Category Archives: Science

PSA: May Day

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May Day! May Day! I'm Not Sure What Constitutes a Proper Celebration of Beltane Anymore!In memory of John Kenneth Galbraith, I suggest that everyone wear black on May 1, May Day, International Worker's Day.

If you want to hold ribbons and dance around a maypole too I suppose that's okay, but try to look dour while doing it, all right? And make them black ribbons, grosgrain if you have it, something matte. I'm really feeling the matte. And maybe you could sing something from the Bruce Cockburn songbook? "they call it democracy" would be perfect!

Here are the lyrics, ideal for happy, full-mourning maypole dancing on International Worker's Day, to commemorate the death of John Kenneth Galbraith:

Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poorWho rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament —
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology

North South East West
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

JKG: the late, the great, on The Predator State

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JKG the Late, the GreatThanks to The Cylinder for the this. I love what you can find just hitting "Next Blog" on WordPress! Any blog that boasts a tagline "The missing rungs are in the hands of a happy few who use them mainly for attack and self-defence" is a blog after my own heart.

So here we have the late John Kenneth Galbraith, writing in Mother Jones on the fundamental change in the nature of modern wealthpower:

The Predator State.

WHAT IS THE REAL NATURE of American capitalism today? Is it a grand national adventure, as politicians and textbooks aver, in which markets provide the framework for benign competition, from which emerges the greatest good for the greatest number? Or is it the domain of class struggle, even a “global class war,” as the title of Jeff Faux’s new book would have it, in which the “party of Davos” outmaneuvers the remnants of the organized working class?

The doctrines of the “law and economics” movement, now ascendant in our courts, hold that if people are rational, if markets can be “contested,” if memory is good and information adequate, then firms will adhere on their own to norms of honorable conduct. Any public presence in the economy undermines this. Even insurance—whether deposit insurance or Social Security—is perverse, for it encourages irresponsible risktaking. Banks will lend to bad clients, workers will “live for today,” companies will speculate with their pension funds; the movement has even argued that seat belts foster reckless driving. Insurance, in other words, creates a “moral hazard” for which “market discipline” is the cure; all works for the best when thought and planning do not interfere. It’s a strange vision, and if we weren’t governed by people like John Roberts and Sam Alito, who pretend to believe it, it would scarcely be worth our attention

…

Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature—a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live.

Go read the whole thing. Don't worry, I'll wait. It's worth it; how often do you read an article about economics by a Harvard economist that makes you sit up straight and shout "I love this guy!" to the dustbunnies on the bookcase? And don't they look surprised?

Obituary: John Kenneth Galbraith

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From the AP by way of the Boston Examiner:John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard professor who won worldwide renown as a liberal economist, backstage politician and witty chronicler of affluent society, died Saturday night, his son said. He was 97. Galbraith died of natural causes at Mount Auburn Hospital, where he was admitted nearly two weeks ago, Alan Galbraith said. During a long career, the Canadian-born economist served as adviser to Democratic presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, and was John F. Kennedy's ambassador to India. "He had a wonderful and full life," his son said. Galbraith, who was outspoken in his support of government action to solve social problems, became a large figure on the American scene in the decades after World War II. He was one of America's best-known liberals, and he never shied away from the label. "There is no hope for liberals if they seek only to imitate conservatives, and no function either," Galbraith wrote in a 1992 article in Modern Maturity, a publication of the American Association of Retired Persons. One of his most influential books, "The Affluent Society," was published in 1958. It argued that the American economy was producing individual wealth but hasn't adequately addressed public needs such as schools and highways. U.S. economists and politicians were still using the assumptions of the world of the past, where scarcity and poverty were near-universal, he said.

Hollywood: A Primer

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High Concept, Low Life ExpectancyNow this book is a fun read, particularly if you’re the least bit vicarious, and some of us have been known to vicariate, although perhaps only late at night, after a few drinks.

Because god knows, you’d never live through it.

High Concept, a biography of Don Simpson and an examination of the fatal cost of Hollywood self-indulgence, escapes beach-read status because it’s both non-fiction and wickedly well-written.

But enough reviewspeak, to the snippets!

“The entertainment industry does not require any thing of its inside people other than an ability to produce hit movies. It doesn’t ask its employees to be intelligent, educated, decent, honorable, fair, good-looking or ethical or ethnical: It only asks that they produce income-generating product.

And, as it does not require intelligence, education, decency, honor or fairness, neither does it reward those qualities. Hollywood is the place where one can overhear dialogue such as this, one morning at the Four Seasons Hotel:

Man #1: “You’re lying! You’re lying to me!”

Man #2: “Yes, I know. But hear me out.”

I love that quote. He’ll go far, that lad.

And now, for our more pharmacalogically-aware readers (more numerous than you think! Pharmacists are everywhere!) we present this toxicology roundup, a freakin’ fiesta of pharmaceuticals, from after Simpson’s death:

Simpson…was on a regimen that includeed multiple daily injections of Toradol, for pain; Librium, to control his mood swings; Ativan, every six hours, for agitation; Valium, every sic hours, for anxiety; Depakote, every six hours, to counter “acute mania”; Thorazine, every four hours, for anxiety; and lorazepam, every six hours, also for anxiety. He was also taking, in pill and tablet form, additional doses of Valium, plus the pain relievers Vicodin, diphenoxylate, diphenhydramine and Colonadine, plus the medications lithium carbonate, nystatin, Narcan, haloperidol, Promethazine, Benztropine, Unisom, Atarax, Compazine, Xanax, Desyrel, Tigan and phenobarbitol…

One ten-day period in August 1995 shows Simpson’s pharmacy expenses at $38,600…

Police and coroner documents also show that Simpson was experimenting with prescription doese of morphine, Seconal, and gamma hydroxybutyrate, or GHB. These medications were being ingested, autopsy reports would show, in addition to large quantities of alcohol and cocaine…

More ominously, Simpson was using heroin.

“More ominously” indeed. Cuz the rest of that stuff you can pop like Pez, eh? Given that they use carbs like cornstarch to bulk up pills, I think I can figure out why Simpson weighed three hundred pounds.

Photo o’ the Day: A-Mazing!

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Via the always-reliable Fark. I tell ya, it's almost enough to make you take up gardening.

Although my kitchen sink looks kinda like this some days. Maybe I should take similar aerial photos? I had a riding teacher who used to show horses…1/60th scale. Pat Gottlieb owned scale model dressage!

A-Mazing aerial photo!