I'm all a Flutter:

The new twitter. Because they could.

New favorite guy:

Atul Gawande.

Among other things medical, Dr. Gawande writes about health care reform, the practice of medicine, and, most recently, about the torturous effects of solitary confinement on prisoners, from Iraq and Afghanistan to international black sites, Guantanamo Bay to the American penal system--by far the largest in the world.

Yeah, he's pretty rad. Been reading his articles for a few years now, but this is the first interview of him I've seen (thanks Charlie). Charmingly compassionate, with the intellect to back it up.

These days, for me anyway, the medical profession isn't held in the highest, or at least as high, regard. For just about the past year (Happy Anniversary, brush with death!), I've had more doctors and appointments, more things poked into me, taken out of me, and put back in, than I care to think about.

And though I'm still here, writing, sometimes it seems as though it's despite it all. For instance, the greatest medical breakthrough and insight in my case history has come not from one of the heads of cardiology at a major NY hospital, but from my brother--and he's a lawyer. So maybe you can understand my underwhelming appreciation of the medical community.

No doubt, the meds I'm on are surely helping to keep me ticking. But, if not for the FDA, I could have prescribed them to myself with a few blood tests and WebMD.com.

To be clear, I'm not expecting a doctor to go all Alexander-the-Great on the Gordian Knot that is my own personal, unending, real-life episode of "House." But a few small cuts wouldn't hurt... hell, it might even help, right?

Anyway, thanks bro!

Bad boys, watchcha gonna do?

I can't even watch it (the TV show "Cops"), turns my recently filled stomach. It takes the combined effort of four vehicles and at least twice that many cops to bust a 5 foot-something crackhead for selling the police some rock. This is our tax dollars at work.

Actually, they're local: so if you don't live in whatever state they were filming in, it's not your money. Though, soon enough, it will be.

Unfortunately, one of the big winners of Obama's plan to save the world--besides the bankers and financiers--will undoubtedly be law enforcement. Now, while part of it will go to the more agreeable functions of law enforcement, part (the bigger part) will be squandered on ineffectual and morally corrupt drug laws.

Actually, law enforcement, here the lack of, is almost as much to blame as the Wall St., if not a willing accomplice. Of course, the blame for this lies within the Bush Years, when the amount of FBI agents that dealt with the financial system was cut to a 1/5 of it's size, according to Glenn Greenwald. Oh, that, and the more than implicit understanding that the people in charge didn't even believe in the enforcement of regulation in the first place.

Speaking of the lack of regulation, Greenwald seems to me the one of the most outspoken (more than Krugman even) critics of the Obama administration. And you know what, I'm starting to agree with them.

It's beginning to feel like a bait&switch. People voted for change, yet it seems like every position, at least those having to deal with the economy, are the same old guys, with the same old ideological lineage. Geitner and Summers to Greenspan and Bernake, and Rubin and on back to Milton Friedman.

(laugh it up, smart guys)

But you don't have to take my word for it! (Line from an old TV show, "You Can't Do That On Television," sorry.)

Check out Greenwald's blog on the link above. He covers all of this, plus he just released a paper on drug decriminalization for the Cato Institute.

It always starts with the dorks

(thanks to The Economist)

Dynamite, chemical weapons, the a-bomb, and then nuclear weapons. Eventually, in the future, of course, there will be the Terminator.

But for now, it's the computer-science geeks that applied math models and game theory, to peddle purposely complex, over-valued bonds made up of crappy mortgages. Thanks, smart guys.

Taking it to the air-waves, again.

The lines below are from another comment posted to WNYC, this time to The Brian Lehrer Show, my fave. They were asking submissions for an Economic Villains Final Four or sorts. This was my recommendation, that oddly no one else mentioned:

Oh, c'mon. Uncle Milty (Milton Friedman) gave all these people an ethos, ethics (or lack thereof), and an excuse for indulging in their more base instinct.

We all became complicit in valuing the "creation of wealth" and making rock-stars out of bankers and financiers.

