'The Operators,' by Michael Hastings (Review) - The Daily Beast

'The Operators,' by Michael Hastings (Review) - The Daily Beast: It’s impossible to read The Operators, Michael Hastings’s new book about the Afghanistan War, without contemplating the amount of adoration and contempt it is going to generate in the coming weeks. It’s a polarizing book about a polarizing war for a polarized nation. Despite that, it demands to be read by both audiences and everyone in between. Its origins reside in “The Runaway General,” Hastings’s 2010 Rolling Stone article about Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his inner circle, which led to the general’s very public resignation from the top position in Afghanistan. Like it or not, this is a book of great consequence, not a pop-culture puff piece, which some of its deriders claim it is. The Operators seems destined to join the pantheon of the best of GWOT literature, not just for its rock-and-roll details, but for its piercing chronicles of a world gone mad.

Fukushima: Inside the Exclusion Zone

Fukushima: Inside the Exclusion Zone:

In June, National Geographic sent AP photographer David Guttenfelder into the exclusion zone around the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station, which was badly damaged in the earthquake and tsunami earlier this year. He captured images of communities that had become ghost towns, with pets and farm animals roaming the streets. Later, in November, Guttenfelder returned to photograph the crippled reactor facility itself as members of the media were allowed inside for the first time since the triple disaster last March. In some places, the reactor buildings appear to be little more than heaps of twisted metal and crumbling concrete. Tens of thousands of area residents remain displaced, with little indication of when, or if, they may ever return to their homes. Collected here are some images from these trips -- the first six are from the December 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine, now on newsstands, and more photos can be seen at the National Geographic website. [20 photos]

After the disasters of March 11, tens of thousands were ordered to leave their homes in the vicinity of the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station, some of their footprints now frozen in the mud. (© David Guttenfelder /National Geographic)

He Told the Truth About China’s Tyranny by Simon Leys | The New York Review of Books

He Told the Truth About China’s Tyranny by Simon Leys | The New York Review of Books: 10

At the Oslo ceremony, an empty chair was substituted for the absent laureate. Within hours, the words “empty chair” were banned from the Internet in China—wherever they occurred, the entire machinery of censorship was automatically set in motion.

Foreign experts in various intelligence organizations are trying to assess the growing strength of China, politically, economically, and militarily. The Chinese leaders are most likely to have a clear view of their own power. If so, why are they so scared of a frail and powerless poet and essayist, locked away in jail, cut off from all human contacts? Why did the mere sight of his empty chair at the other end of the Eurasian continent plunge them into such a panic?11

How the Fed Can Prevent the Next Financial Crisis

How the Fed Can Prevent the Next Financial Crisis: The Fed’s errors can be placed into two broad categories, the failure to ask the right questions before the crisis, and the failure to act quickly and aggressively enough once the crisis began. The first problem had a lot to do with economists’ undue faith in their own models and abilities – the financial meltdown problem had been solved so no need to worry about that – while the second problem is at least partly due to the way in which the public interest is represented on the Fed.

I don’t know how to insulate economists from themselves, every few decades we seem to have the need to declare that we have solved important problems only to be spectacularly wrong, but the representation of the public interest in policy decisions can certainly be improved. That won’t fully overcome the Fed’s tendency to hesitate and take small steps when bold action is needed, but better representation would certainly give more weight to the public’s desire for the Fed to do its utmost to bring an end to the many problems that households face when the economy is operating at subpar levels.

Don’t Do It, Bibi - NYTimes.com

Don’t Do It, Bibi - NYTimes.com: ope was recently asked by an Israeli ambassador what could be done to improve the lousy relations between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. He replied: “Every once in a while, say thank you.”

The American ambassador added a couple of other thoughts. “Maybe, once in a while, ask the president if there’s anything you can do for him. And above all stay out of our election-year politics.”

Diplomatic gift-giving :/

Iran to Send U.S. Toy Model of Downed Drone | World | RIA Novosti: Iran said it will send the U.S. a toy model of a RQ-170 Sentinel drone in response to Washington’s request to return the aircraft that crashed in Iran last year, Iran's Radio Payam said on Tuesday.



The miniature will be sent to Washington during a special ceremony to mark the 34th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran on February 5.

Lynch: No military option in Syria

No military option in Syria:

Syria is not Libya, and has few of the unique conditions which made that intervention appropriate. The moral outrage at the depradations of Asad's forces, as well as the fevered hopes of those hoping to change the region's strategic equation by bringing down Iran's main Arab ally are not enough, any more than hope is a plan. Military intervention in Syria has little prospect of success, a high risk of disastrous failure, and a near-certainty of escalation which should make the experience of Iraq weigh extremely heavily on anyone contemplating such an intervention. There is no magic number of deaths at which the U.S. must embark on a self-defeating and foolish adventure.

A wordy post on why SOPA and PIPA are awful ideas.

blog.reddit -- what's new on reddit: A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP: This legislation naively ignores this complexity, and simply labels a site 'foreign' or 'domestic' based solely on the domain name.

The legislators sponsoring these bills have indicated that they are only targeted at truly foreign sites. However, the language is so loose and ignorant of what is truly a foreign site that there is a huge amount of room to argue what is actually "foreign".

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout - Wikimedia Foundation

English Wikipedia anti-SOPA blackout - Wikimedia Foundation: In making this decision, Wikipedians will be criticized for seeming to abandon neutrality to take a political position. That’s a real, legitimate issue. We want people to trust Wikipedia, not worry that it is trying to propagandize them.

But although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence is not.

As The Debate Continues � Postmodern Conservative | A First Things Blog

As The Debate Continues � Postmodern Conservative | A First Things Blog: So far I’m pretty horrified. The low point was when Santorum asked Romney if Romney believed that felons who had completed their sentence should be allowed to vote. Romney froze and tried to change the subject since apparently Romney didn’t know what he was supposed to pretend to believe.

4S

Transcript | This American Life:

Siri, where do you come from?
Siri Software

I, Siri, was designed by Apple in California.
Ira Glass

Where were you manufactured?
Siri Software

I'm not allowed to say.
Ira Glass

Why?
Siri Software

Good question. Anything else I can do for you?

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Letter from Birmingham Jail: Martin Luther King Jr. |
Liberation |
May 1963

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

[full story]

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Alcohol | Drugs & Addiction | DISCOVER Magazine

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Alcohol | Drugs & Addiction | DISCOVER Magazine:The seeds Johnny Appleseed sold to farmers throughout Ohio and Indiana produced apples that were inedible, but perfect for making hard cider.

A lean, muscular person will be less affected by drink than someone with more body fat: Water-rich muscle tissues absorb alcohol effectively, preventing it from reaching the brain.

To be fair.....

To be fair, I feel like the bike lock really can’t be blamed for this one.

True Dat:

"In an ideal world, you would not pick a representative of this particular sector of the economy to be your presidential candidate," - Rich Lowry on Romney's Bain problem.

Judith Clark’s Radical Transformation - NYTimes.com

Judith Clark’s Radical Transformation - NYTimes.com: She began keeping a journal. She had used her radicalism, she realized, much the way prisoners around her used drugs, as a means to avoid confronting her own doubts. She walled herself off in the safety of doctrine. “I was beginning to say these politics are crazy. I’ve experienced so much loss, and created so much loss, for the sake of an illusion.”

She consumed books on psychology and wrote poetry. Solitary was grueling, she said. “But as horrible as it felt, I felt more alive than I had been. It was like coming out of this cave and being able to see again and feel.”

Helping to pull her into the world was her daughter.

On technology

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing - Boing Boing: Reality asserts itself. Like the nursery rhyme lady who swallows a spider to catch a fly, and has to swallow a bird to catch the spider, and a cat to catch the bird, so must these regulations, which have broad general appeal but are disastrous in their implementation. Each regulation begets a new one, aimed at shoring up its own failures.

It's tempting to stop the story here and conclude that the problem is that lawmakers are either clueless or evil, or possibly evilly clueless. This is not a very satisfying place to go, because it's fundamentally a counsel of despair; it suggests that our problems cannot be solved for so long as stupidity and evilness are present in the halls of power, which is to say they will never be solved. But I have another theory about what's happened.

We don't undestand the brain, yet.

Language Log � The unbearable loss of words: "What's a spondulick?"
"Money."
"Really? Truly? Spondulicks?" In my mind's eye, I pictured a spastic duck.
"Yes," he said emphatically.
"Spondulicks?"
"Spondulicks. It's British."
Surely he was pulling my leg. I breezed into the library to look it up in an etymological dictionary, where I found this entry:

The War on Terror is Over | Atlantic Council

The War on Terror is Over | Atlantic Council: The killing of bin Laden, and the audacious way it was done by US special operations forces, proved cathartic for the American people. Like it or not, Americans take their wars personally. Americans prefer to think not that they are going to war with Germany, Japan, Iraq, or Serbia, but with Hitler, Tojo, Saddam Hussein, or Slobodan Milosevic. So it is with Al-Qaeda as well. While some in Europe and elsewhere may think that the spontaneous celebrations that erupted outside the White House and elsewhere in America on the news of bin Laden’s killing was a bit bloodthirsty, it was a quintessentially American reaction. The dragon had been slain. Some counterterrorism experts may argue that the killing of bin Laden was a symbolic victory only, but for most Americans the war is now largely over.

WHY IS THIS A QUESTION?

Should The Times Be a Truth Vigilante? | The Public Editor - NYTimes.com: I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

One example mentioned recently by a reader: As cited in an Adam Liptak article on the Supreme Court, a court spokeswoman said Clarence Thomas had “misunderstood” a financial disclosure form when he failed to report his wife’s earnings from the Heritage Foundation. The reader thought it not likely that Mr. Thomas “misunderstood,” and instead that he simply chose not to report the information.

3 Reasons Conservatives Should Cut Defense Spending Now! - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

3 Reasons Conservatives Should Cut Defense Spending Now! - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine: It’s a conservative truism that government programs, even ones that are sanctioned by the constitution, tend to be bloated, inefficient, and incompetent. Surely that same logic applies to the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. In fact, Republican Reps. John Mica and Paul Broun marked the 10th anniversary of the Transportation Security Administration with a report that concluded that after spending $56 billion in security measures, flying is no safer now than it was before the 9/11 attacks.

If conservatives can’t find wasteful spending and useless programs in defense and homeland security to cut, they’ve got bigger problems than terrorists to deal with.

This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business | Fast Company

This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business | Fast Company: Chaotic disruption is rampant, not simply from the likes of Apple, Facebook, and Google. No one predicted that General Motors would go bankrupt--and come back from the abyss with greater momentum than Toyota. No one in the car-rental industry foresaw the popularity of auto-sharing Zipcar--and Zipcar didn't foresee the rise of outfits like Uber and RelayRides, which are already trying to steal its market. Digital competition destroyed bookseller Borders, and yet the big, stodgy music labels--seemingly the ground zero for digital disruption--defy predictions of their demise. Walmart has given up trying to turn itself into a bank, but before retail bankers breathe a sigh of relief, they ought to look over their shoulders at Square and other mobile-wallet initiatives.

Euphemisms: Making murder respectable | The Economist

Euphemisms: Making murder respectable | The Economist: American euphemisms are in a class of their own, principally because they seem to involve words that few would find offensive to start with, replaced by phrases that are meaninglessly ambiguous: bathroom tissue for lavatory paper, dental appliances for false teeth, previously owned rather than used, wellness centres for hospitals, which conduct procedures not operations. As the late George Carlin, an American comedian, noted, people used to get old and die. Now they become first preelderly, then senior citizens and pass away in a terminal episode or (if doctors botch their treatment) after a therapeutic misadventure.

Saving Face and Peace in the Gulf - Anne-Marie Slaughter - Project Syndicate

Saving Face and Peace in the Gulf - Anne-Marie Slaughter - Project Syndicate: PRINCETON – The West and Iran are playing a dangerous game. In the past ten days, Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz and warned the United States against sending an aircraft carrier back into the Persian Gulf. The US predictably responded that its aircraft carriers could and would patrol wherever necessary to promote freedom of navigation. Iran then announced that it would conduct naval exercises in the Strait.

In the game of “chicken,” two cars drive straight at each other at top speed; either one driver “chickens out” and swerves, or they collide in a fireball. Governments around the world cannot stand by and watch that game play out across the world’s energy lifeline. It is time for third parties to step in and facilitate solutions that allow Iran to save face while significantly and credibly reducing its supply of enriched uranium.

Overheard on the Goldman Sachs Elevator

TFM Column | Overheard on the Goldman Sachs Elevator:

#1: If you can only be good at one thing, be good at lying… because if you’re good at lying, you’re good at everything.

#1: Blacking out is just your brain clearing its browser history.

#1: My garbage disposal eats better than 98% of the world.

George P. Burdell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George P. Burdell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: George P. Burdell is a fictitious student officially enrolled at Georgia Tech in 1927 as a practical joke. Since then, he has supposedly received several degrees, served in the military, gotten married, and served on Mad magazine's Board of Directors, among other accomplishments. Burdell at one point even led the online poll for Time's 2001 Person of the Year award.[1] He has evolved into an important and notorious campus tradition; all Georgia Tech students learn about him at orientation.[2]

An Oral History of the Guant�namo Bay Detention Center | Politics | Vanity Fair

An Oral History of the Guant�namo Bay Detention Center | Politics | Vanity Fair: Pierre-Richard Prosper: On Thanksgiving weekend, I received a phone call informing me that we had just captured approximately 300 al-Qaeda and Taliban. I asked all our assistant secretaries and regional bureaus to canvass literally the world to begin to look at what options we had as to where a detention facility could be established. We began to eliminate places for different reasons. One day, in one of our meetings, we sat there puzzled as places continued to be eliminated. An individual from the Department of Justice effectively blurted out, What about Guant�namo? The individual then began to make clear that Guant�namo now is an empty facility, that there’s a basic structure there, that it’s a place that had been used to hold Haitian and Cuban migrants, and that U.S. courts in the past have given the executive branch great deference in what it did in Guant�namo.

