"Madonna had the outfit ready to go. She was really proud of it and said it was her 'Terror Bride' costume."

"She had paraded around in it and said she was going to wear it in her next music video. At first when people started telling her it was madness she just brushed it off. But when they mentioned that her actions could put her life at risk she decided to ditch it from her video and certainly won't be wearing it on stage.''

(Via Instapundit.)

"Pushing helmets really kills cycling and bike-sharing in particular because it promotes a sense of danger that just isn’t justified..."

"... in fact, cycling has many health benefits."

"Statistically, if we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities."

Why don't the pedestrians wear helmets? Apparently, per mile traveled, they're as likely to take a blow to the head as a cyclist.

Anyway, the problem is that there are these great bike-sharing systems, like we have here in Madison with B-Cycle. You pay a daily or annual fee to access the system, and then you can get a bike out of a station on one city corner, bike somewhere you want to go downtown, and just stick the thing into another station, where it's automatically locked in.

It's very quick and easy, especially if they have a lot of stations near places you like to go. But the ease is ruined if you need a helmet. So all these efforts all these years to get people to feel they must have a helmet are at odds with the new bike-share agenda. When the overeager agendas of environmentalism and safety collide, somebody's going to get hurt.

The linked NYT article is attempting to dictate the winner: environmentalism (i.e., bike sharing systems and the no-helmet approach). Amusingly, the main argument is: Europe! In Europe!, you won't hear any fretting about helmets.

Does a landlord have an ethical obligation to disclose that the previous tenant died in the apartment you're thinking of renting?

The NYT ethicist thinks the obligation is "seemingly obvious" or even "compulsory." He's responding to somebody who wasn't informed before signing the lease and now finds it "unsettling and slightly disturbing" to know that the previous tenant died. Of an overdose. Not a murder, just an overdose. A forgotten man slipped away through the portal to the beyond that exists within that rental unit... and everywhere else on the face of the earth.

This last week, we've been driving quite a distance across that face. Maybe an eyelid's expanse of earth-face. Much of the eyelid has been Montana, where the Montana American Legion has been carrying out its White Cross Highway Fatality Marker Program since 1953.

The unique idea of marking fatal traffic accident sites with a white cross was the brain child of Floyd Eaheart, a member of the American Legion Hellgate Post #27, Missoula, Montana; after six lives were lost in the Missoula area over the 1952 Labor Day Holiday. The safety program started out as a county and later district project for the Missoula American Legion Post. However, the idea was so good that it was soon adopted as a statewide program. The Montana Highway Commission (now Department of Transportation) approved the program in January 1953, with the blessing of the then 13th governor of Montana, J. Hugo Aronson (the Galloping Swede)....

The program is intended as a highway safety, not a memorial program.  Still, many families place wreaths or other decorations on the white crosses, which may be considered a memorial to a loved one lost in an accident.  Obstruction of the white cross with these decorations defeats the purpose of the safety program.  

You appropriate an individual's death for your message of traffic safety, with the state's approval, and you don't like when the people who loved that person pile on a message of their own. Either it's a speech forum, where viewpoint discrimination is banned or it's the state's own speech, and it's an Establishment Clause violation (unless the courts say it's not).

The white crosses serve as a public service message, reminding drivers to “Please Drive Carefully.”  They are a sobering reminder of a fatal traffic accident, a place where a human being lost his/her life....

Not all highway fatalities are marked.  Due to a federal ruling, white crosses are not allowed along interstate highways.

Here's some discussion of the case. I don't see what the interstate has to do with it. The Constitution applies off the off ramp. But the crosses are all over the place in Montana, reminding us where people have died. How unsettled the skittish NYT reader might feel, driving in Montana, knowing about all that death. Or perhaps it's soothing to see so few doorways to oblivion have opened up in the years since 1953. Half a century has gone by and yet there are long spaces on the road that have never swallowed a human being. Often you can traverse an entire eyelash on the face of the earth without seeing a white cross.

