The Death of Book Covers

It's being accelerated, naturally, by the arrival of e-books.

Chatroulette Me Maybe

This surely has to be the parody to end all Carly Rae Jepsen parodies:

Forrest Wickman attempts to pin down its strange appeal:

The reason this video makes Powers’ point so well—and the reason it’s so winning—is how happy so many of these random Chatroulette users become when they realize what’s happening. Even though several are shirtless dudes seemingly looking for something (don’t worry, the video is safe for work), some still can’t help but crack up and even sing along. There are exceptions—see the horrified face about 10 seconds in—but most smile and join in, with heartwarming results. If part of the appeal of Chatroulette is to get the view from the world’s computers, the view from here, at least, is pretty good.

The Case for a Maximum Income

François Hollande’s new proposed 75 percent tax bracket on income over $1.23 million sounds like a ridiculously good, if slightly freedom-curtailing idea. But before you balk at the thought: trust me, there's a reasonable case to be made for it. And Hamilton Nolan makes it:

Let's have a maximum annual income of, oh, $5 million, pegged to inflation. All income above that would be taxed at 99 percent. Our precious national sports stars, celebrities, and corporate executives could still be fabulously wealthy. The daydreaming poor could still have a nice big number about which to hopelessly dream. Five million dollars a year. Five million! Anyone with $5 million can invest it conservatively enough to earn 5 percent a year and still be making $250K per year without lifting a finger. In other words, $5 million provides you with the means to live as a member of the one percent without ever touching the principal. It's everything that any reasonable person could ask for, financially speaking.

Dylan Matthews points out the obvious economic problem with such a policy:

What Does the Ryan Pick Mean? Ctd

Historically, support for presidential candidates is assisted by the selection of a good running mate. That said, it was the Palin pick that disqualified McCain in the eyes of responsible voters. In some cases, the effect can be quite significant:


Nate Silver is doubtful that the addition of Ryan to the ticket will shift the polls in any meaningful sense:

Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan will get a lot of free exposure in the news media, and Republican voters will be excited by the pick and perhaps become more likely to respond to pollsters. In short, Democrats should probably not worry too much if the polls move slightly toward Mr. Romney over the next week or two. For that matter, Republicans probably should not worry much if the polls fail to move toward Mr. Romney, because of the circumstances of the pick. (What if the polls actually move discernibly against Mr. Romney? Well, that might be a bad sign for him.)

I'm coming round to the opinion that Romney really needs Paul Ryan. Not only as a substantiative tonic to his empty grandiloquence but as someone who can make the GOP candidate something more than an anti-Obama vote. Up until this point (and, part of me still suspects, for the rest of the campaign) the Romney campaign has relied upon the fatal assumption that this election is all about assessing the president's performance: a vote for Romney being a vote against Obama. The policy differences until now have been immaterial, as I've said before. And what Ryan really brings to the Romney package is a Washington background to an executive front. (Isn't it strange that Romney constantly touts his business experience as a 'must-have' attribute for public office, and then elects to choose a Washington wonk for a running mate?) Lizza was right.

(Image: WSJ)

Define "Armed Forces"

Rosa Brooks says the line is blurring even further between civilians and the military:

Complicating matters even more, the decline in the military's tooth-to-tail ratio has been paralleled by a rise in civilian organizations (public and private) engaging in what look suspiciously like traditional military activities. The CIA has gone kinetic, for instance, with paramilitary forces that engage in direct action, often working hand in hand with military special operations forces. And for-profit private military companies increasingly place civilian contractors in jobs that resemble combat positions in all but name.

