MEANWHILE, ON LINEOUT
Read the latest installment of Party Vibes!
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Guilt, karaoke, and power trips
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Los Shains are a rad garage band
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Listen to this deep house music from Olympia
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Kelly O can't believe this song still makes her cry
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Vote for the bigger baller!
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Slog
News & ArtsMonday, May 20, 2013
Animals / Arts Dutch Artist Turns Dead Cat into Remote-Controlled Helicopter
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 9:09 AM
Thanks, Sarah Galvin?!
Transportation No Wonder So Many Drivers Resent Seeing Their Tax Dollars Spent to Subsidize Transit
Posted by Goldy on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 9:05 AM
In the Kemper Freeman utopia—without all that nasty, communistic commuter rail—this would be the idyllic CT to NYC commute every day:
Connecticut commuters endured slow trips to work Monday following last week's train collision that that injured 72 people and disrupted rail service into New York City.
... Many decided to drive instead. State transportation officials said traffic on Interstate 95 and the Merritt Parkway was at a crawl Monday morning, with the trip between Bridgeport and Stamford estimated at about an hour during the height of the rush hour. The trip normally takes about 25 minutes.
And that's not with no transit. That's with Metro-North using 120 shuttle buses between New Haven and Bridgeport until regular service can be restored.
In the comment thread on my recent article about King County Metro's looming 17 percent service cuts (and other posts like it) you can see plenty of comments fuming about the very notion of subsidizing bus and rail service with tax dollars. But as Connecticut commuters are learning today, drivers benefit hugely from keeping all those transit riders out of their cars and off the roads.
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Science The Science Today: Defining Mental Illness
Posted by Unpaid Intern on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:46 AM
Posted by intern Madeline Reddington
Today, science is puzzling out mental illness, contemplating the ins and outs of mass extinction, trying out nano-gardening, and training honeybees to seek out live landmines.
The 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was released Saturday, to mixed reactions
Published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the DSM is often used by doctors to diagnose mental health conditions in patients that meet specific sets of criteria. Among other changes, the fifth edition drops Asperger’s syndrome as a distinct condition and includes it under the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, revises diagnostic criteria for mental health disorders, and adds several new disorders, including “Binge Eating Disorder.”
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is not at all happy with DSM-5, noting particularly that the diagnoses are based on “clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure,” and can hamper new research using genetics, cognitive science, imaging and other avenues to learn more about mental health. Critics also say the DSM-5 tends to “overpathologize” human behavior, but there are strong opinions on both sides.
Would humanity survive a mass extinction? Listen in at Town Hall Wednesday
Who: Annalee Newitz—Science and tech journalist, editor-in-chief of science-fiction/science blog io9, author of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember
What: Newitz talks about human history of dodging extinction, the one we could be on the cusp of, and suggests how we might survive again.
Where: Downstairs at Town Hall (enter on Seneca)
When: Wednesday, 7:30 – 9:00
Advance tickets are $5 online, and at the door starting at 6:30. Read more here.
Harvard researchers “grow” micron-scale crystal flowers
Wim Noorduin, a postdoctoral researcher, makes tiny gardens in a beaker of fluid. To make the flowers, Noorduin uses chemical gradients to shape the direction in which crystals grow. One of his gardens is around the base of the Lincoln Memorial on a penny.
Honeybees could help find unexploded mines
Using a sugar solution, scientists in Croatia are training honeybees to associate the scent of TNT explosive with the scent of their food. They hope these bees could help find unexploded mines that are sometimes missed by de-mining and pose a threat to citizens. Theoretically, heat-seeking cameras would follow the bees as they gathered around areas that smell of TNT. Go bees!
Guns America's Epidemic of Toddler-on-Toddler Gun Violence Continues
Posted by Goldy on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:24 AM
Another martyr to our freedom:
A 2-year-old boy in Asheboro, N.C. was shot Saturday after locating an unsecured gun in his family's home, the Courier-Tribune reported.
