"AN ACT CONCERNING THE PLACEMENT OF IDENTIFYING MARKS ON DENTAL PROSTHESES."

House Bill No. 5706

Public Act No. 08-24

Section 1. (NEW) (Effective October 1, 2008) Each dentist licensed in this state who either makes or directs to be made a removable prosthetic denture, bridge, appliance or other structure to be worn in a person's mouth, shall offer to the patient for whom the prosthesis is to be made, the opportunity to have such prosthesis marked with the patient's name or initials. Such markings shall be accomplished at the time the prosthesis is made and the location and methods used to apply or implant such markings shall be determined by the dentist or person directed to act on behalf of the dentist. Such marking shall be permanent, legible and cosmetically acceptable. A dentist shall advise the patient of any additional charges that may be incurred to obtain such markings on the prosthesis. Notwithstanding the provisions of this section, if in the professional judgment of the dentist or the entity that is making the prosthesis, such markings are not practicable or clinically safe, the identifying marks may be omitted entirely.

Approved April 29, 2008

Why in the name of all that is holy is this being discussed in the Connecticut General Assembly?

That this bill was even brought up, let alone PASSED, indicates a complete misunderstanding of the function of legislature and government... oh, Lord, I weep; Ron Paul weeps with me.

It's like they're all just sitting there, thinking of ways to amuse themselves.

I can see why politicians lose sight of what's important, when crap like this gets thrown at you for your first few years. You think, "Well, why not?..." You don't want to be the asshole standing up and saying no. No one else even cares. They're just there because they were either too lazy to become public school teachers (or couldn't deal with small children), or because they have some wild ambitions to higher office.

I'm disgusted right now. I don't really know what to say. The 2008 General Assembly session runs from Feb 6 to May 7. It might be worth the occasional trek to Hartford to give 'em hell.

Have I mentioned that I love the Russians?

From Exiled Online, a Russian web-magazine:

Instead you have wormed your way, in a manner all too typical of your nation, to the center of attention as a wronged innocent. You, the ordinary American, are the antithesis of innocence. You are lazy, yes; there is no more intellectually and lazy creature on this earth. And you are ignorant, willfully so. But a life spent actively avoiding moral introspection is not innocence. It is prima facie evidence of deep complicity in every crime your chosen proxies have committed.

"But a life spent actively avoiding moral introspection is not innocence."

Oh, God.

I need to go to Moscow.

Levity:

I met a man just yesterday, he said he was a trad...

This is for you, MDSS.

Span-Am War Vets Underrepresented in Washington

Two videos that bring some levity to our minding days in this season of foreboding and bereavement.

First, McCain roasting Obama at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. I've never seen him so animated! Very well written, curious about its authorship.

"I can't shake that feeling that some of you are pulling for me." [applause] "I'm delighted to see you here tonight, Hillary."

"It's gonna be a long, long night at MSNBC if I manage to pull this thing off."

"Y'know I have fun with the media and we all know the press is really an independent, civic-minded and non-partisan group..." [wild laughter]

Secondly, a candidate I would enthusiastically vote for:

"I'm voting for a man I can imagine drowning a bag of cats."

On healthcare: "Flask of whiskey, needle and thread for all."

On Iraq: "Ya can't put a bucket on a pig's head, it'll just make him skittish!"

"Cressbeckler believes Obama to be a shoe shine boy."

Sublimity, Tobacco, & the Unforgivable Heresy of the Smokeless Cigarette

(cross-posted at Culture11)

How much more exquisitely can capitalist entrepreneurs miss the goddamn point?

Tabagisme is the last fortress standing amid the utilitarian horde, which assails her noble walls with the fervor of a kamikaze pilot to achieve universal adoption of its efficiency fetish. How dare they deploy this beastly Trojan horse into our midst.

These, ugh, electronic cigarettes "contain no tobacco and do not produce smoke of any kind. Rather, they produce a vapor that is primarily made up of water and pose no harm to the user’s associates or environment." Smoking without the smoke. Without the burn. Without the laggard accumulation of ash, without the slow evanescence of the cigarette into nothingness, and without the curious distortion of time every smoker knows so well as a result of that process. Without everything that motivated Richard Klein to write his phenomenal treatise Cigarettes are Sublime.

Propagation of these products amounts to nothing less than the complete erosion of the smoker's community and code. Identifying as a smoker in today's world means ostracization from the many and eager embrace by the few, it means dirty looks in parks and unspoken camaraderie when sharing lights and bumming smokes. These "Ruyans" want all the beauty and none of the pain, without recognizing that the beauty, the experience of being a smoker, comes only from the many cons that motivate the ferocious anti-smoking sentiment in our culture.

Cigarettes are sublime, and the sublime is one of the few paths left to us leading us out and away from ourselves, our hyper-rationalism, and our modern hubris. While I don't think there's ever a chance of these "e-cigarettes" catching on (smokers know better), I feel morally obligated as a smoker religious in her fanatacism to cut it down at the root.

Stop the eye-rolling?

My lunch conversation today centered around the possibility of an Obama assassination, citing doubt in black communities that the establishment will let a brother get to the White House, the absence of any procedure available to select a new Democratic candidate, the votes that have already been cast, the ballots already printed, the perfect opportunity for chaos, martial law, and things sinister and wicked. I reacted to it the same way I did to the Sullivan post linked above: with surprise, dismissal, and eye-rolling at conspiracy theorists.

Then I read this, and my libertarian sense started tingling.

"President Bush struck down Posse Comitatus -- which has prevented, with a penalty of two years in prison, U.S. leaders since after the Civil War from sending military forces into our streets -- with a 'signing statement.'"

That's right- Posse Comitatus endured the McCarthy era, but not the current "crisis".

"He also led change to the 1807 Insurrection Act to give him far broader powers in the event of a loosely defined "insurrection" or many other "conditions" he has the power to identify. The Constitution allows the suspension of habeas corpus -- habeas corpus prevents us from being seized by the state and held without trial -- in the event of an "insurrection." With his own army force now, his power to call a group of protesters or angry voters "insurgents" staging an "insurrection" is strengthened.

The more I learn about how our government functions the more I'm horrified (see: ballot access laws), but this incident seems to stand apart a bit. A critical thing my generation seems to share is the conviction that nothing ever actually matters- nothing will really change the way we live, even if, say, we have to switch from Stoli to Dubra, or be more conscious of our gas usage. My father, a police sergeant, was called in from Long Island in the days after 9/11 to make up for the shortage of NYC cops, and even I wasn't profoundly affected by that attack.

What will it take to wake us up? Do we need waking? Are there actual crises anymore?

And you think, alright, now people,
they have finally woked up-
but as soon as the trouble over,
watch them take another nap.
Nobody is making merry,
only trotting scared of boss.
Everybody's making hurry
for some old forgotten cause-
but one thing is surely eternal:
it's condition of a man,
who don't know where he is going,
who don't know where does he stand,
whose dream power is a bottle,
put away in dry dark place,
whose youth power is well buried
under propaganda waves,
whose dream life is in opposition
with the life he leads today,
who's beaten down in believing:
It just kinda goes this way!
Oh no, it doesn't have to be so...

Alternatively:

Our idols lay in ruins,
we'd have saved them if we could,
but we still chose to worship
the places where our idols stood.

If we've learned anything at all,
it's that the ghosts of idols will do just as well,
we all see what we want to anyway...

October Print Edition of the Yale Free Press

can be read here.

On health care: "Health care is just too expensive without insurance. Lies. Damned lies. Health care costs so much precisely because we pay for it through insurance. Patients with coverage pay nothing out of pocket, and so they spare no expense."

On Sarah Palin: "So is feminism about making sure women have happy, fulfilling lives on their own terms, or is it about token achievement by going to a great school, getting a great job, proving to the world that a girl can dominate in a man’s world, and then hitting thirty and realizing that you are completely unfulfilled by any of that?"

On Barack Obama: "Libertarians and all people who value individual liberty or who admire the principles that America was founded on should vote for Barack Obama. He’s our last, best hope for restoring modesty and a respect for human rights to America."

On Bob Barr: "The chiding retort of all who don’t understand libertarianism is “why waste your vote on Bob Barr?” The real question, though, is why people continue to waste their votes on the lesser of two evils instead of being part of the political transformation that is necessary to save this nation."

On China: "China’s spending and purchasing of US dollars is allowing the US to float comfortably through an economic downturn. We must not fear this economic evolution. We should be thanking China, as their expansion gives us time to get our act together."

All this and more! Read now.

Damnit, Volodya

Basic psychology says that when you're strong, you don't make a show of it- but I was hoping that I'd just misunderstood my dear Vladimir Vladimirovich. Unfortunately, I know the Russian psyche too well...

To be sure, the skylines of Russia's cities are chock-a-block with cranes. Industrial lofts are now the rage in Moscow, Russian tourists crowd far-flung locales from Thailand to the Caribbean, and Russian moguls are snapping up real estate and art in London almost as quickly as their oil-rich counterparts from the Persian Gulf. But behind the shiny surface, Russian society may actually be weaker than it was even during Soviet times. The Kremlin's recent military adventures and tough talk are the bluster of the frail, not the swagger of the strong... [WaPo]

I knew things in Russia were bad; I didn't know they were "one notch above [the] Gambia" bad.

"According to U.N. figures, the average life expectancy for a Russian man is 59 years -- putting the country at about 166th place in the world longevity sweepstakes... For women, the picture is somewhat rosier: They can expect to live, on average, 73 years... And the gap between expected longevity for men and for women -- 14 years -- is the largest in the developed world.

So what's killing the Russians? ...HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular and circulatory diseases, suicides, smoking, traffic accidents...

Three times as many Russians die from heart-related illnesses as do Americans or Europeans, per each 100,000 people.

Tuberculosis deaths in Russia are about triple the World Health Organization's definition of an epidemic, which is based on a new-case rate of 50 cases per 100,000 people.

Average alcohol consumption per capita is double the rate the WHO considers dangerous to one's health.

About 1 million people in Russia have been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, according to WHO estimates."

So what does this mean for us?

1. Russia is still pretty good at propaganda, since both presidential candidates are talking about her as a serious threat.
2. Factoring into your decision how a candidate plans to deal with Russia is kind of silly, although neither of them have said anything substantive about it anyway.
3. Russia's army, already very strained, will only shrink and lose potency.
4. OIL CAN'T SAVE YOU.
5. The Russians, despite everything, are really slow to label anything a crisis. I read Russian newspapers a few times a week and never really see anything indicating that their average reader will probably die within 10 to 15 years. You do, however, see lots of stories about maternity and fidelity...

Questions it raises:
-Would the Russians be better or worse off if they were as vocal about their troubles as Americans?
-Why doesn't Vladimir love Russia?
-Why isn't anyone else concerned by this?
-No, really, Vovochka, what the fuck?