From The Best of Times by Haynes Johnson

History of horrors for entertainment 141

Not that the phenomenon of exploiting tragedy and sensation is new. American, indeed human, history is replete with notorious examples, from Roman emperors offering their subjects bread and circuses in the form of staged brutal spectacles to divert them from other matters to Hitler applying that ancient lesson well by staging massive torchlight rallies before wildly cheering crowds, diverting them from horrors being committed by the Nazi regime. In every age, crowds gather instantly at scenes of suffering, and the greater the calamity, the greater the celebrated figure, the greater the crowds. Always accompanying them are the merchants of misery cashing in on the latest scandalous spectacle.

Lie to Me

The beauty of Fox's Lie to Me  is not lost on me. It oversimplifies science, dramatizes a profession, introduces sexy people into a not-so-sexy person job, and enables a 'job' to be finished within the span of an hour - this last point is cited often in TV shows because of the lack of chronology and continuity in the shows; the viewer has no conception of time. 

Yet, it does in simplistic terms what science sets out to do. Namely, unify us. Lie to Me claims that there are universal attributes that all people share and that these attributes are impossible to overcome and ignore. They make up the very fabric of our humanity. I realize that this is a simplistic rendition of actual psychology and body language but at the same time I believe that science tells us the same thing in much more complex terms. 

The Thirty Days of Barack Obama - The New York Review of Books

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22450

Great article on the first 30 days of Obama's administration. Critical but fair, I think. 

A Nation of Tax-Evaders

"What kind of civilized society can dispense with these things?"

Finally someone said it. I'm so happy I've been ranting about this for days. 

http://hnn.us/articles/62344.html

Kindle for the iPhone

I recently purchased a Kindle 2, my insatiable need to have all that's
new and pretty. Yesterday, I received an email regarding the release
of the Kindle app for the iPhone. I wasn't as furious as might be
expected. One, the current app is rather limited. Two, I love the
simplicity of my Kindle it does what it's built to do, and it does it
quite well. Three, annotations are much easier with actual buttons to
press - no nonfiction is out. As for now, I'm using my iPhone at the
gym to read fiction.
I'm a little discouraged by some of the reviews. Many compare the
Kindle app to the Kindle itself, they also compare the Kindle app to
the features of other reader apps (eReader). This is fair, but one
buys a toaster for toast. I buy an e-reader to read books. Amazon as a
massive library readily available to iPhone users. Plus, the books are
a lot cheaper. It's obviously a work in process but the library
itself, available to all these new users will, I hope, stimulate an
even greater expansion of the library Amazon has.

02/27/2009 - Stimulus protesters rally at the Gateway Arch - STLtoday.com

Like the idiots of the Whiskey Rebellion, these people think the colonists fought a war over taxes. It was a war over representation! To quote the Scottish rebel, "No taxation WITHOUT representation." My fellow constituents are represented by one of the most conservative members of the House, Todd Akin. I think the conservatives of St. Louis County can claim adequate representation so the Tea Party thing is moot. 

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/D3FFA37E8AF777BA8625756A00642DC0?OpenDocument