Explaining 9/11 to a Muslim Child By Moina Noor (NYT)

Poignant. It seems so strange to thing that an event that changed so much and affected so many is unknown to someone. I can't even imagine beginning to explain the emotions and complexities.

Explaining 9/11 to a Muslim Child By Moina Noor

Recently on the morning drive to school my 8-year-old son asked me a question I’ve been dreading since he was a baby, “Mom, what happened on 9/11?”

Mass murder is impossible to explain to yourself, let alone a child. But how do I, as a parent, explain the slaughter of innocent people in the name of a religion that I am trying to pass on to my boy?

Bilal was just 8 months old when September 11 happened. He was just starting to crawl and put everything in sight into his mouth, and I remember having to peel my gaze away from the television screen and remind myself to keep a watchful eye on where he lay nearby.

After Bilal was born I viewed everything — especially current events — through the lens of parenthood. I knew the world had changed irreparably on 9/11, and while I mourned the innocent and raged against my crazy coreligionists, my nagging anxiety was for my son.

Even in those early surreal hours after the attacks when images of towers falling and long-bearded men in caves flooded the television screen, I knew that Bilal’s childhood would not be like mine.

When I was growing up in suburban Connecticut few people knew much about Muslims, let alone cared. My parents and their friends would gather in community rooms or church basements for our version of Sunday school. They were devout but weren’t necessarily interested in teaching their neighbors about Islam. We were few in number and invisible.

After 9/11, the spotlight was aimed at Muslims everywhere, especially here in America. Like many Muslims, I felt the need to defend my religious identity. I threw myself into all things Muslim, and explained and explained: “We are like you. Islam is peaceful. Complex sociopolitical factors create lunatics who kill people. Please don’t judge a billion people by a few bad apples.”

I hung tightly to my spiritual rope. I could not let go of a faith has given me and my family comfort and solace for generations.

Since 9/11, I’ve worried how Bilal would feel about his identity as a Muslim living in America. A survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life appeared in 2007 stating that 35 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion about Islam. Could one of those 3 in 10 people be Bilal’s teacher or soccer coach?

Over the past eight years I’ve read about Muslims being deported and pulled off airplanes and mosques being vandalized. My sister, a former middle school teacher in Brooklyn, heard kids taunt a Muslim student on the playground, calling him a terrorist. And even though I fear the possibility of discrimination for Bilal, what I fear most of all is that the din of Islamophobia will rob my son of self-respect and confidence.

So just as I became an activist, I became a proactive Muslim mommy. When Bilal was a preschooler, I took him to Muslim playgroups, organized activities in Ramadan and bought him board books about the Prophet Muhammed. I pushed him in his stroller at peace walks and brought him to interfaith events. These days, I organize local Islamic school classes and give talks about the Hajj at his elementary school. My husband and I read him books about Islamic contributions to math and science.

Over the years, I’ve tried to protect my son from any negative associations made with Islam. I’ve developed lightening quick reflexes — the second I hear a story about suicide bombers or terrorists on the radio, I switch to a pop music station. I’ve made my husband limit his CNN time to after the kids go to sleep. I don’t want to have to answer the question, “Mom, what is the ‘threat of radical Islamic extremism?’ ”

For me, the thought of talking to Bilal about terrorism is a bit like talking about sex for the first time. It is awkward and difficult I’m just not sure how much a child his age is ready to hear.

This year 9/11 falls during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. I made Bilal watch President Obama’s five minute long “Ramadan Message to Muslims” on the Internet. President Obama spoke with respect, knowledge and a sense optimism to Muslims around the world. He found the speech interesting but nothing out of the ordinary. For Bilal, who is just starting to become conscious of a world bigger than our front yard, there is no “clash of civilizations”.

Bilal is proud to tell others that he was named after “the Prophet’s best friend,” an African Muslim with a beautiful voice who gave the first call to prayer. He is also a Cub Scout who has learned how to fold the American flag.

