Livingston, I Presume

Thrilling iPhone update!

I still don't have one. What's more, I can't get one, since we don't get fancy-schmancy Cingular/the new At&T/the Old AT&T/AT&T reception here in old Montany.

I'm fine with it (like I've got $500 to spend on a cell phone!) but Chip's weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth are starting to frighten the children.

I felt the same way about rohlik

Pity the Czech soldier. Not only are they sent to such un-scenic locations as Kosovo and Afghanistan but they have also been systematically forced to eat sliced white bread. Radio Prague reports:

An army spokesperson told the paper that while on missions Czech soldiers were forced to eat American sliced white bread and missed their own Czech wheat-rye bread. Researchers at the Brno University of Defence said the lack of Czech bread caused psychological problems for soldiers.

Thank heavens that help is on the way:

The Czech Army is to introduce field bakeries to make bread for its soldiers in Afghanistan and Kosovo, Hospodarske noviny reported.

You may be scoffing about bread--or lack of a certain type thereof--causing psychological problems, but let me tell you, it's no laughing matter. Every time I was forced to eat another rohlik, I died a little inside. Oh sure, the Czechs are high and mighty about their hearty wheat-rye bread, but the dirty little secret is that Czechs looooooooooove their white-bread rohliky. Ever watched somebody dip a cigar-shaped, tasteless, crust-shedding rohlik in yogurt for breakfast? I shudder just thinking about it.

Don't get me wrong. I've got no quarrel with probably 95 percent of Czech food. In fact, I love Svickova na smetane (a sort of sliced beef roast with a thick, creamy sauce topped with cranberries, lemon and whipped cream) Vepro-Knedlo-Zelo (roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut) and Smazeny Syr (deep fried cheese--what's not to like?). In fact, if I flew to Prague today, one of the first things I'd do would be to go to U Medviku and get their topinky (Czech wheat-rye bread fried, probably in lard, served with fresh garlic and blue cheese). But I have no love for the rohlik. Of course, I also have no love for American white sliced bread. Any substance that can be compacted from a loaf shape into a small ball without considerable difficulty should not be ingested by humans.

Does that make me a woman without a country?

Dammit, Chloe!

Via Shakesville comes this horrifying little tete-a-tete originally reported by Canada's Globe and Mail:

Justice Antonin Scalia is one of the most powerful judges on the planet.

The job of the veteran U.S. Supreme Court judge is to ensure that the superpower lives up to its Constitution. But in his free time, he is a fan of 24, the popular TV drama where the maverick federal agent Jack Bauer routinely tortures terrorists to save American lives. This much was made clear at a legal conference in Ottawa this week.

Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge's passing remark - "Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra 'What would Jack Bauer do?' " - got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent's rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.

Words fail me. Really. Somebody needs to have a little downtime in a holding cell at CTU, perhaps learning exactly what is fact and what is fiction. Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles on television, Mr. Justice. Television. You know, that glowing blue box in your living room? Or maybe the problem is that it's in your chambers.

I think we're looking at some radical detox here. So hand over the box set of the first five seasons, Justice Scalia. And let go of that Tivo with the last season taped on it. It was a terrible season, anyway. You won't miss it.

Don't make us ask you twice. If you don't hand them over, we just might have to put you on a plane to a Chinese prison where they won't let you cut your hair or shave your beard and will commit unspeakable tortures against you but will paradoxically keep you in good enough shape to enable to you to save the world mere hours after your poorly bargained release.

Guess what I've been doing today

Hint: It's not working.

I've been pawing through Connery's Thomas the Tank Engine paraphernalia, trying to figure out if I've been slowly poisoning his brain by buying him train sets. Like most little kids, Connery loves Thomas, and while we've avoided the madness temptation of getting him the crazy table with the gazillion-dollar setup, piece by piece, he does own several sets of the "Take-Along Thomas" toys. None of them seems to be among the items recalled, but when has that ever stopped a worry-crazed mother?

Besides, I'm sure that the set at Barnes & Noble is the wooden, expensive, recalled kind, and we've wiled away plenty of shopping hours there. Hell, B&N is a bona fide destination, the kind of thing I can use to bribe Connery with if we've got a bunch of not-so-fun errands to do. I have no idea what we'll find the next time we visit there.

