The Bellingham Herald carried this article today from Jan Hoffman of The New York Times about teenagers facing early death, and being able to make end-of-life decisions thanks to a guide called "Voicing My Choices" published by the non profit agency Aging With Dignity.
It was an interesting article and opened up a subject I really knew nothing about in terms of the kinds of things that kids are thinking about when facing a terminal illness, and the things that like adults they would like to have some control over, but normally don't.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
3rd Times' A Charm
This Christmas Cactus amazes me - one of the five or so buds on it right now opened up fully today. This is the third time it's bloomed since November 2014. Man I love this plant!
Rainworks: Rain-Activated Street Art in Seattle
Check out this video of Seattle artist Peregrine Church, who makes public art that is activated by water. It was posted on Colossal.com today.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Leonard Pitts Jr. - March 14,2015
I read this on my way into work earlier this week in The Detroit Free Press.
I like Leonard Pitts, and I could totally understand the distinction he is making here.
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This is for Gigi,who can’t figure out why I don’t like Bill Maher.
Gigi, a reader in West Palm Beach, wrote me last week noting that I agree with the star of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on most political issues. Yet I have, on previous occasions in this space, expressed distaste for him. “I just don’t understand,” wrote Gigi, “why you profess to dislike someone who is so like minded. It baffles me.”
Me, I don’t see the contradiction. To whatever admittedly imperfect degree you can judge character from a television performance, I find Maher smarmy, self-satisfied, condescending and just plain nasty. Besides which, his use of coarse, sexist vulgarisms to describe Sarah Palin and of an offensive term to describe her special-needs child a few years ago strike me as far beyond the pale, whether as comedy or as political analysis.
That said, Gigi’s letter intrigues me less for its unspoken assumption that we should flock toward people with whom we agree than for the obvious, albeit equally unspoken, corollary: We should avoid those with whom we disagree.
Her bafflement tracks with the findings of a 2014 Pew Research Center study. It found that partisan animosity has increased significantly in the past 20 years, the right moving further right, the left, further left, with the result that people now largely prefer to make their lives in echo chambers where their beliefs reverberate without challenge. Half of all “consistently conservative” respondents told Pew it’s important for them to live in a place where most people think like them. Forty-nine percent of their liberal counterparts said most of their friends share their views.
Indeed, to a great degree, political identity now serves the same function in the public mind as racial identity — namely, as a fundamental and immutable marker of character and worth. To put that another way: Would you want your daughter to marry one? Twenty-three percent of consistent liberals say no, they would not want to see an immediate family member marry a Republican. Thirty percent of consistent conservatives feel the same about the idea of a Democrat in the family.
Look, I get it: we argue — and we have to, and we should — over momentous things. This is not a call to paper over critical political differences with false harmonies of Kumbaya. For the record, I doubt I could share a bus shelter in the rain with such conservative icons as Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz or Ben Carson. Drenching would be much preferable to five minutes with any one of them. But, as with Maher, that represents a judgment less of politics than of perceived character.
In this era, unfortunately, that’s a distinction without a difference. My problem is that I came of age in another era, that I remember the likes of Bob Dole, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, men with whom I could — and did — have sharp political disagreements without feeling obliged to personally dislike them or to disparage their patriotism or decency.
Having been shaped by that era, I persist in believing party does not equal character, nor ideology, identity. I feel no imperative to like you because I agree with you. Or to dislike you because I don’t.
Granted, that is an outdated and minority view, but I hold to it, largely because I can’t see how the alternative solves anything except the need to argue. If a political opponent is defined as unalterably misanthropic and irredeemably evil, then all politics is doomed to fail. Politics, after all, is the art of compromise. You don’t compromise with monsters.
No, you compromise with people like yourself, who have wants, needs and fears like yourself, though they see the world through a different lens. That’s a truth lost to this loud and polarized time. As is this:
Disagreement is not a reason to stop talking. Truth to tell, it’s a reason to start.
From the Miami Herald
I like Leonard Pitts, and I could totally understand the distinction he is making here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is for Gigi,who can’t figure out why I don’t like Bill Maher.
Gigi, a reader in West Palm Beach, wrote me last week noting that I agree with the star of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on most political issues. Yet I have, on previous occasions in this space, expressed distaste for him. “I just don’t understand,” wrote Gigi, “why you profess to dislike someone who is so like minded. It baffles me.”
Me, I don’t see the contradiction. To whatever admittedly imperfect degree you can judge character from a television performance, I find Maher smarmy, self-satisfied, condescending and just plain nasty. Besides which, his use of coarse, sexist vulgarisms to describe Sarah Palin and of an offensive term to describe her special-needs child a few years ago strike me as far beyond the pale, whether as comedy or as political analysis.
That said, Gigi’s letter intrigues me less for its unspoken assumption that we should flock toward people with whom we agree than for the obvious, albeit equally unspoken, corollary: We should avoid those with whom we disagree.
Her bafflement tracks with the findings of a 2014 Pew Research Center study. It found that partisan animosity has increased significantly in the past 20 years, the right moving further right, the left, further left, with the result that people now largely prefer to make their lives in echo chambers where their beliefs reverberate without challenge. Half of all “consistently conservative” respondents told Pew it’s important for them to live in a place where most people think like them. Forty-nine percent of their liberal counterparts said most of their friends share their views.
Indeed, to a great degree, political identity now serves the same function in the public mind as racial identity — namely, as a fundamental and immutable marker of character and worth. To put that another way: Would you want your daughter to marry one? Twenty-three percent of consistent liberals say no, they would not want to see an immediate family member marry a Republican. Thirty percent of consistent conservatives feel the same about the idea of a Democrat in the family.
Look, I get it: we argue — and we have to, and we should — over momentous things. This is not a call to paper over critical political differences with false harmonies of Kumbaya. For the record, I doubt I could share a bus shelter in the rain with such conservative icons as Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz or Ben Carson. Drenching would be much preferable to five minutes with any one of them. But, as with Maher, that represents a judgment less of politics than of perceived character.
In this era, unfortunately, that’s a distinction without a difference. My problem is that I came of age in another era, that I remember the likes of Bob Dole, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, men with whom I could — and did — have sharp political disagreements without feeling obliged to personally dislike them or to disparage their patriotism or decency.
Having been shaped by that era, I persist in believing party does not equal character, nor ideology, identity. I feel no imperative to like you because I agree with you. Or to dislike you because I don’t.
Granted, that is an outdated and minority view, but I hold to it, largely because I can’t see how the alternative solves anything except the need to argue. If a political opponent is defined as unalterably misanthropic and irredeemably evil, then all politics is doomed to fail. Politics, after all, is the art of compromise. You don’t compromise with monsters.
No, you compromise with people like yourself, who have wants, needs and fears like yourself, though they see the world through a different lens. That’s a truth lost to this loud and polarized time. As is this:
Disagreement is not a reason to stop talking. Truth to tell, it’s a reason to start.
From the Miami Herald
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
A quick note wishing everyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day, now that it's almost over (long day for me). I started my day a few minutes early this morning to get a corned beef in the crock pot to greet me when I got home. I enjoyed that with some baby rainbow potatoes, including white, red and purple! It was all yummy, topped off with some Walker's Scottish Shortbread for dessert ☺
The quote above was from my co-worker Jen K. from the stand-up meeting at work this morning. I just finished watching "The Secret of Roan Inish" from John Sayles; one of my favorite directors, and one of my all time favorite films, to round out my day. Spring is in full swing here and we had a decent day today, I hope it warms up enough and stays dry long enough for me to mow the lawn soon, because it's a jungle out there!!
David Horsey of the LA Times - Tom Cotton & The Iran Letter
I read this today on my way into work, and thought he really hit the nail on the head with what is so problematic about the actions of senator Tom Cotton and the letter to Iran. This whole situation is just so mind blowing in it's stupidity.
Sen. Tom Cotton prefers military action to diplomacy with Iran
David Horsey / Los Angeles Times
Monday in Lausanne, Switzerland, Iranian negotiators demanded that their American counterparts explain to them the meaning of the open letter sent to Iranian leaders by 47 Republican U.S. senators. In the letter, the senators declared that any agreement with the current resident of the White House could be modified or nullified by a future president or by Congress. Apparently, their goal was to scuttle the Obama administration's effort to reach a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry and the other U.S. officials in Switzerland who are trying to make that deal declined to characterize their response to the Iranians, but one might assume it was something like, “Hey, you’ve got your hardliners back home and we’ve got ours.”
The Republicans’ letter may not scare Iran’s rulers away from an agreement, but it contained a passage that ought to send a chill up American spines. Pointing out that a president is limited to two four-year terms, the letter noted that senators can keep adding six-year terms for as long as they keep getting reelected.
“As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades,” the letter said.
Now that is a genuinely frightening thought. Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, David Vitter, Joni Ernst, Jim Inhofe, Mike Crapo, Ted Cruz and the rest of the saber-rattling, climate change-denying, corporation-adoring, immigrant-fearing cranks might still be in the Senate for years and years to come. God save America.
The one who could be around the longest is the freshman senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton. At 37, he is the Senate’s youngest member; he's the precocious darling of the conservative establishment who came up with the idea for the letter to Iran. Cotton claims his mail to the ayatollahs was a necessary assertion of the Senate's constitutional role in reviewing and approving treaties, but by intruding on the negotiations he flouted another constitutional mandate -- the one that makes it the president’s job to forge international agreements on behalf of the nation.
Republicans justify their unyielding belligerence by forever implying that only they speak for the people of the United States. However, while Cotton and his colleagues have won elections in most of the old Confederacy and several sparsely-populated states in the West and Midwest, the president and vice president are the only two governmental leaders elected by the entire country. Republicans have been in denial about it for six years, yet the fact remains that Barack Obama has twice been chosen by a solid majority of American voters to represent them in the world.
It is dangerous for any bunch of senators to insert themselves so directly into delicate diplomacy involving six other countries about an issue as serious as nuclear weapons, but Cotton is happy to court danger since his favored alternative to diplomacy is military action against Iran. One would think that the Senate’s elders might have stepped in to caution the brash upstart from Arkansas. Rather than doing doing that, though, old guys like Mitch McConnell and John McCain added their signatures to Cotton’s letter.
McCain claimed he really didn’t read what he was signing. The Arizonan was in a hurry to get out of Washington before a snowstorm hit. Besides, he said, he gets lots of letters placed on his desk that colleagues want him to sign. Apparently for McCain it was not notable that this particular letter was postmarked for Tehran.
Critics of the Republican senators’ missive have branded it everything from a breach in protocol to treason. Whatever one wants to call it, the letter surely is one more glaring example of what poisonous partisan politics has done to undermine the image and authority of the United States in the eyes of the world. When U.S. senators cannot resist acting like impulsive children spoiling for a fight, we should not be surprised if people in other countries begin to wonder if Americans still have the requisite maturity to be global leaders.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
Sen. Tom Cotton prefers military action to diplomacy with Iran
David Horsey / Los Angeles Times
Monday in Lausanne, Switzerland, Iranian negotiators demanded that their American counterparts explain to them the meaning of the open letter sent to Iranian leaders by 47 Republican U.S. senators. In the letter, the senators declared that any agreement with the current resident of the White House could be modified or nullified by a future president or by Congress. Apparently, their goal was to scuttle the Obama administration's effort to reach a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry and the other U.S. officials in Switzerland who are trying to make that deal declined to characterize their response to the Iranians, but one might assume it was something like, “Hey, you’ve got your hardliners back home and we’ve got ours.”
The Republicans’ letter may not scare Iran’s rulers away from an agreement, but it contained a passage that ought to send a chill up American spines. Pointing out that a president is limited to two four-year terms, the letter noted that senators can keep adding six-year terms for as long as they keep getting reelected.
“As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades,” the letter said.
Now that is a genuinely frightening thought. Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, David Vitter, Joni Ernst, Jim Inhofe, Mike Crapo, Ted Cruz and the rest of the saber-rattling, climate change-denying, corporation-adoring, immigrant-fearing cranks might still be in the Senate for years and years to come. God save America.
The one who could be around the longest is the freshman senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton. At 37, he is the Senate’s youngest member; he's the precocious darling of the conservative establishment who came up with the idea for the letter to Iran. Cotton claims his mail to the ayatollahs was a necessary assertion of the Senate's constitutional role in reviewing and approving treaties, but by intruding on the negotiations he flouted another constitutional mandate -- the one that makes it the president’s job to forge international agreements on behalf of the nation.
Republicans justify their unyielding belligerence by forever implying that only they speak for the people of the United States. However, while Cotton and his colleagues have won elections in most of the old Confederacy and several sparsely-populated states in the West and Midwest, the president and vice president are the only two governmental leaders elected by the entire country. Republicans have been in denial about it for six years, yet the fact remains that Barack Obama has twice been chosen by a solid majority of American voters to represent them in the world.
It is dangerous for any bunch of senators to insert themselves so directly into delicate diplomacy involving six other countries about an issue as serious as nuclear weapons, but Cotton is happy to court danger since his favored alternative to diplomacy is military action against Iran. One would think that the Senate’s elders might have stepped in to caution the brash upstart from Arkansas. Rather than doing doing that, though, old guys like Mitch McConnell and John McCain added their signatures to Cotton’s letter.
McCain claimed he really didn’t read what he was signing. The Arizonan was in a hurry to get out of Washington before a snowstorm hit. Besides, he said, he gets lots of letters placed on his desk that colleagues want him to sign. Apparently for McCain it was not notable that this particular letter was postmarked for Tehran.
Critics of the Republican senators’ missive have branded it everything from a breach in protocol to treason. Whatever one wants to call it, the letter surely is one more glaring example of what poisonous partisan politics has done to undermine the image and authority of the United States in the eyes of the world. When U.S. senators cannot resist acting like impulsive children spoiling for a fight, we should not be surprised if people in other countries begin to wonder if Americans still have the requisite maturity to be global leaders.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Apartment Building in Turin Italy
Check out this article on Colossal.com about an incredible apartment building in Turin Italy designed by Luciano Pia that incorporates nature as part of the design. If I had to live in the middle of a large city, it would be like this - just amazing. I'm a fan of the architect Frank Gehry, and the fluid design of this reminds me of his work. There are a total of 7 pics over on the website.
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| 25 Verde, Turin Italy |
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Catching Up On the Comic Strips
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| Bizarro - February 8 2015 |
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| The Duplex - February 14 2015 |
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| The Duplex - February 16 2015 |
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| The Duplex - February 18 2015 |
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| Get Fuzzy - February 20 2015 |
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| Get Fuzzy - December 28 2014 |
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| Mutts - February 16 2015 |
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| Pickles - March 8 2015 |
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| Sherman's Lagoon - February 8 2015 |
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| Zits - March 3 2015 |
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| Nick & Suzu - March 8 2015 |
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