September 2011
54 posts
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fall, the reason people live here
citizenkerry:
I’ve lived in New York for four years now, and this much I know is true: the reason people stay here is because they know fall is coming.
For a few years I’ve thought September is my favorite month here in Minnesota. Not too hot anymore, not too cold yet, and so many new colors to see. (The Cedar Lake Trail is beautiful right now, except for the concrete stockpiles maybe,...
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“My home has been seized, I’m unemployed, there’s no job prospects on the...”
– Matthew Prowless on occupying Wall Street, quoted by Allison Kilkenny in her response to the New York Times’s coverage.
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Intermedia ArtsHub →
Intermedia Arts is opening a co-working space “designed to spark collaborations and support creative people who are tackling the social, environmental, economic and cultural challenges we face today.” I’m not sure I’m one of those people, but I’m very excited about this idea. There’s a launch party tomorrow night.
(Other Twin Cities co-working spaces: The 3rd...
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Minneapolis slips from second to fourth on bike... →
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Los Angeles River Tries On New Role, as Waterway →
Last month the LA River, “best known for its uninviting concrete channels,” hosted its first legal canoe trip in seven decades.
As the boaters glided through the final stretch of calm water, it was hard for them to square this bucolic scene with the concrete vistas that they knew so well elsewhere on the river.
“Why didn’t they ruin this part?” one participant wondered.
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“There’s a lot of people saying, “this is class warfare.” Well, if saying that...”
– Barack Obama, via Jeff Rosenberg, who notes, “Finally!”
(It should be said, if that’s the only class warfare Barack Obama has seen, he should look lower.)
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Poorer Countries Lead Global Movement Toward... →
David Wheeler: “We all had this idea that [climate change] was a rich country problem and that poor countries shouldn’t have to do anything until they get to a certain stage of development, and that rich countries need to make it worth their while. But what I had seen suggested [was] that poor countries were already doing a lot.”
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Troy Davis
If you want to know what could lead a federal judge in this day and age to uphold the suspect conviction that led to Troy Davis’s execution yesterday, I recommend reading Judge William Moore’s 2010 order denying Davis’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
Terry Lenamon and Reba Kennedy wrote a high-level summary of the order, and Wikipedia goes into more detail, but...
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The Matter of the Monster →
Via Doug Orleans, this choose-your-own-adventure game by Andrew Plotkin is delightful and takes only a minute or two to play (although you’ll want to go back and play it again).
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Transportation as a Civil Rights Issue →
“[T]he average cost of owning a car is just shy of $9,500. That may not sound like much until you realize the federal poverty level is $22,350 for a family of four. One-third of low-income African-American households do not have access to an automobile. That figure is 25 percent among low-income Latino families and 12.1 percent for whites. Racial minorities are four times more likely than...
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“[T]he question is not why more than a thousand people demonstrated on Wall...”
– Zaid Jilani, “Why There Are Protests On Wall Street: Their Actions Impoverished More Than 60 Million People”
(via hippygrungehipster)
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Southerland: Public service an honor but not a... →
U.S. Rep. Steve Southerland (R-FL) says his $174,000 salary is not so great, if you consider how many hours he works. Between him and unemployed Mitt Romney (forced by circumstances to cram 28 people into his $12 million two-bedroom home), Republican politicians have really fallen on hard times!
(Update: fixed link (at least for now). Thanks to hippygrungehipster for noticing.)
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Alcina’s Island: A Picnic Operetta →
I saw this yesterday in a PARK(ing) space outside Local D’Lish: Handel’s Alcina, relocated to a truck stop, with both arias and country songs, magic rings and big rigs, and it’s not just an opera, it’s also a five-hors-d’oeuvre vegetarian picnic. I loved it. Its season is almost over, with upcoming performances at Swede Hollow Park (if you hurry), a community garden...
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“You’re running for a president, a job that requires you to know what you are...”
– Eric Black on Michele Bachmann’s vaccination claims
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Journey to the End of the Night: Saint Paul →
The city spreads out before you. Rushing from point to point, lit by the slow strobe of fluorescent buses and dark streets. Stumbling into situations for a stranger’s signature. Fleeing unknown pursuers, breathing hard, admiring the landscape and the multitude of worlds hidden in it.
For one night, drop your relations, your work and leisure activities, and all your usual motives for...
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“‘I’m a mom. And I’m a mom of three children.’ [Editor’s note: Bachmann has five...”
– The New Yorker fact-checks Michele Bachmann on the number of children she has (via thedependentclause)
It’s time for another round of “Erik takes things too seriously”! She was talking about a Texas law that mandates vaccination against a strain of HPV that can to cervical...
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“Joe Biden, a Democrat who does not “tolerate” or “have regard for” labor unions...”
– Joe Biden Picks a Side, Stands With Labor in Ohio’s Fight Against Right-Wing Attacks
Favorite national politician.
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People like me will tell you that marriage amendments like this one are a cynical maneuver by Republicans, exploiting hot-button issues with the real agenda of getting more right-wing voters to the polls to elect conservative politicians to office. This is interesting:
Previous versions of the legislation called for a referendum on the November 2012 ballot, but Republican bill sponsors changed...
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So let me get this straight… →
swirlspice:
skeskali2: So let me get this straight… Amazon.com wants to start up a subscription service related to its upcoming new Kindle tablet and the words being bandied about to describe this service is “Netflix for eBooks…” seems to me I’ve seen this method of acquiring reading material before.
That was also my reaction. But if folks want the books to come right to their...
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Gorkha Palace first anniversary →
My new favorite cuisine since moving to Minneapolis is… Nepali? Tibetan? Himalayan? It’s like Indian food, but (in my experience) lighter, less hotly spiced but not less flavorful. I’d never heard of it before I got here, but we have at least three good places to eat it. My favorite is Gorkha Palace. They use a lot of fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients, their to-go boxes are...
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Mother Jones: Most Horrifying Sentence on Our Site... →
motherjones:
Texas’ Deputy Attorney General for Criminal Justice, Don Clemmer, later testified that his office didn’t have the resources to investigate allegations of sexual abuse [of children] at a TYC facility in Ward County because at the time the local agent was busy investigating charges of voter fraud by a 68-year-old Hispanic woman.
(via edroso)
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Mall of America visitors unknowingly end up in... →
I’m reposting this story from last week to share an observation from a friend:
Bear in mind that there was a good deal of sampling error in that Minnesota was like the only place where the police would release records—which I suppose reflects well on our cops and their possible discomfort. MoA sucks but it’s quite possible other “landmarks” suck more, just in the...
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F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11 →
Steve Hendrix: “Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather ‘Lucky’ Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93….
“The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or...
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“Here’s the punch line: Old King Hamlet was an inadequate king because he...”
– William Alexander, in Rain Taxi, on Hamlet’s Father by Orson Scott Card
I used to feel vaguely guilty, as a science fiction fan, about never having read Ender’s Game. Now I’m a little bit glad I never got to be disappointed by where Card has ended up.
(via @anselm)
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“You reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid...”
– Gernot Wagner, “Going Green but Getting Nowhere”
Candidate Obama knew this: “So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about...
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The GOP War on Voting →
bigboxcar:
I bolded that last sentence. IT’S FREAKING MORE LIKELY AN INDIVIDUAL WILL BE STRUCK BY LIGHTNING THAN THAT HE WILL FREAKING IMPERSONATE A VOTER AT THE FREAKING POLLS!
Well, exactly. I mean, you’ve heard of people, real individual persons with names and faces, getting struck by lightning. It’s not common, but it’s a thing! It happens! You’ve also heard of...
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“The government is not going to protect us free of charge, so we have to do that...”
– Mall of America visitors unknowingly end up in counterterrorism reports | America’s War Within
:-O
I already won’t accompany visiting guests to MOA. Here’s another reason.
Lots of supplemental info — databases, video, related reporting — on this page.
(via swirlspice)
See also...
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The GOP War on Voting →
How it works, in a nutshell.
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The More We Learn, the Uglier the Arden Hills... →
Ed Kohler’s searching for answers: Are Minnesota’s taxpayers buying out-of-state real estate mogul Zygi Wilf a new stadium and 21,000 parking spaces? Or a new stadium, 21,000 parking spaces, and another 200 acres of land to develop as he pleases? It’s very confusing.
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“If there was ever a year to think about the meaning of Labor Day, this would be...”
– This Labor Day, As Unions Face Historic Attacks, It’s Time to Stand Together and Fight for Jobs | | AlterNet
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Thank you, unions! →
mnpublius:
Today, Labor’s greatest victories are such a fundamental part of our society that we often take them for granted. We expect 40-hour weeks and 2-day weekends. We expect holidays, vacations, and paid overtime. We expect to receive at least a minimum wage. We expect that our children will go to school, instead of going to work in a factory.
It’s easy to forget that we have Labor to...
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“BE IT RESOLVED that the City Council of the City of Kinney, in Kinney,...”
– The Republic of Kinney, 1977.
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State Fair Food Report Card →
To ericaaaaa’s list I’ll just add this:
Chocolate-covered jalapeños: You like jalapeños, right? And everybody likes chocolate! What could go wrong? Grade: F
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The Impossible Tour →
My friend Kim Boekbinder is trying a new way of touring: pre-selling the show through Kickstarter. I know what it’s like to play for just a handful of people in a city where you know you have an audience, and so does she. So this time, she’s only playing the cities where her fans promise they’ll show up.
And it’s working! Some of it. San Francisco and New York stepped...
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NiceRideMN: Big Spring Sale: 1-Year Subscriptions... →
Back in March when Nice Ride was having their subscription sale, I decided to get a subscription, even though I have a bike, because I figured:
I can imagine some uses for it.
I only have to use it eight times for it to be cheaper than daily fares.
I’ll use it more if I don’t have to think about what it costs every time.
Worst case, I’ve donated some money to something I...