A Truly Hilarious Video

Nobody spoofs Hollywood movies better than the people who make them.

Thanks to our friend Pedrão for posting this on Facebook and to Heitor for finding it there.

Ice Skating in Brasil

I really don't know why this ice skating scene struck me as so funny; our Brazilian hosts thought it was as normal as anything else one might encounter at The Mall.

At first, I thought it was some kind of faux ice, an Astro-Ice if you will, but, no, there is some kind of refrigeration system that is working overtime to keep this area frozen.

This would seem amazing enough here in São Paulo, but foto is from Vila Velha, which is a much warmer place than São Paulo.  Heitor and I didn´t even take long pants with us and, in the four days we were there, one of the people in the house never once had a shirt on.  It´s hot there.

But malls will be malls.

Playboy Interview

You probably won´t see me posting many links to Playboy magazine here, but of course I only go there for the interviews

Actually, I want you all to know this is the first time I've ever gone there.

I recommend this interview with Paul Krugman.

http://www.playboy.com/magazine/playboy-interview-paul-krugman

Some random administrative notes:

I appreciate the fact that people are coming here and checking out this blog, especially since I know that most of the time I'm meandering on about things that aren't necessarily that important in anyone's life.  In the last month, the average has been about 9 hits per day, not exactly in the same league with a baby licking the cat's ass on You Tube, but it's a beginning.

Many, perhaps most, of you receive these posts in your email (curiously, I don't even know where in the blog one goes to make that selection), and I appreciate your willingness to let me clutter up your inbox.  Still, if there is a post once in a while that particularly irritates you or that you particularly like, I encourage you to go to the blog and leave a comment. 

One reader (Bob P), who happens to be an old high school friend with whom I have been exchanging emails (sometimes multiple emails per day) for about a year now, has very graciously been leaving comments of late on the blog.  These are not private dialogues and I know I speak for him as well as myself when I say we would welcome the involvement of interested others. I realize that clarifying adjective "interested" is going to leave most of you out, most of the time.  But every once in a while, you might feel like sharing your opinions, and please know they will be welcome. 

Our exchanges sometimes take on a He Said/She Said tone (Jane, you ignorant slut......), which probably doesn't exactly encourage you to jump in but, in reality, we are both reasonably civil and can even admit mistakes now and then.  At least Bob can; I am not sure if I will be able to, should the time ever come when he makes a convincing argument. Ok, enough, you get the idea.

A user-friendly change to the blog:  Heitor has very kindly shown me how to attach a video to the blog instead of just printing the link to the video.  Some of you may have noticed that the Stephen Colbert video about table saws was first just a copy of the link, and later changed to the video itself.  You can thank Heitor.

Get the Lead Out

Thanks to Bob Peterson for this link: 

 http://www.ivillage.com/lead-your-lipstick-making-you-sick/4-a-428853

Note:  The FDA has an acceptable limit for lead in Candy. Check the ingredients the next time you're thinking of picking up a little something for your sweet tooth.

In case you don't want to read the whole article, I'll print this little teaser.

10 Worst Offenders (FDA limit for lead in candy is 0.1 parts per million, or ppm):

1. Maybelline’s Color Sensation in Pink Petal (Lead content: 7.19 ppm)
2. L’Oreal Colour Riche in Volcanic (Lead content: 7.00 ppm)
3. NARS Semi-Matte in Red Lizard (Lead content: 4.93 ppm)
4. Cover Girl Queen Collection Vibrant Hues Color in Ruby Remix (Lead content: 4.92 ppm)
5. NARS Semi-Matte in Funny Face (Lead content: 4.89)
6. L’Oreal Colour Rich in Tickled Pink (Lead content: 4.45)
7. L’Oreal Intensely Moisturizing Lipcolor in Heroic (Lead content: 4.41)
8. Cover Girl Continuous Color in Warm Brick (Lead content: 4.28)
9. Maybelline Color Sensational in Mauve Me (Lead content: 4.23)
10. Stargazer lipstick in shade “c” (Lead content: 4.12)

A More Postive View of Corporate Responsibility

In fairness, since I have betrayed a pretty negative view  of American corporate behavior in a couple of recent posts, here is a counter example involving McDonalds.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/13/omg-mcdonalds-does-the-right-thing/

It is probably best not to speculate too much about motive in these situations, and just acknowledge and credit commendable actions as they are taken.

