Author Archives: Jonelle8381

Quick Reads: "The Dylanologists" by David Kinney

by Jonelle8381 Posted on May 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Dylanologists

By David Kinney

SIMON & SCHUSTER

It seems like everybody and their dog has a book about Bob Dylan, but The Dylanologists turns the spotlight on his most obsessive fans instead. Journalist David Kinney takes us into a world of zealous collectors who will snap up anything the great man has touched, nerds who obsessively trade and catalog bootleg recordings, and code breakers who pore over every quote and lyric for meaning. We learn about the travails of dedicating one’s life to an inaccessible hero and the emotional toll of having that hero regularly reinvent our favorite parts of himself. Through it all runs a tension between the Dylanologist’s compulsion to understand the “real” Bob and the artist’s steadfast desire to remain an enigma.

This review originally appeared in our May/June 2014 issue of Mother Jones.

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Quick Reads: "The Dylanologists" by David Kinney

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"It’s Hucking Yourself Downhill Super-Fast"

by Jonelle8381 Posted on December 30, 2013

Mother Jones

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As far as Katie Uhlaender can tell, skeleton—which involves hurtling yourself face-first on a sled down an icy course at top speeds of nearly 90 miles an hour—is the safest sport she has ever tried. “I’ve had eight surgeries,” she says, “but none of them were from skeleton.”

Four years ago, preparing for the Vancouver Olympics, Uhlaender twice shattered her left knee—the first time in a backcountry snowmobile accident—requiring four surgeries and keeping her on crutches until 20 weeks before the Games. Add in the emotional pain of the death of her father, former major league outfielder Ted Uhlaender, and it’s no wonder that she struggled to an 11th-place finish in Vancouver.

Now, for the second Olympics in a row, Uhlaender is coming off an injury. This time, it’s skeleton-related: She suffered a concussion on a training run in Lake Placid a few months ago and was limited throughout the fall. “It was the first time in 10 years that I’ve had to not take the second run,” she says.

With Sochi on the horizon, I chatted with the 2012 world champ about how she got her start on the sled, how to slide without thinking, and how to manage the double-standard between men and women, in sports and beyond:

Mother Jones: So how did you ever get started in skeleton?

Katie Uhlaender: I just happened to get to meet someone completely random and got sucked in before I knew better. Laughs. I just met a girl who was a bobsledder, and she talked me into trying it. Three weeks into it I won junior nationals, fourth week I went to junior worlds, eighth week I won senior nationals. I kind of started winning right away, and it was either go to college and get a Ph.D. or become an Olympian. So I basically made a choice.

MJ: Had you played a lot of sports growing up?

KU: My father was a major league baseball player, so if you weren’t an athlete, you weren’t cool. I just was an athlete and was looking for a sport, and that’s what happened. I just took advantage of an opportunity and made a choice.

MJ: What was it like to have so much success so early?

KU: It’s all relative, right? First, when I went to junior worlds, I was conflicted because I didn’t feel like I deserved it. And then I talked to my dad, and he referenced his first at-bat in the big leagues. He couldn’t stop shaking. And then he realized that every legend before him took the same steps he took up to the plate. Once you get to the plate, you have two options: You either quit, or you try to hit the ball.

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"It’s Hucking Yourself Downhill Super-Fast"

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Is This Plane the Biggest Pentagon Rip-Off of All Time?

by Jonelle8381 Posted on December 13, 2013

Mother Jones

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The passage of the Ryan-Murray budget plan in the House sends a strong signal that the Pentagon’s budget is basically untouchable. Under the deal, the military’s base budget (which doesn’t include supplemental funding for overseas operations and combat) will be restored to around $520 billion next year—more than it got in 2006 and 2007, when the United States was fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Erika Eichelberger reports, the deal could spell the end of efforts to make the Pentagon budget more efficient, particularly in the realm of procurement and contracting. Exhibit A is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the stealthy, high-tech fighter jets that are supposed to do everything from landing on aircraft carriers and taking off vertically to dogfighting and dropping bombs. Faced with sequestration cuts, the Air Force had considered delaying its purchases of the fighters, which are years behind schedule, hugely over budget, and plagued with problems. If the House budget plan becomes law and sequestration is eased for two years, those plans also may be shelved.

More on the pricey plane with a reputation as the biggest defense boondoggle in history:

Rolling out the F-35 originally was expected to cost $233 billion, but now it’s expected to cost nearly $400 billion. The time needed to develop the plane has gone from 10 years to 18.

Lockheed says the final cost per plane will be about $75 million. However, according to the Government Accountability Office, the actual cost has jumped to $137 million.

It was initially estimated that it could cost another $1 trillion or more to keep the new F-35s flying for 30 years. Pentagon officials called this “unaffordable”—and now say it will cost only $857 million. “This is no longer the trillion-dollar aircraft,” boasts a Lockheed Martin executive.
Planes started rolling off the assembly line before development and testing were finished, which could result in $8 billion worth of retrofits.

A 2013 report by the Pentagon inspector general identified 719 problems with the F-35 program. Some of the issues with the first batch of planes delivered to the Marines:

Pilots are not allowed to fly these test planes at night, within 25 miles of lightning, faster than the speed of sound, or with real or simulated weapons.
Pilots say cockpit visibility is worse than in existing fighters.
Special high-tech helmets have “frequent problems” and are “badly performing.”
Takeoffs may be postponed when the temperature is below 60°F.

The F-35 program has 1,400 suppliers in 46 states. Lockheed Martin gave money to 425 members of Congress in 2012 and has spent $159 million on lobbying since 2000.
Remember this bumper sticker?

And those are fancy, San Francisco foodie cupcakes.

We’ve got much more on the Pentagon budget here.

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Is This Plane the Biggest Pentagon Rip-Off of All Time?

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