February 2010
We’ve been waiting for months to see what’s in the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility but the Obama administration’s point-blank refusal to investigate, let alone prosecute, the war crimes of its predecessors has stalled it for more than a year. We are now told by Newsweek that the establishment - surprise! - will let itself off:
While the probe is sharply...
From Cool Hunting:
Photographer Brandon Voges came up with a simple and surprisingly novel
idea: photograph portraits of people hanging upside down by their
ankles. Then invite your closest friends to do the same. The resulting
eerie series “Upside Downey Face” is a collection of unsettling,
strange images of people flipped the wrong way up.
Nick Carr is still worried that the Internet is killing writing. Maybe he should just go and read the Amazon reviews for a 1 Gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk.
As nihilist Republicans, weak-kneed Democrats and the MSM CW patrol the capital city desperate to kill healthcare reform, the drama is not over yet. Jon Cohn has a must-read on the latest developments in a strategy to save something real. Try not to let your eyes glaze over at times - this is parliamentary politicking and policy-making at its most arcane. But it seems clearer and clearer to me...
Literalist, and punitive. (Hat tip: JMG.)
Lapu Lapu City, Philippines, 5.40pm.
The book, The View From Your Window, with 200 of the best window views published by the Dish over the last three years, beginning at dawn and ending at dusk with a foreword by Andrew Sullivan, can be previewed here and ordered here.
Fallows on Obama at the Duke-Georgetown basketball game. Total Dowd-bait.
In Steve Jobs’ famous commencement speech at Stanford he said:
You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet,...
Rob Tisinai tears it apart:
A stark contrast to the US where those who launched the Iraq war and instituted torture are deemed unprosecutable, immune from public accountability and many of them given platforms as if they have nothing to account for and nothing to apologize for. Blair did well; and nothing probably will come from it; but just forcing these officials to defend themselves in public after a war that was and...
I know it’s boring, but Norm Ornstein does boring really well. You think Obama and the Dems have accomplished nothing in one year? Look closer:
[T]his Democratic Congress is on a path to become one of the most
productive since the Great Society 89th Congress in 1965-66, and Obama
already has the most legislative success of any modern president — and
that includes Ronald Reagan and...
So this is acceptable fpr the mainstream, because it features a man-on-man kiss which is then promptly stigmatized, but the Mancrunch ad, which shows no such graphic kiss, is turned down … because it present homosexuality in a less stereotyped light. You see what CBS is doing: catering to homophobia, while also allowing explicitly political ads - including those run by the virulently...
Bailout and stimulus spending from around the world. Proportionally, China’s was the biggest - and may be the key to a sustainable US recovery.
January 2010
Brian Beglin reviews Margo Berdeshevesky’s Beautiful Soon Enough and debates the nature of fiction:
Does making such a stark distinction between poetry and prose really matter? For my money, it does. Fiction comes with expectations, just as poetry and hip-hop and meatball subs do. Some authors thwart those expectations to great effect: look at Padgett Powell’s newest, for instance. The paradox...
The Son of God gets a millennial makeover. Fucking brilliant:
JESUS2000 from jesus 2000 on Vimeo.
A new tumblr: Caption: “Maybe naming him Rimbaud wasn’t such a good idea.” (Tips on how to avoid hipster names here. And another reason hipsters might be unhappy: they have to pee.)
Michelle Cottle reviews a new book by Frank Luntz:
[H]e warns against putting too much pressure on the individual, and he
certainly is not interested in a larger role for government. Instead
Luntz dreams of a new era of “familial responsibility,” noting that
“the family is the perfectly scaled security net for every human
being.” If this doesn’t warm the heart of every “Leave It...
Garry Kasparov studies the complexity of chess programs:
The number of legal chess positions is 1040, the number of different possible games, 10120. Authors have attempted various ways to convey this immensity, usually based on one of the few fields to regularly employ such exponents, astronomy. In his book Chess Metaphors, Diego Rasskin-Gutman points out that a player looking eight moves ahead...