The whole thing really pisses me off. The vast majority of toy manufacturers sent their factories off to China years ago. Have you tried to find something Made in the USA in Toys 'R' Us lately? It's much like searching for some mythical creature that you've heard about but never seen. (Santa Claus? I last saw him on Aisle 26, but don't expect him to be there when you get there.) Toys are Made in China, even the expensive ones like the wooden Thomas sets. Made in China means that many of the laws we like to adhere to in the United States--crazy, far-out things like "no lead in paint for kids" and "no deadly chemicals in toothpaste"--are not enforced in any way. I wish I were exaggerating. Here's what the New York Times reported this morning:

China manufactured every one of the 24 kinds of toys recalled for safety reasons in the United States so far this year, including the enormously popular Thomas & Friends wooden train sets, a record that is causing alarm among consumer advocates, parents and regulators...

...Over all, the number of products made in China that are being recalled in the United States by the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has doubled in the last five years, driving the total number of recalls in the country to 467 last year, an annual record.

It also means that China today is responsible for about 60 percent of all product recalls, compared with 36 percent in 2000.

Add that, if you will, to the pet food recall and poison toothpaste and I would hope that you'd get some consumers wondering what the hell is going on. Of course, it's partially our own fault. We didn't choose to have our manufacturing sector move everything offshore, but we didn't exactly stage boycotts of the products or rush out from the local WalMart and Target to look for artisinal U.S.-made toys. How many of us even bothered to look where a toy came from the last time we shopped? If you're like me, you probably knew it was made overseas but felt like there weren't many other options.

And it's not just the toys. Other items made for kids--like furniture--are also being manufactured without many safety standards in factories far from us. There was a woman in Bozeman who tried to make a go of selling only non-toxic, high-quality furniture for kids. It was beautiful stuff, but not enough people were willing or able to pay the price for the better stuff. She closed after less than a year. Still, the cheaper stuff ought to be safe as well. Just because you can't afford a thousand-dollar crib doesn't mean you love your baby any less.

I don't know what the answer is. I do hope that this will open some eyes as to the trade-off we've all made for cheaper goods. We all love a bargain, but not at the cost of our health.

I'm a shoe!

A shoe I do not like, sure, but still. I present to you:

Running errand's can be hecticthe Ritter is your saving grace. Our flexible fore-part will give your feet the comfort they need to go all day long. The oh-so-soft loose lined leather upper is unbelievably comfortableyou will not want to take this off. Lace up leather and suede oxford with flexible rubber bottom. 3 > '' heel with a = '' platform.

Apparently I am made in Brazil, which is surprising. And apparently my manufacturers do not share my keen grasp of grammatical principles. Running errand's what I do not know. But I'm pleased to know that I can be someone's saving grace.

That polished look

The other day, Connery was sitting on my bed while I was finishing up my morning ablutions. He's totally into the "why" questions these days (to the point of my occasionally resorting to the worst parental response ever to such questions: Why? Because! Because, that's Why!). Usually, though, I try to come up with some kind of logical reason or explanation for the questions. Yesterday's "What is poetry?" was a pretty tough one. I almost had to call in the reinforcements, i.e. my mom the retired English teacher.

Anyway, he was watching me put on a pair of earrings and of course wanted to know why I was putting on earrings. I think I first answered, "Because I like earrings." The next question, naturally, is why I like earrings? Casting about, discarding "Because I am a tool of the patriarchy who finds it necessary to further establish her defined gender role!", I settled on "Because it gives me a polished look."

He accepted that. Now, every morning since, he has wanted to come into my room and help me out with achieving my "polished look". Yesterday I let him pick out some earrings for me, and he wanted to today as well. When he hands me the earrings, he watches me put them on, and then he asks, "Do you have that polished look now?"

Hey, it's a far better outcome than what I would have expected, which was "But why do you want that polished look?"

New to the blogroll

I corrected a longstanding omission today by adding Junkfood Science to my blogroll. Sandy Szwarc, the "registered nurse with a biological science degree and over 28 years in neonatal intensive care and emergency triage; medical outreach education; health communications; and research" who writes the blog, is one of those incredible rarities in the blogging world: a good writer who backs up her opinions with the best research and analysis out there.

