Majikthise

RSS Feed for Focal Point: http://bigthink.com/blogs/focal-point.rss

2010-03-08T12:13:57-05:00

After 5 years terrific years on TypePad, my blog Majikthise has been rechristened "Focal Point" and relocated to the Big Think website.

Many of you have kindly included me on your blogrolls. If you could take a minute to update them, I would be very grateful.

Key Info:
The new name: Focal Point
New URL: http://bigthink.com/blogs/focal-point
The new RSS: http://bigthink.com/blogs/focal-point.rss

The name of the RSS will display as Big Think in your RSS reader, but don't worry, if you use the above URL you'll just get Focal Point. I've alerted the BT tech people and they're going to fix the problem.

Thanks for your patience during the transition.

Moving Day--Off to Big Think--Update your RSS feeds

2010-03-01T11:09:26-05:00

Today's the day. I'm off to Big Think. Here comes Focal Point.

Update your bookmarks and RSS feeds. The Majikthise URL should start redirecting to Big Think automatically.

Great moments in projection: Olympic edition

2010-02-27T18:19:00-05:00

Did you know that women are ostensibly banned from Olympic ski jumping due to the governing body's concerns about the well-being of their ovaries?

Gian-Franco Kasper, head of the International Ski Federation, had a pretty explanatory answer:
"Ski jumping is just too dangerous for women. Don't forget, [the landing] it's like jumping down from, let's say, about two meters to the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view."

And it only gets worse. The reasons given to Alissa were a bit more in detail:
"So far, we've been told every excuse in the book. That it's too 'dangerous' for girls. That there aren't enough of us. That we're not good enough. That it would damage our ovaries and uterus and we won't be able to have children, even though that's not true. It's so outdated, it's kind of funny in a way. And then it's not." [feministing, via Pandagon]

It’s touching that the gender that totes its gonads around in little bags outside of the body is so solicitous of the gender that keeps its family jewels stowed safely inside the abdomen.

Hockey players act like hockey players, world aghast

2010-02-27T14:52:14-05:00

If you win an Olympic gold medal in hockey, you get to drink beer, smoke cigars, and drive the Zamboni. It's that simple. It's probably in the Canadian constitution somewhere.

Yet suddenly, people couldn't recognize a Zamboni have taken it upon themselves to chide the Canadian women's hockey team for celebrating their 2-0 Olympic gold medal victory over the U.S. on the ice--after the fans had left the arena.

Some players wearing their gold medals were chewing on them. Some were drinking champagne. Some were drinking beer or pouring it into teammates' mouths. Some were doing their drinking while smoking cigars, or reclining on the ice and kicking their feet into the air, or honking the Zamboni's horn, or even attempting to drive the ice-resurfacing vehicle.
Canadians seemed to think this was great, an appropriate response to an emotional triumph. But when a reporter asked someone from the International Olympic Committee - an organization renowned for its stuffiness - that official did not. [...]
Steve Keough, a Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) spokesman, said the celebration was "not something uncommon in Canada." [PI]

You know why Canadians thought it was great? Because we see these women as athletes, not novelty fetish items. Athletes do this sort of thing. These particular athletes had just won a gold medal in Canada's favorite sport.

They were entitled to celebrate. The woman who scored both goals, Marie-Philip Poulin, was photographed drinking a beer. Scolds feigned outrage because she's 18 and the drinking age in British Columbia is 19. A guy who scored two goals in a gold medal game would be allowed to savor a beer in peace. The hockey etiquette police are probably unaware that it's traditional to for the winning team to guzzle champagne from the Stanley Cup.

The women didn't set out to cause a scene. They'd been partying in the locker room and they were invited back out onto the ice by photographers who wanted what should have read as cliches: Victorious athletes celebrating. The New York Times blog suggests that the women were posing for personal souvenir shots and didn't even realize that an AP photographer was still in the building.

But because the winners were women, the rest of the world was scandalized by their harmless exuberance.

And the winner is... (New blog name)

2010-02-27T13:03:15-05:00

The name of the new blog is "Focal Point," as suggested by Windy Pundit. It's professional-sounding, easy to spell, devoid of unwanted psychosexual undertones, and brands both the photography and the writing. I love it.