Ross Simonini defends Carl Sandburg’s work:
Nonsense is for everyone. It falls off the tongues of all speakers of all languages everywhere, from Hugo Ball in Switzerland to Aimé Césaire in Martinique to SpongeBob SquarePants in Bikini Bottom. True, nonsense words and sentences can’t make arguments or walk through A-ergo-B lessons, but this is part of nonsense’s reason for existence: anti-logic...
From Bernie Madoff to Dick Cheney: how knowledge of the other can lead to tormenting them:
A reader writes:
I read the entry “How Natural Is Masturbation, cont.” Then I noted the
next title, “Waiting for Growth,” followed by “The Daily Wrap.” Then,
I went back to the top, and found “They Had It In Their Hands.”
Hmmmmm…
Nativism is never pretty - from the right or the left. The way in which both Jon Chait and Matt Yglesias have responded to Veronique de Rugy’s rhetorical excess is beneath them.
Caleb Crain remembers the jolly fellows, “a certain type of American man—rowdy, boastful, hard drinking, and fond
of games, brawls, and tricks—who could dependably be found in village
taverns and on city streets”:
Jolly fellows found themselves besieged when the nineteenth century’s famous reform movements began to attack drinking, brawling, gambling, and whoring. Reform arose...
“We are familiar with the frequently beneficial consequences of involuntary askesis. How many times have we heard as we have visited a parishioner in the days following a heart attack, “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me – I’ll never be the same again. It woke me up to the reality of my life, to God, to what is important.” Suddenly instead of mindlessly and compulsively pursuing an...
Jonah Lehrer explains:
The brain is designed to learn by association: if this, then that. Music works by subtly toying with our expected associations, enticing us to make predictions about what note will come next, and then confronting us with our prediction errors. In other words, every melody manipulates the same essential mechanisms we use to make sense of reality. The second takeaway is...
Dacher Keltner studies human nature:
[We can] see the great human propensity for compassion and the effects compassion can have on behavior. But can we actually cultivate compassion, or is it all determined by our genes?
Recent neuroscience studies suggest that positive emotions are less heritable—that is, less determined by our DNA—than the negative emotions. Other studies indicate that the...
The kicker from Graeme Wood’s dispatch on the Iranian holy city of Qom:
Despite their conservatism, Qom’s pilgrims seemed motivated not by
passion for Ahmadinejad—I never heard anyone say his name, though the
“Leader” Ali Khamenei was mentioned repeatedly over outdoor
loudspeakers—but by a total denial of politics, and a preference for
something much simpler. In Tehran the previous week,...
Meghan O’Rourke delves:
In the wake of the AIDS crisis and
then 9/11, the conversation about death in the United States has grown
more open. Yet we still think of mourning as something to be done
privately. There might not be a “right” way to grieve, but some of the
work [psychologist George] Bonanno describes raises the question of whether certain norms are
healthier than others. In...
A reader writes: If that’s what you call feminist, then what you Christians call the “Old Testament” beat you to it.
Early in Genesis, Sarah tells Abraham that Ishmael must go. Abraham, the archetype of hospitality hesitates and asks G-d. G-d tells Abraham: listen to Sarah in all that she says. Note, not listen to Sarah in this instance, but in “all” that she...
John Homans reports on how the man and canine relationship has changed:
[James Serpell, head of the Center for the Interaction of Animals and Society at UPenn,] is most excited about new studies
on oxytocin and dog ownership. Oxytocin is the most important
social-bonding hormone, present notably between mother and child but
also in just about any interaction involving pair bonding,...
If you’ve got an idea worth spreading, I hope you’ll consider this random assortment of rules. Like all rules, some are made to be broken, but still…
You can name your idea anything you like, but a google-friendly name is always better than one that isn’t. Don’t plan on appearing on a reality show as the best way to launch your idea. Waiting for inspiration is...