You know those wire service articles that run every time a new health study is released? The ones that often sound suspiciously like press releases for drug companies or just really convenient in terms of promoting the status quo but seem to have all kinds of alarming-sounding statistics to back up their claims? Sandy Szwarc likes to go to town on those articles. Here's a great example, taken from her smackdown of a Scientific American article claiming that a study shows permanent weight loss to be more common than previously thought:

Overall, we have another study that bears little resemblance to what we’re hearing. In fact, this study not only fails to support the government’s public health messages for diet and exercise to prevent or manage weight gain, it gives us every indication that it may be contributing to harm.

Once again, an epidemiological study looking for correlations among a group of people can appear to support whatever agenda it was designed to find. But such studies never give us the full story.

Spin is everything. No matter how intuitive their conclusions might seem or how popular, epidemiology can never provide credible evidence to support decisions about our diet, lifestyle, or health ... and least of all, form a sound basis for public health policies or clinical guidelines.

Practically every post that Szwarc writes could be a chapter in a book. No, wait, should be a chapter in a book. The book could be entitled How the media and the medical establishment are complicit in damaging all of our health by misinterpreting science and accepting a buyout from Big Pharma and Big Diet.

I'd buy that book.

Go read it. It will probably make you angry. It makes me angry. But I can promise that you won't look at one of those "Study Shows American Ass-fat Causes Child Pornography!!!" articles again without running off to the Interwebs to find out what Sandy has to say about it.

 

That must've been some good shit

From the "what was this guy smoking?" department comes a brilliant letter in the Chronicle this morning about what people are...um...smoking. Entitled "Governor far too cozy with San Francisco drug culture", the letter from a Manhattanite charges that our own Brian Schweitzer is clearly on drugs--or at least promoting them madly--by traveling to Sodom. I mean, California.

Schweitzer isn’t even a little bit bashful about traveling to San Francisco (industry headquarters for pot, porn and perversion) for a fundraiser with cannabis culture icon Bill Maher.

How come nobody told me that San Francisco was the headquarters for pot, porn, and perversion? I was just there in November and my trip was lacking even the most rudimentary elements of these industries. Furthermore, I was not aware that merely visiting San Francisco could make one supportive of the drug culture. Add that devil-may-care trip to the City by the Bay to appearing on Bill Maher's show, well, it must mean that Schweitzer is ransacking the kitchen at the Governor's Mansion for cheetos and cold pizza while watching the Dark Side of the Moon and the Wizard of Oz on double HDTVs.

What would this letter-writer prefer, exactly? The governor leaving Helena under the cloak of darkness to "visit relatives" in "Nebraska" so as to avoid offending the delicate sensibilities of those Montanans who have ridiculous, uninformed opinions about the most populous American state?

And I guess maybe I'm the dumb one, as I didn't  realize that Bill Maher was a central figure in drug culture. (No HBO!) Moreover, not being a regular reader of High Times or other marijuana-positive publications, I was not privy to the many awards heaped on Mr. Maher regarding his pro-drug stance. It strikes me that perhaps the letter writer has been spending a bit too much time on the Marijuana Policy Project website to learn all these facts about Schweitzer's new "best friend".

Regrettably, Mr. Manhattan has not spent enough time on said website to learn the cool slang for marijuana:

Interestingly, British psychiatrists estimate an additional 25,000 cases of schizophrenia caused by the smoking of skunk (marijuana).

Reefer madness, I tell you! Actually, madness is believing that visiting a single city can indicate support for smoking anything (I presume Mr. Manhattan is most concerned about pot and pole, but what do I know?), or that a single city could claim to be the world capital of three such diverse industries. I'm no native Californian, but my sources tell me that porn is in Southern California and pot is in the far north. And if perversion is an actual industry, I'd appreciate directions to that San Francisco world headquarters. I've got a small child to protect, you know.

Ah, yes...Utopia!

Via Broadsheet comes this money quote in an AP article regarding the Prevention First initiative, a bill aiming to mandate better access to and information about contraceptives, increase funds for family planning and comprehensive sex education funds, and assure that emergency contraception is made available to rape victims at all hospitals:

"There's a utopian view that women ought to be able to have sex any time they want to without consequences -- that's the bottom line of all these bills," Janice Crouse, Concerned Women for America.

OK, Janice. You've got me there. I really do believe that women--of legal age and sound mind and willing spirit--ought to be able to have sex when they want, how they want, and with whom they want. Isn't that what men have been doing for centuries? As long as said women are not coming over to my house and commandeering the bed, who am I to decide when sex is appropriate?