To continue the corporate kudos, it is important to remember that several corporations were far ahead of government(s) in the area of gay rights. Again, their motives are less important than their actions.

Leaded Gasoline and Personal Responsibility

I don't know why I even bother but:
Overview: Leaded Gasoline History and Current Situation

By Bill Kovarik

SUMMARY: Leaded gasoline should be counted among the great environmental disasters of the 20th century, given the numbers of people killed or slowly poisoned by the dull grey metal. Significantly. alternatives were well known from the beginning and preferred by the same researchers who created leaded gasoline. They originally saw it as nothing more than a bridge to other, safer fuels. Leaded gasoline was phased out in the US from 1975 - 1986 and in Europe in the 1990s. It is still being used in the developing world.

The full article can be found at:

http://www.radford.edu/~wkovarik/ethylwar/overview.html

And there are other sites where you can corroborate the history that is outlined here.

I personally believe that the history of corporate behavior is so reprehensible that this particular story is more typical than aberrant. The fact that the Ethel Corporation's files pertaining to the issue of lead additives to gasoline (what was known and when) are still not open to the public is itself a "crime."

Steven Colbert´s "People Who Are Destroying America"

Watch this video and think about industry opposition to seat belts, air bags, warnings on cigarette packages, the phase out of leaded gasoline etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Obviously this is a one-sided story, but corporate opposition is as predictable as flowers in May....just not as welcome.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Lead Poisoning

I'm sure I wouldn't be posting this, were it not for the irony of still having the Gopnik article fresh in my mind, when I heard something interesting that seems to relate to it.

One of the things Gopnik commented on was the mysterious 40% drop in the crime rate that can't be attributed to any of the conventionally-expected causes.

While listening to a podcast today of a Real Time with Bill Maher broadcast from several months ago, I heard someone mention the fact that the U.S. crime rate continues to be low, despite the conventional logic that crime rises as the economy tanks.  One of the guests then said, very matter-of-factly that it was due to the elimination of lead in house paint. 

Maybe I'd heard something somewhere in the past about the relationship between lead and violence, but it hadn't seriously registered.

I did just enough "research" (ha!) when I got home to learn that it is, at least, a credible theory that lead in paint and gasoline directly contributed to a rise in violent behavior.  There have been studies that look at data from nine different countries around the world that seem to show a twenty-year lag between the elimination of lead from gas and paint and a reduction in crime. 

One of the premises seems to be that children eat paint chips all the time.  And I guess, when those chips contained lead, twenty years later the little nippers held up the liquor store or knifed grandma.  Now, I have no memory of every having eaten paint chips as a child, or ever having seen a child eat them.  But then I've never pointed a gun at anyone and asked for money, or personally known anyone who has.  So, there you have it, I think.  Proof.

The thing that puzzles me is the fact that lead poisoning was recognized in ancient Greece before Christ, and it was also understood in Rome.  Why was it still allowed in paint and gasoline in the 2nd half of the twentieth century?  You might wonder why I would be so naive as to even ask that question, since cigarette executives were still suppressing internal reports and denying a causal relationship between cigarettes and health problems at that same time.


Who knows where the truth lies about the relationship between lead and violence?  But the very possibility of a relation as direct as this does argue for a little bit more humility and less self-rightousness in the way we deal with criminals.

In case you missed Doonesbury this week:

The Last of the Prison Posts

Gopnik doesn't provide data on the numbers of prisoners in the U.S. who are incarcerated in prisons run as businesses by private companies, nor how many such prisons exist, but as he points out, "it is hard to imagine any greater disconnect between public good and private profit..." The obvious public good of having as few people as possible in prison runs up against the profit motive of having as many inmates as possible, maintained as cheaply as possible.

This is from the 2005 Annual Report of the Corrections Corporation of America. They are obliged to caution their shareholders that there exists a "risk that somehow, somewhere, someone might turn off the spigot of convicted men:

Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities....The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.

We have the situation of "a capitalist enterprise that feeds on the misery of man trying as hard as it can to be sure that nothing is done to decrease that misery." Gopnik points out that this particular company, as well as others in the same business, spend millions lobbying legislators to keep their businesses profitable by keeping the convicts coming.

