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Corey Haim is dead, Los Angeles Police confirmed to TV station KTLA. He was 38.

Police say it is believed the actor, who had a long history of substance-abuse problems, perished from an accidental overdose at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.

via Corey Haim, 38, Found Dead – Tributes, Corey Haim : People.com.

I’ve written about child actors before and my reluctance of letting my own gregarious child enjoy the spotlight. Stories like this only confirm my irrational (?) fear of the child actor curse. I’ve been trying to come up with a list of “normal” adults that got their start as children to compare to the tragedies. The lists are not looking so hot.

In the healthy column -

Jason Bateman

Justine Bateman (can we thank their parents for this?)

Fred Savage

Danica McKellar (something about the wholesomeness of the Wonder Years?)

Alicia Silverstone

In the cautionary tale column -

Judy Garland

Brittany Murphy

Dana Plato

Todd Bridges

Gary Coleman

Danny Bonaduce

Mackenzie Phillips

River Phoenix

Lindsay Lohan

Brad Renfro

Michael Jackson

Britney Spears

Coreys Feldman and Haim weren’t doing so hot before today’s news, but sadly Haim is now a permanent member of the club with zero chance for redemption.

Anyone in the healthy column I missed? Let’s hear some good news about this demographic for a change. Tell me who else made it to functional adulthood in comments.

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This week began with a trio of stories that boil down to one basic fact: Humans will combat nature and each other to keep their bellies and wallets full, and this isn’t going to change any time soon. 

The first story comes out of Oregon, where California sea lions — intelligent, opportunistic carnivores, just like people — have been “euthanized” for the apparent crime of eating Chinook salmon, some of which are endangered wild fish trying to enter the Columbia River to spawn. Eleven sea lions were killed last year for the same reason, as their protected status as marine mammals does not keep them safe from state-level requests to kill a few in the name of preserving salmon fisheries, which are a multi-million-dollar, tax-payer funded effort.

As CBSNews.com reported Monday: 

[California] sea lions have gobbled salmon forever. But their numbers have soared in recent years, as has the number of those cruising upriver to dine on salmon at Bonneville Dam. Frustrations peaked, especially among fishermen who have watched sea lions snatch salmon right out of their gill nets. The Bonneville crowd of hefty mammals. . .have become the enemy of commercial and sport fisherman, who are allowed to catch and keep hatchery-raised fish, and a concern for conservationists trying to restore migratory runs, since sea lions don’t distinguish between hatchery and wild fish. . .At least three of the upper Columbia River spring salmon runs that pass through the dam are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, most significantly the spring chinook salmon run.

So we — American humans, a collective “we” — are killing a marine mammal, one we saw fit to give legal protection 38 years ago, in order to protect an endangered salmon species, one that we nearly destroyed with hydroelectric systems, so that a multi-million-dollar recovery effort on behalf of commercial fishing (including Native operations), recreational anglers, and the species itself does not suffer further losses, while the hugely excessive by-catch of American commercial fishing in various waters continues. 

I’m not stating opposition or support one way or the other in that sentence above — I’m just stringing that out for a complete illustration of just what a nutty situation we have gotten ourselves into. 

In 2009, CA sea lions at base of the Bonneville Dam ate 4,489 salmon, according to the CBSNews.com report (how was that number figured out?), while this year, around 470,000 Chinook salmon are expected to enter the river. Saying those numbers hold, the sea lions will gobble close to 0.96% of the spring salmon run this year. That is a level of natural carnivorousness that offends some Americans.

Farther down the west coast, some Americans are offended at another type of carnivore eating marine meat: Human sushi aficionados in California scarfing down what appears to be whale sushi served at a chi-chi Santa Monica joint called Hump, according to a NY Times report this past Monday (link below). 

A crew connected to the makers of the 2009 film The Cove performed an undercover sushi-eating “sting,” in a meal that cost $600 for two, without sake or beer, and spirited away samples of a thick-cut meat for testing in Oregon (site of sea-lion control): 

The samples were sent to Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University. Professor Baker said DNA testing there revealed that the samples sent to him were from a Sei whale, which are found worldwide and are endangered but are sometimes hunted in the North Pacific under a controversial Japanese scientific program. “I’ve been doing this for years,” Professor Baker said. “I was pretty shocked.”

Armed with a search warrant, federal officials on Friday [Mar. 5] went searching for evidence from the restaurant, including marine mammal parts as well as various records and documents. The possession or sale of marine mammals is a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and can lead to a year in prison and a fine of $20,000.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act does not apply in Taiji, Japan, where dolphins are a natural resource, their slaughter depicted in the Oscar-winning film The Cove that the Japanese dolphin hunters, on the southeastern island of Honshu, have called “inaccurate and intolerant of other cultures.” 

As National Geographic Daily News reported on Monday: 

In the course of a six-month season, [Japanese] fishermen kill roughly 2,000 dolphins and sell the meat to local supermarkets for about U.S. $500 a dolphin. The fishermen supplement their income by taking about a hundred dolphins alive and selling them for tens of thousands of dollars each to aquariums in Japan, China, South Korea, Iran, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. 

People in Japan have hunted dolphins and their larger cetacean relatives, whales, for hundreds if not thousands of years. 

“Pretty much any edible sea creature has been exploited for food,” said Harvard University anthropologist and Japanese fishing-culture expert Theodore Bestor. Whales and dolphins became ingrained in Japanese food, culture, and religion. The animals were the subjects of celebrations, rituals, and art. Ancient tombs and memorials for whales and dolphins can be found across the country.

Let’s see if all of this can be put into one mash-up sentence: 

In Japan the ancient practice of eating marine mammals continues, and some Japanese decry international criticism of their carnivorous proclivities (while other Japanese agree that killing dolphins and whales is a bad idea), while in California daring American diners hope to eat raw whale while other Americans and American law enforcement carry out operations to stop such dining, while human dining on hatchery-bred Chinook salmon will be partly enabled by the slaughter of California sea lions that also hope to eat salmon as they have for thousands of years past.