I did try and answer Bilal’s question. I relayed the day’s events in broad cartoonish strokes: bad guys attack, buildings collapse. Don’t worry, I assured him, we’ll get the bad guys so they won’t do it again. As I looked at Bilal in the rearview mirror, I explained that good and bad exists in every group, even your own. I think he understands.

Source

"The dark side of Dubai" (The Independent)

Scary read, but well worth it. Yes, I know everyone posted this last week. I'm a slow reader, sthu.

The Gitmo Guard Who Found Islam (Newsweek)

Terry Holdbrooks stood watch over prisoners at Gitmo. What he saw made him adopt their faith.

SubhanAllah, such an incredible story.

The Ascent of Money (PBS Documentary)

Extremely interesting documentary, available fully online for a LIMITED TIME ONLY. Had I studied it a bit more, I probably would fully understand this financial crisis we're going through; it does a fantastic job of explaining the past, present and future of our economic situation. As for the past/present, I know NOTHING about economics... but the general gist I'm getting from it is "interest is evil." Go figure! Islam fo' lyfe.

I honestly hadn't been that interested in watching it to start, but in the end, it proved extremely informative. Take a look at the preview and, if you're interested, watch the full documentary here while you can.

Thanks for the linkage, deel.

"About the film":

One week before a new President who campaigned on a promise to fix the economy takes office, public media provider WNET.ORG is putting the meaning of money into context – where it came from, where it goes, and why it has always been (and always will be) the fulcrum of civilization. THE ASCENT OF MONEY, a two-hour documentary based on the newly-released book The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Penguin Group USA), will premiere on Tuesday, January 13 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). The film is written and presented by the bestselling author, economist, historian, and Harvard professor Niall Ferguson. An expanded, four-hour version of THE ASCENT OF MONEY will air on PBS later in 2009.

In THE ASCENT OF MONEY, Ferguson – whose series War of the World garnered critical attention last summer – traces the evolution of money and demonstrates that financial history is the essential back-story behind all history. “Everyone needs to understand the complex history of money and our relationship to it,” he says. “By learning how societies have continually created and survived financial crises, we can find solid solutions to today’s worldwide economic emergency.” As he traverses historic financial hot spots around the world, Ferguson illuminates fundamental economic concepts and speaks with leading experts in the financial world.

Why is Barack Obama Electable? by Walter Shapiro (Salon)

Really fascinating despite the election (rather than because of it)
Why is Barack Obama Electable?

Ann Clurman: There has been a very well-known shift in power from marketers to consumers. Consumers have been really good at celebrating how smart they are, how empowered they are. We've been picking that up for at least a decade. What I think is really significant is what we're calling "personal authenticity." And what that was, that kind of reached a critical mass in 2004, it was a coming together of a number of values and trends that we described as consumers really working on internal clarity of their values. Not only were they kind of trying to understand what was really important to them, they began to develop the courage to act on [those things]. And part of that meant moving out of your comfort zone -- and I think that is very important to what's happening today. But also, this desire to get life right became a passion. What we're seeing today is a massive shift beginning to surface and that shift is not just being caused the last four or five weeks.

I just got one of those breaking news e-mails, and apparently Advertising Age has named Obama the marketer of the year.

And so I think that it's that power, but there's a second item too. Through the appointment of several high-level Cabinet members in the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice for example, and Colin Powell, the ascendancy of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice has made Americans comfortable with black Americans in positions of high, high responsibility and of power. Seeing Condoleezza Rice negotiating around the world with world leaders has made many Americans comfortable with the idea of black people in leadership positions. None of that was possible eight years ago.

Russell: I really agree with what Peter is saying. This financial crisis and the feeling that things are going in the wrong direction have been a long, long time in coming. If you look at men's incomes, men's earnings, among men who work full time, their earnings peaked in 1986. That's more than 20 years ago. So for the past 20 years, why have household incomes been increasing? For one reason only: the working woman. And now, virtually every woman who is going to go to work is at work. That boost to household incomes is over. The only other remaining boost to household incomes is that we have the baby boom generation right now in peak earning years and that has kept the numbers from falling.

