Stories from LA

the musings of a procrastinating mind

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Entries Tagged as 'politics'

Plea for book/article suggestions

March 21st, 2008 · 3 Comments

Ok, so people who know me know that I’m pretty obsessed with food. I always have been. Fortunately lately I’m obsessed with growing food, cooking food, and exploring new food. This is a great improvement over when I was fifteen and obsessed with the calories in food and how to avoid said […]

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Tags: food · politics · reading

By the People…

February 4th, 2008 · No Comments

Sometime between now and whenever I go to vote tomorrow I need to figure out how to vote on the seven propositions on the ballot (as near as I can tell those are the only ones I need to worry about since Prop S doesn’t seem to be on the ballot in Altadena). My […]

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Tags: Los Angeles · personal · politics

Positive thinking.

January 30th, 2008 · No Comments

I’ve been reading Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan lately. It’s good stuff.
Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about the coming primary election. Yes I live under a rock culturally speaking but I do read the Economist and the LA Times pretty frequently and I regularly interact virtually with people who read news from all sorts of places. […]

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Tags: culture · politics

The United States government’s valuation of higher education

January 30th, 2008 · 3 Comments

I was just reading something about the state of the union address last night that quoted the line:
“We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income college students realize their full potential. Together, we’ve expanded the size and reach of these grants. Now let us apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in […]

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Tags: education · politics

An eye for an eye, for ratings.

January 28th, 2008 · No Comments

Last weekend I was feeling kind of crappy and decided I’d curl up on the couch and watch some stupid TV. The problem with this plan, of course, was that we don’t have cable, a tivo, or any of the other technologies that allow some sort of control over the stupidness of the available […]

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Tags: culture · politics

Musical Gentrification or Cleaning up the City One Neighborhood at a Time

February 2nd, 2007 · No Comments

Yesterday’s LA Times has an article about the effects of police efforts to curb crime in the part of downtown known as skid row. The claim is that since last fall when LAPD increased the number of officers in the area and put an effort into reducing crime downtown the homeless in skid […]

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Tags: Los Angeles · class · politics

What’s the Matter with Picking on Kansas

January 21st, 2007 · No Comments

Last week’s Economist has a book review of Philip Legrain’s Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them. As I understand it Legrain argues that immigration does not do economic harm to receiving countries and is highly economically beneficial for sending countries. The reviewer jumps off from Legrain’s economic analysis to talk about the intersection […]

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Tags: culture · politics