William Howard Taft IV: At the time we selected Guant�namo we were adhering to the Geneva Conventions, and no decision had been made not to. I can’t say as to everyone, but on our side [the State Department] we were expecting and certainly quite comfortable with the use of the Geneva Conventions. It was the normal way our military had operated for 50 years.

Clever

Attack Ad Of The Day:

Copyranter spots a clever guerrilla campaign:

Let's Hope Iran Tries To Close The World's Oil Spigot | Danger Room | Wired.com

Let's Hope Iran Tries To Close The World's Oil Spigot | Danger Room | Wired.com: Greenert is certainly right to worry, especially as the U.S.S. John C. Stennis‘ battle group just passed through the strait. But in a sense, he should hope Iran tries to close the Strait of Hormuz. There are few mistakes Iran could make that would be worse for it in the long run.

Why? Because Iran would suddenly be responsible for sending world energy prices skyrocketing — perhaps to $200 a barrel — after a disruption of Gulf oil shipping. Washington usually has a hard sell when convincing other countries that Iran’s regional bellicosity and lack of transparency on its nuclear program merits a tough response. But when Iran hits the entire world in the wallet, the argument gets substantially easier.

On idenity

The end of the Union is coming sooner rather later – Telegraph Blogs: Scotland is drifting away from England and consequently will someday sail out of the United Kingdom. As I have argued in the Telegraph before, this isn’t because Scots are now more different from the English than they used to be. On the contrary it’s because they are more alike, because there are fewer differences in the way people live either side of the old Border. It is precisely because of the greater uniformity that so many Scots feel the need to assert that we are distinct and different.

Interesting

<< stephen j. dubner >>: A key fact of white-collar crime is that we hear about only the very slim fraction of people who are caught. Most embezzlers lead quiet and theoretically happy lives; employees who steal company property are rarely detected. With street crime, meanwhile, that is not the case. A mugging or a burglary or a murder is usually counted whether or not the criminal is caught. A street crime has a victim, who typically reports the crime to the police, which generates data, which in turn generate thousands of academic papers by criminologists, sociologists and economists. But white-collar crime presents no obvious victim. Whom, exactly, did the masters of Enron steal from? And how can you measure something if you don't know to whom it happened, or with what frequency, or in what magnitude? Paul F.'s bagel business was different. It did present a victim. The victim was Paul F.

A Decalogue of Canons from Thomas Jefferson

A Decalogue of Canons:

A Decalogue of Canons for observation in practical life.



1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

3. Never spend your money before you have it.

4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

6. We never repent of having eaten too little.

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

9. Take things always by their smooth handle.

10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

Haven't We Lived Through This Primary Before?

Haven't We Lived Through This Primary Before?:

I'm thinking of a Republican primary. It starts with a candidate (John McCain/Mitt Romney) who ran once before, came in second place, and won over the party's elite class without winning over its base. Other candidates, understandably unwilling to accept this, line up: An under-funded social conservative (Mike Huckabee/Rick Santorum), an elder statesman who's walked to the altar three times (Rudy Giuliani/Newt Gingrich), a libertarian who wants to bring back the gold standard (Ron Paul/Ron Paul).

The conservative base is displeased. In the year before the primary, it pines for a perfect candidate. At the end of summer, on (September 5/August 13), it gets him: (Fred Thompson/Rick Perry). The dream candidate immediately rises to the top of national polls, but collapses after lazy, distaff debate performances. When the primaries arrive, he's in single digits and reduced to attacking the front-runners. But in Iowa, he does just well enough to justify staying in the race.

The social conservative (wins/almost wins, depending on what math you believe) Iowa. Flush with victory, eager to prove himself in all battlegrounds, he spends most of the next week in New Hampshire. But the surge can only take him from the margin of error to (13/9) percent of the vote. The old dream candidate, now a national laughingstock only known for a debate moment ("I'm not doing any hand shows"/"Oops") has already moved on to South Carolina. He flies to New Hampshire just to participate in a debate, deeply annoying the supporters of (Ron Paul/Buddy Roemer), whose candidate had worked harder there. He polls a pathetic 1 percent, but stays in the race. The field is crowded enough that a horrified base sees how the front-runner, who's won the endorsement of (Lindsey Graham/Nikki Haley), can win South Carolina with a plurality of the vote.

The Republican base looks at the wreckage and shudders. It can never allow this to happen ever again.

Unnatural selection: Is evolving reproductive technology ushering in a new age of eugenics? - The Globe and Mail

Unnatural selection: Is evolving reproductive technology ushering in a new age of eugenics? - The Globe and Mail: That ability is now morphing into a whole new approach to baby-making, one that gives people an unprecedented power to preview, and pick, the genetic traits of their prospective children.

Just as Paracelsus wrote that his recipe worked best if done in secret, modern science is quietly handing humanity something the quirky Renaissance scholar could only imagine: the capacity to harness our own evolution. We now have the potential to banish the genes that kill us, that make us susceptible to cancer, heart disease, depression, addictions and obesity, and to select those that may make us healthier, stronger, more intelligent.

The question is, should we?

When the law oversteps

Prohibition's Premier Hooch Hounds | Past Imperfect: Bootleggers transported product via an intricate system of underground pipes, including a 6,000-foot beer pipeline that ran through the Yonkers sewer system. Proprietors of cordial shops nailed signs that read “importer” or “broker” on their doors, a clear signal that they were in the know. They also slipped flyers under windshields and apartment doors, offered free samples and home delivery, took telephone orders and urged customers to “ask for anything you may not find” on the menu. Drinking now required cunning, urbane wit, the code to a secret language. “Give me a ginger ale,” a patron said, and waited for the bartender’s wink and knowing reply: “Imported or domestic?” The correct answer—imported—brought a highball.

Quite a Profile

Wright Thompson on New Orleans, the BCS championship, and Louisiana politics - Grantland: He is an 84-year-old felon, a former congressman, and four-time governor of Louisiana. He is a new husband, and he has a book to hawk. He's done time and managed to put more than a billion dollars in the bank for Louisiana's children. In this final act, there is joy in the house of Edwards, and he feels it everywhere he goes, from small-town parades to the BCS National Championship Game, where his Tigers will play and where he, no longer inmate 03128-095, will get to see it live. Listen to the crowd if E.W.E. finds his way onto the Superdome Jumbotron. Look at the expression on his face when he hears it.

Lexington: Rick Santorum’s ride | The Economist

Lexington: Rick Santorum’s ride | The Economist: Before he went down to defeat (by a margin of 17%) in Pennsylvania’s senatorial election of 2006, he was a champion of George Bush junior’s notion of “compassionate conservatism”, ie, giving taxpayers’ money to faith-based organisations, on the theory that do-gooders who had God on their side perform better than social workers.