Kevin Drum can barely believe what he’s reading: .Harkin said “we had an agreement, with the House, the White House and the Senate. We sent it to [the Congressional Budget Office] to get scored and then Tuesday happened and we didn’t get it back.” He said negotiators had an agreement in hand on Friday, Jan. 15. Harkin made clear that negotiators had reached a final deal on the entire bill,...
I’m thrilled to invite you to a killer evening with the brilliant Steven Pressfield (and me, it’s a tag team) at Borders Columbus Circle in New York on Monday, February 8th at 7 pm. It’s free but space is pretty limited. First come, first served.
I’ll be in Orange County on February 11th.
Utah on February 12th. No head shaving this trip, I promise.
I’ll...
Geek Week gathers 20 of the best extended takes in film history. This one is particularly good: My favorite is the pool scene from Boogie Nights, but the death of Little Bill, starring William H Macy, is also astonishing:
Maybe carpal tunnel is from something more fun than typing:
The etiology of non-occupational carpal tunnel syndrome is not well understood. It is proposed that carpal tunnel syndrome can develop during sexual intercourse when the hands become repeatedly extended while under pressure from the weight of the upper body. Of the eight risk factors associated with non-occupational carpal tunnel...
Jonah Lehrer describes the neurological mechanism:
Once we become socially isolated, we stop simulating the feelings of
other people.* As a result, our inner Machiavelli takes over, and our
sense of sympathy is squashed by selfishness. The UC Berkeley
psychologist Dacher Keltner
has found that, in many social situations, people with power act just
like patients with severe brain damage....
Mind Hacks flags a study:
Research has now established that certain police interrogation techniques can lead to false confessions, and it is not only through intimidated suspects confessing even though they know they’re innocent. In some cases, categorised as ‘coerced-internalized’ false confessions, the person starts to doubt their own memory and actually comes to believe that...
A new study published in the current Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that companies could be fibbing on their food labeling:
The authors of a new study said in a news release they measured 29 fast
food and sit-down restaurant meals and found they averaged 18 percent
more calories than stated. Ten frozen meals bought at grocery stores averaged 8 percent more calories than their...
A sunny-day goddamned hippie jam session with Lykke Li and Bon Iver: (Hat tip: Rachel Cothran)
Nerve compiles webby venn diagrams. Yet more here. Some of them are genius, if you like that kind of thing.
Patrick Brown reflects on the rise and fall of reality TV:
The shift in focus from reality to fantasy isn’t unique to The Real World. Reality TV is no longer about reality, not the world that any of us live in, anyway (if it ever was). Most reality TV shows are just game shows containing reality TV elements. Survivor, Big Brother, The Biggest Loser, America’s Next Top Model, and The Bachelor are...
A niche blog.
The latest:
A rare glimpse of them together as the build-up to February 11 continues.
Elisa Gabbert is tired of poets “accustomed to being published because of who they are”:
Here’s what I’d like to see more of in submissions: IDEAS. Why don’t poems have more ideas? So many poems I read are essentially just descriptions. So you went outside. It was beautiful. Or not. I don’t care how creatively you describe it, if it didn’t trigger any...
Jennifer Schuessler notes a book reviewer tic:
[B]oredom — unlike its equally bland smiley-faced twin, interest — is something professional readers, who are expected to keep things lively, would rather not admit to, for fear of being scolded and sent back to the Weekly Reader.
A reader writes:
Call me cynical, and I can’t imagine I’m the first to point this out,
but haven’t the folks at ManCrunch done a wonderful job at advertising
their site without having to, you know, pay to advertise their site?
They
created an ad that was almost certainly going to be rejected by the CBS
brass. Think of the firestorm after Janet Jackson’s tit popped out...
Charles Manson - in one of 125 rare photos of famous people compiled by Crack Two.
Budapest, Hungary, 3.41 pm
Nick Carr is still fretting over the future of the written word:
Our eager embrace of a brand new verb — to text — speaks
volumes. We’re rapidly moving away from our old linear form of writing
and reading, in which ideas and narratives wended their way across many
pages, to a much more compressed, nonlinear form. What we’ve learned
about digital media is that, even as they promote the...