The boy reportedly found the gun in his parents' bedroom and put it in his mouth.
Either the US has the most suicidal toddlers in the world, or something else.
News Morning News: Tornadoes, Bombs, Hacks, and Trikes
Posted by Anna Minard on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:21 AM
Tornadoes Hit the Middle of the US: One person has died, 21 are injured, here is a photo of a wrecked mobile home park.
Car Bomb Attacks Hit Across Iraq: At least 54 people have died, nearly 200 are injured, no group has yet claimed responsibility.
China Starts Hacking Us Again: According to the NYT, "Unit 61398, whose well-guarded 12-story white headquarters on the edges of Shanghai became the symbol of Chinese cyberpower, is back in business."
Pedestrian Found Dead on Dearborn: Here is a sentence that can enrage and depress us all: "Police believe a 34-year-old pedestrian found dead in Seattle early Sunday morning was hit and dragged by a vehicle and left for dead." That's fucking it. Ban cars forever.
Tim Burgess: Dropped out of the mayor's race on Friday, in case you missed it.
Poverty Hits the Suburbs: Where the safety net has a giant white-picket-fence-shaped hole in it, as social services still focus on cities. "During the 2000s, [poverty] grew twice as fast in suburban areas as in cities, with more than 16 million poor people now living in the nation's suburbs—more than in urban or rural areas," reports NPR.
Yahoomblr: It's happening. Paul reported the predictions last week, now we know for sure that Yahoo will indeed be buying Tumblr, for $1.1 billion in cash. They actually "promise not to screw it up" in a statement.
Good Morning! It might be kind of crappy outside this week. Unless you like cloudy with a chance of showers, which I hear a lot of you do.
How the White House Investigates Leaks: An in-depth look from the Washington Post:
They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.
Trikes for Beers! On Queen Anne this weekend, grown-ups tricycled. Go see the pictures. You can totally lose your two front teeth this way if you do it right. Wait, I mean wrong.
SNL Sends Stefon Off in Style: Along with Seth Meyers...
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Film The Other Blade Runner
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:19 AM
For your pleasure, "deleted and alternate scenes are chronologically arranged":
Animals A Teen's Dream Comes True!
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:04 AM
MSN:
A Houston teen’s dream has come true. Through the efforts of his father, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and a little good ol’ fashioned luck, he was able to shoot and kill an 800-pound, 14-foot alligator. Thrilled Braxton Bielski, 18, hooked the gator — which had somehow managed to live up to 50 years, reportedly — using raw chicken, then unloaded his shotgun on the creature, turning a living swamp dweller into a dead record setter.Really, what kind of teenager dreams of killing an alligator? And what's so impressive about killing even a big alligator? What the animal kingdom wants to know is when will humans get enough of their success? We should be bored with our triumph by now. We should instead be alarmed by the fact that even the mighty tiger, the tiger will all its sharp teeth and force has been pushed to the brink of extinction by our endless business. Humans need to get over themselves.
Politics No One Gave a Damn When Bush Used the IRS to You Know What
Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 7:38 AM
This should come as no surprise...
[M]ost of the lawmakers and pundits today decrying the use of public resources against a White House’s political opponents had little – if anything – to say about equally troubling revelations about the Bush administration’s deployment of public resources against its opponents. In fact, conservatives said so little back then that Fox News apparently doesn’t even know (or is pretending not to know) the Bush administration used the IRS in the same way the Obama adminstration allegedly did.Maybe Obama's greatest fault is that he has continued (rather than broken with) many of Bush's shadowy programs and political tactics. But here is the greatest scandal of all: Bush visited more black African countries during his first term than Obama did during his.Bush’s use of the IRS was but one part of that larger assault. As my Salon colleague Alex Seitz-Wald notes today in greater detail, in 2005, Bush’s IRS began what became an extensive two-year investigation into a Pasadena church after an orator dared to speak out against President Bush’s Iraq War. Not coincidentally, the Los Angeles Times reports that the church targeted just so happened to be “one of Southern California’s largest and most liberal congregations.” That IRS church audit came a year after it launched a near-identical attack on the NAACP after the civil rights organization criticized various Bush administration policies.
President Barack Obama "will travel" to Africa, US Secretary of State John Kerry declared Wednesday in remarks to a US congressional committee.One more scandal: On this trip, Obama will not visit his father's country.He offered no details regarding the timing and itinerary of the trip.
As concern grows in Washington about China's role in sub-Saharan Africa, pressure has been mounting for President Obama to pay more direct attention to the continent.
The first African-American President spent less than one day in Black Africa during his first visit in office four years ago. President Obama had made a stopover in Ghana six months after his inauguration in January 2009.
The tip about the African trip came from Lark.
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Guns Gay Man Shot Dead Near Stonewall Inn
Posted by Eli Sanders on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 6:00 AM
It happened on Friday night in New York, and now the police are calling it an apparent hate crime:
The police say that Elliot Morales, 33, trailed and taunted two men, yelling antigay slurs and asking one of them, “You want to die tonight?”
The police say it was the other man, Mark Carson, 32, who died after Mr. Morales fired a single bullet from a revolver.
On Sunday, the police filed murder and weapons charges against Mr. Morales, and several lesbian and gay groups made plans for a march on Monday to the scene of the shooting.
According to The New York Times, Morales's sister says "he was under the influence" on Friday. According to police, in addition to the revolver, a Serbian-made assault weapon was found in the home Morales had been staying in.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Theater You Have an Hour and a Half to Get to On the Boards to See Saint Genet
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Sun, May 19, 2013 at 6:37 PM
Gothic anguish, degeneracy, nakedness, wine, and a wheat field. Also, gold leaf, honey, tar, blood, wax, flowers, leeches, pheasants, and arrows. And Jessie Smith. And Jessie Smith choreography. And Jessie Smith wearing a weird cape thing with a very long tail with egg-carton-like shapes bulging from it. And music. And weird, beautiful acts of endurance. And gay shame and bullying. And the most perfect curtain call of all: None at all.
It might be sold out. Sneak in anyway.
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FOOD & DRINK
Food Truck Roundup
Help the U-District Food Bank help the needy while gorging yourself on biscuits and booze!
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News The Sunday Morning News
Posted by Unpaid Intern on Sun, May 19, 2013 at 8:29 AM
Posted by news intern Ansel Herz
Volunteer Park Even More Awesome Now: A gaggle of happy kids cut the ribbon on a new playground installed at the park. Woo!
Anti-Capitalist Town Thrives in Spain: Unemployment is at a record high of 27% in Spain, except in one town where it's not an issue. The mayor abolished the police and appropriates food from supermarkets. "We are beating the recession better than elsewhere, thanks to our co-operatives," he says.
The Global South Will Dominate Economic Growth: The World Bank says developing economies, particularly in East Asia and Latin America, will control half the world's capital by 2030, up from less than a third today.
China's Rich Buying Up Eastside Real-Estate: Speaking of which, more wealthy folks from East Asia are buying up mansions and the like around Bellevue.
The Poor Are Not Objects: These two stories go together—a powerful op-ed by a former humanitarian aid worker in Haiti, and a story about a Harvard research team's treatment of Palestinian refugees.
Cleaning Up the Duwamish River: A new report says the EPA should provide options to residents who can no longer fish for food in the heavily-polluted river. The report also warns against increasing gentrification in South Seattle.
Scary, Part I: Speaking of toxins, the FBI raided a Spokane apartment on Saturday in an investigation of allegedly threatening letters laced with ricin mailed to a federal judge and post office.
Scary, Part II: A Boise man was arrested on terrorism charges this week. The government says he provided a "instructional shopping trips" on how to make explosive devices and was in possession of a "hollow hand grenade."
"Am I weird to dance alone late at night?" Get down to this:
Religion Slog Bible Study: Revelation 1:9
Posted by Goldy on Sun, May 19, 2013 at 6:00 AM
Revelation 1:9
We suffer because Jesus is our king.
Discuss.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Housekeeping The Best of Slog: A Week of Poor People, Bigots, and Failed Candidates
Posted by Paul Constant on Sat, May 18, 2013 at 11:05 AM
It Is Better to Barely Try and to Give Up Than to Never Run at All: Tim Burgess is out of the mayor's race, and Goldy isn't running for city council.
President Obama Did Something Awful: And Ansel Herz says that this is what you get, liberals.
In Need of a Bus Pass: Seattle came out strong for their bus service.
No Tall Men for You: Sonics fans showed their support for our sports team, but were disappointed yet again.
In Which the Seattle Times Pretends to Care About Poor People: The Seattle Times wants The Stranger to stop picking on The Seattle Times, so they Googled how many times The Stranger mentioned The Seattle Times this year. That turned out to be a genius plan. On multiple levels.
It's Spring: Which means it's time to talk about street harassment.
Where in the Bible Does God Talk About Cakes?: Dominic explains again why it's discrimination if you refuse to bake a cake for a couple just because they're gay. Plus, the bigot florist strikes back.
This Old House: In which an Occupy offshoot tries to save a man from eviction.
This Headline Would Mean Something Completely Different on a Tech Blog: "Michael Pollan Is the Steve Jobs of Food"
Once Every Five Years Or So, Slog Actually Teaches You Something: Here, use the afternoon to memorize the capitols of all fifty states:
Occupy / Politics Where Was Bobby Jindal When the Grand Jury Refusers Were in Prison?
Posted by Brendan Kiley on Sat, May 18, 2013 at 10:49 AM
Republican governor of Louisiana and POTUS hopeful Bobby Jindal has taken a strong stand against federal agents aiming their power at people for ideological reasons—in this case, the whole IRS-scrutinizing-conservative-groups scandal.
He has declared that IRS officials involved should go to jail:
"You cannot take the freedom of law-abiding Americans, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom. When you do that, you go to jail," Jindal said.
Hey Bobby! What do you think about this situation?
News The Saturday Morning News
Posted by Unpaid Intern on Sat, May 18, 2013 at 9:23 AM
Posted by news intern Ansel Herz
Happy Haitian Flag Day: Today marks the anniversary of the day the Haitian flag was created by Jean Jacques Dessalines, the Haitian leader who defeated Napoleon's armies and tore out the white from the French flag. If you didn't know, Jefferson was able to buy the Louisiana Purchase from France on the cheap in large part due to Haiti's victory.
Lakewood Whistleblower Accuses Police of Cover Up: After settling a racial profiling case with the Lakewood police, an attorney says he received an anonymous tip that police destroyed documents in the case.
Hunger Strike Continues At Gulag Guatanamo: Prisoners entered the 100th day of their hunger strike against indefinite detention this week. 30 are being force-fed.
Way to Go, Seattle: Over a hundred LGBT students are receiving $600,000 in scholarships.
LulzSec Hackers Sentenced to Jail in the UK: Remember these braggadocios who took down the websites of the CIA, Sony, and other big-time players? Apparently it was a bunch of British kids, who got busted by a hacker-turned-FBI informant.
C'mon Man! Part I: A third military sexual assault prevention official is being fired. This time it's the head of sexual assault response program at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, who turned himself in after violating a restraining order. President Obama called the string of incidents "shameful and disgraceful."
C'mon Man! Part II: Seahawks defensive end Bruce Irvin faces a four game suspension for using "performance-enhancing substances"—is that a euphemism for "steroids" or is there a meaningful distinction? He has apologized and says he won't appeal the decision.
Here's some fun reading: GIF-blog When You Live in Seattle.
