Accidental Blogger

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  • More Populism (Joe)

    Krugman:

    What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of
    American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition,
    undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who
    flip their houses?

    A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.

    [ . . . ]

    One of the best features of the original plan was aid to
    cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick
    boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the
    centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.

    The
    original plan also included badly needed spending on school
    construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to
    the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food
    stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan,
    with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures
    that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.

    On
    the other hand, the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the
    worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean
    Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the “flip
    your house to your brother” provision: it will cost a lot of money
    while doing nothing to help the economy.

    If the election was a mandate (it was an anti-Bush mandate certainly, but quite plausibly also a populist mandate), and this is government's response, either politicians will have to start getting it right–soon–or we could be looking at some serious political backlash.

  • From frumpy to foxy – reincarnating the first First Lady

    A second post on the same day about altered images – or at least an extrapolated one. This one does not involve plagiarism or copyright infringement. Rather it is an exercise in the restoration of national vanity.

    The president of the United States is widely perceived to be the most powerful person in the world. So far only males of the species have occupied the august office. Their mates, the first ladies, have played public roles that have ranged from ceremonially ornamental to activist partners. Apparently, it irks some folks that any consort of a US president should be perceived as "frumpy," even if the woman in question has been dead for more than two hundred years. The very first First Lady, Martha Washington is the lady in question.  Her likeness in existing portraits, most of them painted in middle age, are as one historian describes it, of the double-chinned Old Mother Hubbard variety. So, armed with ultra modern technology, a few historians and museum curators embarked upon a mission to revise or rather, photo shop history. With the help of forensic anthropologists at the Lousiana State University's special project known as Forensic Anthropology and Computer Enhancement Services, or FACES, a new image of a twenty five year old Martha Washington was created by working backwards from her middle aged visage. This painstaking Benjamin Buttoning of the first lady has yielded a satisfactorily attractive and lissome young woman and revamped her "dumpy" reputation.  

    Martha Washington 1  Martha Washington 2 This just in: Martha Washington was hot. Or at least hotter than we thought.

    Our image of the mother of our country, vague and insubstantial as it is, is drawn from portraits painted after her death showing a frumpy, dumpy, plump old lady, a fussy jumble of needlework in her lap, wearing what could pass for a shower cap with pink sponge rollers rolled too tight underneath.

    But today, 250 years after Martha and George tied the knot, a handful of historians are seeking to revamp the former first lady's fusty image, using the few surviving records of things she wrote, asking forensic anthropologists to do a computerized age-regression portrait of her in her mid-20s and, perhaps most importantly, displaying for the first time in decades the avant-garde deep purple silk high heels studded with silver sequins that she wore on her wedding day.

    Take that, Sally Fairfax.

    History is about to be revised.

    "We always see Martha with a withered face in her old age. But she was quite a beautiful woman in her younger years, and Washington loved her deeply," said Edward Lengel, senior editor at the Papers of George Washington project at the University of Virginia. "What's happening now is revisionist. But I think it's a whole lot closer to the reality of what she was."

    The full story in the Washington Post here.

  • Purloined Image of Hope and Change

    The famous Obamaicon with which we recently had some fun on A.B. (here and here) has now become a subject of controversy.  The Associated Press is alleging that artist Shepard Fairey used an AP photo to create the image without permission. The AP wants a share of the credit and compensation.

    Obama Icon NEW YORK (AP) — On buttons, posters and Web sites, the image was everywhere during last year's presidential campaign: a pensive Barack Obama looking upward, as if to the future, splashed in a Warholesque red, white and blue and underlined with the caption HOPE.

    Designed by Shepard Fairey, a Los-Angeles based street artist, the image has led to sales of hundreds of thousands of posters and stickers, and has become so much in demand that copies signed by Fairey have been purchased for thousands of dollars on eBay.

    The image, Fairey has acknowledged, is based on an Associated Press photograph, taken in April 2006 by Mannie Garcia on assignment for the AP at the National Press Club in Washington.

    The AP says it owns the copyright, and wants credit and compensation. Fairey disagrees.

    "The Associated Press has determined that the photograph used in the poster is an AP photo and that its use required permission," the AP's director of media relations, Paul Colford, said in a statement. "AP safeguards its assets and looks at these events on a case-by-case basis. We have reached out to Mr. Fairey's attorney and are in discussions. We hope for an amicable solution."