Mandatory Olympic Enthusiasm

Hosting the Olympics has left many Brits rollings their eyes. Norman Geras engages in some counter-eye rolling:

The truth is that if you don't like it, you can shut it out, and it's no more than weak will or a failure of personal discipline to complain about stuff others are pressing upon you, when you can simply switch off, not read, do something else. If I may cite my own case as an Olympics now-and-againer: I've enjoyed quite a few events - the ones that interest me and some odds and ends casually watched - and ignored everything I didn't want to see or didn't have time for; I've read almost nothing from the daily press coverage. Just like that. Anyone who pleads they're overwhelmed by the hype is someone wanting to be annoyed.

And the NYT is surprised at the enthusiasm. Though someone should really tell them that the whole 'stiff upper lip' thing doesn't really exist.

The Physics of the Perfect Dive

There's a tumblr dedicated to "celebrating the fluid dynamics of sport." From the entry on diving:

Divers twist and spin gracefully in the air, but the highest marks come when they enter the water with little to no splash. This rip entry—named after paper-ripping sound characteristic of such a dive—is possible thanks to fluid dynamics. Any time a solid object enters a still liquid, it tears a cavity into the liquid. The smaller this cavity is, the less the liquid will rebound and splash when the cavity gets refilled. In diving, achieving a small splash requires a couple items. First, the diver will grab his hands over his head to form a flat surface. This will create the initial small cavity through which his body follows. When entering, the diver will keep his body straight and rigid, with arms pressed against his head; this adds stability to keep the diver from letting the force of striking the water at 35 mph affect his body’s form and create splash. Finally, the perfect dive enters vertical to the water surface. This ensures that all of the diver’s body finds its way into that cavity created by the hands without striking any undisturbed water. Once under the water, divers often extend their arms to generate enough drag to slow down quickly. All in all, the rip entry minimizes the cavity size and thus the splash, adding a great exclamation point to a beautiful dive.

(Image: "Tom Daley of Great Britain competes in the Men's 10m Platform Diving Final on Day 15 of the London 2012 Olympic Games." Al Bello / Getty)

What Does the Ryan Pick Mean?

Democrats seem to be just as pleased by the pick as conservatives. As Ryan Lizza points out in his profile of Ryan in the New Yorker, he brings a solid policy base to a GOP side in which concrete policy proposals have been conspicuously lacking. Even the White House embraced Ryan's budget plan as indicative of the wider Republican philosophy, so that they'd actually have something to critique. In response to the budget, Obama said pointedly, "I believe it paints a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic. There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill."

The takeaway line from Lizza's essay about the rising star was pretty simple: "To envisage what Republicans would do if they win in November, the person to understand is not necessarily Romney, who has been a policy cipher all his public life. The person to understand is Paul Ryan." Indeed, this a pick which brings not only a second, possibly more endearing face to the Romney product but actually much of the substance. Ryan is being relied upon to inject not only Palinesque energy but a sense that there's some specificity to be found among all of Romney's vague, moist — and above all, emotive — rhetoric.

Although both sides of the spectrum are rejoicing, John Dickerson is probably right to say that the Democrats shouldn't be:

Perhaps Romney can take a vision graft from Ryan. He'll have to, because voters won't be lured by Ryan's ideas unless the man at the top of the ticket makes the case for them. But for all of the talk of a new emphasis on policy specifics, this is still going to be a campaign deeply connected to American values. When Ryan spoke on Saturday, he talked about the threat Obama poses to the American way of life. Underneath every policy debate will be the argument that when tough choices have to be made about the federal government, you're going to want candidates who share your values when they're doing the awful math of scarcity.

The Romney choice represents a significant adaptation from the plan that the campaign had been running before, which relied mostly on keeping the campaign focused on Barack Obama's record. By picking Ryan, who comes with a very detailed set of ideas and proposals, Romney has embraced the view that he needs to run a campaign that offers bright alternatives to Obama's vision. Even the Romney bus sends this message. It has been redesigned on the outside to read "The Romney Plan."

For the first time, it seems as though a vote for Mitt Romney won't simply be a vote against Obama.

Veepstakes: And the Nominee Is...

Paul Ryan, according to Weigel and a number of others.