Teh Internets Slog Overnight
Posted by Dan Savage on Sat, May 18, 2013 at 1:47 AM
"I am admittedly very high right now," Slog tipper Taylor wrote at 1:13 AM, "but I think someone at the Stranger will find this video amusing enough to post it on Slog. I don't know if amusing is even the right word. Watch for yourselves."
Friday, May 17, 2013
Books Overheard in the Reception Hall After the 50th Annual Theodore Roethke Memorial Reading Last Night
Posted by Christopher Frizzelle on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 5:20 PM
One man was saying to a group of friends: "You'd be amazed what people share with their grocery person." On the other side of the room, a woman was saying to her friends, regarding the reading Kay Ryan had just given: "I hope that I got some of the jokes. I probably didn't." Later I heard someone say: "My main problem with ghosts is there are never dinosaur ghosts."
This was in a room on the second floor of Kane Hall, a high-ceilinged space with old-fashioned cluster lights and a huge organ at one end and a long banquet table down the center, piled with flatbreads and shrimp and tiny cakes. There was also a bar, serving complimentary wine. It had already been such a treat to see an hour-long free reading by the very wonderful Kay Ryan, who'd been introduced by the very wonderful Heather McHugh, that then to step into a room piled with free treats was, well, quite the treatment. Thanks, University of Washington Department of English!
"Thank you for that ridiculous introduction," Kay Ryan whispered to Heather McHugh as they walked into the reception. McHugh's introduction had been so dense with humor—poetry jokes and history jokes and many other kinds of jokes besides, plus some real-deal appreciation of Ryan's gifts—that Ryan's head, a few rows ahead of me, had been bobbing with laughter. And then Ryan got up and was very funny herself, so funny that afterward I felt exactly like that lady I overheard at the reception: I hope that I got some of the jokes. I love how intimidated that statement is.
"You cannot believe the eminences" the UW has invited to give the memorial Roethke reading since the 1960s, McHugh had pointed out onstage, and then looking at the list, she cracked: "They made one or two mistakes." Among the greats: Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill. Ghost dinosaurs all, it occurred to me later.
Savage Love SL Letter of the Day: Gonna Boil My Laptop After Answering This One
Posted by Dan Savage on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 4:32 PM
I'm 33, living in Colorado with my partner of a year now. We're happy together and have great sex. We have the best and most healthy relationship I have ever been in.... except for a fetish my partner has. He's into fucking dogs. Large dogs to where the dog isn't hurt or uncomfortable, but dogs nonetheless. It doesn't come up often. Soon after we started dating he confessed this to me and we talked about it. I am okay with him exploring that area of his sexuality, but I don't want to have any part in it. He wants us to both explore it together. This doesn't appeal to me in the least and wasn't an issue until recently. He's been getting more vocal about wanting us to get into that kink together, taking it as far as video bombing me with dog/man porn from his iPhone. What do I do? I made it plainly clear I don't want any part in this but left him open to explore on his own. I feel he wants me to be as into it as he is but I'm not and I know I never will be. Is there a solution to the problem or is there a deeper issue going on here that needs outside help?
Thanks for any advice.
Fretting Into Dog Obsession
My response after the jump...
Who's the Boss? Slog Super Poll: Who Should Be Mayor?
Posted by Dominic Holden on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 4:29 PM
The deadline for candidate filing is mere minutes away, and since our last Slog poll, there's been a new alignment of power in the mayor's race. First, in today's big news, Council Member Tim Burgess is dropping out. Meanwhile, the long-shot, capitalism-smashing socialist Mary Martin recently jumped in. And finally, two completely random people filed this afternoon. The first never-heard-of-'em is named Joey Gray, who is apparently with a group called Cyclistas, and the next is Doug McQuaid (he ran against—and lost against—Susan Owens for the state supreme court last year). Welcome, radicals!
That makes this list—provided no one else files in the next few minutes—the likely lineup on your primary ballot:
1. Joey Gray
2. Seattle City Council member Bruce Harrell
3. Kate Martin
4. Mary Martin
5. Mayor Mike McGinn
6. Doug McQuaid
7. State senator Ed Murray
8. Charlie Staadecker
9. Former city council member Peter Steinbrueck
Why wait till August? Vote now!
City / SIFF / Film This Weekend at the Movies (SIFF and Beyond)
Posted by David Schmader on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 3:15 PM
This weekend brings a bunch of SIFF stuff that the Stranger SIFF Review Board loved, including the Wikileaks documentary We Steal Secrets, Noah Baumbach's and Greta Gerwig's Manhattan-flavored comedy Frances Ha, the dead pet-fetishizing documentary Furever, the French family farm-fetishizing documentary After Winter, Spring, and the modern-day adaptation of Henry James' What Maisie Knew.
And in the non-SIFF world, there's Francois Ozon's In the House, the highly effective Filipino kidnapping thriller Graceland, and the cliche-ridden mob film The Iceman, plus all them StarTrekIronManGreatGatsbyblockbusters.
Full film info here.
SIFF Short Film Fridays: The SIFF Edition
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 3:01 PM
For the next three weeks, Short Film Fridays will feature work by directors who are participating in the current Seattle International Film Festival. The first film in this series is a music video made in 1994 by the Seattle-based director Josh Taft. The music video is for one of the most important tracks in the history of hiphop, Nas’s “The World Is Yours.” The world premiere of Josh Taft’s first feature, Alive and Well, a documentary about people dealing with Huntington’s disease, happens at SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 22nd (7:00 pm).
Who's the Boss? Tim Burgess Quits the Mayor's Race
Posted by Dominic Holden on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 2:43 PM
Originally posted at 1:33 pm and moved up with updates.
Tim Burgess withdrew his bid for mayor today, the last day candidates are eligible to file election campaigns, thereby leaving a wide-open gap for candidates vying for conservative votes and funding.
The Seattle City Council member took a parting shot at Mayor Mike McGinn, naturally. "It is critically important that we elect a new mayor," he said in a statement this afternoon. "However, with so many qualified candidates in the field, my continued candidacy may dilute the chance of achieving the positive change Seattle needs. After much deliberation, I have chosen not to continue as a candidate. Instead, I will continue to serve this city that I love from my position on the City Council, the most rewarding job of my life."
Although the statement sounds altruistic, it seems Burgess knew he couldn't win.
From his botched announcement last November to this abrupt end, Burgess's campaign never caught the tailwind many expected. He was considered a leading challenger last year—a sort of mayor in waiting, after Mayor McGinn's two years of floundering—but McGinn seems to have found sea legs at City Hall, and a pack of heavyweight contenders crowded into the race in January and February. In particular, state senator Ed Murray and to a lesser extent Council Member Bruce Harrell have emerged in the race as safe bets for institutional backers that represent downtown business, and, unlike Burgess, can't be portrayed as conservative outliers (Burgess infamously sponsored a controversial aggressive panhandling bill that failed in 2010).
Burgess has also been unraveling this week.
After the news that the 36th District—Burgess's home district—would split its endorsement between him and Murray, yesterday came the news from PubliCola that Burgess fired his spokesman. And then the 46th District Democrats, who represent the relatively wealthy, white district of northeast Seattle that seems like Burgess's base, didn't endorse him at all. Also the city council's biggest advocate to bring back the Sonics, Burgess took a blow when the NBA nixed the deal Wednesday.
Wednesday night was also a poor, petulant showing for Burgess. I was emceeing a mayoral straw poll at the Phinney Ridge Community Center when I asked Burgess about his divisive actions in the last few years that belie his campaign theme of collaboration. Specifically, Burgess booted the city budget director Beth Goldberg from his finance meetings last fall. I said it appeared unprecedented. Burgess insisted I was wrong; he said he blocked the budget director from only one meeting, and then, apparently flustered after the questioning, he told me to "go fuck yourself." Granted, I had it coming: I was wearing a shirt that said "The NBA can go fuck itself." But he didn't say it like a joke—he seemed pissed. And when I followed up by e-mail to ask if he could prove I was wrong—that kicking out the budget director had precedent and that it was only one meeting—he didn't reply. City records show that Burgess held seven budget meetings without the budget director, not just one. In other words, he was wrong, he was angry, and then he went silent. Not very mayoral.
Burgess had raised more money that anyone else in the race ($232,000, according to the latest election reports), but most of it was already spent, with a $100,250 reported balance. Meanwhile, Murray's fundraising has been frozen through the legislative session, and Murray is widely expected to be a fundraising power house through the summer months leading up to the August primary.
Paradoxically, Burgess quitting could benefit Mayor McGinn more than anyone else in the primary. Although McGinn is generally considered to be on the liberal end of the spectrum of candidates, he got 34 percent of the Republican support in a March SurveyUSA poll. Burgess was second among Republicans with 15 percent. If those fiscally conservative voters flock to McGinn—who's run a tight budget and famously fought the expensive deep-bore tunnel project—it may give him the boost needed to push through to the general election.
Politics / Money / Election In Which I Do Not Declare My Candidacy for Seattle City Council
Posted by Goldy on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 2:35 PM
Later this afternoon, just before the deadline, I will not file to run against four-term incumbent Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin. And believe it or not, it was a very difficult decision that I've been struggling with for weeks.
Seriously.
After nine years of covering Washington state and local politics I've come to the conclusion that Seattle can no longer wait on Olympia to address our problems. Our state's inability to fix its longterm structural revenue deficit dictates a gradual but relentless reduction in the services and infrastructure investments the state can provide. Whatever the result at the polls, unless and until the state finds a way to grow revenue somewhat commensurate with the economy, we will inevitably get the Republican agenda by default. And unable to maintain the transportation, education, and other amenities sufficient to preserve Washington's economic competitiveness, our economy will ultimately sputter and stagnate.
Washington is a state teetering on the edge of decline.
Meanwhile, the "fuck Seattle" attitude that permeates much of the rest of the state, combined with Republicans' knee-jerk opposition to taxes of all kinds for any reason under any circumstances, assures that Olympia cannot be counted on even to grant us the authority to tax ourselves to meet our own needs.
But there is hope. Seattle is a compassionate city, a progressive city, a smart city. But above all, Seattle is an affluent city. And while the revenue options at our disposal may not be the ones we'd prefer, we are wealthy enough to use the options we have to invest in the human and physical infrastructure we need to assure economic growth and prosperity now and in the future. That is, assuming we have political leaders with the vision to embrace a newly self-sufficient Seattle, and the communications skills to sell that vision to voters.
Which we don't.
That is why (besides all the usual narcissistic bullshit that is inherent in politics) I seriously considered challenging Conlin: Because Seattle needs and deserves more than the caretaker council that Conlin has come to epitomize. We need to invest in our children, in our transit, in our roads, and sidewalks, and bikeways now, while we can still afford to, before our economy is dragged down by the rest of the state. If we act proactively while we still have an economy capable of sustaining such investments, we can sustain Seattle's competitiveness, and perhaps even drag the rest of the state kicking and screaming with us.
For example: Seattle desperately needs to invest in the one education reform that everybody agrees works: High quality universal preschool for all three- and four-year-olds.
Books / Money In the UK, Amazon Is a Welfare Queen
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 2:01 PM
Zeljka Marosevic at Melville House tells us about a meeting yesterday that was held to discuss Amazon.com's taxes, or lack thereof:
“What people will find particularly galling is that the amount Amazon is paying in tax is actually less than they are taking from UK taxpayers in the form of government grants. Companies like Amazon should pay their fair share of tax based on their economic activity in this country and the profits they make here...
Why is it people get ridiculously upset when someone on the internet sees a young mother of three buying some mildly unhealthy food with food stamps, but when Amazon sucks at the welfare teat on an exponentially larger scale, it's at best considered to be the free hand of the market and at worst just shrugged off as the way it is nowadays?
Health / Economy Browse the Medicare Hospital Charges and Payment Data
Posted by Jonathan Golob on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 1:31 PM
As I wrote about last week, Medicare (for the first time ever) released what hospitals in the United States charged, and what they were paid, for the top 100 diagnoses in 2011.
If you're curious, I've written a simple (and ad-free) web app you can use to browse the data. (I suggest comparing the Las Vegas, NV region to Baltimore, MD.)
Be gentle, but have at it.
Tech Introducing Yahoomblr?
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 1:21 PM
On Monday, Yahoo is holding a press conference, according to TechCrunch. This comes after the company's recent buying spree, and it closely follows rumors that Yahoo is considering spending a billion dollars to buy Tumblr:
On Monday, it seems that we may get a better sense of what Yahoo plans to do with all these new acquisitions, as CNBC is reporting that Yahoo will be holding a “product-related” news event on Monday in New York City. Marissa Mayer will reportedly be speaking at the press conference, but that’s all we know about the contents of the event at this point.
I do get the sense that Tumblr could be a bigger deal than it already is—it's about one-third of a social network and two-thirds of a blogging platform, which seems like a good position to be in—but I'm not sure that Yahoo is the company to bring it to its full potential. But new CEO Marissa Mayer has accomplished what seemed like the impossible a couple years ago: She's got people talking about Yahoo again.
Books Kay Ryan Reads Her Poems Twice (Kay Ryan Reads Her Poems Twice)
Posted by Molly Morrow on Fri, May 17, 2013 at 12:57 PM
A year or so ago, Kay Ryan went to Italy, and it made her think about the sometimes-painful, always-disorienting work the mind has to do when it arrives in a new place. Last night at Kane Hall, she read to us a poem that described this problem of being somewhere new, but not knowing how to be new yourself, as if you had put up an “interior tent,” only to find that “the new holes aren't where the windows went.” The poem settled as she leaned into the podium. “I bet you'd like me to read that again,” she said, and the audience fairly moaned yes. Yes, Kay Ryan, read it again. The sheer delight Ryan took from examining her own work—as though it were not her own but the work of some dear, deranged friend—gave the reading a wondrously funny edge, and allowed the audience to see Ryan not as the intimidating literary giant that she is, but as a warm, comic entertainer of the highest sort, able to humble herself through a kind of soft, conscious mocking. (After the first poem of the night, she mused, “I find that a very touching poem, but I'm ready to go on.”)
She began the evening with a set of new, unpublished work on subjects including but not limited to W.G. Sebald, frogs with dual pupils, octopuses, Thelonious Monk, and 17th-century Dutch still-life painting. Much of it she flatly insisted on reading twice, claiming that “if it's a poem, it should bear a second reading,” when in truth Ryan's poems not only bear a second reading, but seem to require it – so dense and rich with these double meanings you could feel the audience leaning in and curling around them, straining to catch every word and every space between words before the moment passed. (More than once I looked around and saw the people on either side of me listening with closed eyes.) Sometimes the second reading seemed to be as much for Ryan herself as for us, and the second reading would inevitably give a second meaning. This twinned reality—what Ryan calls “doubleness”—was the predominant theme of the evening, much moreso than the Northwest theme Ryan half-heartedly attempted, but (gloriously) abandoned. One new poem in particular, a beautifully creepy thing entitled “Ship in a Bottle,” possessed this doubleness in spades. Ryan introduced it by saying that the poem is still a mystery even to her. (Not being able to see the poem on paper, I‘ve inserted line breaks where I sense them, sacrilegious as that feels):
It seems impossible
Not just a ship in a bottle
But wind and sea
The ship starts to struggle
An emergency of the two realized
We realized
We can get it out but not
Without spilling its world
A hammer tap and they're free.
Which death will it be,
Little sailors?
“I'll read it again. It's a mystery to me,” she repeated. “I mean, it all makes sense, but I'm not sure what it's getting at.”
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