My first post on The Big Think will go live on Monday morning.

The White House and Stupak

2010-02-24T16:56:40-05:00

Amy Sullivan writes:

The President's proposal has, by virtue of not altering the Senate language on abortion coverage, opted for Ben Nelson's formulation rather than Bart Stupak's stricter standard. The Stupak amendment, you'll remember, was deemed necessary back in November to break the logjam in the House and get enough pro-life Democratic votes to pass health reform.

This post is part of a strange emerging conventional wisdom that it's significant that the White House didn't address abortion in its health care proposal.

The thing is, the White House never had the option of altering the Senate's language on abortion coverage. I mean, the president could have proposed whatever he wanted, but there would have been no way to make that alternate proposal into law without scrapping health reform and starting over.

At this point, any changes to the Senate health bill will have to be made through budget reconciliation. With his proposal, the president is telling the Senate what he wants them to try to pass through reconciliation.

Under the Byrd Rule, budget reconciliation is only for provisions that affect outlays and revenues. The Stupak amendment disqualifies private insurers from receiving subsidies if they offer abortion coverage that customers pay for with their own money. It doesn't materially affect the federal budget. So, there's no way to slip it into the Senate bill through reconciliation.

I don't think the White House wants to change the abortion language in the Senate bill anyway, but it's a moot point.

The Weathermen were terrorists

2010-02-24T15:25:05-05:00

Ta-Nehesi Coates writes:

All jokes aside, again, I think the problem here is defining terrorist strictly as the work of "foreign attackers" is really dubious. Newsweek certainly had no problem identifying Bill Ayers as a "former terrorist" in its subhed back in 08. I'm not in their newsroom. But I'd be very interested to see whether they debated this.

The Weathermen were definitely terrorists. Just because they operated domestically doesn't make them any less terroristic. The IRA, the UDL, and the ETA are terrorist organizations that operate on home turf.

Terrorism is a tactic. It can be perpetrated by a group of people, or by a lone individual, at home or abroad. The essence of terrorism is using spectacular violence for psychological leverage in the service of ideology.

A terrorist attack is designed to spark fear out of all proportion to the person/group's operational capacity to inflict casualties, and therefore to give the terrorists disproportionate influence--either to coerce a population or a government directly, or to provoke their adversaries into an overreaction that will set off a backlash.

Terrorists hope to distort our perception of risk by committing memorable, dramatic, "telegenic" atrocities.

I can see some justification for reserving the term terrorist for those who are part of organized groups. If if an attack is obviously a suicide mission by a lone assailant, that kind of defeats the purpose of a terror attack. The attacker loses a lot of leverage by dying and thereby removing further credible threats.

On the other hand, not all terrorists are suicide bombers. Tim McVeigh was clearly a terrorist. He didn't team up with an organization to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City--but he had enough ties to the right-wing, anti-government movement to make us wonder. If he hadn't been caught, he probably would have committed more attacks. Years after McVeigh's execution, you still see Teabaggers showing up at rallies in "Tree of Liberty" t-shirts, an homage to McVeigh.

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, waged a 17-year terror campaign against scientists, mathematicians, lobbyists, and other symbols of technological society. Early in his career, he nearly brought down an American Airlines flight with a bomb in the cargo hold. At one point, Kaczynski wrote a letter to the New York Times falsely claiming to be part of a group called the FC, or the Freedom Club. Was Kaczynski really any less of a terrorist because he turned out to be the FC's only member?

The lone wolf vs. group divide is looking increasingly arbitrary the era of networked organizations and virtual social movements. Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan acted alone, but he saw himself as being part of a much larger project.

In an age of mass communication and media, even a suicide bomber can hope to kindle a chain reaction that will continue long after he's gone. IRS bomber Joe Stack hoped that his attack would inspire others to rise up against the government, and sure enough, within minutes of the crash online shrines were popping up all over the web.

Weekly Pulse: Obama gives GOP rope to hang itself at health care summit

2010-02-24T11:29:44-05:00

Tomorrow, President Obama will gather with Republicans for the long-awaited televised health care summit. Obama will promote his health care proposal, the Republicans will demand that we start over.