The exploitation of prisoners is not just limited to the private companies that run the prisons for a profit. The following is from the site http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8289. It is dated March 2008, but there is nothing in Gopnik's article to suggest things are any better in 2012.

Who is investing? At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom's, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

[Former] Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix recently urged Nike to cut its production in Indonesia and bring it to his state, telling the shoe manufacturer that "there won't be any transportation costs; we're offering you competitive prison labor (here)."

There is a problem when prisons are run as corporate profit centers. It is another instance of Americans running away from their social responsibilities.

More on The Caging of America

Perhaps the most intriguing, shocking, and clearly thought-provoking idea in Adam Gopnik's New Yorker article is one he cites from Harvard Law Professor William J. Stuntz's book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (2011). In trying to arrive at the root cause of our "incarceration epidemic," Stuntz apparently starts with such obvious and immediate examples as tough drug laws, zero tolerance policing, and mandatory sentencing laws. But his search leads him all the way back to the Bill of Rights, "a terrible document with which to start a justice system," and which he contrasts with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, which Jefferson "may have helped" to shape at the same time Madison was writing the Bill of Rights.

His problem with the Bill of Rights is its emphasis on process rather than principles. This emphasis, Stuntz says, leads to a system where accused criminals get "laboriously articulated protection against procedural errors and no protection at all against outrageous and obvious violations of simple justice."

As an example, "you may be spared the death penalty if you can show a problem with your appointed defender, but it is much harder if there is merely enormous accumulated evidence that you weren't guilty in the first place and the jury got it wrong." We see stories all the time that validate the truth of that assertion.

Our obsession with due process and our "cult of brutal prisons" share an important and essential trait, their impersonality. "The more professional and procedural a system is, the more insulated we become from its real effects on real people. That's why America is famous both for its process-driven judicial system...and for the harshness and inhumanity of its prisons." Stuntz argues that all countries started sending fewer people to the gallows in the 18th century and more to prison. He says it was that same Enlightenment inspiration which led to our "taste for...profoundly depersonalized punishment."

"Once the procedure ends, the penalty begins, and, as long as the cruelty is routine, our civil responsibility toward the punished is over. We lock men up and forget about their existence."

"Don't Take It Personally" is the slogan engraved over the gates of the American penal "Inferno."

Gopnik quotes Dickens' published comments after his visit to a "model" prison in Philadelphia in 1842 about the psychological torture, the "tampering with the mysteries of the brain," that is just as pertinent to what is being done today in our supermax prisons, or the supermax wings of other prisons.

Having grown up with the idea that our focus on legal process is its strength, it is shocking to consider that there is a dark side to it.

We're not done yet with the Gopnik article. We haven't even touched on the absurd subject of prisons as for-profit businesses.

The Caging of America

The title of this post was first the title of an article by Adam Gopnik in the January 30th edition of The New Yorker. It is our national disgrace. Or at least one of them; we can't forget the field of Republican presidential candidates.

For anyone inclined to equate the drop in crime over the last twenty years or so with the increased rate of incarceration, Gopnik cites a recent book, The City That Became Safe, by Franklin E. Zimring, a professor and head of the Criminal Justice Research Program at Berkeley Law, that shows otherwise. In the early 1990s crime rates started falling by a factor of about 40% (as much as 80% in NYC), and it was experienced throughout all of the Western World...and for reasons that still seem about as mysterious as blackbirds falling from the sky.

Zimring's book analyses the 80% drop in crime in NYC, and what distinguished it from the 40% drop experienced by the rest of the Western World. It is important to note that, during the same 20-year period in which the incarceration rate has been going up in the country at large, in New York state the rate has been going down. "Whatever happened to make street crime fall, it had nothing to do with putting more men in prison."

"In truth, criminal activity seems like most other human choices--a question of contingent occasions and opportunity. Crime in not the consequence of a set number of criminals; criminals are the consequence of a set number of opportunities to commit crimes. Close down the open drug market in Washington Square, and it does not automatically migrate to Tompkins Square Park. It just stops, or the dealers go indoors, where dealing goes on but violent crime does not....the logic is self-evident if we just transfer it to the realm of white-collar crime: we easily accept that there is no net sum of white-collar crime waiting to happen, no inscrutable generation of super-predators produced by Dewar's-guzzling dads and scaly M.B.A. profs; if you stop an embezzlement scheme here on Third Avenue, another doesn't naturally start in the next office building. White collar crime happens through an intersection of pathology and opportunity..."