Marilyn's Immortal Appeal

Maureen Dowd devoted her column to the enduring icon last week, fifty years after Monroe's death:

Wherever I travel in the world, I run across the luminous image of the heartbreaking and breathtaking sex symbol who was smart enough to become the most famous “dumb blonde” of the 20th century. Marilyn, her white pleated halter dress flying up over the New York subway grate, is as deeply etched in the global imagination as Audrey Hepburn in a black Givenchy dress at Tiffany’s.

David Thomson attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding her death, and, come to think of it, her life:

Monroe escaped the real lust of Norman Mailer but reduced the more kindly Arthur Miller to despair; she was a great actress thwarted by an unkind system, or she was a knowing sexpot who worked very hard on her looks and her voice to play the dumb blonde stupid men expected. She longed to play O’Neill or Chekhov, or was she in her element doing Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot? She was an Actors Studio tragedienne, or she knew that her career lay in movies that made dirty jokes behind her back. Keep all of those scenes, and what does it amount to—the plausible and human possibility that she was a mess who never worked her life out?

The Semantics of Feminism

Caitlin Moran, whose book was covered briefly on the Report here, posits that every woman in this century is a feminist by default:

Prosthetic Advantage, Ctd

So if it's okay to compete in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, as Oscar Pistorius is, then there's a case to be made for scrapping the latter altogether in the interest of disabled athletes:

In a combined event, medals won by para-athletes would contribute to their nation’s medal count. That would perhaps be the most meaningful change of all—one that already makes a difference at the Commonwealth Games, according to David Grevemberg, CEO of the 2014 event. With patriotism in play, the best physically challenged athletes would develop a fan base.

Where Is Romney's Actual Policy?

You may have noticed that when it comes to policy, Romney is rather vague. While the style over substance charge is generally directed at the president (whose emotive speeches captured voters' collective enthusiasm in 2008), it's probably Romney who should be getting the flack. With regard to the lack of any concrete details on economic policy in particular, the gap can be summarised succinctly: Obama has proposed policies — real policies. Romney hasn't. Ezra Klein on the massive 'policy gap' between the two:

You might say that this is the natural result of an incumbent running against a challenger. Obama, by virtue of being president, has to develop detailed policies, and he oversees a massive bureaucracy able to help him get specific. Romney, by virtue of his not yet having Obama’s job, does not.

But in 2008, John McCain ran on a far more detailed policy platform than Romney. To name just one example, like Romney, McCain promised to end the tax code’s discrimination against health insurance bought by individuals. But he told us how he would do it: by taxing employer-based insurance and using the savings to give families a $5,000 tax credit to put toward buying health insurance. Nor has Romney released anything that matches “Renewing America’s Purpose,” the 457-page policy book that George W. Bush released during the 2000 election. Romney’s vagueness is unique among modern presidential campaigns.

He recently elaborated on the disparity, saying that it isn't Romney's personality that's to blame for the lack of specificity:

Can You Fake Mental Illness?

In the case of accused killers like James Holmes, it's considered a matter of debate whether or not their apparent insanity is put on or genuine. It seems as though it might be relatively easy for a good actor to build a case around insanity where, in fact, they're mostly sound. But, as it turns out, forensic psychologists can generally tell if someone's insanity is purely an act:

Malingerers often exaggerate their symptoms and ignore common, subtle signs such as the blunting of a mentally ill patient’s emotions. Some fakers say one thing and do another. They might feign confusion to the psychiatrist but later converse easily with cell-mates, or claim to be paranoid while sitting at ease. Some combine symptoms from different conditions, such as hallucinations of schizophrenia and obscene outbursts found in Tourette’s syndrome. The forensic psychologist may suggest an outrageous delusion during the interview, such as, “Do you believe cars are part of an organized religion?” Fakers might latch onto this bait and perhaps even run with it. Real schizophrenics would say no.

