u.s. geological survey

Happy Mount St. Helens Day!

• Catholic anti-right-wing-archbishop protests: they’re now held every Wednesday, and they’re not for Catholics only.
• Opponents of liquor privatization in Wash. state are making one last-ditch legal challenge. They might get a decision in two weeks, after the state liquor stores will have already closed.
• There are now fewer non-Hispanic white babies in the U.S. than there are all other ethnicities of babies put together.
• The TED speech by an early Amazon investor about economic inequality and how the rich aren’t really job creators? The speech that wasn’t put up on TED’s site? It’s now been put up on TED’s site.
• And here’s the video of Children’s Hospital cancer patients lip-syncing a Kelly Clarkson anthem.
• More than 30 percent of British adults plan to buy an e-book in the next six months.
• Is North America approaching “peak car“?

zgf architects via seattle times

• If you’re gonna build a condo tower that’s utterly, totally out of scale with the historic district immediately adjacent to it, it might as well be a real PoMo monolith.
• UW researchers say they may be able to prove the existence of “gaydar.”
• With a little over two weeks to go before the state liquor stores go away forever, some of the auction sales of the outlets fell through. Eighteen stores will be re-bid.
• Now we know why they call it Bitter Lake. It’s had raw sewage flowing into it for at least a decade.
• The dream is over: Dennis Kucinich won’t run for Congress from Wash. state.
• Amazon’s first non-Bezos-family investor gave a hot speech about income inequality in America, and how rich folks like himself really just aren’t “job creators.” (It was given at a TED conference, but isn’t one of the videos posted on that organization’s site. But you can read it; which I prefer doing anyway.) (And to be fair, here’s a different economic-inequality speech that was posted on TED’s site.)
• Is this the beginning of the end for soft drink sales in America? If the fizz really does die out, remember: Those who forget New Coke are doomed to repeat it.

j.r. simplot co./idaho dept. of environmental quality, via kplu

• Lots of good stuff at KPLU today. First, they’ve got some “mutant two-headed trout” found in an Idaho stream (the result of pollution from a nearby mine). Then there’s the list of potential “things you’ll find from the Japanese tsunami on Northwest beaches.” Finally, they report on the construction of the new 520 bridge’s pontoons. (I just love to say the word “pontoon.”)
• Nintendo lost a whoppin’ half billion bucks on all worldwide operations last fiscal year. That’s a heckuva lot of yellow coins.
• The UW is letting in a few more computer science majors next school year. They must have finally noticed that virtually every job advertised in Seattle requires programming knowledge.
• Get inspired! Next week there’s a “liberal Christian revival” convention in town.
• You know how the Costco-funded liquor privatization initiative promised convenience stores wouldn’t get to sell the hard stuff? Some of the winning bids for the state liquor stores were won by C-store operators, who might just turn those stores into C-stores that sell the hard stuff.
• KIRO-TV has uncovered further shocking evidence that men traveling on business will sometimes visit strippers and/or prostitutes.
• R.I.P. Ernest Callenbach, 83. The enviro-author was best known for Ecotopia, a 1975 utopian novel in which Washington and Oregon would be the outlying provinces of a San Francisco city-state. (I.e., more like a dystopia to me.)
• Flavorwire lists the “10 Grumpiest Living Writers.” Yes, Harlan Ellison is there. But, and this might surprise you, so is Garrison Keillor.
• Elsewhere in the book biz, Macmillan’s scifi division will issue e-books without copy protection. And author Warren Adler believes any talk about an Amazon e-book monopoly is just scare-tactic hype foisted by the conglomerate-owned big publishers.
• Ex-Seattleite Lindy West reminds you that talking like a total racist, then when you’re caught at it claiming it was all an ironic “joke,” is still talking like a total racist.