Then today, Brian was talking about street art/graffiti of late concerning the financial crisis. (Btw: We need a good name for this thing, financial/economic/banking crisis/mess/meltdown, etc. But, usually, I think, these things get named after the fact. Did they call it the Depression during the Depression? WWI used to be called The War to End All Wars, until it wasn't. That would've been pretty cynical to call it WWI before WWII had happened.)

Though I didn't get on myself, what I told the screener did get passed on to Lehrer to mention: since it hadn't been mentioned yet, Shepard Fairey, now of Obama Hope poster fame, has been doing political, and specifically ills of capitalist/consumerism, street art for years--and better than most. So, you're welcome, Shepard. God knows you need the press.

Also posted this pic. Had posted it here, already, but what the hell: you probably didn't see it the first time, slacker.

Mexican illegal immigrants called spoiled cry-baby's

(Actually, boat refugees from Haiti.)

Earlier this week, reports quoting north African immigrants, braving the Mediterranean in ramshackle boats to get to Europe, calling their illegal counter-parts on the U.S.-Mexico border, "lazy," saying they have it "easy."

One north African man, intercepted with others off the coast of Italy, invited Mexicans sneaking into America to try "crossing a sea, sometime" to reach the relative economic prosperity to the north, "not some pansy-ass river."

"Hell, at some points on their border, there's not even any water at all!" a young woman, with three small children, went on to say.

Reminded that border patrol have, in recent years, been buoyed (no pun intended) by trigger-happy, volunteer-patriots on the American side, another man from north Africa replied, "Sharpshooter, schmart-shooter; I'll take my chances with them over the Old Man and the Sea, any day."

Asked what Old Man he was referring to, the illegal-immigrant broke down, sobbing, "Why Spencer, why?

When it was mentioned that similar boat journeys between the Caribbean and the U.S. have similar hardships, often ending in tragedy as well, the group of north Africans refugees responded with a simultaneous, "Ha!"

One young man, with a slight limp, shouted out, with apparent support from the rest, "The Caribbean? Have you ever been to the Caribbean? It's like swimming in bath water."

"Bring it on," he added, as he returned to the group huddled together for warmth around small campfire.

I can't sleep, so

Thought of this thing I'm going to start, I guess, right now. I've been thinking for a while, especially since moving to Bed-Stuy, a more residential and poorer area than where I was before, of how to go about giving something back to the community somehow.

I've been in NY for 13 years now, and it's been pretty good to me. These days, I have more time available to me than most to do something, so I am.

Just got this email address: foodforfolks@gmail.com. That's also the name of the thing (without the @gmail.com, obviously).

The idea is pretty simple: "you email. we pick up. done." That's the slogan. Catchy, right?

What's that mean? Anyone in the city, available on the subway or bike-able from my place, can email me their address, and we (me for now) will come by and pick it up. Bring it all back to my house, box it up and take it to food pantries, etc. (not sure exactly how this part will work). Simple, huh?

No real cost to me or anyone else other than time. Besides the subway fare, which I usually have unlimited rides, anyway, there'd be the occasional taxi to get the stuff from my place to whatever place could use it.

What do we pick up? Food.

Please:
- no large containers: things that normal people buy at normal stores for themselves, I'm hoofing it non-carbon, here.
- non-perishables (think that'd be obvious, but)
- the healthier the better; we are trying to help people, after all.
- NO money. This is strictly a resource based project, word.

Have been a messenger in the past both bike and foot, so have the bag for it, at least. Good for me too, because it's mostly a solo venture. As much as I like other people, having to work with them can be problematic. I'll still get to deal with people, presumably (hopefully) quite a few--just not for too long, for any period of time either of us want to.

Makes sense to me. It's reverse-delivery or delivery donating; instead of supplying something demanded, the demand is to supply the provider of a service--and all for a good thing: feeding hungry people. It's the ease of delivery culture in major cities, that I'm so much a believer in, plus doing something good brought to your door.