Even House Minority Leader John Boehner dimly senses that the GOP is walking into a trap. The public is thoroughly sick of the health reform process, but people still like the idea of health care reform. So, the GOP can't just say "kill the bill" in public. Instead, Republicans have to make disingenuous speeches about "starting over," knowing full well that if health care reform dies now, it'll stay dead.

Boehner must realize that starting over is about as appealing as National Root Canal Week at the DMV. But what can he do? The Republicans have no ideas beyond "tax cuts cure cancer." And they can't boycott the summit, or they'll lose the "bipartisan" blinking contest.

So, when Obama gets on TV and lays out his reasonable-sounding plan, complete with protections against private insurers who want to hike your premiums 39% overnight, he's going to sound good and the Republicans are going to sound crazy.

Brilliant tactician Boehner is now exhorting Republicans to "crash the party" they've already been invited to.

It's a trap, alright.

Hivemind: Help me name my new Big Think blog

2010-02-23T12:10:25-05:00

I'm very excited to announce that I will be moving to my new blog home at Big Think on March 1.

The new blog will be like Majikthise, just on a new site, and a new name. Starting next month the Majikthise URL will redirect automatically to Big Think.

Now, all we need is a new name for the blog. Suggestions? I need to let them know by Friday afternoon.

Examples of other Big Think blog names include: Brave Green World (Tobin Hack); Think, See, Feel (Lea Carpenter); Novel Copy (Orion Jones); Picture This (Bob Duggan); and Mind Matters (David Berreby).

Scientology hires Pulitzer and Emmy winners

2010-02-22T11:43:49-05:00

Via Gawker:

Howard Kurtz, in the Washington Post, reports that the cult hired Steve Weinberg, the former executive director of non-profit Investigative Reporters and Editors, Russell Carollo, who won a Pulitzer in 1998 for a series on medical malpractice that appeared in the Daily News of Dayton, Ohio, and Christopher Szechenyi, an Emmy-winning former TV producer. (They possibly saw this job advertisement.)

I am so disappointed that a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors associated himself with Scientology.

IRE is the premiere professional organization for investigative journalism. (I'm a proud member.)

The defining moment in IRE's history was the 1976 murder Don Bolles of the Arizona Republic. After Bolles' death, his IRE colleagues threw themselves into the Arizona Project, a massive collaborative investigation to expose organized crime in Arizona. I mention this because it exemplifies core values of IRE: investigative journalists working together for justice.

Obviously, it's no reflection on IRE that its former executive director went on to work with Scientology.

It's just sad and ironic that Steve Weinberg chose to help Scientology investigate other journalists, namely reporters at the St. Petersberg Times. The paper won a Pulitzer Prize for its critical coverage of Scientology.

Weinberg told Howie Kurtz that the Scientology gig was just a job like any other.

Steve Weinberg, the former IRE executive, who has taught at the University of Missouri's journalism school for a quarter-century, says he was paid $5,000 to edit the study and "tried to make sure it's a good piece of journalism criticism, just like I've written a gazillion times. . . . For me it's kind of like editing a Columbia Journalism Review piece."
He says their agreement requires that the church publish the study in full, if it decides to make it public, but that "the contract says the church has the right to do nothing with it except put it in a drawer." That means Scientology leaders have an out if the recently completed study isn't to their liking. [WaPo]

This report is nothing like a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review. It's a weapon in Scientology's war against its critics, and it's naive or disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

Now, Scientology can spin the report any way it wants, or bury it, and say that prize-winning investigative journalists signed off on it. They bought Weinberg's seal of approval for a mere $5000.

Scientology is taking a page out of the corporate playbook: loosely associating itself with independent experts in order to piggyback on their prestige. Big Pharma loves to recruit famous doctors and researches to give this kind of "independent" advice. Nobody tells the doctors what to say, but the company always gets the final cut. Whatever the advisers say can and will be used to hype the drug. If a doctor believes this is a great drug that will help lots of people, she may not mind being used in a commercial. That excuse doesn't work for Scientology.

IRE stands for transparency and the search for truth. Scientology is the anti-IRE.

The "church" is notorious for digging up dirt on its critics and hounding them mercilessly. There's a reason why the Anonymous anti-Scientology protesters won't show their faces.

Scientology wants to destroy these reporters and Weinberg is helping them do it.