Clurman: It really does. I think one of the reasons people are not quite as hysterical about what is going on is that they realize a lot of other people are in the same boat. Everybody is getting hit hard here. It's very interesting. We call it the "new responsibility marketplace," but it's kind of not here yet. It's coming, and slowly but surely we're going to see this rolling out. People are realizing on some level that it's time to pay their proverbial piper.

Clurman: They understand on some level. Some people who are up there intellectually understand this problem, but I think on some gut level, people understand that we have got a lot of really serious problems and what's happening is the economy has acted as a lightning rod for some serious thought about where are we going. Global warming, I forgot to mention that one. What's happening to the planet, what's happening to our lives.

Salon: But I don't see people going to find scapegoats.

Clurman: That's why there's an accountability and responsibility happening. What we saw in '91, during that recessionary period, we saw the baby boomers looking at the world collapsing around them and pointing fingers and whining and saying, "This isn't my fault." And now what we're seeing, because the times are different and the demographics are different, what we're seeing is people looking around and saying, "We've got some serious issues here and we've all got to take some modicum of responsibility." It's not enough to just change your light bulbs [from incandescent to fluorescent]. We've got to do something more about what's fundamentally wrong here.

"Only 60 percent of the 18-to-29-year-olds are non-Hispanic white. "

Francese: There's a fourth item that I want to add to that. That is the vast number of young women who are going to college. The best-educated man in America is 55 years old. But the best-educated woman is only 35. So women are going to college at significantly higher rates than men, and there are many, many more young college-educated women than there ever were before in American history.

Salon: Is it that women were just going to college at a disproportionately low rate and that they've just caught up with men? Or is there something else going on with gender roles?

Francese: No. There are a couple of reasons, in my view. One, we've obviously over the last 30 years made the switch from a manufacturing, construction-based economy which favors men who are not college graduates to an office-based employment category in which most people now work in offices and that favors women. Women can work in offices equally as well as men. And they are actually a majority of the professional managerial workers according to the Census Bureau data. They're 51 or 52 percent. Women are just as capable of taking managerial and professional jobs and doing them just as well as men but those jobs usually require college degrees. So women, who mature earlier in life than men, do go to college in greater numbers, significantly greater numbers. That's a fairly recent development.

Russell: I totally agree with what you're saying, and actually the percentage of women who go to college out of high school has been significantly higher than men for the last 10 or 15 years as women poured onto college campuses. It's totally true that women are much more educated than men. And if you look at married couples today, in 2007 for the first time among married couples, the percentage in which the husband is more educated than the wife is lower than the percentage in which the wife is more educated than the husband. There's been a real change in family life.

Unfortunately, our political system is set up so that the rural areas have a great deal of political power, in the Senate. I think that trying to play up this rural vote can be effective because so many Americans relate to it. But ultimately, the suburban and urban voter should numerically take precedent.

Francese: Only 20 percent of Americans live in rural areas.

Salon: Is there anything else that strikes you, non-Sarah Palin related, as awry in terms of what the candidates are talking about? Cheryl, in your book, I saw based on poll analysis that 65 percent of the American people consider themselves moderates. That certainly isn't the tone in politics or on cable television.

Russell: Right, most Americans are in the middle of the road. But there's been such a partisan split in the media that's taken place, with the different cable channels focusing on different camps and talk radio, that it's driven a wedge between Americans when in fact there's very little difference between most of them.

Russell: Both factors are involved. The number of boomers, and that voting increases with age. Interestingly, the millennial generation we've been talking about is 19 percent of the vote this year. And that's up from 13 percent in 2004. Generation X is 20 percent, and the older generation, which is people older than boomers, 63-plus, is 23 percent. The millennial generation, in terms of the size of its vote, is almost as large as the older generation.

