Eugenics in America

"One of (the American Eugenics Society)'s popular traveling exhibits, consisting of a board with blinking lights, was titled "Some People Are Born to Be a Burden on the Rest." Every fifteen seconds a light flashed to warn onlookers that American taxpayers had just spent another $100 caring for defectives. Every thirty seconds, a light flashed to signal that another defective had been born. At intervals of fifty seconds, a flashing light told of another criminal being carted off to prison, with the audience informed that "very few normal persons every go to jail." Finally, after seven and one-half long minutes, a light blinked to announce that a "high grade person," at long last, had been born."

"To further its point, the AES organized 'Fitter Familes' contests, with entrances submitting family histories, undergoing psychiatric exams, and taking IQ tests, all in the hope that they would be deemed Grade-A humans. Winning families joined other best-of-show livestock--pigs, goats, cows--in the end-of-fair parades, the humans riding in automobiles decorated with banners proclaiming them the state's 'best crop.'"

- Robert Whitaker, Mad in America

Dear Empire

"These are your dead. They are buried above ground, so it is hard to say they are buried. Often, they are among us: a parasol on a sunny day, a partnerless shoe.

The lupine shudder with every gust. Their purple buds thread up like kitchen brushes from the graves. There are many gardens here. There are many feet wearing uneven treads on the soil.

If you took a photo negative of me right now, you would see the heat outlines of ghosts. The upright caskets are violent with their exhaust. This is me placing flowers on a stone. This is me besides the wisteria, twisted around the gate's trellis. These are your solar flares."

- Oliver de la Paz

Florida, day 4

Back from Key West. Both vile and amazing. Today started with snorkeling on the reef ($30 and worth every penny, I would have gone back for another round if we'd had the time) and ended with fireworks on the beach. Other stuff between. Bird sanctuary yesterday, the house where Hemingway wrote half his works and petted six-toed cats, the bar he spent every night in and which is now kind of vile. Sadly. Lots of tasty fish. & more to say, but I am saving some of it for a more formal piece, and anyway we drove straight back after the fireworks and must take M to the airport in four hours and are very tired and filthy and ready to sleep in an apartment instead of a 90+ degree tent with a rainfly on it and three people's worth of body heat. And chiggers.

Obama criticizes Republican obstructionist tactics

This is worth spending 90 minutes on, if you're remotely interested in the state of political dialogue in this country. Even if you dislike the two-party system, Democrats or Obama, you don't get to see faceoffs like this very often, especially outside an actual campaign, and Obama's breakdown of some of the rhetorical problems with how elected officials are handling big, important issues...well, as one friend of mine put it, "It was like he tore off one of their arms and beat them with it. Repeatedly."