Ardent Me

Page 1A: The Elephant in the Map Room

From Boderlands:

The network of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is by now so dense that a unilateral Israeli withdrawal seems utterly implausible. The religion-inspired obduracy of a large segment of the settler community would make even the smallest concession unthinkable. If a final settlement is reached, present circumstance suggests it will be imposed by Israel on an unwilling Palestinian Authority. The remainder of the Palestinian territories will be locked away behind the so-called separation barrier. This barrier — a Middle Eastern variation on the Berlin Wall — has been an effective tool in stopping terrorist attacks inside Israel, but it constitutes yet another annexation of Palestinian territory: largely ignoring the Green Line, it cuts deep into the West Bank, occasionally isolating Palestinian towns and villages from their hinterland.

An interesting but brief introduction to the borders of Israel and Palestine. Worth a read if you know nothing at all to everything about the conflict. The main issue missing is, of course, water access and rights. This land is largely desert and access to water helps determine borders, possibly even more so than politics.

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I can’t tell you much more about the customers today, because of my limited contact with them. I work in the kitchen, so I don’t see much of the clientele. What made today so difficult—more difficult than always being behind on food, running out of one thing or another, needing to be in two places at once, etc—was the attitudes of the other employees.

No one really stopped talking about the reasons why today was as busy as it was. The people I work alongside kept going on and on about how powerful it was to be part of such a righteous movement, and how encouraged they were to know that there were so many people who agree with Dan Cathy. They went on at great length about how it was wrong not just for gays to marry, but to exist. One kid, age 19, said “I hope the gays go hungry.”

I nearly walked out then and there. That epitomizes the characteristics of these evangelical “Christians” who are so vocally opposed to equal rights. Attitudes like that are the opposite of Christ-like.

Thats more from our anonymous gay Chick-fil-A employee who is speaking out after yesterday’s record-setting sales day for the chicken company. Bigotry sells! (via newsweek)

(via newsweek)

Page 1A: N.C.A.A. Gives Penn State $60 Million Fine and Bowl Ban

From the New York Times:

Penn State will be able to extend just 15 scholarships per year, as opposed to the normal 25. Perhaps more important is the ban on postseason play, which takes away one of the most attractive aspects of playing for a successful team. The Big Ten will also fine Penn State $13 million over the next four years, which is essentially equivalent to its postseason revenue.

Unbelievable. How the NCAA failed to institute the “death penalty” and shut down Penn State football boggles my mind. Apparently the long-term institutional ignoring of child sexual abuse does not qualify as a “lack of institutional control”, but paying athletes whom you make millions off (a la SMU) does.

Page 1A: Commuters Pedal to Work on Their Very Own Superhighway

From the New York Times:

“A typical cyclist uses the bicycle within five kilometers,” or about three miles, said Mr. Hansen, whose office keeps a coat rack of ponchos that bicycling employees can borrow in case of rain. “We thought: How do we get people to take longer bicycle rides?”

They decided to make cycle paths look more like automobile freeways.

I’ve been very fortunate to ride on a bike path from my home to my place of work where I interact with cars only three or four times. Of course, nobody offers me chocolate at the end of my ride for keeping to the right, signalling (which seems to be a lost art here), and passing carefully. It would be great to see more cities offer a similar “superhighway” for commuters, both to encourage utilizing bikes rather than cars and cut down on obesity rates. (I’m looking at you, Worcester.)

Page 1A: 13 Reasons Why This Is the Worst Congress Ever

From the Washington Post

If doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result makes you insane, what does doing the same thing 33 times and expecting a different result make you? Well, it makes you the 112th Congress.

Possible the most shocking graph in this story is the one on how the IRS is 31% more well-liked than Congress. Who said Americans hate taxes the most? Hell, they like the idea of becoming a communist country more than they like the 112th Congress.

Page 1A: Has ‘Organic’ Been Oversized?

From the New York Times:

As corporate membership on the [National Organic Standards Board] has increased, so, too, has the number of nonorganic materials approved for organic foods on what is called the National List. At first, the list was largely made up of things like baking soda, which is nonorganic but essential to making things like organic bread. Today, more than 250 nonorganic substances are on the list, up from 77 in 2002.

And by nonorganic substances, the article is referring to items like carrageenan, a seaweed-derived thickener with a somewhat controversial health record. Or synthetic inositol, which is manufactured using chemical processes.

Page 1A: Hillary Clinton’s Last Tour as a Rock-Star Diplomat

From the New York Times:

Clinton has said many, many times — on the record, off the record — that she will step down at the end of Obama’s first term, and yet few can imagine that will be the end of her political career. Such has been her success as secretary that when Obama’s popularity ebbed last year, a spate of “what if” stories pondered whether she would have made a better president. Those were followed by more suggesting — fantasizing, really — that Obama would drop Biden and put her on the ticket this year. Clinton herself dismissed it as ridiculous, and senior White House officials told me that the notion misunderstood Obama’s temperament and affection for Biden. Now there is speculation that she could mount a presidential bid in 2016, regardless of Obama’s fate in November. Some administration officials privately acknowledge that she would instantly be the presumptive front-runner, only 69 in November 2016 and more iconic than ever.

I really do love Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her work both on and off stage to bring attention to the plight of women and LGBTQA people around the world long before she became Secretary of State; her insistence on not being a figurehead but rather a passionate advocate for universal healthcare during her time as First Lady. And least you think I love her solely because she is a Democrat, I also admire her willingness to look past partisanship and fear mongering within this country and across the globe to work towards common agreement and the respect she affords people during and after these negotiations. I’m not always willing to do so during my own arguments. I wish her the best in whatever she chooses to do next, though I selfishly hope she will run in 2016.

Page 1A: A Snitch’s Dilemma

From the New York Times:

The problem with the hero claim was that, in some people’s minds, White’s turning against the cops may have just been a way to avoid being charged as an accessory to the killing, if the cops had been caught. He did the right thing, but it could also be viewed as the self-interested thing; it was hard to know. You could not be a snitch without having what could be called a flexible moral view.

A snitch, dirty cops, and woman’s death covered up. Sounds like an episode of “The Wire”.

"I just feel like I’m being kicked out of South Carolina. I’m being expelled."

Judy Helms, 64, who’s property is being split in two as North and South Carolina work to correct their borders.

"While Protestant fundamentalists — the ancestors of today’s evangelicals — were losing their battles against modernists in America’s mainline churches and seminaries, Catholics were focusing on ideas and nurturing academic centers of philosophy and political thought. The cooperation between Catholics and evangelicals in founding the Moral Majority in 1979 was partly the result of political expedience, but it was also the fruit of evangelicals’ longtime admiration of the Catholic ability to communicate a conservative interpretation of the Bible in the secularized language of natural law and win mainstream intellectual respect."

From “The First Principles of Rick Santorum” by Molly Worthen