Columbia University’s Spatial Information Design Lab brings us Million Dollar Blocks, a series of maps of American cities that show the cost of incarcerating residents of single city blocks. Shown above is Brooklyn, here’s New Orleans.
2009/08/24
“Making Policy Public”
The Center for Urban Pedagogy brings us a series of posters that “use graphic design to explore and explain public policy” in their Making Policy Public project. Their issues so far include one on predatory equity, a guide to street vending in New York (as seen above), a guide to the port system in the United States that helps longshoremen organize, and a guide to social security. They are good looking, and the idea is excellent. I haven’t read the posters (you can’t see the text online), so I don’t know what their politics are, or how well their topics are researched, so keep that in mind.
In a similar vein, John Aloysius Cogan Jr., executive counsel for the Rhode Island Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner, wrote an Op-Ed in the Times on August 19th about making health insurance policies easier for people to understand.
[via Candy Chang]
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2009/05/26
‘Ah, but the girl…’
“The wary humor Israelis felt about Kissinger’s style was reflected in an old matchmaking joke that was told about him at the time. Kissinger decides to play matchmaker and informs a poor peasant that he has found the perfect wife for his son. ‘But I never meddle in my son’s affairs,’ says the peasant.
‘Ah, but the girl is the daughter of Lord Rothschild,’ says Kissinger.
‘Well, in that case…’
Then Kissinger goes to Lord Rothschild. ‘I have the perfect husband for your daughter,’ he says.
‘But she’s too young,’ Lord Rothschild protests.
‘Ah, but the boy is a vice president of the World Bank.’
‘Well, in that case…’
Then Kissinger goes to the president of the World Bank, saying, ‘Have I got a vice president for you.’
‘But we don’t need another one.’
‘Ah,’ says Kissinger, ‘but he is the son-in-law of Lord Rothschild.’”
An Israeli joke about Henry Kissinger told during Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” in the wake of the October War. As quoted from Walter Isaacson’s 1992 book Kissinger: A Biography, published by Simon & Schuster (which I recommend).
2009/05/25
The “Vicars of Vacillation”
“Richard M. Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew celebrate their nomination at the Republican National Convention, June 1968.” Taken by White House Photographer Ollie Atkins. From the Oliver Atkins Photograph Collection.
Nixon Vice-President Spiro Agnew, who resigned in the midst of the October War in 1973 and was replaced by Gerald Ford, was famous for his alliterative insults. Here’s a passage from a Time Magazine article about him:
“In a 1969 speech against war protesters, he said, ‘A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.’ ‘In the United States today,’ Agnew told a 1970 audience in San Diego, ‘we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.’ He went after ‘pusillanimous pussyfooters’ and ‘vicars of vacillation’ and ‘the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.’”
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2009/04/26
Breaking News Alert
The New York Tmes
Sunday, April 26, 2009 — 2:20 PM ET
——-
New York Times Swine Flu News Alert Prompts U.S. to Declare Public Mental Health Emergency
American health officials on Sunday declared a public mental health emergency over increasing cases of psychosomatic swine flu, saying that they had confirmed 2.75 million cases of the disease in the United States and expected to see more as investigators review tweets, emails, blog posts, and Facebook status updates.
Officials reiterated that swine flu is “a lot like the flu flu” and that “if you wash your hands, you’ll probably be fine,” but acknowledged that most Americans affected with psychosomatic swine flu had probably not read the second paragraph of the News Alert where it was reported that “most of the cases had been mild” and that “the emergency declaration frees resources to be used toward diagnosing or preventing additional cases and releases money for more antiviral drugs.” The officials were similarly resigned that people won’t read this second paragraph either. An unnamed CDC source who asked for anonymity because he’s not authorized to make ‘correlation/causation’ statements said that most hysteria in the United States can be blamed on 24 hour cable news, including “Howard Dean,” “the financial crisis,” and “rioting due to psychosomatic swine flu.”
[The actual news alert was sent out at 1:45ish EDT and linked to this story.]
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2009/04/13
Head for the hills!
(There were some audition videos for this campaign up on YouTube but they got taken down before I got to see them.)
[Via Green Mountain Daily]
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2009/03/28
Former Middlebury president John McCardell is working to lower the drinking age in the United States back to 18. His organization Choose Responsibility and its partner organization the Amethyst Initiative have attracted plenty of attention recently, with this piece on 60 Minutes and another on the Colbert Report.
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