Circle of life, folks — a modern circle that involves federal energy policy, industrial-food systems, East-West jingoisms, environmentalism, the film industry, people with $300 fly rods who don’t want to think about dead sea lions while spending $2,000 on guided angling trips, high-tech gear and vessels, marine theme parks, and the deep deep human belly. 

It surely makes vegetarianism look a lot less messy, until the Free the Broccoli people show up. 

via Oscar Winners Try to Keep Whale Off Sushi Plates – NYTimes.com.

One of the favorite neocon tropes is that, under Putin’s rancid authoritarianism, Russia has comprehensively squandered all of the goodwill it built up under the influence of the amiable and drunken Yeltsin. In this telling of the story, Russia is friendless and alone in the international arena due to the Kremlin’s profound incompetence, rapaciousness, and cruelty.

With regards to a few countries (Poland, Georgia, and the Baltics, whose anti-Russian stance is and has always been absurdly overdetermined) this is somewhat accurate. But on a world scale? I think you could very easily, and accurately, make an argument that Russia is more broadly popular and diplomatically engaged than at any previous time in its troubled history (to be honest, this is not an especially high hurdle to clear, but what else should we compare it to? An alternate reality in which Russia, instead of the “evil empire,” used to be a blown-up version of the Netherlands?).

Today numerous countries that used to be Russia’s outright enemies (Israel, China, Turkey) or very negatively disposed towards it (Brazil, Argentina, and the other previously right-wing military regimes in South America, as well as the apartheid regime in South Africa) are now in close diplomatic and economic engagement with Russia. Even during the height of the Cold War India had decent relations with Russia, and these have only gotten closer as of late. Russia has even gotten substantially more economically engaged with Japan, despite some nasty, and probably intractable, disputes over the Kuril islands.

This isn’t to grandstand on behalf of the Kremlin, but to acknowledge reality and therefore give a note of caution to those who, based on the clear deterioration of Russia’s relationship with the United States from 2000-08, think that Putin is some sort of international boogey-man and that it is self-evident that his policies are a diplomatic disaster.* Russia has good relations with all of the other BRICS and the other fast-growing economies of Asia. It has good relations with most of the Middle East, including Iran and Israel, and its antagonists are primarily former Warsaw Pact countries in a narrow geographical band in Eastern Europe.

Is this a perfect diplomatic position to be in? Surely not. But is it catastrophic or, more importantly, is it worse than the position it had in the 1990’s? I don’t see how one can argue that. The structure of the world economy is changing before our very eyes, with economic dynamism increaingly coming from, and wealth increasingly drawn towards, Asia in general and China in particular. Russia is not nearly as poorly positioned to take advantage of this as some would think, and if you view Russia solely from the perspective of the United States (where it is loathed and mocked in almost equal measure) you get an extremely distorted view of the situation.

* Russia’s efforts to get its allies to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia were clearly ineffectual, but this issue  is one very small bit of Russia’s overall diplomatic engagement with the world. People who in the same breath will call Russia “friendless” for its inability to gain diplomatic recognition of its tiny client enclaves will offer endless excuses for the United States’ profound inability to get its allies to do anything of note in Iraq or Afghanistan.

After the towers fell, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only New Yorker who assumed that we’d build them back up, and quickly. My favorite initial plan was to have four smaller towers flanked by one larger tower in an F-U gesture to future cowards.

That was a long time ago. So long ago that now I fear we will soon live in a world where T.V. shows and movies construct alternate realities as if 9/11 never happened. [SPOILER ALERT: We already live in such a world.]

And that would be fine if we had truly moved on from the tragedy. You grieve, you remember, you move on, it’s a natural part of life. But we haven’t moved on. Despite all of our sacrifices in blood, treasure, and liberty, all we are left with is our grief. Osama Bin Laden still limps around free. The TSA could demand rectal probing to get on an airplane, and we would submit “just in case.” And oh yeah, we’re apparently out of money — which is kind of exactly what the terrorists were trying to accomplish.

And there’s still this big, gaping hole in the middle of the city. Can we get anybody interested in doing something about that?

Yesterday, there was a rally at Ground Zero:

Construction workers hoping to speed up the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site chanted “Build it now!” at a rally Tuesday to urge quicker movement on the project.

Construction is under way on 1 World Trade Center, a memorial and a transit hub, but the building of other planned towers has stalled as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey battles developer Larry Silverstein.
via The New York Post

The dispute between Silverstein and the Port Authority is complicated and messy and the kind of thing you’d expect to be cleared up if there was a single adult in the room. Let me explain how this could be solved if New York was run by average New Yorkers instead bureaucrats and corporate interests who are more concerned about their asses than the city:

Issue #1 Port Authority wants Silverstein to put more private funds into the project. Silverstein does not.
Resolution: Silverstein needs to kick in some extra dollars. Right now he owns a hole in the ground. Soon he’ll own the most important building in America. My buddy Vinnie could make money with a front like that. So can Silverstein.

Issue #2 Port Authority wants construction to be delayed until the real estate market rebounds.
Resolution: When I want advice on the best way to get to New Jersey, I’ll ask Port Authority. When I want real estate market advice, I’ll ask just about anybody other than somebody who runs a bus station.

Issue #3 Unions want to play a big role in constructing the new towers.
Resolution: The original World Trade Center was built in under five years. Can you do it in under five years? You’ve got the job.

Issue #4 New York State has been run successively by: George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, and David Paterson.
Resolution: One guy was a lame duck milquetoast, the other guy couldn’t keep his pants on, the current guy is just … well … totally incompetent. Until further notice, the only politician allowed to talk about the Ground Zero project is Michael Bloomberg. This isn’t America, this isn’t a democracy, this is New York freaking City. Shut up and do your job.

