Somebody's Blinded by Something

9780486449388 $6.95

Correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the "flat [income] tax" rate and postcard ideas been done before in presidential primaries? Larry said, Steve Forbes, but I recalled a more "fringe" Democratic candidate whom almost everyone pooh-poohed while he waved a piece of cardstock during debates, saying that's how simple a tax return ought to be -- straightforward enough to put on a postcard. 
MSNBC.com's Tom Curry confirmed both Forbes and Jerry Brown as proponents of the flat tax in 1992 as he wrote, "Perry seeks to cash in on flat tax's enduring appeal."

Republican Rick Perry, current governor of Texas, has not quite thought his proposal through and has preempted any criticism of it by saying, "I know it's going to be attacked." His proposal of a flat 20% income tax for everyone is so half-baked and baselessly unanalysed, he doesn't even know whether it would help or harm anyone. So, he invites people to figure it out themselves (well, if anyone thinks he's going to be paying more under my plan, he can always stick with the code as we know it now and pay those big fees to accountants and tax lawyers).  In my estimation, this sounds like a bright future for accountants and tax lawyers; so if passed, the flat tax plan could be Perry's contribution to getting more jobs on the street.

And the idea of individual investment accounts for Social Security? Apparently, Rick Perry so does not want to be George W Bush that he has to bring up the spectre of them again. Bush quite wisely allowed his business advisers to persuade him to let this very unprofitable idea quietly die. Who in his right mind wants to handle 100 million accounts of $100,000 each as opposed to one or two of $100 trillion (sorry, my arithmetic has always been suspect; do I have my zeros all in place?)?  Perry, not in the room at the time, is probably thinking, what happened to such a great sound bite?  And $100,000 is really pushing it, because each account probably starts with $8 when someone gets a job at a fast food restaurant or at a retail store for the holidays.   Has anyone ever not heard of buying in bulk, safety in numbers, power in organizing, efficiency in the collective?  Americans like to go it alone unless they could get the government to do the hard parts for them, like save for retirement.  The only thing in the private sector even close are (no, not 401(k) accounts which are also in a collective of sorts, but) Christmas Club accounts.  Remember them? Forced savings for a reward at end... money to buy Christmas presents.  Maybe we need to start with reviving that activity first.

Blinded Me With Science II

The morning after I finally am able to finish my post about Robin Brande and Fat Cat -- which had made me think of the song, I hear about Thomas Dolby on NPR.  He had spent 20 years after the fame of that song, "She Blinded Me with Science" doing science. His tech consulting company developed the synthesizer software which enables all sorts of interesting and less than interesting ring tones for mobile telephones.  And now, he's produced an online game that follows three EPSs (extended play songs) he created into Floating City  -- "collaborative fiction," he calls online gaming.

Blinded Me with Science

When I picked up Robin Brande's Fat Cat to read, I had forgotten that she had written another Young Adult book which I had liked and had previously recommended somewhere, Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature, a well-done commentary on the unforgiving interpretation of What Is Right.  The story unwinds tensely around Mena and the reader can feel the almost palpable heat of innocent hatred of the "Christian" kids for all things Wrong -- homosexuality, evolution and anyone defending such abominations or simply standing up to the righteous.  Mena and her family are basically shunned by the community they had always thought were an extended family.  She begins to learn about the world outside fundamental Christianity and even a little bit about the world inside.  She even has enough curiosity and courage to ask her teacher how one can believe in God and the theory of evolution at the same time --  a question with which Charles Darwin himself struggled when scientifically developing the theory.  That makes Evolution, Me & Other Freaks of Nature a much more serious or perhaps "heavier" in weight of social issue than Fat Cat. 

Fat Cat addresses the issue of obesity and popularity, except they're not issues in this book. Catherine is a little fat, but not obese and while she's obviously not in the most exclusive clique, she is neither yearning to be popular nor is she being taunted for being fat.  Nor does it appear she or any Honors classmates are being taunted for being geeks.  This story is an evolution of a different sort.  In a Science Fair experiment which first begins as what happens when Cat chooses to eat and live like early hominids -- no cars or cellphones unless in an emergency, no processed foods (like chocolate!) or even dairy (there were no domesticated animals that long ago and so, no milk), and no hair product, Cat is motivated to win first place primarily in order to beat a former friend Matt McKinney, whom she has had a rivalry for as long as she could remember.  It used to be a friendly rivalry, which turned bitter -- at least on her side when they were thirteen, some 3-1/2 years ago.  As the narrative is told in Cat's viewpoint, the reader is just as clueless as Matt as to why they are no longer friends.  Did he throw the Science Fair competition and let her win?  Did she overhear him telling lewd jokes about her?  Eating healthy and walking to school and work have the added benefit of Cat's losing weight and gaining toned muscles.  She goes from "Fat Cat" to "Hot Cat" and attracts way more male attention than she ever dreamed of or even wants.  The experiment morphs into how would a Homo Erectus choose a mate, and is that any different today than it would have been then?  Along the way, Cat learns as much about the self she becomes as she does her pre-historic model.  And in the end, when the judges ask, "Do you think this project has changed you?  Beyond the obvious physical changes?," she can smile and say, "You have no idea how much." 

It's great that Brande is able to depict science in such an accessible way.  While I never knew any such intelligent and creative high schoolers so into science (no Science Fairs in West Babylon and I was in the honors program!), I can see how they would exist and how they're really just like ordinary teens with the usual teen angst.  Brande is an observant recorder of young adult nature, a trait which itself is a pre-requisite to a good scientist.  I'd like to think that the 21st Century Teen would enjoy Brande's writing as much as a middle-aged bookseller, but maybe I'm just blinded by the science.

Food Glorious Food

I have discovered that today is Blog Action Day on which bloggers throughout the world write about a topic of global concern.  This year's topic is "Food."  Well, that narrows the range.  Or does it?

Along with air to breathe and some temperature control to keep a human body from freezing or melting down, food is a vital part of our existence.  It also has a wide-ranging definition.  Yesterday, I was eating brunch with an especially intelligent and sophisticated group of people -- Vassarites, and we discussed restaurants, good meals, and at one point, molecular gastronomy.  A trained cook among us gave an example of molecular gastronomy at work -- the breakdown of an apple to its core (pun intended?) elements -- fiber and flavour.  So, can we take those elements and present them to the diner differently, like as a piece of paper made of apply fiber which tastes (one expects) like apple?  This might come in the form of an edible menu.  The objection one person made which is the objection most of us have is, why not enjoy the fruits (another pun?) of Nature's labor and eat an apple in its pure form?  Another person articulated the objection more forcefully:  it is akin to playing with our food; with all the starving people in the world, we are expending exorbitant amounts of resources to play with food.

There may be an argument that molecular gastronomy makes eating out more of an experience, an adventure, and not merely in the 21st century to socialize.  This would then be like the adoption of cooking meat 1.5 million years ago which enabled hominids not simply to stay alive, but to thrive (as demonstrated in Robin Brande's Fat Cat, a young adult story which uses the question, "What would happen if we eat like hominids did?" as the beginning basis for a science fair project).

This would be the antithesis of what a farmer once called, "Better living through chemicals."  High yields of grains and other crops through use of fertilizers, weedkillers and insecticides, refrigeration, preservatives and don't forget, refined fuels for the production, transport and cooking of food are all progress and have undeniably made life better for a significant amount of people in the world.

Because we in the Western World can take food for granted, we can take it further.  We can have a reaction to the inefficient packaging of regularly fried potato chips by creating pre-formed, orderly stacked chips made from potatoes (we could have had that for fish, too, if we listened to Professor Mazzocchi of Hoboken), and we can have a counter-reaction to that over-processing by eating only organic potatoes freshly fried in fresh pressed peanut oil.  We can have an evolved sub-species of humans called "foodies," who are basically food snobs, continuously looking for the next trend.  The foodies are eating locally grown organic purple potatoes freshly fried in duck fat, unless they are enthusiasts of molecular gastronomy, admiring and inhaling the essence of the slice of potato frozen with liquid nitrogen and then, transformed into vapor.  One wonders what kind of science fair project can come studying the eating habits 21st Century Homo Sapiens Americanus.

Nobel Prize in Literature Announced and We Are Out-of-Stock

Scandinavian is all the rage right now, if I might irreverently proclaim.  Beginning with Stieg Larsson, the interest pedalled backwards to find Henning Mankell, around to find Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking) and front and center again to embrace every other Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Finnish crime and mystery writer who ever had the good fortune to be translated into English.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is currently the most borrowed e-book in the New York Public Library system.  (For those who don't want to wait, you can buy the paperback or the Google e-book online at www.booksonfirst.com.)

And now, this year's Nobel Prize Winner for Literature is from Scandinavia is Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, whose fellow countrymen have been waiting for over 50 years for recognition of his literary prowess.  (We also might note that the Nobel Prizes are awarded by a Scandinavian committee, but that's only a Nota Bene, not implying any strange coincidence, except the fact that being Scandinavian is very cool right now.)

Before you click onto www.booksonfirst.com to reserve your copy of either The Sorrow Gondola/Sorgegondolen -- his first published collection of poetry after his stroke in 1990 or try to find 17 Poems, his first book published when he was just 23 years old, know that our wholesaler has been wiped out of stock, so surprising was this award.  Actually, 17 Poems is not in print here in the United States, but after this award and with the coolness factor hardly waning, stay tuned.  You may be able to put it on  your holiday wishlist.

Disquieted Few to Present in Rockford

Disquieted Few, "a small collective of creative types" which includes Alex Paschal, will be strutting some stuff at Rockford, IL's Fall Artscene on Friday, 14 Sep and Saturday, 15 Sep. Check them out at MedicineMan/ 510 Studios (510 E State St, Rockford).

Alex Paschal is a talented photographer whose day gig is with Sauk Valley Newpapers and whose work has been on display here as part of Books on First Visiting Art, as well as the wonderful gift to us -- a color photograph of an espresso cup on an open book. He also took the photo of Larry and Carolyn, originally printed in the Dixon Telegraph shortly after Books on First opened and is the one right here on this blog.