Such ideas do not grate only on liberals. They also collide with the strand of conservatism represented in this cycle by Ron Paul, whose army of avid followers insist that the best thing government can do is to get out of people’s way—and certainly out of their bedrooms. Mr Santorum prefers government to serve as an instrument in the urgent task of remoralising a society that has lost its spiritual moorings. These philosophies are opposites, hard to accommodate in the breast of a single political movement. The eventual Republican nominee, even if it is the elasticated Mr Romney, will not find it easy to regroup his party.

Print - The Daughter of the Disappeared - Marie Claire

Print - The Daughter of the Disappeared - Marie Claire: Earlier that week, the Argentine government had publicized allegations that her father, along with other ex-military officers, had taken part in Argentina's military dictatorship in the 1970s. He was accused of interrogating and torturing prisoners; he'd tried to commit suicide the night the news broke. Entering the caf�and sliding into a seat by the window, Victoria desperately hoped that Isaac, a friend from her volunteer work, would tell her the charges had been a huge mistake. Instead, he just looked at her, his eyes welling up behind his thick glasses.

"Negrita," he said, using a term of endearment for the black-haired Victoria, "you are the daughter of a couple murdered during the dictatorship. The people who raised you aren't your parents," he continued. She'd been kidnapped, and her identity had been changed at birth.

The Dougherty Gang Crime Story - GQ January 2012: Newsmakers: GQ

The Dougherty Gang Crime Story - GQ January 2012: Newsmakers: GQ: The P.O. told him that, by law, he had forty-eight hours to fix this, to get mail delivered to a house without a mailbox in an area that had no mail service. All of Ryan's pleading for more time left the P.O. unmoved. "That's your all's problem," he told them. As he left the house that night, he said, "I'll be back in forty-eight hours to arrest you." He said it without heat, almost casually. Just like that, Ryan was going to be locked away for fifteen years. Just like that, his life was over. Really over, because Ryan was sure he wouldn't survive his sentence: "People like me get stabbed in prison, we get beat to death." The way he figured it, he had forty-eight hours left to live.

Governments are not corporations | Daniel W. Drezner

Governments are not corporations | Daniel W. Drezner: The thing is -- and this is kind of important -- governments are not corporations. I cannot stress this enough. There's the obvious point that in democracies, legislatures tend to impose a more powerful constraint than shareholders, making it that much harder for leaders to execute the policies they think will be the most efficient.

There's also the deeper point that it's a lot harder for governments to be "unsentimental" when it comes to the provision of public services. It's a lot harder for states to eliminate the functions that are less efficient. Frequently, demand for government services emerges because of the perception that the private sector has fallen down on the job in that area. This means that the government has been tasked with doing the things that are difficult and unprofitable to do.

Adventures in Terrible Headlines

Adventures in Terrible Headlines:

NASHUA, N.H. -- I read the fatigue of a job nearly done in this one.

Questions will be answered on other days, too.

Something that should be self-obvious

When 'Anti-Semitism' Is Abused – Forward.com: We can — we must — write about these things. We can argue over borders and refugees, democracy and lack of democracy, worry over the increasingly uncomfortable tension between the ultra-Orthodox and the secular in the state to which so many of us in the Diaspora feel connected.

We can do so because such criticism is not, by definition, anti-Zionism. We can do so because such criticism is not, by definition, anti-Semitism.

There comes a time when we must insist on common sense. We must reject the absurd. There comes a time when we must say, “Enough.” Real anti-Semitism exists. Real, ugly, hatred of the Jewish people is all too easy to find.

Forget Stocks Or Bonds, Invest In A Lobbyist : Planet Money : NPR

Forget Stocks Or Bonds, Invest In A Lobbyist : Planet Money : NPR: In a recent study, researchers Raquel Alexander and Susan Scholz calculated the total amount the corporations saved from the lower tax rate. They compared the taxes saved to the amount the firms spent lobbying for the law. Their research showed the return on lobbying for those multinational corporations was 22,000 percent. That means for every dollar spent on lobbying, the companies got $220 in tax benefits.

Lab notes #14: How the weather affects us (Wired UK)

Lab notes #14: How the weather affects us (Wired UK): You're warmer and colder towards people depending on the weather. In studies, warmer conditions induced: greater social proximity; use of more concrete language; and a more relational focus. (1)

People shop more on sunny days: as exposure to sunlight increases, negative effects decrease and consumer spending tends to increase... (2)

...And work more when it pours: on rainy days, men shift on average 30 minutes from leisure to work. (3)

Overcoming Bias : Dear Young Eccentric

Overcoming Bias : Dear Young Eccentric: Think of it this way. When some folks go out of their way to show off their defiance and rebellion, others go out of their way to publicly squash such rebellion, to assert their dominance. But if you are not overtly rebellious, you can get away with a lot of abstract idea rebellion — few folks will even notice such deviations, and fewer still will care. So, ask yourself, do you want to look like a rebel, or do you want to be a rebel?

The Arab Spring isn't a constant

The Dog That Didn't Bark - By James Traub | Foreign Policy: Algeria's story reminds us of the danger of looking at events categorically. Because the same grievances have given rise to protest across the Arab world, and because that protest has taken a very similar form from one country to the next, we tend to expect the outcomes to resemble each other as well. But they won't, because different histories have shaped different political cultures in each of these places. Algeria also forces us to recognize the weight of the past. History is not destiny: Had the military chosen not to step in, Algeria might well have groped its way to democracy. Turkey went one way, Algeria another. But history shapes expectations and fears, conditions the response to new events. All of us, whether we know it or not, carry our past within ourselves.

This isn't art.

Test. Test. Test: How wooga turned the games business into a science (Wired UK): Wooga is a new type of game developer, one that emphasises metrics over creativity. Its core discipline is A/B or split testing, in which new features are introduced to a selection of users, and their reactions measured. Features remain only if users engage with them. If they don't respond, wooga tries new features until they do. Each wooga title is updated weekly; the initial release is just another stage in development. "After launch we become very metrics-driven," says Begemann. "During the first two weeks of Brain Buddies [wooga's first game], we did four or five A/B tests. It was very fast -- almost daily iterations."

Jodi Kantor’s “The Obamas,” Review : The New Yorker

Jodi Kantor’s “The Obamas,” Review : The New Yorker: The public is angry and the crises—economic, diplomatic, environmental, social, and political—are myriad. For all that, staff members like Emanuel hated hearing the President railing against the “silliness” of Washington. “The rules apply to everybody,” as one former adviser told Kantor, and complaining about how Washington works “is like crying over the rain.” Obama was elected to lead “a rational, postracial, moderate country that is looking for sensible progress,” a White House official tells Kantor. “Except, oops, it’s an enraged, moralistic, harsh, desperate country. It’s a disconnect he can’t bridge.”

New York Criminal

King Carl of Canarsie: The cooing, however, wasn’t all that the FBI found. Over the past four years, the Feds had tallied the more than $1 million in bribes that had gone from lobbyists and developers friendly with Kruger into bank accounts Turano controlled. The bribe money was used as a kind of allowance for Turano, who used it to pay down his Bloomingdale’s credit card, as well as to pay for the lease to his brother Gerard Turano’s Bentley and renovations to 139 Bassett Avenue, a garish mansion on the waterfront in South Brooklyn that he and his family had purchased.

Despite directing where his bribe money went, Kruger never spent it or saved it. It was all for the Turanos, a family he had adopted as his own. Kruger seemed to live his life for them.

Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript - What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 - Popular Mechanics

Air France 447 Flight-Data Recorder Transcript - What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 - Popular Mechanics: We now understand that, indeed, AF447 passed into clouds associated with a large system of thunderstorms, its speed sensors became iced over, and the autopilot disengaged. In the ensuing confusion, the pilots lost control of the airplane because they reacted incorrectly to the loss of instrumentation and then seemed unable to comprehend the nature of the problems they had caused. Neither weather nor malfunction doomed AF447, nor a complex chain of error, but a simple but persistent mistake on the part of one of the pilots.

On Depression

The fight goes on. — TheBloggess.com: When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker…but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand.

Yule Blog 2011-12: How Real Is The Meaning? | Via Meadia

Yule Blog 2011-12: How Real Is The Meaning? | Via Meadia: It’s not as easy for an infinitely transcendent God to reveal himself to culture-bound, historically placed people as you might think. When God committed himself to humanity, he made the decision to enter history. He took us where he found us and met us where we stood. Even today we have to figure that there are ways that our knowledge of the universe and of human history places sharp limits on what we can understand about God. The difference between our times and the era of Jesus often complicates our ability to make sense of the stories we are reading.

Threats don't work in the long term

Supreme Loser - By Ali Vaez | Foreign Policy: Khamenei's nuclear gamble has been painful for the Iranian people. Corralled by sanctions and plagued with mismanagement, the country's economy is ruined, its financial sector is paralyzed, and its energy sector is in shambles. This month, an ill-considered threat to halt trade with the United Arab Emirates caused the Iranian rial to go into a free-fall, hitting its lowest-ever mark against the U.S. dollar.

International developments have also not been kind to Tehran's ruling cabal. After marginalizing the reformists, the conservative factions of the Islamic regime are now engaged in a political fratricide. In the wake of uprisings in the Arab world, Iran's popularity in the region has plummeted. The Syrian regime, Tehran's sole regional ally, increasingly appears unable to resist the calls for change shaking the entire region.

Will Robert Kyncl and YouTube Revolutionize Television? : The New Yorker

Will Robert Kyncl and YouTube Revolutionize Television? : The New Yorker: For the past sixty years, TV executives have been making the decisions about what we watch in our living rooms. Kyncl would like to change that. Therefore YouTube, the home of grainy cell-phone videos and skateboarding dogs, is going pro. Kyncl has recruited producers, publishers, programmers, and performers from traditional media to create more than a hundred channels, most of which will d�but in the next six months—a sort of YouTV. Streaming video, delivered over the Internet, is about to engage traditional TV in a skirmish in the looming war for screen time.

Devaluing the Think Tank > Publications > National Affairs

Devaluing the Think Tank > Publications > National Affairs: The value of that original model, therefore, was not that it was objective; it very often was nothing of the sort. Its value, rather, came from its ability to bring serious, original, expert research to the task of analyzing policy problems and proposing solutions. It sought to expand the range of options under debate and to ground that debate in hard facts and figures.

Some new think tanks, by contrast, are less likely to expand the range of options under debate. Rather, these institutions are helping politicians avoid the difficult task of pursuing creative policy solutions by giving them more ways to persist in failed courses. There are still great exceptions in the think-tank world, on all sides of our politics, but they increasingly have trouble being heard over the din.

History of Think-Tanks

Devaluing the Think Tank > Publications > National Affairs: Heritage was a different breed of think tank, and augured the new direction in which such institutions were headed. A far cry from its avowedly hands-off predecessors, Heritage tried explicitly to "formulate and promote conservative public policies," as the organization's mission statement put it. It sought not only to serve as a source of basic research and analysis but also to help drive the agenda on behalf of conservatives around the country. To that end, Heritage pursued direct-mail fundraising, a tactic more typical of political campaigns and mostly unheard of among think tanks at the time. It rightly considered itself as much an organ of the conservative movement as of the Washington intellectual world.

What Happens To Old And Expired Supermarket Foods - Forbes

What Happens To Old And Expired Supermarket Foods - Forbes: “Foods can remain safe to consume for some time beyond sell-by and even use-by dates provided they are handled and stored properly,” says Dr Ted Labuza, professor of food science at the University of Minnesota. For fresh produce and refrigerated foods this means storage at below 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Canned foods and shelf-stable goods like salad dressings, Labuza adds, can be consumed for years beyond their expiration dates. While their quality might suffer, for example emulsified dressings may split, they will not pose a safety hazard unless contaminated.

Scrunch time: The peculiar physics of crumpled paper - physics-math - 05 January 2012 - New Scientist

Scrunch time: The peculiar physics of crumpled paper - physics-math - 05 January 2012 - New Scientist: No matter how tightly you crumple paper into a ball, you'll be hard-pressed to come up with a structure composed of less than about 90 per cent air. "It's technically possible to compress them further," says Cambou, "but that will take a lot more force because the crumpled sheet increasingly opposes the external force as it's crushed." Menon and Cambou wanted to know why.

Despite their insubstantial constitution, wadded paper balls are capable of feats of considerable strength. They are the ultimate packing material, for instance, able to support and cushion objects far heavier than themselves.

Rob Parker Doesn’t Deserve His Job | ATLsports.tv

Rob Parker Doesn’t Deserve His Job | ATLsports.tv: You paint a broad brush and call out an entire city’s fan base using stereotypes and baseless myths without looking at facts and the possible causes. Your article was insulting and demeaning and reeks of New York elitism. How Atlanta can be punished for being a growing city that is 28% of New York’s size is one of the worst cases of media bias in recent sports journalism.

I am proud of who I am, and who I am is an Atlantan. The sports teams in Atlanta represent me and the memories of these teams, from the Thrashers to the Braves, the winning and the losing, the highs and lows, will be memories I remember and cherish until my death. No matter where I move, these teams will represent me and I will be their passionate fan. As I am sure you have noticed by the reaction your article has received, I am not alone.

Twitter thought:

Twitter / @drgrist: Obama went into general el ...: Obama went into general election in 2008 toughened by brutal warfare w/ Clinton. Romney's going in w/ the world's biggest glass jaw.

BBC News - Giant escalator installed in Colombian city of Medellin

BBC News - Giant escalator installed in Colombian city of Medellin: The Colombian city of Medellin has opened a giant outdoor escalator for residents of one of its poorest areas.

People living in the Comuna 13 district - which clings to a steep hillside - previously had to climb hundreds of steps to get home from the city centre.

The escalator is divided into six sections and ascends nearly 384m (1,260ft).

The mayor of Medellin says it is the first project of its kind in the world aimed specifically at the poor.

