Accidental Blogger

African Butterfly Bush

I just posted this on Facebook and thought I should share the photo here. An African butterfly bush which I planted in early spring is flourishing in my front garden. I had never seen this plant until I found it in a nursery and decided to bring it home. This bush is not to be confused with other common butterfly bushes which attract butterflies (I have some of those also). This one is so named because its flowers look like butterflies. I love  it. Hope you enjoy the lovely and unusual botanical specimen.

 (click to enlarge)

What happens after the crowds go home?

On July 7, 2005, one day after Londoners received word that the city would host the 2012 Olympics, terrorist bombs tore through the public transit system, killing 56 people. To prevent a repeat attack and protect the roughly 25,000 athletes, family members, coaches, and officials attending (along with roughly 700,000 spectators), spending on security has topped $1.6 billion. Sydney's pre-9/11 Olympic security in 2000 cost only $179.6 million.

Some privacy advocates have questioned the efficacy of such huge outlays of taxpayer cash. James Baker, the campaign manager for the privacy organization No2ID, points out that in May, a concerned workman at The Sun tabloid was able to smuggle a fake bomb into the Olympic Park in spite of spite of iris and hand scanners at the site. Baker also wonders if authorities will be able to use the web of surveillance technologies quickly enough to be effective -- he points out that in 2009, several of the more than 10,000 license plate scanners around the country detected the car of Peter Chapman 16 different times -- he was wanted for arson, theft, and violation of his status as a sex offender. But police were inundated with hits from the system and did not follow up. Two days later, he raped and murdered a teen he met via Facebook.

More from our own Andrew Rosenblum in CNN Money magazine.

 

Curry or Culture? (all A.B Bloggers)

The National Geographic Bee finals were held yesterday in Washington DC, with 10 finalists selected from all the state champions. Seven out of the ten were of Indian origin, one was of Chinese extraction, two were Caucasian. As always, we wonder why there is a preponderance of kids from India in competitions like these.  Is it the curry after all?

We had a long email discussion about the results. Here is the thread of those emails.

Another minor collateral damage in the great war on terror

I mean, couldn't this guy have been whisked out beforehand or even during the raid in one of the Blackhawk helicopters? Didn't the US intelligence know that Al Qaida sympathizers in the  Pakistani army and government, who were probably harboring bin Laden, were going to punish this guy for embarrassing them?

"Affordable housing has to go somewhere."

Never mind that in Marin County, California one can qualify for affordable housing with an income of $88,800. Some residents worried that George Lucas' original plans would “pose a serious and alarming threat to the nature of our valley and our community,” “dwarf the average Costco warehouse” and generate light pollution so that “our dark starry skies would be destroyed.”  But now that Lucas' proposed new plan has been revealed, the denizens of this exclusive neighborhood are beginning to see stars during day light hours. The famed director, the richest resident of Marin County, is being blamed for inciting class warfare by his neighbors.

 

Saadia Toor and "The state of Islam" (Omar Ali)

by Omar Ali

First published at http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2012/05/saadia-toor-and-the-state-of-islam.html#more

Saadia Toor is an assistant professor of sociology and social work at the City University of New York and recently published a book about Pakistan titled The State of Islam: Culture and Cold War politics in Pakistan. She states that the book grew out of her PhD thesis (a doctoral thesis in developmental sociology titled “"The Politics of Culture and the Poetics of Protest: Pakistani Women and Islamisation, 1977-1988."). The book’s official blurb states:

The State of Islam tells the story of the Pakistani nation-state through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, in order to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the rise of militant Islam across the world. Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam, and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined political realm, The State of Islam is a Gramscian analysis of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period.  The author uses the tools of cultural studies and postcolonial theory to understand what is at stake in discourses of Islam, socialism, and the nation in Pakistan...

She also states that:

I wanted to subvert this discourse by highlighting the complexity of Pakistan’s history and the primacy of people’s struggles within it, as well as the role of the US-aligned establishment (and, at key junctures, liberals) in quashing these struggles and the alternate political and cultural visions they embodied.

