Perry on the defense

How can one possibly recover from Perry's latest embarrassing debate performance? Maggie Haberman praises the swift response of the campaign, echoing Republicans:

It may not ultimately work, but it's the best they can do right now. Because at the end of the day, Team Perry is selling a product that voters have not been moving to buy. To some extent, Perry has a Tim Pawlenty problem - a team of terrific caliber, a strong organization, and a candidate who voters aren't buying. That may change, and Perry is currently running, as Ben and I noted today, with humility - something that could appeal to voters more than the swagger has. But the adage still holds that it's the candidate's job to get the candidate elected, and right now, his team is doing the best it can do.

Dan Amira has doubts about the effectiveness of any response, even a good one:

OWS is winning

At least when it comes to creating conversation, argues Dylan Byers:

A quick search of the news--including print articles, web stories and broadcast transcripts--via Nexis reveals a significant rise in the use of the term “income inequality,” from less than 91 instances in the week before the occupation started to almost 500 instances last week.

Of course, you might argue that the whole idea wasn't to create conversation at all. But, as I've questioned before, who knows what the objective was in the first place? When considering the term 'income equality', one is almost compelled to immediately dismiss such a lame combination of words as mere idiocy: it's an oxymoron in every sense except definition (don't we live in a meritocracy, after all?). Regardless, it's difficult to deny that conversation about this sort of thing is, in the end, probably a good thing. At least that has happened.

An island is born

Julia Whitty captions:

An underwater volcanic eruption in the Las Calmas ("The Calm") sea off El Hierro in the Canary Islands continues unabated since last month. The volcano is believed to be spewing up to 330 feet (100 meters) below the surface—yet its 2,200°F (1,200°C) cauldron is heating the surface by as much as 18°F (10°C). The plume visible in this satellite image stretches tens of miles from the eruption site and is formed from the blasting and churning of seafloor sediment, volcanic rock, and minerals.

(Image: NASA image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, via Mother Jones)

Technology as a silver bullet

Ian Quillen, in Education Week, writes:

President Barack Obama’s goal of once again leading the world in percentage of college graduates by 2020 is impossible without increased implementation of technology in education, said U.S. Deputy Director Steve Midgley today at the Virtual School Symposium in Indianapolis. “The only way to hit that goal is to bring people back to the system and provide credentials,” Midgley said. “The only way we’re going to do that is with technology.”

Daniel Luzer counters:

Really? What’s the proof for this assertion? President Obama’s goal of the United States leading the world in college graduates stems from the realization that many other developed countries have more (or a higher percentage of) college graduates. But do they have more college graduates because of “increased implementation of technology in education”? No, they don’t. Technological innovations are not the key distinction between the United States and countries with a higher percentage of college graduates. It just isn’t.

We've talked about this at high school level before, though not in great detail. In spite of my love for technology, I fail to under how its use in education could possibly result in better schooling. All the evidence appears to suggest that despite the money poured into providing high-tech resources for students in the past decade or so, the quality of education hasn't really changed at all.

Visiting Fukushima

Martin Fackler describes his experiences:

Workers line up cafeteria-style to take gloves, booties, suits and surgical masks. Masks — boxes and boxes of them — were stored in a nearby room. Workers are also given personal radiation measuring devices, which are checked on their return for total radiation exposure.

Returning workers take off protective clothing in a room covered in pink plastic sheets. After taking off protective clothing, workers are scanned for radiation by a machine called a “gate monitor,” which looked similar to the new body-imaging devices used by airport security.

Michael Moore among the 1%

I'd hate to link to Breitbart, but he happens to point out some important details about Michael Moore, whose work I loathe:

The fact is that Moore is so wealthy that he does not need to worry about his income. According to public tax records, Moore owns a massive vacation home on Torch Lake, Michigan–one of the most elite communities in the United States–in addition to his posh Manhattan residence. 

What about members of Congress? The numbers there are hardly surprising.

Eurozone crisis in one sentence

According to Paul Krugman: "What has happened, it turns out, is that by going on the euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of third-world countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies."

Where's the viable Romney alternative?

McKay Coppins wonders if it could be Jon Huntsman:

Those searching for a viable anti-Romney candidate are running out of options: Michele Bachmann flamed out long ago, Rick Perry’s dismal debate performances have all but sunk his campaign, and by the time Cain emerges from this mess of scandals, he’ll likely be too battered to maintain frontrunner status. So could Huntsman be the Tea Party’s savior? It would certainly seem like an odd choice. Everything about the former Utah governor’s campaign—from his unflinchingly erudite discussion of foreign policy to his brazenly pro-science tweets and his obscure music references—seems designed to alienate grassroots conservatives. 

Female readers of 'The Economist'

There aren't many, surprisingly – only thirteen percent. (Via Suzy Khimm)

On Martin Amis

Geoff Dyer writes that Amis would be almost inevitably displeased with his biographer, Richard Bradford:

Amis is hyper-allergic to bad writing and seeing his life half-swaddled in Bradford’s sentences must have induced anaphylactic shock. Jeez, they gave me a shock – though with its suggestion of brevity, as in “short, sharp”, it is not the right word, for the sense that this is shockingly bad writing deepens with exposure. This shock came as a bit of a surprise, so to speak, since the late Humphrey Carpenter is quoted as saying that Bradford, in his Kingsley biography, rose “to Amis’s stylistic level” – enormously consoling news for those of us who have never been persuaded to read Amis the elder. Either that or, since Martin has spoken warmly of Bradford’s trawl through his father’s life, the present book represents a precipitous decline in quality.

Jon Huntsman, the disappointment

Erza Klein expresses his disappointment with Huntsman, who initially appeared promising as the GOP moderate:

Huntsman has offered the Republican Party a generic conservative platform minus the partisan swagger. He’s polite. He dutifully served in the Obama administration. He wrote complimentary notes to the president. He eschews rancor. His daughters are running a charming campaign on his behalf. He has combined Paul Ryan’s positions with Ned Flander’s personality. He’s the conservative you can bring home to mom. The problem is that the Republican field already has a generic conservative who is reasonably polite and electable. His name is Mitt Romney.

In many ways, Huntsman's willingness to oppose generic conservative viewpoints – notably, his acceptance of the consensus on climate change and the science behind evolution – could have made him the Republican to win over enough voters on either side of the aisle. Instead, we've seen none of the flair one might have hoped for in Huntsman.

Where's the guy who's going to stand up to the GOP's predictable ideological douchebaggery? There's a special niche there for Huntsman. What a shame that he didn't take the opportunity to fill it.

(Image: Joe Burbank, Pool / AP Photo, via the Daily Beast)

Image of the Day

From the Atlantic's photoessay on recycling. "Ohio State University optometry student Patrick Milleson poses in a sea of old and used glasses at the optometry college, in Columbus, Ohio, on May 27, 2010. Eyeglasses that are collected from donation bins in stores are shipped to the OSU optometry school and the students sort, clean and donate them to those in need."

 (AP Photo/The Columbus Dispatch, Neal C. Lauron, source)

And here we go

Like so many books, Ulysses has been sitting on my shelf for some time, collecting dust. I suspect that –  in one of the few exceptions to the rule parents often dictate to young children: that the things of which you're frightened are more frightened of you – Joyce's magnum opus is significantly less apprehensive about meeting me than I meeting it. But, hey, how am I to know how my books feel?

Regardless, I've taken the view that it's best, when a book is so often associated with difficulty and complexity, to simply throw oneself into it; understanding will come to me eventually, for sure. In the meantime, however, it might be a difficult journey, particularly in the tempestuous throes of the scholastic examination system. Wish me luck. 

Hot for Coolidge

David Greenberg dissects the Republican obsession:

For the right, the fact that [Calvin] Coolidge presided over sustained growth—and without accumulating massive debt, as Reagan did—seems to ratify the wisdom of the low taxes, loose regulation, and limited government that they still champion. As for the Depression, they find it easier to scapegoat Herbert Hoover—almost certainly the worst president of the 20th century next to Richard Nixon—than to admit to blots on Coolidge’s legacy.

Albert Camus and Judaism

The famous novelist, who was born a Catholic and died, at just 46, an atheist, had deep ties to Judaism. Robert Zaretsky explores its influence on his writing and philosophy:

At the political and existential level, Camus felt a visceral connection with the absurd predicament of the young Jewish state. It was a political bond insofar as many on the French left, from whom Camus was estranged, had grown deeply anti-Zionist in the wake of the Suez War. In 1957, he publicly affirmed his sympathy and support for Israel. His reasons still echo today: Not only must Europe accept Israel’s existence as the only possible response to the continent’s complicity in the Final Solution, but Israel must also exist as a counter-example to the oppressive rule of Arab leaders. The Arab people, he declared, wished for deserts covered with olive trees, not canons. Let Israel show the way.

(Image: Albert Camus (Paris, 1944) by Henri Cartier-Bresson, source)

The end of Rick Perry

Oh my, this is painful (the inevitable keyboard cat included):



Timothy Noah – at least in comparison to some of the other chatter about the above clip – is feeling kind:

My first thought when Rick Perry couldn't name the third government agency he'd eliminate was that he was having a transient ischemic attack. My second thought was, "Oh, he's just having a senior moment. I've been having those since I was 15." My third thought was that his forgetting the name of the third federal agency he wants to eliminate does make you wonder whether he actually wants to eliminate it or whether this is something a campaign consultant told him to say. My fourth thought was that of the three on the list, the Energy department is the one that might really warrant elimination.

It is a dreadful thing to watch, though, isn't it? I mean, really. If his poor performance in previous debates hadn't already disqualified him from the race altogether, this should just about do it.

PG Wodehouse's life in letters, ctd

Roger Kimball reviews the book, also:

What Wodehouse craved was quiet and the company of his pipe, his pets and, above all, his typewriter. In 1902, when he was twenty, he published his first book, The Pothunters. On Valentine's Day, 1975, he was discovered next to all the usual accoutrements, along with the manuscript of his half-completed last novel, published as Sunset at Blandings a couple years thence. Like the gnu he wrote about in 'Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court', he'd handed in his dinner pail, victim not of a crack shot but a heart attack.

An earlier post on the matter here.

Questioning Jackie Kennedy

Christopher Hitchens, ever the lovable cynic, seems to think less of the Mrs. Kennedy than everybody else:

If the subject were being a major player in establishing the popular reputation of the Kennedy administration, that would be an entirely different story. With amazingly professional velocity, she seized control of the image-making process and soon had an entire cadre of historians and super-journos honing and burnishing the script. And there again, as I revisit it, comes that weird feeling that the taste and style pressure were being exerted very slightly downward.

(Video: the famous White House tour.)

The truth about violence

Sam Harris gives some basic principles of self-defense:

You are under no obligation, for instance, to give a stranger who has rung your doorbell, or decided to stand unusually close to you on the street, the benefit of the doubt. If a man who makes you uncomfortable steps onto an elevator with you, step off. If a man approaches you while you are sitting in your car and something about him doesn’t seem right, you don’t need to roll down your window and have a conversation. Victims of crime often sense that something is wrong in the first moments of encountering their attackers but feel too socially inhibited to create the necessary distance and escape.

Berlusconi's top ten

Gaffes, of course, according to Time magazine. Money quote, on the 17,000 left homeless by the L'Aquila earthquale: "Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary. But they should see it like a weekend of camping."

(Image: "A man unwraps a painting called 'Silvio & Ruby' made with plastic bags and scotch tape by Israeli artist Dodi Reifenberg at the Edward Cutler gallery in Milan, Italy." Alessandro Garofalo/Reuters, via CSM)

Quote of the Day

"Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?" – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The neuroscience of Barbie

Well, kind of:

A research group at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden has managed to make people feel as though they actually inhabited bodies of vastly different size – either that of dolls or of giants. The researchers showed that this fundamentally changed the way people perceived the physical world. Those in smaller bodies felt as though they were in a world populated by giant hands and pencils the size of trees, while those in giant bodies felt the same objects to be tiny, toy-sized versions of the real thing.

In order to accomplish this trick of self-displacement, participants in the experiments lay on a bed and wore a head-mounted display connected to two video cameras. These cameras faced a fake body lying on a bed next to the participant; thus, when participants looked down toward their own bodies, they instead saw artificial bodies where their own should have been. These artificial bodies were either huge (a 13-foot form made of chicken wire) or very small (a Barbie Doll). 

Is Google+ really dead?

Farhad Manjoo says that in spite of its promise, Google's stab in the social networking arena has failed to hit the mark:

I’ve been surprised by just how dreary the site has become. Although Google seems determined to keep adding new features, I suspect there’s little it can do to prevent Google+ from becoming a ghost town. Google might not know it yet, but from the outside, it’s clear that G+ has started to die—it will hang on for a year, maybe two, but at some point Google will have to put it out of its misery.

Since signing up myself at launch, I've seen no reason to return to the site. A 'ghost town' seems to describe things as they are at the moment, let alone what it might look like in a year or two. The primary issue seems to be this: when you're dealing with network effects, there's no way a site with only marginal improvements will overtake a giant. Besides, the 'next Facebook', assuming Facebook doesn't make any huge mistakes, probably won't look anything like Facebook. Yeah, it's dying – if not dead already.

Altruism's other side

Barbara Oakley asks if we're killing people with kindness:

Once you take altruism off its pedestal and are willing to examine it rationally, you begin to see pathologies of altruism all around: well-meaning actions that result in worsening problems. Let's take the concept of political correctness, which involves sacrificing one's own self-interest and self-expression in the belief that doing so will avoid doing anything that might inadvertently make others feel uncomfortable. This has become a powerful tool to harass and silence people.

"It's not just men"

Ana Marie Cox makes the best point of all:

The conference may prove damaging to Cain. Not because he seemed guilty or because he kind of backwardly admitted that more accusations could be coming (they're false, too!), but because this conference was the first sustained look America has gotten at an unscripted Cain. And it turns out he's kind of a prick! Right? Do Americans like people who refer to themselves (MANY, many times) in the third person? Do they have warm feelings for people so confident in their blamelessness that they brag about "never" having behaved "inappropriately" with "anyone" ever?

Allahpundit reacts, as does Dan Amira. Although I feel that this was necessary for the Cain campaign to move forward, one suspects that they won't be for some time. In fact, the whole situation seems remarkably unresolved, and I don't think we've heard the last Cain on this matter. Regardless, this is damaging. But is he finished, though? That's the real question.

Apartheid and the occupation of Palestine

John Dugard argues that Israel has already surpassed South Africa's racist era:

Israel discriminates against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in favour of half a million Israeli settlers. Its restrictions on freedom of movement, manifested in countless humiliating checkpoints, resemble the "pass laws" of apartheid. Its destruction of Palestinian homes resemble the destruction of homes belonging to blacks under apartheid's Group Areas Act. The confiscation of Palestinian farms under the pretext of building a security wall brings back similar memories. And so on. Indeed, Israel has gone beyond apartheid South Africa in constructing separate (and unequal) roads for Palestinians and settlers. Apartheid's security police practiced torture on a large scale. So do the Israeli security forces. There were many political prisoners on Robben Island but there are more Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.

(Image: "Robben Island in South Africa housed political prisoners during apartheid, but Israeli jails hold even more." Gallo/Getty, via Al Jazeera)

PG Wodehouse's life in letters

Sophie Ratcliffe writes, in the Guardian:

Wodehouse's letters, often written at speed, allow us to see him without his craft in place. Moments of great emotion break through: his excited optimism at the prospect of winning a scholarship to Oxford; his disappointment when he learned that a varsity life was not to be his lot after all; his stoicism in the face of romantic disappointment; his devastation at the death of his step-daughter; his outrage and sorrow at the public response to his wartime broadcasts.

The worst fonts in the world

In Simon Garfield's list, Comic Sans isn't among them.

Cormac McCarthy meets Yelp

Another entertaining Tumblr.

How should Herman Cain react?

Bill Bennett argues that he needs to give more attention to the accusations:

Herman Cain wants to be taken seriously as a public advocate for anything, never mind running for the chief executive and commander in chief of the most powerful and important and blessed country in the world, he needs to give a full press conference dedicated exclusively to this issue and these allegations. I have watched long enough and held my tongue long enough to give him the benefit of the doubt, but can no longer say this is a witch hunt, “a lynching” to use his word, or any other euphemism. There are allegations out there that matter and they have stacked up. 

Agreed. A press conference, at the very least. Thus far, it seems, the response hasn't been nearly adequate. If Cain wishes to continue any further in the race, he will need to dispel doubt regarding his innocence almost entirely, for to do so completely would be considered impossible. There's little doubt that this will remain a nuisance (if not something much greater) for the Cain campaign right throughout the process. One suspects it's a good thing, then, that he probably doesn't want to be president after all.

Image of the Day

"Fans reacted to guilty verdict of Dr. Conrad Murray outside the courthouse. Dr. Conrad Murray was remanded into custody after the jury returned with a guilty verdict at at the Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday." Credit: Monica Almeida/via The New York Times. 

The lady blogosphere

Emily Nussbaum writes that it has sparked something of a feminist rebirth:

These sites inspired an even sharper cadre of commenters, who bonded and argued, sometimes didactically, sometimes cruelly, but just as often pushing one another to hone their ideas—all this from a generation of women written off in the media as uninterested in any form of gender analysis, let alone the label “feminist.” Freed from the boundaries of print, writers could blur the lines between formal and casual writing; between a call to arms, a confession, and a stand-up routine—and this new looseness of form in turn emboldened readers to join in, to take risks in the safety of the shared spotlight.

Aggressive Bachmann

My God, she's getting desperate.

"You Want a Job, Don't You?"

The plot thickens. Rod Dreher thinks all the brouhaha will kill Cain's campaign, assuming it hasn't already:

It’s just getting worse for Herman Cain. It’s one thing for anonymous accusers to come after you. But this Bialek woman who just held a presser in New York has a name and a face, and is willing to make her accusation in public. Her lawyer, Gloria Allred (I know, ugh), produced statements by two people who claim Bialek told them at the time what Cain had done to her. Cain can yak all he wants about how he’s not going to talk about this stuff anymore, but that’s all anybody is going to talk about until and unless he firmly and convincingly rebuts this stuff. This drip-drip-drip is going to kill his campaign. I’d say it’s probably dead anyway. 

The 'name and the face' element is perhaps more important than people realise. Once we can attach a victim to the allegations – a human being, at any rate – then we're far more likely to take those allegations seriously. Well, that's how these events usually play out. Other reactions from Dave Weigel and Dan Amira. Doug Mataconis considers the impact of Bialek's statement:

At some point, I assume she’ll end up on cable being interview by someone and then we’ll see how she comes across. If she’s credible, it’s going to be difficult for Cain to just say “she’s lying” and assume that this story is going to go away. Moreover, if there are any other women out there, the fact that one of them has now come forward may cause others to do the same.

Mocking God, musically

Musical satirist Tim Minchin describes his visit to the heart of Texas:

Later in the evening, struggling like DJ Dante through acoustic hell, I get the giggles during my song "Thank You God (For Fixing The Cataracts of Sam's Mum)" – a ditty that pokes fun at the megalomaniacal idea that an omnipotent being might have his attention diverted by the plight of a middle-class woman with minor ocular issues. Here in Texas, where it's perfectly normal to pray before every football match, board meeting and exam, and where the governor will happily organise mass rain-dances while ignoring climate data, it feels like the song has found its spiritual home. 

Vonnegut in all his complexity

According to Charles J. Shields' new biography of the author, reviewed by Janet Maslin:

Mr. Shields means to separate image from perception: He depicts Vonnegut as an essentially conservative Midwesterner, proud of his German heritage and capitalist instincts, who developed an aura of radical chic. He also describes a World War II isolationist who aligned himself with Charles A. Lindbergh yet became an antiwar literary hero. And he finds a life-affirming humanist sensibility in a writer celebrated for black humor. How this man would eventually be recruited to brainstorm with the Jefferson Airplane and be hipper than his own children are among the mysteries on which Mr. Shields casts light. 

(Image: Kurt Vonnegut with his dog Pumpkin, New York, 1982.)

Steve Jobs's real genius

In his quasi-review of Walter Isaacson's new biography of Jobs, Malcolm Gladwell examines the role of tweaking in innovation:

I’ll know it when I see it. That was Jobs’s credo, and until he saw it his perfectionism kept him on edge. He looked at the title bars—the headers that run across the top of windows and documents—that his team of software developers had designed for the original Macintosh and decided he didn’t like them. He forced the developers to do another version, and then another, about twenty iterations in all, insisting on one tiny tweak after another, and when the developers protested that they had better things to do he shouted, “Can you imagine looking at that every day? It’s not just a little thing. It’s something we have to do right.”

Even to an outsider, it is clear that this has been the secret to Apple's enormous success over the years, particularly since Jobs's return in 1997. Small things make a huge difference. Whenever people attempt to compare, for example, the iPhone with an Android device, the discussion will inevitably come down to what the user values in a phone.

You can reel off a list of impressive technical specifications all you wish, but as is the case with most Apple products, what people see in them is a little more abstract; the appeal of their products cannot be distilled to mere numbers. The little things really do matter: the tweaking paid off.

Decoding the brain

Benedict Carey profiles Michael Gazzaniga, the neuroscientist credited for studying the brain's split personality:

Brain science “will eventually begin to influence how the public views justice and responsibility,” Dr. Gazzaniga said at a recent conference here sponsored by the Edge Foundation. And there is no guarantee, he added, that its influence will be a good one. For one thing, brain-scanning technology is not ready for prime time in the legal system; it provides less information than people presume.

For another, new knowledge about neural processes is raising important questions about human responsibility. Scientists now know that the brain runs largely on autopilot; it acts first and asks questions later, often explaining behavior after the fact. So if much of behavior is automatic, then how responsible are people for their actions? Who’s driving this submarine, anyway?

"How could they do this to Tintin?" Ctd

Jonathan Jones asks if the purists have gone overboard:

Is the gulf between expert disgust and public enthusiasm further proof that critics are doomed? Or that modern culture is truly anti-intellectual and philistine? I think it is evidence of neither. I am sure the Tintin film really is infuriating if you are a Tintin fan, as many who write about it plainly are. But is everyone a Tintin fan? Is everyone that familiar with the quixotic idealism, richly absurd characters, and unique humour of these great comic books. Tintin fans, in short, may be overestimating how dearly these classics are held in the common heart. If this film had come out a decade ago I'd have seen it without any prejudices because I had never read a Tintin book.

On the nature of musicals

David Benedict argues that Cabaret is the musical for people who hate them:

The antipathy to non-naturalism explains the success of Cabaret, the musical for people who hate them. Director Bob Fosse ducks the fantasy issue, coming up instead with a dazzling apology. He avoids the vexed question of people bursting into song by ensuring that everyone sings within solidly naturalistic circumstances. Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey play performers who sing onstage. Even the chilling Aryan salute, “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” is started by a Nazi party member singing outside a Bavarian Gasthaus with a dramatically appropriate (unseen) oompah folk band. The film won a remarkable eight Oscars but it is a contraction of the musical’s possibilities, not an expansion.