Misc.

* Ezra Klein argues Nancy Pelosi is playing three-dimensional chess.

* "Tea Party" is now a registered party in Florida. Excelsior! The sky's the limit.

* John Hodgman now has a daily podcast.

* 40 House Democrats are now threatening to vote no on the health care conference bill unless Stupak is removed.

* Number of Ph.D.’s hired last year to “develop” carrot sticks for McDonald’s: 45. Is this on the usual job list? Interviews at MLA?

* Also at Harper's: Number of U.S. universities that have a Taco Bell Distinguished Professorship of Fast Service: just one. That's the tragedy.

Classic bad news/good news situation: Sure, Iceland's economy has completely collapsed, but at least it caused McDonald's to leave the country.

Late Sunday links.

* Rachel Maddow kicks ass on another visit to Meet the Press. They should just give Rachel Meet the Press; I hope eventually they do. It's the only version of the show I could imagine actually watching.

* The networks are apparently afraid of SF; Day One has apparently been downgraded to a miniseries and the V remake is rumored to be forbidden to use the world "alien."

* Octavia Butler's papers will go to the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, joining Christopher Isherwood's, Charles Bukowski's, and Jack London's.

* Playgrounds of the 1970s. A version of the Officer Big Mac at right was active in Ledgewood, NJ, well into the 2000s. (Is it still there?)

* Judith Butler: Save California's universities. My only quibble is that she appears to be writing in the wrong country's newspaper.

* More Nate Silver: That the conservative intelligentsia reacted giddily to news of the Americans losing is telling. It's telling of a movement that was long ago knocked off its intellectual moorings and has lost the capacity to think about what people outside the room think about. Flagged by Bitter Laughter. More thoughts along the same lines from Cogitamus and Contrary Brin.

* My happiest time was after Mao came into power. Our social status improved. People were allowed to express their views. Before, people had no right to speak out. After the founding of new China, the first parade, I was on the front row during the first parade. Foreign journalists from America and the Soviet Union took lots pictures of me. I was carrying a flower basket, walking down Huaihai road, it was very festive, and there was much excitement. I went out during the parade every year for many years, rain or shine. Why the Chinese support the Communist party.

Americans are never further than 145 miles from a McDonald's. I'm actually surprised the number is that high. (via)

A few links I've missed over the last few days.

* xkcd discovers the secret origins of the Kindle.

* RIP, Philip Jose Farmer. More here, especially about Venus on the Half-Shell, the book he published under the name Kilgore Trout. It's not half-bad.

* 'Las Vegas Running Out of Water Means Dimming Los Angeles Lights.'

* Spider-Man is taking a job at McDonald's in these tough economic times.

* And Joss Whedon explains why DC Comics movies don't work. He's right and wrong about this; there's something to be said for the "pain" thesis, but mostly it's a failure of writing and directorial ambition, compounded by corporate cowardice...

McDonald's hamburgers are not food. Here's a picture of a hamburger from 1996 that looks exactly as it did the day it was made twelve years ago—and probably tastes the same, too. Via kottke.



Which was bought in 1996, and which today?

Flag-waving American companies are cheating on us with China.

Ezra Klein's had a number of good posts lately on the high environmental and social costs of Americans' meat-laden diets.

Most recently:

Bacon is transcendent. The words "porterhouse" and "steak" make my mouth water. Pork belly makes me simultaneously believe in God and doubt my own religious tradition. And because of this, I'm not a full vegetarian. But I should be. And not liking liberals don't change the truth about meat: Industrial agriculture is cruel, meat production is a huge contributor to global warming, and the market for meat contributes to world hunger in a substantial and direct way.

My come-to-Gandhi story is almost exactly opposite, which is why I think it's been relatively easy for me to stay vegetarian for a decade: my vegetarianism originated in a visceral distaste for nearly all meat, with the eco-awareness and smug self-satisfaction turning out to be just nice bonuses along the way.

In general I'd say the emergence of flexitarianism is one of the better and more important memes to emerge out of last decade or so, though at this point I've completely ruined myself for anything that's recognizably meat-based. And it's unlikely flexitarianism could have worked for me, anyway; as anyone who's ever watched me try to make any sort of lifestyle change knows, the only workable strategy is total, unbreakable taboo. Eighteen-year-old me attempt to eat less-but-still-some meat would have resulted in my eating nothing but McDonald's Chicken Nuggets, which had been a big part of the problem in the first place.