Mario Batali's Response to 9/11

Blogger Sally Swift wrote a very moving piece on dining in downtown New York in the days after September 11, 2001: http://www.improvisedlife.com/2011/09/11/batalis-beautiful-fuck-you-a-tale-of-911/

U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

James Verone, an unemployed man living in Charlotte, N.C., attempted to rob a bank of a single dollar so that he would be arrested and would subsequently get health care in prison.  His plan was to do enough time so that when he was released he would be eligible for Social Security.

When it comes to healthcare, the U.S. is barbaric.

California Is Fucked

The budget that Jerry Brown vetoed last week contained $300 million in cuts for state funded universities, a cut they deem necessary to help close the $10 billion deficit we are facing. But how short-sighted is this?

According to the Cal State University system, every dollar invested in their schools has a $5.43 return on investment. So our cutting $150 million from their system (the UC system is also being cut by $150 million) is in effect throwing away $815 million in returns. Stupid.

In fact, of the California Senate Republicans, 2/3 of them (10 of 15) attended state funded colleges:

Doug LaMalfa – Cal Poly SLO
Anthony Cannella – UC Davis
Tom Berryhill – Cal Poly SLO
Sam Blakeslee – UC Berkeley
Sharon Runner – Antelope Valley College
Joel Anderson – Cal Poly Pomona
Tom Harman – Kansas State University
Jean Fuller – UCLA, UCSB (PhD)
Mimi Walters – UCLA
Bob Dutton – Los Angeles Valley College

How can you guys benefit from the system and then subsequently try to bring it down?

Why the Economy Blows

The economic disparity in the U.S. is widening every year, sending the country back to the days before the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and labor laws. To me, this squeezing out of the middle class is the number one problem in the United States today.

Robert Reich illustrates how this come to be in just two minutes:



I will be posting more on this subject, boy howdy.

Crazy Ass Stuff

I tried this once and could barely stay horizontal.

Dan Savage tells Good Christians to Refocus Their Efforts

I'm sure this won't be the first time I post a Dan Savage link, but it happens to tie into many of my interests.  Basically, he explains that whenever he criticizes fundamentalist Christians, he received hushed assurances from moderate Christians that they are not all anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-contraception, etc.  And to them Dan says, "Tell that to the fundamentalists!"

His point being that it's the inaction of rational religious people to speak out against the zealots that has allowed those hate-mongerers to become the spokespeople for all religion.  What a stud.

Free Noir Fiction!

As a Raymond Chandler fan, this caught my eye: Rockstar Games is distributing a digital short story collection that ties into L.A. Noire, their stylized uber-violent action adventure video game.  The best part is it's free and I just happen to be going on a little vacation and could use some reading material that won't tax my brain too much.

They nabbed some respectable writers for the task including Andrew Vachss and Joyce Carol Oates.  If it's amazing, I'll report back.

Flying High

David Windestål is a young Swedish engineer whose hobby is remote control flight.   He's part of is a growing Internet subculture that integrates conventional R/C technology and off-the-shelf video technology with the open source movement.  Just do a search for "open source" and helicopter and you'll see what I mean.

Windestål shares all his projects online where he not only posts videos of his endeavors but also all his plans and step-by-step instructions. It's all completely beyond me but the openness of his posts gives me the illusion that I could do it myself.  After all, the arms of his copters are made of wood and he soldered all the circuitry himself.


But if you have a grand or so to spare, a solid concept of electronics and programming, and several hours to spare, you can make your own POV tricopter that will shoot in HD.  Need proof?  

Reboot

So it's been five and a half years since I've posted on this blog.  Originally it was meant to be forum for my brilliant thoughts and analyses but it turns out I don't have much to say.  But it turns out I'm good at discovering amusing things and occasionally I have insights that might not be brilliant but won't fit into a 140 character tweet.

With that in mind, I decided to use this space to rant, pontificate and pass on nuggets of information in dribs and drabs if only as a digital scrapbook for myself.  If anyone else finds it amusing, yippee.  First post of the new Marty Report to follow toot sweet.

January 10, 2006

It’s unbelievable that after 15 years, The Simpsons continues to be hilarious. This past Sunday, while fighting fever delirium, I watched a new episode of The Simpsons and it wasn’t that good. But for whatever reason, watching it made me scour through the 153-odd unwatched episodes on my TiVO. Of course, I’d seen most of the previous episodes but had seen none from this season. Tonight, instead of watching me perform (mediocrely) on an ABC sitcom, I watched a recorded Simpsons episode from November about Homer running for mayor and it had my sides splitting. Splitting like an overripe melon thrown off of a gymnasium roof!

It just amazed me that the show can still surprise. Of course, I can’t remember a single joke – that’s not my thing – but it was high-larious. It ain’t perfect, but the consistency is to be commended. And if you’re wondering how I can have so many episodes on my TiVO (at high quality), it takes about a $100 and an hour to increase your TiVO’s capacity 8-fold.

Anyhow, still mildly sick, but had some wine tonight anyhow. What else was I supposed to drink with my penne with bitter greens? It’s so easy, by the way. Go into my garden and pluck a couple handfuls of bitter greens, chop them up and sauté them with some sliced garlic. Add some cooked penne, salt, pepper and grated romano and you’re done. Unless you want to add some truffle oil, as I did. Couldn’t be simpler.

Sleep now.

January 8?, 2006

The past couple days have been sort of a blur. You know how in movies, when the protagonist gets drugged by a spiked martini and then the camera cuts to his/her perspective and it gets all blurry and streaky and the audio sounds like it's coming through a cardboard tube. Well that's what this weekend's illness was like. I had a little cough but still went for a run Saturday morning. I felt like ass afterwards. Then I went to a tennis class and felt like double-ass afterwards. When I got home, I thought, maybe I'm sick. I'm very in tune with my body like that. My temperature: 99 degrees Farenheit. So I stayed in and watched "One Day in September" to bone up on my terrorist history before seeing "Munich." It's an excellent movie. Gripping, sad, frustrating, very well made (by the guy who did "Into the Void").

Sunday morning, I woke up with the blurry/cardboard tube sensation accented by pain in head and body. Ride it out, I thought. Temperature: 100. After watching 3 episodes of the Jack Osbourne reality show where he loses 56 pounds and climbs a mountain, I called my sister and she says go to a doctor. I said, pshaw. Temperature: 101. So I took more Motrin and started sweating gallons. Temperature: 102. At that point I thought maybe it wasn't such a good idea to eat that coughing duck that died on my doorstep. I dragged my ass to Woodland Hills, which I discovered is where my hospital is. That's a 25 mile sucky drive.

But they were great there. I didn't have to wait and they doted on me. Doted, I say! They've got this flu test where they stick a Q-tip up your nose and then make a little culture. Ten minute later, they told me I had influenza-A. Yeah, yeah. Whatever. But what a cool test. It even came in its own cardboard box with picture instructions. Then they gave me Tamiflu, which, because of its prevalence in the news, seemed so trendy and sexy. The whole experience seemed so futuristic; the only thing missing was a robot doctor.

Anyhow, the lesson learned: get a goddamned flu shot.