Video: Native Mongolians see Polaroids of themselves for the first time ever

It's an interesting concept. Bring a Polaroid camera with you to Mongolia and show the local their first ever photographs. it is a neat idea. But at the same time, I worry about the Prime Directive (think: "The Gods Must Be Crazy"). If our definition of "neat" interfering with the natural development of another culture?



From the folks who did the trip:

while researching mongolia prior to our trip, we found out that most of the natives love having photographs taken of themselves. most nomadic mongolians have never had a printed photo to keep of themselves before, so we decided to bring a bunch of polaroid film along on our motorcycles so each local we met along the way could have a picture to keep of him or herself!

when we asked one family if we could take a picture of them, we were kind of scared of bothering or distracting them from their daily duties. I didn't see the family for the next ten minutes so I assumed they didn't want a picture. finally, the family (the first family seen in the video) came out of their yurt all decked out in traditional celebratory clothing only used on mongolian holidays! we were so honored to be able to capture a moment of their lives that would always remain a memory.

people huddled around us just to have their photo taken and once they got one, they'd return to their yurt, but eventually return with other friends or family members who also wanted a polaroid. they were all so shocked when they'd finally see a faded image of their face appear on the polaroid, especially because we couldn't really concept of polaroids since we speak no mongolian and they speak no english.

each person photographed really prized and protected his or her polaroid (fearing that we wanted to keep it), and barely let us see it when it was developed! the children automatically stored it away once we showed them what was the very first printed picture of themselves. it was a really great and humbling experience and showed us how much just one photograph can mean to people who have never had one of themselves. although many people claim they want to escape this mess of technology in more delevoped countries, we often tend to take the beauty of some technology, such as photography, for granted.

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Video: The earth from the space station

Serious Battlestar Galactica flashbacks about halfway through when you see what I can only assume are lightning flashes in the clouds below. They look a little like nuclear blasts.  Though maybe that makes this all the more poignant.

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GOP Sen. Vitter opposes "cronyism" only after his cronies are losing

You remember David Vitter. The GOP Senator from Louisiana who has a thing for hookers and diapers. More from TIME:

Washington “scandals” have a predictable rhythm, and the Solyndra solar loan “scandal” has entered the phase where critics start exploiting the controversy to push their ideological agenda. For example, Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana has filed a bill to increase scrutiny of taxpayer-financed renewable energy projects. It wouldn’t scrutinize taxpayer-financed non-renewable energy projects, like the nuclear reactors that Vitter so ardently supports. It wouldn’t scrutinize why a certain Louisiana Senator has worked so hard to protect oil companies from liability for their spills. It would just crack down on Big Renewables.

“We can’t afford any more crony capitalism,” Vitter said on Wednesday. Vitter should know. He’s written a bunch of letters to the Energy Department’s loan program seeking loans for renewable energy firms.

For example, on July 1, 2009, Vitter and Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana wrote Energy Secretary Steven Chu to support a loan application by the V Vehicle Company, a clean-car start-up (backed by T. Boone Pickens and the venture capital leviathan Kleiner Perkins) that was planning a Louisiana factory. “This vehicle would serve as a catalyst for job creation,” they wrote. A year later, Vitter joined the entire Louisiana delegation in another letter pushing “expedited consideration” for VVC. Alas, the Energy Department rejected the loan, citing concerns about the company’s financial viability. Vitter must have been annoyed by all this due diligence, because in December 2010–after VVC changed its name to Next Autoworks–he, Landrieu and Congressman Rodney Alexander tried once more. “Every day that Next Autoworks’ application is delayed is another day that workers cannot be hired,” the wrote. So far, no luck.

No wonder Vitter’s angry: His cronies are losing!

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Obama proposes end to $5 billion farm subsidy

Now we will have the opportunity to see who the real socialists are in the US. (Hint: it's not Obama.)

President Barack Obama on Monday proposed to end a "direct payment" subsidy that gives $5 billion a year to farmers regardless of need, as part of his larger effort to reduce the federal budget deficit.

Direct payments, created in 1996 as a temporary measure, will be the largest farm subsidy this year and terminating them would be a dramatic re-shaping of the U.S. farm program.

Traditional price support programs, which are triggered by low grain prices, are idle this year because of record high crop prices.

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Turkey seeks alliance with Egypt as Middle East restructuring begins

An important under-the-radar process has started in the Middle East, which could result in a major restructuring of alliances and powers.

Earlier Myrddin reported on (and analyzed) the possibility of war between Turkey and Israel over Israel's May 2010 assault on the Turkish-flagged humanitarian flotilla bound for Gaza.

There is no question that relations between Israel and Turkey have reached a new, almost rock bottom low. After that attack, which resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish citizens, Turkey has said that the Turkish navy would escort the next Gaza-bound rescue ships. That makes it put up or shut up for Israel, with war hanging in the balance.

Now, in a brilliant bit of diplomatic maneuvering, Turkey is working on an alliance with Egypt (my emphasis):

A newly assertive Turkey offered on Sunday a vision of a starkly realigned Middle East, where the country’s former allies in Syria and Israel fall into deeper isolation, and a burgeoning alliance with Egypt underpins a new order in a region roiled by revolt and revolution.

The portrait was described by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey in an hourlong interview before he was to leave for the United Nations, where a contentious debate was expected this week over a Palestinian bid for recognition as a state. Viewed by many as the architect of a foreign policy that has made Turkey one of the most relevant players in the Muslim world, Mr. Davutoglu pointed to that issue and others to describe a region in the midst of a transformation. Turkey, he said, was “right at the center of everything.”

He declared that Israel was solely responsible for the near collapse in relations with Turkey, once an ally, and he accused Syria’s president of lying to him after Turkish officials offered the government there a “last chance” to salvage power by halting its brutal crackdown on dissent.

Strikingly, he predicted a partnership between Turkey and Egypt, two of the region’s militarily strongest and most populous and influential countries, which he said could create a new axis of power at a time when American influence in the Middle East seems to be diminishing.

This is seriously one to watch. Egypt and Turkey are as close as you get in the Middle East to Arab–Europe crossroads states, with cultures and economies that share in both worlds. (And the article is an excellent review of Turkey and its strengthening place in the Arab world; very impressive.)

Will Turkey follow through on a navy-escorted Gaza humanitarian flotilla? If so, will Israel attack? As Myrddin points out, if Israel backs down, the hard-right Netanhahu–Avigdor Lieberman government could fall.

And long-term, imagine a Middle East dominated by a pro-Palestine Egypt–Turkey axis instead of the Israel–Syria "warring states" status quo. Couple that with diminished U.S. influence, presence & credibility; add a dash of Palestinian de-facto statehood via the U.N. — and suddenly the world looks different from over there.

This certainly could stir the pot, and not in the bad way.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Elizabeth Warren leads Scott Brown in Mass. Senate race for first time

PPP:

Elizabeth Warren has had an incredibly successful launch to her Senate campaign and actually leads Scott Brown now by a 46-44 margin, erasing what was a 15 point deficit the last time we polled the state in early June.

Warren's gone from 38% name recognition to 62% over the last three months and she's made a good first impression on pretty much everyone who's developed an opinion about her during that period of time. What was a 21/17 favorability rating in June is now 40/22- in other words she's increased the voters with a positive opinion of her by 19% while her negatives have risen only 5%.

The surprising movement toward Warren has a lot to do with her but it also has a lot to do with Scott Brown. We now find a slight plurality of voters in the state disapproving of him- 45%, compared to only 44% approving. We have seen a steady decline in Brown's numbers over the last 9 months.

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Yahoo appears to be blocking email about the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations

Who would have guessed — the elites close ranks. Yahoo(!) seems to be shutting down email about the Wall Street protests. Thinks that's illegal?

ThinkProgress:

Thinking about e-mailing your friends and neighbors about the protests against Wall Street happening right now? If you have a Yahoo e-mail account, think again. ThinkProgress has reviewed claims that Yahoo is censoring e-mails relating to the protest and found that after several attempts on multiple accounts, we too were prevented from sending messages about the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrations.

Over the weekend, thousands gathered for a “Tahrir Square”-style protest of Wall Street’s domination of American politics. The protesters, organized online and by organizations like Adbusters, have called their effort “Occupy Wall Street” and have set up the website: www.OccupyWallSt.org. However, several YouTube users posted videos of themselves trying to email a message inviting their friends to visit the Occupy Wall St campaign website, only to be blocked repeatedly by Yahoo. View a video of ThinkProgress making the attempt with the same blocked message experienced by others (click full screen for a better view of the text):



ThinkProgress tried other protest websites, like AmericansforProsperity.org and TeaPartyPatriots.org, and both messages were sent smoothly. However, emails relating to the OccupyWallSt.org protest were blocked with the following message (emphasis added):

Your message was not sent
Suspicious activity has been detected on your account. To protect your account and our users, your message has not been sent.
If this error continues, please contact Yahoo! Customer Care for further help.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

The YouTube video is here (unless it too is censored).

Back to illegal. In the old days, before the right-wing got their post-FDR mojo back, the FCC declared phone lines "common carriers" — meaning in plain English that owning the wires doesn't give the phone and telegraph companies any control over the content. Cable networks aren't common carriers, and they fought hard not to be classified as such. This is the argument for getting your Internet via DSL phone lines, by the way.

It would take a lawyer to sort this, since Yahoo(!) isn't about the wires, but the default these days appears to favor censorship unless prevented. ThinkProgress notes that Yahoo(!) has been at this before, including partnering with the Chinese government to hand over emails from accounts the Chinese are interested in. (I'm guessing there's a goodly sum of cash involved.)

Sounds like Internet freedom needs a Fierce Defender, someone not influenced by the goodly sums of cash available to censorers. Got one to suggest?

ThinkProgress says, Stay tuned.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Falling US satellite to hit Mrs. Agnes Jones of 342 Pine Street

Best clarification ever.

A 20-year-old satellite is expected to crash into Earth later this week, and the debris has a roughly 1-in-3,200 chance of hitting a person, NASA officials say. (To be clear: that's the odds that any of the wreckage will hit any of the planet's 7 billion people, not the odds of hitting any specific person.)

I was too young to be a member of the Duck and Cover generation, but my God that video is terrifying. I did however have the pleasure of tornado drills (in the midwest, of course) where we all went in to the hallway and all the little girls crouched down on the floor, hands covering their heads, facing the lockers while all the little boys stood over the girls, pushing against the locker with our hands over our heads, looking almost like we were getting ready to dive, thus forming an arch over the girl below you in order to ensure that any falling debris hit you instead of her.

Seriously.

Even in the first grade I remember thinking that this wasn't entirely fair. Read the rest of this post...

Roubini: Greece should default and leave euro

They should have done this a long time ago. Kicking the can down the road (again) won't help. CNBC:

"The recent debt exchange deal Europe offered Greece was a rip-off," said Roubini in a commentary in Tuesday's Financial Times. "If you take into account the large sweeteners the plan gave to creditors, the true debt relief is close to zero."

The major problem, in Roubini's view, is a lack of growth and competitiveness, which can only be overcome by currency depreciation.

"A return to a national currency and a sharp depreciation would quickly restore growth and competitiveness, as it did in Argentina and many other emerging markets that abandoned their currency pegs," he said.

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GOP Sen. Alexander quits leadership, desire to get something done incompatible with being GOP leader. Ouch.

Politico:

Sen. Lamar Alexander will resign from his influential Republican leadership post in January, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO - a stunning decision by the former two-time presidential candidate who has played a central role shaping GOP strategy during President Barack Obama’s time in office.

But his affable nature and calls for bipartisanship also could prove to be a liability at a time when Republican politics has shifted markedly to the right, with tea party activists demanding that their party adhere to strict conservative orthodoxy that has inspired a new breed of fire-breathing lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Yes, being a nice guy and wanting to get things done for the good of the country is inimical with being a Republican nowadays. Read the rest of this post...

Obama infuriates Big Pharma by demanding they cut drug prices for Medicaid

Good. They're upset that perhaps the easy money days are waning. It's never been clear why Bush, and later Obama, did not want to negotiate drug prices but this may be a sign of change ahead. Big Pharma received a free ride from Obama yet they still complained. Maybe a dose of capitalism is what they need. Either way, Obama needs to hold firm on this and not give in to the swarms of lobbyists who are about to flood the halls of Congress.

The U.S. hospital and drug industries lashed out at provisions of President Barack Obama's deficit reduction plan that would saddle them with more than $200 billion in federal healthcare spending cuts.

Lobbyists vowed to fight proposals for Medicare, which covers the elderly, that are aimed at saving $135 billion on prescriptions by requiring drugmakers to provide steeper rebates similar to those for Medicaid, which covers the poor.

Another $42 billion would come from adjustments in Medicare payments to hospitals, skilled nursing facilities and in-patient rehabilitation centers.

Note from John: These bastards are more than happy to cut Europeans a deal on their drug prices - like charging $25 for Celebrex in France, while the same drug company charges $136 for the same drug at Costco here in the US. They rip us off here in the states because they can. It's time for that nonsense to stop. Read the rest of this post...

POLITICO: Obama and the left back in sync

Well, I'm not picking out curtains just yet.

Having said that, as Ben Smith notes in the article, the President has made some good moves in the past week, and he should be lauded for it.  Praising him doesn't mean we're naive.  Hell, I've lauded Republicans when they've done the right thing, the least I can do is accord the same courtesy to our own.  This is a good first step.  And we'll be here to make sure there's a good second and third step as well.

President Barack Obama finally gave his liberal critics exactly what they wanted.

His tough opening bid on deficit reduction and his feisty, defiant speech from the White House Monday were greeted with almost incredulous joy by progressives who have urged Obama to take this kind of hard line with Republicans since the day he was elected.

After two years of disappointing compromises on health care, Wall Street reform, climate change and the Bush-era tax cuts — and nearly one year after Obama’s centrist tack in reaction to the 2010 midterm elections — Obama is now singing from the left’s playbook.

He called for $1.5 trillion in new taxes on the wealthy. He protected Social Security. And he declined to include a conciliatory offer to raise the Medicare eligibility age — a decision that thrilled “the professional left,” as his aides have long derided them, whose advice on policy and strategy was often ignored by a White House deeply committed to the legislative middle road.

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Now that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is gone

The US military's ban on gays serving openly ended last night at midnight.  It's a good day in America, and a nice way to start the morning.

Some further thoughts over at AMERICAblog Gay.

And I don't know why, I just really wanted to post this.  It's absolutely positively not work safe.  But it still gives me a chuckle.

PS A whole lot of gay 18 year olds are just figuring out that now they can get drafted too ;-)

(And check out the video I posted last night of what seems to be a US service member in Germany coming out to his dad in Alabama by phone just last night.) Read the rest of this post...

Video: One kitten, one cup

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18-24 yr olds average 109.5 text message a day

From PEW:

Young adults are the most avid texters by a wide margin. Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day—that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month—and the typical or median cell owner in this age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (or 1500 messages per month).

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Poverty up in Perry's Texas

Quite an economic miracle.

While it's true that Texas is responsible for 40% of the jobs added in the U.S. over the past two years, its poverty rate also grew faster than the national average in 2010.

Texas ranks 6th in terms of people living in poverty. Some 18.4% of Texans were impoverished in 2010, up from 17.3% a year earlier, according to Census Bureau data released this week. The national average is 15.1%.

And being poor in Texas isn't easy. The state has one of the lowest rates of spending on its citizens per capita and the highest share of those lacking health insurance. It doesn't provide a lot of support services to those in need: Relatively few collect food stamps and qualifying for cash assistance is particularly tough.

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Obama, White House announce that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is gone

More at AMERICAblog Gay, including a video purporting to be a US service member stationed in Germany coming out to his father in Alabama by phone, on camera. Read the rest of this post...