7 billion

We've reached a milestone for the world's population. What about the next three billion? Jack Goldstone considers the resources needed to manage ten billion people:

In the next century, the fastest population growth will take place in the world’s least advanced economies and some of its worst-governed countries. A global effort to improve governance and education in those countries, allowing the world to benefit from the human potential of billions of additional people, could again usher in a new stage of global prosperity. But failure to meet this challenge may consign billions of people to live in countries with failing states, brimming with angry and frustrated youth, prone to high levels of violence, and recurrent humanitarian disasters on ever-larger scales.

What lies ahead for OWS

Hendrik Hertzberg sees danger ahead, and puts things excellently:

Unlike the Tea Party, which was born when the alien/socialist enemy held all three of Washington’s elected redoubts, Occupy Wall Street inhabits a different political world, one whose most prominent figure, the President, has fallen short of not only many Occupiers’ hopes but also his own—in large part because of the Republicans’ conscienceless exploitation of the perverse veto points of the congressional machine. Yes, O.W.S. has “changed the conversation.” But talk, however necessary, is cheap.

(Image: "A protester wears a dollar bill over his mouth at the start of a march by demonstrators opposed to corporate profits on Wall Street on Sept. 30, 2011 New York City." (Mario Tama/Getty Images, via ABC News)

The strange tale of the Norden bombsight

By the way, the TED talk to which Gladwell refers early in his piece is here, and it's worth watching, too.

The United States as an empire

Pankaj Mishra reviews Niall Ferguson's new book, Civilisation. On another book – Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (2003) – of the Ferguson's:

An exasperated Ferguson – ‘the United States,’ he claimed, ‘is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name’ – set out to rescue the word from the discredit into which political correctness had apparently cast it. Britain’s 19th-century empire ‘undeniably pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour. It invested immense sums in developing a global network of modern communications. It spread and enforced the rule of law over vast areas.’ ‘Without the spread of British rule around the world,’ he went on, in a typical counterfactual manoeuvre, colonised peoples, such as Indians, would not have what are now their most valuable ideas and institutions – parliamentary democracy, individual freedom and the English language. 

Intellectuals, revolution, and the Arab Spring

Political movements generally have their intellectual champions (Thomas Paine being my favourite example), but such individuals seem to have been absent throughout the Arab Spring. Robert Worth examines the changing model of revolution:

The absence of such figures in the Arab Spring is partly a measure of the pressures Arab intellectuals have lived under in recent decades, trapped between brutal state repression on one side and stifling Islamic orthodoxy on the other. Many were co-opted by their governments (or Persian Gulf oil money) or forced into exile, where they lost touch with the lived reality of their societies. Those who remained have often applauded the revolts of the past year and even marched along with the crowds. But they have not led them, and often appeared stunned and confused by a movement they failed to predict.

Image of the Day

Pupils demonstrate rhythmic gymnastics during a promotion activity of Sunshine Sports in Tianjin Mulnicipality, north China. Personally, I'm not that impressed; I do this every morning. (Liu Dongyue, Xinhua, via the Wall Street Journal)

Could you pass a US citizenship test?

Good question:

In order to become a US citizen, immigrants must pass the Naturalization Test. American citizenship bestows the right to vote, improves the likelihood of family members living in other countries to come and live in the US, gives eligibility for federal jobs, and can be a way to demonstrate loyalty to the US. Applicants must get 6 answers out of 10 in an oral exam to pass the test. According to US Citizenship and Immigration services, 92 percent of applicants pass this test.

Why don't I like Coldplay? Ctd

A reader, and obvious fan of the band, tweets:

I think you've overlooked several things in this report. Otherwise it's just me sticking up for my favourite musicians.

Go on...

On immigration, Republicans love big government

A. Barton Hinkle considers the double standard:

In his Iowa remarks, Romney endorsed a biometric card—a high-tech ID that contains fingerprints, iris scans, or similar unique personal identifiers. The casual listener might think only certain people—such as Latinos with thick accents—would need to carry such a card. To the contrary: Every U.S. resident would be required to present one when applying for a job. This is not Big Brother. This is Big Brother with a bad case of 'roid rage. It's like making every American apply for a gun license to catch the tiny few who are forbidden to own firearms.

A sister's eulogy for Steve Jobs

Novelist Mona Simpson's touching eulogy for her brother, which was delivered as part of a memorial service at Stanford University:

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man. I realized during that terrifying time that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations: his son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire.

I encourage you to read the whole thing, and pay particular attention to the end.

Why don't I like Coldplay?

Sasha Frere-Jones explains her aversion to the popular band:

The tunes are there, usually three to an album, but that is something you could say of even their weakest contemporaries, like Maroon 5. What puts them up into some higher level of accessibility must be an averaging of Martin’s guarantee to never shock or offend anyone—which parents value—and the toy soldier brand of pageantry and celebration that underpins so many songs. Coldplay keep throwing massive parades for themselves, without explanation or merit. Some folks just love confetti.

Well put. Of course, with their new album out, we're getting a lot of people praising the band's latest work everywhere – be it on the internet or, at the higher levels, television. Regardless of how much I might like a person otherwise, I'll always get along with them that much better if they hate Coldplay as I do.

Thinking about Shakespeare as a fraud

The film, as Stephen Marchie points out, makes a rather bad case for the Oxfordian theory, but realises that some people might find the idea appealing:

You don’t have to be a truther or a birther to enjoy a conspiracy theory. We all, at one point or another, indulge fantasies that make the world seem more dangerous, more glamorous and, simultaneously, much more simple than it actually is. But then most of us grow up. Or put down the bong. Or read a book by somebody who is familiar with both proper historical methodology and the facts. The errors in “Anonymous,” I should point out, do not require great expertise to identify. Any undergraduate who has taken a course in Early Modern Drama, and paid attention, should be able to spot at least 10. (That might make a good exam, come to think of it.) In the movies, a few mistakes don’t matter, but the liberties with facts in “Anonymous” become serious when they enter our conception of real history. 

'FluffPo'

A Tumblr of bad Huffington Post behaviour.

Johnny Depp remembers Hunter S. Thompson

We've discussed Hunter S. Thompson recently, but it's worth a reprise for Depp's piece:

The Hunter circa 1971 and 1972, i.e., the Fear and Loathing era, that’s the Hunter where the hair went away and the voice was there in full force. The Hunter from 1959 and 1960 was this long, lean, athletic, handsome man, who used to type The Great Gatsby over and over to see what it felt like to write a masterpiece. He was a kid searching for his voice and looking for the outlet for that rage, anger, and passion. In terms of how Iapproached The Rum Diary as an actor, Raoul Duke [from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas] is the fully realized Hunter Thompson, and this character, Paul Kemp, is the Hunter teetering on locating that voice, pre-Gonzo. 

Miyazaki on boycotting the US

The director of the acclaimed animated film Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki, decided not to attend the Academy Awards in 2003. Although he neglected to give a reason at the time, Miyazaki is finally willing to give an explanation:

Miyazaki, who has not spoken publicly of the subject, today explained his reasons in an interview with The Times at Comic-Con. “The reason I wasn’t here for the Academy Award was because I didn’t want to visit a country that was bombing Iraq,” he said. “At the time, my producer shut me up and did not allow me to say that, but I don’t see him around today. By the way, my producer also shared in that feeling.”

(The link is old, but thanks to reddit, not lost.)

Berlusconi and Gaddafi

Foreign Policy details their controversial relationship:

In 2009, Berlusconi shut down Rome's largest park to allow Qaddafi and his entourage of female body guards to set up a Bedouin style camp during a state visit. This comes on top of the extensive economic relations between Italy and Libya; along with being Libya's largest trading partner, Libya's sovereign wealth funds had invested in many Italian companies, including football club Juventus F.C. Initially, Berlusconi opposed the NATO mission over Libya, but had an about face in August, as he stood beside interim Prime Minister Jibril, announcing the release of frozen assets to the NTC.