Seeing the white crosses, I wonder about the places where there has been death. What if you could — everywhere — see who (and what) has ever died on that spot. How covered with death would the earth be? I'm blogging in the breakfast room of a Holiday Inn Express in Bismarck, North Dakota. Am I sitting on a dinosaur carcass?

"Be afraid. Be very afraid."

I ended the previous post with that old sci-fi movie tag line.

I think what is going on right now is an effort to create a mindset, and emotional orientation toward Romney. Business is an alien entity. It's scary and mystifying, and Romney is part of that. You can't understand it, so don't even try. [NYT columnist Gail] Collins is planting the seed of fear. You laugh now. You won't even feel it. But it will grow. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Please pay attention to that. It's what's happening right now, and it is an effort to emotionally manipulate people in a way Obamans are counting on. It's The Framing.

But what is the source of "Be afraid, be very afraid"? I was thinking "Alien." But the original "Alien" tagline was "In space no one can hear you scream."

"Be afraid, be very afraid" came from... Googling... the 1986 version of "The Fly." I love that movie, the one with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis.



Speaking of tags, this blog has long had a tag for "insect politics" — based on the line from "The Fly" "Have you heard of insect politics? Neither have I."

Full text: "Have you heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects don't have politics.... they're very brutal. No compassion.... no compromise. We can't trust the insect. I'd like to become the first insect politician. I'd like to, but.... I'm an insect.... who dreamed he was a man, and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the insect is awake."

And speaking of Obama and "The Fly," remember Obama and the fly?



And speaking of dreams being over? Remember the dream?

"When we travel, though, we are asking for hospitality. There’s great vulnerability in this."

"It also requires considerable strength."

To be a good guest — like being a good host — one needs to be secure in one’s own premises: where you stand, who you are... Travel is a search for meaning, not only in our own lives, but also in the lives of others. The humility required for genuine travel is exactly what is missing from its opposite extreme, tourism.

Vulnerability? Humility? And — at the same time — it's supposed to be loftier than mere tourism?

The kind of travel to which we aspire should tolerate uncertainty and discomfort. It isn’t about pain or excessive strain — travel doesn’t need to be an extreme sport — but we need to permit ourselves to be clumsy, inexpert and even a bit lonely.

I used to throw myself out of my own country like that. Buy tickets to somewhere and then have to go. I wished I could back out. I was lonely when I was there. I spent a lot of money. I'm actually not a good tourist at all. It was always some kind of spiritual journey for me, a pilgrimage. So I don't identify with the tourism the linked authors sniff at. But I have become very skeptical of the notion that we are supposed to travel for lofty purposes. Is it humble to believe you're above those other tourists and somehow able to commune with foreign locals?

Somebody in the comments at the link quotes Thoreau: "I have travelled a good deal in Concord." That's what crossed my my mind too. Some years ago, I traveled, alone, to Amsterdam, and the book I read there was "Walden." I felt so lonely, and wrote down the quote: "Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?"

I got to that first link via Nina, who has traveled a good deal in Europe. She's comparing showers in France, Spain, and Wisconsin. In Spain and France, the public beach showers are out in the open. At Devil's Lake State Park in Wisconsin, they are in the bathroom, and when ladies are in them with the curtain closed, they expect you not to peek, even if they are taking too long.

I thought about this for a minute. Privacy. Our big entitlement. Mine, mine, not anyone else’s. It struck me that if someone screamed at me in this way in, say, France, I’d have to think that there’s pent up anger seething there, among the people....

So I wondered if maybe we are a nation of very angry people. As the media broadcasts our general dissatisfaction (with Congress, with each other), as opportunities for expressing anger flourish (blast away at the person you don’t agree with – it’s your right!), maybe we let it all out at the expense of looking for something less... well, loud?

Wisconsinites do have this sense of entitlement, and they shout in your face about it when they feel righteously angry. Remember the Rotunda. And they do mix up the concept of having rights with the problem of deciding when and how to use them. But privacy is a big one. And women can feel quite vulnerable, especially when taken a shower. There's a reason "Psycho" is judged the scariest movie of all time.

And, by the way... that article? The one promoting "vulnerability" in traveling? It was written by men. Of course. You want to stretch yourself beyond the usual realm of everyday life and what you come up with is vulnerability? Chances are you are not a woman.

On his show tonight, Bill Maher says he's not defending Rush Limbaugh.

"I'm defending living in a country where people don't have to be afraid that they might go out of the bounds for one minute. Do we all want to be talking like White House spokesmen?... I would rather put up with Rush Limbaugh and live in a country where people do have freedom of speech. And the people who I've heard who say 'You know what, when they put pressure on his sponsors the system is working' — no, it's not. That's the system being manipulated. I lived through that 10 years ago."

***

Here's Maher's tweet that people interpreted as defending Limbaugh.

Here's the information about what happened to Maher 10 years ago. His late-night ABC show "Politically Incorrect" was canceled after a controversy over an edgy remark he made one week after the September 11th. ("We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.")

***

Maher went on to criticize that "fat fuck" Limbaugh: Right-wingers have made a "false equivalence" between Limbaugh and him. "I am a potty mouth. That's different from a misogynist."

"Suddenly... I stumbled and ended up in one of the lifeboats."

The hilarious pratfalls of the Cowardly Captain of the Costa Concordia.

Why does Gingrich keep calling Mitt Romney "timid"?

He even uses the word "timid" as a noun.

It seems like the creators of the ad decided to play around with the name "Mitt," so they flipped it over to get "tiM," flopped it back so it's "Mitt" again, then put them side by side to get "tiM-Mitt," which sounds like "timid."

It some kind of palindrome!

And then what would happen if Mitt picked Tim Pawlenty as his VP? The brains of poets will explode. But what kind of an ear for poetry do we average Americans have? Perhaps it doesn't matter whether you notice. It's harder to defend against the subliminal effects. The words seep directly into your emotions. You get these uneasy feelings about the candidate, and you don't know why.

And then again, we do hear poetry in the language of politics: I like Ike... tricky Dick.... Even when you hear it and you can defend against it, you're hooked. You do like Ike. And Dick Nixon is tricky.

"Note to bloggers: In a free-speech controversy, you can’t count on WordPress."

"WordPress Takes Down 'Bare Naked Islam' Blog After Threats From CAIR."

"A toddler was found wandering alone in Battery Park City yesterday -- hours after his troubled mother was taken to a hospital, cops said."

"It took nine hours before police realized Trevon Frazier, 3, was on his own, officials said. The tot was discovered at 9:30 a.m. inside Teardrop Park, a 2-acre green space between Warren and Murray streets by North End Avenue, officials said."

First, some numbers are missing from this NY Post story. It took 9 hours for the police to realize they taken the mother away from a toddler, but how many more hours passed before they found the child?

So, a 3-year-old was wandering around in this busy part of Manhattan for (presumably) far longer than 9 hours, and in all that time, no one helped him. I mean, it's great that no one hurt him, but why didn't anyone help him?

Perhaps he was skilled at hiding. (The mother is "emotionally disturbed," we're told.) I anticipate that some of you will say that people these days are afraid to go up to a child, because they imagine that they might be accused of child molestation or kidnapping. But think about how you would help a child in the situation. I look around when I'm in public. I notice children. When I see a child that seems to have a problem, I look around to see if he is attended. You don't go right up to a child, but you can start talking to the adults in the area about whether this child is alone. If you are male and feel especially vulnerable to accusations, see if there is a woman nearby, talk to her, and enlist her help. Or bring other men into the rescue effort. If there are no other adults anywhere around, you have a moral responsibility to approach the child somehow and try to help — especially in the city, especially at night. What is wrong with people?

"McConnell Proposes Giving Obama Authority To Raise Debt Limit Alone."

Crafty? Or pusillanimous?

"So when a white person holds objectionable views — racism, for example — we rightly condemn them."

"But when equally unacceptable views or practices have come from someone who isn’t white, we’ve been too cautious, frankly even fearful, to stand up to them."

Prime Minister David Cameron, daring to say that his country has values.

Publish Post

"There's no satisfaction to any Madoff loser that the son committed suicide."

"It's just tragedy on tragedy."

ADDED: All the newspapers have to say that Mark Madoff hanged himself with a dog leash. It's like "all the papers had to say was that Marilyn was found in the nude."

When does a single a death detail become irresistibly mentionable?

If only Flaubert were still here, adding entries to his "Dictionary of Received Ideas." At "Mark Madoff," we'd have "hanged himself with a dog leash."

I see Flaubert has an entry for "suicide": "Proof of cowardice."

Why did Obama let Clinton jerk him around over Samantha Power?

Here's the revolting and ridiculous conference call, in which Clinton campaign hacks pretend it's a giant outrage that the brilliant Samantha Power applied the word "monster" to Hillary Clinton. Power withdrew herself from the campaign, but where was Barack Obama? Why didn't he support her?

Here's Matthew K. Johnson:

For those of us who follow foreign policy and human rights policy in particular, Samantha Power is a fascinating and inspiring figure - a brilliant woman who has lectured and written equally from her heart and her head. Her Pulitzer-prize winning book A Problem From Hell is a passionately argued and beautifully written description of America's at times shameful and always complicated history during the genocides of the 20th century - it remains my favorite non-fiction book; the first one I will recommend to friends and colleagues and has inspired more than one of my own written works.... Her profession, and her approach to it, makes her a somewhat undiplomatic politcian, but I was still absolutely thrilled that she joined Obama's campaign, and was one of the first reasons that I became an Obama supporter - clearly he was attracting the top minds, many of whom were critical of the practices of the past (Power, like myself, is very critical of the Clinton years - the inaction on Rwanda, the ignorance of the power of strong leadership in the Balkans).

What do we learn from this incident? I don't need to learn that Clinton will do whatever it takes to win, and perhaps that does earn the label "monster," but let's not ignore the deficiencies in Barack Obama. How does he intend to win by shrinking away when her people pull their tricks? Where is his vigor? And, more importantly, where is his courage? It was cowardly to allow the Clinton campaign to savage Power and rip her away from him.

And now I'm wondering whether there is anything courageous about Barack Obama. Obama supporters, please: Make the case to me that the man has courage. And don't say that he opposed the war in Iraq, because I don't think, in the position he was in at the time, that it took courage to oppose the war. That served his political ambitions. Tell me something he did that was difficult to do, that took some risk to do what was right.

IN THE COMMENTS: Balfegor said:

I've read speculation that he may have used the "monster" kerfluffle as cover for tossing her overboard because in that same interview, she claimed he wasn't actually serious about getting out of Iraq in 16 months or whatever his plan was -- once he was president he'd discard his campaign plan and take a new look at the situation.

If this is the reason he let her go, it's a defense against the charge that he let Hillary push him around, but it only makes me worry more that he lacks courage. And ironically, Power's statement about how he would handle Iraq reinforced what I've been assuming, and this assumption was central to my decision to vote for him in the Wisconsin primary.

So what am I to think now that he let Power go? That what she said about Iraq was wrong or that it was right? If it's wrong, I like him less on policy. If it's right, then I'm more upset about the estrangement of Power and concerned that Obama is dishonest, saying things to get elected that he's never going to do in office. And yet — this is so troublesome for me! — I'm hoping that, if elected, he'll listen and reassess and exercise the good judgment that he now applies to the task of getting elected and the results of his presidential decisionmaking will be much more to my liking.