Another reason not to like pork!

The United States passed its healthcare reform bill today. Unsurprisingly, it seems to have its ups and downs. Obviously the actual bill was made public and can be viewed online at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3200: but let's take a minute to step back and consider what has been given to the public to be viewed. At 1018 pages and with so much cross-referencing you could go googly-eyed it isn't exactly an accessible piece of legislation. It reminds me a little of the Jim Crow law literacy tests that put the power right into the citizens hands - assuming the citizens have the ability to access that power (and we know they don't!)

The Bill grants healthcare to millions of people - and if you don't think this is a good thing, at least on the fundamental level, then you needn't read on at all. If we are going to live in a unified country certain things have to be somewhat socialized and medical treatment is one of those things. I can't argue that the quality of care won't go down - it very well may. I can't argue that this will cost the average citizen more - I don't see any way to avoid that. But when a conservative pundit makes these arguments he or she is simply laying a thin veil over their real belief: I want the best care for myself and my loved ones no matter who else must suffer. The response, much too late in the country's history, is finally to say that every citizen, regardless of social status, deserves the same opportunities to be healthy and safe.



What is upsetting to me about this bill is the sheer amount of pork that gets tied into the 1000+ pages of this bill. The 100 million dollars being sectioned off for Nebraska to buy one senator's vote is unacceptable. Referred to now as the "cornhusker kickback" this money is stuck in the bill simply because it was shoved in by a few senators making moves and then kept in because no one had the energy to do anything about it. Something is wrong with the way we do legislation if 100 million dollars gets lost in a 1000 page bill. That same 100 million could certainly be put to better use addressing health issues in a more pro-active way. Which brings me to my final point:

The healthcare bill seems like a step forward but I can't help but wonder if the nation isn't dragging a few toes when it should be making a real leap by addressing the many issues that cause sickness in the first place. Attack smoking. Attack the American diet, heavy in red meat and dairy products, high salt foods and overly sweet drinks. Attack the entire military-industrial system that encourages people to drive when they could walk, snack on the couch when they could read in the park and hit the drive-thru when they could be picking fresh fruit from a home garden. The government can pretend that these are the free choices of every individual and thus part of our inalienable rights but if that was the case then why are companies like Wal-Mart and McDonald's, ConAgra and Monsanto pouring billions of dollars into advertising this unnatural lifestyle and keeping the individual or the odd politician from exercising their legal rights.

Geodesics - the fountain of youth

I was reading this NY Times article on Geodesics - a differential geometry term for the line that finds the most direct path between two points when compared to paths nearby. Not being a student of math or an admirer for that matter this explanation sent my mind in many other directions thinking about time and space as simple concepts and the innate (in-nate, as in the latin nasci to be born with it) mathematical knowledge humans seem to share.

We all try to move in the most economical of ways. Without really considering why (some of us could certainly use a bit more exercise) we all walk similar footpaths to our destination. "The Spaniaad [sic], if on foot, always travels as the crow flies, which the openness and dryness of the country permits; neither rivers nor the steepest mountains stop his course, he swims over the one and scales the other." - The London Review Of English And Foreign Liturature, by W. Kenrick - 1767 The Geodesic, a human mathematical discovery, is really just a relabeling of the natural instinct to fight time; An evolutionary trait acknowledging the greatest motivation of our self aware society: death.

It also makes me consider the human perspective in relation to the broader, albeit purely theoretical, world perspective. The local and the global. This is most easily evidenced by our use of two-dimensional maps. When we want to cross a field to sit under a tree we center the tree in our line of sight and walk towards it. This is because our perspective suggests the path is on a flat plane. To get from New York City to Rome we turn to a map and try to draw a similar straight line but that route would prove extremely out of the way because of the spherical shape of the earth. We scoff at the fly who bumps hopelessly against the window pane searching vainly for the point at which it entered, but are we any more adept?

2 recipes - no hassle

Scrumptious! Hmm well i suppose it's debatable. Personally I have a thing for healthy, hearty food. you know the kind you can eat until your well full and not feel like your organs are straining to digest everything. If you grew up on a steady diet of Doritos and Mountain Dew (sometimes i wish i had) then you might not actually taste this food as you eat it but I find the more I incorporate healthy, veggie-filled vegan meals into my diet the more i appreciate the rich and subtle flavors of a proverbial cornucopia of vegetables, legumes and grains!

