It is already cued up.
And don't forget this really good (short) one from the Edge of the American West.
I think it is important to listen to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving Day
We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.
I think it is important to listen to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving Day
Agreed. I have tried to institute this as a tradition in the Idealist household (being a DFH), but I have never gotten through more than a few minutes before my kids wander off.
An Alternative Thanksgiving, thanks to Paul Krugman
I burnt out on Arlo somewhere in the late 80s. Sorry
It's notable to me for the sheer number of quotable lines. The Group W bench is a frequent reference point. But a typical case of American blind justice, Facha the dog, the twenty-seven color 8-by-10s with the circles and the arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was, and of course I'm not proud...or tired. All of those show up in my speech on a fairly regular basis.
The "new" version is funny for the coda about how many things in the world are exactly eighteen minutes and twenty seconds long. But I'm a traditionalist, and I like the old version. Momentary bigotry aside.
I too think it is important to watch the video bob linked on Thanksgiving Day.
OT, except in that it's about family stuff, but I'm reading a book dedicated to me, and good God, it sucks. What is the protocol for this?
Not seriously asking for advice, the book was published years ago, there's no danger o f getting asked my opinion about it over Thanksgiving dinner; just griping.
I have class tomorrow and Friday. I did see some stores here advertising Friday as an extended hours shopping day, but there's no holiday to go with it!
I did see some stores here advertising Friday as an extended hours shopping day, but there's no holiday to go with it!
Can't get much more American than that.
Man, you know ogged is really dead when Unfogged gets scooped by EOTW on this story.
I saw it on Mefi before dana posted it, but, eh.
It's not a big story unless she was also the English Courtesan.
Man, you know ogged is really dead when Unfogged gets scooped by EOTW on this story.
Speaking of whichness, Happy Thanksgiving to the zombie from Iran! May he enjoy some sort of brain repast or something.
Obviously, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone else, even if you are forced to endure turkey.
Also, in the annals of disappointment department (pardon any pwnage, please):
Obama Pardon Tally: Flightless Fowl 1, Human Beings 0
Debra Saunders laments that 10 months into his presidency, Barack Obama's first [and only! -m ] presidential pardon has gone to . . . a turkey.[...]max
18: You know what was surprising, in a sort of good, sort of bad, way? I just heard that the person I know in federal prison got e-mail access.
Good: so much faster and makes more sense for quick send-offs of family news.
Sort of Bad: presumably, it's for easier screening (whatever, they were doing that anyway).
Actual Bad: Based on previous behavior of many guards over numerous facilities, I'd assume some prison guards will be able to block e-mail access more easily than they could regular mail access. (Not that they don't block or fuck with regular mail, but regular mail they could bring to you, so it's harder for a guard to make a case to block it.)
Eh, I'm not the person to make this case, because I get all blindy and ragey and not at all tepidy.
I'm not the person to make this case, because I get all blindy and ragey and not at all tepidy.
Sounds like we need some procedural liberals on the case! Where's Tim Burke?
20: Katherine or CC or leblanc* might be willing to argue the line I want to, now that I think of it, in a way that would make me say, "Hey, that's what my blind rage wanted to say!"
I don't think of any of them as procedural liberals.
*not to put anyone on the spot on a holiday when no one checks the blog anyway
Where's Tim Burke?
Composing a long, thoughtful comment in response to your question.
18: I don't have any point of reference. Is that a normal pardon-rate for a president? I have this notion that pardons come in clumps at the end of a term, but maybe that's wrong.
19: I'm not certain that the costs/benefits line up clearly. Having the privilege to have e-mail access can certainly be yanked, as anything in prison can get yanked. Items sent by postal mail were always subject to delay, confiscation, censorship or outright theft, and many of them can't be sent by e-mail anyway.
One of the upsides is the sheer time factor. Maybe I'm biased by thinking of a couple of very time-sensitive issues, but in instances where either something happened in the prison that the prisoner really wanted to inform others about, or when something was happening to the prisoner's family and the prisoner needed quick updates, e-mail seems like a huge advantage over postal mail. If the "somethings" are bland enough that prison officials don't care, and/or if the prisoner has a prior system of slang or shorthand to communicate controversial topics, e-mail seems like a clear win.
Plus, many inmates are states and states away from their families -- even best-case scenario, you're looking at 3-4 days to get a letter across the country.
If the "somethings" are bland enough that prison officials don't care
The "somethings" are never bland. "Ooh, Smith. You're mouthy. No computer access [hence, no family news] for you today; you should cool off," is what I'm imagining. That's what happens, even with mail, or gym or landscaping class. That's what happens.
Er, by "never bland" I mean "often bland". I'm going to step away from this.
The "somethings" are never bland.
I think we're in agreement. That's what I meant when I said : Having the privilege to have e-mail access can certainly be yanked, as anything in prison can get yanked.
But that's just the general arbitrary and capricious exercise of power in a prison context; it's not focused on the content of the messages. I'm not convinced that inmates are going to have privileges pulled over the content of their e-mails any more or less often than they did over postal mail.