It is indeed possible to write a good work of history that is also a subtle work of socialist (or other) propaganda and that appeals to the author’s in-group while reaching a larger audience. But this takes a lot of skill and experience and Ms Toor, unfortunately, is unable to manage this feat. In her youthful enthusiasm for her version of the socialist cause (a cause she formally joined by becoming a member of the Pakistan workers and peasants party or Mazdoor Kissan Party, while back in Pakistan researching her PhD thesis) leads her to shoehorn every event into an academic-Marxist narrative that owes more to to Tariq Ali and fashionable Wesern academic prejudices than to the actual history of Pakistan. Of course, it is possible for youthful enthusiasm  to produce a great book (John Reed’s “Ten days that shook the world” comes to mind) but unfortunately, this is not that book.

The Return of the Mommy Wars- Mother's Day 2012 (Sujatha)

It's the time of the year for the return of the Mommy wars in the media, with Time magazine's choice of shock-jocking cover leading the fray. What could be more motherly than a mother with her nursing child, after all ? But no, Time's editors chose the worst shot possible out of those that were so carefully taken at the photo session - the one that clobbers you on the head with 'I'm better, prettier, sexier, more shocking than you"  and a headline to match: "Are you Mom enough? ", rather than the one with more realism to it,(second one in the photoshoot set ), matching more closely the realities of the mother-child pair who only very rarely, in current culture, continue nursing into and beyond toddlerhood.

Would Elisabeth Badinter think that the Time cover symbolizes all that is the worst about the image of motherhood that she decries in her book 'The Conflict' '? Isn't it a challenge to her assertion that women ought to maintain economic independence even after motherhood and not be so attached to their children as promoted by 'attachment parenting' advocates? 

It was not always so easy to maintain a safe distance from the physicality of the mother-child bond, as Badinter would prefer now, Before the invention of easily digestible formulas, babies who lost mothers or had mothers/wetnurses who did not succeed in breastfeeding, died in infancy. The extremely high neonatal mortality rate isn't a 'good old days' number that we would like to see come back :

"(Powdered milk, jars of baby food, and disposable diapers were created for a reason, says Badinter.) But the less modern women use them, the longer they stay at home, bending over backward for their children, losing a sense of independence—and economic edge—in the process. “We used to talk constantly about ways to reconcile a woman’s maternal responsibilities with her need to retain financial independence,” Badinter tells The Daily Beast by email. “Now we talk exclusively about a mother’s duties and the ‘rights’ of the young child, which increase substantially year after."

Like Ann Romney, whose main claim to fame rests on her definition of the working mother (and yes, all mothers work, it never is paid in money and therefore cannot be quantified by the rules for determining economic worth), Badinter invokes her own credentials as the mother of three, but neglects to mention her own not-so-minor conflict of interest - her company Publicis' links to Nestle, Mead & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories, among the largest infant formula manufacturers in the world.

"Yet, whether Badinter is out of touch as an author likely goes back to whether she’s out of touch as a mother. And while she’s portrayed herself as an ordinary mom—she had three children within three and a half years, all while a full-time student—she also had an au pair to help out. Her family wealth is estimated at $920 million. Her husband, Robert Badinter, is a former French justice minister and a prominent lawyer.

Still, Badinter contends, no mother is perfect, least of all she. “The more time passes, the more I’m convinced that the perfect mother is a myth,” she says. “What woman can boast of having always had the right reactions, made the right decisions? … As for me, I’ll say that it’s for my children to judge.”

Amen to the last line. No mother is perfect. Or rather, every (or most) mothers are perfect to their kids, no matter how they choose to parent, whether  'attached' as Jamie Grumet or 'detached' as Badinter, with all their faults and failings. But perfect or not, there is one thing that all mothers excel at- Being judgmental about other women's mothering abilities.

Apropos of the occasion, here is Ruchira's blast from the past- the intriguing and mysterious 'Unaboober' Gypsy Woman, whose expression reminds me of the 'Judge me if you dare' eyes of Ma Durga .

She sees all, knows all, and protects all.

 

 Happy Mother's Day!

Tuesday Miscellany (Sujatha)

A Fishy analysis of The Hunger Games (yes, I know, that is So Last Month, but please bear with the professor, he is not quite upto speed with the 'passé'ness of some memes) ) vs. my own market-colored  (and timelier, of course) take on the books.

 

 

 

A treasure trove of photos from early 20th century India:

"A century-old collection of photographs of India has been discovered in the RCAHMS archive.

The rare and fragile glass plate negatives, which date back to around 1912, show life on the subcontinent at the high point of the British Raj.

The 178 negatives were found in a shoebox for a pair of grey, size 9, Peter Lord slip-on shoes, and were stored in their original five-by-eight-inch plate boxes, wrapped in copies of The Statesman newspaper dating from 1914. Founded in 1875, The Statesman is one of India’s largest circulation English language newspapers, and is still published today."

( More at  http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/news/lost-imagery-of-india-discovered)

 

RIP, Maurice Sendak, finally off on his great adventure to where The Wild Things Are.

One of my and my children's favorite Sendak stories about Pierre, the boy who didn't care:

 

Fighting fear with fear

Not so different from fighting poison with poison. Here.

Veterans Affairs Nurses [Strikeout Nurses] Management Scrutinized After Patient Deaths (Norman Costa)

Nurse - Anonymous

Veterans Affairs Nurses Management Scrutinized After Patient Deaths in Two States (Norman Costa)

A re-editing of an article by Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein

ProPublica, April 30, 2012, 1:19 p.m. 

After a patient died last year at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan, federal inspectors discovered nurses in his unit [Management] had a startling gap in their skills [supervision and training of nursing staff]: They [Management] didn't understand [they were responsible for the competence and training of nursing staff as to] how the monitors tracking vital signs worked. 

Management - Gen. Eric Shinseki

None of the nurses [management] interviewed could accurately explain [their lapse in supervision and training of nursing staff, so that nurses could tell] what would happen if a patient became disconnected from a cardiac monitor — which allegedly occurred to the patient who died, according to an October 2011 report from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' inspector general. 

The incident followed two deaths in the cardiac monitoring unit at a VA hospital in Denver that raised similar questions about nurse [Management] competency. 

Earlier this month, a broader review by the VA inspector general of 29 VA facilities found only half had adequately documented that their nurses had the needed skills. Some nurses "did not demonstrate competency in one or more required skills," but there was no evidence of [Management taking charge and providing the] retraining [for nursing staff], the report said. 

An outside nursing [management] expert who reviewed the reports at ProPublica's request called them "troubling" and said the fact that the [management] lapses weren't caught and corrected "signified much broader [management] problems." 

Chlorine Road

It is more than two years since I had written a post about street names - the overabundance of homage to politicians among them and names that change at the whim of people in power or because of changing politics and local sensibilities. I find road names a fascinating subject and take note of them, always looking for instances where someone had the imagination to stray off the beaten path of dedicating every public street and building to wealth, power and patriotism.

A few weeks ago I spent a couple of days in Galveston with a friend. Close to where we were staying is a bridge that leads to the city of Freeport which lies quietly to the south of Galveston Island, its more glamorous, arty and historic neighbor. I do not know much about Freeport except that it is an industrial sea-side town where Dow Corning has a large chemical plant.  Almost eight years ago, I had passed through Freeport on my way to Galveston via a circuitous scenic route that my husband had insisted on taking. I noted at that time with some surprise that one of the streets we passed was named Chlorine Road.  I was reminded of that odd street name and mentioned it to my friend. She informed me that the streets of Freeport where the Dow plant is located are marked by many such chemical names.  A search brought up a google map of the area which indeed shows streets bearing names such as Tin, Nickel, Iron, Copper, Zinc, Benzine, Glycol, Butane and Electric.

Neighborhoods within cities often follow a central theme in naming their streets - trees, universities, presidents, marine culture etc. The streets in my own subdivision which is not on the sea but contains several lakes, bear aquatic names; streets like Jetty Circle, Shoreline Drive, Midstream Street, Westshore Lane, Harborview Court etc. But rarely have I seen the essential ingredients of a particular business used in street names. Are there more out there? At hospital complexes, in Silicon Valley or other places dedicated to a specialized pursuit?

Note: This post was originally published in December of 2007. Recently a friend was talking about road names on Facebook and I was reminded of Chlorine Road and similar topics we have discussed here before.

After six and a half years, some of us are not posting with the same frequency as the early days of the blog. We used to write a lot and often. Rather than leave the front page idling for long periods, I have decided to bring some of the old posts to the front from time to time. These may be familiar to some but others new to the blog, including some of our own writers, have not seen them. I request the older A.B. authors (Sujatha, Dean) to do the same with some of their posts that are more than three years old, especially those that generated a lively discussion. Choose from non-time sensitive posts (ignore politics, mostly) of cultural nature that are often fun to read and re-read.

International Workers' Day

Happy May Day. A message from Noam Chomsky.