On the left: A sweet potato star - basically just threw four small potatoes into the microwave with a paper towel over them and microwaved on high for 5, flipped them and another 5! Don't forget to poke a few holes so it looks like you actually did some cooking (haha, i don't know if it's even necessary but i did it).
Kale, Red and Green Peppers and Onions Sauteed with Cashews - Basically throw in the chopped onions with a little olive or canola oil and then cut the peppers and throw them in and then after 5 minutes on high heat rinse, rip and toss in the moist kale and throw a lid on the pot for another 5. Finsih with a spritz of soy sauce and a pinch of basil and sugar. top with crushed cashews.

On the right: Throw some pearled barley in a pot and cover with water plus half an inch and a drop of oil and salt. Bring to a boil and then let simmer for about an hour (don't fret this is when you start the other dish)
Another onion diced in a pot with a drop of oil on high heat. Cut up the carrots like they do in cartoons (little coin shapes) and throw those in and halve a bunch of brussel sprouts and toss those in. pour in about an eighth of a glass of water and cover so everything steams. 5 minutes later lose the cover and throw in some balsamic vinegar and a pinch of pepper, basil and sugar. saute another 5 and your set!

Well i liked it anyway!

The Short Short Story

It never fails. As soon as I enter a lecture hall my mind reaches a transitory state - one in which I have never-ending streams of creative visions battling inside my cranium for attention. Of course none of the evident synapse firing is willing to pause, even momentarily, on the discussion topic I need to be taking notes on for my final exams. Today I began to think about the short short story and the brevity of a good anecdote. I was reminded of a contest I once came across in a literary publication on the Brooklyn College campus. The Ten Word Story.

It struck me as strange at first, maybe even bordering on pointless, to try to convey an idea worth conveyance by using such a limited amount of words. I thought: I've strung together longer lines of expletives after banging my toe and that wouldn't even skim the surface of the bad day I might have been coping with. On the other hand, one must consider the archetype - the ideal form as Plato might say - and whether this might not be the best way to handle the telling of a story in which 99 parts out of 100 have already been told to death.

Well thinking lead to researching and I found some short shorts that were so comfortably under ten words, so terse that one can very comfortably use the term epigrammatic, and yet so richly embroidering an archetypal story that is already firmly rooted in our collective consciousness. Anyway, It doesn't escape me that in discussing the benefits of single-digit word counts I have managed to compile the opening bit of an essay - rather antithetical to my point. So first I will display two Short Shorts from two of my favorite authors that I feel capture the essence of these bonsai trees of the literary forest.
"For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn." - Ernest Hemingway
"Longed for him. Got him. Shit." - Margaret Atwood


And because I couldn't help but dive in head first a little myself, a few of my own attempts:

Timid
He wants to kiss you. Scared you will turn away.
Divorce
Made in China. Shattered now. One less thing divided, ruined.
Wine
Red. White. Red again. His keys clumsy in the ignition.
Retrospect
Mother warned I'd catch pneumonia. How wrong she was, cancer.
Necessity
Why do in ten what you can accomplish in - crap.
Every
Let us eat. If for no other reason than ________.

And finally let me encourage everyone to post some of their own. I'd love to hear some fun and creative ones.

Dig that crazy music prose!

Hello Cool Cats. Ciao mad monks and trippy teamsters. It's about time for a media update from this end. As you know I spend a lot of time absorbing culture and art like a sponge from books, movies, music and television and as I go along some of the craft is particularly magical and makes me turn my head twice and scream out "Yass! Keep blowing that crazy horn!" So I like to throw out some suggestions for anyone who is in limbo waiting to discover their next favorite book or can't-stop-playing-it-on-repeat iPod song.

