Some Thoughts On Mercy
The writer, who is black, on how his experience with racism and racial profiling has formed his identity in the U.S.:
“Among the more concrete ramifications of this corruption of the imagination is that when the police suspect a black man or boy of having a gun, he becomes murderable: Murderable despite having earned advanced degrees or bought a cute house or written a couple of books of poetry. Murderable whether he’s an unarmed adult or a child riding a bike in the opposite direction. Murderable in the doorways of our houses. Murderable as we come home from the store. Murderable as we lie facedown on the ground in a subway station. Murderable the day before our weddings. Murderable, probably, in our gardens.”
Jack Handey Is the Envy of Every Comedy Writer in America
Meet the man who created “Deep Thoughts” and “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer”—and who is about to release his first novel, The Stench of Honolulu:
“’A lot of comedy is going the extra step,’ Handey continued. ‘An unfrozen caveman was funny — but that’s not enough.’ Later, he e-mailed me a sheet of sketch ideas he typed up in 1991. The sketch seemed to be a combination of two ideas: ‘Too Many Frozen Cavemen,’ in which a surplus of frozen Neanderthals drive scientists crazy, and ‘Swamp Bastard,’ about a Swamp Thing-like creature who keeps stealing everyone’s girlfriends. ‘I guess my brain put these things in a blender,’ he wrote, ‘and out came Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer.'”
Playlist: Richard Feynman and ‘The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out’
“How foolish they are to try to make something.” Here’s the classic 1981 BBC interview highlighting the work of theoretical physicist Richard Feynman, “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.” You can also read Feynman’s book of the same name.
The Promise: The Families of Sandy Hook and the Long Road to Gun Safety
What it will take for the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting to get sensible gun laws passed in the United States? A brief history of gun laws, and what’s next:
“I stood before the Sandy Hook families on that day in January to brief them on the basics of gun policy and politics. These are smart, educated people. They assumed that, in the wake of this horror, Congress would pass some long-overdue gun safety measures. By then, however, this much was already clear to the political classes: there wasn’t going to be a renewed ban on assault weapons or high-capacity ammunition magazines, no matter how wrenching the scene in Newtown. Congress just didn’t have the courage to take such a step. The Senate wouldn’t pass it, and the House wouldn’t even consider it.
“When I broke this news to the families, one of the mothers let me know, gently but firmly, that I had screwed up. ‘Don’t tell us what can’t be done, because we just aren’t prepared to hear that,’ she said. ‘Tell us that it could take time, which we can accept, because we’re in this for the long haul. And tell us what we can do now to honor the memory of our children.'”
Special Deal
An examination of the American Medical Association’s special committee that meets three times a year to determine how much Medicare should pay doctors for the medical procedures they perform:
In a free market society, there’s a name for this kind of thing—for when a roomful of professionals from the same trade meet behind closed doors to agree on how much their services should be worth. It’s called price-fixing. And in any other industry, it’s illegal—grounds for a federal investigation into antitrust abuse, at the least.
But this, dear readers, is not any other industry. This is the health care industry, and here, this kind of ‘price-fixing’ is not only perfectly legal, it’s sanctioned by the U.S. government. At the end of each of these meetings, RUC members vote anonymously on a list of ‘recommended values,’ which are then sent to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that runs those programs. For the last twenty-two years, the CMS has accepted about 90 percent of the RUC’s recommended values—essentially transferring the committee’s decisions directly into law.
Reading List: Identity
Picks from Emily Perper, a freelance editor and reporter currently completing a service year in Baltimore with the Episcopal Service Corps. This week’s picks include stories from the New Statesman, Oprah Magazine, Rookie, and The Rumpus.
Same-sex Couples in the South Left Out of Trend
Buoyed by marriage equality victories on the coasts, same-sex couples are fighting for equality rights in the South:
“Not only are gay couples in Mississippi not allowed to marry, they cannot legally adopt — even though a quarter of same-sex couples here are raising children together, the highest percentage of any state, according to the Williams Institute.
“Nor are gays and lesbians in Mississippi protected from being fired or otherwise discriminated against by employers for their sexual orientation. (A federal employment protection bill is pending in Congress.) Some employers have barred gay workers from participating in the marriage-license campaign, saying it would be ‘bad for business.’
“Yet, couples like Welch and Lockwood refuse to move to a more liberal environment. This is home. They know the battle for equality in the South is unlikely to be won politically — at the ballot box or through state lawmakers — or through state courts. All they can do is share their personal stories in hopes that, on some level, their families, co-workers, neighbors, even the clerk at the courthouse will come to understand.”
Leo and Frida
On Frida Kahlo’s friendship with Leo Eloesser, a noted surgeon who gave her advice throughout her life:
“He followed up with a letter addressing the root cause of her suffering: ‘Diego loves you very much, and you love him.’ Acknowledging that Rivera ‘has never been, nor ever will be, monogamous,’ he went on to propose that she remarry him, accept him as he was and channel her energy into work. He closed by saying, ‘Reflect, dear Frida, and decide.’ Meanwhile, he convinced Rivera that remarriage would help safeguard Kahlo’s fragile health, something the doctor honestly believed. ‘She really needs me,’ Rivera told one of his assistants, the American artist Emmy Lou Packard, Herrera wrote.”
Post-Scarcity Economics
Our world is increasingly automated, so what exactly will drive our economy, our jobs, and consumer demand into the next century?
“We live like gods, and we don’t even know it.
“We fly across oceans in airplanes, we eat tropical fruit in December, we have machines that sing us songs, clean our house, take pictures of Mars. Much the total accumulated knowledge of our species can fit on a hard drive that fits in our pocket. Even the poorest among us own electronic toys that millionaires and kings would have lusted for a decade ago. Our ancestors would be amazed. For most of our time on the planet, humans lived on the knife-edge of survival. A crop failure could mean starvation and even in good times, we worked from sun up to sundown to earn our daily bread. In 1600, a typical workman spent almost half his income on nourishment, and that food wasn’t crème brûlée with passion fruit or organically raised filet mignon, it was gruel and the occasional turnip. Send us back to ancient Greece with an AK-47, a home brewing kit, or a battery-powered vibrator, and startled peasants would worship at our feet.
“And yet we are not happy, we expected more, we were promised better. Our economy is a shambles, millions are out of work, and few of us think things are going to get better soon.”
In Iraq, the Bomb-Detecting Device That Didn’t Work, Except to Make Money
How a British businessman named James McCormick made millions selling fake bomb-detectors to the Iraqi government:
“When Dale Murray arrived in Denver a few weeks later, he knew he’d seen the Mole before. It was identical in every way to the Quadro Tracker—down to the patterns of stippling on the plastic handle. ‘It looked like someone had taken the injection molding from one location to another and just put a different label on it,’ he says. Although he was confident the Mole was as ridiculous as its predecessor, Murray subjected it to a carefully devised double-blind experiment, with Balais seeking a sample of C4 explosive hidden in the offices. ‘I knew that without doing a rigorous scientific test, there would be people that would be unconvinced,’ Murray says. ‘So we treated it exactly the same way we would any other piece of scientific gear.’
“Only Balais seemed surprised when the Mole failed. At the start of the trial, when he could see where the C4 had been placed, the equipment scored perfectly; once the double-blind sequence began, it performed no better than chance. When Sandia published its results, Balais, McCormick, and the manufacturers in the U.K. were furious. They protested that the experiment had been mishandled. Balais lost his franchise arrangement, and the manufacturers withdrew the Mole from sale soon afterward. But another detector just like it soon appeared on the market under a new name, the GT200.”
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