Zimring's analyses of NYC, as channeled through Adam Gopnik, doesn't show any miracle cure. It shows that it was the result of a lot of small changes in police procedures. "Curbing crime does not depend on reversing social pathologies or alleviating social grievances; it depends on erecting small, annoying barriers to entry." (It's a six-page article; I'm being simplistic in my summary.)

But that discussion about the relationship between prison sentences and crime rates is a sidebar. The article is about the shameful American rate of incarceration.

Here are some facts:

Most American prisoners are serving sentences much longer than those give for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world.

Texas alone has sentenced more than four hundred teenagers to life imprisonment.

There are more black men in prison, on probation, or on parole than were enslaved in the 1850s.

There are more people in U.S. prisons (excuse me, under correctional supervision) than were in Stalin's Gulag at its height.

The imaginary "city" of Lockuptown is the second largest city in the U.S.

The rate on incarceration in the U.S. in increasing:
In 1980
220 prisoners per 100,000 people

In 2010
731 prisoners per 100,000

In the last two decades, state spending on prisons has risen six times faster than the rate of spending on education.

At least 50,000 men are in solitary confinement, many of them in "supermax" prisons. The author suggests locking yourself in the bathroom (no windows) and imagine staying there for 10 years, with one hour per day of solo exercise.

More later.

Taking It to the (Wo)man

Hey...sanity won.

When I made my posts yesterday, I wasn't aware of the organization that was already underway on Facebook and other sites to get the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to reverse its decision regarding Planned Parenthood. But it certainly felt like a decision that could be undone with a little public pressure. And it hardly took any time at all.

Sort of feels like a mini Arab Spring.

Bloomberg Steps in to Help

Here is the latest on the subject (at least the latest I know about)...from the NY Times website.

I still believe it is important to contact companies like General Mills (Yoplait) to get them to put pressure on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation (what a name!) to reverse their decision to defund Planned Parenthood. It is ridiculous to politicize people's charitable impulses by pitting breast cancer research against abortion rights. It is so unnecessary.

In addition to contacting companies that sponsor the Pink Ribbon campaign, it would be useful to contact the Susan G. Karem for the Cure Foundation directly and let them know your displeasure. The address is: www.komen.org. I'm encouraged to report that when I first tried to log on, their server was too busy too handle it, but I did finally get through and find the "contact us" area and let them know my feelings.

We'll see how this plays out. (to state the obvious)

February 2, 2012, 3:11 pm

Mayor to Give $250,000 to Planned Parenthood

By MICHAEL PAULSON and KATE TAYLOR

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, responding to the controversy over a breast cancer advocacy group that cut off most of its grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening, said Thursday that he would make up a large part of the missing money.

Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire with a long-term interest in public health, said he would give Planned Parenthood Federation of America a $250,000 matching gift — he will donate $1 for every new dollar Planned Parenthood raises up to $250,000.

“Politics have no place in health care,” he said in a statement. “Breast cancer screening saves lives and hundreds of thousands of women rely on Planned Parenthood for access to care. We should be helping women access that care, not placing barriers in their way.”

Mr. Bloomberg then highlighted his contribution on Twitter, posting a series of messages asking his followers to contribute to Planned Parenthood.

The controversy erupted this week when the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation said it would not renew most of the grants it had been making to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening. The Komen foundation had been giving about $700,000 a year to Planned Parenthood.

A Komen board member said on Wednesday that the decision to cut off the contributions was made because of the fear that an investigation of Planned Parenthood by Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, would damage Komen’s credibility with donors.

Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, issued a statement saying, “On behalf of hundreds of thousands of women nationwide who rely on Planned Parenthood for breast cancer education and screening, we are enormously grateful to Mayor Bloomberg. This contribution will help ensure that politics don’t interfere with women having access to health care. People all across the country have stepped forward in the last 48 hours to offer help and support, and the mayor’s donation will help ensure that no woman is denied breast cancer services because of right-wing political pressure campaigns.”

Mr. Bloomberg has been a longtime supporter of both the Komen foundation and Planned Parenthood. According to his office, he has given $555,000 to Planned Parenthood over the years. And he has given $200,000 to the Komen foundation, much of it in the form of matching grants to Bloomberg L.P. employees who have run in the foundation’s fund-raising road races.

More About the Pink Ribbons

To follow up on the paragraph I highlighted in the last blog, I went to the website of Americans United for Life (aul.org) and I recommend it to you, just to know what that crowd is up to. The Race for the Cure pink ribbon is specially highlighted on the site, and the decision of the Komen organization to defund Planned Parenthood is the biggest story. In fact, Planned Parenthood is obviously AUL's principal bugaboo, as it seems to be now for all the social conservatives in this brave new world we live in.

It won't leave you with a very good feeling to see that pink ribbon linked up on the same site with AUL's crusade against Planned Parenthood.

The original article by Andrew Rosenthal referred to the various products that display the pink ribbon, specifically mentioning yogurt. That would be Yoplait yogurt, owned by General Mills, a company pretty sensitive to controversy. Their website is easy to find, and their phone number is on the side of the yogurt container. Just saying.

This seems like a good cautionary example of the baby with the bathwater allegory. Clearly the Race for the Cure program has done, and is doing, good work. The Yoplait website claims that they alone have donated $30 million in the last 13 years (which I assume is the number of years they have had their association with the pink ribbon campaign). The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the Race for the Cure organization a B+ rating, and Charity Navigator shows that a little more than 80% of their income goes to programs.

But maybe consumer pressure on companies like General Mills can force the Susan Kamen Race for the Cure organization to rethink their alliance with AUL, and to reinstate funding for Planned Parenthood. These were both so obviously political decisions and bad ones. But decisions can be unmade too, if there is the proper motivation. It doesn't take as many complaints as people might think to generate a response from a corporation like GMI.

The president of AUL is quoted on their site, in defense of the Kamen defunding of Planned Parenthood, as saying that “Breast health is not Planned Parenthood’s core competency..." Well, I would respond that it isn't AUL's core competency either, and at least everyone assoicated with Planned Parenthood has women's rights in the forefront of their minds, which is more than can be said for the people of Americans United for Life.

Muddying the Pink Ribbon

By ANDREW ROSENTHAL...from the NYTimes of February 2, 2012

I know that political forces on the right are determined to restrict access to abortion and to vilify the legal procedure, even if it means diminishing the availability of other health services that help women and children. But, naively I suppose, I’m still shocked by the lengths they’ll go to get their way.

The latest example is the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s decision to sever its relationship with Planned Parenthood. Komen is the nation’s largest breast cancer advocacy organization—they’re responsible for the pink ribbons you see on yogurt and tons of other products—and Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider. Until recently, Komen provided grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening. This was an extremely effective partnership: Over the years, Komen’s money helped Planned Parenthood offer screenings to some 170,000 women.

The Komen foundation claims its decision was driven by an investigation started by Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, into Planned Parenthood’s use of federal Medicaid funds.

A spokesman for the foundation said it feared that its donors might be offended by its ties to an organization under investigation. That’s just not believable – unless Komen has decided to focus its fundraising exclusively on conservatives.

Planned Parenthood, like any organization that receives federal Medicaid dollars, has come under investigation dozens of times. It has been found in violation of Medicaid accounting rules and sometimes fined. There also have been questions as to whether it complied with state reporting laws when under-age girls came in seeking abortions.

Komen never expressed worry about previous complaints. So what changed? A right-wing anti-abortion lobbying organization, Americans United for Life, has been cheering on Mr. Stearn and tarring Planned Parenthood’s commitment to reproductive freedom. Could this decision also have something to do with the fact that Karen Handel, a Republican who ran for governor of Georgia in 2010, joined Komen as its president in January?

To me, there is no doubt that Komen is taking sides in the abortion debate. And that’s going to change the look of that pink ribbon, which is already prominently displayed on the website of Americans United for Life. (My emphasis)

Abortions, it bears repeating, are safe and relatively rare. About 2 percent of American women have one a year. It is also a completely legal procedure. But having lost the legal battle, anti-abortion forces decided that they would use political influence and intimidation to stop women from exercising their constitutional right to privacy. In the process, they have not only made it harder for women to have abortions, but also to get birth control counseling, prenatal care, and now cancer screenings.

This is a test

I am just trying to determine if reducing the quality of a picture will make it fit better in my posts.

You might wonder why I have to do this, but pictures I have posted that don´t display properly in the blog always have looked perfect when I previewed them before posting.