Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Getting Away With It
Why is it that the GOP gets away with all sorts of scandalous activities, while Democrats are tarred and feathered for trumped-up offenses? Remember 'Whitewater' and 'Monica-gate'? Can you imagine the field day conservatives would have if Democrats engaged in the sort of shenanigans and outright criminality that Peter Dikikes itemizes in this list of 34 scandals from the Dubya years, part one?
Sunday, January 16, 2005
anxiety
the 'word of the day,' courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary...
anxiety
(æzat) [ad. L. anxiett-em, n. of quality f. anxi-us: see ANXIOUS, and -TY.]
1. The quality or state of being anxious; uneasiness or trouble of mind about some uncertain event; solicitude, concern.
c1525 MORE De Quat. Noviss. Wks. 1557, 91 There dyed he without grudge, without anxietie. a1631 DONNE Select. (1840) 25 Temporal prosperity comes always accompanied with much anxiety. 1714 Spect. No. 615 1 It is the Business of Religion and Philosophy to free us from all unnecessary Anxieties. 1849 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. I. 200 The United Provinces saw with anxiety the progress of his arms.
2. Strained or solicitous desire (for or to effect some purpose).
1769 Junius Lett. i. 3 Anxiety..for the general welfare. 1833 I. TAYLOR Fanat. viii. 304 Every man's anxiety to obtain for himself the inestimable pearl of genuine knowledge.
3. Path. ‘A condition of agitation and depression, with a sensation of tightness and distress in the præcordial region.’ Syd. Soc. Lex. 1880.
1661 LOVELL Hist. Anim. & Min. 368 The paine and anxiety of the ventricle. 1732 ARBUTHNOT Rules of Diet 303 The Blood..pressing upon the heart creates great Anxieties. 1844 T. GRAHAM Dom. Med. 277 [Angina pectoris] is an acute constrictive pain..attended with anxiety, difficulty of breathing, and a sense of suffocation.
4. Psychiatry. A morbid state of mind characterized by unjustified or excessive anxiety, which may be generalized or attached to particular situations. Freq. attrib. and Comb., as anxiety-producing, -ridden adjs.; anxiety complex (cf. COMPLEX n. 3); anxiety hysteria, a form of anxiety neurosis (see quot. 1923); anxiety neurosis [tr. G. angstneurose (Freud 1895, in Neurolog. Zentralbl. XIV. 55)], anxiety state, names technically applied to such a condition of anxiety.
1904 G. S. HALL Adolescence I. iv. 285 The anxiety neurosis was relatively more common in women than in men. 1909 A. A. BRILL tr. Freud's Sel. Papers on Hysteria vi. 134, I call this symptom-complex ‘anxiety neurosis’ (Angstneurose) because the sum of its components can be grouped around the main symptom of anxiety. Ibid. vi. 136 A quantum of freely floating anxiety which controls the choice of ideas by expectation. 1912 Ibid. (ed. 2) xii. 210 We must slightly modify our procedure in anxiety-hysteria (phobias). 1913 Lancet 26 Apr. 1184/1 Anxiety dreams and anxiety neuroses represent a breaking down of this compromise. 1923 R. GABLER tr. Stekel's Conditions of Nervous Anxiety I. iii. 20 Freud..proposed to distinguish two sorts of anxiety neuroses: one with a pure somatic basis, Freud's genuine anxiety neurosis, and one with a psychical basis, which he terms ‘anxiety hysteria’. 1926 W. MCDOUGALL Outl. Abnormal Psychol. xiv. 269 The first factor in the production of the anxiety state is the bringing into activity of the instinct of flight. 1931 M. C. D'ARCY Nature of Belief ii. 39 Another cause for failure in reasoning is what has been called an anxiety state. Those who suffer from this are unable to make up their minds: they have had their balance upset by some shock to their old convictions, and as a consequence they oscillate to and fro. 1942 A. L. ROWSE Cornish Childhood 204 It undoubtedly produced an anxiety-complex, the combination of working hard with worry. 1958 New Biol. XXVII. 34 The tabu word which is presented subthreshold..is classified as an anxiety-producing word. 1960 C. DAY LEWIS Buried Day iv. 64, I went to school, entering..a world insulated, self-important, artificial, anxiety-ridden.
5. Phr. Age of Anxiety: the title of W. H. Auden's poem applied as a catch-phrase to any period characterized by anxiety or danger.
1947 W. H. AUDEN (title) The Age of Anxiety. 1953 Economist 7 Nov. 413/1 The main change is to be found between the nineteenth and the twentieth century outlooks... A survey which ignores it..fails to achieve a complete relevance to the current Age of Anxiety. 1958 Times 11 Nov. 4/4 He [sc. Jackson Pollock] was very much an American product of the age of anxiety.
anxiety
(æzat) [ad. L. anxiett-em, n. of quality f. anxi-us: see ANXIOUS, and -TY.]
1. The quality or state of being anxious; uneasiness or trouble of mind about some uncertain event; solicitude, concern.
c1525 MORE De Quat. Noviss. Wks. 1557, 91 There dyed he without grudge, without anxietie. a1631 DONNE Select. (1840) 25 Temporal prosperity comes always accompanied with much anxiety. 1714 Spect. No. 615 1 It is the Business of Religion and Philosophy to free us from all unnecessary Anxieties. 1849 MACAULAY Hist. Eng. I. 200 The United Provinces saw with anxiety the progress of his arms.
2. Strained or solicitous desire (for or to effect some purpose).
1769 Junius Lett. i. 3 Anxiety..for the general welfare. 1833 I. TAYLOR Fanat. viii. 304 Every man's anxiety to obtain for himself the inestimable pearl of genuine knowledge.
3. Path. ‘A condition of agitation and depression, with a sensation of tightness and distress in the præcordial region.’ Syd. Soc. Lex. 1880.
1661 LOVELL Hist. Anim. & Min. 368 The paine and anxiety of the ventricle. 1732 ARBUTHNOT Rules of Diet 303 The Blood..pressing upon the heart creates great Anxieties. 1844 T. GRAHAM Dom. Med. 277 [Angina pectoris] is an acute constrictive pain..attended with anxiety, difficulty of breathing, and a sense of suffocation.
4. Psychiatry. A morbid state of mind characterized by unjustified or excessive anxiety, which may be generalized or attached to particular situations. Freq. attrib. and Comb., as anxiety-producing, -ridden adjs.; anxiety complex (cf. COMPLEX n. 3); anxiety hysteria, a form of anxiety neurosis (see quot. 1923); anxiety neurosis [tr. G. angstneurose (Freud 1895, in Neurolog. Zentralbl. XIV. 55)], anxiety state, names technically applied to such a condition of anxiety.
1904 G. S. HALL Adolescence I. iv. 285 The anxiety neurosis was relatively more common in women than in men. 1909 A. A. BRILL tr. Freud's Sel. Papers on Hysteria vi. 134, I call this symptom-complex ‘anxiety neurosis’ (Angstneurose) because the sum of its components can be grouped around the main symptom of anxiety. Ibid. vi. 136 A quantum of freely floating anxiety which controls the choice of ideas by expectation. 1912 Ibid. (ed. 2) xii. 210 We must slightly modify our procedure in anxiety-hysteria (phobias). 1913 Lancet 26 Apr. 1184/1 Anxiety dreams and anxiety neuroses represent a breaking down of this compromise. 1923 R. GABLER tr. Stekel's Conditions of Nervous Anxiety I. iii. 20 Freud..proposed to distinguish two sorts of anxiety neuroses: one with a pure somatic basis, Freud's genuine anxiety neurosis, and one with a psychical basis, which he terms ‘anxiety hysteria’. 1926 W. MCDOUGALL Outl. Abnormal Psychol. xiv. 269 The first factor in the production of the anxiety state is the bringing into activity of the instinct of flight. 1931 M. C. D'ARCY Nature of Belief ii. 39 Another cause for failure in reasoning is what has been called an anxiety state. Those who suffer from this are unable to make up their minds: they have had their balance upset by some shock to their old convictions, and as a consequence they oscillate to and fro. 1942 A. L. ROWSE Cornish Childhood 204 It undoubtedly produced an anxiety-complex, the combination of working hard with worry. 1958 New Biol. XXVII. 34 The tabu word which is presented subthreshold..is classified as an anxiety-producing word. 1960 C. DAY LEWIS Buried Day iv. 64, I went to school, entering..a world insulated, self-important, artificial, anxiety-ridden.
5. Phr. Age of Anxiety: the title of W. H. Auden's poem applied as a catch-phrase to any period characterized by anxiety or danger.
1947 W. H. AUDEN (title) The Age of Anxiety. 1953 Economist 7 Nov. 413/1 The main change is to be found between the nineteenth and the twentieth century outlooks... A survey which ignores it..fails to achieve a complete relevance to the current Age of Anxiety. 1958 Times 11 Nov. 4/4 He [sc. Jackson Pollock] was very much an American product of the age of anxiety.
Friday, January 14, 2005
Missing That Swedish Egalitarianism...
I'm back in the U.S. again, and this article helps explain why I, and especialy Ira, experience a sense of culture shock when we leave Sweden, a country's whose egalitarian social policies I would like to see emulated in America.
To learn more about life in Sverige, read Daniel Brook's "How Sweden Tweaked the Washington Consensus" in Dissent. Even after spending a fair amount of time there in the last couple years, I was surprised to learn that Sweden has the same proportion of foreign-born immigrants as the U.S.
As Ph.D. students in English, we're both members of the working poor in the States with all the worries that economic insecurity brings. Yesterday, for example, I received an ambiguous notice indicating that two visits I made to the UIC Medical Center last semester might night be covered by my student health insurance. It's damn hard to stay focused on preparing for exams, coming up with a dissertation that demonstrates one's professional competence (i.e. making an 'original contribution' to one's academic field), and teach overcrowded courses to undergrads when you're going into debt (for a job that may be non-existent) and still have to worry about paying the rent.
Best, to tarry with, rather than dwell on, the negative when there's work and more work to be done...
To learn more about life in Sverige, read Daniel Brook's "How Sweden Tweaked the Washington Consensus" in Dissent. Even after spending a fair amount of time there in the last couple years, I was surprised to learn that Sweden has the same proportion of foreign-born immigrants as the U.S.
As Ph.D. students in English, we're both members of the working poor in the States with all the worries that economic insecurity brings. Yesterday, for example, I received an ambiguous notice indicating that two visits I made to the UIC Medical Center last semester might night be covered by my student health insurance. It's damn hard to stay focused on preparing for exams, coming up with a dissertation that demonstrates one's professional competence (i.e. making an 'original contribution' to one's academic field), and teach overcrowded courses to undergrads when you're going into debt (for a job that may be non-existent) and still have to worry about paying the rent.
Best, to tarry with, rather than dwell on, the negative when there's work and more work to be done...
Monday, January 03, 2005
DeeJayKay: Is It you Dennis, or Just a Brilliant Disguise?
Can it really be that my favorite Democratic presidential candidate, Dennis Kucinch, is blogging? And under the name of DeeJayKay no less?
If Kucinich is behind this blog, I hope he keeps it up. For one, it suggests that he's smart, that he's a genuine character, and that he's got beliefs which he's willing to endorse and stand behind. Secondly, the Net just might be the only place in our right-wing, corporate-dominated, mediasphere where someone as 'left of center' as Kucinich can get a hearing.
If this ain't Dennis, who're the merry pranksters behind it?
If Kucinich is behind this blog, I hope he keeps it up. For one, it suggests that he's smart, that he's a genuine character, and that he's got beliefs which he's willing to endorse and stand behind. Secondly, the Net just might be the only place in our right-wing, corporate-dominated, mediasphere where someone as 'left of center' as Kucinich can get a hearing.
If this ain't Dennis, who're the merry pranksters behind it?
Wal-Mart: Economic Exploitation At Its Worst
Living in Chicago and Gävle, it's fairly easy for me to take a moral stand against shopping at Wal-Mart because there aren't currently any of the mega-stores in the immediate vicinity of where I live. However, friends and family back in Nebraska, for example, shop there on a regular basis. Prices are generally lower, and it’s convenient to buy everything at one location. Nonetheless, I'd like to encourage them to read "Inside the Leviathan," an essay by Simon Head that reviews recent books and publications that analyze the ascendancy of Wal-Mart around the globe, and consider whether or not they want to continue giving their money to this particular corporation.
The conclusion reached by these publications is that Wal-Mart’s ‘success’ is based on the exploitation of the working poor. No surprise there. But Sam Walton’s managerial techniques—such as intentionally understaffing all stores so that managers will be forced to illegally require employees to work extra hours for no pay, hiring store spies to police ‘time theft’ by the employees, issuing arbitrary punishments in order to make it easier to fire employees, and practicing sex discrimination against women workers who have complained about the corporate malfeasance—don’t just violate Wal-Mart employees’ rights. In the big picture, everybody suffers (except, perhaps, the rich), as Wal-Mart pushes wages and benefits down in the communities in which it locates and forces taxpayers to subsidize the welfare needed to provide employees with the health care, housing, etc. that their meager wages can’t cover:
One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.
Decide for yourself if, in the long run, it’s worth saving a few bucks to support a ruthless system that is wrecking havoc on the economy and degrading workers around the globe.
The conclusion reached by these publications is that Wal-Mart’s ‘success’ is based on the exploitation of the working poor. No surprise there. But Sam Walton’s managerial techniques—such as intentionally understaffing all stores so that managers will be forced to illegally require employees to work extra hours for no pay, hiring store spies to police ‘time theft’ by the employees, issuing arbitrary punishments in order to make it easier to fire employees, and practicing sex discrimination against women workers who have complained about the corporate malfeasance—don’t just violate Wal-Mart employees’ rights. In the big picture, everybody suffers (except, perhaps, the rich), as Wal-Mart pushes wages and benefits down in the communities in which it locates and forces taxpayers to subsidize the welfare needed to provide employees with the health care, housing, etc. that their meager wages can’t cover:
One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees.
Decide for yourself if, in the long run, it’s worth saving a few bucks to support a ruthless system that is wrecking havoc on the economy and degrading workers around the globe.
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