First order of business. I took in two plays of late and can't say a bad thing about either. the first, La Cage Aux Folles, is the theatrical version of a movie called 'the birdcage' with Nathan Lane. I wasn't a big fan of the movie but the dancing in the show was pretty off the wall. Second, and much more resonant in my long-term memory and emotional spectrum, was 'The Lion King'. Now I know you can't toss a lion off of a mountain (ouch, too soon?) without hitting someone who saw and loved the movie but the play has a more enriched story line. There's also the little fact that the costumes are awesome, the large dancing numbers are all showstoppers and the music is poignant. So here's my suggestion for people who can't scrape together the 70 bucks (20 pound student price, in my case): Since you already know the bare bones story from the movie just youtube some of the best songs. I added a link to my favorite but you'll have to supply your own box of tissues.

Yassir - moving on - Zoom! If my mad and manic style has thrown anyone off I apologize but i'm trying to emulate one of my new fave books: On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Now, I have a history with this book and it ain't all pretty. On two other occasions I picked the thing up and tried to get into it and both times were a gargantuan fail. I don't know what was missing for me then that isn't now. I would suggest sitting down to this text if you are traveling or just a travel enthusiast and you will be immersed in the 'hit the road' attittude Kerouac pushes. For me, though, I think the most compelling part of this read was the realization that he wrote his entire first draft in two weeks on a 100-ft scroll he taped into his typewriter. For someone interested in the writing craft this is a deeply compelling idea. Most novels struggle with an author who wakes up every day in a slightly different mood him/herself and the text can reflect that but Kerouac saw this one through, albeit on a hazy benzadrine kick. It also entranced me to think of this book as the closest portal into the lives of the mysterious and short-lived beat poets. These were men who cut their teeth in the streets of New York City at a time when the depression and the first great war had left people at a complete loss and they struggled with those emotions through their prose and poetry. Can you dig it?

Time and travel

Wow! Bang! Zoom! Amazing - my last post was exactly two months ago today and that wasn't an intentional occurence. It's strange and mystic the way our bodies and our souls keep time when our minds can't be bothered with it. Not much has happened in the 62 days that passed undocumented. Christmas (not my holiday but still a good way to mark the time) flew by in a whir of chinese food and broken Yiddish lessons with my grandma. New years was spent on a Virgin Atlantic plane in between two girls, both named Molly, one who I will probably never see again and the other who I run into frequently. We landed in London and just a few short days later I began my semester of Study Abroad here.

I've been hesitant to write about London and travel and my experiences. Mainly because everything i've done that has been worth my time hasn't been worth a tale and the same is true in the other direction. I stood at the gates of Buckingham Palace counting the Royal guard and marvelling at their stillness. I stood at the center of every bridge from Westminster to London and traced the winding path of the Thames as it defined this mad laid out city. I craned my neck up to Big Ben's clock until the big hand made a full loop around its little brother and I've ambled through so many museums from the National Gallery (tops in art) to the British museum (great history since the Brits stole from the entire world at one point or another) and the Tate Modern (if modern art is your bag) that I sometimes forget this city has a present to go along with its past. But, through all of that, I found very little meaning in the personal sense that I was looking for. I took pictures and just as quickly deleted them - you can find better on a ten-pence postcard.

What stands out in my mind is the feel of a pint glass, standard pub fare, as i rotate it in my hand. The reticent muttering of "cheers" as I hold the door for someone. The way that the stone-slabbed streets sometimes shift as you glide over them. The discrete camaraderie shared on the crossing of the Waterloo bridge in the morning when we all turn up our collars to the harsh London wind and fog as one. The way that you can identify a Welshman from an Irishman at the pub by the speed and irreverence of the stories he is no doubt telling to the nearest soul. Or maybe all I will remember are the occasional rides on the tube, across from friends, as we sit quietly mimicking the reserved Brits. Comfortable amongst each other our eyes dart greedily around sucking in the scene like a vacuum. Prep school students undoing their ties and tall businessmen hunching over from the slanted tube ceilings. The world comes off most different when it is mostly the same. My memories of the great things will almost certainly fade while my memories of the good, the plain and the mostly mundane, will hopefully be harbored for much longer.

Funny but important video about makeup

This youtube video speaks for itself but I will say this...

There is no FDA regulation for makeup products which can contain lead, aluminum or other harmful heavy metals. If you or someone close to you regularly slathers on the rouge check this video out.