(Image: "Colorado shooting suspect James Eagan Holmes attends his first court appearance in Aurora, Colorado." Reuters)

Media Critic-in-Chief

An indication of Obama's media diet:

A writer before he was a politician, Mr. Obama is a voracious consumer of news, reading newspapers and magazines on his iPad and in print and dipping into blogs and Twitter. He regularly gives aides detailed descriptions of articles that he liked, and he can be thin-skinned about those that he does not.

Even though George Bush is known to be widely-read, his frightening/hilarious remark about 'reading the headlines' only perpetuated the (at least partly accurate) perception of him as a president who is uninformed, incurious, and apparently quite proud of both qualities. But it contrasts even better with Sarah Palin's response to a reporter who asked which newspapers she read. She seemed to think it was a trick question.

Let's Get Bigfoot!

The latest trend in documentary television.

Prosthetic Advantage

Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius has been the subject of discussion in the scientific community of late. Some say his carbon fibre blades give him an unfair advantage:

One of the biggest points of contention is limb-repositioning time. The average elite male sprinter moves his leg from back to front in 0.37 second. The five most recent world record holders in the 100-meter dash averaged 0.34 second. Pistorius swings his leg in 0.28 second, largely because his Cheetah's are lighter than a regular human leg. Pistorius's rivals are swinging a lower leg that weighs about 5.7 kilograms, whereas his lower leg only weighs 2.4 kilograms.

But most of the evidence would suggest otherwise:

Once Pistorius is off the blocks, he faces two distinct obstacles: navigating the two turns of the 400-meter race without an ankle, and compensating for the relative lack of energy generated by his strides. The Cheetah works like a basic spring, compressing when it hits the ground and storing potential energy, which it then releases as kinetic energy as the blade returns to its natural position. But the spring only returns about 90 percent of the energy generated by a runner's stride, according to a study released by Ossur. An able-bodied leg and foot, on the other hand, can return as much as 240 percent.

Some scientists continue to argue that Pistorius gains a degree of competitive advantage with the Cheetahs, a debate chronicled in a comprehensive Scientific American article. They reason that Pistorius' blades are much lighter than a human foot, which allows him to swing the blades faster and generate more force with each stride. But when the people who actually make and test the Cheetah say there is no competitive advantage for blade running over biological foot running, the naysayers' arguments lose a lot of credibility.

(Image: Reuters)

Progress Here, Regress There, Ctd

Remember the reaffirmation made by the Boy Scouts of America with regard to their ban on gay people? Describing it as a policy we should oppose, as Obama did via a spokesperson, would almost certainly be an understatement of the highest order; we shouldn't just oppose it, we should be vocally appalled by it. In a statement given to Metro Weekly, White House spokesman Shin Inouye said that Obama believes the Boy Scouts of America, an organisation of which he is the honorary president, is a "valuable" one "that has helped educate and build character in American boys for more than a century."  The president, Inouye went on to say, opposes discrimination in all its forms, including on the basis of sexual orientation.

I happen to think that if Obama really wanted to make a bold statement in support of the rights of LGBT people — especially youth — then it would require a great deal more than a hesitant backing of gay marriage and some timid, vicarious criticism of what is in essence an openly-discriminatory, anti-gay institution. Something tells me it's far from good political practice, let alone good moral practice, for the president of the United States to be the figurehead of such a group.

Given how long it took him to come around to equal marriage rights, it would be awfully disappointing if he were to fall short of publicly denouncing bigotry like this. And it's denunciation that this kind of blatantly discriminatory thing needs — that is, if we're to realise a few very basic rights for all people (one of which is freedom from discrimination).

When the Olympics Gave Out Medals for Art

Joseph Stromberg mulls over the Olympiad's forgotten art events:

For the first four decades of competition, the Olympics awarded official medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, alongside those for the athletic competitions. From 1912 to 1952, juries awarded a total of 151 medals to original works in the fine arts inspired by athletic endeavors. Now, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the first artistic competition, even Olympics fanatics are unaware that arts, along with athletics, were a part of the modern Games nearly from the start. 

Does Romney Belong to a Cult? Ctd

Adam Gopnik confronts the question in his examination of Mormonism and its meaning:

All of which leads to the inevitable question: To what degree is Mormonism responsible for Mitt Romney? Is there a thread, dark or golden, that runs from Moroni to Mitt? Garry Wills has argued, after all, that Irish Catholic ideas about sin—that sin is negotiable currency, to be practiced, done penance for, forgiven—allowed John Kennedy some serenity as he screwed his way through the White House typing pool, just as the habits of Protestant Evangelical belief, in forgiveness and temptation and forgiveness, in a never-ending cycle, helped Bill Clinton find a common language with working-class people.

Subversive Superstition

Concern over magical thinking was mostly because it was considered a threat to the authority of the Church, and because magical belief offered a life outside its carefully-cultivated hierarchies:

Little had changed; people still felt powerless in the face of nature, but now instead of turning to magicians, they blamed them. The Church, after all, rarely attacked sympathetic magic on the grounds that it was empirically fallacious or ineffective—rather, it was a rival source of power. Among the many scandalous aspects of witches’ sabbaths as they were popularly depicted was the commingling of social classes: women—and increasingly men—of all walks of life, from peasants to the aristocracy, all were equal at the Midnight Mass. This vision of a dark Utopia was as threatening—if not more so—than any of the black rites practiced therein.

The passage is from Colin Dickey's piece on superstition in Lapham's. In the final few paragraphs, he essays an explanation for why we still in various forms cling to irrational thinking, even in this age of "hyperrationalism." Furthermore, he quotes Joan Didion, whose book The Year of Magical Thinking examined her irrational response to the death of her husband John Dunne. Both are worth reading.

(Image: "Black Cat Auditions In Hollywood, 1961." Ralph Crane, via LIFE)

Olympic Conspiracies

"The Opening Ceremony Was a Satanic Illuminati Occult Ritual" and other fun tales.

Prideful Hate

In response to the Chick-fil-A controversy, you get this. And those were some of the milder and — okay, I'll allow myself this — less misspelt tweets on the subject. It was the company's president, Dan Cathy, who said, "I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about." Jesse Bering predicts that the whole event will do untold harm, especially to teenagers:

It is society that is sick, not the sexual minorities. Yet the most tragic thing about this admittedly odd cultural flare-up involving a chicken chain and gay rights is that there are countless—and I mean that quite literally, since I suspect many will be inspired to retreat permanently into their closets after an incident so vile as this—gay teenagers and young adults who have been watching in silent terror as it has all unfolded. For them, every single body on proud display at the “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” not to mention those leaning out of their car windows to scream “faggots!” and “dykes!” at gay couples milling about or kissing, was a tangible reminder of just how much they really do have to fear in this country. (Meanwhile, we’re trying to convince them that “It Gets Better.”) So know this: From the unspoken perspective of all the petrified, closeted 15-year-olds out there (I used to be one myself, after all), it makes absolutely no difference, none whatsoever, what your motives are in rallying behind Chick-fil-A. All they see is your raw hate.

Earlier post here.

Quote of the Day

"It’s not class anymore. It’s money. And for very good reason. Money is a much more fluid medium than class, and much more measurable, too, than class. It was a protest, if it was that, to any extent, against privation. It is the sort of society where—it’s not very rational—people look at fame and feel deprived if they haven’t got it, feeling that this is a basic, almost a human right—a civil right. And also feel the same way about wealth, I suppose—Why haven’t I got it? And plenty of people have got it who don’t deserve it. It’s as if it’s all up there for grabs, but it isn’t coming their way," — Martin Amis, when asked about the role of class in his new novel.

"Mrs. Assad Duped Me"

Joan Juliet Buck tells the story of her infamous interview with Syria's first lady. (The article in question, incidentally, seems to have been made impossible to find online by Vogue, the magazine which both commissioned and published it.)

The Merits of Hitchcock

Vertigo came out on top of Citizen Kane in Sight and Sound magazine's hit parade of the greatest films of all time. Armond White thinks the de-throning of the classic Kane in favour of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece reflects a cultural desire to be different:

Perhaps Vertigo’s victory frees us from traditional authoritarianism (we should learn to develop our own taste, ignoring fashion) but it ushers in another tyranny. It is the triumph of “smartness” whereas the very nature of Kane’s prodigious exercise of cinema’s potential was actually a celebration–like the 1952 Singin’ in the Rain (which also fell off Sight & Sound’s top ten list). Recognizing the art of cinema as popular pleasure is frowned upon in fashionable criticism. A movie that impacts the culture like Kane always did provides a foundation for wider experience; a film that doesn’t, doesn’t.

James Wolcott agrees:

Between Austerity and Growth

When it comes to Europe's economic dilemma, it's easy to incorrectly think of it as a binary choice:

If Europe, and especially its periphery, were to build on the structural growth agenda that it has already begun, it could pursue growth even as it implements needed budget discipline. The combination would avoid fiscal profligacy as well as the vicious cycle that comes from a single-minded focus on austerity. If the initial lift from structural reform cannot counteract all the immediate contractionary effects of austerity, it could surely ameliorate them—and lay the groundwork for a more impressive and lasting recovery.

Paging All Undecided Voters

Ross Douthat puts Obama's strategy thusly:

If you’re an undecided, stuck-in-the-middle kind of voter, the president isn’t meeting you halfway on the issues, or pledging to revive the dream of postpartisanship that he campaigned on last time. He’s just saying that you’ve got no choice but to stick with him, because Romney is too malignant to be trusted.

He goes on to explain that by taking this position, the president is putting himself at odds with the logic of lefty bloggers and MSNBC contributors, who seem to think that a stronger, more ideologically-driven liberalism would be a politically beneficial. But it's the president's logic that makes sense here. As Douthat puts it, the "undecided, stuck-in-the-middle" people are the ones to win. Those to whom greater liberalism is desirable aren't going to vote for the conservative if their incumbent liberal isn't liberal enough.

I think you get my point.

Contrary to the Romneyland logic, winning over the undecided voters won't be a simple matter of convincing the public that their president is an underperformer who hates small businesses. They'll have to combat the Obama-projected image of their candidate as a Mormon Scrooge with a penchant for outsourcing and a perverse affinity for tax-evasion. At its most practical level, this election like almost any other is really about persuading the persuadable. And there are many more such people than you might suspect:

Eliot's Letters

David Collard reviews a new collection of T.S. Eliot's correspondence:

Was he a great letter writer? Not on the evidence gathered here - although we are offered a vivid picture of the single-handed daily management of a high-minded literary magazine. Few of the Criterion letters are riveting or revelatory, and are couched in a scrupulously courteous register that becomes wearisome when read in quantity. But the dazzling roster of correspondents makes even the most humdrum exchanges of interest. The big names - Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf and W B Yeats - are well represented, along with an illustrious cast of literary worthies from Auden (his first appearance in the letters being a courteous rejection note) to Gertrude Stein (another rejection, rather less courteous), Robert Graves (a quarrel) and Thomas McGreevy, Criterion contributor and close friend of Samuel Beckett, whose recently published letters vie with Eliot's as essential purchases for anyone with an interest in modern writing.

Gay and Proud in Uganda

Alexis Okeowo went to see the first gay pride parade in Uganda, which, based on its appalling record on LGBT rights, is widely panned as the worst place to live if you're gay:

People swam, drank, and danced as a D.J. played loud music. I met people like Akram, who operates a “gay-video library.” Activist Frank Mugisha, who appeared dressed in a sailor’s costume with a rainbow sash and called himself Captain Pride, told me, “I just wish I had a switch to turn on that would make everyone who’s gay say they are gay. Then everyone who is homophobic can realize their brothers, their sisters, and their aunts are gay.” He confessed that he was shocked to see so many people in attendance.

More on Uganda's shameful gay rights violations here.

Demanding Gun Control

A campaign has been launched by victims of the Tucson shootings to advocate a plan to end gun violence:

More than 48,000 Americans will be murdered with guns during the next president’s term. That’s why I’m calling on you to step forward with a substantive plan to end gun violence. What we need from our nation’s leaders is more than just a moment of silence -- we need a moment of courage.

Songs in the Key of Death

It turns out that America's morbid funeral industry relies largely on one man for its ambient mourning music:

But mourners don’t simply want “Scarborough Fair”—they want “Scarborough Fair” through a David Young filter, what the advertisement for Young’s music describes as “semi-spiritual.” The spirituality is “semi” in that it lends itself commercially to distribution agreements with corporations who manufacture embalming chemicals, but is still moving enough to preserve the emotional sanctity of our rituals for death. In a church funeral, hymns and music at prescribed moments bring on a wave of grief we desire and expect, and one that swells and then—crucially—subsides as the music ends....David Young’s music, when it shows up at a funeral home, doesn’t ask much of a listener in terms of attention, reverence, or devotion. The spirituality comes easy, and so do the emotions—if they come at all.

Rahm Emanuel's Good Intentions

Glenn Greenwald characterises Emanuel's Chik-fil-A decision as a dangerous attack on free speech:

If you support what Emanuel is doing here, then you should be equally supportive of a Mayor in Texas or a Governor in Idaho who blocks businesses from opening if they are run by those who support same-sex marriage — or who oppose American wars, or who support reproductive rights, or who favor single-payer health care, or which donates to LGBT groups and Planned Parenthood, on the ground that such views are offensive to Christian or conservative residents. You can’t cheer when political officials punish the expression of views you dislike and then expect to be taken seriously when you wrap yourself in the banner of free speech in order to protest state punishment of views you like and share. Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.

(Image: "Graffiti is painted over on the exterior wall of Chick-fil-A restaurant in Torrance, Calif., on Friday. Gay rights activists held kiss demonstrations at Chick-fil-A stores Friday, just days after the company set a sales record when customers flocked to the restaurants to show support for the fast-food chain owner's opposition to gay marriage." Via the AP)

Our Debt to the Greeks

Epicurus reflected rather self-righteously that "vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man." Brendan Boyle points out that by that measure, contemporary philosophy seems pretty vain:

Does Romney Belong to a Cult? Ctd

I feel as though Walter Kirn is directly addressing me in this bit of his essay, "Confessions of an Ex-Mormon":

I’d never been a good Mormon, as you’ll soon learn (indeed, I’m not a Mormon at all these days), but the talk of religion spurred by Romney’s run had aroused in me feelings of surprising intensity. Attacks on Mormonism by liberal wits and their unlikely partners in ridicule, conservative evangelical Christians, instantly filled me with resentment, particularly when they made mention of “magic underwear” and other supposedly spooky, cultish aspects of Mormon doctrine and theology. On the other hand, legitimate reminders of the Church hierarchy’s decisive support for Proposition 8, the California gay marriage ban, disgusted me. Deeper, trickier emotions surfaced whenever I came across the media’s favorite visual emblem of the faith: a young male missionary in a shirt and tie with a black plastic name-badge pinned to his vest pocket. The image suggested that Mormons were squares and robots, a naïve, brainwashed army of the out-of-touch. That hurt a bit. It also tugged me back to a sad, frightened moment in my youth when these figures of fun were all my family had.

You can see why here.

Mitt Romney's Wimp Problem

Michael Tomasky thinks Romney has been awfully wimpy lately — over tax returns, answering questions from reporters, and so on — and may actually be a wimp. He wonders how the 'insecure' Romney will cope in the company of swaggersome Dubya and Reagan:

A good-looking guy doesn’t have to walk around saying, “Hey, look at me!” He knows everyone’s looking. And a rich guy doesn’t have to remind us he’s rich. When he does, something’s off. It looks insecure. Romney is the genuine article: a true wimp. Oh, there are some ways in which he’s not—a wimp lets himself get kicked around, and Romney doesn’t exactly do that. He sure didn’t during the primaries, when he strafed Rick Perry and carpet-bombed Rick Santorum (but note that they were both weaker than he). In some respects, he’s more weenie than wimp—socially inept; at times awkwardy ingratiating, at other times mocking those “below” him, but almost always getting the situation a little wrong, and never in a sympathetic way.

I think 'wimp' might be taking it a bit far, but Tomasky's right about the insecurity, the social ineptitude, and the fawning obsequiousness. Romney tries too hard, laughs awkwardly in uncomfortable situations, and rarely gives the 'straight' answer. Maybe Tomasky's right: he is a wimp.

Where God Was

Over at the Belief blog, pastor Rob Brendie attempts to answer questions from the faithful about why God would allow awful things, like the attacks in Aurora, to occur:

Maverick Boris

Andrew Gimson, like most people, can't quite believe Boris Johnson's insistence that he has no Prime Ministerial ambitions:

As a young man, Mr Johnson wrote a perceptive essay about how to get elected as president of the Oxford Union, a feat he achieved at the second attempt. He said that what you really need is “a disciplined and deluded collection of stooges” who will get the vote out for you in their respective colleges. The Mayor is now assembling a collection of stooges within the Conservative Party who will help him, when the time comes, to mount his bid for the leadership. One cannot yet say this collection of malcontents is disciplined. But it may compensate for this weakness by showing a generous willingness to be deluded.

How to Design a Swimsuit

In the Beijing games, 98 percent of the medals were won by swimmers wearing Speedo's full-body LZR suit. New rules permit only “jammers," suits from the kneecap to navel for men, and from the knee to shoulder for women. They also may not have zips or any other fastening devices — a ban apparently in response to the wetsuit-like suits companies began designing after 2008. They had to come up with something entirely new:

At Aqualab, researchers took four years and spent 55,000 man-hours to produce what Speedo calls the Fastskin 3 system. The internal team of 19 supplemented by outside experts talked to hydrodynamic experts, aircraft engineers and nano textile producers. They called on experts in kinesiology, biomechanics, fluid dynamics and even a sports psychologist, who suggested a blue-gray tinge on goggle lenses to instill a sense of calm and focus. They tried the “Six Thinking Hats” method of brainstorming, a green hat for creative ways to attack a problem, a black one to look at the feasibility of those ideas. They “reverse brainstormed,” picturing how to make a swimmer go as slow as possible with oversized goggles and a suit compressing the body so parts stuck out, creating drag. The crazier the idea,the better.

What they eventually came up with has been described as "Spanx on steroids," and compresses the body more than three times as much as the banned predecessor.

"All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world"

With regard to Gore Vidal, who died Tuesday at 86, the NYT obituary puts it best:

Mr. Vidal’s essays were literary, resurrecting the works of forgotten writers like Dawn Powell and William Dean Howells, and also political, taking on issues like sexuality and cultural mores. The form suited him ideally: he could be learned, funny, stylish, show-offy and incisive all at once. Even Jason Epstein, Mr. Vidal’s longtime editor at Random House, once admitted that he preferred the essays to the novels, calling Mr. Vidal “an American version of Montaigne.”

"I always thought about Gore that he was not really a novelist," Mr. Epstein wrote, "that he had too much ego to be a writer of fiction because he couldn’t subordinate himself to other people the way you have to as a novelist."