Francese: That's new. That's one of the reasons Barack Obama has a chance.

The Bradley Effect by Kate Zernike (NYT)

Article.

Basically:

In recent days, nervous Obama supporters have traded worry about a survey — widely disputed by pollsters yet voraciously consumed by the politically obsessed — that concluded racial bias would cost Mr. Obama six percentage points in the final outcome. He is, of course, about six points ahead in current polls. See? He’s going to lose.

If he does, it wouldn’t be the first time that polls have overstated support for an African-American candidate. Since 1982, people have talked about the Bradley effect, where even last-minute polls predict a wide margin of victory, yet the black candidate goes on to lose, or win in a squeaker. (In the case that lent the phenomenon its name, Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles, lost his race for governor, the assumption being that voters lied to pollsters about their support for an African-American.)

Amazing Picture: Lightning Storm Engulfs Erupting Volcano

After 9,000 years of silence, Chile's Chaitén volcano erupts amid a lightning storm.

SubhanAllah. Gorgeous gorgeous pics

Abu Ghraib / Sabrina Harman

Just very... depressing.

I read it a while ago, at this point. I was honestly unsure of whether the piece was trying to humanize Harman and her unit or expose them. It felt... eerie. I'm not sure how to explain it... Just that... it's so strange to see such powerful actions transcribed to harmless words. Inter spliced with the letters Harman wrote, often justifying her actions (and her removal from the atrocities), it was just... surreal.

No highlights. Just read it.

Pew Survey on Muslim Americans (Update/Better Summarization)

A quick summarization of conclusions from a survey (that's been previously discussed). Figured it was worth an update.

The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.

The Pew Research Center conducted more than 55,000 interviews to obtain a national sample of 1,050 Muslims living in the United States. Interviews were conducted in English, Arabic, Farsi and Urdu. The resulting study, which draws on Pew's survey research among Muslims around the world, finds that Muslim Americans are a highly diverse population, one largely composed of immigrants. Nonetheless, they are decidedly American in their outlook, values and attitudes. This belief is reflected in Muslim American income and education levels, which generally mirror those of the public.

Key findings include:

- Overall, Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.

- A large majority of Muslim Americans believe that hard work pays off in this society. Fully 71% agree that most people who want to get ahead in the United States can make it if they are willing to work hard.

- The survey shows that although many Muslims are relative newcomers to the U.S., they are highly assimilated into American society. On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.

- Roughly two-thirds (65%) of adult Muslims in the U.S. were born elsewhere. A relatively large proportion of Muslim immigrants are from Arab countries, but many also come from Pakistan and other South Asian countries. Among native-born Muslims, roughly half are African American (20% of U.S. Muslims overall), many of whom are converts to Islam.

- Based on data from this survey, along with available Census Bureau data on immigrants' nativity and nationality, the Pew Research Center estimates the total population of Muslims in the United States at 2.35 million.

- Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.

- A majority of Muslim Americans (53%) say it has become more difficult to be a Muslim in the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most also believe that the government "singles out" Muslims for increased surveillance and monitoring.

- Relatively few Muslim Americans believe the U.S.-led war on terror is a sincere effort to reduce terrorism, and many doubt that Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Just 40% of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out those attacks.

"Leandro Barbosa's Worst Nightmare"

Made me lol. Like... a lot.

How do you scare the living Hades out of Leandro Barbosa? Break his fibia? Tell him his dog ran away?

Nope.

Suns guard Leandro Barbosa was fooled by a prankster Thursday with a phone call to his Beverly Hills hotel room.

"He told me to go to the front desk, because there was a message from (General Manager Steve Kerr) that I was traded to New York," said Barbosa, who was still shaken Friday. "It was bad."

"Traded to the Knicks?! Nooooooooo!!!" +20 to the Angeleno prankster who pulled this one off.