(Image: LIVIO ANTICOLI/AFP/Getty Images)

Perry's flirt with birtherism

It's over:

In an interview with a local television news station in Florida, Perry downplayed his previous Birther applause lines, and said that people need to "lighten up a little bit." "I don’t think I was expressing doubts," he said. "I was having some fun with Donald Trump."

But it'll still hurt him, notes the Washington Post:

Are corporations people?

In a freshly-published profile of Mitt Romney, Benjamin Wallace-Wells considers the remarks – a supposed 'gaffe' – from another perspective:

The incident, in retrospect, did less to peg Romney as a creature of privilege than it did to reveal something deeper. For Romney, the corporation has long been an object of a certain idealism. It is something he has spent much of his adult life—first as a management-strategy consultant, then as CEO of the private-equity firm Bain Capital—working to perfect, to strip of its inefficiencies until it might function as a perfectly frictionless economic unit.

Consider, too, Ron Paul's response.

The perils of Groupon

There has been no shortage of criticism. The Economist makes a good point:

Groupon aspires to be global, but the markets it serves are intensely local. Internet selling is best suited to “experience goods”. These are goods and services the quality of which you cannot judge until you experience them, such as haircuts and Thai meals, so there is no advantage in having a bricks-and-mortar shop for people to browse in. (In North America 83% of Groupon’s deals fall into this category.) The trouble with experience goods is that generally you cannot separate manufacture from delivery: you cannot cook a meal in Guangzhou and eat it in New York.

Of course, the most common point made against the daily deals business is that there is a ridiculously low barrier-to-entry. If imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery, as I recall one article or video on Groupon began, then Groupon must be truly flattered.

Money faces

And, thus, a meme is born.

How the potato changed the world

In pretty significant ways, some might argue:

Many researchers believe that the potato’s arrival in northern Europe spelled an end to famine there. (Corn, another American crop, played a similar but smaller role in southern Europe.) More than that, as the historian William H. McNeill has argued, the potato led to empire: “By feeding rapidly growing populations, [it] permitted a handful of European nations to assert dominion over most of the world between 1750 and 1950.” The potato, in other words, fueled the rise of the West.

It would be unusual to think that Europe owes its imperial dominance to the humble potato. But, hey: history's weird like that.

Enforcing the law, without discrimination

Going about the business of law enforcement produces a few problems, as John Paul Stevens reveals in his review of The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William J. Stuntz:

Ironically, during an age of increasing protection for civil rights, discrimination against both black suspects and black victims of crime steadily increased. Stuntz attributes this development, in part, to the expansion of prosecutorial and police discretion—in his view, “discretion and discrimination travel together.” For example, the discretionary authority to enforce posted speed limits has enabled state troopers to be selectively severe in making arrests, and to use those arrests to justify searches for evidence of drug offenses. While Stuntz does not suggest that such discriminatory enforcement of traffic laws is itself a national crisis, it provides one illustration of the negative effects of excessive enforcement discretion.

"The Deity failed to pay his property taxes"

Futility Closet's latest titbit.

From Herman Cain, the best ad yet

I laughed so much. James Fallows captions:

Now, I cannot be 100% sure that this is real rather than Onion parody. (And doesn't that say something delightful about our politics at this stage?) David Roberts, of Grist, who alerted many people to it, is skeptical. But if you check some of the other ads the campaign has posted, like this one, it's not that far off. The "Mark Block" speaking in this ad looks very much like the online pictures of Mark Block of the Cain campaign.

Regardless, it's worth watching.

Why don't we eat horses?

Like most food aversions, there's no definite explanation:

Horse-eating, or hippophagy, became popular in Europe in the 19th century, when famines caused several governments to license horse butcheries. Today, horse meat is most widely available in France, Belgium, and Sweden, where it outsells mutton and lamb combined. While Americans have occasionally consumed their equine friends during times of scarcity, the practice just didn’t catch on. It may be that so many Americans forged intimate relationships with horses during our founding and expansion that eating the creature seemed morally wrong by the time of the nation’s major food shortages of the 20th century.

Economy over foreign policy

In spite of Obama's foreign policy success, people seem unmoved in light of the economic situation. New Yorker editor David Remnick considers the effect of Gaddafi's death on the public's perception of the President:

Yet there’s something strange about the backseat status often given to foreign policy in Presidential campaigns. Presidents have a great deal more sway over the matters of war, peace, and diplomacy than they have over the economic weather. (Globalism and the House of Representatives make sure of that.) Even stranger is the lack of attention given to foreign affairs by the candidates themselves.

What I (still) don't see in the OWS movement

Regardless of how hard one tries, it would be almost impossible to ignore the Occupy Wall Street protests completely. In little time, the demonstrations have not only intensified in New York, but have also inspired countless demonstrations around the world. The movement has attracted both scorn and praise – from people on the left and the right; intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, and vapid propagandists like Michael Moore: sure enough, it seems to demonstrate all the tell-tale symptoms of a world-changing movement.

But I, and indeed others, certainly don't see it that way. Although grand comparisons to the Arab Spring have been made, OWS cannot claim to have waged a war against military dictatorship. There is no corrupt leader to overthrow, no tear gas through which to fight, no violent reaction, and certainly no lack of basic democracy; Zuccotti Park is no Tahrir Square. There are no laws to be repealed, and no specific demands to be made.

Don't get me wrong: people have the right to be angry. You're pushing an open door with me if you're argument is that corporate interests wield too much influence in Washington and government in general, but if you're method is primarily concerned with the forceful occupation of a financial district, you've lost even the slightest semblance of support on my part. Undoubtedly, others will feel the same. While protests can often mean inconveniencing oneself, meaningful change almost never rises out of inconvenience. Change doesn't happen because a group of aspiring dissidents elects to stand on a street corner, but is instead the result of true injustice.

And I suppose this is what I don't see in the movement. One can't help feeling that the anger is a little misdirected, and that the misdirection is based on a misunderstanding of how 'the system' actually works. I understand that the majority of demonstrators don't advocate the dismantling of capitalism, or some such thing, but instead wish to see it reformed so that the crisis we have witnessed over the past few years isn't likely to recur. There's no doubt that the majority of OWS-ers wish to see the influence of the corporation in government diminish, and that I would support that too.

But, then again, who knows that the majority of OWS-ers think. It's hard to gauge the ideological sentiment of a loosely-banded group of protesters: supported by libertarian Republican Ron Paul on one hand, and filmmaker Michael Moore on the other. The movement remains as transparent and as elusive as it was yesterday: with nothing to hide, yet nothing to share.

Now that we all agree that there's a problem with society, the issue is in coming to some form of solution. I don't think, personally, that it will be born of Occupy Wall Street. It's becoming difficult to say with certainty how the true goal will evolve, and I'm certain that there are causes (the gay rights movement would be one) immeasurably more worthy of everyone's time and attention – but now that you've got that attention, how about using it. That is, before it's gone for good. 

(Image: "A reporter with Russian Television International speaks to Occupy Wall Street protesters who have camped out in New York's financial district on September 20, 2011." Paul Weiskel, via Wired)

The future of punctuation?

The whole system is changing – evolving, perhaps:

Use of the semicolon is dwindling. Although colons were common as early as the 14th century, the semicolon was rare in English books before the 17th century. It has always been regarded as a useful hybrid—a separator that's also a connector—but it's a trinket beloved of people who want to show that they went to the right school.

More surprising is the eclipse of the hyphen. Traditionally, it has been used to link two halves of a compound noun and has suggested that a new coinage is on probation. But now the noun is split (fig leaf, hobby horse) or rendered without a hyphen (crybaby, bumblebee). It may be that the hyphen's last outpost will be in emoticons, where it plays a leading role.

(Image, perhaps best described as a repository of abandoned punctuation, via the Wall Street Journal)

Conservatism's zeal

It's hard to explain what I don't like about the movement at the moment. Paul Krugman seems to come pretty close:

The key to understanding this, I’d suggest, is that movement conservatism has become a closed, inward-looking universe in which you get points not by sounding reasonable to uncommitted outsiders — although there are a few designated pundits who play that role professionally — but by outdoing your fellow movement members in zeal.

Perry's tax plan miracle, ctd

Conor Friedersdorf piles on the flagging GOP candidate's plan:

He's proposing to radically change the whole system. It's his proposal, so he can set rates however he likes. And despite that, he's maintaining a status quo deduction that distorts the real estate market, acts as an incentive for Americans to invest in more housing, and does the most to benefit affluent homeowners in pricey urban enclaves. Take that you dirty, rotten apartment dwellers!

(Image: "Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry delivers a keynote address during the Western Republican Leadership Conference last week in Las Vegas." AP, via the Toledo Blade)

Murdoch and his shareholders

Things are turning sour:

Michael Wolff, Murdoch biographer and author of The Man Who Owns the News, said it was now inevitable that James Murdoch would leave. "James will probably go by himself, that's what everybody will be waiting for. I wonder too if Lachlan will step off the board. But could this drag on for another year? Yes." Wolff said the size of the vote against Murdoch's son had created "a very difficult family moment."

Incidentally, Wolff's biography of Murdoch – The Man Who Owns the News – is excellent. You ought to read it.

Reading on the toilet

Some call it a filthy practice. For others, it's a habit in which they happily indulge. Ian Sample explores the appeal behind this unusual (or perhaps not so unusual) environment for reading:

No writer owned the arena of toilet reading more than Henry Miller. He read truly great books on the lavatory, and maintained that some, Ulysses for instance, could not be fully appreciated elsewhere. The environment was one that enriched substantial works – extracted their flavour, as he put it – while lesser books and magazines suffered. He singled out Atlantic Monthly. Miller went so far as to recommend toilets for individual authors. To enjoy Rabelais, he advised a plain country toilet, "a little outhouse in the corn patch, with a crescent sliver of light coming through the door". Better still, he said, take a friend along, to sit with you for half an hour of minor bliss.

One can't help but wonder how James Joyce would feel about that.

Image of the Day

"U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gestured with revolutionary forces before she departed Tripoli, Libya, Tuesday, October 18th." (Kevin Lamarque/AP, via BagNewsNotes.) Hillary's reactions to the events in Libya over the past few days have been rather interesting indeed. You may recall the reaction to Gaddafi's capture, caught on video.

National anthem recitals as TV promotions

Zooey Deschanel, star of the television show New Girls, sang the national anthem at the recent MLB World Series. I'd agree, although I can't say I've heard every national anthem ever, that it is possibly one of the least inspried. Jay Caspian Kang considers the significance of a rendition of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' as a television promotion:

If we are to respect the national anthem, stand and reflect on our citizenship, don’t the network executives bear the responsibility of presenting us with a version of the song that falls somewhere outside the very easily traceable lines of ratings and intra-platform promotion? And if we are cynical enough to say, “Well, that’s business and you should just grow up,” can’t we at least demand that those same network executives, who, by the way, produce a news network that argues passionately for consecrating American traditions, at least give us a network star who can actually sing?

'Recently dead sponsors of terrorism' costumes

They exist, I kid you not.

Defending Rachel Maddow

Pema Levy, of the American Prospect, was rather surprised by the New Republic's decision to include MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on their list of DC's most overrated thinkers. In her defense:

Is Maddow polemical? Often. Does she have opinions? Obviously. Is she anything like Fox News, where making up facts and promoting a partisan agenda is all in a day's work? Anything but. She carefully uses her pulpit to push important issues that the rest of us often leave behind.

I have a strange thing for Maddow's show. Although I often disagree with her politics, she goes about reporting in an admirable way, and with a mindset more journalists ought to adopt. Although, yes, she happens to be opinionated, Levy's correct in defending her against the accusation that she's anything like the fact-contorting talkingheads on Fox News.

She's not deserving of any such comparison, unless favourable – and I think you can appreciate how difficult that would be to make. Yeah, very.

The Chinese didn't discover America

Erik Loomis debunks the myth:

I am curious why this idea that the Chinese reached America before Columbus has such legs. Of course, no one has done more to popularize this myth as Gavin Menzies through his awful book 1421: The Year China Discovered America. In the years since this book came out, I have heard way too many otherwise smart people (inevitably politically progressive) assert that the Chinese arrived in America before Columbus as fact, using Menzies book as evidence. Menzies essentially argues that the Chinese fleet which left China in 1421 discovered the entire world, using extraordinarily flimsy standards of evidence. I discussed how bad this book was years ago.

(via Matthew Yglesias)

On Tunisia's first free election

With a successful democratic election, she's becoming the envy of her Arab Spring siblings. An editorial for the Independent contrasts the state of affairs in Libya with that of her neighbours:

Born in blood, and accelerated into being by help from outside, the new Libya is likely to find its path to modern statehood harsher and more problematic than, say, Tunisia or even Egypt. But it would be premature to pronounce the revolutions in either country secure. After many delays, Egypt is planning its first post-Mubarak elections, for a new parliament, next month. And Tunisia, though smaller, more cohesive and one step ahead in electoral terms, has also still to face some of its own contradictions.

The article goes on to conclude that Tunisia is a 'pioneer', "but it is only a start."

OWS in China

It's a censored search topic, according to Time. Hannah Beech discusses the nature of media coverage (particularly of 'sensitive issues') in China:

Media cycles in China often follow predictable patterns. First a news topic is allowed, even encouraged as a way to teach the public a valuable lesson. But as worries mount over the destabilizing effect of bad news—be it a product-safety scandal or an instance of local corruption—censors step in and a once well-covered subject disappears from the papers. Savvy Chinese media consumers know how to read between the lines.

Life of the Earth as a 24-hour clock

Admit it: you're fascinated. (via synthetictom)

Awful joke of the day

It's so bad, it makes me wince.

GOP finds out about Twitter

I read that the Obama campaign has established an official Tumblr. I've also been informed that Republicans have picked up their Twitter game since 2008, and are now employing people – as I suppose any intelligent campaign managers in this age would – to monitor social media around the clock and provide 'rapid responses' to the events of the day. It marks a promising improvement from the previous online campaign efforts, which were clearly inferior to the efforts of Obama's campaign employees.

Perry's tax plan miracle

Put simply:

The plan starts with giving Americans a choice between a new, flat tax rate of 20% or their current income tax rate. The new flat tax preserves mortgage interest, charitable and state and local tax exemptions for families earning less than $500,000 annually, and it increases the standard deduction to $12,500 for individuals and dependents.

I'm mildly impressed, but Kevin Drum, predictably, is profoundly unimpressed:

Scientology is rather creepy

To the point where they're investigating South Park. They've even gone so far as to hire private investigators with the aim of 'digging up dirt' on creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, an internal document reveals. The document, which has been combed carefully by the Village Voice, was leaked by former executive of the church Marty Rathbun. Tony Ortega reports:

I asked Rathbun what kind of things OSA's operatives would be looking for in the trash of Parker and Stone and their friends. "Phone records. Bank records. Personal letters that expose some kind of vulnerability. They'll read stuff into the kind of alcohol you're drinking and how much. Prescriptions. They'll figure out your diet. They can find out a lot about you through your trash," he told me this morning by phone from his home in South Texas.