I'm not advocating some giant, national orgy--although, as a liberal, I guess I'm supposed to welcome that--but I am saying that mandating "consequences" for having sex is ridiculous. First of all, why is it only women who should have to face these consequences? Is a baby a precious new life or a punishment for an orgasm? And cervical cancer. There's a great consequence we should want to preserve for all women who have sex. Because God knows without the threat of cervical cancer and unintended pregnancy, women everywhere will be doffing their clothes and shagging the first available man they see.

Certainly not every consensual sexual encounter in this world happens for all the right reasons. People get drunk and make bad choices. Hell, a lot of us are fully capable of making bad choices even without alcohol. But it's pretty hard to make laws against bad choices, and it's even harder to make laws that go against fundamental tenets of human nature.

Maybe abstinence before marriage was truly viable in the days when it was expected that people get married when they were 17 or 18 years old. (I don't have trouble with the notion that women AND men can and in most cases should avoid sex until they are old enough to vote and have true control over their bodies. But you can't mandate it by law. You can make it clear in no uncertain terms that to have sex before then would require a trip to the dreaded gynecologist, as my mother did to me. You can put condoms in your teenage child's luggage before camp, ensuring that any sexual experience will have to take place with the thought of Mom and those goddamn condoms uppermost. Have I said too much? Ahem.) Encouraging abstinence before marriage in a time when the average age of marriage is 26 for women and 27 for men seems just a waste of time. Why shouldn't unmarried people in their twenties be having sex if they want to? If they have kids in their thirties, those memories just might get them through.

Oh, and let's not forget the great, heteronormative Catch-22 that the whole "abstinence before marriage" crowd sets up for gays and lesbians: Don't have sex before marriage and--haha!--you can't get married! It's a life of celibacy for you, my friend.

Making the choice to have sex should not mean a life of fear--fear of pregnancy, fear of disease, fear of cancer. And a woman who can't control her body can't control any other aspect of her life. I wish to hell that, just once, Antonin Scalia would have to experience the terror of a late period. Or that Samuel Alito would have an abnormal pap smear. But most of all, I wish that the morality police out there peddling inaccurate information about sex would all be as honest as Janice. Because it's not really about "protecting unborn life" or "helping kids say no to sex", it's about controlling women. To hell with the consequences.

Not so comic(s)

NB: We sent this letter to the Chronicle probably a month ago, but they are apparently too busy publishing letters about how global warming is a myth to waste editorial page space on a critique of their comics selection. So I'll publish it here. And I'm not bitter or anything.

When I first read a recent letter to the editor decrying a Doonesbury comic strip, I thought that the writer must have been hallucinating. What is this Doonesbury of which he speaks? Is he not aware that Doonesbury is created by a living artist, which would render him ineligible for inclusion on the Chronicle’s sad, outdated comics page?

Then I remembered that once a week, the Chronicle likes to tease its readers—some of whom must read the comics multiple times each day to small children—by offering a slightly improved slate of comics on Sundays. That includes the aforementioned offensive Doonesbury.

Frankly, I’d rather be offended by Doonesbury every single day than read one more “adventure” featuring the “hilarious” antics of Sarge and Beetle. (That Sarge! What a character! And how about Miss Buxley! She’s a dish, huh?) Try explaining Sarge’s senseless violence—and Miss Buxley’s unreasonably sexy work wardrobe—to a toddler.

In fact, I’d rather do almost anything than suffer through the comics kept alive in the Chronicle. Johnny Hart has shuffled off this mortal coil, and yet B.C. continues to assault me with fat jokes and thinly veiled intolerance toward non-Christians. The Born Loser, another comic not drawn by the original artist—who passed on 16 years ago—is funny only if you enjoy stereotypes about mothers-in-law and abusive bosses.

I can’t attack Peanuts (who besides Lucy could be mean to Charlie Brown?) but I will say that when Charles Schulz died, his family expressly stated that they wanted the strip to end. Who are we to dishonor those wishes?

Unless you intend to run B.C. from 1991 indefinitely, could you please consider something relevant, funny and drawn by someone alive as a replacement? I’m not saying go from B.C. to Boondocks, but how about trying a little Zits or—dare I say it—Doonesbury?