the Czech Republic, became a noted practitioneer of lagers, and geology again had a central role in defining the taste. The well water of Pilsen is drawn from a formation of metamorphic rocks, transformed underground by high pressure and heat so that they are almost impermeable. The water slides through cracks, but it draws almost no minerals from the rocks. This mineral-light water enhanced the clean, light taste of the beer, which became known as Pilsener.

From a New York Times article explaining the link between geology and brewing, about better living through chemistry.

You choose

Overwhelmed by boredom, I resolved to hunt down a picture I had read about, of a political poster the Hungarian political party FIDESz (the Association of Young Democrats) created for its campaign prior to the first democratic elections in Hungary in 1990. Success!

You choose

Oh shit

Space Station Astronauts Told to Eat Less as Food Runs Low

Whatever does he mean?

Satire

Let's curb suicide by making it illegal

While some college officials question whether students should be forced into counseling, others favor the heavy-handed approach. The University of Puget Sound, one of the campuses that recently began using the Illinois approach, bluntly describes the program as "a public statement that suicide is unacceptable here."

And this is supposed to deter a suicidal student from doing harm to his or her self? Because he or she will have to live -- oops -- with the shame of being ostracized by the university community? That should work.

Orange with envy

Sometimes, Eastern Europe can be a depressing place to study. Genocide, totalitarianism, atomization -- it's not the stuff of bedtime stories.

But then, those pesky Eastern Europeans go and do something really inspiring, like refusing to let some bastard steal a presidential election.