Links for 2009-10-28 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

The Public Option Redux: Carper's Folly | Mother Jones
While proponents of health care reform celebrate Majority Leader Harry Reid's pledge to support a public option in the Senate bill, nobody--journalists or politicans, advocates of opponents--seems to know what it is he's supporting. It's quite possible that the latest reincarnation of the public option will simply lay out one more circuitous route back into the insurance industry, with a a public entity subcontracting the actual insurance back to a private insurer in something akin to an outsourcing scheme.
Trumka Sets AFL-CIO Standard for Real' Health Reform - Working In These ...
As Congress haltingly moves toward approval of some version of health care reform legislation, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka warned today that “we cannot be in favor of reform for reform’s sake. This is the moment to make it real. The fight now is about what reform looks like.”
Snowe: I'll Block The Health Care Bill If I Have To
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has already suggested she won't vote for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's health care bill if it comes to the floor. Now she says she could prevent it from getting there in the first place.
The Washington Monthly
HOW LIKELY IS THE BLUFF?.... Marc Ambinder notes this afternoon that Senate Democratic leaders and the White House still think that Joe Lieberman, when push comes to shove, will join Dems and support cloture on health care reform. "They think he's posturing for power but will cave," Ambinder said.
Nevada: A Good Place to be a Bad Boss
Nevada is a good place to be a bad boss. According to a new report, you can flout safety rules and state inspectors just shrug it off. Even when workers die. Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a sweeping indictment of Nevada's OSHA program. Nevada OSHA (NOSHA) is one of over 20 state-level occupational safety programs supervised and partially funded by the federal OSHA.

Links for 2009-10-21 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-22T00:00:00-07:00

Say It Ain't Snowe -- In These Times
I don’t get it. I know that’s the simplistic refrain of every 10-year-old, but I’m 33 and I mean it: I just don’t get it. Specifically, I don’t get why Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) — or any Republican senator, for that matter — is attracting so much attention.
Democrats lost leverage early in health reform ...
Democrats pushing for a government-backed insurance option as part of their health reform strategy are finding out the hard way that, by taking single payer health care off the table early, they have little leverage now to force a strong public plan.
Harkin touts health reform advantages for small businesses
“Right now small businesses are at the end of the tail that is wagged,” the Democratic lawmaker explained. “They don’t get the discounts and the rates and the coverage like the huge businesses do because they just don’t have the bargaining power, and they don’t have the choices available to them. So many small businesses in Iowa basically have one insurance company to deal with or maybe two at the most. So, therefore, there is no competition out there.
Abortion Remains A Foil for Opponents of Reform
All the sexual health-specific sturm und drang around the process of health reform over the past few months---hysterical anti-choice protests, representatives spreading false stories about school field trips to get abortion, and Senators pushing to restore abstinence-only funding---has resulted in a set of bills all of which that take roughly the same approach to abortion, what some call an “abortion neutral” approach.
TPMDC: Pelosi Whipping House Health Care Plan--Including Robust Public Option
As I reported last night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is making a concerted push to pass a health care bill with a robust public option. In previous weeks, Pelosi maintained that House health care principals were still hashing out whether the public option in the bill would pay providers Medicare-like reimbursement rates, or whether those rates would be negotiated by administrators.

Links for 2009-10-16 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-17T00:00:00-07:00