How NASA kept astronauts from swearing on the Moon

How NASA kept astronauts from swearing on the Moon: In preparing for his mission, NASA had the astronaut hypnotized. Rather than curse, a psychiatrist put the idea in his head that he would rather hum when his mind wandered. The hypnotized astronaut is rarely named, but only one man can be heard humming as he skipps across the lunar surface. Transmissions from Commander Pete Conrad are punctuated with "dum de dum dum dum" and "dum do do do, do do" making him the likliest candidate.

Dang

Winter’s Tales�|�Full Stop: “Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt’s eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven’t time to read.” ― David McCullough

Surprise ending

Stories -Ten things a janitor can teach you about leadership: William “Bill” Crawford certainly was an unimpressive figure, one you could easily overlook during a hectic day at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Mr. Crawford, as most of us referred to him back in the late 1970s, was our squadron janitor.

While we cadets busied ourselves preparing for academic exams, athletic events, Saturday morning parades and room inspections, or never-ending leadership classes, Bill quietly moved about the squadron mopping and buffing floors, emptying trash cans, cleaning toilets, or just tidying up the mess 100 college-age kids can leave in a dormitory.

Central banks: Crazy aunt on the loose | The Economist

Central banks: Crazy aunt on the loose | The Economist: Whatever central bankers do, they cannot repair problems best fixed by politicians, such as America’s incoherent fiscal policy or Europe’s fractured institutions. Asked about the ECB’s aggressive new lending to banks, Masaaki Shirakawa, the governor of the Bank of Japan, said it could “buy time”. But he warned it could backfire if politicians fritter away whatever time the central bank has bought. Unfortunately, that risk is never low.

The Saving Game: Can Michael VanRooyen Build an Army of Super-Humanitarians? - Boston Magazine - bostonmagazine.com

The Saving Game: Can Michael VanRooyen Build an Army of Super-Humanitarians? - Boston Magazine - bostonmagazine.com: For a prime example of this problem, you need look no further than Haiti, the poverty-stricken nation that suffered a massive earthquake in 2010. After the quake, nongovernment organizations rushed in to offer $9 billion in aid. They brought food, money, search-and-rescue services, and medical teams. To coordinate the efforts of 420 health organizations alone, the United Nations employed a freshly designed “cluster” system, but for the most part it was chaos. In one case, earthquake victims had their limbs unnecessarily amputated by disaster responders who lacked medical training. Even more distressing was that with most organizations focusing their efforts on the city of Port au Prince, few were looking out for the growing threat of a cholera outbreak in the countryside, where much of the population had fled. Despite the huge influx of money and workers, no one had the jurisdiction, interest, or know-how to implement a plan that would address this important issue. So in the end, lack of sanitation caused the deaths of 6,500 people and sickened half a million more.

Top Right = Nostagia

The Restart Page - Free unlimited rebooting experience from vintage operating systems

The Syrians' Need To Be Heard

The Syrians' Need To Be Heard:

Issandr El Amrani reflects on the above video:

This video really highlights the isolation of the Syrians — because the situation is confusing, because most media have a tough time covering the conflict, because there is an "Arab Spring weariness" in much of the world, because the consequences of the uprising there are regionally daunting. What's so moving about this scene is the protestors' need to be noticed, for the world to take note, to have an audience for their chants and slogans.

A View Inside Iran

A View Inside Iran:

Iran has appeared in numerous headlines around the world in recent months, usually attached to stories about military exercises and other saber-rattlings, economic sanctions, a suspected nuclear program, and varied political struggles. Iran is a country of more than 75 million people with a diverse history stretching back many thousands of years. While over 90 percent of Iranians belong to the Shia branch of Islam -- the official state religion -- Iran is also home to nearly 300,000 Christians, and the largest community of Jews in the Middle East outside Israel. At a time when military and political images seem to dominate the news about Iran, I thought it would be interesting to take a recent look inside the country, to see its people through the lenses of agency photographers. Keep in mind that foreign media are still subject to Iranian restrictions on reporting. [42 photos]

Iranian grooms, Javad Jafari, left, and his brother, Mehdi, right, pose for photographs with their brides, Maryam Sadeghi, second left, and Zahra Abolghasemi, who wear their formal wedding dresses prior to their wedding in Ghalehsar village, about 220 mi (360 km) northeast of the capital Tehran, Iran, on July 15, 2011. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A conservative economic critique

Does stimulus cure recession? | Adam Smith Institute: Any economy is always in transition and this means, inevitably, some attendant additional idleness. Usually this “unnecessary idleness” is relatively small; sometimes, like now, it is not. But it too is transitionary. The problem with all talk about “getting the economy going” is that it means getting yesterday’s economy going, which is of course a futile quest. Yesterday was a Government- induced unsustainable boom and we must not forget that in the UK pretty well any period since the last World War has featured some form of stimulation by credit expansion and thus pretty well any period features transitions which would be described more accurately as “corrections”. These corrections are merely delayed and hampered by further stimulation or even the possibility of it.

Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens (Vanity Fair, Feb 2012)

Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens (Vanity Fair, Feb 2012): On June 8th, 2010, I was “in conversation” with Christopher Hitchens at the 92nd Street Y in New York in front of his customary sellout audience, to launch his memoir, Hitch-22. Christopher turned in a bravura performance that night, never sharper, never funnier, and afterwards at a small, celebratory dinner the brilliance continued. A few days later he told me that it was on the morning of the Y event that he had been given the news about his cancer. It was hard to believe that he had been so publicly magnificent on such a privately dreadful day. He had shown more than stoicism. He had flung laughter and intelligence into the face of death.

Bet it was Romney or Newt

The Manchurian Candidate Mystery:

CONCORD, N.H. -- YouTube's been with us for 5 years, and yet no one's figured out how to verify what comes out of it. The current test case: NHLiberty4Paul. On January 4, that username was taken by a new YouTube user, who uploaded one video, and nothing else. The video is a remarkably offensive piece of crap about whether or not Jon Huntsman is a "Manchurian candidate." Huntsman is caricatured as Chairman Mao. His adopted daughters are pictured, without commentary, to imply... I don't know, but they're meant to imply something.

Spiritual Economics of Communion Wafers

Buying the Body of Christ < Killing the Buddha: Just as important for the world of altar breads, Vatican II got Protestants taking Communion again. For Episcopalians, it rekindled the idea of “recapturing what we held in common” with Catholics, as Tom Miller, a Canon of Arts and Liturgy, put it, sitting in an anteroom at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. “In addition to baptism, the Eucharist is the next closest thing, ” he said. Following Vatican II, not only Episcopalians, but Lutherans and other Protestants began to question their longstanding aversion to taking Communion every week, of steering away from parts of the service that could be seen as “too Catholic.” The Sunday service at St. John the Divine, for instance, now includes the Body and the Blood of Christ. Beginning in the 1960s, without cloistered communities to do their baking, thousands of Protestant churches went looking for wafer suppliers.

Behaviorally targeted ads and the ethical dilemmas behind building consumers into ads. - Slate Magazine

Behaviorally targeted ads and the ethical dilemmas behind building consumers into ads. - Slate Magazine: Let’s play a game—thought experiment. Imagine it’s the near future. You’re walking along a city street crowded with storefronts. As you walk past boutiques, cafes, and the Apple Store, your visage follows you. Thanks to advances in facial recognition and other technologies, behavioral marketers have developed the capacity to take your Facebook profile, transform it into a 3-D image, and insert it into ads. That sweater you’re eyeing? In the display, the mannequin wearing it takes on your face and shape. The screen showing a car commercial depicts you behind the wheel.

Scary

The U.S. and Biblical Israel - Barbara Lerner - National Review Online: By now, most Americans know that the “two-state solution” is no solution to the war that supremacist Muslims have been waging against the state of Israel since its rebirth in 1948. Most Americans in public life know it too, but in public, nearly all of them pay lip service to the idea of a Palestinian state. To do that plausibly, they have to studiously avoid any public mention of facts about the Palestinians that make it glaringly obvious that a Palestinian state is not in America’s national interest; and glaringly clear that empowering the Palestinians and the forces and ideas they represent is a self-destructive policy — a threat to our national security and a defeat for our values.

Robert Reich (The Decline of the Public Good)

Robert Reich (The Decline of the Public Good): In fact, much of what’s called “public” is increasingly a private good paid for by users — ever-higher tolls on public highways and public bridges, higher tuitions at so-called public universities, higher admission fees at public parks and public museums.

Much of the rest of what’s considered “public” has become so shoddy that those who can afford to do so find private alternatives. As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, they pay premium rates for private care.

Translation: Men and Women are very different

PLoS ONE: The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality: Personality measures were obtained from a large US sample (N = 10,261) with the 16PF Questionnaire. Multigroup latent variable modeling was used to estimate sex differences on individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D). We found a global effect size D = 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions. Even excluding the factor showing the largest univariate ES, the global effect size was D = 1.71 (24% overlap). These are extremely large differences by psychological standards.

h/t Daily Dish (or blatant copying)

Cool Ad Watch:

Noah Smith is pleased by a new Target ad:

That stylish young man in the orange shirt is Ryan. Ryan just so happened to have been born with Down syndrome, and I’m glad that Target included [him] ... This wasn’t a “Special Clothing For Special People” catalog. There wasn’t a call out somewhere on the page proudly proclaiming that “Target’s proud to feature a model with Down syndrome in this week’s ad!” And they didn’t even ask him to model a shirt with the phrase, “We Aren’t All Angels” printed on the front. In other words, they didn’t make a big deal out of it. I like that.

Putin is Smart, and his success is a sign of his manipulative ability

Putin and the Uses of History | The National Interest: The state, or gosudarstvo, has a very specific meaning for Russians. In Russia, as in France, Germany and other great European powers, the state is personified—Mother Russia, the motherland, Mat’ Rossiya or Rodina. The twist in Russia is that while Mother Russia must be protected, she does not necessarily protect you. In the United States, the state exists to protect the rights of the individual. In Russia, the state is primary. The state stands above the individual, who is subordinate to the state and its interests. The fact that Putin is a gosudarstvennik, a person who believes that Russia must be and must have a strong state—and thus a strong state apparatus—seems to be the most obvious thing to say about a former KGB operative.

Lives of crime

Encounters with the Calabrian Mafia: Inside the World of the 'Ndrangheta - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International: Antonio is one of these middlemen. He runs a seafood restaurant with a view of the ocean on the Tyrrhenian coast. Pictures in gold frames hang on the walls of his restaurant. "All of this," he says, waving his arm in a semi-circle, "I owe to the 'Ndrangheta."

Antonio says that he is a friend of Vincenzo. The rules for doing business with the South Americans are clear, he says: "We always pay in advance, and if they don't deliver, we kill them."

In such an unfortunate case, says Antonio, a couple of nice Italian families go to South America on vacation. During the trip, the men disappear for a while and take care of the job. Investigators whose work involves mafia drug deals believe that such talk is not bravado, but is in fact deadly serious.

Salt and pepper: Why are they always together? - Slate Magazine

Salt and pepper: Why are they always together? - Slate Magazine: But if black pepper lost its position as salt’s consort, what, if anything could replace it? Which qualities must a “second seasoning” have? Should it provide a taste as elemental as salt? Perhaps we should use monosodium glutamate powder—a rocket of meaty umami flavor—as a way to make our meals more savory. But MSG’s lack of nuance and its association with allergies (be they real or imagined) make it a pariah for the contemporary dinner table. Along the same lines, the second spice might not be a spice at all, but a condiment like the ones found on Asian tables. Soy sauce, for example, gives both salt and umami in one fell swoop. But soy sauce is still too specific a flavor for someone, like me, who cooks Mediterranean-inspired food about two-thirds of the time.

But by who?

The future of theater in a digital age, ranging from nonprofits to Broadway | Harvard Magazine Jan-Feb 2012: “In order to maintain its ideal form, theater needs to be subsidized,” says Robert Brustein, senior research fellow and founding director of the American Repertory Theater (ART). In the 1930s, a tiny sliver of the New Deal Works Progress Administration budget supported the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), which funded a flourishing American stage culture from 1935 until 1939, when Congress canceled funding in reaction to the left-wing character of many FTP productions. Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, Elia Kazan, and John Houseman were among those who launched their careers under the FTP.

A Colbert Profile

How Many Stephen Colberts Are There? - NYTimes.com: But those forays into public life were spoofs, more or less. The new Colbert has crossed the line that separates a TV stunt from reality and a parody from what is being parodied. In June, after petitioning the Federal Election Commission, he started his own super PAC — a real one, with real money. He has run TV ads, endorsed (sort of) the presidential candidacy of Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, and almost succeeded in hijacking and renaming the Republican primary in South Carolina. “Basically, the F.E.C. gave me the license to create a killer robot,” Colbert said to me in October, and there are times now when the robot seems to be running the television show instead of the other way around.

Man vs machine

The best American wall map: David Imus’ “The Essential Geography of the United States of America” - Slate Magazine: By contrast, David Imus worked alone on his map seven days a week for two full years. Nearly 6,000 hours in total. It would be prohibitively expensive just to outsource that much work. But Imus—a 35-year veteran of cartography who’s designed every kind of map for every kind of client—did it all by himself. He used a computer (not a pencil and paper), but absolutely nothing was left to computer-assisted happenstance. Imus spent eons tweaking label positions. Slaving over font types, kerning, letter thicknesses. Scrutinizing levels of blackness. It’s the kind of personal cartographic touch you might only find these days on the hand-illustrated ski-trail maps available at posh mountain resorts.

When Currencies Collapse | Foreign Affairs

When Currencies Collapse | Foreign Affairs: Consider first the dollar. Faith in its reliability was seriously undermined last summer when the debt-ceiling imbroglio in the United States revealed a seemingly unbridgeable gap between the political parties and raised concerns about the capacity of U.S. policymakers to put the country's financial house in order. Foreign investors, who hold slightly less than half of all marketable U.S. Treasury debt, saw the crisis as proof that members of Congress would rather let the country default on its obligations than compromise on their own partisan objectives. And foreign governments were spooked. As the debate reached a peak, Chinese officials lectured Washington on the need to act responsibly, China's state-run news agency disparaged the negotiations as a "madcap farce of brinkmanship," and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin characterized Americans as "living like parasites off the global economy and their monopoly of the dollar."