Just hypothetically, let's say a prisoner is sort of a jailhouse lawyer type and wants to get word of a recent inmate beating out to an advocacy group. If he's savvy, he'll be able to write his message in a slightly coded way, so that it's less likely to get flagged by officials. I am not convinced that the medium matters very much in this case; you can set an e-mail system to screen for obvious words like "bomb" or "escape," but there's still a volume factor for the humans to sort through. So due to the time factor I'm tentatively thinking of e-mail as a net win, especially given the cost of stamps.
I could be talked out of this by someone with more recent direct experience or expertise.
Apparently I feel strongly about content.
That's what happens, even with mail, or gym or landscaping class. That's what happens.
So what makes this more of a problem with e-mail?
I think I basically agree with Witt's 26 (as 28 implies). The problems are with the prison system generally, and they are both numerous and serious. In that context giving e-mail access to the prisoners probably doesn't add any problems that weren't there already, and it may (or may not) help alleviate some of those problems. But my knowledge of all this is extremely limited, of course.
(To be clear, commenters like teofilo and Witt are doing a stellar job talking about this sort of thing. And I'd love to read more comments on it. I can't seem to comment further on it without getting personal in a way that makes me feel weird. So by all means talk about it.)
Alternatively, I killed the blog.
I dunno, I could drone on at length about the stupidity and human-killing properities of prison systems in general and ours in particular,* but I'm not really sure anyone wants to hear it. Plus it's late.
I did just unpack another few cartons (hello, old friends) and found my copy of Among the Lowest of the Dead, which is IIRC about state-level inmates, not federal (and death row to boot), but is extremely good, and recommended. Now I'm wondering where James Gilligan's Violence is, because that should have been in the 300s too. Hmm.
*About which I feel a weird sliver of guilt/responsibility because it was Quakers who started us on the road to modern-day isolation craziness with Eastern State Penitentiary.
There's another way to pack them?
(Seriously, I had 57 cartons and did want to be able to find what I needed while they were still packed. Plus, they were already in rough Dewey order on my shelves -- my concession to other people needing to be able to find stuff -- so it was fairly simple to do the packing.)
Did you move recently or something?
Nah, I moved a year ago, but the eternal wallpaper-stripping and painting process is forcing me to set up my bookshelves in stages. I'm too lazy to fill up floor-to-ceiling bookshelves only to have to dismantle and move them a few months later when I have to paint the wall behind them.
There's also LC...
But if they were already Dewey, there's no reason to break that up. My books have slowly gotten out of order enough that I'm going to have to redo the system. But since they're mostly in boxes in another country and mostly academic history I don't need to get regularly, there's not much incentive until I have a stable living situation again. It does seem kind of weird, sometimes, to be checking out books I own from libraries.
And by "the system", I mean an arbitrary list by box number of the contents of boxes.
Ah. With 57 cartons' worth, that sounds like the forgivable sort of laziness.
Hmm, books--I should try reading those again. Instead I just read Wikipedia. I feel this is not enough. And tonight I read my HS alumni magazine, which is the only piece of mail to me that still gets delivered to my parents' house. It turns out scholarships are still being awarded, kings and queens are still being crowned, service projects are still being carried out, valedictorians are still being recognized, and alumni/ae are still submitting news of their life milestones to the appropriate authorities. Nothing new under the sun, folks.
I don't know much about real prisons. I do know that giving a client of mine in a surreal prison the opportunity to talk to his family on the phone every few months has materially improved his life and theirs. And I'd be happy to lock up the people who prevented this for six very long years.
Email sounds like a great idea.
on the alice's restaurant thing, my dad actually went to his draft intake interview balls-out tripping on some insane amount of liquid acid, and they were like: you, we don't really want. I kind of want to know more details but he doesn't remember much about it, apparently. my dad can be awesome sometimes.
on the jail front, it looks like dumbass will be OK, just deported, but this other woman I accompanied to court yesterday...jesus. there was a bag x-ray thing at the entrance to the court, and she tried to bring in...an entire bottle of gordon's gin! and I was trying to convince her that voluntary commitment to IMH (institute of mental health) might be a way to get out of going to jail, and her lawyer was like, YOU, IN THE BACK, GOOD FUCKING IDEA, but she wasn't having any of it. my sponsor is having a talk with me about how I need to start going to al-anon and stop trying to help the most hopeless motherfuckers that turn up. and I'm like, but duuude, THEY NEED HELP! this is so transparently the result of me being the caretaker for my borther and sister in our alcoholic family, but knowledge of ths fact doesn't appear to have much effect on the situation.
my brother's name is "borther", as should be totes obvs.
Alameida, I think we need to form a society of people with caretaker issues (not just Al-Anon type ones) to take care of eachother.)
On prison e-mail. In MA, you can't have it, but you can under urgent situations make very expensive phone calls. The guy I know works on a computer fort his job where he processes invoices, but it doesn't have internet access, and I suppose that one could make a case for not allowing web browsing access, but you could have old-school Juno e-mail easily enough.
They check the letters already, and stupidly in this state you're limited as to the number of books you're allowed to have.
40: you have my sympathy/empathy. It's a hard habit to break.
42: can I join?
So do you think Krugman has always been bitter about the fate of Native Americans, or is this a sort of reverse 9/11-Chappaquidick thing? I was a centrist until Bush destroyed the country; now I'm outraged about Wounded Knee.
Not that I think he shouldn't be, of course - I was just thinking, "Whatever happened to the mainstream, establishment economist who made me so angry in the Seattle days?"
Despite a lot of caveats with what you should conclude from them, these maps of state-by-state variations in the top 50 recipe searches at allrecipes.com are kind of fun.
45: Searches from just yesterday.
45-6: So is green bean casserole relatively unpopular in New England, or does everyone just know how to make it already?
I thought it was rather mean of them to include the variant "sweet potatoe" just to show what states don't know how to spell.
On prison e-mail: realistically, I wonder how easy it is to encode a message into something innocuous. If you want to write so that the first letter of each word spells something of its own, say, how hard would that be? I'd try to figure it out myself but I'm at a relative's for Thanksgiving right now, so that would be even more antisocial than going upstairs for a few minutes to check my e-mail and blogs.
40
my sponsor is having a talk with me about how I need to start going to al-anon and stop trying to help the most hopeless motherfuckers that turn up. and I'm like, but duuude, THEY NEED HELP!
I don't see why the two are mutually exclusive. I mean, the obvious explanation is if one or both takes up a lot of time, but that's not what I would have guessed.
44: As of eight years ago, the country's custom became "jingoism or die (professionally, at least)". Republicans cheerfully gave up on patriotism as soon as a Democrat got elected, but most everywhere else the habit is still in force. Your memories of Krugman as "mainstream establishment" - are they older than 9/11? If not, that could explain it right there. If so, I don't know what to tell you.
I wonder how easy it is to encode a message into something innocuous.
Reminds me that some of our deranged jingoes defended this barbarism in part based on the possibility that Padilla might have been able to blink some USA-destroying message in code.
I wonder how many of us will pick out the first letters of 49 until we conclude that Cyrus was or was not trying to encode something? You should really check to make sure it's not a first letter code combined with a shift along the alphabet code.
51: Fortunately, uther commitments keep me entertained.
realistically, I wonder how easy it is to encode a message into something innocuous.
I thought to see the fairies in the fields, but I saw only the wicked elephants with their black backs. Woe! How the sight awed me!...
...Does that ring a bell with anyone?
but I saw only the wicked elephants with their black backs. Woe! How the sight awed me!...
I'm pretty sure this is an encryption of "I tawt I taw a puddy tat."
53: No, but it it wounds my heart with a monotonous languor.
I remember Krugman being centrist, but still not quite mainstream, during the Seattle days.
Krugman flipped Winter-Spring 2001-2002. He had been upset during the campaign of 2000 at Bush's fiscal lies, tho no huge fan of Al Gore. But it was the combination of war, pedal-to-the-metal monetary policy, and the second round of tax cuts that led Krugman to decide that the Republican Party was a Revolutionary Party, determined to throw the nation/world into social unrest for ideological ends.
Still center-left, still not a passionate Democrat of leftist, still mostly focused on policy, but policy meant to keep Republicans out of power, who are a clear, present, and immediate threat to cause the destruction of civilization and the end of life on Earth.
58 -- It's always struck me as strange that people didn't get that from contract with america -> shutdown -> impeachment, but I guess the whole 'not a dime's worth of difference' thing meets some kind of profound psychological need.
Eh, you try being an impressionable teenager being raised by Republican parents during those years and see how you turn out.
impressionable teenager
I'm having a hard time keeping these words together.
Not all of us were rebels during those years. I did grow my hair long. So I was a long-sideburned quasi-Republican.
Coming to a theater near you: "I Was a Teenage Republican"
59:One of the things I love about Krugman is his understanding of his own limitations. He is an economist, and it took economic insanity to turn him.
Me too. Wars of aggression, Torture, vicious politics, economies have survived much worse.
But wars have been waged for millenia and there are very few exceptions to the rules. Wars are expensive, and inflationary. Taxes are raised, and money is tightened (to keep the prices of commodities reasonable*).
The 2003 tax cuts were a world-historical event that makes the election of Obama a relative triviality. I think the actual goal was a Greater World Depression.
*Greenspan et al managed to shift the inflation into FIRE in ways that are not yet understood.
Hello Eddie & Leroy, please invite mom by eventually in Norm's garage, & tough out really tired uppity rednecks easily dears.
Hello Eddie & Leroy, please invite mom by eventually in Norm's garage, & tough out really tired uppity rednecks easily dears.
The supply of game for London is going steadily up. Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper and for preservation of your hen pheasant's life.
I do not think the commenter Beddoes (new here?)
is ever making clever witticisms.
This advice, slightly modified, still applies.
I think I've posted the whole of "A Recollection" by John Peale Bishop here before, so will merely link it. A vertical code of a similar, but slightly different sort.
