The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect

Sign me up for three giant pills and a machine thing.  Courtesy of MSK.

This Land Is Your Land: the lost verses

Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine/The Nightwatchman) and friends sang This Land Is Your Land at a rally in Wisconsin last week for the protesters, public and private employees, who want to kill the union-busting bill.  The whole video is worth it, but if you're in a rush start at 4:20.

Mahlon Mitchell, President of the Wisconsin Professional Firefighters Association on Democracy Now Friday morning, talked about himself and 60 firefighters sleeping in the capital rotunda alongside 600 protesters, even though their union is exempt from the bill: 

"Well, it just shows how important union work is and how important the union is to the middle class. There is not one employee, public employee, state, municipal, local employee, firefighter, police officer teacher, that does their job to get rich. We don’t do our job to get rich. We do our job to have a decent life, to have a decent middle-class family and not have to struggle like a lot of our other people do. Well, what this bill will in essence do is bring the middle class back down lower. And that’s really where the Governor wants and the corporate backers want us, so that we’d have less power and we have less influence on elections. So this is not about just unionism. This is about an attack on the middle class. This is about Wisconsinites, and this is a hard-working Midwest state, and we need unions to help take care of our middle class."

 Video Interview, which I highly recommend.  I think we'd all be better off if we reminded ourselves that we must share this country, it belongs to us all, "us" being a very general term; and we need to make room for everyone to retain their individual potential.  It's not a race to first place, it's a society.  The bottom-line is that you (meaning everyone) should be worried about the middle-class shrinking. How are we doing with that?  Glad you asked.

More about the song, after the jump (because originally this was a music post).

My friends are clever people: Dictator edition

Today my friend had as his gchat status: "News outlets of the world: he spells it 'Moammar El-Gadhafi.'  Get it together."  This plethora of spellings had annoyed me as well, so I shared with him the most ridiculous official spelling I'd seen, and he responded with this piece of gchat gold:  

"That is ridiculous.

Why is this even an issue?

The man has spelled his own name in English

that should be the end of it.

That's the one thing you should be able to act as a dictator over,

your own name"

So very true. 

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - The Important Question

I just received my copy of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and I'm super excited to see what kind of insight it gives me into how I was raised and what influence that upbringing may have had on my adult life.  After reading the inflammatory portions of her book in the Wall Street Journal, I can say that no matter what you think about her methods, the scenarios described are common in the memories of many Chinese American children and adults.  But...let's cut to the chase...the really important question is: how on earth does Amy Chua look so young?  According to Wikipedia, she was born in 1962 which would make her 49 years old.  See for yourself in this interview on the Colbert Report:

Liberate!*

S is the political/current events junkie of this blogging partnership.  My google reader is filled with fashion blogs, and the only section of the New York Times website I read is the "most emailed" box.  So, for example, I had no idea that dozens of Chilean miners were trapped (and then rescued) until I saw a documentary on it.  But it hasn't escaped even me that the world is changing right now, and rapidly.  In the words of a good friend, "I got the flu, I went to bed for a week, I woke up and the world is different."

In an effort to catch up, I've been reading Al Jazeera's live blog on Libya and came across this neat visual representation of the last couple of months:

*The exclamation point in this post's title is brought to you by Wellstone!

"I'll do better, I'll do better, I swear I will"

Best new song of Tuesday. Jarrod Gorbel, formally The Honorary Title, released his EP Bruises From Your Bad Dreams last week.  This is the strongest song: I'll Do Better.

More after the JUMP

Dictators who care more about their video sets than their people

Al Jazeera English, Live Blog

7.34pm: In case you missed it - the backdrop to Gaddafi's speech - a piece of artwork showing a clenched fist crushing a US fighter jet, in front of the words "Allahu Akbar" [God is the greatest]. 

The man is crazy, a nut.  But a very well armed nut; who's vowed to continue using these weapons to massacre his own people.  This is going on in the world right now. People are fighting it.  And I am still awe-struck by the horror and bravery.  As I have been since mid-January.


As always, the definitive source for all things revolution this winter is the NPR twitter curator, @acarvin

I like my eyes just the way they are...

Yesterday, the New York Times had this interesting article about how different plastic surgery procedures are popular in different cultures.  It's pretty common knowledge that different traits are considered desirable in different cultures, so this article isn't ground breaking in any way, but it is interesting to see exactly what is popular these days amongst different groups.  Supposedly, Asians want big earlobes.  No thanks!

I promise I'll blog about music and sneakers next week...

Just words on cardboard, sure. But wouldn't it be cool if all citizens were more empathetic and less suspicious of other peoples and cultures; instead of seeing them as subjects of leaders and extensions of polices?

Another at SOURCE.

Happy Friday

It's Friday so let's focus on Wisconsin, which is surprisingly giving me the warm and fuzzies.

The video below shows firefighters - LEAD BY BAGPIPERS!!! - walking into the state capital building to join their fellow public workers, who have taken over the retunda. Why is this so important? The voice explains:

"The bagpipers and the uniformed men you are seeing coming into the rotunda right now are firefighters, they are getting huge applause because in this bill they are technically exempt from [Gov.] Walker's proposals. But there has been a huge showing of firefighters in this area."

If you didn't catch that, it's important because the Governor exempted these unions.  These unions, however, protested in solidarity nonetheless.  

SOURCE 

If you are confused about the bill, here's one quick article.  But to understand what's actually going, this may help 1) a month ago Wisconsin was set to have a $120 million budget surplus for the year and 2) watch this (after the jump)

Pop Chart Lab

Lots of clever things come from Brooklyn these days, Pop Chart Lab being one of them.  I never knew I wanted a poster visualizing the migratory patterns of fresh princes until I saw this:

More awesome charts after the jump.

"Gettin crunk on brewskis with my broskis"

This is a fitting "first post" for me (J would concur). The amazing comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates put out a new video for their song, This Party Took a Turn for the Douche. The song is kind of amazing, as you can tell by these lyrics:

Did my last keg stand like General Custer

And I'm assessin' the damage like a claims adjuster

I ain't your Daddy but I'll call you son

Yeah I get metaphysical like fuckin' John Donne

There's also few things more gratifying than singing For the douche, for the douche For the motherfuckin douche!!!!!! If you want to feel cool, you can see their old-skool video, which I kinda prefer. See it after the jump.

Welcome to Dos Orange

Welcome to Dos Orange.  This is our blog.  We're glad you're here.  We will post things that interest us that we hope will interest you.

J & S