Free Will is a silly topic. No one on earth can know or predict your choices.

Column: Why you don't really have free will – USATODAY.com: But there are two important ways that we must face the absence of free will. One is in religion. Many faiths make claims that depend on free choice: Evangelical Christians, for instance, believe that those who don't freely choose Jesus as their savior will go to hell. If we have no free choice, then such religious tenets — and the existence of a disembodied "soul" — are undermined, and any post-mortem fates of the faithful are determined, Calvinistically, by circumstances over which they have no control.

But the most important issue is that of moral responsibility. If we can't really choose how we behave, how can we judge people as moral or immoral? Why punish criminals or reward do-gooders? Why hold anyone responsible for their actions if those actions aren't freely chosen?

Think Again: Intelligence - By Paul R. Pillar | Foreign Policy

Think Again: Intelligence - By Paul R. Pillar | Foreign Policy: Had Bush read the intelligence community's report, he would have seen his administration's case for invasion stood on its head. The intelligence officials concluded that Saddam was unlikely to use any weapons of mass destruction against the United States or give them to terrorists -- unless the United States invaded Iraq and tried to overthrow his regime. The intelligence community did not believe, as the president claimed, that the Iraqi regime was an ally of al Qaeda, and it correctly foresaw any attempt to establish democracy in a post-Saddam Iraq as a hard, messy slog.

In a separate prewar assessment, the intelligence community judged that trying to build a new political system in Iraq would be "long, difficult and probably turbulent," adding that any post-Saddam authority would face a "deeply divided society with a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so."

Twitter / @eugenephoto: Too true. RT @rachelsklar: ...

Twitter: Too true. RT @rachelsklar: Ha RT @cschweitz: 500 RT @jpodhoretz: More people are tweeting this caucus than are voting in it. Literally.

The GOP's Allegations of Appeasement Against Obama | The National Interest Blog

The GOP's Allegations of Appeasement Against Obama | The National Interest Blog: If the GOP candidates believe that it is improper even to talk to hostile foreign regimes, diplomacy largely ceases to exist as a meaningful foreign-policy tool. It is no challenge at all to negotiate with friendly, democratic governments. But we don’t have the luxury of dealing only with the New Zealands, Chiles and Estonias of the world. The real challenge for diplomacy is negotiating with, and getting desirable results from, prickly or odious regimes. Making demands for a laundry list of concessions from such adversaries, backed up by either unenforceable or ill-advised threats, is not a practical—much less a sensible—foreign policy. Yet that is where Romney, Gingrich and most of the party’s other presidential candidates apparently would take the United States if any of them entered the White House.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson -

CarlZimmer.com: Articles: Tyson spreads himself so wide for two reasons. One is that there’s so much in the sky to talk about. The other reason is down here on earth. For all the spectacular advances American science has made over the past century--not just in astrophysics but in biology, engineering, and other disciplines--the best days of American science may be behind us. And as American science declines, so does America. So here, in the dark, under the stars, Tyson is going to try to save the future, one neck cramp at a time.

wait wat?

Trade between belligerents — Marginal Revolution: nk

I have been enjoying Adam Hochschild’s To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, which covers the British role in World War I. My favorite section details how the British responded when it turned out they had a drastic shortage of binoculars, which at that time were very important for fighting the war. They turned to the world’s leading manufacturer of “precision optics,” namely Germany. The German War Office immediately supplied 8,000 to 10,000 binoculars to Britain, directly intended and designed for military use. Further orders consisted of many thousands more and the Germans told the British to examine the equipment they had been capturing, to figure out which orders they wished to place.

Are we on information overload? - Salon.com

Are we on information overload? - Salon.com: m.

Do you think all of these changes are good or bad?

It’s both good and bad. It’s both impossible and unhelpful to ask if it’s making us smarter or stupider. But I am actually very hopeful. Ask anybody who is in any of the traditional knowledge fields, and she or he will very likely tell you that the Internet has made them smarter. They couldn’t do their work without it; they’re doing it better than ever before, they know more; they can find more; they can run down dead ends faster than ever before. In the sciences and humanities, it’s hard to find somebody who claims the Internet is making him or her stupid, even among those who claim the Internet is making us stupid. And I believe this is the greatest time in human history.

The History Of Our Planet

The History Of Our Planet:

Quick study: Alastair Smith on political tyranny: How to be a dictator | The Economist

Quick study: Alastair Smith on political tyranny: How to be a dictator | The Economist: Do they actually have to support me, or can I just terrify them into supporting me by threatening them with death?

No, they absolutely have to support you on some level. You can’t personally go around and terrorise everyone. Our poor old struggling Syrian president is not personally killing people on the streets. He needs the support of his family, senior generals who are willing to go out and kill people on his behalf. The common misconception is that you need support from the vast majority of the population, but that’s typically not true. There is all this protest on Wall Street, but CEOs are keeping the people they need to keep happy happy—the members of the board, senior management and a few key investors—because they are the people who can replace them. Protesters on Wall Street have no ability to remove the CEOs. So in a lot of countries the masses are terrified but the supporters are not.

Nicholas Carr on E-Books - WSJ.com

Nicholas Carr on E-Books - WSJ.com: The ability to alter the contents of a book will be easy to abuse. School boards may come to exert even greater influence over what students read. They'll be able to edit textbooks that don't fit with local biases. Authoritarian governments will be able to tweak books to suit their political interests. And the edits can ripple backward. Because e-readers connect to the Internet, the works they contain can be revised remotely, just as software programs are updated today. Movable text makes a lousy preservative.

Such abuses can be prevented through laws and software protocols. What may be more insidious is the pressure to fiddle with books for commercial reasons. Because e-readers gather enormously detailed information on the way people read, publishers may soon be awash in market research. They'll know how quickly readers progress through different chapters, when they skip pages, and when they abandon a book.

2012

2012:

6 candidates in double digits. My goodness.

FiveThirtyEight: 2012 Iowa Republican Caucus Projections - Election 2012 - NYTimes.com: These forecasts are formulated from an average of recent surveys, with adjustments made to account for a polling firm's accuracy, freshness of a poll and each candidate's momentum. Although this improves accuracy, there is still considerable uncertainty in the forecast as is reflected in the range of possible vote totals for each candidate. Read more about the methodology.

PS 22

This should be a good series.

Dan Kimball: Vintage Faith: Wednesday-Weird-Bible-Verses and being careful of how we use single Bible verses: A classic and well known almost cliche example of a strange story from the BIble I will start with today is from 2 Kings 2:23-25. The story goes:

"From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys."

So basically, Elisha gets made fun of by some youth for being bald. Elisha then calls a curse on them and two bears kill all 42 boys.

From the Dish

From the series "Matchheads" by David Mach.