Link Banana

Aware of the internet’s love for bacon, Salon shamelessly devoted a week to it. If you’re interested, they are:

• Why we love bacon
• I made bacon
• I made other pork things
• Bacon won’t be cool forever

Sarah Bird desperately wishes that she could change her son’s sexual orientation: she wants him to be gay.

How could I not dream of having a son who cared deeply about all the right things: fashion, musical theater, interior décor? But mostly a son who cared deeply about the most right thing of all: his mother? How could I not yearn for a son who would tell me that the bias cut emphasized my saddlebag thighs, that no one was staining concrete anymore, that the tiniest bit of white on the upper lids would open up my eyes and make me look 10 years younger? And now that California is handing out marriage licenses, what mother could resist the opportunity to micromanage a union in which both participants would obsess with her about whether the color theme celadon and peach or apple green and hot pink best expresses their love?

Not unrelated: William Saletan discusses a feasible genetic cause of male homosexuality.

Over at Salon, Megan Dolls points out that any fans of City of God will probably be interested in the related television series — now available on DVD — from the same director:

In “City of Men,” a televised miniseries that ran in Brazil from October 2002 until December 2005 and is now available on DVD, Meirelles and his collaborators add dimension to “City of God’s” gory view of Rio’s other half, depicting domestic life in the favelas — shantytowns cobbled together from concrete, corrugated tin and cinder blocks by their poor inhabitants. Whereas “City of God” followed its characters through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, “City of Men” looks at contemporary life. Preserving the gritty, neorealist aspects of Meirelles’ film, the TV series offers glimpses into the homes, schools and shops where daily life in the favelas unfolds.

Even for homosexuals eager for the right to get married, there could be one drawback to California’s making it legal: doting parents and the persistant question of “When are you gonna get married?”

As you may have heard, a new Israel-focused lobbying group opened in Washington recently. Gary Kimiya’s thoughts on the subject are worth considering:

Nothing is more urgently needed in our political discourse than for the taboo against speaking forthrightly about Israel to be overthrown. After all, notwithstanding its profound connection to some American Jews and its (partly justified) status as a beloved icon with whom we have a “special relationship,” Israel is not the 51st state — it is a foreign country, and one smack-dab in the center of the Middle East, a region in which we have some considerable national interest. The enforced silence about Israel has prevented us from thinking clearly about the Middle East, and helped enable both the disastrous war we are now fighting in Iraq and a possible future one against Iran.

But because of the highly sensitive nature of the subject, American Jews must lead the way.

Which is why the birth of J Street, whose goal Ben-Ami says is “to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel,” is cause for unalloyed celebration. “Over the course of a quarter century of doing American politics, I’ve seen the way in which the Israel issue plays out,” Ben-Ami said in a phone interview from J Street’s Washington, D.C., office. “And it greatly disturbs me and it greatly disturbs a very large number of progressive American Jews, who believe very strongly in Israel but feel that the way in which the American Jewish community’s voice has been expressed on these issues doesn’t reflect our values or opinions. Only the voices of the far right have been heard. They’ve really hijacked the debate when it comes to Israel.”

Because I enjoy a bit of senseless swimming against the tide, I present Joseph Romm’s argument against Earth Day.

Only bitter environmentalists cling to Earth Day. We need a new way to make people care about the nasty things we’re doing with our cars and power plants. At the very least, we need a new name.

How about Nature Day or Environment Day? Personally, I am not an environmentalist. I don’t think I’m ever going to see the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I wouldn’t drill for oil there. But that’s not out of concern for the caribou but for my daughter and the planet’s next several billion people, who will need to see oil use cut sharply to avoid the worst of climate change.

It’s a hard question, and Salon’s Pablo Päster doesn’t give a broad answer — though he offers how to figure it out for yourself. For a 1986 Mercedes-Benz W126:

Given that your car is already built, we can write off the energy used in making it. We can also write off the emissions that it has already created from burning gasoline. That means that over the next 116,000 miles, your car’s greenhouse gas emissions will essentially break even with the emissions from the production and use of a Prius. I’m guessing your 22-year-old car probably has over 200,000 miles on it. If you’re lucky, you can get another few years out of it. So if you can afford a new Prius, you are better off switching now. And think of the fewer hassles of owning a new car.

Your daily “Whoa! Really?” is an excerpt (from a fascinating excerpt) from Daniel Radosh’s Rapture Ready!:

“Ladies,” announced Dillow, “sensuality in marriage is godly. Just as a husband and wife experience deep joy as they lose themselves and merge into oneness at the moment of sexual climax, we experience ultimate joy as we become one with Jesus Christ in a union that leads to incomprehensible joy. Sexual intercourse mirrors our relationship to God and causes us to worship him for giving us this good gift.” Surely it couldn’t be a coincidence, she added with a wink, that there is no better time than a long Sunday morning in church to practice your Kegel exercises.

Salon’s Pablo Päster makes clear that the United States could never manage to get all it’s power needs satisfied by solar alone. It seems obvious, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d wondered.

At 12,000 kWh per capita, electricity demand is roughly 3.6 trillion kWh, or the equivalent of 1,200 coal-fired power plants running full-time. To generate 3.6 trillion kWh per year, we would need to install about 1.5 billion square meters of solar panels, or around 586 square miles. This is clearly a lot higher than the number that you had heard and equivalent to one-third of Rhode Island.

Alex Koppelman’s essay isn’t exactly new news, but he says it admirably and it’s a point I like hearing:

The new season of Fox’s reality show “Hell’s Kitchen,” starring Ramsay, kicks off Tuesday night. It’s a show that seems deliberately designed to waste Ramsay’s considerable talents both as a chef and as a television personality by having him send inexperienced, talentlesscooks through a particularly dull meat grinder. Ramsay and Fox give these poor saps simple kitchen tasks that are obviously way above their skill level, presumably in the hope they’ll fail. And then, joy of joys, Ramsay gets to turn insincerely red-faced and yell.

For the record: despite it’s massive, glaring, almost intolerable, flaws I do have a season pass to Hell’s Kitchen on the TiVo.

Not being a parent, I was going to ignore the Ask Pablo column of yesterday and the Green Lantern column of today (linked above) until I noticed that they’re about the same topic. An interesting time to compare the dueling green-living columnists of Salon and Slate (respectively).

The Lantern, as usual, offers more links to outside sources on the subject, but also draws on his personal experience. Pablo offers some greater history and an interesting and unexpected solution. In the end, they both offer the same answer:

The bottom line is that cloth diapers are greener than run-of-the-mill Pampers and Huggies, as long as you’re committed to an energy-efficient laundry regimen. But that commitment takes more than just an EnergyStar washing machine and a clothing line for air drying. It also takes time, a commodity which will be in startlingly short supply once your offspring drops.

Thou Ms. Traister is far more fond of celebrity garbage than I think is healthy, she does have a few worthwhile things to say on topic.

How could readers not become desensitized, and more than a little fatigued, especially when the plot twists stopped being fun, or funny, or anything other than scary and sad, even on the harshest of schadenfreude scales.

Add to this the fact that as the market for celebrity gossip grew, so did the number of celebrities. Anyone — chefs and designers and models and weight-loss champions, Gossip Girls and Real Housewives — can be famous, and picking up an US Weekly no longer guarantees a visit with a cast of familiar characters, but a roster of mysterious names: Minka Kelly, Benji Madden, Stacy Keibler — who the hell are these people and what are they doing in my imagined celebrity neighborhood?

Slate’s Green Lantern takes on the question of cans versus glass bottles and comes up with a typically nuanced answer:

If your chosen tipple is produced very close to home and your town has a robust recycling program, then glass bottles are probably the way to go. But if your preferred suds are brewed far away, by a company that’s even mildly eco-aware, aluminum cans are the wiser choice.

I should note that Salon’s Pablo Päster tackled a similar question over a month ago, deciding that plastic bottles are better than aluminum cans. Assuming both columnists’ logic is sound, that means: plastic bottles are better than cans, and cans are (generally) better than glass bottles.

I’m not without a fair share of reservations on this one. For one, I didn’t even make it through the article. For another, “poo” is always entertaining but rarely worth talking about. Regardless, the attached video is entertaining enough for a mention.

Salon’s got the best-looking and most-informative (if slightly slower than others) results page I’ve seen — though I’m disappointed by the lack of a Huckabee cartoon. If you’re looking to see the results roughly as they come in, this is what I’d watch.

Having said that, if you can’t handle the delay, CNN does seem the most up-to-the-minute.

Engaging in what is probably a fair measure of premature and gleeful grave-digging and dancing, Eric Boehlert does a good job explaining all that has gone wrong for Fox News recently.

Let’s take an extended multiple choice quiz. Right now, which of the following topics is likely causing the discomfort inside Ailes’ Fox News empire?

A) CNN’s resurgence as the go-to cable destination for election coverage.
B) The unmistakably sunken candidacy of Fox News’ favored son, Rudy Giuliani.
C) The still-standing candidacy of Fox News nemesis and well-funded antiwar GOP candidate Rep. Ron Paul.
D) The Democratic candidates’ blanket refusal to debate on Fox News during the primary season.
E) Host Bill O’Reilly being so desperate for an interview from a Democratic contender that he had to schlep all the way to New Hampshire, where he shoved an aide to Sen. Barack Obama and then had to be calmed down by Secret Service agents.
F) Former Fox News architect and Ailes confidant Dan Cooper posting chapters from his wildly unflattering tell-all book about his old boss. (“The best thing that ever happened to Roger Ailes was 9/11.”)
G) The fledgling Fox Business Network, whose anemic ratings are in danger of being surpassed by some large city public access channels.
H) Host John Gibson’s recent heartless attacks on Heath Ledger, just hours after the young actor was found dead.
I) Fox News reporter Major Garrett botching his “exclusive” that Paul Begala and James Carville were going to join Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, and then refusing to correct the record.

I’d say it’s A, B, C, D, E, F and G. (I doubt Gibson’s grave-dancing or Garrett’s whopper caused Ailes a moment’s concern.)

The story linked in the title shouldn’t shock anyone, but it’s an excuse for me to link to an old story that I still harbor some affinity for. Rebecca Traister’s assertion that all liberal Democrats really love Mr. Kucinich should not be missed.

You are lying to yourselves. In a quest for an “electable,” “not insane” presidential candidate, you are willfully overlooking the candidate who actually comes closest to representing the things in which you really believe: justice and peace and the basic freedoms that should be afforded to every American, regardless of race, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation or galactic origin. In an effort to distance yourself from the squish of the Birkenstock and the stench of the patchouli, you have convinced yourself that compromise and pragmatism light the path to the White House. And you are correct. But still, before walking listlessly down the aisle toward our impending union with tepid centrism, let’s rip our clothes off for one final, ill-advised fling with ideological honesty:

Dennis Kucinich is our man! If he can’t do it, well, that’s because we’re all chickenshit and condemned to a future of our own making. Yay, Dennis!

I’ve been waiting for a counterpoint to this for some time, and Salon has finally offered it. In a piece that’s more about realism than Kristol himself, Stephen Walt argues that what America (and thus the NY Times Op-Ed page) needs is some hard-nosed realists.

Hiring Kristol did not bring an “opposing view” to the Times’ Op-Ed page, of course, because columnist David Brooks already represents the same worldview that Kristol does. Nor does the Times’ roster of liberal pundits provide a full complement of “opposing views.” Most liberal commentators share the neocons’ belief that it is America’s right and responsibility to exercise “global leadership,” even when that role involves the aggressive use of American military power and constant interference in other countries’ affairs. The Times’ Thomas Friedman was an energetic supporter of the Iraq war until it went south, and Nicholas Kristof is a passionate advocate of U.S. intervention in Darfur. Columnists like Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich have been sharply critical of the neoconservatives’ worst follies, but both proceed from the familiar liberal internationalism that has characterized the American foreign policy establishment for many years.

What’s missing in America’s mainstream media is the voice of realism. As the label implies, realists think foreign policy should be based on the world as it really is, rather than what we might like it to be. Realists see international politics as an inherently competitive realm where states constantly compete for advantage and where security is often precarious. But realists understand that being overly alarmist and aggressive can get states into just as much trouble as being excessively trusting or complacent. …

Salon’s political reporters have done a great job giving a feeling for what really went on in Democratic caucuses yesterday in Iowa — Republican caucuses there are much simpler. The chaos, and complicated calculations, make one wonder why the Democrats still do it this way:

By the end of the night, what was a solid Edwards precinct in 2004 had nearly sent half its delegates to Obama. But caucus math made the outcome a de facto tie between the two candidates. Though Obama had support from 72 people, and Edwards only 49, they each wound up with two delegates. Clinton, stuck on 40 people, was left with one delegate. And Richardson slid into viability without any room to spare, winding up with 28 people and one delegate — thanks entirely to support from people who had come in the door supporting Biden. The two had been dueling for a fourth-place finish statewide when the evening’s voting started.