Source

Bill Gates' Farewell - Microsoft at CES 2008

Featuring Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg, Hillary Clinton, Bono and more!

Very amusing, if for no other reason than the celebrity cameos.

"MN Health System Purges Its Hospitals and Clinics of Drug Company Trinkets"

Farah approved.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- When a Duluth-based operator of hospitals and clinics purged the pens, notepads, coffee mugs and other promotional trinkets drug companies had given its doctors over the years, it took 20 shopping carts to haul the loot away.

The operator, SMDC Health System, intends to ship the 18,718 items to the west African nation of Cameroon.

The purge underscored SMDC's decision to join the growing movement to ban gifts to doctors from drug companies.

"I've never seen nor heard of a systematic roundup of pens and coffee mugs before," Johnson said. "It's a bit draconian. But the onus is on us now to do a better job of explaining the job and the importance of marketing representatives. Unfortunately there are a lot of cynics in America who want to think the worst."


SDMC's effort was motivated by a desire to show patients that its 450 doctors were serious about keeping prescription drug costs down and making unbiased medical decisions, Irons said.

The backlash against the cozy relationships between doctors and drug makers gained steam from article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006. It said research had shown that even cheap gifts, such as pens, can affect doctors' prescribing decisions.

"The Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2007" from ForeignPolicy.com

You know, I had a clue about a thing or two that happened in 2006, but this year, I got nothing. Craziness.

Top 10 Stories you (and I) missed in 2007.

Daily Show and Colbert Report to Return in January

You seriously underestimate how attached I am to them.

In a joint statement, the hosts said: "We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence."

The WGA reacted angrily to the announcement, saying: "Comedy Central forcing Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert back on the air will not give the viewers the quality shows they've come to expect."

Source

Nigeria Turns From Harsher Side of Islamic Law by Lydia Polgreen (NYT)

<3, if it's true. I'd love to learn more about true shariah, since it's rarely (if ever?) implemented in even a shadow of its ideal form (or so I'm told). Pray for ALIM this summer, please.

Article

Highlights:

"Shariah needs to be practical," said Bala Abdullahi, a civil servant here. "We are a developing country, so there is a kind of moderation between the ideas of the West and traditional Islamic values. We try to weigh it so there is no contradiction."

The change has little to do with religious attitudes — northern Nigeria remains one of the most pious Muslim regions in Africa, as it has been since the camel caravans across the Sahara first brought Islam here centuries ago. In Kano, the main city of Kano State, thousands of men spill out in neat rows onto the city’s main boulevards on Friday afternoon, an overflow of devotion for the week’s most important prayer, and virtually all Muslim women are veiled.

The shift reflects the fact that religious law did not transform society. Indeed, some of the most ardent Shariah-promoting politicians now find themselves under investigation for embezzling millions of dollars. Many early proponents of Shariah feel duped by politicians who rode its popular wave but failed to live by its tenets, enriching themselves and neglecting to improve the lives of ordinary people.

"Politicians started seeing Shariah as a gateway to political power," said Abba Adam Koki, a conservative cleric here who has criticized the local government's application of Shariah. "But they were insincere. We have been disappointed and never got what we had hoped."

"Shariah is not only about the cutting off of wrists," said Muzammil Sani Hanga, a member of Kano State's Shariah Commission and a legal expert who helped draft the state's Islamic code. "It is a complete way of life."

New programs have sprung up to encourage parents to send their daughters to hybrid public elementary schools that offer traditional Islamic education along with math and reading, in keeping with Islamic principles that call for the education of girls. In many of these classrooms, girls outnumber boys, and the United States Agency for International Development is so impressed with the potential of these programs that one third of the schools it supports across Nigeria are integrated Islamic and secular, according to officials at the agency.

State officials are using Islamic exhortations on cleanliness to encourage recycling of the plastic bags that choke landfills and gutters. One governor, citing the Islamic duty to care for the indigent, recently instituted a monthly stipend for disabled beggars.

“The idea of Shariah is to promote social justice, not create religious conflict,” Mr. Azuka said. “Shariah is not about violence.”

TDS - Three Generations of “America to the Rescue”

In perhaps the most brilliant segment on “The Daily Show” I’ve ever seen, last night Jon ran through the last three decades of United States intervention in the Middle East to show how incoherent, ass-backwards and counter-productive it has been.

Link to Video

One of the commenters (-ors? i dunno) from the site: "Your average ditto-head doesn’t want to hear history lessons. It’s easier just to say they hate us for our freedom. If you can figure out a way to condense decades of history into a catch phrase that fits on a bumper sticker, people might get it."

so sad, so true.

"Muslim Americans: Middle-Class and Mostly Mainstream" -- Pew Survey

Article -- though I tried to find an article/summary that didn't focus primarily on politics/suicide bombings, I couldn't. The survey's really a fascinating read, especially if you ARE an American Muslim.

I really wanted a greater breakdown of the results (though I suppose that could come in after the 15 pages i read) based on:
-- gender
-- income
-- race

Full Survey here.

I've only read the first 15-ish pages, but major themes that stood out:

-- American Muslims in general are concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism, both in the US and the world. [side note: Count me in].
-- "With the exception of very recent immigrants, most report that a large proportion of their closest friends are non-Muslims." [side note: LCHS hollaaa] "On balance, they believe that Muslims coming to the U.S. should try and adopt American customs, rather than trying to remain distinct from the larger society. And by nearly two-to-one (63%-32%) Muslim Americans do not see a conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society."
-- younger Muslims are more likely to consider themselves very religious than old Muslims [side note: i can easily buy into this. Younger Muslims raised in a non-Muslim country are less likely to take their religion granted. When they're constantly fighting the status quo of the society they live in, they 1. feel the need to hold more strongly to their beliefs and 2. educate themselves on what they truly think is right. What I'd like to know, however, is how big of a role 9/11 played in how 'religious' one feels they have become].
-- the younger AND more religious muslims are both more likely to believe that 9/11 was not carried out by arabs. Younger Muslims are also more likely to believe suicide bombings targeting civilians can sometimes or rarely be justified [side note: where is this opinion brewing from??? what is the religious educational background of those who consider themselves religious?]
-- side note: I'd love to see the standards by which everyone defines varying levels of religiousness, how it differs between individuals and how they view themselves based on such differences.
-- the vast majority of young Muslims in the US seem to be first generation ("roughly two-thirds (65%) of adult Muslims living in the United States were born elsewhere, and 39% have come to the U.S. since 1990")
-- "Muslims in the US reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries" ; they also happen to generally have fewer instances of poverty.
-- while a greater percentage of muslims than christians feel that religion plays an important role in their life (72% vs 60%), fewer say they pray every day (61% vs 70%)
-- a smaller percentage of Muslims attend mosque once a week than Christians attend church (40% vs 45%, respectively [side note: why? is it because of the Muslims' deluded self image? Or because of a serious discontent with the masjid? Or because they don't feel the need to connect to the Muslim community throught the masjid? Or because the weekly mosque visit is typically on Fridays (a work day) as opposed to Sunday? Does this number change based upon gender?]

"You Are What You Grow" - NYT

New York Times journalist Michael Pollen examines the clandestine connection between federal farm subsidies and the nation's obesity epidemic.

Interesting read, particularly because I had no idea wtf they were talking about. I' be way more likely to have full faith in the article if he, you know, cited his sources (books, studies, research, etc). Further investigation will have to be done (links and recommendations on the subject are greatly appreciated). Regardless, it's a bit depressing how the lowest tier of society is kinda effed over in every aspect of their life.

Article in New York Times
and if you don't have a subscription to NYT (though you really should), that same article is found elsewhere.

Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could.
...
Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

As a rule, processed foods are more "energy dense" than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace

Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat--three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades--indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning--U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

That's because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce.

The farm bill helps determine what sort of food your children will have for lunch in school tomorrow. The school-lunch program began at a time when the public-health problem of America's children was undernourishment, so feeding surplus agricultural commodities to kids seemed like a win-win strategy. Today the problem is overnutrition, but a school lunch lady trying to prepare healthful fresh food is apt to get dinged by U.S.D.A. inspectors for failing to serve enough calories; if she dishes up a lunch that includes chicken nuggets and Tater Tots, however, the inspector smiles and the reimbursements flow.

By making it possible for American farmers to sell their crops abroad for considerably less than it costs to grow them, the farm bill helps determine the price of corn in Mexico and the price of cotton in Nigeria and therefore whether farmers in those places will survive or be forced off the land, to migrate to the cities--or to the United States. The flow of immigrants north from Mexico since Nafta is inextricably linked to the flow of American corn in the opposite direction, a flood of subsidized grain that the Mexican government estimates has thrown two million Mexican farmers and other agricultural workers off the land since the mid-90s.

The smorgasbord of incentives and disincentives built into the farm bill helps decide what happens on nearly half of the private land in America: whether it will be farmed or left wild, whether it will be managed to maximize productivity (and therefore doused with chemicals) or to promote environmental stewardship. The health of the American soil, the purity of its water, the biodiversity and the very look of its landscape owe in no small part to impenetrable titles, programs and formulae buried deep in the farm bill.

"The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won’t solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies. It will take some imaginative policy making to figure out how to encourage farmers to focus on taking care of the land rather than all-out production, on growing real food for eaters rather than industrial raw materials for food processors and on rebuilding local food economies, which the current farm bill hobbles. But the guiding principle behind an eater’s farm bill could not be more straightforward: it’s one that changes the rules of the game so as to promote the quality of our food (and farming) over and above its quantity."

Aerosol Arabic on USA 'Arts and Islam' Tour

i'm dumb for not having gotten this out earlier. sorry, kids :-/

If you're not aware of his work, it's pretty damn hot. i'm a huge fan. he's touring the US; check it out if you get a chance, if for no other reason than because his name is friggin "aerosol arabic"... c'mon! you know that's awesome.

The dates for the Arts and Islam USA programme are as follows:

Chicago:
11th-14th April
New York:
15th April – 19th April
Boston/Massachusetts:
20th April – 21st April

Aerosol Arabic's youtube videos

Pearls Before Breakfast (Washington Post)

ironic that i'm highlighting an article about taking the time to find beauty in life, eh?

Washington Post placed Joshua Bell, a world renowned violinist, in a busy metro station to see how many people would stop to listen or drop change. he goes on to discuss the priorities we've set in our our lives and whether we take the time to appreciate beauty in the midst of our hectic schedules. seriously a very well-written article; i highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Pearls Before Breakfast by Gene Weingarten (Washington Post)

Highlights/Spoilers:

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too.

and

But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

And then there was Calvin Myint. Myint works for the General Services Administration. He got to the top of the escalator, turned right and headed out a door to the street. A few hours later, he had no memory that there had been a musician anywhere in sight.

"Where was he, in relation to me?"

"About four feet away."

"Oh."

There's nothing wrong with Myint's hearing. He had buds in his ear. He was listening to his iPod.

What about Joshua Bell?

He was too loud, too, Souza [ the shoe shine lady] says. Then she looks down at her rag, sniffs. She hates to say anything positive about these damned musicians, but: "He was pretty good, that guy. It was the first time I didn't call the police."

Souza nods sourly toward a spot near the top of the escalator: "Couple of years ago, a homeless guy died right there. He just lay down there and died. The police came, an ambulance came, and no one even stopped to see or slowed down to look.

"People walk up the escalator, they look straight ahead. Mind your own business, eyes forward. Everyone is stressed. Do you know what I mean?"

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

-- from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies