Month: September 2006

professionalism

A reader writes Talking Points Memo:

What leaves me shaking my head, trying to understand, is not the lawyers, but the medical doctors who participate in torture and give guidance into how much more the person can take before they die. I just imagine the kind of person who decides to become a doctor — that person must want to heal, want to fix people, want to alleviate their suffering or pain or at least want to be someone who has the power to do that.

So this person has years of training, has seen people suffer and die and seen pain first hand — and yet, that same person is able to not only watch someone being tortured but take part in the process by saying the person could take 100 more volts or 4 more punches or 10 degrees cooler or stay in that position for another 24 hours before their legs break or whatever. I wonder at what point they lose that humanity. I wonder what they think of themselves when they look in the mirror or what goes through their mind when they turn off the light and pull the blanket up to their chin to go to sleep. When their family asks about their day, what do they tell their kids they do? I wonder what they tell themselves to make it be OK.

I simply cannot imagine the gentle hands of a doctor who in one case may be so delicately examining a wound to then be the one to say “Yeah, this guy can take more… he’s still conscious so go at it.”

I think it’s the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog that questions the humanity of people who make landmines. Consider someone sitting at a workbench or running a machine with these devices going by, and what it takes to derive any kind of job satisfaction from that.

This seems like it must be the most extreme kind of compartmentalization: how can anyone separate their work from their life to that degree? Or worse, what if they don’t? What if their recreational activities are just as horrible? Hard to get my mind around that.

links for 2006-09-15

  • Accessorize Me
    once this thread calms down (unfogged threads are pretty busy), I’ll see what they say about decent bags.
    (tags: markets)
  • The Water’s Fine
    The silly thing is that rights-owners spent considerable money producing these videos, and now most of them are gathering dust, perhaps deteriorating or getting lost, where they could be making back some of the investment from people of a generation that
    (tags: DRM culture nostalgia)

cutting, stitching, and gluing: the bookbinding process

The fellow says “Make Your Own Moleskine-Like-Notebook.” So I did.

The promise of “your very own Moleskine-like-notebook/journal/sketchbook” was too much to resist, especially as I have always been curious about bookbinding.

Continue reading “cutting, stitching, and gluing: the bookbinding process”

links for 2006-09-14

call for entries: Photomedia Center 2006 Holga Show

ATTENTION: fine art photographers working with HOLGA cameras!

In December 2006, the Photomedia Center will be featuring artists who have been invited through an open submissions process to exhibit their photography which was created with the assistance of the Holga toy camera. This plastic miracle has produced a track record unexpectedly beatuiful results in the hands of skilled image-makers.

Alright, I’ll send some stuff in for this.

Dear Sam’s Club

I don’t go to Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart. I avoid the former, because it has a membership fee and the latter because of their horrible reputation (and based on my own experiences). I suppose Sam’s Club should be proscribed for the same reasons, but I had my reasons for bending my own principles. I had a day pass coupon on my latest phone book and I needed a product only available at Sam’s Club. So I went to get some of that and while I was there, I decided I would see what I could find that might save some money.

The short answer? Nothing. I found a couple of food items I don’t find in my local stores but everything else offered less choice/a smaller selection with the dilemma of what to do with the supersized quantities. Even basics like laundry soap were no cheaper than Fred Meyer. Gas was cheaper, I’ll grant you that: $2.83 for regular beats anything I have seen around town, though not by much.

Facial tissues? Can’t get large ones without lotion embedded and not all of us can tolerate that. The small boxes were no savings and require me to find a place to store 10 boxes. Hint: when every package seems to bear the legend “ideal for vending” or “labeled for resale” I realize I am not part of the desired market for these stores. And the other items — soups, condiments, even baking supplies — were all one brand, massive quantity. This is capitalism?

I noted that every variety of Coca-Cola product was available, and the candy/cookie selections were quite robust. I’m not sure it’s a very sensible place to shop, if you’re looking for a balanced diet.

I really tried. I walked all the aisles but I was confronted with no choices — they didn’t have what I wanted — or a limited one — I could get what I needed but far more than I needed.

And how to put it delicately? Your clientele were all very generously-proportioned people. Almost everyone I saw could stand to lose 50 or more pounds. I’m by no means a paragon of physical fitness — I realize I’ll never get down to 6-pack abs but I’m shooting for less than a pony keg — but I can’t help thinking the abundance of food is driving the abundance of physical size. I try to tell myself the shoppers have large families or run a group home but looking at them makes it hard. Their families — no more numerous than mine — are going to eat all that stuff and they’ll be back for more.

I am trying to shop more frequently and buy less/fresher as a way of improving the quality of the food here and support local growers. I have to think the warehouse store model is both undermining small local growers — there’s no way they can grow enough to be regular suppliers to a big retailer — as well as the health of their own customers. I could see a cardiologist reviewing purchases at the end of each checkstand and removing a lot of the cart’s contents for many customers.

A lot of this is based on my own quirks: I can’t see buying a box of muffins when I can make them, and I would never make them so large or with such unhealthy ingredients. There are an awful lot of prepared foods in there. In the time it takes to get to a Sam’s Club and navigate through it, you could invest in some better quality food closer to home.

So between the illusion of choice — you get one brand of a given product, in many cases — the huge containers (a gallon of mayonnaise? how long will that take to get through?), and the few locations that require more driving/gas use, I have to say there’s no advantage. What is billed as one-stop, everything-under-one-roof is actually a huge specialty retailer.

So thanks for the guest pass, but I think it’s a “no sale” on the membership offer.

mmmm, pie

This summer has been bountiful for fruit trees around town. Where we had millions of blossoms a few months ago, now we have apples dropping to the street everywhere you look.

I took advantage of one such windfall myself. I pass a vacant — for sale — house every day that has a huge crop of bright red apples, and today I pulled into the driveway and filled a mesh shopping bag in a few minutes. Probably got 10 pounds or more, all fine, no worm holes or coddling moths.

Got ’em home and realized peeling them was going to be a chore, so I put out a WANTED notice on FreeCycle for one of those hand-crank peeler/corers.

Wonder of wonders, someone loaned me one, and I quickly prepared 6-8 apples, with some tasting help from my staff. I have to say, those things are pretty amazing. Once you get the peeling blade setup, it makes short work of an apple. You end up with a beautiful spiral cut apple, ready to chop or whathaveyou. Might not be a bad purchase.

Made a crust — always a hit or miss proposition for me — and after the requisite chill time, then rolling/cutting/assembly, the whole affair just came out of the oven.

Smells awfully good and will make a fine breakfast. I suspect I didn’t put enough filling, but it’s not like I won’t have another chance. And another chance to make a crust will be welcome.

And if you think you are looking at a similar waste of good fruit, you may be permitted, if not entitled to save them from rot/rats, etc. I am not a lawyer, but the principle of usufruct deals with this: Latinate readers will note the roots of “use” and “fruit” in there, so this is quite germane.