I'm posting publicly as I write this for, at least, 3 reasons. One, to see if any of you have any ideas, comments, critiques, suggestions, etc.; another, to show the positive things that come from insomnia; the last, to force myself to follow through on it, after waking up later to day.

The 27's

Hendrix, Joplin, Robert Johnson, the guy from Badfinger, Jim Morrison, and 15 years ago, yesterday, Kurt Cobain. All dead by 27, and some none too prettily either. This guy just wrote a book about those above and other musicians who died at the age of 27. Not by the age of 27, but in that year.

Kurt Cobain, I remember well. One of the first deaths during my lifetime to actually affect me, Cobain's (apparent - not getting into it here) suicide, like most, bothered me not so much for the loss of the person but for the question: why?

Kurt is a good example of this. If at the time anyone was making bets on who in the world of entertainment, perhaps the world itself, would be most likely to off themselves, he would have been an odds on favorites. Still, even though it was almost as if his whole life and career had lead up to this, his violent death came as a shock; suddenly and, seemingly, "From Out of Nowhere" (great Faith No More song from the era).

Seen below, Cobain had just recently become the father of a baby girl. In interviews and on TV, it seemed as if the talk of Kurt finally getting control if not rid of his chronic heroin addiction might be true. From however humble (read: poor and unstable) a background he came from, and despite the effects of hard living, Cobain appeared to by "settling down."

Maybe that was the problem. According to some popular wisdom of the time, partially, it was. By that point, the inherent paradox of the corporate-sponsored usurpation/co-option/whatever of the "revolution" that was the Alt/Grunge/etc. scene, that was Nirvana, Kurt's band, was becoming unsustainable and for Cobain himself, unfortunately, unbearable.

(If unfamiliar with 90's alt-music culture: the "Diet Grrrl" on Francis Bean is a satirical--or maybe just clever--reference to the Riot Grrrl-cultura of which Courtney Love, Cobain's wife and FB's mother, was a icon for.)

(Yep, that's Francis Bean these days, age 16)

I also remember when I turned 28, and being pleasantly surprised I'd made it. I had heard of the magic and tragic #27, until that point having always worked in, around and/or playing music since adolescence.

To be sure, I was no heroin addict, chronic or other wise. (Lost a few friends who were, though.) No, but I definitely spent some years that I can't recall much of; think of it as a living-in-NY-as-a-young-punk tax. But most on the list of 27's didn't blow their brains out with a shotgun because they couldn't get off smack and couldn't stand being the most venerated musician of their time either.

Indeed, a constant of the 27's is the trouble of fame--what to most of us often comes off as out-of-touch or pretentious at best. But here, anyway, it seems relevant to what's going on: all things being equal, even without the pressures of fame, these are the folks (not all of them, but the ones who went messily and/or self-destructively) that would've been the most susceptible to the things one can do to oneself.

Whether or not the lives they led were made any worse is impossible to know. Perhaps their wild and crazy lives helped some to come out of the shells they would've otherwise wasted away in, long before the age of 27. Maybe that's just wishful thinking.

But, at least with Cobain, drugs or no drugs, he probably wasn't going to wind up being a people-person. That doesn't mean he wouldn't have been a good person, a good father.

Really, though: fuck all of us. It's not about what we missed out on, not about our loss. Rather, it's that Francis Bean never got to find out just what kind of person her father was.

Lord knows, with a mother like Courtney Love, a good dad would be of use.

Holy Crap! Italy, I'm so sorry.

Recently, in a rail against the Catholic Church, I went as far as to call for the carpet bombing of Vatican City. Well, in Rome, an earthquake just displaced tens of thousands, with the death toll at 150 and rising. Oops, my bad. I guess my vengeance was a bit off the mark.

So, for real Rome: sorry about this. But, then again, my mom always liked to warn me about my friends she didn't take kindly to: you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. The point is Italy, this is your fault for allowing these fanatics to reside in your country, the capital city, no less--Christ you people treat them like they're the Pope or something... oh, right.

