JEFF JARVIS IS BLOGGING — with great honesty and eloquence — about prostate cancer, leading the Insta-Wife to wonder why there’s so much more attention given to breast cancer than prostate cancer. (It’s the boobies, I’m pretty sure.) Anyway, there’s a Boobiethon for breast cancer, but there’s no Prostate-a-thon. But there is a mustache campaign to raise money for prostate cancer research. You’re supposed to grow a ’70s porn mustache, but if that’s embarrassing you can always tell ’em it’s a Lucien Nicolet techno ‘stache. Only the cognoscenti can spot the subtle difference anyway . . . .
Archive for 2009
October 24, 2009
BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of news from the Apple empire.
POLIWOOD: Can The Internet Save Hollywood? With guest Thor Halvorssen.
MELISSA CLOUTHIER: Sarah Palin Strikes Back. “With her decision to endorse Doug Hoffman, the conservative (not Republican) candidate, Sarah Palin sends the Republican Party a very clear message.”
SWINE FLU UPDATE: In Oakland County, Michigan, “Vaccination Hell.”
Related: Obama declares swine flu a national emergency.
But Mickey Kaus wonders if it’s all trumped-up. I think, though, that the reason they’re not bothering to distinguish between H1N1 and seasonal flu is that at the moment, there isn’t really any seasonal flu yet. If it’s flu, it’s swine flu.
UPDATE: Swine flu cases overestimated?
And more skepticism from Michael Fumento. Plus, several readers think this is a case of Rahm “never let a crisis go to waste” Emanuel at work — declare a health crisis and it makes national health care look somehow more urgent. But while I discount the “Swine Flu Vaccine Is Obama’s Katrina” talk, their handling so far isn’t something I’d put forward as an actual argument for more government involvement in health-care delivery.
More here, including the full text of Obama’s order.
MORE: America In The Midst of Two Major “National Emergencies.” “President Obama’s swine flu declaration is the 33rd national emergency declaration since 1976.”
MEASURING TIME: How your brain creates the fourth dimension. Sounds as if listening to trance or techno might make you smarter — or, anyway, speed up your neural processing.
ALAN BOYLE rounds up some reactions to the Augustine Committee report on NASA’s future.
AN INTERVIEW WITH ITAMAR AREL on Artificial General Intelligence.
THOUGHTS ON the legal regime for mining the moon. And the full paper by Richard Bilder is here. It’s very interesting, though for reasons expressed at some length here I am not as sanguine regarding the Moon Treaty.
ILYA SOMIN on Libertarianism and Culture.
IN THE MAIL: From Dr. David Gratzer, Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster.
SHOCKER: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PAY GETS CUT: “The best and brightest find better-paying jobs elsewhere because they are the best and brightest. What does that leave behind? Usually, either people who can’t afford to check out because of their age, or people who simply can’t compete in the open job market because of a lack of marketable skills, accomplishment, or experience. Of course, this describes exactly what has happened to the firms in which American taxpayers have invested hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Well, it could have been worse. They could have put “community organizers” in charge. Uh oh.
THE WAGES OF LOUSY MAINSTREAM POLITICS: One fifth of electorate consider voting BNP. “The YouGov poll, taken hours after the BBC show aired, indicates that 22% of people in this country would ‘seriously consider’ voting for the far-right party in an upcoming election.” I believe that the BNP’s appeal stems from a sense that New Labour, and the Tories, are unable or unwilling to deal with problems like aggressive Islamism and economic decline, that ordinary Brits find troubling. I’m not sure if ineffectual liberalism is actually a precondition for fascism, but it certainly doesn’t help matters.
UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails:
Glenn — The aspect of the BNP surge in the Uk that keeps getting missed is that the UK has had a perfectly reasonable, not even vaguely fascist conservative-libertarian third party — the UK Independence Party — for quite a while. It was trashed and tarred as “fascist” and equivalent to continental parties such as Le Pen’s. Now they have a real fascist party…
As I say, the wages of lousy politics.
STIMULUS! St. Petersburg Times: “In an economy where there is a pressing need to help the growing ranks of jobless in manufacturing, public safety, technology and construction, it seems the height of folly for $2.3 million in federal economic stimulus grants to be targeted to train more hairstylists, nail technicians and masseuses in the Tampa Bay area.”
MEGAN MCARDLE: Polling mysteries.
UPDATE: From the comments, there’s this explanation:
I find all these poll numbers fit very neatly within the same change in viewpoint, which perhaps is best summed up by:
January: Hooray, we’re saved!
Now: Holy crap, these guys don’t have a frickin’ clue about anything, do they?Every once in a while, the cult of the expert implodes in this country, and the bulk of the citizenry stops believing in anything they say, whether it’s about health care, the economy, or climate change. A mulish conviction that it’s all being made up on the fly to feather well-connected nests sets in.
Yes, I think that could be the way things are moving.
SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT AT A GERMAN PROTEST IN FAVOR OF HIGHER TAXES:
Mr Vollmer said it was “really strange that so few people came”.
Yeah, who’d’ve thought it?
MINITRUE WAS NOT PLEASED: NPR Analyst Compares Obama to Nixon, Issues Full Apology.
IS CNBC silencing criticism of Obama?
I thought that was all settled with the Immelt meeting.
HAD SUSHI LAST NIGHT with J. Storrs Hall, nanotechnology luminary, President of the Foresight Institute, and author of Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine, and Nanofuture: What’s Next for Nanotechnology. I’d never met him before, though we’ve corresponded and I’ve reviewed his books. But sooner or later, everyone comes to Knoxville — in his case, for the AGI Roadmap conference!
REALLY WORKING FOR THE SENIOR VOTE . . . Obama To Tax ICDs, Pacemakers. Call it the anti-Cheney tax. . . .
HEH: “I’d advise Mohammed El Baradei’s surviving colleagues to take the elevator, but then again the aunt of Kofi Annan’s discredited sidekick Benon Sevan fell to her death accidentally stepping into an empty elevator shaft shortly before she was due to be questioned about the Oil-for-Food scandal. If you work at the UN, get a gig on the ground floor.”
NATHAN MYRHVOLD on global warming politics. “The way you deal with things you don’t know about is to research them! That’s what we are advocating.” Well, there’s your problem.