Dems vs. Insurance Industry, Round II " The Washington Independent
Health insurance companies, for decades exempt from federal anti-trust laws, are exploiting that privilege to churn profits at the expense of patients, a number of Senate Democrats charged Wednesday. The lawmakers — including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — want to repeal the exemption as part of broader efforts this year to overhaul the nation’s dysfunctional health care system.
Here's What to Tell Obama, Congress About Real Reform
If you campaigned to elect Barack Obama last year, on the theory that doing so would deliver health care reform, it is likely that you will get a call next week. The president himself might even be on the phone. Obama is throwing his weight -- or, in this fit president's case, the proper word is probably "stature" -- behind a grassroots organizing effort to get 100,000 Americans to call Congress in support of health care reform.
The Insurance Industry Can't Lose
The health insurance industry’s double cross of Obama has created a storm of controversy. But it probably won’t amount to much. There's been a lot of talk about punishing the industry for its actions: through a barely conceivable threat to remove the industry’s antitrust exemption or by resurrecting the public option. Neither seems very likely.
Harkin: Bill Would Include Higher Threshold for "Cadillac Plan" Tax
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told reporters on Friday that a public option will be included in the health reform bill ultimately signed by President Obama.
Moderate Dems Blast Medicare Doc Fix Bill
t’s not looking good for Senate Democratic leaders hoping next week to pass a $245 billion proposal to give Medicare doctors pay raises over the next decade. That’s because there are a number of Democratic moderates lining up to oppose the proposal because it’s not paid for. The New York Times points out this morning that at least two moderates, Sens. Evan Bayh (Ind.) and Kent Conrad (N.D.), are already vowing to vote against the bill.
Franken speaks up for competition in the health insurance industry ...
WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine raised eyebrows when it sued the state for refusing to grant an 18.5 percent premium hike on 12,000 individual policy holders — an increase that would have generated a 3 percent profit margin for the company. Instead, Maine’s insurance superintendent granted a 10.9 percent hike — effective last July — which nets the company no profit on those policies. Reportedly, the superintendent reasoned that Anthem, a subsidiary of Wellpoint Inc., had profited enough in recent years — and paid out enough huge executive pay packages — that it could afford to break even for 12 months while patients struggle in the down economy.
Nativism is Dangerous to Our Health
Oct. 16, 2009 | Of all the wingnut mythology surrounding healthcare reform, nothing has stirred greater fury or louder denials than the suggestion that government might somehow provide insurance to America's undocumented workers and their families. "You lie!" screamed Rep. Joe Wilson as the President told Congress that his plan would provide no coverage to them. "No, we don't!" replied the Democrats, who scrambled to make sure that the undocumented are excluded by statute.

Links for 2009-10-15 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-16T00:00:00-07:00

Contrarian Double-X hires sociopath as friendship expert
The self-proclaimed feminist website Double-X shrewdly hired noted sociopath Lucinda Rosenfeld to write its friendship column. This is precisely the kind of fresh, contrarian perspective we've come to expect from the Slate/Double-X brand.
CNN Contributor Has Ties to Insurance Industry
THE BLURRED LINES ON CNN.... Alex Castellanos' role as a CNN political analyst has been controversial for a while, but this might be the most serious incident to date: "Media Matters for America has obtained evidence that CNN contributor Alex Castellanos' political consulting firm, National Media, is the ad buyer for the insurance industry group America's Health Insurance Plan's (AHIP) new ad blitz attacking Democratic health reform plans. CNN has a responsibility to insure that Castellanos' obvious conflict of interest does not tarnish their future coverage of the health care debate."
Petition: Fire Lucinda Rosenfeld from "Friend or Foe"
A petition urging the editors of the self-proclaimed feminist blog Double-X to fire advice columnist Lucinda Rosenfeld for her columns trivializing the ordeal of a letter writer who reported being involuntarily drugged at a bar and abandoned by her friends.

Links for 2009-10-14 [del.icio.us]

2009-10-15T00:00:00-07:00

Baucus Committee OKs a Health Bill, But Not Reform
Public Health Before Wall Street Wealth
Featured in the Daily Pulse!
BAUCUS BILL NOT MODERATE ENOUGH FOR LIEBERMAN....
Featured by Lindsay Beyerstein in the TMC's Weekly Pulse.
My Insurance Company Says Being Pregnant Is An "Unhealthy Lifestyle ...
Featured by Lindsay Beyerstein in TMC's Weekly Pulse.

Links for 2007-03-10 [del.icio.us]

2007-03-11T00:00:00-08:00

The face of war | Salon Life
My second Salon cover story, an interview with photojournalist Nina Berman about her prizewinning portrait of a horribly burned Marine and his bride on their wedding day in small-town Illinois.

Links for 2007-03-03 [del.icio.us]

2007-03-04T00:00:00-08:00

"Goring the Former Veep" By Howard Kurtz
At last, a common-sense blogger! In Salon, Lindsay Beyerstein describes how she turned down an offer to blog for John Edwards--from a staffer she calls "Bob"--before the hiring of Amanda Marcotte ended in a meltdown: " 'I'm probably not . . . the perso