Election

The Agenda of Activist Conservative Justices

States’ rights, no; corporate rights, yes – PostPartisan – The Washington Post By E.J. Dionne Jr.

The corporate conservative majority on the Supreme Court was at it again on Monday. By its customary 5 to 4 vote, the court threw out a Montana law that had been on the books since 1912, banning corporate spending on elections. Naturally, the court’s conservatives believe their judgment in the Citizens United case is so much more refined and intelligent than the judgment of the good people of Montana.Will everyone please finally admit that conservatives actually don’t care a whit about states’ rights unless invoking states’ rights happens to be helpful to the conservative agenda? Conservatives on the court have become complete and utter hypocrites on the matter of what states can and can’t do.

This has stuck in my craw for a long time. Recall that the Supreme Court had absolutely no qualms about telling the state of Florida in 2000 that there was no way it could recount its votes in a fashion that would be satisfactory, and never mind that the Florida Supreme Court had ruled in favor of recounts. Those recounts might have gotten in the way of George W. Bush’s elevation to the presidency. Face it: If states’ rights are inconvenient to the outcome conservatives want, conservative justices will find a way to supersede them.

States’ rights, no; corporate rights, yes – PostPartisan – The Washington Post

QOTD, The Atheist's Pulpit

Orwell tweets: nvr uz a lng wrd whn a short ‘un werks

You any damn word you want to — that’s my motto. But, I like the longer quote. mjh

Brendel Playing Schubert by Lisel Mueller | The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Orwell said, "So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information."

And, "Never use a long word where a short one will do."

Brendel Playing Schubert by Lisel Mueller | The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

WTF?!

Amazon stumbles three time on one order!

I’m a big fan of Amazon. Recently, I bought a Tripp Lite PV150 Portable Inverter with DC Auto Power Outlet. The following is a review I tried to submit but which was rejected:

Amazon is great about returns, which is one reason I buy from them. However, there is something "hazardous" about this device. (Hard to believe.) The package it came in said it had to be shipped ground, not by air — fine. However, when I tried to return it two weeks later, Amazon indicated it cannot be returned and advised me to seek local information on disposing of hazardous waste. I’m not really reviewing the product, I’m warning the next buyer: make sure you want this.

From the guidelines, I understand this review was rejected because it doesn’t focus on the product. I’m not interested in tricking Amazon into accepting this review. I’m simply doubly disappointed. Make that triply, because the rejection advised me to use the Feedback link, but this product is not included in those I can feedback on. I can’t return it and I can’t warn another potential buyer. Amazon failed me.

WTF?!

Qwest – CenturyLink Service Disaster

About 10 days ago, we took steps to get rid of our lifelong landline. In the process, Qwest (so much easier to say and type than CenturyLink) offered us deals that made us look like chumps for having paid so much for so little all these years. We stood our ground on the landline, but decided to opt for an upgrade in DSL speed from 1.5M to 7M. Amy in Idaho Falls assured us our old modem would work with 7M, but that she had to order a new modem to ‘trick’ the system, and then cancel that order.

Yesterday, our old landline was disconnected. DSL went down, too, but we were assured that the new speed would be available by 5pm. When we called after 5pm, we were assured it would be by 7pm.

It was a service nightmare surpassing the Dell Debacle, the FedEx Fumble, the White Glove Wipe-out, and the Butterflyphoto Follies of 2007.

For 24 hours, the DSL light blinked futilely. In that time, we spoke to a half a dozen people and I made repeated attempts to chat online with Qwest service (using a neighbor’s wireless). Understand, I’m very patient, polite, and clear on the phone. Merri could not be more personable or pleasant, as well as thorough. We are not the customers from hell. Each person we talked with seemed helpful but none really understood the problem or had the correct solution. It was tremendously frustrating to have to start over again and again in describing the problem, as if there is no record of previous calls — no institutional memory. However, very late in the process, one rep seemed to see a complete list of our contacts over the past 24 hours. Why didn’t one person look at that and say "we need to do something special"? Why doesn’t Qwest issue an incident number you can enter at the first prompt to reconnect to someone who knows the situation, instead of starting anew with each representative?

Like the uninformed person who told us we could not go back to 1.5M, as if overnight the feature was gone from the earth. Like Ellie, stammering through her script, who asked if I’d called Netgear to discuss the modem with them, and who was rattled out of her script but did the right thing when I said "either give me to a supervisor or hang up — your choice." Like that supervisor, JoAnn, who patiently listened as I said she would be the last person I ever talked to at Qwest: "downgrade the service or get us a compatible modem by 5pm," I said. She apologized and connected me with someone to downgrade our service (rather than recommend a $99 modem), but Eisley had to talk to her supervisor about an odd $25 fee; no follow up. Or Sue J, Tia, and Bambi — all online — who repeatedly forwarded me to Internet Services, which instantly triggered a Remote Support function that plastered a graphic on screen and nothing more — no way forward, no way back. The second and third times I started my chat with "Don’t activate Remote Support or forward me to Internet Services" — yet each time they did. As an aside, the Qwest website is NOT compatible with Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8. (The Qwest website is simply gawd-awful. However, IE10 crashes every day and is incompatible with Google and Facebook, ad nauseum.)