Mi blogo loco

from Fox News

This is my second live-blog. Eh.

Here comes a statement from Gov Patterson: tragic day.

Apparently, an Asian-America in his twenties opened fire in a civic center for immigrant affairs. Supposedly, people were taking a citizenship class. Way to get out of class.

12 dead, up to 40 held hostage. Not known if this is over or not.


(Going to keep updating...)


Twitter (damn) and googlemaps are coming in handy.

The way they talk about guns belies their lack of knowledge: "a air...high-power air-gun." Air-gun? That would've been a good thing, unfortunately not the case.

First eye-witness interviewed live, young, white Italian-homeboy: saw two Asian males taken out in plastic hand-cuffs. They've said it's normal to put suspects or hostages out in cuffs because they can't know for sure which is which.

Oh, btw, I'm getting all this from a live feed online of a CNN international affiliate. The major channels need to just stream all TV live if they want to survive, and soon.

(...)

So I guess Asians are taking over from the skinny, ostracized, white dudes. Remember Virginia Tech of course. There was another shooting in the-boonies-VA recently, found when googling "shooting" looking for the one up here. Oddly, in more metropolitan VA, near where I grew up, around DC, there seems to have been a bunch of crazy shootings.

Eye-witness again: they were foreign. Reporter: they were Asian?

So, it is a Hostage Crisis In New York, reads the top of the screen, disgustingly splattered with blood. Who thought that was tasteful? They didn't.

Ah, well, I guess it is an international CNN--they just went to another story... about Pakistan.

(...)

Fox News: seems it's over. Lone gunmen has killed himself. Press conference at 4:30... I'll be back. May be 13 dead now.

(...)

This is the end, beautiful friend. The end. - JM

NBC News and news services

updated 4 minutes ago

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - Twelve to 13 people were killed Friday whe n a gunman walked into an immigrant services center and opened fire, Gov. David Paterson said. A federal law enforcement official said the gunman was found dead in the building.

"I speak for all of New York when I offer my prayers for the victims and families of this tragedy," Paterson said hours after the gunman shot several people and took dozens hostage. The gunman first blocked the back door with his car, authorities said.

Two people were seen in handcuffs as they left the building, but NBC's Pete Williams said they were not suspects and that police were simply taking extra precautions as people left the building.

(...)

Make that 14 dead, including shooter. He was a south-Asian.

(...)

41 year old, named Wong.

I'm sorry, but, fuck!

The drug Plavix should not have to advertise. If someone needs to take it, a doctor should just give it to them without having it suggested by the patient because they happen to see a commercial on the wall mounted TV about it while recuperating--FROM THEIR HEART ATTACK.

If not, that's bad health care. What group of people are these? Had a heart attack, but didn't go to a hospital or see a doctor?

Or perhaps it's because their trying to scare the shit out of people who haven't had a myocardial infarction but have plenty of reason to be afraid. Plavix is tapping into the fear market that's ironically been developed by folks trying to do good and make people healthier.

Irony, absurdity, or pehaps the cold weather and crappy liquor?

A Russian human-rights activist, Lev Ponomaryov, was beaten up in Moscow. The attack followed the killing of a human-rights lawyer, Stanislav Markelov, earlier this year.

Really? Well, I've heard these peaceniks can be quite confrontational.

A prominent Chechen, Sulim Yamadayev, was reportedly shot dead in Dubai. Mr Yamadayev had fallen out with Chechnya’s president, Ramzan Kadyrov. He would be the fourth well-known opponent of Mr Kadyrov’s to be killed since September.

You know, sometimes I think I might have been better off staying in the land of my ancestry, eastern Ukraine and up through the Baltic states, beating up dissidents and murdering political opponents... maybe it's in the blood. Or maybe I just need to eat lunch.

(Thanks to The Economist for the italics.)

The above is an old Soviet propaganda poster of a supposedly common phrase back in the day: "And you are lynching Negroes," a response directed at America's hypocrisy for it's treatment of blacks while criticizing the USSR for it's lack of "freedom."