Hailed as a sign of renewed government transparency when they began airing last year, President Barack Obama’s weekly video addresses have grown increasingly experimental in recent weeks, raising eyebrows nationwide.
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Obama, who sources said has been more introspective and isolated in recent months, made his first foray into the avant-garde last March, when he posted a video titled “Red, White, and Doom” to the White House website. In it, the president, seated in the Oval Office with a skull-and-crossbones banner where the American flag would normally be, stares unblinkingly into the camera as the phrase “in God we trust” loops for four minutes and 33 seconds.
While it was initially dismissed by the public as a technical error, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer was quick to clarify that the video in fact reflected Obama’s changing vision for the country.
“The president still wants to continue his dialogue with the American people,” Pfeiffer said. “However, he’s been getting really into Nam June Paik lately, and is passionate about using new technologies and techniques to communicate his message of hope and progress.”
“And if he smashes the very foundations of modern consumerist culture while he’s at it, then all the better,” Pfeiffer added.
Though the videos are a continuation of the fireside chat tradition begun by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, they mark the first time a president has used weekly addresses as a form of artistic self-expression.
Obama’s early pieces primarily played with structure: Our Long-Term Strategy In Afghanistan employs Brion Gysin’s cut-up technique to reorder the words in a major speech on foreign policy, eventually creating a shocking sound collage that, according to the White House, reveals “a truth previously buried beneath layers of intent.”
Since then, the president’s work has grown more abstract and drawn mixed reviews. Citizens reacted favorably to the absurdist slapstick of Reshaping Wall $treet, which features a man in a pig mask rooting through a garbage pail filled with currency, but were less satisfied with (S)Mother Earth, in which Americans ranging in age from 6 months to 90 years are submerged in oil and found guilty by a clown-faced judge for their role in the recent BP oil spill.
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Nonetheless, a number of critics have embraced Obama’s edgier productions.Artforum magazine referred to Obama’s oeuvre as “a winking indictment of the institution of the presidency from none other than the president himself,” and cited in particular his wildlife conservation video Meat Play as “the direction the office needs to go in if the executive branch is to remain relevant.”
A readable and balanced article in TIME magazine, already from 2000, about the benefits and downsides of ecstasy, also known as MDMA.
I particularly like the description of the effects of MDMA, and honestly believe that, in making people peaceful and empathetic and lowering socially constructed barriers, it can have therapeutic effects on people. On the other hand, the dangers are also documented. These are slight, however, in comparison to other drugs (including marihuana) and especially alcohol. Most of them are short-term and situational, while the scientific debate about long-term effects is still going on. But most likely, long-term effects only play a role with big time users.
No wonder that it’s increasingly being studied again by medical scientists for its therapeutic value.
What’s the appeal of ecstasy? As a user put it, it’s “a six-hour orgasm.” About half an hour after you swallow a hit of e, you begin to feel peaceful, empathetic and energetic–not edgy, just clear. Pot relaxes but sometimes confuses; LSD stupefies; cocaine wires. Ecstasy has none of those immediate downsides. “Jack,” 29, an Indiana native who has taken ecstasy about 40 times, said the only time he felt as good as he does on e was when he found out he had won a Rhodes scholarship. He enjoys feeling logorrheic: ecstasy users often talk endlessly, maybe about a silly song that’s playing or maybe about a terrible burden on them. E allows the mind to wander, but not into hallucinations. Users retain control. Jack can allow his social defenses to crumble on ecstasy, and he finds he can get close to people from different backgrounds. “People I would never have talked to, because I’m mostly in the Manhattan business world, I talk to on ecstasy. I’ve made some friends I never would have had.”
All this marveling should raise suspicions, however. It’s probably not a good idea to try to duplicate the best moment of one’s life 40 times, if only because it will cheapen the truly good times. And even as they help open the mind to new experiences, drugs also can distort the reality to which users ineluctably return. Is ecstasy snake oil? And how harmful is it?
This is what we know:
An ecstasy pill most probably won’t kill you or cure you.
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There’s a long-standing debate about MDMA’s dangers, which will take much more research to resolve. The theory is that MDMA’s perils spring from the same neurochemical reaction that causes its pleasures. After MDMA enters the bloodstream, it aims with laser-like precision at the brain cells that release serotonin, a chemical that is the body’s primary regulator of mood. MDMA causes these cells to disgorge their contents and flood the brain with serotonin.
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Normally, serotonin levels are exquisitely maintained, which is crucial because the chemical helps manage not only mood but also body temperature. In fact, overheating is MDMA’s worst short-term danger. Flushing the system with serotonin, particularly when users take several pills over the course of one night, can short-circuit the body’s ability to control its temperature. Dancing in close quarters doesn’t help, and because some novice users don’t know to drink water, e users’ temperatures can climb as high as 110[degrees]. At such extremes, the blood starts to coagulate.
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Ricaurte told TIME that “the vast majority of people who have experimented with MDMA appear normal, and there’s no obvious indication that something is amiss.”
Pop Art, dedicated to the best and healthiest snack on earth, “Broodje haring”, or Herring Sandwich (which is superior to eating a single herring by the tail):
Het Christen Democratisch Appèl (CDA) wordt weer eens bedankt. Mede dankzij drie van hun Europarlementariërs (en een van de ChristenUnie, en een van de SGP, jawel) is Schriftelijke Verklaring 29 in het Europees Parlement aangenomen.
Deze houdt in dat de bewaarplicht voor internetgegevens uitgebreid wordt naar wat je in zoekmachines intikt.
Dit als toevoeging aan de verplichting die providers nu al hebben om een jaar lang op te slaan met wie je belt, waar je mobiele telefoon is, en wanneer je inlogt op Internet.
Bedenk maar eens wat je allemaal voor persoonlijks opzoekt op Google. En hoe relaxed het zou zijn als jouw zoekopdrachten allemaal opgeslagen worden, gekoppeld aan je ip-adres. En wat een beeld van je gemaakt zou kunnen worden, alleen op basis van je zoekopdrachten.
Het doel van de Schriftelijke Verklaring is om een “Europees alarmsysteem voor pedofielen” op de agenda van het Europees Parlement te zetten. Het iedereen bij voorbaat tot potentiële pedofiel verklaren is dus nog niet aangenomen, maar er zal over worden gedebatteerd, en de richting is wel duidelijk.
Deze nieuwe uitbreiding van de surveillancestaat hebben we te danken aan de EP’ers Wim van de Camp (CDA), Lambert van Nistelrooij (CDA), Corien Wortmann-Kool (CDA), Peter van Dalen (CU) en Bastiaan Belder (SGP).
Bedenk je eens hoeveel persoonlijke informatie een zoekmachine over je heeft.Je zoekt vast wel eens bepaalde personen op, medicijnen tegen gekke kwaaltjes, of andere zaken die je niet met anderen wilt delen. Om een idee te krijgen van de hoeveelheid informatie die je blootgeeft via je zoekopdrachten, kan je eens de serie korte films “I love Alaska” bekijken van de Nederlandse filmmakers Sander Plug en Lernery Engelberts. (Zie trailer onderaan.)
Hoofddoel van de Schriftelijke Verklaring is om “een Europees alarmsysteem (EAS) tegen pedofielen” op de agenda te zetten. Maar op de tweede pagina onder nummer 2 wordt de Raad en de Commissie opgeroepen “de toepassingssfeer van Richtlijn 2006/24/EG uit te breiden tot zoekmachines”. En die Richtlijn gaat over de bewaarplicht, op grond waarvan jouw provider een jaar lang moet opslaan met wie je belt, waar je mobiele telefoon is en wanneer je inlogt op internet.
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Maar bij de afgelopen sessie van het Europees Parlement hebben de indieners van de Schriftelijke Verklaring een uitgebreide campagne gevoerd, en die heeft blijkbaar zijn vruchten afgeworpen: er zijn toch meer dan de vereiste 369 handtekeningen verzameld en de intekening is gesloten. Nu zal over deze verklaring worden gedebatteerd in het Europees parlement (de schriftelijke verklaring is geen bindende regelgeving, maar een politiek instrument om het debat binnen het parlement richting te geven).
De lijst met ondertekenaars is inmiddels openbaar.
This latest report of the Commonwealth Fund shows that, based on interviews with patients and professionals, the mixed Dutch healthcare system overall scores best of the countries compared. And in any case, I have to mention, way better than the American system, which combines exorbitant costs (just look at the spending per capita) with no significant increase in quality. Despite conservative rhetoric of American healthcare being “the best in the world”.
Personally, I’m an admirer of the ultra-cheap UK system that I think appropriately de-prioritizes health care services relative to other public services and achieves decent quality and enormous efficiency while doing so. But everything about that system cuts against the American grain. The Australian system, at least as I understand it, is structurally much more similar to what we do in America and probably more in line with our cultural norms and manages to do a much better job than our system. The high-performing Dutch system is broadly similar to the Affordable Care Act in its structure, but it adds a government-run social insurance component for catastrophic costs.
The Netherlands overhauled its insurance system very recently, however, and I have to believe the quality of its providers has longer-standing roots than the 2006 reforms
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