In the end, the fix was simple. Ten days ago, Amy in Idaho Falls should have told us that a new VDSL modem cost only $99. You can’t find that info on Qwest’s website, even if you’re logged in as a customer. Or the tech who switched service yesterday should have known — from Amy — that we had an ADSL modem and configured the system accordingly. This, we got from Johnny in Idaho Falls, whom Merri dubs a hero. Johnny even told us where a CenturyLink store is (a mile away).

I can’t convey the misery, anger, depression, and powerlessness both Merri and I felt over the past 24 hours. We lost most of two full days to this nonsense. But, I know anyone reading this has a comparable story. 

Lastly: for god’s sake, don’t run loud endless ads on hold. It’s clueless at best, infuriating at worst, to make me listen about your great service while on hold for tech support over and over and over again. Some VP bought a summer house in Aspen with the proceeds from that idiotic idea. How is it possible that large corporations with vast sums paying VPs hundreds of thousands of dollars can’t provide the service they exist to provide? Management and the board should be very, very embarrassed. Maybe some overpaid suit should steal some ideas from Amazon’s service. Amazon’s going to take everything from the Unservices, if it can continue to avoid becoming like them.

The Atheist's Pulpit

Are We Living in Sensory Overload or Sensory Poverty? – NYTimes.com

Short, well-written essay. Read it, then turn off your computer and sit outside for a while. Not to be smug, but I walked to the park, sat in the backyard, and will play volleyball for 2 hours under a gorgeous New Mexico sky in sight of a mountain range. A good day. mjh

Are We Living in Sensory Overload or Sensory Poverty? – NYTimes.com

By DIANE ACKERMAN 

As a species, we’ve somehow survived large and small ice ages, genetic bottlenecks, plagues, world wars and all manner of natural disasters, but I sometimes wonder if we’ll survive our own ingenuity. At first glance, it seems as if we may be living in sensory overload. The new technology, for all its boons, also bedevils us with alluring distractors, cyberbullies, thought-nabbers, calm-frayers, and a spiky wad of miscellaneous news. Some days it feels like we’re drowning in a twittering bog of information.

But, at exactly the same time, we’re living in sensory poverty, learning about the world without experiencing it up close, right here, right now, in all its messy, majestic, riotous detail. The further we distance ourselves from the spell of the present, explored by our senses, the harder it will be to understand and protect nature’s precarious balance, let alone the balance of our own human nature.

Are We Living in Sensory Overload or Sensory Poverty? – NYTimes.com

[hat tip to Meg Adams and Merri Rudd]

Health

Think before you eat. We are an on-going experiment for corporate profit.

Since largely eliminating wheat from my diet 6 months ago, my appetite has changed for the better, as has how I experience hunger: less dread, less distress. mjh

Mind games, man boobs, and muffin tops | Wheat Belly Blog

Posted on June 17, 2012 by Dr. Davis 

Wheat Belly is, first and foremost, about the changes introduced into modern wheat by the work of geneticists during the 1960s and 1970s, the same kind of research that led to the creation of Agent Orange, DDT, and other “better health through chemistry” types of efforts. The failure of agricultural geneticists and agribusiness to ask questions about the suitability of a genetically unique crop means they unleashed a foodstuff on a public . . . with no understanding of its effects on humans who consume it. This unquestioned acceptance of chemistry and genetics was the modus operandi during the mid-20th century. …

Among the changes introduced into wheat by geneticists:

  • Enrichment in the glia-alpha-9 genetic sequence that provokes celiac disease. Nearly absent from the wheat of 1950, nearly all modern semi-dwarf wheat contains this genetic sequence. Is it any wonder why the incidence of celiac disease has quadrupled?
  • Gliadin is a more powerful opiate–The changes introduced into the gliadin gene/protein make it a more potent opiate. While the digestive byproducts of gliadin bind to the opiate receptors of the brain, they lack the pain-relieving and euphoric effects of heroin and morphine, but “only” provoke addictive eating behavior and appetite stimulation. People who consume wheat consume, on average, 440 more calories per day, 365 days per year.
  • Changes in the lectin unique to wheat, wheat germ agglutinin, that is responsible for 1) direct intestinal damamge, and 2) a Trojan horse effect of helping foreign substances gain entry into the bloodstream. This is likely at least part of the reason why wheat-eaters experience more lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, polymyositis, type 1 diabetes in children, worse ulcerative colitis and Crohns, more Hashimoto’s thyroiditis: Foreign proteins gain entry to the various organs of the body and result in “autoinflammation.” Changes in wheat lectin may have also led to more effective blocking of the hormone of satiety, leptin.
  • Changes in alpha amylase inhibitors–These are the most common sources of wheat allergies, e.g., wheat allergy in kids.

Eliminating wheat is about undoing all these effects, effects that have broad implications for human health across an astounding number of health conditions.

Mind games, man boobs, and muffin tops | Wheat Belly Blog

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams