Will Israel attack Iran?

Debate regarding the possibility of a US and/or Israeli war against Iran has people picking their sides fairly quickly. Obviously there is bound to be some shift in opinion over time, but Matthew Kroenig, for example, seems fairly set on his long-held position in favour of attack:

Skeptics of military action fail to appreciate the true danger that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to U.S. interests in the Middle East and beyond. And their grim forecasts assume that the cure would be worse than the disease -- that is, that the consequences of a U.S. assault on Iran would be as bad as or worse than those of Iran achieving its nuclear ambitions. But that is a faulty assumption. The truth is that a military strike intended to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, if managed carefully, could spare the region and the world a very real threat and dramatically improve the long-term national security of the United States.

Whereas a colleague of his would disagree, arguing that Kroenig "takes a page out of the decade-old playbook used by advocates of the Iraq war" and that the U.S. would be foolish to not seriously consider other options before diving headfirst into conflict. And then of course there's this must-read from the New York Times Magazine:

As we spoke, a man approached and, having recognized me as a journalist who reports on these issues, apologized before asking: “When is the war going to break out? When will the Iranians bomb us?” The Mossad official smiled as I tried to reassure the man that we wouldn’t be nuked tomorrow. Similar scenes occur almost every day — Israelis watch the news, have heard that bomb shelters are being prepared, know that Israel test-fired a missile into the sea two months ago — and a kind of panic has begun to overtake Israeli society, anxiety that missiles will start raining down soon.

One of the obvious sources of complexity with regard to the decision concerns the relatively small window of opportunity available for Israel and the U.S. to attack and still put a significant dent in Iran's nuclear ambitions. It has been said that after just nine months, Iran's nuclear project, beleaguered after the highly-publicised assassinations of numerous top scientists, will be immune from Israeli attacks; the U.S., with its superior arsenal, is said to have fifteen months. Iran has been in pursuit of nuclear weapons for some time, but it would seem that covert efforts have been unable to meaningfully stall, much less halt, their progress.

Should the Iranians succeed in obtaining nuclear weapons, the results could be catastrophic. Aside from the country's expressed desire to destroy Israel, speculation that surrounding countries may feel compelled to go nuclear may prove to be frighteningly accurate. Ordinarily, my sympathies wouldn't lie with Israel, and I happen to think that Zionism is a generally bad idea, to put it mildly. Of course, that said, the situation is indifferent to my views on Israel. When it's likely that no more than a year remains to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weaponry, such things simply don't matter.

If I had the poor taste to place a bet on the likelihood of an attack on Israel's part, then I would bet in the affirmative. Whether actually suited to the country's best interests or not, I'm in no position to say, but the probable outcome is becoming increasingly obvious to me: the fear might be simply too much.

(Image: "The shrouded body of assassinated chemistry expert Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who had been a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, Tehran, January 13, 2012," AP Photo/Iranian Students News Agency, Mehdi Ghasemi, source.)

Romney can sing!

But it's really, really awkward:


Brett Smiley identifies possible causes for the odd awkwardness, even thought Romney's recitation of the lyrics (and indeed the tuneful way in which he delivered them) isn't cringe inducing by any means:

At a final stop in Florida before the state's primary on Tuesday, Mitt Romney attempted to overcome his innate awkwardness and performed a rendition of America the Beautiful, a favorite Romney hymn that he's recited on the trail before but never sung. To his credit, Romney knows the words and doesn't have a terrible voice, but there's something very awkward about his singing. Maybe it's the left hand that never leaves the comfort of his pocket, or his stretching to reach the high notes for the verse above the fruited plain, or the way he assures The Villages, Florida residents, "I love this country."

Although he's not a patch on Herman Cain, here and, of course, here.

"War against religion"

That's how Newt Gingrich described the administration's decision not to provide exemptions to religiously-affiliated groups from a new rule requiring employers to offer birth control to their female employees. "The Obama administration is engaged in a war against religion," he told a rally audience on Monday in Jacksonville. "Their decision last week that they would impose on every Catholic institution, every Jewish institution, every Protestant institution, the Obamacare standard of what you have to buy as insurance is a direct violation of freedom and religion — an example of the increasingly dictatorial attitude of this administration."

Even if you disagree with the law, which a great many people do, it's altogether stupid and laughable to attribute such a decision to some sort of 'war' on the religious in America. Republican rhetoric on this matter has turned sour of late, casting aspersions on the secularist movement by maintaining that it is one side of a 'war' between the forces of the pious, hardworking church-goers, and the evil hotshot Washington-dwellers who want to take away their beloved Jesus. In the correct doses and delivered with a little zeal, such talk can easily evoke the worst kinds of paranoia within the religious. I'm not even going to mention the family values of Newt Gingrich. It's just too easy.

Are ebooks damaging society?

Jonathan Franzen certainly thinks so, citing the 'instant gratification' they provide:

Maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing - that’s reassuring. Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough. But I do fear that it’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that. That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government. 

Although I'm happy to sit idly while the newspaper industry dies, I find myself slightly less comfortable with the idea of books simply fading away; luckily, though, I'm inclined to think they won't. A book is an object, and publishers are at least beginning to understand this, designing attractive hardcover copies that people will wish to treat as aesthetic items within their homes. For me, it's not the permanence of print that makes me long for it after hours of reading 'temporary' text on a screen that's liable to be updated and revised each coming hour, but more the closely-held opinion that ebooks remain an inferior medium through which to deliver longform texts.

The internet is ideal for news, and longform journalism, too, appears to have found a welcome home there. The business model is shaky, but that will come. But this does relatively little to quell my suspicion that at least some people will pine for printed matter once the crowd forgets the smell of a book for good. Of course, that said, an alarming number of people already have.

(N.B. An earlier post on ebooks and their effect on the publishing industry can be found here.)

Why do we lock up so many people? Ctd

J. Bryan Lowder praises Gopnik's essay on the American prison system, but adds that the article failed to represent Lockuptown's female residents. Lowder raises questions about whether or not it's worse to be a female inmate:

While their overall rosters are smaller than those of their male counterparts, jailed women are clearly caught up in same kind of unjust system that Gopnik describes. But the female prison population also has problems of its own. Kurt Erickson of the Illinois-based newspaper the Herald-Review reported over the weekend that his state’s female-only institutions are anxiously looking to recruit more female guards due to complaints from inmates of sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior at the hands of male supervisors. Erikson cites a report by a prison watchdog group that notes that “a great number of inmates expressed distress over lack of privacy and the feeling that their bodies were thoroughly exposed and on display to observation and surveillance by male officers in the housing units.”

(Image by Spencer Platt/Getty Images, via Slate)

Banks weren't meant to be like this

Michael Hudson gives a short history:

The first step toward today’s mutual interdependence between high finance and government was for central banks to act as lenders of last resort to mitigate the liquidity crises that periodically resulted from the banks’ privilege of credit creation. In due course governments also provided public deposit insurance, recognizing the need to mobilize and recycle savings into capital investment as the Industrial Revolution gained momentum. In exchange for this support, they regulated banks as public utilities.

The case for higher taxes

A chart making its way around the internet likens the national budget to household finances, but its delivery of the message is imperfect. David Graham provides a word of caution:

The problem with a chart like this is that the easy retort is: Well, OK, why don't you just cut household expenses by $16,500? In a household, the family would have to cut expenses to whatever the could pay (or, realistically, cut down other spending on eating out, travel, and so on) to make up the gap, or else risk bankruptcy and homelessness. For governments, unlike households, it's generally OK -- and sometimes beneficial -- to take on debt, for the same reasons that corporations often take on debt. That's perhaps particularly true at a time of super low interest rates. The debate among economists on the left and right isn't really over whether it's OK for the government to owe money, but about what level of debt is healthy.

How to save the publishing industry

Nicholas Carr makes the case for bundling physical books with ebooks:

Bundling a free electronic copy with a physical product would have a much bigger impact in the book business than in the music business. After all, in order to play vinyl you have to buy a turntable, and most people aren't going to do that. So vinyl may be a bright spot for record companies, but it's not likely to become an enormous bright spot. The only technology you need to read a print book is the eyes you were born with, and print continues, for the moment, to be the leading format for books. If you start giving away downloads with print copies, you shake things up in a pretty big way.

Romney's real test

Charles P. Pierce has a certain talent for tart prose, and from him we would expect nothing less than the following. He puts it as it is:

Willard Romney has made a great effort over the past two days, butching himself up in spiked shoulder pads and hollering for mead and slave women, in order to "get back" what he'd never truly lost in the first place. Yes, he looked like a jackass in South Carolina. In any sane political party, he'd be allowed to brag about that. Now, though, he's back running in a state that he can carpet-bomb with money, which he will use to explain again how he's the only one of this troupe of buffoons who even halfway looks like a president. He's outspent Newt Gingrich five-to-one in a state where all campaigning is done tarmac-to-tarmac. He's always been the candidate best suited to take advantage of the twisted new landscape of campaign finance, and to take advantage of the fact the most of his party is out of its mind. He's always been the only one of them operating within the fundamentally overlooked twin realities of this campaign.

The test comes afterwards, though. I fear we're now in for a fearsome period of reality-detached spin. The Republican "Establishment" — although having bottom-feeding slugs like Matt Drudge, indicted crooks like Tom DeLay, superannuated media harpies like Ann Coulter, and Bob Dole, The Vengeful Undead, for your "establishment" illustrates another story about Republicans that's worth a second look, but won't get it — has lined up impressively behind Willard Romney, who has abnegated himself impressively enough just to make that happen.

"Superannuated media harpies" — Ann Coulter, yes.  My thoughts exactly. It's becoming ever more difficult to suppress the notion that Romney is little more than an inept opportunist, able to pounce on Newt Gingrich's lack of support among women, among other weaknesses. If Romney can't take down a womanizing, overly-ambitious, charmless sleaze-ball like Newt Gingrich in a state like Florida, he shouldn't be in this business.

(Image: "Mitt Romney said Gingrich ‘‘hasn’t been successful connecting with the people of Florida...because of his message." Charles Dharapak/Associated Press, via The Boston Globe)

The making of a gymnast

Alyssa Roenigk profiles Jordyn Wieber, a gymnast of prodigious talent and astounding precocity:

Managing outward expectations while retaining the laser focus she's known for will be Wieber's toughest challenge in the coming months. The worlds/Olympic double is difficult for many reasons: It's tough to push hard in training while staying healthy for such a long stretch, judging styles change from event to event and the rest of the field begins gunning for the girl at the top. But the most difficult challenge is motivation and focus, and the possibility of Wieber losing either of those traits will keep U.S. national team coordinator Marta Karolyi up at night and could keep Wieber off the top of the podium.

"The most important thing Jordyn can do is not train as if she's the world champion," said Miller, the 1992 Olympic silver medalist in the all-around, the 1993 and 1994 world all-around champ and 1996 Olympic balance beam and team champ. "She must train as if she wants to be the Olympic champion. I've always believed it's important to have an underdog mentality."

(Video via WILX News)

In praise of introverts

Although I'm now so pretentious as to think the introvert/extrovert distinction to be a little trite, this still strikes me as interesting, because I consider myself to have introversive tendencies. Susan Cain, a self-described introvert, praises our shy sort in her new book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts. On how others react when she tells them she's introverted:

People sometimes seem surprised when I say this, because I’m a pretty friendly person. This is one of the greatest misconceptions about introversion. We are not anti-social; we’re differently social. I can’t live without my family and close friends, but I also crave solitude. I feel incredibly lucky that my work as a writer affords me hours a day alone with my laptop. I also have a lot of other introvert characteristics, like thinking before I speak, disliking conflict, and concentrating easily. Introversion has its annoying qualities, too, of course. For example, I’ve never given a speech without being terrified first, even though I’ve given many. (Some introverts are perfectly comfortable with public speaking, but stage fright afflicts us in disproportionate numbers.)

I'm among those who find public speaking easy, to the point where I rarely have reason to be nervous. Conversely, I find small talk extremely challenging.

Why we don't have comments

Among other reasons, because much of the reasonable, intelligent discourse is drowned out by this sort of vitriol. It's disgusting.

Barack X

I wouldn't call myself a huge Bill Maher fan, but in five minutes, he's managed to wittily encapsulate everything reasonable people have been saying for quite some time now: that the Barack Obama the president's critics (on the Right, yes, but on the Left as well) have been talking about obsessively is almost entirely imaginary. The clip in question:



He makes an excellent point in an amusing fashion, although it's a pity that it had to end with — as Hitchens described it, on Maher's show, no less — "the joke that stupid people laugh at." The joke, in other words, that absolutely anyone can make, because Bush was so ridiculously inarticulate as to lend himself to 'megagaffes' of the worst sort, including, I kid you not, "Is our children learning?"

At any rate, the point still stands. Reasonable people may have to cope with the two completely different and, I would say, completely incompatible versions of the same man for a while longer.

Throw away the vitamins

So argues Dr. David Agus in The End of Illness, discussed here by Brian Bethune:

Vitamin supplements would be bad enough if they were merely useless, he says. The money Americans spend yearly on vitamins—some $25 billion—is sorely needed elsewhere in the medical system. They aren’t getting much for their money now. Consider claims that vitamin D significantly cuts cancer risks and that three-quarters of the U.S. population had insufficient levels of it. For Agus, these results are found in not very high-grade studies; for one thing, he’s at a loss to understand how anyone can claim to have established the correct dose for appropriate D levels. The bone disease rickets is long gone and age-related fractures are not on the rise, meaning that by the only indications we have, the population has quite enough vitamin D. Moreover, some of the miracle stories record what he considers absurdities, one even declaring that vitamin D cream rubbed on tumours can “make them vanish,” which ignores the general fact that the human body reacts differently than lab-grown tumours and that actual tumours in actual patients are difficult to reach with a salve.

And, of course, the war on sitting continues:

For example, a 13-year study showed that sitting four hours in a row doubles your risk of dying from or being hospitalized for heart disease later in life, even if you regularly exercise, and almost surely elevates the risk of cancer as well. All told, sitting is almost as deadly as smoking. Agus, surprised to find after measuring his daily steps that he moved around his office far less than he thought, now conducts all telephone calls while walking.

On that comforting note, I think I'll go for a stroll.

Why do we lock up so many people?

If you haven't already stumbled upon it, Adam Gopnik's latest New Yorker piece, 'The Caging of America', is a must-read:

William J. Stuntz, a professor at Harvard Law School who died shortly before his masterwork, “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice,” was published, last fall, is the most forceful advocate for the view that the scandal of our prisons derives from the Enlightenment-era, “procedural” nature of American justice. He runs through the immediate causes of the incarceration epidemic: the growth of post-Rockefeller drug laws, which punished minor drug offenses with major prison time; “zero tolerance” policing, which added to the group; mandatory-sentencing laws, which prevented judges from exercising judgment. But his search for the ultimate cause leads deeper, all the way to the Bill of Rights. In a society where Constitution worship is still a requisite on right and left alike, Stuntz startlingly suggests that the Bill of Rights is a terrible document with which to start a justice system—much inferior to the exactly contemporary French Declaration of the Rights of Man, which Jefferson, he points out, may have helped shape while his protégé Madison was writing ours.

On the brutality of American prisons:

An atheist 'temple'

Okay, with this, Alain de Botton is really going too far:

De Botton's most recent book, Religion for Atheists, calls for unbelievers to copy the major religions and build grand architectural masterpieces to inspire a sense of perspective in people. He argues that a temple doesn't need to be dedicated to a religion: "You can build a temple to anything that's positive and good. That could mean: a temple to love, friendship, calm or perspective".

He added: "Why should religious people have the most beautiful buildings in the land? It's time atheists had their own versions of the great churches and cathedrals. A beautiful building is an indispensable part of getting your message across. Books alone won't do it."

If this doesn't sound strange enough, you ought to know that de Botton is serious enough about his 'atheist temple' project to actually begin designing it. According to Wired:

Putting his money where his mouth is, De Botton has begun work on just such a temple. The first has been designed by Tom Greenall Architects, and is a concept for a 46-metre-tall black tower, sat in the City of London. The height is symbolic of the 4.6 billion-year age of the Earth, and right at the bottom will be a millimetre-thick band of gold that represents humanity's brief existence within that life.

The way in which de Botton's atheistic religion-envy has manifested itself is unusual indeed. Temples, among other staples of religious life, are completely unnecessary for non-believers, and for other reasons beside the obvious lack of any desire to gather together and convince ourselves of what we believe for another week. It just seems completely ridiculous and contemptible to me — the whole thing. I'm in no position to say if this enthusiasm stems from de Botton's love of architecture or religion, but I'm inclined to say the former. But it's all awfully strange, isn't it?

Cain's endorsement

Although dear Herman's initial endorsement of 'the people' for president of the United States was laughable and silly (we would expect no less from ye, President Cain), he's decided that a trifle more convention in this case may be called for, and has endorsed Newt Gingrich instead.

Cain released the following, metaphor-mixing, er...statement: "I hereby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States," it read. "Speaker Gingrich is a patriot. Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas. And I also know that Speaker Gingrich is running for president and going through this sausage-grinder—I know what this sausage-grinder is all about. I know he is going through this sausage-grinder because he cares about the future of the United States of America."

God save us. 

The Chinese faces behind your iPhone

The Italian filmmakers behind the documentary spoke to the NYT about their work:

The stories and the dreams that we collected tell us a lot about this new generation of workers, which is taking the scene in the world factory. In particular, as I wrote before, their testimonies remind us of the humanity of these young people, their being something more than “workers.” Another thing that we realized while we were touring Italian universities for some screenings was that many Italian students were struck by what they perceived as the “optimism” of these young workers. It didn’t matter how hard their life was, they still had a dream to cling on and a strong faith that this dream could be realized, which is something very different from their Western counterparts nowadays.

(via Damien Ma)

Becoming a religion

Rachel Aviv reviews 'The Church of Scientology', by Hugh Urban:

Urban does not argue, as other writers have, that it was all a financial ploy, though he agrees that getting rich was a powerful motivating force. He places Hubbard in a line of science-fiction novelists who thought of reality as a ‘collective fiction created by our own continual agreement that it appears to be real’. As Hubbard saw it, the ability to create one’s own reality was a divine kind of freedom; he compared this ‘creation and management of universes’ to ‘a writer sitting at his desk’. ‘He’s pounding a typewriter,’ he said in a 1952 lecture. ‘So what’s he doing? Inventing time and space and energy and matter.’

Newt the space cadet

Typically for the self-styled Republican 'visionary', Newt Gingrich's plans for a moon colony are wasteful, expensive, and pointless:

Now, four astronauts is not a permanent colony on the moon. To have a permanent colony, you would have to manufacture housing, most likely underground, or at least under significant shielding, since there is no atmosphere and no magnetic field to shield against the harmful effects of cosmic rays for an extended period. Not to mention the need to build facilities for waste recycling, plus food storage and preparation. That is, unless we continually provide food and other provisions for pilgrims from Earth, creating a non-self-sustaining colony. But Gingrich has already made it quite clear, in his attacks on President Obama, that he would not like to be remembered for championing any such sort of government-sponsored food program.

So, to truly embark on such an endeavor within a decade, we would have to spend somewhere between a few hundred billion and a trillion dollars. Whether we could develop the necessary technology for such a task within a decade is an open question, although for a sufficiently large investment, it might not be impossible. However, Gingrich is vying for leadership of a party whose major rallying cry is an end to big government programs and make-work projects to stimulate the economy.

Why does Gingrich seem to go so far out of his way simply to shatter his own already-tenuous credibility with this cosmic vanity project? Childish and expensive, certainly, and while it's also true that the American public have been lacking in something to actually put their enthusiasm behind, that's no excuse to embark on a grand space adventure.

While he might do well to reach for the stars — and certainly has done in this campaign — to do so literally has never seemed to be the correct course. There's little doubt in my mind that this will limit Gingrich's ability to argue convincingly on behalf of fiscal conservatism, and has provided ample ammunition to opponents, who will call him a naive dreamer, besotted with fantasies of space. Except unlike John Lennon, Gingrich really is the only one.

(Image via the National Post)

To name the unnameable

Kenan Malik adds to the debate surrounding the cancellation of Salman Rushdie's appearance at the Jaipur literary festival:

Mayer and Nygaard belonged to a world in which the defence of free speech was seen as an irrevocable duty. The organizers of the Jaipur festival belong to a different world, one in which the idea that a poet's work is "To name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep" is seen not as self-evident but as shockingly offensive. Over the past two decades, the very landscape of free speech and censorship has been transformed, as has the meaning of literature. The response of the Jaipur organizers gave expression to this transformation.

Image of the Day

"Camel troops of Indian Border Security Force saluted as they marched down Rajpath during India's 63rd Republic Day parade, Thursday." Raveendran/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images, via WSJ.

Is American decline a myth?

Yes, according to Robert Kagan, whose eloquent and clearly influential essay on the subject has become required reading for anyone interested in American exceptionalism and decline — including, it seems, President Obama, who was influenced by the article, "discussing it at length" in an off-the-record meeting on the afternoon of his State of the Union address. Money quote:

If the United States is not suffering decline in these basic measures of power, isn’t it true that its influence has diminished, that it is having a harder time getting its way in the world? The almost universal assumption is that the United States has indeed lost influence. Whatever the explanation may be—American decline, the “rise of the rest,” the apparent failure of the American capitalist model, the dysfunctional nature of American politics, the increasing complexity of the international system—it is broadly accepted that the United States can no longer shape the world to suit its interests and ideals as it once did. Every day seems to bring more proof, as things happen in the world that seem both contrary to American interests and beyond American control.

And of course it is true that the United States is not able to get what it wants much of the time. But then it never could. Much of today’s impressions about declining American influence are based on a nostalgic fallacy: that there was once a time when the United States could shape the whole world to suit its desires, and could get other nations to do what it wanted them to do, and, as the political scientist Stephen M. Walt put it, “manage the politics, economics and security arrangements for nearly the entire globe.”

Money quote II: "Foreign policy is like hitting a baseball: if you fail 70 percent of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame." The whole piece is worth reading.

After SOPA

What comes next:

The real question now, however, is whether this community recognizes the potential it has. Ours is not a Congress that has made just one mistake—almost passing SOPA/PIPA. Ours is a Congress that makes a string of mistakes. Those mistakes all come from a common source: the ability of lobbyists to leverage their power over campaign funds to achieve legislative results that make no public-good sense. The (Internet) giant has stopped this craziness—here and now. But the challenge is for the giant to recognize the need to stop this craziness generally.

I can think of another source of the mistakes: Congress' general lack of understanding when it comes to the internet. In fact, that's mostly it.

How viruses evolve

Change can be so quick that scientists often only become aware when it's too late:

[V]iruses can evolve entirely new traits — and thus give rise to new diseases. A debate has swirled around whether a strain of avian flu called H5N1 could turn into a global killer. Last year scientists ran experiments in which a highly lethal H5N1 virus gained the ability to spread among mammals. In response to the urging of a federal advisory board, the scientists will withhold crucial details when they publish their research. But according to news reports, the team, based in the Netherlands, found that it took five mutations to transform the flu.

Václav Havel as Thomas Jefferson

The late Václav Havel impressed upon others the limits of rationalism, and insisted that the notion of a Creator was necessary if one wishes to speak about unalienable rights, just as the Founding Fathers invoked a designer in the Declaration of Independence. Add to this the unusual religiosity of his undertakings. Paul Berman on his peculiar philosophy:

The revolutions of 1989 were more than European, and they had overthrown dictatorships of all sorts, communist and otherwise, in the name of democracy. But nowhere in the world had anyone succeeded in presenting a full exposition of the democratic ideal and its grandeurs and weaknesses. The revolutions had ended up, as a result, a political success and an intellectual failure. One of the only people anywhere in the world who did manage to lay out larger thoughts to a general public was Havel himself. If 1989 could claim a philosopher, Havel was that singular person. And yet his ideas about democracy displayed all sorts of odd traits, touching on spiritual or perhaps religious themes.

He granted that, in modern times, it has become unfashionable to speak about democracy in connection to anything above us or beyond our understanding. This was of course the crucial point. To write one’s own speeches was unusual, but the content of those speeches made them triply unusual. He stood in a grand tradition, though. He invoked the American Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers spoke about a Creator. Why, after all, does man have a right to freedom and a right to dignity? Who has bestowed these rights? They do not come from treaties. They are not human inventions. They are gifts of the Creator. The rights also imply a duty to the Creator. Havel cited the Declaration of Independence—all of which seemed to me rather stirring, given that, unlike a lot of people who natter on about the Founding Fathers and Thomas Jefferson, Havel meant what he was saying, and the Czech Republic was there to prove it. He was Thomas Jefferson. Without slaves!

Who could not admire this man?

On language learning

Graeme Wood reviews Michael Erard's Babel No More, which discusses hyperpolyglots, individuals with an extraordinary talent for learning multiple languages:

The most famous hyperpolyglot is Giuseppe Mezzofanti, the nineteenth-century Bolognese cardinal who was reputed to speak between thirty and seventy languages, ranging from Chaldaean to Algonquin. He spoke them so well, and with such a feather-light foreign accent, according to his Irish biographer, that English visitors mistook him for their countryman Cardinal Charles Acton. (They also said he spoke as if reading from The Spectator.) His ability to learn a language in a matter of days or hours was so devilishly impressive that one suspects Mezzofanti pursued the cardinalate in part to shelter himself from accusations that he had bought the talent from Satan himself.

Romney's atheist father, posthumously converted

Apparently so:

Ann Romney's Welsh-born father (who Mitt mentioned in last night's debate to shore up his pro-immigrant bona fides) was an engineer, inventor, and resolute atheist who disdained all organized religion and raised his children accordingly. Davies, his son Roderick told the Boston Globe in 2007, regarded the faithful as "weak in the knees." But when Mitt began seeing Davies' daughter Ann, the Romney family launched a concerted effort to convert not only Ann but her entire family to Mormonism. And they were wildly successful: Within a year of meeting Ann, Mitt and his father had converted all three of Edward Davies' children. Days before she died in 1993, Ann Romney's mother asked to be converted as well. Edward Davies was the only member of his clan whose soul the Romneys never claimed for their church.

Until he died. According to this entry in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' genealogical database, Davies was baptized as a Mormon at a "special family meeting" 14 months after his death.

Upon initial reaction, I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, but the posthumous baptism of a resolute atheist doesn't register as 'good political move', incase you're asking. Obviously we're not entirely sure — nor can we be sure at this stage — whether the story is actually true or not. I think I'll remain agnostic on this one until further details arrive.

Unwind: Cut Out

History according to Newt

"We allowed him to lead our party and some of us remember, 'Oh yeah, the Contract With America, that was a good thing. We took over the House, that was great news,'" Mitt Romney told an audience in Florida recently. "What happened four years later? Well, he was fined for ethics violations, he ultimately had to resign in disgrace. He can’t rewrite history. We have to go back and look at history and say he may be a great guy with a lot of great ideas, but he is not the leader we need in a critical time."

It seems almost refreshing to me that Mitt Romney seems to understand at least some of the time with whom it is that he's competing. According to The Caucus, he opened the event in question with the, I think, quite memorable line, "Now I’m speaking to you today as if I’m already the candidate for president of the Republican Party. But I’m not." As I've said numerous times before, Romney would do well to remember that.

Military intervention in Syria? Ctd

Shadi Hamid seconds Anne-Marie Slaughter's argument on Syrian intervention, and goes a step further:

For me, Syria is part of this bigger debate; what role does the United States seek for itself in a rapidly changing world, a world in which activists and rebels still long for an America that will recognize the struggle and come to the aid of their revolutions? The rising democracies of Brazil and India cannot offer this. Russia and China certainly cannot.

Hastening Bashar al-Assad's fall, aside from being the right thing to do, would also be squarely in our self-interest. The Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis would be destroyed. Iran would find itself significantly weakened without its traditional entry point into the Arab world. Hezbollah, dependent on both Iranian and Syrian military and financial support, would also suffer. A democratic Syria, meanwhile, would likely be more in line with U.S. interests. In a free election, a reconstituted Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would stand a good chance of winning a plurality of seats. As I've written previously, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has had the distinction of being one of the region's fiercest opponents of Iranian hegemony.

I find myself increasingly leaning towards intervention in Syria. Given that the United States has a history of standing up to despotism and tyranny wherever it takes hold, it would seem irresponsible not to fight against this ultimate evil. There are problems to face, yes, both financial and otherwise, but the cost to the democratic cause may be much higher if the world chooses not to act. Bashar al-Assad has been described as a "dictator by accident." His vicious crackdown in the wake of uprisings and the violence inflicted on so many of his people both seem to contradict what observers might expect from this moist-mouthed and apparently murderous dictatorial despot. Consider also, if you will, that his actions in the face of unrest have escalated the public's discontent to the point at which it is almost inconsolable. The damage he has caused will be impossible to alleviate; thus, he simply must go.

Hamid is correct to state that it is entirely within the interests of the United States to hasten al-Assad's inevitable demise. Indeed, Iran may find itself significantly weakened, and a democratic Syria would likely stand alongside its ally. But this is ultimately irrelevant, and the benefits of intervention to the U.S. need only be explained if someone is not yet convinced, somehow, that something needs to be done in Syria.

(Image: A banner with an image of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is on display in front of the Central Bank in downtown Damascus, via The National Post. Previous post on this topic here.)

How rich is Mitt Romney?

Oh, sorry...how successful. The Associated Press crunches the numbers:

Just how rich is Mitt Romney? Add up the wealth of the last eight presidents, from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. Then double that number. Now you're in Romney territory.

But George Washington was richer:

He couldn't top George Washington who, with nearly 60,000 acres and more than 300 slaves, is considered the big daddy of presidential wealth. After that, it gets complicated, depending how you rate Thomas Jefferson's plantation, Herbert Hoover's millions from mining or John F. Kennedy's share of the vast family fortune, as well as the finer points of factors like inflation adjustment. But it's safe to say the Roosevelts had nothing on Romney, and the Bushes are nowhere close.

(via Ezra Klein)

'On What Matters' on what matters

And a meme is born, featuring Derek Parfit's new book:


I can play this game too, by the way. A previous article on Derek Parfit, the book's author, here.

Quote of the Day

"Philosophers get attention only when they appear to be doing something sinister--corrupting the youth, undermining the foundations of civilization, sneering at all we hold dear. The rest of the time everybody assumes that they are hard at work somewhere down in the sub-basement, keeping those foundations in good repair. Nobody much cares what brand of intellectual duct tape is being used." — Richard Rorty, 'Philosophical Convictions', The Nation, June 14, 2004.

If it bleeds...

On Weegee, the photojournalist known in particular for his crime photography:

Weegee knew that everything becomes theater in the tabloid press. He captioned his images to fit the dramas. “Balcony Seats at a Murder” presents a long shot of two buildings with their residents huddled on the fire escapes and open windows looking down as long-coated police detectives stand around the entrance to the “Italian Café” in Little Italy. The entrance is blocked by the body of man, his legs stretched onto the sidewalk, half hidden from view.

Consider the most famous of these spectator images, “Their First Murder.” Captured in 1941, the photograph presents a closely framed group of school children pushing and pulling against each other, looking off to the body of Peter Mancuso, gunned down on the sidewalk as he was walking with a newspaper. But we don’t see Peter. We only see the reactions. The faces range from the anguish of the victim’s aunt in the center, to utter glee on the face of a blond boy on the left, to confused concern by two boys in the back. But it’s the girl in the foreground, staring up with knitted brows and projecting a look of concern and contemplation, that unsettles us. Weegee’s photographs often contain someone in the crowd staring back at him — back at us — and reminding us that these photographs are more about the act of looking than the subject we are looking at.

Paul personally authorised his newsletters

The Washington Post has the scoop, and reports that Paul was closely associated with the production of the controversial newsletters. The pamphlets are disturbing, to say the least, but Dave Weigel seems to put it best in this case, dismissively:

Paul's odd coalition of Old Right conservatives and young liberal college students hasn't been shaken at all by the newsletter story. In primary after primary, he outperforms with liberals. This convinces me that Paul's close third place result in Iowa was a godsend: It made sure that Newsletteraquiddick remained a boutique story, not an explosive new story about a frontrunner. And it suggests that Paul's voters are so dedicated to their protest votes that they're willing to overlook... well, everything that makes him look bad. Most of them know they're not picking a president. They're keeping an anti-drug war, anti-tax spokesman on the debate stage next to Mitt Romney.

It's true that very few perceive Ron Paul to be a particularly presidential candidate. Indeed, it would seem to me that Paul's appeal is that he gives weight to social issues of perceived-importance. Ta-Nehisi Coates puts this in perspective:

As I've said before, we all must make our calculus in supporting a candidate or even claiming he is "good" for the debate. But it must be an honest calculus. If you believe that a character who would conspire to profit off of white supremacy, anti-gay bigotry, and anti-Semitism is the best vehicle for convincing the country to end the drug war, to end our romance with interventionism, to encourage serious scrutiny of state violence, at every level, then you should be honest enough to defend that proposition. What you should not do is claim that Ron Paul "legislated" for Martin Luther King Day, or claim to have intricate knowledge of Ron Paul's heart, and thus by the harsh accumulation of evidence, be made to look ridiculous.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

(Image: source here.)

Is brain boosting ethical?

While the idea of a simple, inexpensive, and effective device that can enhance your brain might sound appealing, but it's ethically questionable:

"We ask: should we use brain stimulation to enhance cognition, and what are the risks?" explains [Dr.] Roi [Cohen Kadosh, who has carried out brain stimulation studies at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford]. "Our aim was to look at whether it gives rise to new ethical issues, issues that will increasingly need to be thought about in our field but also by policymakers and the public. This research cuts to core of humanity: the capacity to learn," says Professor Julian Savulescu. "The capacity to learn varies across people, across ages and with illness. This kind of technology enables people to get more out of the work they put into learning something."

In defense of debates

David Weigel on the loathsome debate audiences:

[S]hould the crowd react? It should; after all, it’s tradition. Writing about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the ones Newt Gingrich so badly wants to re-enact with somebody, Harold Holzer pointed out that audiences treated the events like monster truck shows. There were “moments when crowds erupted into such an avalanche of noise,” he wrote, “that stenographers confessed, right in their transcripts, their inability to follow whole sentences at a time.” Presidential debates have been noisy, too. Not recently, because the Commission on Presidential Debates has decreed that audiences shall not make a racket. But the old League of Women Voters-sponsored debates were loud and proud. The crowd was on for Reagan-Mondale, and it was on when Lloyd Bentsen humiliated Dan Quayle. Those debates reflected what happens, outside of security bubbles, when politicians have to engage with real voters.

It's also true that there may have been one-too-many debates — personally, I'm getting a little sick of them. But mostly they're worth it for the entertainment value.

Liveblogging the GOP Jacksonville debate

4:01 / 10:01 — Okay, and that's it. Reactions from around the web coming later.

3:49 / 9:49 — A pleasing response from Paul on the question on religious beliefs. "Ours is a nation that is based upon Judeo-Christian ethics...our law is based on Judeo-Christian ethics." That's debatable. Then he goes on to make some idiotic remark about how the country's founding documents refer specifically to a creator. He might do better to note that the document in question, the Declaration of Independence, is careful not to mention a specific deity at all.

Newt Gingrich goes on to talk about the academic news media and the secular movements, and then some banal argument about 'religious oppression'. Santorum shows his lack of knowledge, like Romney, by failing to realize that the document doesn't specify a deity at all, much less Jesus. "I believe in faith and reason," says Santorum. He misunderstands this entirely: faith and reason don't go together half as well as most people think. More often than not, one is forced to choose.

3:44 / 9:44 — All participants seem intent on making these debates about Obama, not each other. Do they realize that they're not the nominee yet? To focus on Obama too soon is to miss the point of these debates entirely. Although perhaps flippant criticism of the president is exactly what GOP voters want to hear. At any rate, it's not actually about Obama yet, it's about who can beat Obama. They would do well to remember that.

3:40 / 9:40 — Romney on Israel is truly moronic from beginning to end. Personally, I happen to think that zionism would be a poor idea even if there weren't any Palestinians. "Our friend Israel." It's slightly too chummy, isn't it?

3:38 / 9:38 — Mitt Romney actually made a good point on Cuba, and I'm inclined to agree, but he made it in a typically inane fashion. Newt Gingrich seems weak in this debate.

3:34 / 9:34 — Apparently I've missed out on something:

Holy shit. Romney actually reminded people that his only wife had both multiple sclerosis and cancer and he stuck with her. Wow. When he wants to stab someone in the front, he knows how. Another slam dunk for Romney. But Santorum's touching answer about his children was also powerful. And will win many panhandle evangelical votes with this.

Damn. Oh, and Ron Paul is very, very good at this sort of thing. It's a pity he doesn't look presidential enough. Still, that said, Newt Gingrich is doing well of all people.

3:30 / 9:30 — Sorry, I'm a little late to this, I know. I'm not big on liveblogging this one, but I might add a few things here over time. I'm not entirely sure what I've just dropped into, but I'm pretty sure there's some  serious Reagan-fanboy one-upmanship going on here.

(Image via Politico)

A sniper's mind

The deadliest sniper in American history speaks to the BBC:

Brian Sain, a sniper and deputy at the sheriff's department in Texas, says many police and army snipers struggle with having killed in such an intimate way. "It's not something you can tell your wife, it's not something you can tell your pastor," says Mr Sain, a member of Spotter, an American association that supports traumatised snipers. "Only another sniper understands how that feels."

But for the US's deadliest sniper, remorse does not seem to be an issue. "It is a weird feeling," he admits. "Seeing an actual dead body... knowing that you're the one that caused it now to no longer move." But that is as far as he goes. "Every person I killed I strongly believe that they were bad," he says. "When I do go face God there is going to be lots of things I will have to account for but killing any of those people is not one of them."

The rise of Islamism

Although the Arab Spring uprisings are not thought to be religiously motivated, the burgeoning Islamist parties represent an unusual step in pursuit of democracy and freedom from tyranny. Oliver Roy reminds us (albeit unnecessarily) that not every functioning democracy need be a secular one:

To grasp what is happening, we must set aside a number of deep-rooted prejudices. The first of these is the assumption that democracy presupposes secularisation. The second is the idea that a democrat is, by definition, also a liberal. Historically, this has not been the case. The American Founding Fathers were not secularists; for them, the separation of church and state was a way of protecting religion from government, not the reverse. The French Third Republic was established in 1871 by a predo­minantly conservative, Catholic, monarchist parliament that had just crushed the Paris Commune. Christian democracy developed in Europe not because the church wanted to promote secular values, but because it was the only way that it could maintain political influence. Finally, let's not forget that populist movements in Europe today align themselves with Christian democracy in calling for the continent's Christian identity to be inscribed in the EU constitution.

The idea that secularism is necessary for every form of democracy is arguable, yes, but so is Roy's rather contentious claim that the Founding Fathers wanted to protect religion from government instead of the reverse, which seems an awfully banal and meaningless statement when you consider that many the founding fathers were deists, not theists. Does it actually matter who is being protected from whom? This doesn't disqualify the label 'secularism'. Aside from this, it's obvious that Roy lacks even an elementary understanding of what is meant by religious freedom: freedom from theocracy and religiously-motivated policy (religious freedom, of course, being vital if a society wishes to embrace diversity of faith, not to mention the various forms of unbelief). It's such a non-point. Any dunce can discern that it's not a requirement that a democracy be secular — but that doesn't change the fact that it certainly helps.

In a recent op-ed on the rise of Islamism for the New York Times, John Owen wrote the following:

Political Islam, especially the strict version practiced by Salafists in Egypt, is thriving largely because it is tapping into ideological roots that were laid down long before the revolts began. Invented in the 1920s by the Muslim Brotherhood, kept alive by their many affiliates and offshoots, boosted by the failures of Nasserism and Baathism, allegedly bankrolled by Saudi and Qatari money, and inspired by the defiant example of revolutionary Iran, Islamism has for years provided a coherent narrative about what ails Muslim societies and where the cure lies. Far from rendering Islamism unnecessary, as some experts forecast, the Arab Spring has increased its credibility; Islamists, after all, have long condemned these corrupt regimes as destined to fail.

You can read the rest here.

(Image: "Newly elected speaker of the Egyptian parliament, Saad al-Katatni, of the Muslim Brotherhood." Photographer: Asmma Waguih/Pool/Getty Images, via Bloomberg)

Compulsory philosophy

Philosophy instruction is mandatory in Brazilian high schools, meaning nine million students take the subject for three years. The question becomes whether or not this will create better citizens, even if legislators claim the study of philosophy is 'necessary for the exercise of citizenship':

But can philosophy really become part of ordinary life? Wasn’t Socrates executed for trying? Athenians didn’t thank him for guiding them to the examined life, but instead accused him of spreading moral corruption and atheism. Plato concurs: Socrates failed because most citizens just aren’t philosophers in his view. To make them question the beliefs and customs they were brought up in isn’t useful because they can’t replace them with examined ones. So Socrates ended up pushing them into nihilism. To build politics on a foundation of philosophy, Plato concludes, doesn’t mean turning all citizens into philosophers, but putting true philosophers in charge of the city—like parents in charge of children. I wonder, though, why Plato didn’t consider the alternative: If citizens had been trained in dialectic debate from early on—say, starting in high school—might they have reacted differently to Socrates? Perhaps the Brazilian experiment will tell.

In other education news, Vladimir Putin's proposal for an obligatory reading list looks scary as hell. Indeed, "it is a rule of history that only tyrants are interested in what their subjects read."

"It would be a disaster"

This seems to best summarize the GOP's horror at the thought of Gingrich as the nominee:

It could happen, and it would be a disaster. All of us who were around and saw how he operated as speaker — there’s no one who’s not appalled by the prospect of what could happen.... He could win the presidency if there’s a way to win with 45 percent — a second recession or a third-party candidate. The immediate worry is him winning the nomination and losing the election, tanking candidates down-ballot.

PM Carpenter weighs in:

If Republicans nominate Romney, as is likely, the far right, subsequent to Romney's annihilation in the general election, will instantly begin agitating for a "true conservative" to run in 2016. And that means another batch of Cains, Bachmanns, Perrys, Palins, and so on. Their party will suffer through another dreadful four years of moving farther and farther right, while the electorate moves farther and farther away from what should be an authentically conservative party -- which a healthy, two-party American democracy requires.

If, however, the party nominates Gingrich, the right, post-2012, will be deprived of its now-incessant complaint that the party too often nominates a losing "moderate." It's true that Gingrich has flipped or wobbled on several issues of key interest to the far right, but no one among the pseudo- or ultra-conservative ranks will be able to convincingly deny that the party's 2012 candidate was himself, in the personage of Newt Gingrich, in so many primal ways, an ultraconservative. And with Gingrich's resounding defeat, that brand of ultraconservatism will have proven itself to be altogether electorally unviable.

Military intervention in Syria?

Both Foreign Policy's Marc Lynch and an editorial in The Economist argue that the time isn't right for the world to intervene; Anne-Marie Slaughter takes the contrary view:

It is a game of perceptions and assumptions, whereby the international community has tried to make Assad's fall seem inevitable and Assad himself has made clear that he will not be cowed into leaving or making real concessions. Injecting the possibility of armed intervention to protect opposition protesters into this mix, with the accompanying prospect of a much longer and much more destructive conflict in which more members of the military could defect to the Free Syrian Army, could tip this domestic political balance in favor of a negotiated deal and put real internal pressure on Assad. It is still true, however, that the credible threat of force requires an actual willingness to make good on that threat.

(Video: "After online calls for a "day of dignity", protesters demanding an end to alleged government corruption took to the streets of cities across Syria on Friday. But they were met with a violent crackdown orchestrated by state security forces. In one video subsequently posted online, water cannon are used on crowds of protesters. Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith reports on the "Facebook youth" who appear to be keeping one step ahead of the authorities.")

Disneyland and facial hair

We've long been aware that Disneyland has excessively restrictive (but interestingly justified) rules on their employees' facial hair. Good to hear they've let go a little, and now allow their employees to grow beards:

Disney's new policy restricts any facial hair to no more than a quarter of an inch in length. And the company says any chin whiskers "must create an overall neat, polished and professional look" and must be fully grown in and well-groomed. It is one of two notable changes Disney is making to "The Disney Look" — the clean-cut, all-American appearance that Disney has demanded of its theme-park employees from the day its original theme park, Disneyland, opened in 1955. The rigid code was instituted by Walt Disney himself, who wanted to distinguish his theme park from the sleazy carnivals of the time. The other change: Casual Fridays. But only for employees who work in non-costumed jobs and who don't interact with theme-park visitors.

Remember, of course, that Walt Disney himself had a mustache.

The science of anesthesia

The fact is, we actually don't know much:

But though doctors have been putting people under for more than 150 years, what happens in the brain during general anesthesia is a mystery. Scientists don't know much about the extent to which these drugs tap into the same brain circuitry we use when we sleep, or how being anesthetized differs from other ways of losing consciousness, such as slipping into a coma following an injury. Are parts of the brain truly shutting off, or do they simply stop communicating with each other? How is being anesthetized different from a state of hypnosis or deep meditation? And what happens in the brain in the transition between consciousness and unconsciousness? "We know we can get you in and out of this safely," [Massachusetts General Hospital anesthesiologist Emery] Brown says, "but we still can't quite tell you how it works."

Bill Clinton without the charm

Is a perfect description of Newt Gingrich, according to Emmett Tyrell. Naturally, Gingrich is not at all fond of the frequently-made comparison:

Newt Gingrich insisted Wednesday in Miami that there was nothing similar about his personal failings and those of Bill Clinton—even though both men were having extramarital affairs in the late '90s. And Gingrich, as speaker of the House, tried to impeach Clinton over his. Pressed during a forum at Univision—the Spanish-speaking television network—about the hypocrisy involved when “at same time he was doing the exact same thing,” Gingrich was indignant. It wasn’t the same thing, Gingrich repeatedly insisted. “I didn’t do the same thing,” he said. “I didn’t lie under oath. I didn’t commit a felony.” He added that in his own divorce depositions, he told the truth—which Clinton did not when asked about Monica Lewinsky.

Indeed, while it may not have been entirely the same thing, the fact that Clinton was more reluctant to volunteer the truth doesn't make Gingrich any better — it simply supports the contention that there's an underlying dishonesty to Clinton's character (a dishonesty that seems deplorably obvious once one manages to get past the 'charm' of the man).

SOTU reaction-roundup

Mark Halperin:

The speech was clearly poll tested to within an inch of its life, filled with programs and themes of broad appeal running from the left to the center right. Rhetorically reached out to the opposition by invoking national security, the need to get Washington working and a few familiar areas of common ground (entitlement and education reform). But much of the speech focused on policies that divide the parties absolutely. And, judging by the press releases and tweets from the Republican leadership, this State of the Union address will serve to lay down markers for November's election rather than break the current gridlock. New taxes and a bigger role for Washington are where the presidential election will be fought out – not foundations for compromise this year.

Jonathan Chait:

The first two years of the Obama presidency were a frantic rush of policymaking with barely any concern for political messaging, which suffered as a result. Tonight’s State of the Union address was just the opposite. President Obama knows full well that Republicans in Congress will block everything. In the absence of policy, he is backfilling the political narrative.

Howard Kurtz:

The speech’s subtext, of course, is that Obama stands for middle-class fairness while his Republican opponents are champions of the wealthy, who make their own rules. Even Eric Cantor, whose party bobbled the issue before Christmas, had to clap when Obama called for extending the payroll-tax cut. There was even a nod to another grand bargain, trading entitlement cuts for tax hikes on the rich—precisely the deal that eluded the president in 2011. We’ve known for five years now that Obama can give a great speech. It’s hard to imagine this one will be remembered for long once the campaign heats up.

Jonathan Cohn:

But after the election, there will be a chance to govern again. Expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the onset of spending cuts from last summer’s budget deal will force decisions on fiscal policy. With this speech, Obama is not merely trying to win reelection, although he is quite obviously trying to do that. He is also laying the groundwork for those negotiations, should he have a chance, as the president-reelect, to drive them. And if he sounds a lot like he’s sounded for the last few months, that’s only because what he’s been saying seems to be working.

Jonathan Tobin:

His claim that America “is back” was empty braggadocio that makes little sense given the grave state of the economy. Obama’s rally cry about American greatness seemed stuck in nostalgia for a bygone era of massive government spending projects and an economy based in manufacturing rather than information and technology. The result of this empty talk was a speech that struck a sour, flat note just when he needed to inspire.

Andrew Sullivan:

I was hoping for a vision. I was hoping for real, strategic reform. What we got was one big blizzard of tax deductions, wrapped in a populist cloak. It was treading water. I suspect this will buoy liberal spirits, but anger the right and befuddle the independents. It definitely gives the Republican case against Obama as a big government meddler more credibility. I may be wrong - but the sheer cramped, tedious, mediocre micro-policies he listed were uninspiring to say the least.

We voted for Obama; now we find we got another Clinton. The base will like this. I'm not sure independents will. As performance, he did as well as he could with the thin material he had in his hands. As a speech, I thought it was the worst of his SOTUs, when he really needed his best.

Apologies. Admittedly, I'm a little late to this, but I thought it to be worth posting regardless.

10 common misconceptions, debunked

Did the 'Occupy' movement succeed?

If the goal was to shift the dialogue of American politics, then certainly:

The chief accomplishment of OWS won’t be a new party or new regulations, let alone the dissolution of the corporate state. Rather, its legacy will be placing class inequality squarely at the center of public debates and transforming how Americans understand economic progress. Polling data show that OWS has had a profound effect. According to a Pew Research Center report issued this month, 66 percent of Americans believe there are “strong” or “very strong” conflicts between the rich and poor, a 19-point increase since July 2009. The number of people who believe there are “very strong” conflicts (30 percent) has doubled in that timeframe.

Rushdie no-show

The recent cancellation of Salman Rushdie's appearance at the Jaipur Literary Festival marks a frightening defeat for free expression everywhere, particularly in India, where the festival's organisers relented to pressure from local authorities to scrap the controversial author's plans to attend. Perhaps more disturbing is the news of bogus intelligence reports provided to Rushdie, which suggested that radical Muslim clerics with malevolent intentions — as well as "paid assassins from the Mumbai underworld" — may pose a significant threat to his safety.

Secondary plans for a video link were not allowed to be carried out either, and Rushdie, angered by the developments, spoke to NDTV about the "fantastically fishy" affair. David Remnick writes:

The shameful episode in Jaipur is, indeed, best seen in light of deeper, and troubling, tendencies of contemporary Indian politics. The country is Hindu majority, but the government seems eager to court the huge Muslim populace at election time, no matter how troubling the demands. One famous and trendsetting example: in 1978, a Muslim woman named Shah Bano was divorced from her husband. Shah Bano had no means to support herself and her five children, and she appealed to the civil courts to get alimony; after seven years she succeeded in winning a judgment from the Supreme Court. But then, under heavy pressure from Muslim groups and clerics, the government of Rajiv Gandhi reversed the Court’s judgment and passed the Muslim Women’s Bill, which decreased the authority of civil authority. That move, ceding greater power to religious authorities, was widely seen as a purely political attempt by Gandhi to win Muslim political support. Civil liberties groups and Hindu factions were enraged.

British Indian novelist Hari Kunzru spoke at the festival, and remarked that "today is a bleak day for Indian literature. We heard earlier from Gurcharan Das, Alex Watson and Oscar Pujol about the place that doubt, dissent and argumentation held in the very origins of Indian thought [this is a reference to an earlier session, which dealt with skepticism in Vedic philosophy]. Today, one of India’s greatest novelists, Salman Rushdie—a writer whose work enshrines doubt as a necessary and valuable ethical position—has been prevented from addressing this festival by those whose certainty leads them to believe that they have the right to kill anyone who opposes them.

"This kind of blind, violent certainty is in opposition to everything the festival stands for—openness, intellectual growth and the free exchange of ideas. There are many rights for which we should fight, but the right to protection from offense is not one of them. Freedom of speech is a foundational freedom, on which all others depend. Freedom of speech means the freedom to say unpopular, even shocking things. Without it, writers can have little impact on the culture. Unless we come out strongly in support of Rushdie’s right to be here, and to speak to us, we might as well shut the doors of this hall and go home."

It's simply outrageous, and almost unthinkable, that anyone could be subject to such threats for writing a work of fiction. For anyone who cares about free expression, Rushdie's absence demonstrates a contemptible and unpardonable affront to the very foundations of every functioning democracy. (Image via Flickr, by Alexander Baxevanis)

The dying presidential address

Political scientists Matthew Baum and Samuel Kernell analysed American viewership of presidential addresses in 2006, and found a steep decline in the number of people tuning in to view them:


Of course, it's important to note that much of this decline might be due to shifting habits in consumption of news and information, away from television to the internet and other sources, but the data seems pretty persuasive. Ezra Klein captions:

President Obama’s speeches fall in line with this trend. His State of the Union addresses average a 0.30 Nielsen rating, which measures the percent of households tuned in to an average minute of a program. Even Obama’s most-watched speech, on the death of Osama Bin Laden, only hit a 0.34 Nielsen rating, far below averages for Nixon and Ford.

Something to keep in mind, perhaps, for tonight's State of the Union.

The many faces of Meryl Streep

Her 60 Minutes segment, for those interested in The Iron Lady:



In my original quasi-review of the film, I noted that "Streep’s performance is unforgettable and uncanny, and she appears to adopt the role effortlessly. Though this is a shallow reflection on any performance. What greater compliment can be paid to someone who so excels at mimicry than to say that as an audience member I saw Margaret Thatcher, not a portrayal?" If you still haven't seen it, you really ought to.

Sigmund's grandson

The painter Lucian Freud, profiled in the latest issue of Vanity Fair:

Freud liked to call himself a biologist at heart, and he applied himself to his work with the discipline and rigor of a scientist in a lab. Each day, he tore a clean piece of white cotton sheeting from the pile of rags he kept in the studio—decommissioned hotel sheets purchased in bulk from a recycling business—and tucked it under his belt to serve as an apron. He wiped his brush clean after each individual brushstroke, painstakingly remixing the colors on the heavy palette he held in his right hand. (Freud painted left-handed.)

There was an ulterior motive beyond sociability to all this lavishing of attention: “He would be watching you the whole time, so he’d get a bigger understanding of what he was painting,” says Dawson. The biologist in him wanted to subject the sitter to a variety of conditions: hungry, caffeinated, tired, peeved, slightly drunk. “The time he used to like me most was if I had a hangover,” says Cozette McCreery, the subject of the painting Irish Woman on a Bed (2003–4), who met the artist while working as an assistant to his daughter Bella. “I asked, ‘Is that because I’ll just sit here and shut up?’ And he was like, ‘No, no, you have a sort of glow!’ ”

An earlier post on the artist here.

America's love of Chinese food

Brent Cox retraces its history. On Nixon's visit to China:

[In] 1972, Nixon went to China. It may be difficult imagining Richard Nixon inspiring anyone to eat something, the trip was unprecedented politically, and was covered with the intensity usually reserved for moon shots and royal weddings (or, to translate to modern terms, for everything ever, all the time). Direct negotiations with the Chinese were important historically but when President Nixon and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai shared a Chinese meal on live television, it was the best advertising for Chinese restaurants that money couldn’t buy. According to Coe: “People were swarming to classes in Mandarin and in Chinese cooking; department stores sold Chinese handicrafts (the Mao suits quickly sold out at Bloomingdale’s in New York).”

(Image: "President Nixon and Prime Minister Zhou Enlai, left, in Shanghai at the end of Nixon’s visit." Via the New York Times)

Quote of the Day II

"I’ve read a lot about what the president will talk about Tuesday night. It sounds to me like the same old proposals we’ve seen — more spending, higher taxes, more regulation — the same policies that haven’t helped our economy, they’ve made it worse. If that’s what the president is going to talk about Tuesday night, I think it’s pathetic." — John Boehner, when asked Obama's upcoming State of the Union address.

Private lives and Philip Larkin

Francis-Noël Thomas, in Humanities magazine:

His inclinations were, in almost equal measure, to be confiding and to be deceptive. During his lifetime, he misrepresented his whole career as a poet in the same way he misrepresented the writing of “The Whitsun Weddings.” After his death, he was shown to be—perhaps by his own design—something quite different from the provincial librarian who, after work, wrote several of the best English-language poems of the second half of the twentieth century. The appearance of the poems he held back from publication revealed someone far more credible: a working poet whose impressive successes were sometimes hard won and whose commitment to writing was unremitting and lay at the core of his identity. When he found he could no longer write poems, he was devastated.

Clive James claimed that people who attain the measure of fame that Larkin achieved (or suffered) have no private lives. Nevertheless, Larkin’s oral request that the approximately thirty volumes of his diaries be destroyed was honored. A large volume of his letters, however, was published in 1992 and set off a cascade of negative comment from shocked readers that, for a few years, threatened to diminish his standing—at least in some academic circles—as a poet.

That tempest seems to be over; the culture police have not managed to bury his achievements as a poet under his politically incorrect views, his apparent misogyny, or his duplicity toward his lovers. Now, some twenty-six years after his death, his complete poems have been published in an exemplary scholarly edition by Archie Burnett, a director of the Editorial Institute and professor of English at Boston University.

See a previous post on Larkin here, and a sample of his work here.

"Why are Obama's critics so dumb?" Ctd

David Frum's response to Sullivan's coverstory is hardly the most toxic of reactions, but it's worth quoting (particularly because it appears in Newsweek, Sullivan's magazine):

Yes, much of the criticism of the Obama administration has been hysterical and deluded. Yes, many of the attacks on the president and his family have been ugly and hateful. But in rejecting the extremism of some critics, we shouldn’t race to the opposite and equally invalid extreme of denying all criticism. There is much to admire in Barack Obama the man. But his presidency, especially on the domestic front, has been a bitter disappointment to almost everybody—perhaps above all to those who most desperately needed help from the government he led. It’s time for a new way forward.

It's pleasing to see that Frum, unlike a number of other commentators, has actually read the piece in its entirety (Ann Althouse, take note), and hasn't simply spewed a half-baked retaliation based on the magazine's provocative cover. Tina Brown must have known that it would spark a small war on either side of the political spectrum, and although she's always had a talent for the right kind of controversy, her Newsweek career seems to illustrate it best — 'Diana at 50' and all.

But it's just all too funny when Fox News — of all institutions — launches a tirade against another outlet regarding decent journalistic practices. I very much doubt they'll take too much interest in the magazine's publishing of Frum's piece, because their only interest is in gathering second-rate evidence for their inane argument about the mainstream media's perceived liberal bias. Perhaps it takes a satirist to set them straight on this.

In Iraq, war endures

Nahrain Al-Mousawi assesses the state of Iraq:

The enduring nature of the Iraq war is reflected by recent developments on the ground. U.S. announcement of the war’s end was met with a coordinated bombing in Baghdad on December 22, 2011, consisting of 16 explosions that involved 9 car bombs, 6 roadside bombs, and 1 mortar. Within two hours, 63 people were killed and 185 wounded. Amidst these bombings, the tributes to Christopher Hitches [sic], who had succumbed to cancer on December 15, 2011, were a particularly fitting reminder of the American disconnect between reality and rhetoric on Iraq. Commentators were effusive in their praise of Hitchens’ rhetorical form and debating style. Transitioning easily from lamenting the war to celebrating one of its cheerleaders, these hagiographies mirrored the facile and absurd reconciliation of rhetoric and reality characteristic of a culture Hitchens “helped create and has left behind. It’s a culture that has developed far too easy a conscience about, and sleeps too soundly amid, the facts of war.”

You're likely to find me in agreement if you're point is that the rhetoric surrounding war most often thoroughly misrepresents its reality, or that those who are powerless and without influence must almost always undertake and live with the 'facts of war' while the powerful do not. It must also be brought to your attention that nobody, to my knowledge, could present a persuasive argument negating the contention that Iraq is in a truly sorry state of affairs.

The opposing sides of interventionism are not really addressed in the piece, but the most outspoken critics of the liberation of Iraq are rarely asked the important questions when it comes to their position on the issue: is it really the case that non-interventionalism would have resulted in less suffering, less cruelty? Undoubtedly, the weight of war has been tremendous, but the weight of Hussein's hideous dictatorship may have perhaps been heavier still.

(Image: Protestors in Sulaimaniyah's Sara Square on Mar. 25, 2011. Samer Muscati / Human Rights Watch)

Free textbooks?

Matthew Yglesias considers the economics behind the rise of electronic textbooks:

Freeing school districts from the costs of book acquisition by paying for the creation of high-quality free alternatives would be an excellent investment. Of course any philanthropist would hesitate to produce an Apple-exclusive product, but surely the Gates Foundation could be tempted to team up with its benefactor’s old rival Apple to break the textbook cabal. The good news is that the much-criticized user agreement associated with iBooks Author explicitly exempts books distributed for free from any restriction. In the short-term, of course, savings from free textbooks would be clawed back by the price of tablets. But schools are already spending bundles on computers, often with little to show for it. More to the point, the price of electronic gadgets falls steadily each year while textbooks keep getting more expensive. Apple’s technology plus a relatively modest investment from credible outsiders could not so much transform the $8 billion K-12 textbook market as destroy it altogether.

The evolution of technology's relationship with education has been a point of interest on this blog for a while. The verdict remains the same: it won't improve education. That said, up-to-date and inexpensive textbooks just might.

Image of the Day

"Snow covered a church, pictured from an aerial view, in Davos, Switzerland, Monday. The World Economic Forum opens Wednesday in the resort area." Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters, via the Wall Street Journal.

Why the Oscars are left-wing

No, actually:

You hear a lot of rubbish from conservatives about how left-wing Hollywood is, but in one overlooked respect it really is left-wing. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences uses, in its nomination process, a complicated form of voting that's somewhat similar to the proportional-voting scheme that sank Lani Guinier's chances of getting confirmed assistant attorney general for civil rights during the Clinton administration. If the big Hollywood studios paid any attention to the way Oscar nominations get tallied they would probably have a cow. But because alternative vote-counting methods are generally considered to be an extremely boring topic, they don't. Unfortunately, nobody else pays any attention either, which is why I try, every year around this time, to publicize the unsung benefits of instant-runoff voting.

Gingrich and the Washington elite

Ezra Klein posits that if Newt Gingrich actually isn't among the so-called 'Washington elite', nobody is:

Newt Gingrich served in Congress from 1979 to 1999. After he resigned his seat, he settled down in McLean, VA and sought to forge a new career as one of Washington's highly paid, widely respected, wise men. He began his Center for Health Transformation and consulted for Freddie Mac. He filmed anti-global warming commercials with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and co-authored New York Times op-eds with Sen. John Kerry. He served on the bipartisan U.S. Commission on National Security and as co-chair of a task force on UN reform. Newt Gingrich has, in other words, been a key player in Washington since Jimmy Carter was president. Yet in his victory speech in South Carolina, he blasted "the elites in Washington and New York."

One is left to wonder what the criteria must be for someone like Gingrich to be officially considered 'elite' in Washington. Perhaps any candidate for the 'Beltway insider' position must present himself as a reasonably likable human being. As Jon Stewart accurately but euphemistically termed it, Gingrich has a tendency to appear "likability challenged." Some are even wondering if a little facial hair might make him more appealing to voters (hey, it might even work on the Washington Elite Committee, too).

Quote of the Day

"Mitt Romney is a rich man, but is Mitt Romney's character formed by his wealth? Is Romney a spoiled, cosseted character? Has he been corrupted by ease and luxury? The notion is preposterous. All his life, Romney has been a worker and a grinder. He earned two degrees at Harvard simultaneously (in law and business). He built a business. He's persevered year after year, amid defeat after defeat, to build a political career. Romney's salient quality is not wealth. It is, for better and worse, his tenacious drive—the sort of relentlessness that we associate with striving immigrants, not rich scions." — David Brooks, The New York Times, January 20