Paid Parental Leave

Matt Yglesias points out a sad truth about the U.S.:

It's standard for countries to offer a certain amount of mandatory paid parental leave as a recognition of the special role parents play in our society (in effect, this measure lowers everyone’s wages slightly and then provides a benefit only to parents, thus enacting a small transfer of resources from non-parents to parents). In the United States, everything must surrender beneath the all-powerful God of flexible labor markets, and "pro-family" conservatives seem fine with that.

I might add that these same "flexible labor markets" are the same ones that dump employees at the first sign of trouble, so I don't understand why we shouldn't push for some basic benefits as part of this trade off. Plus, as I keep hearing these days, our economy is based upon people spending their discretionary income; so if you want new parents - a large portion of society! - to spend more, you should give them incentives and tools to do so, rather then forcing them to spend their vacation time and money to stay home with their newborns.

Quote of the Day

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with what it loves."
- C.G. Jung

First Line of "Ghostwritten"

"Who was blowing on the nape of my neck?"
- David Mitchell, Ghostwritten

This is an excellent book so far (three chapters in). Shaping up to my my favorite since i took on Cloud Atlas

Quote of the Day

Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity -- most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to being with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.
--Gravity's Rainbow, p. 412

I Want One!

Comix word-balloon shelves. Brilliant.

Ticketmaster is still Evil, lest anyone forget

So I'm purchasing tickets to see The Church down and some corporate monstrosity of a club in Foxborough. So of course they use Ticketmaster to sell their tickets. Tix are only $20.00 for GA, a deal for unemployed saps like me. However, when the time comes to actually buy the tix, what do I see?

Total Convenience Charge(s): US $4.75 x 1
Order Processing Charge(s): US $3.00

This shit is outrageous. There's no reason for these charges, other then Ticketwhore making more money off of the back of honest musicians. And the inconvenient fact that it's at least a 30 minute drive for me to drive down to this place so I could buy the tix myself. So the end result is that I just paid $7.75 to avoid an hour on the road. That's "convenience"?

It's the same thing with the "Convenience Fees" charged by ATMs. No reason to charge them other than corporations can do it with no consequences.

Not going to concerts recently means that I haven't had to deal with Ticketmaster. I forgot how dirty it makes me feel.

It's about time

Tito starts to realize that Nick Green, of all people, is better than Lugo:

The shortstop situation is starting to look less like an even platoon and instead is beginning to look like a job that is more Green's, less Lugo's.