Monday morning procrastination link-a-roo

We begin this morning with a cosmological riddle.

People often say that time speeds up as we age, but if the latest scientific theory is true the opposite could well be the case.

The radical theory by academics suggests that time itself could be slowing down - and may eventually grind to a halt altogether.

The latest mind-bending findings - put forward by researchers working at two Spanish universities - proposes that we have all been fooled into thinking the universe is expanding.

The universe being  the huge place that it is, these effects may be localized relative to your point of view.  For example, in New Orleans, we're already aware that time begins slowing down around the beginning of July and virtually grinds to a halt somewhere between Independence Day and the start of football season.  This is also prone to happen at any given moment where Jackie Clarkson happens to be speaking.

Oddly, though, there are places when and where it is most certainly speeding up, such as the Monday morning interval between the alarm going off and whenever it is I'm supposed to be at work.  Today our standard Newtonian conception of time tells us that is 2 hours.  But here all I've done is glance at my phone and put on the day's first gallon of coffee to brew and over half of that has gone by.  One barely has time to even muster the resentment necessary to carry one's momentum forward into the day.

In pursuit of that end, though, here is some of the news one might glance at this morning.

• This  New Republic article is titled Whatever Happened to Bobby Jindal? but it's really about how the longstanding animus between Jindal and David Vitter has shaped state politics over the course of Jindal's term in office. The article dates the beginning of the schism to the height of Vitter's lady troubles in 2007, but I'm pretty sure it goes further back than that and would have been inevitable under any circumstances.


• The Advocate picks at some low hanging "government waste" fruit in the form of an occasional controversy over City Council members each getting their own sheriff's detail assigned ostensibly for their personal security but mostly to just drive them around places. Like most readers, I was hoping for a fun Marie Antoinette style quote from Clarkson here, but it turns out the closest thing to that we get comes from Susan Guidry.

  “I find it very comforting,” echoed Councilwoman Susan Guidry. “We’re going out all the time in the community. I think there are possibly some things I would not do at night” without the protection of an armed deputy.


According to Stacy Head, though, the deputies have other functions such as investigative reporting. Did you know, for example, that Head's driver blew the lid off of the NOAH scandal?

For instance, Head said that Deputy Gregory Malveaux, who has been assigned to her for years, helped jump-start a celebrated investigation into New Orleans Affordable Homeownership, the city nonprofit whose leader has been charged with taking kickbacks. Malveaux drove around in 2008 and documented how various houses remained blighted even though NOAH had paid to fix them.

He does similar work helping to put together cases against problem barrooms and corner stores.

Oh and he's also shutting down your neighborhood bar for you. Forgot to mention that part. These guys have all sorts of uses. Not sure any of them are appropriate, strictly speaking but, well there you go.

Meanwhile, those of us without personal drivers might find other ways of getting around town. Like bicycling for example. This is a story from Boston but it picks up on an annoyance I've been talking about for some time in New Orleans as well. Other people riding bikes are pretty much ruining bike riding as a viable transportation alternative.

Even as Mayor Thomas M. Menino continues his push to unseat cars as king in Boston, cyclists are starting to sound like drivers. They’re griping about rack hogs who take up more than one space. They’re avoiding areas where they know there won’t be a single rack, parking meter, tree, gate, fence, railing, or sign that’s not already hosting one or more bikes. And just like the very motorists over whom they lord with their zero body fat, they’re complaining if they have to walk more than a couple of blocks from bike parking spot to destination.

Paul Krugman hits on a favorite political theory of mine here. People are willing to accept just about any horrific conditions as long as they happen slowly enough to seem normal. Long term unemployment, for example:

You might think that a persistently poor economy — an economy in which millions of people who could and should be productively employed are jobless, and in many cases have been without work for a very long time — would eventually spark public outrage. But the political science evidence on economics and elections is unambiguous: what matters is the rate of change, not the level.

Put it this way: If unemployment rises from 6 to 7 percent during an election year, the incumbent will probably lose. But if it stays flat at 8 percent through the incumbent’s whole term, he or she will probably be returned to power. And this means that there’s remarkably little political pressure to end our continuing, if low-grade, depression.

Let's see.. what else? Oh look, the freedom seems to be spreading well in Egypt.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Gehad Haddad, a spokesman for Muslim Brotherhood, said that at around 3.30 in the morning, army and police forces started firing at sit-in protesters in front of the Republican Guard headquarters in Cairo.

“We have people hit in the head, we have bullets that exploded as they entered the body, cluttering organs and body parts” said Haddad.

“Every police force in the world understands how to disperse a sit-in. This is just a criminal activity targeting protesters.”

Okay that should do it. We've wasted more than our share of elusive time and now have to go be late for work... unless there's some way to slow things down even further. Is Tommy Tucker on the radio right now?

Tony Blair is "a strong supporter of democracy but..."

Shorter Tony Blair: They elected some people we don't like so now we have to teach them how to do democracy better.

I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn't on its own mean effective government. Today, efficacy is the challenge. When governments don't deliver, people protest. They don't want to wait for an election.

In fact, as Turkey and Brazil show, they can protest even when, on any objective basis, countries have made huge progress. But as countries move from low to middle income status, the people's expectations rise. They want quality services, better housing, good infrastructure, especially transport. And they will fight against any sense that a clique at the top is barring their way.

This is a sort of free democratic spirit that operates outside the convention of democracy that elections decide the government. It is enormously fuelled by social media, itself a revolutionary phenomenon. And it moves very fast in precipitating crisis. It is not always consistent or rational. A protest is not a policy, or a placard a programme for government. But if governments don't have a clear argument with which to rebut the protest, they're in trouble.

As it turns out, though, we can really only determine who is "in trouble" according to whichever side the army happens to be on. In 2003 there were as many as 2 million people marching in the UK in opposition to the Iraq invasion. Tony Blair sent the troops anyway saying, unpopularity was "sometimes the price of leadership and the cost of conviction."  The consequences for Morsi were a bit greater than just unpopularity. The difference is sometimes the army goes where you send it and sometimes it comes to get you.

But okay now, according to Blair,  the West can't be shy to "engage" as much as possible until everybody finally elects the right people.

At its crudest, we can't afford for Egypt to collapse. So we should engage with the new de facto power and help the new government make the changes necessary, especially on the economy, so they can deliver for the people. In that way, we can also help shape a path back to the ballot box that is designed by and for Egyptians.

That last line must be one of those of Sphinx riddles you hear so much about. Anyway, that whole "engagement" thing shouldn't be too hard seeing as how we pay for the entity that makes all the decisions in the first place.

Who wears these pants anyway?

American foreign policy debate works like this.

Our so-called liberals fall all over themselves to prove they can be more vicious and reckless than our conservatives. They blow things up. They imprison people indefinitely (or just kill them) without due process. They work tirelessly to suppress free speech and political expression.

But no matter how hard they work at this it's always a losing proposition politically because the "branding" inevitably comes down to some idiotic fashion analogy. Since they're going to lose anyway, it would be nice if, for once, our so-called liberals would choose an actual liberal policy position hill on which to die.

Also someone with some more sophisticated fashion sense than mine needs to explain to me what the difference between "mom jeans" and "cowboy jeans" is. I suspect it's about as subtle and insignificant as the difference between our major political parties.

Sunday digest

A brief listing of this week-end's miscellany.

• Endymion Grand Marshals announced

  Parade officials have announced this year's Grand Marshals of the Endymion parade.
  
  Those Marshals will include: CNN's Anderson Cooper, talk show host Kelly Ripa, actor Mark Consuelos, singer Pat Benatar and the musical group Train are expected to ride in this year’s Endymion as grand marshals.

  Surprised to see Cooper snub Thoth and Cleopatra this year. It's bad enough that Pat Benatar is there to remind of being hit with someone's best shot.
  
  Meanwhile, NYT: In New Orleans, Early Mardi Gras Parades Are Family Fare
  The article actually means well but this constant attempt to separate Carnival from "family fare" in the non-NOLA media is still distorts the fact that, aside from the tourist frat party on Bourbon street, the whole thing is a "family fare" type of event.



• Speaking of Egypt, it is often the case in mildly xenophobic America that political narratives spawn very quickly out of ignorance or indifference. The best defense against such for most of us is to just shut the hell up and read more. Here are a few links through which one can learn some context quickly.
  
  Unrest in #Egypt: Not new, just reaching a tipping point
  
  Why Mubarak is Out A primer on police, military, gender and capitalist dynamics behind the Egyptian uprising
  
  
  Always always more to the story than you think there is.



• Ray Nagin. The real Ray Nagin, it appears. Is now in the Tweeter Tubes. Actually he's been there for some time but people only started noticing just this week when he demonstrated full capacity with the medium by picking a fight with Fletcher Mackel which is, of course, what Twitter is there for. While the former mayor's tweets might prove to be every bit as diverting as the now-defunct @mayornagin satire account, we can't imagine they'll be any more profound. Many overloaded Twitter users might save themselves some time by just buying one of those "Da Mayor in your pocket" thingies.



• Crawfish prices up in Louisiana
  
  

  Small, expensive and hard to find is no way for Louisiana's beloved delicacy to kick off boiling season. Yet local merchants, harvesters and scientists say if you move fast, you might be able to scrounge enough to make do on Super Sunday.
  
  A fall drought and a cold winter have conspired to keep the mudbug population down. And that low supply, coupled with higher prices at the gas pumps, have crawfish costing about 50 cents to a dollar more per pound than this time last year.
  
  A pound of live crawfish is going for about $3.50 to $4, and boiled fetches anywhere from $4.25 to $5 in the New Orleans area. Once the weather gets above 60 degrees, supply will increase, typically dropping prices by a dollar per pound.

  
  
  Food prices up everywhere
  
  

  What’s behind the surge in food prices? The usual suspects have made the usual claims — it’s all about the Fed, or it’s all about speculators. But I’ve been looking at the USDA World supply and demand estimates, and what stands out from the data is mainly that we’ve had a huge global harvest failure.




• This week in the Gulf. Drake Toulouse summarizes the eventful week in oil spill news from Barack Obama's indifference, to Ken Feinberg's newly defined status as a BP employee, to the growing criticism of Feinberg's "two to three year" Gulf recovery estimate.
  
  Two additional items of note regarding all of this.
  
  The Pensacola News Journal published an editorial today noting the size of the fee Feinberg collects from BP.

  "For instance, the AP reported that Feinberg's law firm "was paid $850,000 a month for its work through the middle of January, and now Feinberg is discussing with BP how much he should be paid going forward. Well, given that BP has an interest in Feinberg paying out as little as possible, is it unreasonable to suspect that his pay will be linked to that goal?"

  
  
  And then there's this.
  
  

  Months after diving in Gulf waters fouled by BP crude oil and the oil dispersant Corexit, a man in his 40s has more than five times the normal amount of ethylbenzene in his blood.
  
  The bloodstream of a 3-year-old, exposed to the oil spill when his family visited the Gulf Coast, contains at least three times the normal level of the same organic hydrocarbon, which is toxic in certain quantities.
  
  Such numbers, according to Wilma Subra, a New Iberia biochemist and environmental activist, are increasingly common in a region that continues to grapple with the consequences of the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
  
  And, Subra said Saturday at a forum in New Orleans, they are just one indication that the human health effects of the spill are greater -- and will linger far longer -- than either the oil industry or the U.S. government has acknowledged.
  
  "The effects will be felt for generations," she said, ticking off a wide range of symptoms she said result from exposure to crude oil and Corexit. "This is what we have to look forward to."

  
  
  Feinberg defines "generations" as roughly 2-3 years.
  
  

  The blood tests were performed on people of varying ages, gender and exposure levels. All of the individuals tested displayed some physical symptoms typical of exposure to crude oil or Corexit, Subra said. Immediate symptoms include skin irritation, nausea, headaches and vomiting. Longer-term maladies can include liver and kidney damage, cardiac arrhythmia and chronic respiratory problems. Benzene also is a cancer-causing agent.
  
  Test results consistently showed elevated levels of chemicals -- among them benzene, ethylbenzene and Xylene -- that are found in either crude, dispersant or both, she said. Results were similar on oysters and other Gulf seafood.

  
  
  Meanwhile I continue in my personal pursuit to ingest as much of this poison as I possibly can with varied results. On Friday night, Menckles and I wandered in to Casamento's where I had some of the most disappointingly cakey and greasy fried oysters I've ever encountered. They came on a full loaf of big thick buttered toast. Properly fried seafood is one of life's greatest pleasures. Poorly fried seafood is quite the opposite of that. These were nasty. I ate all of them anyway.
  
  Last night we joined a large party at Pascal's where I ordered these.
  
  
  
  They were exquisite. I ate all of them. Obviously, I am far from the only person in South Louisiana who eats copious amounts of Gulf Seafood despite the continuing flow of ambiguous reports as to its safety.



• Neighborhood level Census 2010 data is now available. More on this later but one conclusion we can draw is that the flood accelerated the demographic trend of a shrinking New Orleans already in progress. It also enabled the demolishing and abandonment of poorer neighborhoods while encouraging the development of ritzy condos. The net effect is a smaller city geared more to serving an upper class population. None of this was inevitable, of course. But none of it was at odds with what policymakers thought of as an optimal outcome either.



• Finally, today is Super Bowl Sunday. It's something of a let down in New Orleans, of course. But as I said at the very beginning of the football season, nothing that happened last year can ever be taken away now. Or to put it another way, it will always be Lombardi Gras in our hearts.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Meanwhile, today I and every sports fan with any kind of a conscience will be rooting for the Green Bay Packers. Here's a passable explanation why that is.

  Simple: They’re the only major team left that’s not owned by an oligarch. The only one that’s not just a business run by some tycoon with his eyes on the bottom line.
  
  They’re still, effectively, owned by the town of Green Bay, population 102,000

  
  
  In truth, every professional sports franchise rightfully belongs to the city off of whose identity it trades, whose taxpayers build its stadiums, and whose citizenry invests so much time, money, and emotional capital in supporting. The billionaire "owners" of these franchises are really just unnecessary leeches who have attached themselves to a decent racket. At least the city of Green Bay figured a decent way to get around this. (I'd actually go farther than they do with regard to collective ownership but that's another story for another day.) In this sense, a win for the Pack is a win for all of us.

Mubarak urges Obama not to run again

What? Oh wait that's backwards. My bad. Makes sense either way.

Meanwhile: Neocons hold hard and fast to the crazy.

Not about us

What Adrastos said.