Speaking of the Grinch...

The big news lately is Prince Joffrey's President Trump's government shutdown temper tantrum. But that's not the worst thing he's done this week. That honor would have to go to his decision to bypass congress and impose restrictions on basic SNAP food assistance to low income Americans.

Congress debated such measures for a good part of this year and wound up doing the right thing. Apparently, the president and his cronies couldn't let that good deed go unspoiled. You can read more about what that means here and here.

It's not over by any means. There are likely to be political as well as legal challenges. It's a good idea now to prepare to flood USDA inboxes when the proposed changes are up for public comment. Things might have to get a bit more interesting down the road.

IN A RELATED STORY...spiders could at least theoretically eat all humans on earth in one year.

In the forest of the night

Spider, spider burning bright...

Last night, I took the dog on a walk in the woods while wearing a headlamp. It had been raining, so there was water on the grass. As we trudged up and down the hill, I saw what looked like a skyfil  of little diamonds moving on the ground. A closer look revealed, a closer look revealed a multitude of spiders busy going about their nocturnal business. There had to be thousands of them.

I guess I knew that there were spiders on the hill. And I guess I didn't expect them to go to be at sundown. Still, there was all this activity going on all around me that I'd never been aware of before.

I think that's a pretty good metaphor for life. There's stuff we don't have a hint about going on all around us all the time. Thoreau said "Only that day dawns to which we are awake" I guess something like that is true of the night as well.

Philosophical bugs

It's interesting how references to animals show up in philosophy. Plato put in a good word for some dogs in The Republic, comparing their traits of bravery and loyalty to guardians of the ideal city.

Hegel remarked that the owl of Minerva (Roman name for the Greek wisdom goddess Athena) "spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk." I take that to mean that we mostly figure things out when they are over--or when it's too late.

Wittgenstein said that if a lion could speak we couldn't understand him (I disagree with him for reasons elaborated here).

Isaiah Berlin wrote a famous essay about foxes and hedgehogs, quoting a Greek poet as saying that "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

I recently stumbled on another philosophical animal reference from Francis Bacon (1561-1626) from his New Organon:

Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.

I don't usually think of myself as a Bacon fan, but that is a pretty good way of stating the need for balance between data and perspective.

Plus, bugs are cool.

Voice of thunder

What is it about Abraham Lincoln that makes him the subject of such endless fascination? I would have trouble counting the number of books I've read about this or that aspect of Lincoln's life. If he was like most people, at some point I'd have my fill.

I love Bob Dylan, for example, but I think my life total for books about him is three. I've probably done that many Lincoln books in the last year, including one I just finished, Doris Kearns Goodwin's justly famous Team of Rivals. It wouldn't surprise me if I hit another Lincoln book or two before the year is out.

There is something epic and, to use an overused word, awesome, about this man and the time he lived through.

One thing that strikes me now is that Lincoln is how his life illustrates the power of stories. One thing that many people loved about him--and that drove some people crazy--was his constant use of stories. Some of these shed light on a situation. Some were just silly. Some perfectly summed up a complex situation.

I remember reading yet another book about Lincoln several years ago by James M. McPherson that suggested one reason the North won the war was that Lincoln was better at metaphors than his counterpart Jefferson Davis.

I think he has a point, although in fairness I must say, as Confederate General George Pickett once did about why his famous charge failed, that the Union Army had something to do with it.

I may return to that theme of the power of story in the next few posts, which may be irregular as I'll be on the road.

UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT. Here's the Washington Post on the impact of the sequester on the Head Start program, its children and their parents.

INEQUALITY MATTERS. From CNN, here's a suggested list of things to read about it.

URGENT WEIRD SPIDER UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A wild night and day

With headlines spilling over the media and web about the disaster in Texas and the chaotic times in Boston, I'm not even going to try to comment. I can't even keep up with events. My friend Ken Ward at the Charleston Gazette made a couple good points on Twitter that can help put headlines in perspective. Here's one:

...Saw comparison of gun deaths vs terrorism deaths-30,000 gun deaths per year in US, 3,400 terror deaths since 1970.

Here's the accompanying link.

He added the following:

...Keep in mind: 4,500 deaths per year in workplace accidents, 50,000 per year from occupational diseases.

And here's that link.

Speaking of Twitter, when I first heard of it, it made no sense at all to me. However, when there's something going down that you want to follow, there's probably no quicker way to get information, even though some of it is going to be noise rather than signal.

Here's hoping for some slow news days. Meanwhile, here are some things to check out:

UPPER BIG BRANCH. Also from Ken Ward, here's an interesting article that suggests former Massey Energy executives and board members may be targets of criminal investigations.

A GOOD PIECE ON GUNS from someone who knows a thing or two about them here.

MEDICAID EXPANSION. It looks like Arkansas is going to do it, albeit with publicly subsidized private insurance. Better than nothing though. Still waiting to here about WV...

THAT "OBAMACARE" TRAIN WRECK dissected here.

ON A STRESSFUL DAY FOR THE COUNTRY AND WORLD, it might be good to look at some calming images. Check out these of bat-eating spiders! Who loves you?

DON'T EVEN ASK ABOUT THE GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL

A man is made Providence to himself

The theme at Goat Rope these days, aside from occasional rants when things get on my last nerve, is the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. At this point, I'm on his Harvard Divinity School Address, which managed to tick off even Unitarians.

As I've mentioned before, Emerson and Thoreau were both forerunners of American Buddhism. In this essay, Emerson expounds a subtle idea of karma whereby people become more like what they invest themselves in. Compassionate people get better at compassion. Greedy people get better at greed. He sees this as working like a law of nature:

See how this rapid intrinsic energy worketh everywhere, righting wrongs, correcting appearances, and bringing up facts to a harmony with thoughts. Its operation in life, though slow to the senses, is, at last, as sure as in the soul. By it, a man is made the Providence to himself, dispensing good to his goodness, and evil to his sin. Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie--for example, the taint of vanity, the least attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance--will instantly vitiate the effect. But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness. See again the perfection of the Law as it applies itself to the affections, and becomes the law of society. As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own violition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell.

To which I can only say, with Hamlet's friend Horatio, so have I heard and do in part believe it. Or I'd like to  anyway.

COAL COUNTIES AND DEATH RATES seem to go hand in hand.

PLEASE CHECK OUT THIS WEBSITE to learn more about Medicaid expansion, whether you can qualify for coverage, and how you can take steps to make sure it happens here.

I CAN HANDLE BATS EATING SPIDERS, but the thought of spiders eating bats kind of grosses me out. Maybe it's a mammalian solidarity thing.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A good time for writing

The period of time between 1850 and 1855 has sometimes been thought of as a golden age of American literature. (In terms of politics, race and slavery, it was anything but that.) Still, this was a time when great writers bloomed in this country. Think Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville and Whitman.

In 1941, F.O. Matthiessen published an enduring work titled American Renaissance: Art and Experience in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. I actually read through all 600 and some pages of it a few years back, not that I remember a whole lot about it at the moment.

In recent years, predictably, Matthiessen has been criticized for emphasizing white male writers. After all, this was also the time of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Emily Dickinson, not to mention Frederick Douglass.

I am, however, not interested in staging literary show trials in the English department.

Instead, I must admit that I have turned to these writers, most of them anyway, for sustenance over the years and am a better person for it. I have wallowed in Thoreau and Whitman. I am wallowing again in Melville even now. I love Hawthorne's guided tours to the Dark Side.

But one of these writers is still a bit of a mystery to me and over the next spell I'm going to try to "settle accounts," as the Marxists used to say, with him. I am referring to Ralph Waldo Emerson. I can't decide whether he was a wise man or a wind bag or some combination of the above.

So over the next few weeks, as the WV legislature ramps up and things get crazy here, this blog is going to put Waldo through his paces. I'll share some key ideas from his essays and interesting facts about his life and some interesting quotes and see what there is to keep and what to discard.

Stay tuned...

STATE OF THE UNION? Here's one opinion on that.

URGENT JAPANESE FLYING SQUID UPDATE here.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN BRAZIL, it's raining spiders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Really?

I woke up this morning (sounds like the beginning of a song) and, after completing a few rituals, began scanning the web for news. I was a bit disappointed to find this story which said that the Obama administration is considering going after the states that recently took steps towards legalizing marijuana.

I say again, really?

Full disclosure: I am not and never have been a marijuana person. When I was in junior high, I would gladly have done any drug I could find. Alas, the only drug I could find at the time was gasoline to sniff, which may explain a few billion missing brain cells. In the end, I'm OK with missing the drug train. I figure if alcohol was good enough for my old man and my Scotch-Irish ancestors, it's good enough for me.

But still...the whole war on drugs thing has proven to be about as good an idea as Prohibition. It kind of is the same idea. It has had all kinds of unintended consequences, nearly all of which are bad. It's been pointed out over and over that marijuana is not responsible for anything remotely resembling the body count racked up by alcohol and tobacco.

Let's face it: all law enforcement is selective. Shouldn't the administration have bigger fish to fry? And aren't there better uses for federal resources these days?

JUST ONE LINK, BUT ONE TOO GOOD TO IGNORE. Zombie-ism...it isn't just for humans anymore. Here's a look at zombie spiders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Tiger mom, revisited

Once upon a time, there was an orphan baby chick. It tried to seek solace from other hens, but only got pecked. As for the father, roosters aren't big on parental responsibility.



This baby obviously needed a mother. We found one, a badly mauled stuffed tiger toy, in our dog's abundant toy box.



The baby thrived. Here's a look at the happy family today.

FOR MASOCHISTS ONLY. Here's a whole slew of recent articles on the BS of Ayn Rand.

IF YOU WANT TO READ ABOUT MORE BAD IDEAS, here's a slew of info on Paul Ryan's budget.

PRIVATIZATION. Here's a look at its dark side.

TROGLORAPTERS, ANYONE? If you need  a cave spider fix, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Courthouse blues

I have visited more courthouses this spring and summer than the average career criminal whilst roaming the state to drum up support for a Future Fund for West Virginia (aka a natural resources trust fund). One thing I noticed up north is the way swarms of abstractors and gas company agents are combing through property records looking for suckers to exploit  land owners willing to engage in mutually beneficial natural gas transactions.

The wheels of commerce and all that. But it kind of gave me the creeps. Anyhow, here's a good article from the Daily Mail about the rush on courthouses in Marcellus Shale country.

ON THAT NOTE, Stephen Colbert tweeted this today:

I hope they find water on Mars. That means we'll be able to frack there.

OLYMPIC MOMENT. A hearty Goat Rope congratulations goes out to Kayla Harrison, who became the first American athlete ever to win an Olympic gold medal in judo. The martial art has been an Olympic sport since the 1964 Tokyo games. By way of background, judo grew out of ju jitsu, the samurai's art of weaponless fighting. Judo's founder, Dr. Jigoro Kano, studied various ju jitsu styles, took out the nasty stuff and came up with a sport that was safe to practice while also retaining its effectiveness.

I HAVEN'T READ THIS YET, but you can do it and tell me about it. It's a report from the Congressional Research Service on mountaintop removal mining.

URGENT CANNIBALISTIC SPIDER UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Beware the bananas

The staff of this blog never rests in its quest for the most interesting and relevant news stories around the world. Today's post is only the latest example.

The German paper Spiegel reports the following:

It is a nightmare scenario for any supermarket. Last Friday morning, as an employee was unloading bananas from a crate in a large grocery store in south-western Germany, a large, greyish, hairy spider about 13 centimeters long jumped out and scuttled under a shelf.

The member of staff checked the Internet for images of spiders resembling the one he had just seen, and was shocked when he found a match: a Brazilian Wandering Spider (Phoneutria nigriventer), billed as one of the world's most venomous and aggressive spiders.

(For freedom lovers, 13 centimeters is over 5 inches.)

Despite a major spider-hunt, the critter in question has not been found. Spiegel continues:

Anyone encountering it should be very careful. Amy Stewart, the author of "Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects," cites the Brazilian Wandering Spider as one of her top five worst bugs. A bite doesn't just cause severe pain, but also leads to breathing problems, paralysis and even death.

That isn't all. Stewart writes that the creature is fearless and so aggressive that it will stand on its hind legs, prepared to take on any challenger, however big.

(Spiegel is too delicate to add that the spider's bite has bizarre, unpleasant and seemingly opposite effects on the unmentionable parts of human males.)

All of this is to say, be cautious around bananas.

I ask again, is this a full service blog or what?

BUDGET BLOWHARDS discussed here.

OH GOOD. WV Senator Joe Manchin gets Koch brothers money.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

In the spirit of fair play

I don't always agree with WV Senator Joe Manchin on issues regarding Medicaid, the federal budget and such, but in the spirit of fair play, I think he is right on directing priorities away from war spending in Afghanistan.

Manchin was quoted in the New York Times as saying

We can no longer, in good conscience, cut services and programs at home, raise taxes or — and this is very important — lift the debt ceiling in order to fund nation-building in Afghanistan. The question the president faces — we all face — is quite simple: Will we choose to rebuild America or Afghanistan? In light of our nation’s fiscal peril, we cannot do both.

And this is from the Charleston Gazette:

"We cannot afford to pursue our current costly strategy in Afghanistan when we face devastating cuts and a death spiral of debt here at home," Manchin said.

KOCHED UP. Here's an item with a video on the right wing noise machine.

UNEMPLOYMENT. Here's Jared Bernstein on trends over time.

CUTTING MEDICAID means cutting jobs.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING HOW SPIDERS SPIN WEBS IN ZERO GRAVITY, click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Short rations again

No time to ramble today, but here are a few items that caught my eye:

FAMILIES CHALLENGE MASSEY SALE. A lawsuit is in the works challenging the sale of Massey Energy to Alpha Natural Resources in the wake of the Upper Big Branch disaster and the facts that have emerged since it occurred in April 2010.

"RIGHT WING SOCIAL ENGINEERING." Congressman Paul Ryan's plan to gut Medicare continues to generate political blowback. More on that here.

SPEAKING OF POLITICS, bees have an interesting system.

WHEN SPIDERS ATTACK,they do it really well.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Dealing with monsters

Say what you want about human conflict, but literature would be a lot duller--or maybe even non-existent--without it. I remember a high school English class when a teacher explained that pretty much all of it had to do with conflict, either between characters, between characters and nature, or within characters. There might be some exceptions in this post-modern age, but he had a point

Imagine, for example, how dull Beowulf might have been if the creatures in it were expert at resolving conflict. In the epic, the monster Grendel is bothered by the noise of king Hrothgar's mead hall, where he and his boys revel all night:

Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark,
nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him
to hear the din of the loud banquet
every day in the hall, the harp being struck
and the clear song of a skilled poet
telling with mastery of man's beginnings.

Eventually, he starts eating people there. Imagine instead this scenario instead:

GRENDEL: Sorry to bother you, Hrothgar, but I've been having a little trouble sleeping since you built your mead hall. I know that this is very important for you but would appreciate it if you could keep the noise level down a bit. The thing is, I have a tendency to eat a bunch of people when I get upset and I'd rather that not happen.

HROTHGAR: Gee, Grendel, I never thought about that. We always have such a great time drinking, feasting and listening to the bard that I never thought this could bother anybody. But you have to understand that someone in my position has to have a place like that to give gifts and keep my boys happy--otherwise they wouldn't fight for me when I needed it.

GRENDEL: I totally appreciate that. Maybe we could agree that you guys could revel for a while but try keeping it down after, say, midnight. And since you've recently converted to Catholicism, maybe you could try something like bingo when it gets late.

HROTHGAR: Bingo...I never thought of that. How about we try this for a few weeks and see how it works: we'll tone it down after midnight and will even cut you in some livestock every now and then if you'll refrain from eating my guys.

GRENDEL: Deal. Thanks! See you around.

That just doesn't do it for me.

DUMBING DOWN. Here's Leonard Pitts on our falling away from science.

SWORDS TO PLOWS. Literally. This story is about an effort to help combat veterans from the current wars to try their hand at organic farming.

FOOD, FLOODS AND CLIMATE discussed here.

URGENT BLACK WIDOW SPIDER UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

No crony capitalism here, boss!

Talk about a steaming load.

Lots of people are aware of Arizona's tough and controversial anti-immigration bill. NPR yesterday morning had an interesting feature about what REALLY went on behind the scenes.

It turns out a private, for profit corporation, Corrections Corporation of America, sees locking up immigrants as a potential growing new "market" for their business. CCA types and sympathetic politicians hooked up at a meeting of the conservative legislative group ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and drew up a model bill. CCA and allied groups also provided campaign contributions to most of the sponsors.

The idea was that the immigrants to be locked up by the new law would be detained at a private prison run by CCA.

It's just business. And perfectly legal.

It does kind of make one wonder, however, what the next stunt to increase market share might be...

SPEAKING OF STEAMING LOADS, here's a piece on Wall Street's effort to shift the blame for the economic meltdown to poor people.

BALLOT INITIATIVES. Here's a look at a few that are on the menu around the country. I'm so glad WV doesn't do this stuff.

LOOKING AHEAD. Here's one gloomy prognostication.

HEALTH CARE REFORM. WV Senator Jay Rockefeller was a champion of health care reform and he's not running away from it now.

EARLY HUMANS may have hit the road earlier than had previously been thought.

NATURE RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW DEPARTMENT. Assassin bugs have a neat trick for making a meal of spiders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A law of nature

Charles Darwin's ideas of evolution by means of natural selection were first taken up (with many misunderstandings) by those on the political right. Part of the reason for this was that early expositions of Darwinism emphasized competition. It would take a while for evolutionary biologists to look at the other side of the equation by investigating cooperation and altruism.

More to the point, in the Gilded Age, robber barons and financial aristocrats found in them a great rationalization for their own wealth and power.

Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie wrote that while capitalist competition may harm some individuals, "it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department."

(That phrase "survival of the fittest," by the way, has its origin in the writings of British philosopher Herbert Spencer rather than Darwin himself.)

In a similar vein, John D. Rockefeller Jr. wrote that

The growth of large business is merely a survival of the fittest...This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working our of a law of nature and a law of God.

As the Church Lady would say on the old Saturday Night Live, "Isn't that convenient?"

SPEAKING OF EVOLUTION, this article suggests that our relationships with animals helped make us human.

FORECLOSURES. Here's Dean Baker and what the government could do about the foreclosure crisis but isn't (so far).

FUN LIST. From The Nation, here's a list of the 50 most influential progressive leaders of the 20th century.

CHARLOTTE'S WEB ON STEROIDS. A spider in Madagascar weaves the world's biggest webs with the toughest natural material yet discovered.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Radical minds

It would be hard to think of two people more different than Henry David Thoreau and Karl Marx, but the transcendentalist and the red exile sounded alike in their critique of early capitalism.

Particularly in his early writings, the young Marx denounced the alienation of the workers and their degradation in an industrial system that reduced the individual worker to "an appendage to the machine." The hyper-individualist Henry picked up on the same theme, noting in Walden that

lo! men have become the tools of their tools.

He also noted that

the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer

This rant about social inequality from Walden could go toe to toe with those in the Communist Manifesto:

The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and "silent poor." The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which everywhere border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood-pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world.

I'm not sure what he thought could be done about it, given his distaste for collective action, but at least he saw it. It's also interesting that he almost accidentally gave the world a blueprint for nonviolent action in his essay on civil disobedience.

YOUR GOOD DEED FOR THE DAY would be to call your US senators and urge them to pass HB 4213 with an amendment to extend COBRA benefits and help states avoid layoffs and cuts to services by extending the federal Medicaid match for another six months. The bill would extend key provisions of the recovery act, including jobless benefits. Families USA has provided a toll free number: 888-340-6521.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, the public supports continuing the benefits mentioned above.

MYOPIA. Economist Dean Baker takes another swipe at deficit hawks. If they win, he argues, the recession and accompanying unemployment are likely to linger.

SPIDER GIRL FIGHTS can be deadly.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Round about the cauldron go

Painting by William Rimmer by way of Wikipedia.

I've always subscribed to the view that a mind is a terrible thing not to mess with--especially a young one. This was inherited from my late father, who read a lot of Poe to me when I was a little kid, scaring the bejesus out of me to my immense delight.

When my turn came, I attempted to pass on that tradition by reading aloud and making my kids listen to all kinds of things that are not standard kiddie fair. Depending on their age, these have included things like the poetry of William Blake and Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, about which they said things like, "Let me get this straight: this guy just got turned into a giant bug and he's worried about being late for work?"

Shakespeare found its way into the unofficial curriculum by means of a comic book full text edition of Macbeth. Both kids were fond of it, but it was a particular favorite of my oldest, who had large sections of it memorized at an early age. The witches of course were a particular favorite, but she also liked things like "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."

There is something endearing about hearing a little kid go around babbling "Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed..."

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS. Here's more from the AFLCIO blog on the need for jobs and what the US Senate can do about it.

ARE YOU FEELING APOCALYPTIC? Lots of people are.

NEANDERTHALS may have been smarter (and more artistic) than we thought.

URGENT BIG SPIDER UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Short rations again

No time for rants today, other than a wish that the Good Fairy, pictured above, grants everyone a good day. In the meantime, these things struck my eyes:

WHAT'S IN THE HOUSE HEALTH CARE REFORM BILL for us? Click here.

UNLEASHING CAPITALISM? Unregulated capitalism didn't do too well in a recent global poll.

DOA? Some say climate change legislation isn't likely this year or next. Here's a summary of info from Ken Ward's Coal Tattoo.

IT'S OFFICIAL. Not only are pigs smart, but they like mirrors.

NEED A SPIDER FIX? Click here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

That's just the stress talking

Workplace stress is probably not a major issue for this green heron.

Goat Rope has been running an off and on series lately about the links between social status health. The short version is that there is a big connection between the two and that people's health tends to be better the higher up the social ladder they are.

It's not just that people who are poor and/or have relatively low social standing get sicker and die younger, although that is true as far as it goes. Rather, it's like a social gradient that works all the way up or down. People who have very high status are healthier than people who just have high status. And so it goes.

British epidemiologist Michael Marmot, who has spent decades studying this, identifies some key components that might explain the gradient. One big one has to do with autonomy and a sense of control. This is especially true in the workplace.

While most people on the job talk about stress, research indicates that not all stresses are created equal. As Marmot puts it,

Ask more successful people if they are stressed at work and they will tell you, in slightly macho fashion, about how many e-mails they receive a day, how much in demand they are, how many different tasks await their attention, about their deadlines. If you ask about stress, they are unlikely to tell you that work is monotonous, boring, soul-destroying; that they die a little when they come to work each day because their work touches no part of them that is them. But this is the reality of many jobs; and the lower the status, the more likely that is to be so. Ask the people with all the e-mails which job they would rather be doing, the high-status job with continuous demands, and the company BMW and the firm's credit card, or the soul-destroying job with tasks that ask for little use of skills, that are completely determined by others, and, oh yes, that offer little in the way of self-fulfillment, financial rewards, or status enhancement. There are not too many high-status people who would swap their "stressed" place in the boardroom for a place on the production line.

More on that to come.

HEALTH CARE REFORM. A new poll shows strong support for a public option.

TWO CENTS MORE. Here's economist Dean Baker on the same.

CHILD WELFARE. El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia doesn't come out too well in this report.

MEGAN WILLIAMS CASE. There's been another strange turn of events.

URGENT GIANT SPIDER UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED