Panglossian Notes

Some good news from Iceland

Icelandic melt down drives out the MacDonald brand. Now if the same indirect result would only work in the rest of the world maybe some culture erosion could be slowed. On the nutritional side Icelanders will still have fast food just made with local inputs. Sounds a bit like that 100 diet thingy.

"The Icelandic owners of the McDonald's franchise have decided to drop it. They will still run a burger joint in the same location, but under a different name – and using only domestic ingredients.

...

McDonald's in Iceland was a symbol of an era when Icelanders lost touch with their roots and the real things in life. In a strange and poignant way, the departure of Ronald McDonald and company is like a release from the yoke of runaway capitalism and unrestrained greed, of over-processed fare and empty calories. Farewell, golden arches: you won't be missed.

McDonald's, gone from Iceland
Alda Sigmundsdóttir
The Guardian
October 27,  2009

For some parts of North America, without relatively cheap MacDonald's or similar fast fare, I suspect a segment of the population might go to bed or crash on the street hungry every night?  Yes I know it's not good for you but it's filling for now even if it means problems in the future.

The answer to the problem, is what: the lisping opportunistic aging boy cook?

It would be nice to imagine there was some really moderate solution to the nutritional problems of many, something between the alternatives of: waiting in line for an over processed filler and the easy peezy nutritional bromides of a glib celebrity cook. 

Another use for Twitter: How long is that line to get my jab, eh?

H1N1 inoculation clinics started yesterday in Ontario and the first to get it are health workers, young kids, anyone with a chronic illness, etc. . Ottawa public health is adjusting to how it will handle the numerous clinics it has across the city - 5 fixed sites and 12 roving sites. They were caught off guard, just a bit, by the crowds that showed up yesterday. I suspect as October ends and November rolls out the efficiency of the mass inoculation effort will improve.

Anyway they are using Twitter to provide some rough indications of the wait times across the city which is pretty sensible, I think.

The Public Option - so who's being played for suckers?

Great joy in the ranks of progressives (?) in the USA. Lots of congratulatory back slapping, high-fives all around, and breathless waiting for Obama to pontificate, again, about something, or other, to woo his jaded apostles and pump air into deflated hope . Why? It seems the US Senate will include a Public Option in the health reform legislation they will vote on. The US House had already indicated that their legislation would include some form of the same option.

But after reading Trudy Lieberman at CJR I have to wonder what the hell is really going on.

"Currently, lawmakers would restrict the public option to small businesses buying coverage for their workers and people seeking policies in the individual market. The plan would be off-limits to the millions of Americans who get their insurance from employers. The limitation, of course, is meant to prevent “crowd out”—that’s jargon for taking too much business away from private insurers. With so few people using the plan, though, it’s hard to see how it will lower health care costs or compete against the likes of insurance giant WellPoint, which is aggressively marketing very cheap and very limited insurance products to individuals.

Truth Emerges about the Public Option
Who really will be allowed to join?
Trudy Lieberman
CJR
October 26, 2009

What's all the fuss about, eh? Do you think maybe there is some real stage managing going on for the benefit of slipping approval ratings? I wonder if there wasn't a lot of red-herring delivered to the WH and Congress sometime over the past week. If what Lieberman writes is true, could this be a variation of the proverbial tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

I'm too cynical about pretty well most things but particularly when a very strong smell of rooting fish pervades even the web tubes.

Technorati Tags: Funny, Politicians

Just wondering and thinking of

>Nerys Williams on Sound Stories. What the hell is up, eh. Nothing really just sort of love the Welsh way of saying their words as they speak English. Is it up or down. Monster - say it if you are Welsh. The emphases is on the first syllables, right. Not the way we usual English speakers would say it all one syllable m to ter. Do like it, eh.

I'd have taken a different approach

"Humber River Regional Hospital has fired a registration clerk and apologized to a Mexican refugee family whose 7-year-old son, suffering a head injury, was turned away at the emergency room earlier this month.

Clerk fired after boy, 7, sent from ER
Nicholas Keung, Immigration Reporter
The TO Star
October 22, 2009

This is an appalling incident to have occurred in my country. I'm wondering whether the clerk isn't an American hiding here - just kidding sort of .

Anyway I wouldn't have fired the clerk, which likely will create its own set of social problems. I would have had the clerk apologize to the mother and her children then I'd make sure the clerk knows s/he lives in Canada which, 'til now as Harper and his Reform Party thugs are in power, is a civilized country that looks after any human being within side its borders. PERIOD.