    "We believe fair use protects Shepard's right to do what he did here," says Fairey's lawyer, Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at Stanford University and a lecturer at the Stanford Law School. "It wouldn't be appropriate to comment beyond that at this time because we are in discussions about this with the AP."

    Fair use is a legal concept that allows exceptions to copyright law, based on, among other factors, how much of the original is used, what the new work is used for and how the original is affected by the new work.

  • The Villain and the Wannabes

    The rudderless and demoralized GOP is thrashing around helplessly, searching for the coherent and authoritative voice of a national spokesperson. So far three hefty bald men have obliged. Two are unelected motor mouths and another has been out of power for mere two weeks and cannot keep his mouth shut.  Worrisome though it may be for Republican office holders, I am deriving some vindictive pleasure in seeing them hoisted by their own petard of arrogance and ignorance.

    Rush Limbaugh, the "radio personality" of immense disrepute, has emerged as the clear leader of the right wing. Barack Obama made the mistake of acknowledging that fact. He should have given Limbaugh the cold shoulder instead. Among the long list of idiotic things that Limbaugh has said over the years, he recently added another gem when he made public his hope for Obama to fail as president. Many prominent Republicans came forward to hastily deny and denounce the rash pronouncement. Limbaugh is of course known goods. He has been holding court for more than twenty years and has a considerable fan following. He is doing what he has to do to satisfy his ardent flock and to earn his mega millions. It is the members of the Republican establishment, including George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who have flattered and feted him over the years and must now put up with his loose lips. Bush even threw a surprise birthday party at the White House for Limbaugh a few days before leaving town last month. The radio host crowed about the honor on his show. So, may be Limbaugh is a bit miffed that he won't be setting foot inside that mansion for parties and sleep overs in at least the next four or possibly eight years.

    Less clear is the case of Joe Wurzelbacher aka Joe the Plumber, who first emerged as the right wing's favorite poster child during the second McCain-Obama debate. Since then Wurzelbacher has been seen at various right wing national events, even doing a dint as a foreign correspondent during the Israel-Gaza conflict for a conservative website. Now the news blog Politico.com reports that Wurzelbacher attended a closed door strategy meeting of aides to Republican lawmakers to offer his opinions on Barack Obama's economic stimulus proposal. How pathetically lacking in leadership is the GOP and how dim is its political future that Joe the Plumber, whose fifteen minutes of fame should have been long over, is on its economic advisory team?

    Call it a pipe dream come true: When members of the Conservative Working Group held their weekly strategy meeting on the Hill on Tuesday morning, they were joined by none other than Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, who had come to offer his thoughts on the economic recovery bill.

    The Senate staffers who showed up at 9 a.m. for the closed-door meeting refused to leak the contents of their discussion with the tradesman-cum-strategist, but Wurzelbacher himself revealed that the advice they soaked up was just good, old-fashioned “common sense.”

    Wurzelbacher opposes the stimulus and said he questioned why the government can’t just cut its bills like other people do. He also advised staffers to take a harder line on the legislation: “Republicans on the Hill are afraid of saying too much,” he noted.

    Further recommendations from the Karl Rove of the Commode included having “someone go in there and kick some ass.”

    One voice that the Republicans probably wish wouldn't be heard but is now booming again, is that of former vice president Dick Cheney, who along with his juvenile boss, can claim the lion's share of the blame for leaving the GOP's future and its reputation in tatters. But unlike Bush, Cheney hasn't left town (the Cheneys have bought a home in Maryland) and if Wednesday's unexpected outburst is any indication, he doesn't plan to fade into the political sunset any time soon. In an interview with Politico.com he lambasted the Obama administration for its plan to close down the Guantanamo Bay prison and for wanting to reverse some of Bush-Cheney's secretive, draconian and often illegal national security measures. The villainous and self righteous Cheney questioned Obama's intelligence and his understanding of national and global issues. And then, as befits his vengeful personality, he predicted that the new president will make "catastrophic" terrorist attacks on America possible by his misguided policies. Rush Limbaugh only hopes that Obama will fail. After merely two weeks of the new president taking office, Cheney has already declared him a failure.

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed. 

    In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects. 

    And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand. 

    “When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said. 

    Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.” ….

    In the interview, Cheney revealed no doubts about his own course — and many about the new administration’s. 

    “If it hadn’t been for what we did — with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees, the Patriot Act, and so forth — then we would have been attacked again,” he said. “Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S.” 

      Cheney    Limbaugh  Joe the plumber 2

  • The skull and the cup – from the same set of china

    Tea_cup Human skullThere may be many a slip between the cup and the lip. But do you know that the drinking cup is  etymologically a close cousin of the skull? I did but that knowledge is tucked away in a distant enough corner of the brain that it doesn't color the way I look at my tea cup.  

    I am an avid tea drinker. I like "real" tea - the slightly acrid and soothing liquor made with tea leaves, both black and green. I drink the former with milk and the latter without. Not for me the new age concoctions contaminated with orange, lemon, pomegranate, elderberry, wild flowers and other unnecessary flavors although I do occasionally enjoy jasmine, ginger, chamomile, mint, Indian chai masala or a few strands of saffron in my brew. But mostly, I like to partake of the undiluted version of the beverage. There is no special tea ceremony in our home. The kettle is put to boil whenever the craving strikes for a hot refreshing cuppa.

    I grew up around copious tea drinkers. Tea was served all year round at breakfast, at afternoon teatime and when guests came. Though not particularly tempted as a child to drink the beverage of the adults, I was nevertheless fascinated by the paraphernelia of the tea tray.  My mother owned three sets of tea service made of fine English bone china. They were part of her bridal trousseau – gifts from her father. One was an elegant and sedate cream color set with green and gold edging. Another, a dainty design of pink roses on pristine white. The third, my childhood favorite, consisted of a very round teapot surrounded by globular tea cups of impossibly thin and exquisitely translucent beige china festooned with tiny red, deep blue and gold birds, flowers and berries. Although I did not start drinking tea regularly until I entered college, the sight of the steaming amber-gold liquid being poured from one of the gorgeous teapots into a waiting cup was an aesthetic experience even my childish eyes could appreciate.

    Perhaps it says something about my austere mother's indifference to material possessions that those beautiful pieces, an anomaly in our otherwise un-ostentatious Bengali kitchen, were not stowed away in a cupboard for special occasions but put to daily use by the family as well as guests who regularly dropped by for a cup of tea. It is therefore not surprising that most of the tea cups and pots from the collection were gone by the time I began drinking tea in my late teen years. Isolated pieces of the beautiful china remained – a few cups and saucers, a mate-less creamer from one set and an unmatched sugar bowl from another. The teapots were all gone – chipped, cracked or broken due to years of use and careless handling. We then drank tea from non-descript ceramic cups and tea pots. No one bothered to go out and shop for good china. When I earned my first pay check, I bought my mother a set of eight cups and saucers (no teapot, creamer or sugar bowl) made of locally produced bone china. They were not half as elegant as my mother's old collection but she accepted the replacements with whole hearted enthusiasm.

    As a person who loves tea and tea sets, I do own some nice tea cups and mugs. But sadly, my kitchen pantry is currently devoid of a good china / clay teapot. I have owned a few ceramic and clay ones since I set up independent house keeping after marriage. They were all traditionally attractive, affordable and eminently serviceable fat bellied pots. They are now gone and I currently own a few glass, stainless steel and pewter ones. My "formal" dinner set did not come with a teapot. By the time I went back and searched in a catalog of Mikasa's line of accessories, the design had been discontinued. I never got around to buying a suitable tea pot to go with the set. Perhaps this nostalgic blather will act as an impetus to begin a new search.

    My sudden outpourings about tea, teapots and cups was set in motion by an excellent article, Fragments of Bone and Clay  by Aditya Dev Sood, a new writer at 3 Quarks Daily. Among other observations about the culture of tea drinking, Aditya goes into deep musings over bone china and the the drinking cup.