See how easy that was?

There is literally no excuse for politics and money to be screwing up our expression of national pride.

As a devout culture-war-pacifist, I find bits like this somewhat frightening.

On the other hand, Sean Penn’s call to put journalists who critique Venezuelan Macho-Dictator-for-life, Hugo Chavez, in jail is equally scary.  Said Penn:

Because every day, this elected leader [Chavez] is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.

And the culture wars rage on.

In related news, the new battle raging in the culture war is one I hope ends quickly: torture.  I do think this one will be a much more short-lived fight. Perhaps it is just the eternal optimist in me. I think decent people can only support it if they remain afraid and convinced that it can somehow protect them, and wicked people can only foment fear for so long.  A swift, decisive victory here would be good for people on every side of the culture war.  On that note, here’s Jon Stewart laying waste to torture-advocate and, as Andrew Sullivan has dubbed him, “Mcarthyite mediocrity” Marc Thiesen (who has written a book on the subject, if you didn’t already know since he mentions it every time he opens his mouth or puts ink to paper….)

Corey Haim in 2008. (Image by Getty Images via Daylife)

The news coming out of Hollywood today is that teen actor Corey Haim has died — the police suspect a drug overdose.

If you don’t remember Haim’s acme of fame in the ’80s as co-star of teen movies like “License to Drive,” “Dream a Little Dream” and “The Lost Boys” with friend and wild-lifestyle cohort Corey Feldman — and you can be forgiven if you don’t because it was a very brief zenith — then you probably remember him as the punch line to a million Generation X jokes on TV about interchangeable ’80s teen pretty boys. Both “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons” have used the Coreys as winking, inside jokes (”How many of these guys are named Corey?” asks Homer Simpson after he buys a handful of teen magazines for his bed-ridden daughter) and the Irish band The Thrills released a single in 2004 about lost days of youth, titled, of course, “Whatever Happened to Corey Haim?” (Have a listen… it’s not a bad song.)

But Haim, who never completely put his teen drug days behind him, attempted a resurrection of sorts — as so many other teen idols before him have — by turning to reality TV.

A&E aired “The Two Coreys” in 2007 — which depicted Haim moving in with Feldman and Feldman’s wife in an attempt to get his life back on track — and get both their careers back on track. Feldman had actually done pretty well with the reality TV career path, having starred (sort-of) memorably on VH-1’s “The Surreal Life.” But even the low-level of grade-B reality show fame eluded Haim. “The Two Coreys” sputtered for 19 episodes, mostly focusing on Haim’s repeated lapses back into drug use and constant bickering with the man to whose fame he was forever linked:

A&E cancelled the show before the second season finished taping.

The death of Corey Haim may be another way station on the slow march toward old age for us Gen-Xers (though I can honestly say I’ve never seen a single Corey Haim movie…). Or it may not be. But the life of a man who got famous fast and then spent the bulk of his life trying to get back to that brief moment of adulation is certainly another way station in the strange wake of American celebrity culture and what happens to the human beings we dispose of when we’re done with them.

Martha Stewart didn't make this gingerbread house. Photo courtesy Eliza

Many of us were mesmerized by Ryan Flynn’s stop motion demolition video, showing the process of demolishing a Cabrini-Green building that sits across the street from him.

Interestingly enough, some New York and Chicago artists had a similar idea, only much more appetizing. Artists Eliza, Eve and Bowie created an “edible ghetto” – housing projects made out of food and then allowed their audience to slowly nibble away at the development one evening.

Take a look:

I think it’s really interesting to watch how the destruction starts slowly. When it’s all one piece, people are hesitant to take a bite. But after the pieces start coming off, people start to chow down. Why not take a piece of something that’s already falling apart?

The artists ask some great questions about the “consumption” of a neighborhood, land and space.

It also reminded me of some former Chicago public housing towers that have already been “eaten,”  – the former ABLA homes on the near West side. Take a look:

The former Grace Abbot homes. Photo from "The Poorhouse"

What do you think?

I am looking forward to Sunday’s debut of the HBO miniseries The Pacific, which focuses on the experiences of the marines who fought America’s island war against Japan. One of the early episodes will focus on the battle of Guadalcanal. It was there, relatively early in the long campaign to control of the island, that my uncle, Marine Sgt. Andy Malanowski, died a hero’s death.

Coming from a fairly reticent family, I never learned much about Andy, who was dead a decade before I was born. But some years ago I grew curious about Andy and his service and the circumstances of his death, and so I contacted the Marine Corps, which sent me a copy of his service record. I also published a notice in a Marine Corps Veterans’ newsletter, and a number of Andy’s comrades shared with me their recollections of him.

Anthony Peter Malanowski Jr. was born in Baltimore on January 31, 1914, the fourth of Rosalie and Anthony Malanowski’s ten sons (one ahead of my dad). Called Andy to distinguish him from his father, he grew up in a Polish neighborhood in East Baltimore near Patterson Park. He enlisted in the marines in July 1933. Obviously this was a Depression-era choice made by more than few 19 year olds, but perhaps unique in his family; although five of his brothers served in the armed forces, I believe Andy was the only one who enlisted during peace time.

Andy’s records show that he was a good marine, achieving high ratings on his evaluations. At various times during the 1930s he was stationed in San Diego, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, served two years as part of the marine detachment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, and at least a year as part of the garrison in Peiping, China. (A marine who met him in 1940 would refer to Andy as “an old China hand,” even though this service occurred a scant two years earlier.) In 1940, his commander in Portsmouth recommended that Andy, by now a corporal, receive a Good Conduct Medal based on his long clean record. “Malanowski is an excellent man,’’ wrote H.L. Smith, “and is reenlisting.’’

H.L. Smith wasn’t the only person who had a positive view of Andy during this period. In 1934, Joseph Seborowski, who went on to have a distinguished career in the Marine Corps, was a ten year old neighbor of the Malanowski family on Chester Street . In a private memoir he shared with me, he remembers Andy returning home on leave:

“Small events are the origin of great world history. So it is with the life of a man. For Joe, there was a singular event during that enchanted summer of boyhood in 1934, which ordained him to his journey. He looked up one day from his boyish games, and saw striding toward him down Chester Street a rare Being of blue and gold and shining brass. A United States Marine.

Joe knew him. He was Anthony P. Malanowski Jr., who had become in the eyes of a ten year old boy, a god of battle. Maybe Joe was not entirely sure what marines did, but he resolved to someday wear that excellent uniform.’’

By the end of 1940, Andy had been promoted to platoon sergeant, and was transferred to the seventh regiment of the First Marine Division (1/7), which was commanded by the famous Maj. Chester `Chesty’ Puller. Andy spent 1941 and the first half of 1942 in Guantanemo Bay, Cuba, training for amphibious landings.

In a letter, Leland de Rocher of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, who became Andy’s runner and tent-mate in March 1942, wrote “I can honestly say that my platoon sergeant was the finest man’s Marine I ever met during my four years in the Corps. I never heard him swear; he did not smoke or chew. He had one close friend, the company’s 1st Sgt. Ford. They had both served together in China. Sarge was always neat in appearance, setting a fine example for us all. The best I can recall is that he was a man 180 pounds, 5’8’’, barrel-chested with very strong arms and legs, and without any facial hair on his round face, and none on his head. He always wore a cap or helmet. His carriage was that of a military man. He was not inclined to talk unless there was a need to. While I am not sure, I think he went to mass when available.’’

De Rocher reports that the 1/7 left Cuba for Guadalcanal on Easter Sunday 1942. It was, he reports, “a great trip,’’ one that took them through the Panama Canal and eventually to British Samoa, where they spent three and a half months training. “We set up camp on the former British polo grounds,’’ wrote de Rocher. “ Pineapples and coconuts were plentiful and also fresh water to bathe in. We played baseball and were allowed two cans of beer a day. The friendly natives spoke fluent English and we got along well. They treated the marines to a luau when we were leaving the island.’’.

They were leaving for Guadalcanal, a 2,510-square mile island, about 90 miles long, part of the Solomon Island chain in the southwestern Pacific. The Japanese landed there in May 1942 and were constructing an airfield which would have served as a base for bombing Australia and Allied shipping. Elements of the First Marine Division landed in August and entered combat almost immediately. They captured the Japanese airfield, renamed it Henderson Field, and defended it against several furious Japanese counterattacks that resulted in high casualties on both sides. The 1/7 arrived on September 18 and saw action almost immediately. Before a week had passed, on September 23, de Rocher, standing next to Andy on a patrol, was shot in the hip by a Japanese sniper. The wound became infected, and he was sent home.

On September 27, the marines launched a three-pronged offensive operation near the mouth of the Matanikau River on Guadalcanal’s northern coast. One detachment of a regiment called Edson’s Rangers was supposed to land on the coast and move inland, and join up with another detachment of Edson’s Rangers that was already in position. Meanwhile, further east, near Point Cruz, elements of the 1/7, Andy among them, was supposed to land on the beach, move inland, and at the appropriate moment, join the two groups of Rangers in converging on a Japanese position that was supposedly lightly held by about 200 troops. But as Richard Wheeler writes in A Special Valor, his history of the marines in the Pacific, “the operation was a fiasco from beginning to end.’’

Essentially, both Ranger forces encountered heavy resistance, and neither was able to come close to meeting its objective. Meanwhile, the 500 men in the 1/7 moved up the hill from the beach, through a coconut grove, and into position on a grassy ridge, where they saw not 200 Japanese troops, but a large column advancing against them, and moving to encircle them and cut them off from the beach.

A desperate fight began. The 1/7’s commander was killed and his second-in-command wounded by a single mortar round. Radio communication was knocked out. Japanese soldiers assaulting the ridge came so close that the marines had to aim their mortars almost straight in the air so that the descending shells would hit their targets. With the radio useless, a signalman employed semaphore flags to communicate with Puller, who was offshore in navy ship called The Ballard. Puller immediately signaled the marines to fight their way back to the beach, and he had The Ballard use its big guns to clear the enemy from the path of retreat.

Chaos prevailed: noise and smoke from the exploding shells, the marines plunging headlong down the hill, the Japanese pursuing, other Japanese who had survived the bombardment jumping out of the jungle to ambush the marines. One Japanese officer leaped from the brush and beheaded a marine with his sword. Finally the marines reached a clearing near the beach, but with the enemy closing in, Andy took a Browning Automatic Rifle from a wounded marine and set it up behind a fallen log. “You take Doc Schuster and the other wounded on down,” he said to Captain Regan Fuller, “and I’ll handle the rear. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.’’

Fuller says that when he and the others reached the beach, he heard a rapid burst of gunfire, and then silence.

In a letter, Donald Dillard of Fenton, Michigan said “I was the last marine to see your uncle at Point Cruz. He was slumped across a log. I rolled him over, took what was left of his ammo, and ran for it.’’

After more desperate combat on the beach, the marines were evacuated. Andy was one of 24 members of his unit who were killed that day; another 23 were wounded. With terrible fighting on both the island and the sea surrounding it, the battle for Guadalcanal lasted until February 1943, when the Japanese finally evacuated their forces. According to one source, 1500 Americans and 25,000 Japanese died on the island, and many more died at sea.

In Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller, Burke Davis writes the Puller recommended that Andy be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, and says that Andy received it. In A Special Valor, Richard Wheeler reports the same information. It is not clear what their source was. In the event, Andy was awarded The Navy Cross, the navy’s highest decoration. The citation accompanying the award, sent in a letter on December 8, 1942 by Admiral William F. Halsey, reads “For exceptional heroism in action against the enemy on September 27, 1942, near Point Cruz Guadalcanal. Sergeant Malanowski, with an automatic rifle, covered the withdrawal of his company until overrun and killed by the enemy. By his exhibition of the highest bravery, unselfish courage, and utter disregard for his own personal safety, he inflicted great loss on the enemy, greatly assisted in the withdrawal of his company, and gave his own life in the action.’’

“I was a young marine of 17 when your uncle led us,’’ wrote Louis Clabeaux of Redington Shores, Florida. “Your uncle saved the lives of our platoon.’’

Combat conditions prevented the immediate recovery of Andy’s body, and subsequent attempts to locate the body by the Graves Registration Company, including one as late as 1947, were unavailing. Donald Dillard rather trenchantly reminded me that the Japanese were known to mutilate the bodies of the enemy.

My father once told me that the military offered to put a marker in honor of Andy in Arlington National Cemetery, but that my grandmother declined, satisfied with the plaque that hangs in the vestibule of Holy Rosary Church on Chester Street that lists Andy’s name among the parishioners who had been killed in action. No matter; Andy’s real monument is the admiration of the men who knew him.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The European Union Commission has proposed a new directive, to be voted on in March, that would make maternity leave compulsory for the first six weeks after a woman gives birth. You read that correctly–compulsory. As in, women would be forced to stay home, regardless of their own wishes, if they have children.

Beyond the obvious affront on personal free will, the problems with this proposal are so numerous and egregious it’s making our heads spin. Firstly, Europe as a whole already suffers from low female labor participation rates; continent-wide, only six out of ten women work. This is a major problem for the region, as it turns out women have been the key factor driving economic growth worldwide in recent years (”women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India,” according to a pre-mancession article in The Economist). Stigmatizing women by telling employers outright that women will not, by law, be as committed to the workplace as men is a foolish and self-defeating move.

Potential economic impact aside, what really riles us up is the huge step backwards the proposition would entail in social and cultural terms. By mandating that women take maternity leave, and saying absolutely nothing about fathers, the EU would send a continent-wide message that being a parent is primarily a woman’s responsibility. Some individuals happen to believe this; that’s their opinion and they’re entitled to it. But this viewpoint and the mandatory maternity leave proposal violate the EU’s own official goals, which state that women and men should have the same opportunities to combine their work, personal, and family lives. Not only would the mandate push women back into an antiquated role of homemaker and caretaker that many of us have struggled, for centuries!, to free ourselves from, it would signal to the citizens of the European Union, and to the world at large, that women belong at home with their babies, and that work, for childbearing women, comes second. Whether or not you would personally make the choice to stay home for the first weeks or months or even years of your child’s life is one thing: feel free to do as you please. But forcing everyone to do this is a sign that, from the top down, society has reached a verdict on parenthood, and that verdict places women firmly in the role of primary caregiver.

Not only does this possible mandate have a potentially disastrous effect on women, but on men as well! For the past couple of decades reform has been slowly but surely brewing regarding fatherhood. Official policy has not always caught up with social norms. The view of the “modern father” of the twenty-first century is not the suit-clad man who returns home from work late at night; he is the Baby Björn touting playground regular who sees fatherhood as a hands-on job. Sweden has provided paternity leave for fathers for decades. The rest of Europe has, in recent years, been catching up. Each day of paternity leave given to fathers is not just a day won in the life of a family, but a huge achievement in the direction of a cultural paradigm shift- one where shared, even equal, parenting is the norm. The damage the EU mandate, which completely ignores fatherhood and sends the message that the care of children is only a mother’s right as well as responsibility, may have on the view of parenting can’t be overstated.

To put it simply: the EU proposition sends a message that is at odds with all the progress recent years have shown about cultural views of parenthood.

Don’t get us wrong, parental leave is a wonderful thing. It gives parents the opportunity to bond with their babies. It gives families options. But mandating that all women take leave for the first six weeks is preposterous! What if the woman is the sole breadwinner in the family? What if she has post-partum depression? What if the couple prefers that the husband be the primary caretaker during the first six weeks? What if she can’t breastfeed?  (Breastfeeding seems to be at the core of those arguments that support women staying home rather than men with young children. Sorry folks, but even if a woman can breastfeed–and not all women can—the scientific proof that breastfeeding is best is, frankly, weak. A 2001 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded “there are inconsistent associations among breastfeeding, it’s duration, and the risk of being overweight in young children.” Same “inconsistent” findings for higher IQs, disease protection, being able to fly, and the myriad of benefits people associate with breastfeeding. We are by no means saying you shouldn’t breastfeed your child if you want and are able to. At least one of us feels strongly about doing so no matter the statistics. We’re just saying: please don’t use breastfeeding as an argument for why men are not as qualified as women to take care of babies. We’re not buying it.)

Sweden, which already guarantees mothers and fathers 18 months of parental leave to be split between the parents as they see fit, has slammed the proposal. In an op-ed, Sweden’s Minister of EU Affairs, Birgitta Ohlsson, writes “On a personal level, if the proposal were to come into force it would prevent me from working. As a mother-to-be I would have had to turn down my new job as Swedish Minster for EU Affairs.” If the proposal passes, it threatens not only to put Ohlsson out of a job, but also to compromise Sweden’s uniquely egalitarian parental leave policies as a whole. Don’t bring bad decisions down on countries that already have better policies of their own.

Hey EU Commission: scrap the proposal! And write a new one that guarantees a certain number of weeks of parental leave for women as well as men—but don’t force anyone to take it. That would truly be taking a step in the right direction.

- Astri and Liz

It’s a shame Eric Massa is leaving when he is.  Never mind the definite impression he’s a wacko, lying sleaze bag;  what causes him to stand out in Washington is his acknowledged experience with the “Tickle Fight”. He’s a regular old Elmo.

By now, we all have heard that’s all he was doing to prompt charges he had groped staff members.  So at the very moment Democrats are groping for some way to pass health care reform, he bails, just when his expertise would be useful.

Now that he’s a former member of Congress and before he goes into rehab, so he can run for re-election, he would be tremendously useful as a TV analyst.  He could provide the insider’s view on all the moves during the ticklish legislative process ahead and the naked politics in and out of the shower room.

Who knew there were so many Congressional emperors with no clothes on? Sort of makes one long for the days when we compared lawmaking and sausage. At least both would grind something out. Now things have ground to a halt.

Here’s how we get things moving.  How about a full fledged tickle fight in public.  Let’s invite C-Span in to see everything.  We should place cameras everywhere, including the Capitol gyms.

We probably should assign one to simply follow Rahm Emanuel around to watch all of his moves and, just as important, listen to his every subtle persuasion. That way, we don’t have to hear what he’s thinking via his favored reporters. We can get it straight from the horse’s…uh…mouth.

Here’s a thought: We can follow the lead of the news networks and let each official carry his or her own equipment. Think of the money savings, as these one man bands do it all…debate, shoot the video, run the audio, edit their remarks. For that matter, they could interview themselves and have primetime  shouting matches with each other without the Glenn Becks and Keith Olbermanns of this world to goad them.

Naaah.   Nobody can do so many things at once without the quality seriously suffering.  And heaven knows, quality is already in short supply.  But hey. If the TV executives don’t care why should anyone else?

Another possibility:  Since law enforcement has already blanketed the country we could just take the material from their surveillance.  Perhaps we could also have access to the wiretaps of telephone calls between House members, and Senators and the lobbyists who control them by financing their campaigns.

Admit it:  You thought this was going to be some silly rambling.  Little did you know there were so many creative new ways to get the job done here in Washington, so many untried tactics that could very well break the cycle of failure, or at least alleviate the boredom.  And these are just a few ideas.  They barely scratch the surface.  Or tickle it.

Last weekend I covered the U.S.A. Memory Championship for NewYorker.com and the event had all the makings of March Madness. As the end drew near, with just three finalists left, the auditorium at Con Edison’s headquarters was as filled with taut anticipation as any second-half, final-minute, game-tied scenario could offer.

You can read about the finale here, but what happened in between the seven events was also intriguing. The mental athletes–their term–were asked to share techniques for remembering copious amounts of data. They were happy to oblige, because they want to dispel the notions that their feats are products of being savants or of pulling some kind of trick.

Here are three specific tips:

1) Create rooms of associations. This was a technique many of the mind athletes used. Walk through a room and in a very specific order to create “anchors” that you can associate with ideas, numbers, etc. For instance, the first thing I see walking into my apartment is a couch. Second is a bookcase. Third is an armchair. For memorizing cards, this is especially effective for the athletes. Here’s a hypothetical: When they see a Four of Diamonds first, that is attached to the couch. The Three of Hearts is the bookcase. The Queen of Diamonds is the chair. Every time a mental athlete sees his couch, s/he also sees the Four of Diamonds. So then the card comes up, s/he sees his couch and the reverses the association.

2) Use visual cues to connect names with faces. One of the contests, Names and Faces, gives the athletes 15 minutes to memorize the names of 99 people, with pictures of their faces above the name. They then get a scrambled list of just the pictures and they have to fill in the names. Many of the athletes use a method of finding attributes on the person’s face that remind them of their name. Often the connection is phonetic. So my mouth amplifies sound, like a “mic,” which can “call” a cab — Michael. My bald head looks like “hump” that has broken “free” from a camel — Humphrey.

3) Create mini stories for abstract details. Nelson Dellis broke a U.S. record in speed numbers Saturday, which gives athletes five minutes to memorize as many digits in a row from a randomly generated 500-digit string. Dellis did 178. He then shared his method, called number chunking. He associates every combination of two numbers from 0-10 with a famous name, an action and an object. So, another hypothetical, 03 could be John Malcovich, slicing and nectarines. 24 could be Mia Hamm, kicking and garbage cans. If the number 032403 were in the string, he would think John Malcovich is kicking a nectarine, a simple story replaces six abstract symbols.

Bonus time … here are three more general tips they gave:

A) Repeat, repeat and then repeat. These associations are stored through nothing other than recycling them in the mind over and over. To train for card memorization, in which each card is associated with an object, US Memory Champion Ronnie White runs through the deck multiple times per day. “Not to memorize the deck, just to repeat the associations I’ve made.” It works–White currently holds the record for memorizing a deck of cards in 87 seconds. Like the study I mentioned a few weeks ago noted, this kind of repetition is the most effective, and most underutilized, tool for memory.

B) Distractions are your enemy. The power of association is that it forces your mind to focus, but even associating ideas to objects can become rote and lose its efficacy. Being distracted by other thoughts and by outside stimuli is memory’s biggest enemy. During the competition, White puts on a set of noise-canceling headphones attached to nothing. Daily distractions are less intense that competition. Name memory, for instance, is often thwarted by subtle emotions–such as nerves–or initial judgment. Ignoring distractions is the key.

C) Exercise your body too. Most of the mental athletes were fit. White is a Navy reservist, Dellis is a mountain climber. This is no coincidence, they say. “Keeping your body in shape fuels the mind. They’re not separate.”

Chemezov

Yesterday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy bestowed the Legion d’Honneur (Chevalier) to Russian dark prince Sergey Chemezov.

Chemezov is one of those oft-cited, scary strongmen who ran the Kremlin — and the rest of Russia — under Vladimir Putin’s rule, which has yet to expire. Putin brought in Chemezov because he knew him well: the two were undercover KGB agents in Dresden in the 1980s. He is, how you say in English?, a scary motherfucker.

I would ask why the French have honored Chemezov thusly, but they also Honneured Russian-Georgian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli who is wonderful at his job, which is to make loads of money on really kitschy, oddly-proportioned, hyper-literal monuments that beat you senseless with Significance. (He is also the author of the 9/11 memorial in Bayonne, New Jersey, which a friend once referred to as, “Oh! That vagina sculpture!”)

But if Tsereteli was the odd choice, Chemezov is the cravenly obvious one. For the past six years, he has overseen Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state monopoly on military exports. It oversees 90% of the Russian arms trade and owns the crippled AvtoVAZ car plant, in which Renault is a major shareholder. Oh, and let’s not forget Airbus, which gets titanium from Chemezov’s fiefdom, which also has links to French electronics company Thales, whose products are used in Russian military equipment.

So now you know.

via Lenta.ru

I think it was the great Benjamin Disraeli who said, you understand a people when you understand their bathroom habits. Or maybe it was Don Cherry who said that.

Nevertheless, it’s common knowledge that Canadians love their hockey. They love their hockey players like few others. Sidney Crosby is a deity in Canada and the CBC’s hockey night is still the best game in town.

But just how much Canadians love their hockey, we did not fully grasp. Until now, that is.

The fabulous blog, The Canoe Dossier, the water usage chart for Edmonton which corresponds to the Canada-USA Gold Medal Hockey tilt has been released. Writes David Newland:

This isn’t just a corporate chart. This is an insight into our national character. Fans in Edmonton here represent Canadians across the country, adding their own discomfort to the efforts of our boys on ice. The players “take one for the team” while we avoid taking one.

The peaks and valleys charted couldn’t be more striking.

That’s above and beyond the call of duty. And the call of nature for that matter.

The NCAA is at a crossroads. If you don’t believe me, it’s time to smell the roses (unfortunately for the Bowls, not those Roses). And mired within the final evolution of “big-time” college athletics — football and men’s basketball — is the ultimate symbol of the NCAA’s quaint, barnstormin’ heritage: The independent status of the University of Notre Dame’s football team.

For the sake of brevity, our tale begins Aug. 30, 2007. The first domino was the launch of the Big Ten Network, the first nationally-distributed channel devoted to one athletic conference. It currently reaches 40 million households, beaming Penn State-Northwestern basketball games into Los Angeles living rooms and Wisconsin-Minnesota football clashes into Deep South dens.

The Southeastern Conference, the O’Bannion of athletic conferences, predictably responded to the Big Ten’s gambit. What wasn’t predicted, however, was the SEC’s Jules Winnfield-esque reaction.

Voila, the ESPN-SEC television deal worth $2.25 billion. Yup, 2.25 BILLION DOLLARS. Instead of starting from scratch, SEC boss Mike Slive merely borrowed the omnipotence of ESPN to guarantee weekly coverage … and pocket enough money to leap even further ahead of the competition in terms of revenue. Your move, Big Ten.

*Sidenote: How the hell can the Big East, with its $200 million TV deal, even sniff its southern brethren? (Though admittedly the contract isn’t permanent, it doesn’t end until 2013).

The Big Ten has long discussed expanding, but this off-season witnessed an intensification of those talks. And the conference’s Pac-Man way of doing business greedily eyed cherries like Notre Dame, Rutgers and/or Texas (the latter housing the most profitable athletic department in the country, surely a coincidence as far as the Big Ten is concerned).

The Big Ten’s aggression set off a feeding frenzy. Take the Pac-10, long regarded as one of the most traditional of the “Big Six” conferences (see: Stubborn defense of the Rose Bowl). Now threatened by the Big Ten’s gluttony and the SEC’s fiscal supremacy, the Pac-10 is seriously talking about becoming the Pac-11 or Pac-12, with TV and media contracts expiring after 2011-2012.

Away from the gridiron, the feng shei of the men’s basketball 64-team NCAA Tournament is endangered. The culprits: More TV revenue, more tickets sold … in essence, the “bigger is better” belief. We’ve already seen that attitude enlarge bowl season to 34 freakin’ games … with playoffs beckoning in the not-too-distant future.

So let’s turn to Notre Dame, whose basketball team plays in the Big East but whose footballers (along with Army and Navy) still exist outside conference bounds. ND athletic director Jack Swarbrick understands that times are a-changin’:

I’ve been around this business for 29 years, and this is as unstable as I’ve ever seen it. … We’re trying like hell to maintain our football independence. I think it’s good for college football and it’s good for Notre Dame.

As the gap widens between the NCAA’s haves and have-nots, Swarbrick understands ND’s traditional stance doesn’t work like it did 40 years ago.

You have such an interesting media environment here. It’s having such an impact on people. You have two conferences who have separated themselves economically. And you have all the other conferences lined up in successive years for broadcast negotiations. That’s a tough situation for everyone in that position. The bar has been set so high, and the media market is so tepid, that it creates tension.

This “tension” can lead to all sorts of crazy ploys for more moolah, such as Sports Illustrated’s Andy Staples’ proposal for “full-blown conference realignment.” Staples was (presumably) half-joking, but does anyone doubt that at least one university president felt inspired by the idea? Does Joanna Newsom play a wicked harp?

This post may scream naivety … college sports probably lost its amateur sheen years ago. But if Notre Dame football ditches the independence train, consider it the symbolic la goutte d’eau qui fait deborder le vase. College athletics has jumped down the professional rabbit-hole (and like that development, yes, the movie kinda sucks).

Image via Wikipedia

Barking Up the Wrong Tree Looks at what it calls The Borat Effect:

This research examined the effect of language fluency on the evaluation of culturally inappropriate behavior. A series of video vignettes were created in which a nonnative speaker either followed or broke social rules while displaying varying degrees of fluency in English. Results demonstrated a shielding effect of poor language fluency, such that when the nonnative individual acted in a culturally inappropriate manner, poor fluency in English shielded the individual from negative evaluation.

This may explain Gov. Schwarzenegger.

Cover of License to Drive (Special Edition)

Reports are just coming up now from California via KABC news that Corey Haim, who with Corey Feldman made up the iconic late 80s acting team of ‘the Coreys,’ has died at 38.

The KABC website is running the following banner:

Actor Corey Haim has died at the age of 38, LAPD confirms

The Coreys in recent years went from a punchline in obscurity to a reminder in real-time of the toll that being a teen heartthrob can take on people. The A&E reality TV show ‘The Two Coreys’ showed Haim and Feldman’s struggles to get along in the years following on their stardom in such films as ‘The Lost Boys’ and ‘License to Drive’. The show kind of set the stage for what we’re seeing today – Feldman depicted as neat and respectable, Haim struggling to get along in a world that had passed him by in all but late night cable TV movie re-runs.

More news as it emerges.

Update: 8:34 am – TMZ reports that Haim was found dead of an ‘apparent overdose.’

8:37 am – Both KABC and Radar are calling the overdose ‘accidental.’ KABC adds that Haim was living with his mother in North Hollywood.

8:44 am – Sheesh, Corey and Corey’s careers may have been left in the 80s, but their websites appear to have been left behind in the 90s. Haim’s MySpace page has not been updated since early last year.

9:24 am – TMZ got Corey Haim on video outside a night club on February 18. He talks about making ‘License to Fly’ which is presumably a sequel to ‘License to Drive’ and that he’s directing for the first time. He was with Feldman and it was touching how they said they’d be best friends forever, but there’s also the fright of these two guys, and Haim in particular, like moths to a flame. It’s just so sad in a lot of ways – if he died of a drug overdose, isn’t this a person who could least afford to have one? And in that way, he was kind of like everyone else in the world now, no longer the celebrity self he knew for a short time in his teenage years.

9:32 am – Interesting fact via TMZ – Rick James died of an OD in the same apartment complex as Haim. Sources tell them it was ‘possibly accidental.’

Warning: Lots of bad words.

Via Sully

Dan Ariely has a new book. Haven’t read it yet, but (as Tyler Cowen might say) self-recommending.

“Dr. Atul Gawande, The New York Times bestselling author of Better and Complications reveals the surprising power of the ordinary checklist. First introduced decades ago by the U.S. Air Force, checklists have enabled pilots to fly aircraft of mind-boggling sophistication. Now innovative checklists are being adopted in hospitals around the world, helping doctors and nurses respond to everything from flu epidemics to avalanches. Even in the immensely complex world of surgery, a simple ninety-second variant has cut the rate of fatalities by more than a third. Gawande is a surgeon at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston and a staff writer for The New Yorker.”

You can buy his book here.

HT: Farnam Street

Image via Wikipedia

I’m always of two minds when I read about the horrendous discrimination faced by queers in homophobic institutions like the Catholic Church or the US military.  On the one hand, I think: That’s so wrong.  On the other I think: What the hell are you doing trying to be part of organizations that hate you?

Case in point: a nice lesbian couple decided to enroll their two children in the Sacred Heart of Jesus School in Denver, CO.  The children enjoyed their first year there, but were barred from re-enrolling because their parents are lesbians.  According to the Archbishop, Charles J. Chaput:

The Church does not claim that people with a homosexual orientation are ‘bad,’ or that their children are less loved by God… But what the Church does teach is that sexual intimacy by anyone outside marriage is wrong; that marriage is a sacramental covenant; and that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. These beliefs are central to a Catholic understanding of human nature, family and happiness, and the organization of society. The Church cannot change these teachings because, in the faith of Catholics, they are the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

Funny, but I don’t recall Jesus railing against lesbian parents or unmarried sorts. After all, Jesus’ mother was pregnant from someone other than his father and his best friend was a whore. I also rather doubt that the school is kicking out all divorced parents or unmarried heterosexual ones.

But I digress, the real question is not what would Jesus do, but why do queers want to be part of institutions that hold so firmly to the belief that there are straights and gays and gays are sinful or bad for army morale or not full citizens? In other words, what would make queers send their kids to Catholic schools, join the military, or try to get access to marriage?

I will leave it to the psychologists to discuss internalized homophobia and a deep need to be accepted by those who hate us. Being a sociologist, I suggest we keep our eye on something else: social power.

In purely economic terms, there are reasons to join the military, get married and send our children to parochial schools that are much less expensive because they are religious. In a country where income distribution is by far the most unequal in the industrialized world, where access to higher education involves huge amounts of debt for the majority of Americans, and where jobs that pay a livable wage are few and far between without a university degree, the military is one of the few promised paths to future financial well-being. Of course, it’s a promise that is rarely realized- but nonetheless, it is a promise. The same holds for the benefits of marriage- health insurance, property transfer, etc. As for Catholic schools, they’re cheaper than most private schools and the level of education can be quite a bit better than our underfunded public schools.

But it’s not just about money. It’s about privilege and status. It’s also, more fundamentally, about a sense of being a good person. Good people love their country enough to kill and die for it; good people are married people; good people do everything in their power to ensure their children have as many opportunities as possible.

Good grief. Good people should love their country enough to resist illegal wars of aggression, insist that civil rights not be distributed on the basis of marital status, and fight for excellent public education for all our children.

I’m no Christian, but even a sinner like me knows that’s what Jesus would do.