That's exceedingly creepy. (Embedded at the top of the post is the controversial clip. You ought to watch it, it's quite amusing.)

Whiskey by George Washington

It reveals his business acumen, according to NPR:

Virginians have always enjoyed their liquor, and for much of the 18th century, their preferred drink was rum. But when war and tariffs made imported rum hard to come by, George Washington saw an opportunity. Why not make liquor out of grains he was growing on his farms?

"He was a businessman and he was a very, very successful one," says Dennis Pogue, the director of preservation programs at Mount Vernon. By 1799, Washington's distillery was the single most profitable part of his plantation. He couldn't make enough whiskey to meet demand, Pogue says. 

Bachmann on Libya

It was a mistake, apparently:

"We don't know who the next leaders will be," Bachmann said. "Sure, there's a transitional council. But who will the real leadership be that takes over and runs Libya? It could be a radical element. It could be the Muslim Brotherhood. It could be elements affiliated with Al Qaeda. But worse, we've seen [weapons] go missing that are very dangerous."

Well, it may not be particularly astute, but at least she's more aware of foreign policy than her Palin-counterpart. Still, that's not saying much.

Schooling without technology

We've become so accustomed to the idea that education needs to be technology-oriented and increasingly computer-centric. In the (possibly self-proclaimed and widely recognised) home of American technology, Silicon Valley, a leading school has decided that computers and education don't mix:

“I fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school,” said Alan Eagle, 50, whose daughter, Andie, is one of the 196 children at the Waldorf elementary school; his son William, 13, is at the nearby middle school. “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous.”

Someone should tell St. Mary's. (Image source)

Presidents rolling up their sleeves

An illustrated history.

The nature of solitary wit

Alyssa Pelish explains that Alan Shore, of Boston Legal, remains one of his favourite installations of 'solitary wit':

This is the sort of person who is always at the ready with an epigram or an ironic aside. There's a detached elegance to their pith that places them above the pedestrian fumbling of ordinary conversation. But if honest-to-goodness repartee consists, at a minimum, of one wit’s thrust followed by another’s riposte, the solitary wit’s rapier is ever brandished but never met by another blade. Alan Shore’s predecessors, Oscar Wilde’s most epigrammatic characters must have pride of place in this. Although the dialogue of Wilde’s prose and plays is, in general, known for its incisive wit, it almost always turns on the solitary wit — for whom the world is his straight man. Think of the caustic bon mots dropped by Dorian Gray’s Lord Henry, which are never quite returned in kind by the more socially reserved Basil or wide-eyed young Dorian. Even in The Importance of Being Earnest, which is adored for its comically mannered exchanges, Algernon is the only true wit. His every other line is a perfect epigram — but it's rarely ever returned in kind by the others.

Learning to love the protesters

Andrew Sullivan is growing fond of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and argues that they're not nearly as radical as we might think:

The Occupy movement has, according to recent polling, significantly more general support than the Tea Party, and its specific demands are highly popular. Huge majorities agree that corporate special interests have too much clout in Washington, that inequality has gotten out of control, that taxes can and should be raised on the successful, that the gamblers of Wall Street deserve some direct comeuppance for the wreckage they have bestowed on the rest of us. 

You're pushing an open door with me if you want to argue that corporations and special interests have too much influence in Washington, but on a couple of other points I'd have to disagree. Disagree profoundly, you might say.

How to open a door

Awwccupy Wall Street

I suppose we should have seen this coming.

Blogging's conversational informality

Some of Paul Krugman's blog readers take issue with his informality. He explains that it's important to keep blogging (particularly in his field, economics) from becoming too dry:

You see, the things I write about are very important; they affect lives and the destiny of nations. But despite that, economics can all too easily become dry and boring; it’s just the nature of the subject. And I have to find, every time I write, a way to get past that problem. More broadly, the inherent stuffiness of the subject demands, almost as compensation, as conversational a tone as I can manage.

It would be foolish to apply this point of view to just economics; blogging, in general, requires and deserves an entirely different form and style. We cannot approach the composition of a blog post – often one among many – as we would an essay, for example. The medium lends itself to another kind of writing: one that is conversational, largely unedited, and a little rough around the edges. Colloquialisms can be tolerated, bad spelling and grammar cannot.

We mustn't too-closely associate conversational writing with informal writing. One can write in a conversational style and simultaneously appear verbose and wordy. But, after all, everyone has their own writing style. But economics, I would have thought, would never lend itself all that well to blogging.

The end of fur coats

Once representing the height of sartorial luxury among women, fur has fallen into disrepute. What brought about its demise? Carol Dyhouse explains that it wasn't the animal rights groups:

Fur was falling from favour well before the activism of the 1980s. In the late 1950s the price of mink fell dramatically. The cost of manufacturing a mink coat now exceeded that of the raw materials and there were many in the trade who felt that the luxury status of fur was becoming a thing of the past. Demand began to fall. The widespread adoption of central heating no doubt played some part: in bitter cold, nothing keeps you warm like natural fur. But the truth was that the fur coat, once the epitome of glamour and luxury, acquired unfashionable connotations from the 1960s. It signified an older, less trendy and more dependent kind of femininity. The urbane and discreet Links had insisted that most furs were bought by husbands for their wives and not for their mistresses. But in the popular mind the fur coat had come to signify hussies on the make or the kept woman.

Obama as a war president

He can't run on his economic record. Jill Lawrence considers his chances of winning:

In a world ever more complicated, dangerous and economically fragile, he can make a strong argument that he deserves re-election based his record as commander in chief. That may not be enough to offset the pain of the recession and voters' desire for change, but Republicans are bolstering his case in at least two ways: One, some are making unforced errors on foreign policy and two, as they court conservative primary voters, the GOP candidates may be misreading the type of foreign policy most Americans want.

(Image: "President Barack Obama meets with General Raymond T. Odierno, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, during the President's visit with U.S. troops at Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq on April 7." Official White House Photo / Pete Souza, via the Sacramento Bee)

Occupy Wall Street as a tourist attraction

Apparently it's true: "It's now common to see tourists at Zuccotti Park taking photographs of themselves, with protesters in the background. On a typical day they clog the pedestrian traffic in the area, which is often bustling with financial district employees pushing their way through." Personally, I'd rather see the Statue of Liberty or a show on Broadway. But, hey: each to his own.

Haruki Murakami's fierce imagination

As a reader of only The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I could hardly consider myself a devoted Murakami fan. However, my enjoyment of that one book did provoke some interest in Sam Anderson's profile of Murakami in the New York Times Magazine. On how he became a writer:

Murakami, age 29, was sitting in the outfield at his local baseball stadium, drinking a beer, when a batter — an American transplant named Dave Hilton — hit a double. It was a normal-­enough play, but as the ball flew through the air, an epiphany struck Murakami. He realized, suddenly, that he could write a novel. He had never felt a serious desire to do so before, but now it was overwhelming. And so he did: after the game, he went to a bookstore, bought a pen and some paper and over the next couple of months produced “Hear the Wind Sing,” a slim, elliptical tale of a nameless 21-year-old narrator, his friend called the Rat and a four-fingered woman. Nothing much happens, but the Murakami voice is there from the start: a strange broth of ennui and exoticism.

That line – "nothing much happens" – is true of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, too.

What would Steve Jobs have reinvented next?

The textbook:

Jobs held meetings with publishers about working together with Apple on the new digital textbooks. He proposed the idea of giving away the books for free on the iPad, which would have allowed publishers to get around state certifications for textbooks. (Not being too familiar with the textbook business myself, I’m not sure what the advantage would be for publishers.)

The 'Garden of Cosmic Speculation'

Its design is inspired by maths. Chris Weige captions:

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation is at Portrack House, near Dumfries in South West Scotland. It is a private garden created by Charles Jencks. The garden is inspired by science and mathematics, with sculptures and landscaping on these themes, such as Black Holes and Fractals. The garden is not abundant with plants, but sets mathematical formulae and scientific phenomenae in a setting which elegantly combines natural features and artificial symmetry and curves.

Should Gaddafi have been killed?

Christopher Hitchens argues that he should have been put on trial instead:

There can be no doubt that the proven elimination of the old symbols of torture and fear has an emancipating effect, at least in the short term. But I would say that this effect is subject to rapidly diminishing returns, which became evident in Iraq when Moqtada al-Sadr’s unpolished acolytes got the job of conducting the execution of Saddam Hussein. There are sectarian scars still remaining from that botched and sordid episode, and I shall be very surprised if similar resentments were not created among many Libyans on Thursday. Too late to repair that now. But it will be a shame if the killing of the Qaddafis continues and an insult if the summons to the Hague continues to be ignored.

Leaving Iraq

Obama fulfills his campaign promise. "As promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over." Glenn Greenwald reminds us of a few important points:

There will still be a very substantial presence in that country, including what McClatchy called a “small army” under the control of the State Department. They will remain indefinitely, and that includes a large number of private contractors. None of this is to say that this is bad news (it isn’t: it’s good news), nor is it to say that Obama deserves criticism for adhering to the withdrawal plan (he doesn’t). It would just be nice if these central facts — painfully at odds with the two self-serving narratives that started being churned out before the President even spoke — were acknowledged.

Yochi Dreazen, of the National Journal, insists that we understand: "The troops aren't being withdrawn because the U.S. wants them out. They're leaving because the Iraqi government refused to let them stay."  Andrew Sullivan, too, weighs in:

The philosophy in pop music

In 1888, Friedrich Nietzsche coined the phrase, "What does not kill me, makes me stronger." Lazy pop musicians have been using it ever since.

The problem with I.Q.

Among other things, it isn't set in stone:

Teens' personalities, work ethic and the home environments are important, too. "There's a lot of variability in neural development during adolescence and in young adulthood as well," says Stephen Ceci, a professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University. He says this study should give educators and parents pause. "It should caution all of us against assuming that one low IQ score, at one time, is capturing all that an individual is capable of," Ceci says.

Like so many tests, its result is mostly no more than an indication of how good you are at...well, that test.

Cain fails to clarify on abortion

David Freddoso considers the significance of his remarks:

Abortion hasn't become a top-tier issue yet in the 2012 race, but it remains crucial all the same. If Cain isn't pro-life, he's finished in Iowa, and his momentary surge in the polls for the GOP nomination will be just that. Opposition to abortion on demand is also a net winner for GOP candidates in general elections, whatever the other issues in each particular race. In 2000, Mark Shields once noted, 14 percent of American voters told exit pollsters that abortion was their most important issue, and 58 percent of these chose George W. Bush over Al Gore. Shields estimated from this that the issue was a net winner for Bush by 2.5 million votes.

It is almost impossible to deny that Cain's incoherence on this issue serves as another blight on his prospects as a GOP candidate. His inability to give a clear, concise answer to Morgan's question should concern his supporters greatly – in spite of the issue's complexity, Cain's perspective shouldn't be so difficult to summarize. He took far to much time talking about his personal objections to abortion, and not nearly enough time explaining why he wouldn't intervene as president.

As a voter, I would be indifferent to the candidate's own views on the matter, and would simply look to what he or she would do as a leader. Cain's answer focused too much on the former and too little on the latter, and as a result, it seemed muddled and confused. In many ways, it reminded me of his recent remarks on neoconservatism. Increasingly, we see a man who – unlike the polished performances of other candidates, save Perry – seems completely unprepared for the clear-cut answers required by voters and the media.

'Food psychosis'

Frank Bruni counters some of New York's culinary pretentiousness:

Romera is Manhattan’s newest culinary oddity, an elegant hideaway whose conceits include the pairing of each dish in an 11-course meal with a lukewarm flavored water in a lidded grappa glass. One water might be infused with leek and radish, another with jasmine and dried seaweed. Most taste like indecisive teas, commitment-phobic broths or pond runoff.

“Feel free to smell them,” said a server, as if I might otherwise feel jailed. “And to taste them.” He paused. “Make a memory of them.” While blazers are optional at Romera, straitjackets would be a fine idea. 

Salman Rushdie is not afraid

Gidi Weitz interviews the author. Money quote: "We live in a frightened time and people self-censor all the time and are afraid of going into some subjects because they are worried about violent reactions. That is one of the great damaging aspects of what has happened in the last 20 years. Someone asked me if I was afraid to write my memoirs. I told him: 'We have to stop drawing up accounts of fear! We live in a society in which people are allowed to tell their story, and that is what I do.' I am a writer. I write books."

Muammar Gaddafi is dead, what comes next

Amy Davidson asks what comes next:

Libyans suffered terribly under Qaddafi for decades, and also in his fall—as he put down their uprising; in Benghazi, in the siege of Misrata; now. It would be a mistake to draw lines too brightly—to ignore, for example, what might happen in the next triumphant days to the civilians of Surt. (The Washington Post had a report on the grim conditions in the hospital there.) There have also been discouraging reports about the treatment of migrant workers, and of infighting within the National Transitional Council. Perhaps such circumstances will prove to have been a great crucible for a democratic future; but that has not always been the case. One can celebrate a victory, and still be cautious of its character.

Max Fisher recalls how he 'fooled the world'; the Daily Beast publishes an excerpt from Condoleezza Rice's memoir, in which she recounts a meeting with the now-dead Libyan dictator; Al Jazeera obituary here.

(Image: "Gaddafi cheers his supporters after a meeting with a delegation of five African leaders at his Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli." Zohra Bensemra/Reuters, via The Guardian)

Why does God love beards?

A good question:

Although beards appear repeatedly in religious texts, God never explicitly tells us why they’re so holy. In the absence of any divine exposition, many theologians have posited that a hairy face is a symbol of masculinity bestowed upon men by God. St. Clement of Alexandria, who was among the most emphatic proponents of this view, argued: “But for one who is a man to comb himself and shave himself with a razor, for the sake of fine effect, to arrange his hair at the looking-glass, to shave his cheeks, pluck hairs out of them, and smooth them, how womanly! And, in truth, unless you saw them naked, you would suppose them to be women.”

Quote of the Day

"Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.

The need for a single demand

Mary Elizabeth King dismisses it:

Remembering that successful movements in East Germany, South Africa, and Serbia saw their messages evolve and diverge should prompt us to have patience with the messaging from OWS. History suggests that not having “one demand” from the outset is no reason to consider this movement uncommonly disorganized, or irrelevant. 

Herman Cain's race humour

The Times queries: behind it all, a question of seriousness? On his 'electric fence' joke:

The moment illuminated one of the main concerns about Mr. Cain: He could have a hard time being taken seriously, at least to the degree that he uses sarcasm and laughs to divert attention from what for another candidate could be disqualifying gaps in knowledge and experience. And while his casual style of racially inflected humor works to ingratiate him with mostly white audiences at campaign rallies, it has angered some black critics, who believe he uses age-old stereotypes. 

Jonathan Martin and Juana Summers explore the issue:

But even as he runs a campaign centered on what he calls a common-sense message and an embrace of conservative orthodoxy, the racial component is ever-present. It’s not necessarily because Cain’s the only nonwhite candidate running for the presidential nomination of an overwhelmingly white party. And it’s not because he’s vying to take on the country’s first black president. Rather, it’s because Cain, himself, places the issue front and center.

In other news, Godfather's Pizza doesn't exactly cut it in a Politico taste test. "The cheese is really sour! The crust is like a sponge." (Image via Politico)

Worst college essays

New Yorker editor Alex Ross offers one of his own.

Suffering from 'Paris Syndrome'

Symptoms, both psychological and physical, experienced by first time visitors who feel that the City of Light doesn't conform to their expectations:

Despite our international desire to imagine that this is a city where pigeons stay in the parks and the waiters occasionally burst into song, Paris can be a harsh place. It has its share of social problems: crime, filth, inequality, and -- our special treat for the visitors -- not-so-friendly locals. Parisians are constantly breaking new scientific ground when it comes to being unaccommodating and even disdainful towards foreigners. If you do not speak French, you can look forward to stumbling through many uncomfortable, labored conversations with people who resent your very existence. The service industry, too, is notorious for treating tourists like something they recently scraped from the bottom of their shoes.

This is generally a response to arrogance: people who refuse to make any attempt to speak French will undoubtedly find themselves ignored. Or at least that was our experience. Perhaps if one is credulous (or stupid) enough to truly believe, for example, that 'the waiters occasionally burst into song', Paris might be a rather disappointing destination. For most, though, this isn't so.

"How could they do this to Tintin?"

A lifelong fan of the character appears thoroughly unimpressed with Steven Spielberg's new film:

As it is, the film has turned a subtle, intricate and beautiful work of art into the typical bombast of the modern blockbuster, Tintin for morons, and the nicest things one can say about it are that there's a pleasing cameo of Hergé himself in the opening scene, the cars look lovely, indeed it is as a whole visually sumptuous, and (after 20 minutes or so of more or less acceptable fidelity; and the 3D motion-capturing transference of the original drawings is by far the least of the film's problems) it usefully places in plain view all the cretinous arrogance of modern mass-market, script-conference-driven film-making, confirming in passing that, as a director, Spielberg is a burned-out sun. 

I don't know enough about either to comment, so I'll just wait until I've seen the film (that is, assuming I do see the film, and I probably won't).

Being buried alive

Fear of it, you may have suspected, isn't without basis in reality:

Throughout the enlightenment, doctors were learning more about the human body and death. As they learned to revive people who were previously considered dead (such as drowning victims via the recently invented mouth to mouth resuscitation) doctors began to question if all the people they were burying had truly been dead. With increasing reports of premature burial, by the late 1700s the fear of being buried alive had fully taken hold of the Western mind.

It was a common enough fear that in 1799 as President George Washington lay dying he told his servants "Do not let my body be put into the vault in less than three days after I am dead. Do you understand?” to avoid such a fate.

I suppose everyone can understand fear of such a thing; it's certainly not a pleasant thought, regardless of how remote a possibility it appears to be. It has very little to do with this, but I've always found cremation more appealing. With any luck, it won't matter to me; I'll actually be dead.

Feelings on wealth redistribution

Surprisingly, support for redistribution has plummeted during the recession, according to the Scientific American:

For years, the General Social Survey has asked individuals whether “government should reduce income differences between the rich and the poor.” Agreement with this statement dropped dramatically between 2008 and 2010, the two most recent years of data available. Other surveys have shown similar results.

One explanation:

Our recent research suggests that, far from being surprised that many working-class individuals would oppose redistribution, we might actually expect their opposition to rise during times of turmoil – despite the fact that redistribution appears to be in their economic interest. Our work suggests that people exhibit a fundamental loathing for being near or in last place – what we call “last place aversion.” This fear can lead people near the bottom of the income distribution to oppose redistribution because it might allow people at the very bottom to catch up with them or even leapfrog past them. 

Fear and Loathing...

Matt Labash reviews Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson, edited by Jann Wenner:

Thompson was a musician in prose, his words his rhythm section. He was Buddy Rich and Tito Puente and John Bonham rolled into one. His paragraphs kept perfect time—never laying a false beat. He often wrote to music, which he called "fuel." "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was written entirely to a live version of the Rolling Stones's "Sympathy for the Devil." Thompson felt writing should resemble a great song, that, like music, it should move people through the ear. Frequently, he would have guests at his Woody Creek, Colo., compound read passages aloud, telling them to slow down and just how to punch the emphasis, as he enjoyed the sound of his sentences hitting like blunt rocks. As a young writer, he'd gone so far as to re-type the works of Dos Passos and Fitzgerald, just to feel their cadences vibrate through his fingers.

(Image: Getty Images, via the Wall Street Journal)

Questioning Mormonism

Is it a cult? Christopher Hitchens doesn't care, but says we should question it anyway:

The Mormons apparently believe that Jesus will return in Missouri rather than Armageddon: I wouldn’t care to bet on the likelihood of either. In the meanwhile, though, we are fully entitled to ask Mitt Romney about the forces that influenced his political formation and—since he comes from a dynasty of his church, and spent much of his boyhood and manhood first as a missionary and then as a senior lay official—it is safe to assume that the influence is not small. Unless he is to succeed in his dreary plan to borrow from the playbook of his pain-in-the-ass predecessor Michael Dukakis, and make this an election about "competence not ideology," he should be asked to defend and explain himself, and his voluntary membership in one of the most egregious groups operating on American soil.

Pundits have frequently attempted to pose religion as being an aspect of a candidate's character we needn't (and ought not to) touch; that it's sacrosanct and protected, in other words. I rebel against this notion, and although I wouldn't dismiss a candidate simply because of their religion, I might find their faith as a source of at least some doubt when it comes to their suitability for public office.

This has been linked to before, but Bill Keller, in his article on candidates and religion, did put things rather well.

Are debates good for Republicans?

Amy Davidson is unsure:

Debate after debate has included moments that seem disastrous for Republicans, individually and collectively, and yet they all seem to get Fox News immunity totems anyway. That’s what keeps them from functioning as circular firing squads, as much as they might look like them sometimes. And why? After each debate, one wonders whose misstep, or whose continued presence, helped whom, but perhaps that’s the wrong way to look at it. Maybe the Republican campaign against President Obama’s election has come together, whether it was planned that way or not, as an ensemble piece, not a solo show.

Confronting mortality

Boris Kachka examines Joan Didion's new memoir, Blue Nights. You may recall a previous post on the matter, here.

Image of the Day

"Maj. Gen. Russ Handy braves a sandstorm at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, Sept. 27, 2011. As the commander of the 9th Air and Space Expeditionary Task Force-Iraq and director of Air Component Coordination Element-Iraq, the general is the senior US Air Force representative in Iraq and represents the combined force's air component commander to the commanding general of US Forces-Iraq." (US Air Force photo/Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo, via Mother Jones)

Positive Obama coverage

There isn't much of it:

Though covered largely as president rather than a candidate, negative assessments of Obama have outweighed positive by a ratio of almost 4-1. Those assessments of the president have also been substantially more negative than positive every one of the 23 weeks studied. And in no week during these five months was more than 10% of the coverage about the president positive in tone.

That is, according to a new study from Pew Research. It shouldn't be particularly surprising: the president is almost always going to be subject to more scrutiny, criticism and scorn. Why? Because he (or, in the future perhaps, she) makes important decisions publicly on a daily basis. Where presidential hopefuls can simply hide their mistakes or bury them behind press releases, the president himself must be subjected regularly to the scrutiny of the world's media.

Besides, people rarely have anything 'positive' to say about the incumbent.

Believing in Bachmann

Donald Trump still does:

Michele Bachmann got a boost from Donald Trump on a tele-town hall tonight, a call on which her campaign claimed more than 200,000 listeners took part. Trump opened by saying he had a "lot of respect" for Bachmann, with whom he had breakfast last week.

Is it just me, or is this the kind of endorsement you wouldn't really want to have?

At the helm of the 'Gray Lady'

Ken Auletta (whose book, Googled, is one you ought to read) profiles Jill Abramson, the new executive editor of the New York Times:

An editorial voice in news stories adds credence to the frequent charge that the Times’ news reporting often displays a liberal bias—a critique that will not be lessened by the elevation of a woman brought up in a liberal-Democratic household on the West Side of Manhattan who worked for liberal Southern Democrats and wrote a book asserting that Clarence Thomas probably lied.

Abramson, asked whether the Times has a liberal bias, says, “I think we try hard not to” be biased, but she adds that the Times, as its public editor argued in a column seven years ago, has an insular urban bias that is sometimes apparent in social stories. She fervently believes that the Times is an equal-opportunity prober of Democrats as well as of Republicans. Asked about her own upbringing, she responds, “I’m often the one who raises the point in page-one meetings that our mix of stories is too urban in outlook, too parochial. All my years in Washington, and in some ways being attacked by conservatives, made me more conscious of how a story might be seen in the rest of America.”

"Imagine there's no pizza"

Occupy New Plymouth

It exists, I kid you not. Following a little jaunt to town this morning, I was rather surprised – but more amused – to discover that there is such a band of loosely-organised dissidents in our fair city, both of whom situated on the lawn in front of the courthouse. I don't think I've ever seen a more pitiful display of anger in my life. My favourite sign? "Money is debt." Oh, how insightful!

Demonstrations similar to those in New York, I read, have sprung up in Wellington, inspired by their more intrusive and irritating counterparts in the United States. One can only hope that the silliness dies down shortly.

America has turned agnostic on climate change

Or so it seems, writes Elisabeth Rosenthal:

Belief in man-made global warming, and passion about doing something to arrest climate change, is not what it was five years or so ago, when Al Gore’s movie had buzz and Elizabeth Kolbert’s book about climate change, “Field Notes From a Catastrophe,” was a best seller. The number of Americans who believe the earth is warming dropped to 59 percent last year from 79 percent in 2006, according to polling by the Pew Research Group. When the British polling firm Ipsos Mori asked Americans this past summer to list their three most pressing environmental worries, “global warming/climate change” garnered only 27 percent, behind even “overpopulation.”

Philosophy as a practical major

Study in the field appears to be on the rise. Edward Tenner asks why.

Blame the baby boomers?

Niall Ferguson suggests that the Occupy Wall Street-ers really ought to be blaming the baby boomers, not big business (although, in all honesty, who really knows who they're blaming):

Of these harsh realities the occupiers of Wall Street seem blissfully unaware. Fixated on the idea that they somehow represent the 99 percent of people who scrape by on 80 percent of total income, they fail to see that the real distributional conflict of our time is not between percentiles, much less classes, but between generations. And no generation has a keener interest in slashing future spending on entitlements than today’s teens and 20-somethings.

So occupying Wall Street is not the answer to this generation’s problems. The answer is to occupy the Tea Party—and wrest it from the grumpy old men who currently run it. 

(Image: "A protester holds a sign during the Occupy Wall Street demonstration at Zuccotti Park in New York, Oct. 10, 2011," Jin Lee / Bloomberg-Getty Images, via The Daily Beast)

Herman Cain on foreign policy

He seems to be rather unfamiliar with the ideological distinctions. Ben Smith says it's further evidence that he's given little thought to the matter, which is an increasingly important talking point in the race:

He said this of a decade-old war, and his open ignorance of less central matters of foreign policy, like the course of troublesome U.S. ally Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan, seems almost a point of pride. He's said he likes the views of George Will and Charles Krauthammer, who disagree sharply on pretty much everything past the water's edge. (This is more or less as illuminating as saying you like to read Keynes and Hayek.) All the available evidence suggests that Cain "hasn't the faintest clue," Dan Drezner wrote yesterday, and it's hard to disagree.

It certainly isn't.

Perry's descent

Some have cited his poor debating skills as a factor; others blame his policy on immigration:

When Republicans were asked in February which issues were most important to them, immigration was seventh on the list, after job creation/economic growth, the deficit, health care, national security/terrorism, energy, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In this week's poll, immigration had shot up to fourth -- ahead of health care (Mitt Romney's weakest issue), energy and the two wars.

For sure, immigration seems to have become a larger issue than anyone had anticipated. However, I'd generally side with those who think that it's due to his lack of visibility. He just doesn't look, er, presidential enough.

(Image: Associated Press, via Politico)

Are nuns a force for good?

Nichi Hodgson seems to think so:

The first duty of a nun will always be to her faith; but in a climate wary of religiosity, focusing on the social care nuns provide may bring them back into secular view. For centuries, the cultural contribution and the unique role nuns have played in women's intellectual lives have been overlooked; when it comes to welfare, we surely cannot afford to do the same. Nuns are a force for good; you don't need to believe in God to believe in that.

Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party, ctd

"One looks cooler. The other smells better." Jacob Weisberg contemplates their political impact:

Where the Tea Party is anarchic in principle and conservative in style, Occupy Wall Street is anarchic in style and liberal in principle. Tea Party rallies are dominated by middle-class, middle-aged white men who pack up their coolers and go home at the end of the day. The Occupy Wall Street encampment, which I visited a couple of times last week, is more like a Phish concert that forgot to end. The Tea Party, remember, was launched by a guy in a suit on the floor of a financial exchange; it’s the backward-looking movement of people worried about losing their place in society. Occupy Wall Street was spawned by a poster of a ballerina perched atop Wall Street’s bronze bull. It is the image-conscious, forward-looking movement of people worried that they may never live in the kind of country they want. Occupy Wall Street looks cooler. The Tea Party smells better.

And yet both seem equally pathetic. I suspect it is rather easy for those – often with more time than sense – to throw themselves behind whatever movement they wish, refusing to acknowledge its ultimate futility in bringing about meaningful social change. Both have no well-formed idea of the change they wish to see in the world. How can we possibly take them seriously?

Paris when flooded

The world's abandoned blogs

Why do 95% of them end up in this category?

It turns out that this cycle may not be uncommon. Surveys have shown that 95% of blogs are abandoned within 120 days and 60-80% of them abandoned within the first month. I'm not 100% certain if these statistics are still valid today, but I have a hunch they are or perhaps even worse. Many of us simply don't have the time, energy, passion and stamina it takes to build an online audience. Worse still, we've entered an age of conspicuousness in which blogs gone unnoticed are blogs worth abandoning. Put those two together and you find yourself stuck with massive inertia.

Do negative campaign ads work?

Not really, so it would appear:

Take the “daisy ad.” Perhaps the most infamous negative presidential ad of all time didn’t appear to move either Lyndon B. Johnson’s or Barry Goldwater’s poll numbers. And don’t be fooled by accounts suggesting that a negative ad had some subtle effect on a race — “changed the narrative” or another similarly squishy phrase. Votes, not narratives, are what wins elections. 

Quote of the Day

"Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless." – Oscar Wilde, writing in the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I have just started reading. It's really rather wonderful thus far.

The internet intellectual

Evgeny Morozov profiles Jeff Jarvis, and presents criticism:

Jarvis’s sloppy discussion of privacy is emblematic of his overall approach, and so it merits a closer look. There are certainly strong arguments to be made about privacy’s often perverse impact on national security or economic growth or the richness of public life, and many of those arguments have already been made. Instead of familiarizing himself with the work of leading contemporary critics of the unthinking celebration of privacy—scholars such as Amitai Etzioni, Richard A. Posner, Richard Wasserstrom, and others—Jarvis prefers to arrive at many of their conclusions on his own, losing much intellectual sophistication along the way, not least by failing to address any of the counterarguments that have been raised in response to their work. 

(Video: "Renowned bloggers Tina Brown, Jeff Jarvis and Andrew Sullivan debate the implications of society's changing views on privacy in the digital age, from teens on Facebook to Brett Favre's sexting incident." That's the caption on the video, although I would present a correction in that Tina Brown isn't really a blogger. She does run a successful website, but it's not a blog.)

City of walls

Robin Kirk visits Belfast:

Snapping in the salty breeze, red-white-and-blue flags mark a Protestant Unionist neighborhood loyal to the British queen, her Union Jack, and the United Kingdom. Across the interface, Catholics and Nationalists who yearn for a united Ireland do errands under the gaze of glowering, ski-masked gunmen depicted in a mural topped by the Irish tricolors. Many Protestants embrace Rangers, a Glasgow-based soccer team. The most visible fans are copiously tattooed men who congregate and smoke in front of a pub as they show off their muscles in light-blue Rangers shirts. In contrast, musclemen in front of Catholic pubs, loyal to the Glasgow team that has a Catholic fan base, wear Celtic-knot tattoos and shamrock-green Celtic shirts.

(Image: “'History is written by the winner,' on Falls Road." Via the American Scholar)

Refusing to settle, ctd

You may recall Kate Bolick's piece in the Atlantic, to which I linked. Amanda Marcotte gives a compelling response:

I would have never thought of myself as a hopeless romantic, but reading endless sad, dry articles about the "marriage market," where people supposedly assess each other like you would a car purchase ("No, I was really holding out for something with a sunroof and post-college degree of some sort") certainly makes me wonder whatever happened to plain old love. Partnering up is portrayed in this article, and in many like it, as the acquisition of a person-object who functions to stave off loneliness and keep others from perceiving you as pathetic. There's very little discussion of that ultimate taboo in American discourse, pleasure.

Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party

A helpful Venn diagram. I must say, I see both groups as equally ineffective.

RIP, Dennis Ritchie

From the Times obituary:

The C programming language, a shorthand of words, numbers and punctuation, is still widely used today, and successors like C++ and Java build on the ideas, rules and grammar that Mr. Ritchie designed. The Unix operating system has similarly had a rich and enduring impact. Its free, open-source variant, Linux, powers many of the world’s data centers, like those at Google and Amazon, and its technology serves as the foundation of operating systems, like Apple’s iOS, in consumer computing devices.

Of course, the inevitable comparisons to Jobs, some of them not at all flattering. Edward Tenner makes one such comparison:

This is not to diminish Steve Jobs. I've argued elsewhere that in some ways he was the superior of Thomas Edison. But these lives serve to remind us of the missing slice of Apple: a commitment to basic research -- something that is present to a much greater degree in Microsoft and Google.

For Wall Street protesters, some advice

Matt Taibi has some for you:

No matter what, I'll be supporting Occupy Wall Street. And I think the movement's basic strategy – to build numbers and stay in the fight, rather than tying itself to any particular set of principles – makes a lot of sense early on. But the time is rapidly approaching when the movement is going to have to offer concrete solutions to the problems posed by Wall Street. To do that, it will need a short but powerful list of demands. 

He goes on to give a list of possible demands. (Via Andrew Sullivan)

Mitt Romney near the centre

Ross Douthat thinks he's running a centre-right campaign:

I don’t think that Romney’s domestic policy agenda is particularly impressive, but his economic messaging — that the rich are “doing just fine,” and we should worry more about the middle class and the uninsured — is very well-suited to a successful center-right general election campaign.

I'm inclined to agree.

Image of the Day

"A man looks at waves washing oil up on to Papamoa beach after the Liberian-flagged container ship Rena struck aground on a reef off the coast of Tauranga, New Zealand last Thursday. Up to 390 tonnes of heavy fuel oil have spilled from the hull, prompting New Zealand's environment minister, Nick Smith, to call it the country's biggest maritime environmental disaster." (Natacha Pisarenko/AP, via the Guardian)

An end to the footnote?

Alexandra Horowitz wonders whether the e-book will kill it:

I have come across more than one author who chose “excrescence” to describe footnotes. Noël Coward reputedly said that “having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.” The footnote jousting could soon be moot, as the e-book may inadvertently be driving footnotes to extinction. The e-book hasn’t killed the book; instead, it’s killing the “page.” Today’s e-readers scroll text continuously, eliminating the single preformed page, along with any text defined by being on its bottom. A spokesman for the Kindle assured me that it is at the discretion of the publisher how to treat footnotes. Most are demoted to hyperlinked endnotes or, worst of all, unlinked endnotes that require scrolling through the e-reader to access. Few of these will be read, to be sure. 

Even a quick skim of Infinite Jest (as in, a quick skim of a few pages; I think that a 'quick' skim of the whole thing seems quite impossible) may reveal that David Foster Wallace would be very disappointed.

An apology

Sorry about the paucity of updates as of late. I suppose that any apology should have a reason affixed – that would be, in this case, that I've been spending quite a lot of my time thinking about a new online publication. Look, I know that this has been done far too much already, but I think that the market for (I'd hate to say the word 'boutique', but) boutique online publishers is yet to be fully exploited.

Populated by sites like The Awl and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the niche of high-quality, curated online content is still coming of age, particularly in an online world so commonly dominated by the search-engine-optimised Huffington Post and other similarly dreadful playgrounds of frivolity. Believe me, I generally love this sort of thing: often there's nothing I adore more than the occasional photo of a cat that looks like Vladimir Lenin, or something equally trivial. However, there's something about the Post's presentation of celebrity-obsessed tendencies that makes it contemptible – and, frankly, a little creepy.

Of course this blog (that is, the one you're currently reading) would move under the new website's roof, and be hosted at a subdomain. I'd love to have people like me – people with a point of view and a computer through which to express it – to also become part of the website, contribute columns, write their own blog (after all, isn't the blog the new newspaper column?), or provide original content in some other form. It's abstract at the moment; merely an idea at the front of my mind. But I'm beginning to take the idea seriously.

Cain's 'branwashed' remarks

HuffPo captions:

The former CEO of Godfather's Pizza said, "I have received some of that same vitriol simply because I am running for the Republican nomination as a conservative." He added, "So it's just brainwashing and people not being open-minded, pure and simple." Despite the comments, Cain signaled he sees "good news" in the situation in that he believes one-third to 50 percent of black Americans are "open-minded." 

Perhaps someone should remind Cain that disagreeing with someone doesn't require a parochial perspective of the world, or 'brainwashing'. He seems to have a penchant for the term.

Romney as the candidate to beat

It's looking increasingly evident:

Since the last debate, the early primary and caucus states have moved up their contests by about a month. There is no evidence that has quickened the pulse of Romney’s competitors to knock him down. In the portion of the evening where they could pose questions to one another he got four, the most of anyone, but it gave him only more free time to repeat his forceful positions. Romney appeared to react to the compressed calendar by looking to the general election, talking repeatedly about the middle class. More and more, unless one of his opponents steps up, it looks like Romney is going to be the one sitting at the head of the Republican family table in November.

The perils of paywalls

I take issue with the paywall over at the New Yorker. Incase you happen to be a subscriber and can access all of their articles (in which case you've probably already seen last week's issue and, thus, this post is pointless), here are two articles I really enjoyed: John Cassidy's essay on Keynesian economics, and Joshua Davis' article on Bitcoin, the 'crypto-currency' and its elusive founder.