    The form of a teacup awaits and anticipates its human users with intimacy, affording a second finger leverage, varieties of opposition for the thumb, and of course, that slippery kiss. But it has still more intimate links with the human body: the word ‘cup’ has Indo-European roots, being linked to cupola, as in dome, as well as the Latin cephalus and the Sanskrit kapala, both cognate words for skull. The kapalika–s, of course, are members of that now nearly extinct sect of Saivism, who carry around a human skull, from which they both eat and drink. I believe it is a false calumny that their skull belongs to someone they have killed, but rather that their purpose is, like Hamlet, to be in proximity and awareness of death, the better to feel their own quickness and capacity for live action. How much does it matter whether one’s cup be found whole in nature or be crafted by human hands? Whether it be a human relic or a fine puree of mammalian bones? The important thing is that a cup can serve as a means for dialogue, for silent communion, for mutuality and shared sustenance.

    For more on the kapala – cup connection see here.

  • Tom Daschle Out

    Were you like me, beginning to despair over some of the recent cabinet picks by President Obama? After promising change and the overhaul of the entrenched insider culture of lobbyists and old pols in Washington, his choice seemed to rely heavily on the same old, same old players of the established ruling class. I am disappointed that the new treasury secretary Tim Geithner comes in with a tainted tax record and when former senator Tom Daschle's confirmation hearing was shaping up to be a similarly murky affair, I was very unhappy. It has just been reported that Sen Daschle has withdrawn his candidacy as the new secretary of Health and Human Services. I think this is good news. I hope Obama will now nominate a competent person with a clean record for this important cabinet position, preferably one with no involvement in Washington's unsavory revolving door system of money, influence and public service. Time to bring in Dr. Howard Dean?

  • “These people are idiots”

    And they are evil.  Sen Claire McCaskill (D-MO) said angrily on the senate floor what most Americans are thinking. 

    We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer. They don't get it. These people are idiots. You can't use taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion in bonuses. They owe us some common sense.

    But common sense is what the "idiots" don't have – it has been so long since they had to call upon that quality. Following one disaster after another that have rocked the foundations of the American financial sector,the fat cat bankers and financiers came hat in hand, begging for bailouts with public funds. Despite the government pulling their chestnuts out of the fire that the sleaze balls had themselves started, no lesson in shame and humility has been learnt. The financial institutions were bailed out, we were told, so that they can start lending money again to consumers and businesses. But the vultures and jackals of Wall Street still don't understand. Instead of injecting money into the faltering economy, they have been again caught lining their own already bursting pockets. What's the difference between merit pay and scavenging? Don't ask the greedy bastards who paid themselves fat bonuses, took expensive hunting trips and spa vacations, renovated  offices (and bathrooms) in lavish styles befitting a Saudi monarch, shopped around for a $50 million luxury jet  and who knows what else. And they have the chutzpah to continue being stingy when it comes to issuing loans because they want to "invest" their (ours, really) money for maximum growth.

    When asked about the unseemly bonuses, Merril Lynch's clueless ex-CEO John Thain said, “You have to believe there’s value in the franchise. If you don’t pay your best people, you will destroy your franchise." Really? Where will those "best people" go if one takes away their ill begotten goodies?  Can they teach school? Can they make anything from scratch? Can they flip hamburgers according to simple specifications barked through the drive-through window? Can they dig ditches? What exactly are they good for except to filch other people's money and make bad decisions based on greed?  Let loose these wonder boys (yes, they are mostly men) of the cloistered and incestuous world of finance into the real world and let's find out how they survive without the crutch of easy money.

    Another glib explanation for where the bonuses came from when bankruptcy was looming large, is that they came not from the government bailout funds, but from a "separate pool." What? Do they really think we are buying that  ludicrous baloney -  as ludicrous as claiming that they only peed in a "separate section" of the swimming pool?

    Horsey-bailout  (cartoon by David Horsey)

    Update: Maureen Dowd too is fuming about the same idiots.

  • Choose A Caption

    Yesterday my son sent me the link to a web album of the photos he took on his recent trip to India. One picture which he has named "Benjamin Abroad" in his album, caught my eye for the unlikely (in the Indian context) image and the unusual accompanying words on a business billboard. With the juxtaposition of money changer and carpenter, I would have thought more along Biblical terms. Take a look. What would you call it? 

    Benjamin Abroad 

  • A Food Review (Sujatha)

    so bad, that it's good!Food

    "Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].

    I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?

    You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in:"

    The apoplectic passenger who composed the above is the next James Beard awardee for food writing, for sure.

