mchuge

An epidemiologist I know recommended reading up on the 1918 epidemic. While it is a lesson in underreaction, it’s also a lesson in overreaction. Egypt is killing pigs to stop it. In discussing whether it’s better to overreact or underreact, or react just perfectly, please be informed. Wingnuts who say there’s no such thing as overreaction are overreacting.

Update: A friend of a friend is quarantined with this flu and is expected to make a full recovery soon. It seems a bullet was dodged as it was pure happenstance that my immediate friend hadn’t seen the former in a couple weeks.

Tags: General Pop Culture by hugh
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• The new quagmire: Seven questions for Barack Obama on Afghanistan. With hindsight of Mary McCarthy’s Vietnam memoirs and penned by retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.
• Greenwald calls Jane Harman a bunch of names although strangely, hypocrite isn’t one of them. Jeff Stein delves further into the mess.
• Socialist Andre Damon pretty cynical about everything.
• Reese Erlich seems to think loosening policy toward Cuba will bring more illicit drug trafficking.
• Jessie’s bond-trader friend whacks at the Wells Fargo earnings piñata.
• Tom Engelhardt ruminates on the constant stream of civilian casualties that largely go unreported on these shores.
• Dems want to sweep torture hearings under the rug as much as Bush flunkies do.
• Israelis hawking first-class propaganda junket??!?
• Bank stress test: a) too big to fail b) too big to fail…
• Tiny violin playing for pro-torture Judge Bybee.
• Texas sheriff prosecution for waterboarding by Reagan’s DOJ ignored by current torture advocates.
• New York food banks stressed.
• Polish pianist stops the show with anti-U.S. tirade.
• The new terror alert: Swine flu hype conveniently killing off the torture story. Includes a history of “flu oddities.”

Tags: Politics, Richard's Forwards by hugh
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The diorama is half-built. In the back area, there should be a tiger, a banker, some broken chairs, and a penguin.

Tags: Photography by hugh
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By golly. Breakin rekkids, askin questions. If the water boils on the stove, everything is copacetic.

Tags: Uncategorized by hugh
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I gave the garbage patch in the Pacific Gyre a mention on my myspace blog last year right before I started this blog. Of course around Earth Day, Oprah and the Huffington Post saw fit to highlight a newish documentary on the subject. One of the comments says everything about American media and ignorance: Nothing bad exists until Oprah says so.*

Anyway, we should send a few aircraft carriers over there to trawl for a month or two while Oprah hosts a reality show with super-rich and smart philanthropists solving this and the rest of the world’s problems. Do I have to think of everything?

* certainly if it's not crashing through our windows like a tornado or a car-jacker

Tags: Media, Science by hugh
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Nooners!

Update: Agree with Josh and Sullivan … Let’s call Cheney’s bluff.

Tags: The Lunch Wire by hugh
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I set out to take some spring shots but it’s not time yet. It’s going to be raining off and on for the next two days. After that… April showers, pilgrims; as I like to say.

Tags: Photography by hugh
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Fill each with a story, link them all through coincidence and circumstance, and you’ve got a novel. Eureka. I’m just laughing at the way different people write and how many of them don’t.

Tags: Writing, Blogging by hugh
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The problem with the Tax Day Teabag Protests was that no alternative was offered. Some of those interviewed called Obama a fascist but could not articulate why they felt this way. The governor Texas threatening to secede is apparently signaling his constituents that it’s okay to hate America again. I understand the bipartisan frustration of tax dollars insuring that the wealthy stay wealthy, but middle class truck drivers and factory workers complaining about tax increases is way off the mark. These people didn’t complain when their dollars were funneled to Bush and Cheney cronies amid the privatization of the Iraq War. It’s basically the same thing. [Read more →]

Tags: Politics, Richard's Forwards by hugh
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I had a great time at Minton’s Playhouse the other night. It felt like Augie’s (now SMOKE) back in the day. On April 29th, they’ll be celebrating Duke Ellington’s 110th birthday. Performing is Darby Dizard and the Blue Millenium Orchestra, featuring several alumni of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra. Git it in yer soul.

Tags: Music by hugh
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I’ll be shooting some magnolia trees and cherry trees and some fertilizer pretty soon now.

Tags: Photography by hugh
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“One day I climbed up as fast as I could to the olive grove where I had carried out all these experiments, but I had brought neither my liquid machine gun nor the live rhinoceros that I would have liked for the prints, nor even some half-dead octopus. It was the only time when, as it did not happen to Louis XIV either, “I would have to wait.” –Diaries, 1960

Tags: Art, The Lunch Wire by hugh
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