Muszkiewicz Reader

A Daring River Crossing

lmuszkie — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:30:10 +0000

La fotografía Audacia fue tomada desde el puente sobre el río Tárcoles, en Garabito, Puntarenas, y muestra la osadía de una garza que se desplaza lentamente sobre las aguas en medio de feroces cocodrilos. “Estuve alrededor de cinco minutos contemplando la hazaña de esta pequeña ave, que parecía no inmutarse ante la amenazante presencia de los cocodrilos. La garza logró cruzar el río sin ningún percance”, contó Pucci.

Captured by Juan José Pucci, who said the heron made it safely across the river. Excerpted from Andrea Solano’s Fotografía de garza asediada por cocodrilos del Tárcoles gana premio in the Nacion.

Snake Oil?

lmuszkie — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:03:09 +0000

Fascinating topic and unreal use of visualization by David McCandless and Andy Perkins.

Who Will Lead the Regeneration?

lmuszkie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 17:16:12 +0000

Alas, though, instead of making nation-building in America his overarching narrative and then fitting health care, energy, educational reform, infrastructure, competitiveness and deficit reduction under that rubric, the president has pursued each separately. This made each initiative appear to be just some stand-alone liberal obsession to pay off a Democratic constituency — not an essential ingredient of a nation-building strategy — and, therefore, they have proved to be easily obstructed, picked off or delegitimized by opponents and lobbyists.

So “Obamism” feels at worst like a hodgepodge, at best like a to-do list — one that got way too dominated by health care instead of innovation and jobs — and not the least like a big, aspirational project that can bring out America’s still vast potential for greatness.

Excerpted from Thomas L. Friedman’s, The Fat Lady Has Sung.

Afghanistan Year Eight: Pep Talk for Marja

lmuszkie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:23:40 +0000

“Thousands of American, Afghan and British troops attacked the watery Taliban fortress of Marja early Saturday, moving on foot, in trucks and through the air to destroy the insurgency’s largest haven and begin a campaign to reassert the dominance of the Afghan government in a large swath of southern Afghanistan.”

Excerpted from C.J. Chivers and Dexter Filkins’ Attack on Taliban Stronghold Begins.

Super Bowl XLIV: Baylen Brees MVP

lmuszkie — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:15:27 +0000

Drew Brees and his son Baylen photographed by Andy Lyons.

If Filmmakers Directed the Super Bowl

lmuszkie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:56:07 +0000

Via Slate, produced by Andrew Bouve. The David Lynch take is so good.

Gabrielle Bouliane

lmuszkie — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 06:10:10 +0000

“This would be her last public performance.” Via YouTube.

A Man’s Office

lmuszkie — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:06:49 +0000

Excerpted from Miles Fisher’s blog LESLIE – MILES, though photo isn’t credited.

Corruption Knows No Bounds: Texas Bail Bondsmen

lmuszkie — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:06:20 +0000

Here’s how it works: You’re arrested. A judge gives you $5,000 bail. But you don’t have $5,000, so you pay Lubbock Bail Bond a nonrefundable fee — at least 10 percent of your bail — and you get out of jail.

“We put up the total amount; they pay us a premium. As long as they show up for court, we make money,” says office manager Ken Herzog.

There are about a dozen bail bond companies in Lubbock, serving a rather small population of 250,000. Herzog says it’s a cutthroat business that leaves no room for even a modest pretrial release program. As an example, he describes a time he was working to make bond for an inmate. A clerk at the courthouse told him that the inmate had been interviewed by pretrial release program workers who were working to get him out of jail.

“I said, ‘Oh no, they ain’t,’ ” Herzog says he told the clerk. “So I went to the judge that signed the motion for pretrial and told her what was up. They had no business even talking to this person. They pulled their bond, and I got the person out of jail.”

I ask him if he is talking about Henderson from Lubbock’s pretrial release office. “If he gets in my business, I told him, ‘I do this for a living,’ ” Herzog says. “I said, ‘You don’t do that. We set this thing up.’ I said ‘I’ll work with you any way I can, but you’re not going to get in my business.’ Well, he backed off.”

It’s unlikely Henderson had much choice. Henderson works for county officials. And county officials are elected.

“We take care of the ones who take care of us,” Herzog says. “We don’t want to pay anybody off, per se. We just want to support the people who are trying to help our business.”

According to Lubbock campaign records, bondsmen make frequent donations to elected officials. Indigent jail inmates do not.

Excerpted from Laura Sullivan’s Bail Burden Keeps U.S. Jails Stuffed With Inmates for NPR.

Edouard Basile Recounts

lmuszkie — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:56:42 +0000

Video by Sarah Smith of Britain’s Channel 4 News.

Edouard was an English teacher in Port-au-Prince living with his wife and two children according to the NY Times.