What the internet does

Not going to try to make a deep post here. I think we all forget sometimes just how radically the internet has upset the world. Its full effects have still not shaken out.

Palin saves Xmas

It's easier to spend time hooking suckers to buy your new book than to work on legislation (i.e., Farm Bill, Immigration).

Why does this "War on Christmas" shit drag on? (here, here, here...)

As Krugman memorably put it, the modern GOP is an alliance between the plutocrats and the preachers. You can't get middle and lower-class Americans to vote for plutocrats openly, so you make BS like this the underlying current that drives them. This is of course the famous "What's the matter with Kansas?" thesis. As the GOP continues its rightward slide, I can't help but think that as older white people die off so will the party they support. The GOP will become a truly regional party, largely rooted in Southern Christianity.

PS: I'm a not-so-angry atheist without an attorney. Thus I won't be "telling" Palin that Christ is no longer a part of Christmas. Lolz

Reason to celebrate

I am pretty late on this, but once I saw it I couldn't resist...

Sometimes science gives you reason to celebrate: "Does semen have antidepressent properties?"

(apparently it does)

Every man's reaction on planet earth?

Kristof on guns

Today's NYT:

The imbalance in our priorities is particularly striking because since 2005, terrorism has taken an average of 23 American lives annually, mostly overseas — and the number has been falling.
More Americans die of falling televisions and other appliances than from terrorism. Twice as many Americans die of bee or wasp stings annually. And 15 times as many die by falling off ladders.
Most striking, more than 30,000 people die annually from firearms injuries, including suicides, murders and accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. American children are 13 times as likely to be killed by guns as in other industrialized countries.
Doesn’t it seem odd that we’re willing to spend trillions of dollars, and intercept metadata from just about every phone call in the country, to deal with a threat that, for now, kills but a few Americans annually — while we’re too paralyzed to introduce a rudimentary step like universal background checks to reduce gun violence that kills tens of thousands?
Wasn’t what happened at Sandy Hook a variant of terrorism? And isn’t what happens in troubled gang-plagued neighborhoods of Chicago just as traumatic for schoolchildren, leaving them suffering a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder?
I don’t see any glib solutions here, just a need for a careful balancing of risks and benefits. I’d say that in auto safety, we get it about right. We give most adults access to cars, but we regulate them with licenses, insurance requirements and mandatory seat belts. In the case of national security and terrorism, I wonder if we haven’t overdeployed resources.
In the case of guns, we don’t do enough. Baby steps, consistent with the Second Amendment, would include requiring universal background checks, boosting research to understand gun violence and investing in smarter guns. A debit card requires a code to work, a car requires a key — and a gun, nothing at all.