Amanda Marcotte's quick reaction to Christopher Hitchens' passing was to post a pretty good headshot of him up at the Overrated White Dudes tumblr, a decision she explains in more detail here at Pandagon.  Elsewhere, she has argued (rightly, I think) that people who react to this by angrily crying "too soon" are taking the ridiculous position that Hitchens, a career bomb thrower who spoke

This week for The Daily, I wrote about the Obama administration's overruling the FDA and continuing to restrict over the counter sales of Plan B birth control pills to women under 17.  When I posted the news item on this site last week, some of you commented that Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius had legitimate health concerns about how Plan B might affect younger users.  I'm no longer convinced that such concerns are valid, or that they truly factored into Sebelius' decision

I watched Val Kilmer in Red Planet again last night. It's 2056 and Earth has been seeding Mars with algae because our blue marble is almost toast. The acting and SFX are OK, but the plot is contrived. I like scifi enough to overlook small errors, but some of the science in the fiction doesn't make a lot of sense. Spaceships swoosh as they go by, but just about every show does that. A helper robot ignores Asimov's three laws and decides to be a ninja assassin. A scientist calls some exoskeletoned Martian insects, "nematodes," which I recall as being simple roundworms. But hey, it's escapist fantasy.

In America's New Energy Security, Daniel Yergin jumps on the tight oil bandwagon, claiming that everything's going to be fine because we're finding plenty of new oil in the good old US of A.

We now have kittens in PA, so we can't walk around in bare feet anymore without stepping on something they've batted under the door. Which I did Sunday evening. As I was pouring hydrogen peroxide over the hole in my heel this morning, the WBAL traffic crawler noted that a large police presence had closed traffic at Pratt & Light. At the same time, WBAL's weather cutie Ava Marie was telling us about the Festival of Lights at the Power Plant, which is not very far at all from McKeldin Square. I had the feeling that the festivities would not be including Occupy Baltimore, and I couldn't help but wonder if Darrick's taunting of the mayor at the Santa parade had set the stage for this morning's eviction.

When I was a little girl during FDR's time, I remember people in my family talking in hushed, reverent tones about the President of the United States --  as if he were someone so special you mustn't use your normal, everyday voice.  I grew up thinking there was no one in our beloved country who could top the President when it came to being all-wise and all-caring.  I believed that there was something other-worldly, even God-like about Presidents, and I felt safe.

In January 2011, Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, predicted The Great Food Crisis of 2011, and followed up in May 2011 with The New Geopolitics of Food.
 

In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in the world price of wheat actually means that the wheat you carry home from the market to hand-grind into flour for chapatis costs twice as much. And the same is true with rice. If the world price of rice doubles, so does the price of rice in your neighborhood market in Jakarta. And so does the cost of the bowl of boiled rice on an Indonesian family's dinner table.

Welcome to the new food economics of 2011: Prices are climbing, but the impact is not at all being felt equally. For Americans, who spend less than one-tenth of their income in the supermarket, the soaring food prices we've seen so far this year are an annoyance, not a calamity. But for the planet's poorest 2 billion people, who spend 50 to 70 percent of their income on food, these soaring prices may mean going from two meals a day to one. Those who are barely hanging on to the lower rungs of the global economic ladder risk losing their grip entirely. This can contribute -- and it has -- to revolutions and upheaval.

The race to the GOP nomination has very little to do with actually winning the Presidency, and much more to do with selling books. Just about every GOP contender has a new book, or books out, as well as other Republicans connected with the GOP race.

A quick rundown:

Newt Gingrich: “The Crater” & “A Nation Like No Other”

This morning blogger John Aravosis, over at AMERICAblog, wrote about blogging vs. journalism after finding an article from AP about a ruling against a Montana blogger who claimed protections as a journalist while fighting a defamation suit brought by a lawyer she called "a thug and a thief".

In America, various right wing elements have tried to paint the poor, and even the middle class, as moochers who take more from society than they pay back into the system.  This story is meant to counter the seemingly obvious observation that the wealthiest Americans benefit more from our collective system that anyone else.  There's a productive class (rich people) and a consuming class (everyone else) and the morally just have been rewarded while the rest of us learn to be like them.  That's how the fable goes, anyway.

For those following the silly drama between Alec Baldwin and American Airlines, the 30 Rock actor has now quit his Twitter account, saying he would start a new one.

"Let's play a game called Mass Unfollowing. I want to crash this acct and start again. But, tonight at 10 PM, NY time, unfollow me," wrote Baldwin.

You've probably read that eight Ferraris, a Lamborghini, and three Mercedes, traveling at a highly-efficient 80 to 100 mph, crashed when one of the Ferraris had to pass a slow-moving Prius, and hit a slower-moving guardrail. In a twist of irony, after causing the accident, the Prius was the only undamaged vehicle. This $3 million debacle proves that Priuses, and other non-ICE vehicles, represent a hazard to normal traffic. Maybe Priuses should be made to drive on the sidewalk, where they can't obstruct efficient, high-speed drivers.

While we argue about economics, candidates and option backs, political voices as disparate as revolutionary Anonymous (youtubing in a typical Guy Fawkes mask), the ACLU, right-wing Forbes Magazine, left-wing Mother Jones and the libertarian Reason Magazine are railing against two sections of the latest National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Defense appropriations are nothing new, of course, but Sections 1031 and 1032 are said to allow, even require, military personnel to engage in domestic law enforcement—a violation of Posse Comitatus. Someone must be for those provisions, because each house of Congress has quietly passed the bill, and the Big Four (Levin, Graham, McCain and Sessions) are now working on a reconciliation to be sent to President Obama, who has the option of a veto. Some outlets claim he has vowed to veto it, but others claim he only wants to veto it because it doesn't provide enough secrecy.

As of this very moment, there are two men that are dominating the news – and both of them are just awful at their chosen professions. But amazingly enough, we are all witnessing mediocrity rise to incredible heights as a lousy NFL quarterback is leading his team to victories while a lousy politician is leading the race for the GOP nomination for President.

As Italy and Spain go tumbling after Greece into an abyss of insolvency, Germany has at last found the will to act boldly in defense of the European Union.

According to the New York Times, Chancellor Angela Merkel has launched a courageous effort to bail out Germany's struggling neighbors...with the International Monetary Fund's money.

Not that she's shirking responsibility. After all, Germany contributes a full six percent of the IMF pool.

And really, why should Germany be any more responsible for bailing out European debtors than the United States (17 percent) and the other 159 non-European members (60 percent). So Germany and Italy share the same currency, what of it?