  • Bland Book Reviews :-)

    Woman_reading_Kuniyoshi_Utagawa,  (Woman Reading : Kuniyoshi Utagawa)

    A recent post, a joint effort between reader Narayan Acharya and me, led fellow blogger Namit Arora to write the following comment on our blog.

    Ruchira, I noticed once again your approach to book reviews where you present a mostly descriptive overview about the story/plot/setting, even how others might react to it, but stay away from saying what *you* thought was really great about it, what moved you, what really sucked, etc. The review is still a good read – don't get me wrong - but it is a curious choice and I remain puzzled why an otherwise opinionated woman should consciously prefer such a bland middle ground when reviewing novels. (Contrast that with Narayan's approach. It's clear the book shook up the man to the core, prompting him to even demand that Ghosh get a life! :-)

    Namit draws attention to Narayan's impassioned critique of the author's style and my own descriptive plot driven approach to the review of the same novel, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. In response to Namit's query I will attempt to explain to our readers why my book reviews come across more as précis style presentations than literary criticisms.

    Although an avid reader from early childhood, I have never been a terribly literary person. I treat books very much like meals – to be examined, consumed, deriving whatever nutrition they offer and moving on.  Some are relished like gourmet treats, some approached with playful or cautious interest and others summarily rejected after the first bite. No matter how deep an imprint a book leaves on my memory and my psyche, I feel little need to dwell too long on it or to connect it to a past or future reading experience in any formally meaningful way. Although I do recall with precision how a very good book managed to touch me, I don't feel compelled to recount the details of those feelings to others who may or may not agree with my assessment.  Reading seems like a very private enjoyment. Therefore the lack of ardor in public.

    Why don't I then write "negative" book reviews? Simple – I don't read too many bad books. More often than not, after the quality of the style, narrative and subject matter has been established in the first fifty or so pages, I rarely ever continue to read a book that I do not like. My mother, a student of literature, who had the infinite patience (and training) to plod through tedious and rotten writings (cursing all the way), used to wonder about my ability to throw aside a book that I had "already begun."  Fortunately, as a science student, literature for me has always been a pursuit of pleasure, not a requirement. I therefore never feel the need to labor through a book or author that puts me off. (In the past decade though, since joining my beloved neighborhood book club, where the choice of reading material is a democratic process, I have had to endure several literary embarrassments.)

    When I began blogging, I knew for sure that I would be writing about books and authors. I made a conscious decision to write only about books that I myself like and would want my readers to enjoy. No negative criticism was to sully the pages of the blog (for that I had politics and politicians) and take up precious time and space. Not that I don't enjoy reading negative reviews and wouldn't be adept at writing one. I do believe that it is easier to shred something we don't like to ribbons than to admire the admirable. Some of the liveliest sessions of our monthly book club meetings occur when we have read a particularly impossible piece of crap and the ladies come armed with choice words of denigration. But I decided to refrain from that practice in public.  Possessing a sharp tongue, I feared that I may flaunt my sarcasm and capacity for snark too well. Also, if I don't want our visitors to read a particular book, why bring it up? In other words, what I write here on A.B. are really book recommendations rather than reviews in the strict sense of the word. Hence the descriptive overview of the story/plot/setting which if intriguing enough, a reader will check out for him/herself.

    Take the review of the Sea of Poppies for example. I tell enough (with necessary warnings) that if the readers wants to find out more, they will seek the book out or as Namit did, will give it a pass. And why is my own part of the review laconic compared to Narayan's passionate love-hate outpourings? Well, for one, although I very much liked Amitav Ghosh's dense period piece, I didn't absolutely love the book. I learnt a number of things I didn't know before but being quite familiar with the politics and culture of 19th century India, there were not many surprises either. I didn't feel that either the literary effort  or the history lesson deserved too many superlatives.  As for the most intriguing aspect of the novel, the unusual application of language, with my strong grasp of Hindi and Bengali (including their more archaic dialects), I found Ghosh's carefully laid out linguistic obstacle course quite easy to navigate. I did warn that others less familiar with the vernacular might find themselves climbing a wall. That's where Narayan came in with his excellent rant – taking up where the description ends and the head banging starts, turning the post into a genuine critical review.