David > Recent Status Updates

In 1940 the odds of being struck by lightning were 1 in 400,000. Today they're 1 in 11,000,000.

The National Hurricane Center did a very *good* job forecasting Katrina. The faults lay elsewhere.

I'm hooked already.

Damn but Sondheim is strict. He doesn't even cut Lorenz Hart slack for "Your looks are laughable, / Unphotographable." Well, maybe there's a good rhyme to match "unphotogenic" but I'm more than satisfied with Hart's version. Unphotographable is a laughable word, right?

Sondheim is right about the flaws he points out in Oscar Hammerstein II's lyrics (the word "bromidic" in South Pacific has always distracted me) but the amazing thing is that the flaws don't seem to matter.

My mother is one of MILLIONS of people who have died from lung cancer, emphysema or heart disease caused by the efforts of people who worked in that industry. Is that any way to make a "living?"

Only once have I been presented with a work-related moral dilemma. I turned down the job offer. Though I needed the money the choice was not hard: I would not have been able to live with myself. I don't know how the many, many thousands of people working in the tobacco industry can go to work each day.

If cigarettes had no or very little nicotine no one would smoke.

The tobacco industry is really the nicotine industry. The only difference between it and the cocaine or heroin industry is that the former is legal.

The cigarette industry is a pageant of horrors, not the least of which is the experimentation on untold thousands of animals -- almost every bit of it absolutely fucking useless.

$10,000 in Philip Morris stock in 1958 would be worth $58,000,000 now! Which is to say -- if crack cocaine becomes legal, make sure you get in on the IPO.

It's interesting that people still smoke "light" cigarettes even though it has been known for at least 30 years that they are not less dangerous. Likewise, filters have been around for 50 years and never reduced the harmful effects *at all*. You might as well smoke unfiltered if you're going to smoke.

Smoking "satisfaction" = "temporary relief from the withdrawal symptoms of nicotine addiction."

Interesting: very few cigarette smokers LIKE smoking. I know it's an addiction but I thought most smokers would still enjoy smoking.

Lung cancer was almost unknown before cigarettes.

"Project Scum": a marketing initiative to promote Camels to head shops and the homeless.

"Cigarette death in the Unites States alone is like two jumbo jets crashing _every day_...."

The exposé is supposed to inspire revulsion at the exploitation of the bereaved -- the money wasted on embalming, extravagant caskets, vaults, etc. True, it's an extraordinary rip-off. And yet I think how when I visit a cemetery -- it's interesting! -- I wish I could go to a headstone and see a well-produced documentary on the life of a person.

A "judgement proof" crypt? Now THAT would be worth the extra expense!

In the 1950s corporate taxes made up 30% of federal revenue. Now they make up just 9%!

"A white man _with_ a criminal past is slightly more likely to be considered for a job than a black man with no criminal past,"

This recession is unusual: the share of wages has fallen but firms are still making good profits.

"The largest fraction of personal bankruptcies involve the illness of a family member." Remember that on November 6 (or whenever you vote.)

The top 1% own more than a third of US wealth.

Yep. Change you can believe in was "more of the same." In fact, followers sometimes have to force a leader into a particular course.

Irony doesn't begin to describe LBJ, Richard Nixon, Henry Cabot Lodge and other American politicians introducing honest elections to Vietnam. They didn't even believe in them for the USA!

How Republicans have changed: When Eisenhower came into office he didn't try to cut the 91% top income tax rate.

Yet more reasons to hate outsourcing by the Pentagon -- essentially, unaccountable employees of contractors whose goal is profit, regardless of the goals of the government or the needs of soldiers.

I don't remember that the Panama Canal Treaty was all that controversial but, according to Maddow, Reagan got more out of it than the Panamanians.

I didn't know about the Senate Foreign Relation Committee's confrontation with Ford on evacuating from Vietnam. I can see why it would have had a profound effect on Rumsfeld.