(This is a post in which I try to save all the things in my GoogleReader subscription that seem worth keeping around. The post title’s reference is to a Talking Heads song, “Born Under Punches,” and the style is nicked from those fun Books and Culture blog things my friend Nathan Bierma used to do.)
A Texas jailer actually sort of got punished after getting caught bartering with prisoners for oral sex. (Usually that’s just a slap on the wrist.) On the other hand, Tazing 72-year-old ladies is still OK. It just got a little harder to lie to immigrants about the consequences of pleading guilty to charges.
This free NRDC report on “Simple and Inexpensive Actions” to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions actually got me to eat a veggie burger: it’s that persuasive. It may actually be possible to “test” the theory that there is a multiverse, thanks to some cool mathematical tricks. Geoengineering to save the climate may or may not be an OK idea. While we’re at it, we might do something about all the plastic in the ocean (which is working its way into the food chain). Maybe plastic-eating microbes could help, though you’ve got to wonder about the byproducts from that. Two percent of humans may enjoy a kind of synesthaesia in which time is perceived as a shape, but the best part may be the pop-culture reference New Scientist uses to explain it.
The UK considers its relationship to the US “profound and vital,” but they don’t want to date exclusively anymore. On the other hand, the UK has some lethal air and a habit of patent secrecy, not to mention possible complicity in US post-9/11 human rights abuses, so maybe a break would be good for us both. As long as I’m criticizing English-speaking nations beloved of liberals, Canada’s hate speech laws are sucktastic, and they don’t mind cozying up to the occasional right-wing Latin American dictator either.
Still, at least they didn’t waterboard a crazy person eighty-five times. Defending US torture is a great way to get a book contract, and a Washington Post column, even if you’re a hack speechwriter with no journalistic credentials, and your book is a tissue of lies (see first link in sentence). The courts have once again condemned NSA eavesdropping. Gotta wonder what will happen to that ruling if it gets to the overdog-loving Roberts Supreme Court, and speaking of which, let’s not replace Justice Stevens with Cass Sunstein, no matter how much it’ll piss off Glenn Beck.
Executions may be increasing in China but abating in, of all places, Texas. US-China relations are chilly as ever, but Chinese willingness to consider sanctions on Iran may make some US policy goals easier to achieve. This must be the kind of nonsense Obama had in mind when he used to talk about “bipartisanship.” Thank God for the knee-jerk obstructionism of the GOP, which may yet kill Obama’s offshore drilling plan.
India declares education a right for all children, volunteers to reprocess US nuclear fuel, and successfully test-fires a nuclear missile named after the Hindu fire god. Japan’s farm policy seems calculated to please locavores. Did you know Ezra Pound used to write for the Japan Times? Activism against the use of child soldiers seems like a no-brainer, but the laws of unintended consequences and Great Power self-interest still apply. Life in Africa’s slums. Everybody’s talking about Netanyahu’s “snub” of Biden, but life-saving charities are being intimidated right out of Gaza, partly as an unintended consequence of US sanctions. The guy who virtually invented marriage counseling was a hilariously creepy, made-in-America eugenicist crank.
