“When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.” — Mahatma Gandhi
Today is Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday in India in celebration of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, and the UN-recognized International Day of Non-Violence.
A couple years back, the Oregonian’s hackneyed Web front-end, OregonLive.com, started experimenting with a local implementation of Reddit, a link-sharing social network. It never gained critical mass, and it was easy to game the system to get (and keep) links on the front page of OregonLive.
Hey, we had our juvenile fun, but it was to a point: the Oregonian simply doesn’t have a clue how to operate in the 21st century new media world.
OregonLive made a number of tweaks to their Reddit system, including moving the links to the very bottom of the front page and giving up on hosting Oregon Reddit (it’s just a category at Reddit.com now). We can still have a little fun with them.
They (obviously) still don’t get new media at the Oregonian (they had a daily podcast for a couple months starting in August 2008, which petered out last March), but that’s just a critique of their delivery.
The real knock on the O is the same knock on pretty much any old school daily: their pretension of objectivity makes them shills for the status quo.
Journalist, author and pundit Dan Savage had some fun recently with what he calls a “drug war” story in the Oregonian, and gave Oregonian reporter Bryan Denson the honor of “Stupid Fucking Credulous Hack of the Day” not once, but twice in the same week.
I thought that story deserved a link on the front page of OregonLive, and voila!
Dan also published a long and humorous e-mail exchange with Denson, which is an object lesson in the insularity of reporters at the O. (Here’s Savage’s Wikipedia page, just for future reference, Bryan.)
Fear mongering about socialism in America would be comical if it weren’t so damned frightening. What can the rest of the world think of us?
We spend twice as much per capita on health care, and still have tens of millions without access to basic, preventive care. Why do we pay so much and get so little? We’re the only industrialized nation on the planet without government-run universal health care.
The free market has failed miserably to provide this basic service of modern life anywhere nearly as efficiently and completely as the governments of every other industrialized democracy on Earth.
Those who bleat about “socialism” should pause and consider that insurance, after all, shares some very basic tenets with socialism, like shared responsibility for the greater common good. Moreover, the so-called free market would collapse without the socialized infrastructure that supports it. Take, for instance:
Then of course there are all those horrible socialist “extras” like:
That’s right, folks, if you use any of those things (and you’d have to live off-grid in the wilderness to avoid them), you benefit from “socialism.” Has it taken away your freedom? Isn’t all government bad? Perhaps you should try living in Somalia for a while to experience the true libertarian paradise of no government. Don’t forget to pack your AK.
Two of the most popular government programs in the history of our nation are Social Security and Medicare. The only complaints are that they may become underfunded, and Medicare doesn’t cover enough. But nobody complains about inefficiency.
The single easiest thing we could do to solve our health care crisis (not just kick it down the road a few years) is to go to a single payer system like the rest of the industrialized world. Expand Medicare to cover all citizens, paid for with a payroll tax as it is today. Yes, your medicare tax would go up, but you would no longer have an insurance premium. Worst case, it would be a wash, but more likely, your out of pocket expenses would go down as we eliminate a significant amount of overhead currently going to duplication of administrative services, profit, and executive compensation.
The fact that this simple, efficient and cost-effective solution isn’t on the table is indicative of the power the insurance industry has over President Obama and Congress. The fact that so many Americans fear even a modest expansion of public health insurance is indicative of not only American provincialism, but also of the dearth of real news reporting that goes beyond repeating the industry message.
Got a little tired of hipsters with bullhorns and cans of beer yelling “Clear the track! Get off the track!” but otherwise had a fine time.
See the full set.
I love beets. Despite this love, and despite having been a produce guy for 10 years, I never tried Chioggia beets until I grew them in my garden this year. They are an Italian heirloom variety, milder than your average beet, and they don’t stain. The first batch I harvested, I roasted to bring out their sweetness, but tonight I wanted to steam them to appreciate their unadulterated complexity.
I also harvested the first big batch of green beans tonight, and some baby zucchinis, and the basil’s still kicking of course, so I whipped this up for dinner tonight.
Heat olive oil over medium-high flame in a cast-iron skillet. (Use more olive oil than you think you’ll need; this will not only cook the onions, garlic, beans and zucchini, it will dress the beets and rice.) Caramelize onions. While onions are caramelizing, steam beats.
Once onions are starting to brown, add green beans, thinly-sliced zucchini, and thinly-sliced garlic; sear well. Add salt and pepper and lemon juice. Add a little olive oil if it doesn’t look like enough.
Arrange beets on a bed of rice, top with skillet mixture, Parmesan cheese and lemon zest. Garnish with a sprig of basil. Enjoy wth a glass of Pinot Griggio and your super-hero spouse (serves 2).
From my flickr friend OneEighteen, who drives ships in and out of the Port of Houston for a living.
My coworker has me on a Bollywood crash course. Evidently, you don’t know Bollywood if you don’t know the classic 1960 film Mughal-e-Azam (The Emperor of the Mughals). This film has everything: love, war, music and dance. It was shot (mostly) in black and white, with critical scenes in Technicolor, then re-released in 2004 fully colorized.
When I watch “foreign” (i.e. non-U.S.) films, sometimes the actors start to seem familiar in strange ways. It took me a while to figure out that Akbar (Prithviraj Kapoor) reminded me — a lot — of Jed Clampett (Buddy Ebsen). Turns out they were born within a year of each other.
Then I start to think the Anarkali (the beautiful Madhubala) looks a lot like Cher (Madhubala was about ten years older than Cher).
By the time I get to the end of the film, I’m sure I’ll find a match for Salim.
Tonight’s garden feast: capellini with garden fresh pesto, rustic whole wheat bread, and rice salad with fresh green beans, zucchini, basil, and jalepeño. I haven’t made pesto for years, but it’s not hard to remember.
(You could use some other kind of nuts — walnuts, almonds — but then don’t call it pesto.) We’ve got some old food processor I never use, but it’s perfect for this. Go cut a bunch of basil. I used the equivalent of about four bunches at the store. Rinse the bugs and dust off them, the strip all the leaves (and the tender buds) into the food processor. Add several cloves of garlic, a couple glugs of olive oil and some grated cheese. Puree the heck out it and set it aside in the fridge. Toss with hot pasta later.
This is a variation on something I used to do with cilantro, but I’m not growing any cilantro this year. I added garbanzo beans to make a complete protein. Make a bunch; keeps well in fridge for several days.
Prep beans like you’re going to freeze them: submerge in boiling water one or two minutes, then transfer to ice bath. While beans cool, mix rice, beans, a glug or two of olive oil and a fair amount of lemon juice. Add minced jalepeño, onion, basil, grated zuchinni, salt an pepper. Lemon zest would be great if you’re using fresh lemons. Add the beans, stir well, and set aside in the fridge to marry flavors.
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