The firing tells me I'd be looking at the hospitals administration and asking some hard HR questions.

A strong condemnation?

Matt Taibbi has another article up at Rollingstone, further documenting the complete collapse of any US regulation of its financial markets. The article is actually quite funny in a grim sort of way, but I don't think there is much new about the US's completely cocked-up financial institutions and structure.

It does document, again, the incompetence, at best, but you could suspect collusion, of US financial oversight bodies in preventing the great taxpayer & investor robbery. In that regard, the most interesting point it makes is in the penultimate paragraph, which both underlines the president of hope's lackadaisical approach to financial policy, and highlights the fact that he has surrounded himself with a web of individuals who, and he must know this as a lawyer, are hopelessly conflicted in terms of their ability to provide unbiased advice or direction. The final sentence in the paragraph may have the capstone phrase that comes ultimately to describe the Obama era, though I do hope wish not, "absent of balls" or in a word balless.

"The new president for whom we all had such high hopes went and hired Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who accepted a $2.2 million bonus after he joined the White House, to serve on his economic transition team — at the same time the government was giving Citigroup a massive bailout. Then, after promising to curb the influence of lobbyists, Obama hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as chief of staff at the Treasury. He hired another Goldmanite, Gary Gensler, to police the commodities markets. He handed control of the Treasury and Federal Reserve over to Geithner and Bernanke, a pair of stooges who spent their whole careers being bellhops for New York bankers. And on the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when he finally came to Wall Street to promote "serious financial reform," his plan proved to be so completely absent of balls that the share prices of the major banks soared at the news.

Matt Taibbi
Wall Street's Naked Swindle
Rollingstone
October 14, 2009

(h/t Newshoggers)

The Red Book

Three interesting, maybe, links all related to Jung's doodlings ? Likely doodlings is not how to describe the volume, eh. The Red Book:

The Red Book Dialogues - likely available starting tomorrow the 20th of October

ABCs, The Book Show, interview with Sonu Shamdasani, the editor and one of the translators of The Red Book.

Scott Horton's, at Harpers, Six Questions for Sonu Shamdasani.

A sample of Malayalam fiction, translated, of course

A sample of Paul Zacharia's writing, titled The Night Desk, from his story Paathirayethumpol.

"Midnight crept into the news bureau. Shadows of ceiling fans spun on empty tables like winged termites fallen to earth. Scattered pieces of paper stirred into motion by fans dodged their shadows. Troubled scraps of news wandered aimlessly on the floor. They hugged table-legs, raced up walls, skulked under shelves and stood shivering in nooks and corners. When one of them wrapped itself around Mrityunjayan’s leg, he shook it off with a start, kicked it away and sprang up. As he watched the bit of news crawl under the teleprinter, Mrityunjayan said, "It came from the teleprinter; it has gone back to the teleprinter. May it not be born again, dear God!"

...

The Night Desk
Paul Zacharia
The Little Magazine

Technorati Tags: Writing, puppy, Reading

An Indian State mad about books

Very interesting, every one reads in Kerala, but better not tell certain people, as:

"Unlike any other Indian state, Kerala, traditionally communist-led, boasts almost universal literacy. As a result its thirty-one million people are avid readers in their mother tongue, Malayalam.

and, that

"Sixth on the list of seven objectives of Kerala’s communist-led state government’s literacy mission is “provision of facilities for library and reading rooms for creating an environment conducive for literacy efforts and a learning society”.

Kerala: mad about books
Mridula Koshy
Le Monde diplomatique
June 2009

Berlusconi’s impotence

I don't pay much attention to Italy's billionaire clown PM, so I wasn't aware that rumors were out and about that he was impotent. But watching an interview with Amy Goodman of Slavoj Žižek he noted:

"Look at Berlusconi in Italy, who is systematically undermining, for over five years now, the minimum of dignity of the state power. I mean, you are again and again surprised how is this possible. You know, after those sex scandals, two weeks ago, his lawyer, Berlusconi’s lawyer, made a public official statement, where he said that the claims that Berlusconi is impotent are lies and that Mr. Berlusconi is ready to prove this in court. Now, how? How—what did he mean?

Slovenian Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Capitalism,
Healthcare, Latin American “Populism” and
the “Farcical” Financial Crisis
Democracy Now
October 15, 2009

Technorati Tags: Curious