Category: Everything Else

Midterms are over; time to focus on everything else that’s been piling up. Like renewing my now-expired passport. The application has been sitting on my desk for months, but I really need to get off my butt & do it before I get RFID’ed.

I’ve posted previously on the problems with putting RFID chips into passports. As this recent article notes, DHS is “dealing” with the problem not by looking for a better solution, but by engaging in an Orwellian re-naming of the technology involved.

Conspiracy theorists and civil libertarians, fear not. The U.S. government will not use radio-frequency identification tags in the passports it issues to millions of Americans in the coming years.

Instead, the government will use “contactless chips.”

The distinction is part of an effort by the Department of Homeland Security and one of its RFID suppliers, Philips Semiconductors, to brand RFID tags in identification documents as “proximity chips,” “contactless chips” or “contactless integrated circuits” — anything but “RFID.”

The Homeland Security Department is playing word games to dodge the privacy debate raging over RFID tags.

So very typical of this administration.

I’m supposed to be studying for my Accounting midterm, but this song just cycled through my iMix and I just had to say it:

The Dave Matthews Band song “Grey Street” is a really good song. But it would be even better if Peter Gabriel covered it.

Brad Plumer has some policy-wonk posts up today about health care reform. Although this isn’t a front burner issue for me most of the time, it got me thinking.

I’m generally supportive of converting America to a single-payer health care system like what most European countries and Canada have. And then it hit me — what if my wish came true?

Would I trust my government to make decisions about things like who gets access to prescription birth control devices? Not if a Republican were in the White House. Given the SCOTUS precedent of Griswold v CT, I’m fairly sure they couldn’t eliminate birth control entirely, but they could include things like ‘conscience clause’ that would allow doctors to not write prescriptions for birth control pills if they chose not to. As we’ve already seen with abortion services, if nobody chooses to provide something, you have an effective ban on service even if it is still legal.

That’s a really scary scenario, and one that is making me rethink whether I support single-payer health care after all. Just one more thing to blame on the right wing nut jobs trying to run this country.

My favorite chocolate is actually good for you:

Investigators from the University of L’Aquila in Italy found that after eating only 100 grams, or 3.5 ounces, of dark chocolate every day for 15 days, 15 healthy people had lower blood pressures and were more sensitive to insulin, an important factor in metabolizing sugar.

UPDATE: If I’d known Kevin Drum was going to link to this post, I’d have put some more thought into it and maybe even a few actual insights. So it goes. Welcome, all you visitors from Political Animal!

It’s virtually impossible to avoid the whole Schiavo mess right now. I’m with Brad Plumer:

Ugh, very much not interested in reading about the Schiavo case right now. It’s “important”, I know, and it’s the big news of the moment, but

I’ve been trying to come to grips with my apathy lately. I found “trueblue illinois” over at dKos who said some things I really wish I had said, related to the cognitive dissonance it is to be an American these days. Here it is:

I’ve heard modern conservatism described as a “philosophy” of “Got mine. Get yours.” It seems to be a mindset of radical self-interest. What is strange to me is how many people have jumped on that bandwagon. Or is that just how the election results were portrayed?

When Americans look into the mirror, they like to see the NYC firefighters of 9/11; the liberators of post WW II Europe; a generous people who open their wallets and hearts to people in need. I know that most of us are that, deep down.

But under the GOP, our image is increasingly that of an unapologetic Scrooge. There’s a cravenness, a selfishness, an aggressiveness that just does not jibe with the way most people in this nation see themselves. Of all the people I know personally, of any political stripe, not one person would fit that definition. And yet that is what we as a nation are projecting.

It seems like it will take some huge shock, some giant international snub, for people to wake up and realize that the image in the mirror does not reflect who they are. One would have thought that 9/11 would have served that purpose. It could have. But Bush & Co. played on our fears and encouraged the worst aspects of our natures to come out. They’ve leveraged that to radically change the nature of our laws and our society into something most of us with any perspective would not recognize as “American.”

At some point, the cognitive dissonance will have to kick in. When the scales fall from our eyes, we as a nation are in for the sort of anguished soul-searching that gripped Germany after WW II.

I have, in fact, met a few American who really are as aggressively selfish as the commenter describes above. And I’m sure many of the BushCo folks are that way as well. But overall she’s got a point.

I worry what it will take for the rest of the country to wake up. How bad does it have to get?

In a way, I think I have kicked into my own selfishness mode. There are so many outrages going on in our country that I could literally spend all day every day doing nothing but trying to stay on top of all the bad things that are going on, much less trying to react to all of them. I can’t do it. I can’t be that person, constantly outraged, constantly active in the struggle. There’s just so much to fight against I can’t even decide where to start anymore.

And yes, I know, this is one of the ways “they” can win. We don’t all have to be thrown into jail or leave the country. We just need to give up and stop caring.

15, or even 10 years ago, I might have done things differently. But I’m older, and sadder, and just plain tired. If America is screwed, at least I can have time with the people (and pets) most important to me as we all go down the tubes together. It’s less aggressively selfish, but still a selfish decision I’ve made. So maybe trueblue illinois is more right than she knows.