escapistmagazine.com

• The Star Wars universe is explained in handy infographic form.
• Rob McKenna is given an opportunity to prove he’s not part of the War on Women. Result: Epic Fail.
• More details about the big waterfront renovation plan have been released. They show a great improvement over the original concept (which, as you may recall, was essentially just a bunch more “world class” windswept plazas, a commodity greater downtown already has in abundance). These proposals actually include stuff people can recreate with. Like a climbing wall, and a swimming pool on a barge in the water.
• The Real Change-sponsored protest against homeless-camp removals went off without a hitch. Now let’s get our officials to do more for the homeless instead of merely against them.
• Wash. state now has over 700 wineries. Twice the number in ’07.
• The first Boeing 787s you’ll be able to get on from Sea-Tac will go from here to Tokyo starting later this year.
• How does DC Comics’ plan for a Watchmen prequel series gibe with the original graphic novel’s creator Alan Moore? If you know anything about Moore, you’ll know he doesn’t much care for the idea.
• Obama is picking his fights carefully, choosing for whom he’s going to strongly fight. Pot users: it’s still not your turn.
• Rex Huppke at the Chicago Tribune announces the “Death of Facts,” following one too many tea bagger fabrication.
• The newest thing to be paranoid about: what employers think about your Klout score. (Yes, the hereby linked article explains just what a “Klout score” is. It has something to do with how active you are on Twitter, or something like that.)

foodbeast.com

• Margarita flavored Bud Light: sign of the apocalypse #6 or #7?
• Winning bids for the state liquor stores (or rather, for the right to apply for licenses, negotiate leases, and take over inventory at the stores) are now in. Individual winners have apparently not yet been posted anywhere, but the store at 12th Avenue and East Pine Street went for a cool half million. The state’s total take (should all the sales go through): over $30 million, more than four times estimates reported just last Friday.
• Yesterday, we mentioned how Deluxe Junk, the lovely vintage everything store that’s one of the last remnants of “Fremont funk.” faced a sudden eviction by the Masonic lodge that owns its building. Apparently there’s a settlement; alas, Deluxe Junk will still leave the premises, at the end of June.
• The Real Change folks will get their protest camp in Westlake Park after all.
• One little-publicized event at the big Space Needle anniversary gala: a protest by Needle restaurant workers.
• The Canucks have made sure there won’t be riots in the Vancouver streets this June.
• Here’s a long, loving profile of ex-Seattleite and comix genius Lynda Barry.
• Google and Facebook: They’re hot now, but could they stumble as computing goes mobile?
• Author Michael J. Sandel places blame for the market-ization of almost all of western society. He says the economists did it.
• Paul Krugman blasts Romney, assuredly not for the last time.
• A Georgetown prof really dislikes the Facebook-spawned overuse of the verb “Like.”
• Toby Litt in Granta wonders whether long-form literature can hold an audience, or even be considered relevant, in an age of multitasking and incessant distraction. I say bah. Folks who can finish umpteen-level video games or watch entire TV-show seasons in one weekend can enjoy a story of a few hundred pages.
• Sorry, but I can’t trust any list of the “ten most harmful novels for aspiring writers” that excludes Bukowski.
• The top black women’s magazine hired a white guy as managing editor. What could possibly go wrong? Oh, that he turned out to be a not-so-secret racist wingnut.
• Steven Pearlstein reminds you that some politicians actually want you to be turned off from politics. Remember: Not voting = voting a straight right-wing ticket.
• Making stuff in China will cease being cheap sooner or later. China’s other outsourcing advantages might remain (lax environmental enforcement, autocratic government, brutal suppression of dissent).
• TV ratings, both broadcast and cable, are way down, especially among younger viewers, and especially in terms of “real time” viewing (i.e., without DVRs; i.e., with the commercials). The hardcore TV haters will naturally ignore this, and will continue to insist that Everyone Except Them is a vidiot sheeple.

will deluxe junk's giant plastic hot dog become homeless?

• On the heels of the development threat against the Bauhaus block on Capitol Hill, now comes another funky institution in danger. Deluxe Junk, a second hand furnishings and curios store, is the heart n’ soul of the Fremont district. It was just given an eviction notice by its landlords of 34 years, the Doric Masonic lodge upstairs from it.
• Is it the name? The phallic symbolism? Or just the taste? Whatever the reason, China (heart)s our geoducks!
• Seth Kolloen at The SunBreak analyzes local sports marketing: “The Sounders are a Mac, the Mariners are a PC.”
• C’mon guys! Somebody’s gotta want Beacon Hill’s PacMed building!
• What could be Puget Sound’s third major “economic cluster“? How about novelty gifts? Fringe theatre? Heck, let’s take over the music and film industries from their respective obsolete old guards?
• Today we might learn who won the auctions for the state liquor stores.
• One of the last remnants of Regrade Park’s pre-dog-park incarnation, the “Gyro Jack” sculpture, is under attack by some park users.
• While the media weren’t looking (or were obsessed with their own declines), arts employment in the U.S. has taken a severe nosedive.
• Update #1: The U.S. nuns whom the Vatican wants to censure or even disband because they spend their time caring about poor people instead of hating gays? They refuse to be shut up.
• Update #2: A few days ago we discussed the studio-imposed need for all movie theaters to acquire costly digital projection gear, and the trouble smaller operators might have affording it. Here’s one way they could. Fans of one mom-and-pop theater in little Harmony, Minn. organized a big $75,000 fund drive so their beloved local cinema could go digital. (The author of the above piece also has a long background article about the rise of digital cinema after almost two decades of hype.)

one of rob vasquez's many out-of-print 45s, via aarongilbreath.wordpress. com

(No snickering jokes from this corner about a certain three-digit number.)

• A pair of my ol’ punk era acquaintances have nice write ups. You may have already seen the Seattle Times profile of former Showbox impresario and current ACT Theatre honcho (and all around nice guy) Carlo Scandiuzzi. You may not have seen Aaron Gilbreath’s loving tribute to one of the scene’s greatest unsung guitarists, Rob Vasquez.
• And here’s one of Seattle’s smartest writers, Neal Stephenson, on the need for science fiction to relate to readers’ present-day real lives. (Update: Link now fixed.)
• For such a small, efficiently laid out building, could the legendary 5 Point bar/cafe really have a heretofore undiscovered secret room?
• There are several other lying memoirists out there. What makes Greg (Three Cups of Tea) Mortenson different? He used his allegedly partly-made-up book to raise $62 million for his own charity, money he’s accused of mismanaging and misspending.
• Starbucks is removing crushed-bug-based red dye from its strawberry-flavored cold drinks. (But that contributed half the nutritional value!)
• John Urquhart, who’s running for King County Sheriff, used to be the department’s PR guy. As such, he issued several interesting press releases.
• The city’s apparently afraid of another Occupy situation. It won’t let Real Change put up tents in Westlake Park to protest insufficient help for the homeless. Not even unoccupied “prop” tents.
• Greenpeace has a point about Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple opening server farms fed by coal and nuclear power. This “clean tech” takes an awful lot of electricity.

alliance for pioneer square via seattlepi.com

• An artistic ad poster, promoting the native American cause “Honor the Treaties,” was wheat-pasted in multiple copies all over a series of artists’ murals in Pioneer Square. The “Honor” campaign didn’t do it, and neither did the poster’s original artist. It was PosterGiant, the city’s leading poster putter-uppers.
• Congress just might kill off “Boeing’s bank.”
• One idea to save journalism is the concept of a nonprofit news website. Several of these are already up in scattered spots around the country. But the IRS is taking its own sweet time processing some of their applications for official nonprofit status.
• Here’s King County Metro’s current plan for bus changes effective September. A few new routes would be added, but a lot of key current routes would be reduced or dropped.
• You’ve only got 44 more days to enjoy your state liquor stores.
• This story speculating about potential “robot prostitutes” reminds me of (1) that whole “dildonics” nonsense in the 1990s, and (2) Westworld. Remember: Nothing can possibly go wrong….

david eskenazi collection via sportspressnw.com

And a happy Friday the 13th (first of the year) and Mariners home opening day to all of you!

• Richard Beyer, 1925-2002: The Waiting for the Interurban sculptor didn’t invent Fremont’s image as a funky/artsy neighborhood. But his work publicized this image as much as anything.
• Something You Might Not Have Known Dept.: Seattle gets a small but impressive portion of its electricity from methane at an Oregon landfill.
• You’ve got two more chances to have your say about Metro’s plan to ax the downtown Ride Free Area, at County Council meetings on the 16th and the 25th. Let ’em know you want/need/demand robust free downtown transit service.
• Third Avenue in Belltown now has those “daylight-like” street lights. Next step in resurrecting Third: making the street and its buildings look cleaner.
• With the legislative session finally over, Rob McKenna can legally raise campaign money. Thus, Washington’s gubernatorial campaign is now truly underway. Watch for McKenna to simultaneously run with and against the national Republican agenda—something Jay Inslee will try to stick onto McKenna at every opportunity.
• St. James Cathedral is among the churches that won’t take part in the Catholic archdiocese’s initiative petition campaign to overturn gay marriage.
• When can you start getting a legal drink in Wash. state after 2 a.m.? Perhaps in November (just perhaps).
• Bizarre Patent Application of the Day: GeekWire says Microsoft wants to patent “monetizing buttons on TV remotes:”

It’s called “Control-based Content Pricing,” and the basic idea is dynamic pricing of video content, based on the preferences of the user at any given moment—essentially setting different prices for different functions of the TV remote.

• Frances Cobain still can’t get away from her mom’s meddling.
• A Spokane nursery put up a billboard reading “Pot Dealer Ahead.” The ad was complete with an image of some flower pots, in case people didn’t get the joke (it being Spokane and all). Some people are vocally not amused (it being Spokane and all).
• The U.S. Border Patrol in this state continues to behave like a gang of racist tools.
• North Korea just can’t keep it up.
• Reversible male contraception is finally in the domestic testing stage, despite Big Pharma’s longtime disinterest.
• Jed Lewison at Daily Kos parses the anatomy of a Mitt Romney lie, that over 90 percent of U.S. job losses have gone against women. In reality (instead of Fox News Fantasyland), most folks laid off in the Great Recession were men. But new or revived jobs the past two years have also gone mostly to men (56 percent).
• The Murdoch media empire’s phone and email tapping scandal is reaching the U.S. But Murdoch’s domestic properties are not implicated, at least not yet. This is still about Murdoch’s U.K. papers, tapping into Hollywood celebrities’ phones and emails.
• Ari Rabin-Havt at HuffPost claims right wing racism no longer bothers with coded “dog whistle” messages, but now spews its hate openly and proudly.
• What Omar Willey says about seeking good web comics applies to just about all web “content”: “How do you find all this stuff?” (The stuff worth reading, that is.)

artist's rendering; via kiro-tv

• Millions in the making, the big Seattle waterfront roller coaster is finally on the way! Estimated opening: July 4th.
• You all need to read Judy Lightfoot’s piece at Crosscut about people forced to live in their vehicles at highway rest stops—even people with full time jobs.
• On a related note, the state’s (official) jobless rate has dropped just enough to disqualify the state’s unemployed from 26 weeks’ worth of extended benefits.
• The state’s finances, services, and basic sense of humanity are swirling down the drain. Tim Eyman, of course, doesn’t give a shit.
• Dept. of Correction: It turns out public breastfeeding is already legal in Wash. state. Yesterday’s “Random Links” piece implied otherwise.
• Queen Anne Books has got itself a lucky new owner.
• It’s official: there’s a whooping cough epidemic in our state.
• Seattle Center asked the public for input on new public-space designs for the place. Only they announced it on Tuesday with a deadline of Wednesday. And we’re asked to choose between three plans, all designed by out-of-state firms, and all reeking of “world class” emotional coldness.
• Three deserving local theatre troupes will get to share the performance space at the bottom of a new mixed-use development on Capitol Hill.
• Who doesn’t look at a bizarre press release issued on April 1 with at least a little skepticism? The Puget Sound Business Journal, that’s who. (The hoax was from Ivar’s, announcing a 100-flavor chowder dispenser to rival the Coca-Cola Freestyle pop machine.)
• The Mariners are acting all NIMBY-y about getting a basketball/hockey arena next door.
• As the Seattle Times finishes up its recounting of every complaint anyone’s got against Amazon (including some pretty serious allegations), labor advocacy group Working Washington is inviting people to register their own snark on the etailer’s sales page for a “Fair Share Pie Cutter.”
• Despite the plethora of comic book-based movies and related merch, actual comic book sales have collapsed in recent years (even more than newspapers). But one reviewer sees a ray of hope emerging amidst the pall of gloom. It’s the new higher-res iPad.
• Just declassified and in hot demand, it’s all the data from the 1940 Census.
• Celebrity-snark writer Dustin Rowles depicts sitcom has-been Kirk Cameron as a complete douchebag, albeit one of the pseudo-Christian rather than the regular Hollywood variety.
• Morley Safer snarks at the bigtime art world. New York mag’s Jerry Saltz snarks back.
• Your daily dose of political outrage: Paul Buchheit at Buzzflash lists some “preposterous but persistent conservative myths;” Stephen D. Foster Jr. at Addicting Info lists 40 particularly disgusting quotes by GOP politicos demonstrating the “values Republicans want to destroy America with;” and Laura Clawson at Daily Kos recounts the utter failure of a particularly dorky would be right-wing sting operation against a commuity organizing group.
• And let’s all get ready for Easter with (direct from the Betty Crocker Kitchens) the original “Bunny Butt Cake.”

ap photo via newstimes.com

• At the time of this writing, the Seattle Mariners are in first place as the winningest team in Major League Baseball! (This may be subject to change by the time you read this.)
• In other sporting news, the Husky men’s basketball team valiantly lost its NIT semifinal game in overtime; thus tying for the status of this year’s 71st best college team.
• You might be able to ski on the Fourth of July around here this year.
• Two years in the making, the downtown Target is set to finally open on July 29.
• Metro Transit’s downtown Ride Free Area ends two months after that.
• Meanwhile, Washington’s first food-only Walmart store is about to open at an ex-Kmart site in Bellevue.
• One-third of all homes sold in King County these days are sold for all cash (i.e., to speculators or rental operators).
• An Army PR guy says Joint Base Lewis-McChord is “not having any issues that other Army bases aren’t having, too.”
• This is from October but still fascinating—an in-depth look at the Columbia River, its watershed, its hydroelectric industry, its fishery, and the people who try to balance the needs of each.
• Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon would really like you to know there really are non-wingnut Christians out there.
• The rumored Apple-branded TV set is still just a rumor. But Farhad Manjoo at Slate reports that Microsoft’s XBox already brings the magic of online streaming-video search to TV sets.
• Slate also has a fond remembrance to the inventor of the frozen bagel and a handy guide to Quebeçois cuss words.
• Now we know why Bud, Miller, and Coors all sold out to foreigners. Light-beer sales are in a nosedive, perhaps a permanent one.
• John Cassidy at the New Yorker claims the right-wing assault on health care reform, as seen this week at the Supreme Court, is “a very bad joke.”

• We’ve got the indie alcohol entrepreneurs. We’ve got the apples (though perhaps not the right kinds). So let’s get a bigtime hard cider industry going in Wash. state already!
• The Central Cinema, which insists it needs to serve beer and wine to adult patrons at screenings, to survive, will apparently get to keep doing so. Even during all-ages screenings.
• Dept. of Just Sayin’: In three years, it will be a novelty to find a new hiphop artist who’s not white. Like with jazz after 1965, or with soul after 1985.
• Death Cab for Cutie (you know, the quasi-local band whose singer now lives in L.A. (until recently with Zoey Deschanel)) has entitled its spring 2012 tour “Return to Bellingham.” The tour does not actually include a show in Bellingham.
• Does current Seattle zoning need to be revised, to require more off-street parking in new developments? The Seattle Transit Blog apparently doesn’t think so, at least in one instance.
• Knute Berger looks at Seattle Center development schemes and would really like someone to explain them in non-buzzword-talk.
• If you know them, you love them, and you just can’t get enough of George Tsutakawa’s fountain sculptures. Seattle gallery owner John Braseth tracked one down in Indiana, and is arranging to have it fixed up and placed somewhere in town.
• There are a few non-Deja Vu strip clubs left in the region. Just not many.
• Oliver Willis wants more real progressives running for office, and wants them to actually “stand for something“…
• …while Chris Mooney at AlterNet thinks he’s figured a way progs could successfully appeal to “the right-wing brain.”
• The Economist notes that divorce, abortion, unwed pregnancy, and violent crime are all way down in the U.S. these days. So, the essay asks, why are Republicans still exhorting about “moral decline“? Perhaps because U.S. church attendance is also way down.
• Naomi Wolf insists elite private K-12 schools are bad for America and even bad for the kids who get sent there…
• …while Adam Levin at HuffPost suggests the Feds consider ordering a cap on public-college tuition, so taxpayer-supported universities don’t become only for the 1 percenters.
• Blogger “Angry Black Lady” really doesn’t like the Republican woman who claims the Democrats are just making up the whole “Republican war on women” meme.
• It wasn’t just Marx. Keynesians and other macroeconomists are also often guilty of forgetting the human factor in their systems constructs.

washington beer blog via seattlepi.com

First, thanks to the more than 50 people who crowded Roy St. Coffee and Tea for the History Cafe presentation on old Seattle restaurant menus Thursday evening. And thanks to my fellow panelists Hanna Raskin and Taylor Bowie for making it easy for me. Each of them had so many insights about the old restaurants, their menu designs, their food items, and their respective places in cultural history, that I didn’t have to say much.

• Seattle’s newest microbrewery has a gimmick. It puts out its pilsner in old fashioned steel cans that need a can opener. The company’s appropriate name: Churchkey Can Company.
• Annie Lowrey at Slate has the strange tale of a true “computer hacker” in the old, non-criminal definition of the term. He was a programming genius who supplied his innovations to, and supported the goals of, the open-source software movement. Before he abruptly and completely withdrew from public life.
• At least half the traffic on the Internet isn’t supplied by human computer users, but by automated spambots, information-stealing “scrapers,” and search engines.
• America’s most progressive-leaning broadcaster (or at least the outfit with that reputation) has just hired a union-buster consulting firm.
• Branding consultants Susan Lee and Jenny Laing claim the Occupy movement represents a great new opportunity to sell stuff.
• “The world’s most annoying song,” according to one Jason Richards, is not “Paradise City.” I see no reason to believe anything this Richards person says.

inventorspot.com

• Whatever happened to GAK and Floam?
• Here’s a potential first: a headline starting with the word “Shit,” on a KOMO-owned website! (The article in question is by a woman, questioning the marketing strategy of a vodka “for women.”)
• The liquor privatization initiative’s supporters vowed that the cheesy storefront liquor stores seen in other states won’t come here. Actually they might, depending on who bids to take over the current state Liquor Stores, which will each be auctioned off separately.
• Sorry, local lefties: Dennis Kucinich isn’t moving here.
• Before the Republicans hijacked the state Senate, they claimed to be in favor of fully funding K-12 education. Now, not so much.
• A Ph.D tackles the issue of “Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill.”
• An Internet meme has been going around this week, a video pleading for donations to a campaign against a notorious African warlord. Now it’s turning out the video’s makers aren’t all that morally pure themselves.
• “Respectable” DC pundits (you know, the kind who promote “bipartisan cooperation,” defined as caving to every Republican ploy) try to defend Limbaugh, very awkwardly.
• It isn’t just movie and music file sharing that’s caught the ire of the global copyright police. They’re also cracking down on folks sharing expensive textbooks and research journals.

crosscut.com

• Ex Seattle First Brother Bob Royer looks back at one of the city’s first prominent newspaperwomen. Fun fact: In the late 1930s, the Seattle Times had six people working in the “society” section; an expense more than made up by the amount of “women’s” oriented advertising in the section. Speaking of which….
• The P-I globe will remain standing, somewhere. That’s nice. But it’s not just the globe that I’d wanted preserved. Speaking of which….
• Newspapers are losing $7 in print ad revenue for every $1 they gain in online ad revenue. This is from a Pew Research study. The study’s authors claim papers “need to prioritize digital ad revenues” in order to survive. But what if that’s still not nearly enough? The study cites a “success story” of a small paper (20,000 print circ.) that’s now making $670,000 a year online, compared to $8 million from print ads. That doesn’t look like a bright future to me.
• The new Miss Seattle used to be a Miss Phoenix. Last December she Tweeted® how she “Ugh can’t stand cold rainy Seattle and the annoying people.” She has since apologized.
• Could liquor privatization in Wash. state really get derailed by a court challenge on techinical issues in the original initiative?
• Repercussions continue from Friday night’s Republican coup in the state Senate. The all-cuts budget they rushed through, with the help of three turncoat conserva-Dems but with no public hearings, turns out to hurt K-12 education and devastate services for the neediest.
• Also, the GOP’s parliamentary trickery doomed about 20 non-budget bills from the state House, which died because the Senate didn’t take action on them by midnight Friday.
• Meanwhile, the national Republicans, becoming shriller and stupider every week, have firmly (and probably fatally) tied their fate to the aging, non-college-educated, white male demographic. And they’re “appealing” to this last remaining constituency by treating them like idiots.
• Oh, and the even more batshit-n’-bigoted than ever Limbaugh? He’s lost a third of his ratings in the last few years. (However, some of that loss can be attributed to more accurate means of measuring radio listenership.) But in any event, the right wing “outrage machine,” which includes Limbaugh and his many imitators, may have finally become too petty and brutal for its own good.
• Besides, there’s a problem with trying to bring sexuality and women’s lives back to what they were in the 1950s. It wasn’t working then either. As local author Stephanie Coontz points out, “Teenage childbearing peaked in the fabulous family-oriented 1950s.”
• The GOP-controlled U.S. House is pushing through a bill that would crack down on protests anywhere a federal official might be present. At least, that’s what a worst-case interpretation of its “imprecise language” might infer.
• We know the 9/11 bombers came from Saudi Arabia. But did the Saudi regime itself collude in the attack? Two former U.S. Senators say maybe.
• A megarich hedge fund manager write lucidly about the failures of capitalism in regard to preserving a sustainable society.
• What if crossword puzzle editors wrote poetry?
• Finally, here is a handy pie chart of “excuses conservatives make when facts prove them wrong“: