The Week in Review

Last Sunday, I bemoaned the state of Romney's singing voice, calling his tuneless rendition of America the Beautiful a "cruel, cold-blooded murder." We asked about the most effective killing machine in human history, and were surprised to learn that it was the mosquito; we also discovered that Andy Warhol called a chocolate bar between two pieces of bread 'cake' and that he had a rather unusual relationship with food. We call someone 'hot' because there is a primal relationship between our emotions and temperature, according to various studies.

On Monday, we began the week with a post on the challenges of being a juror for the Pulitzer prize and on the following day examined the art of writing a decent obituary. I wrote a piece in defense of Alex Kane, a writer whose criticism of Israel provoked a charge of antisemitism, and concluded that there is a danger in ascribing the term too liberally. We talked about the horrors of alcoholism, continued our discussion on the nature of offensive jokes, and found that the Newsweek cover story on internet addiction was based on scant evidence and is an example of poor reporting. Sarah Silverman had a very indecent proposal for Sheldon Adelson, and Sam Harris explained that Religions are just failed sciences. We also wondered whom Mitt will pick as his running mate, and concluded that contrary to the current speculation, it wouldn't be Condoleezza Rice.

Wednesday on the Report, one post linked to a celebration of the delightful feminist and columnist Caitlin Moran, another to interview with a Disney Park addict, and yet another to Milos Forman's defense of Obama. Calling the president a socialist, the filmmaker said, was something of an insult to the actual victims of socialism. Also: let's stop trying to debate the merits of Facebook and social media; it's getting boring. We also discussed the possibility of intervention in Iran, and examined the evidence behind the claim that such intervention would only set back the nuclear program by one to three years. We continued our exploration of the mommy porn literary phenomenon Fifty Shades, and agreed with the literary critic who said that in the absence of good comedy, there is always the allure of bad seriousness. In addition, we asked why it is hard for people over thirty to make new friends, along with a very amusing clip from Mitchell and Webb, and asked if it was possible for Anthony Weiner (you know, the disgraced congressman?) to make a comeback in New York.

We were also unusually sporty on Wednesday. As it happens, sex is the order of the day in the Olympic Village, that sweat doesn't really smell, and that a sort of reverse anorexia is common among bodybuilders. Promising to be less athletic in our coverage next week.

We looked at the obsession with slogans in the election, and determined that Romney had essentially pinched Thatcher's famous (or infamous) Saatchi-coined "Labour isn't working" ad line; we also took a quick glance at Romney's years at Bain, via a timeline from Mother Jones. Why, when space exploration itself is such a secular pursuit, is it celebrated with such a great deal of religious fervor? Also, should the army return to conscription? A number of people, including apparently a large number at the Allen & Co. Sun Valley conference, certainly think so. On Thursday, we agreed that what is considered 'correct' grammar is really just a matter of fashion. We still don't know what the Higgs Boson is, and New York has fallen out of love with Starbucks.

My long-read for the week on Friday focused on Obama's so-called gaffe about business owners. On a related note, take a quick look at the nature of the gaffe.

Once again, we took the time to look at the 'climate of denial' around climate change (relevant note: Alexander Cockburn died last night), and the rich kids of Instagram, who epitomize everything that's wrong with the internet photo service. We asked if the Assad regime was really falling in Syria, and warned that we ought not to jump to conclusions on the matter. Also interesting was an exploration of the literary value of Twitter from N+1 magazine. We agreed that Oscar Wilde would have been an excellent Tweeter.

On Saturday, much of our material was focused on the shootings in the Aurora cinema. In our first post on the subject, we linked to Roger Ebert's piece in the Times, which had a salient point to make about the 'insane' gun laws in the United States; we quoted a 2008 column from another film critic who draw a vital link between violence in the media and a more violent society; and considered the suggestion that magazines like Time not put the killer's face on their covers. Our second post delved into the question of whether or not a brave, armed moviegoer could have stopped the shooting; evidently, it seems unlikely. And finally, we looked at how politicians responded to the tragedy, and the etiquette surrounding a political response to such an event.

Image of the Day here. Required Listening from Coconut Records here.