Galley Slaves

Non-Triumphant Return

2010-09-22T08:35:00.000-05:00

The new site, JonathanLast.com, is slowly coming back online. It's now safe to return.

Totally Fucked

2010-09-08T13:17:00.000-05:00

Yup. In case you've wandered over here from the new site--or rather, the site formerly known as JonathanLast.com--basically what happened is this: A Kurdish hacker hit the site and a combination of non-existent support from the host company (that's WhoIs.com, without a doubt, the worst host company in the history of the internet) and my own paltry technical skills mean that the new site is gone. Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. I don't know.

Anyway, in case you're curious, the hacker is SA3D HaCk3D and his email is sahd_2020@yahoo.com.

JonathanLast.com

2010-07-21T05:35:00.000-05:00

So that's the big announcement. After years of mild frustration with Blogger I've finally moved over to a better platform. You can continue to follow Galley Slaves at JonathanLast.com.

See you there.

PSA

2010-07-15T09:28:00.000-05:00

Galley Slaves is going to be closed for a couple days while I work out some changes. By next week there should be some site news. In the meantime, I've shut down comment threads to keep the spam out.

The Bron-Bron Train Derails?

2010-07-09T09:22:00.001-05:00

Czabe has some thoughts on LeBron to Miami:

In a span of 27 eyeball glazing minutes on ESPN, LeBron James morphed himself from potentially "The Greatest Player of All Time" into a jezebel Scottie Pippen.

I don't follow the NBA closely enough to know, but the superficial answers would have been (1) Go to NYC for the money or (2) Go to Chicago for the long-term run at championships. I'm not sure what goal Miami satisfies.

The most interesting question is whether or not players are allowed to formally collude in the way in which it seems James, Wade, Bosh, and possibly Paul may have. (The operative word here is "formally," not "collude." Players informally collude all the time.) Owners almost certainly couldn't act this way without running afoul of anti-trust. Legally, I suspect the players are fine--although I'd love to hear a smart lawyer's thoughts on the matter.

From the league's perspective, however, this might not be fine. It will be interesting to see how the owners--and eventually the league office--deal with this affair.

Update: If you want to know the difference between LeBron and Jordan, here's Exhibit 1,422: LeBron says that in a game of one-on-one against Barack Obama, Obama would hold his own. Now obviously, James is just being polite. That's fine.

But the exchange calls to mind this story, from a long-ao profile of Dan Patrick:

After game three of last year's NBA finals, Dan Patrick interviews Michael Jordan. When they finish, Jordan says to Patrick, "Stand up."

"Why?"

"Stand up," Jordan demands, rising.

Patrick stands up.

"How would you guard me?" Jordan asks.

"I wouldn't guard you. I couldn't guard you."

"How would you guard me?"

Patrick plants a forearm on Jordan's back.

"Yeah," Jordan snarls. "There are twenty-eight motherfucking teams that think they can guard me that way."

Patrick says, "Michael, I can't guard you. But I don't think you can guard me." Jordan, gaping and speechless, walks away.

"You should've seen the look on his face," Patrick says now. Ahmad Rashad comes up to Patrick later to say that if Dan wants to go one-on-one with M. J., Jordan's willing. "Just understand," Rashad tells Patrick, "Michael will treat it like it's the seventh game of the finals--you won't even get your shot off."

But I want an iPhone 4 . . .

2010-07-06T18:10:00.001-05:00

Paul Krugman: World's Worst Colleague?

2010-07-06T18:08:00.001-05:00

He's giving Andrew Sullivan a run for his money with this blog entry today:

But there’s something else in David’s column, which I see a lot: the argument that because a lot of important people believe something, it must make sense:

Moreover, the Demand Siders write as if everybody who disagrees with them is immoral or a moron. But, in fact, many prize-festooned economists do not support another stimulus. Most European leaders and central bankers think it’s time to begin reducing debt, not increasing it — as do many economists at the international economic institutions. Are you sure your theorists are right and theirs are wrong?

Yes, I am. It’s called looking at the evidence.

Because, you see, no one else on the other side has ever even bothered to look at the evidence!

You could fill a small sand bucket with what I know about economics, so I'm not interested in the rightness or wrongness of Krugman's position vis-a-vis demand side economics in the present recessionary environment. What is truly amazing is that he argues not that he's probably right. Or that the evidence supports his case more so than the opposite. He has absolute, God-given certainty as to his total and complete correctness and equal certainty that anyone who differs is a fool or a liar.

Whoa.

Even he was talking about, I don't know, outlawing abortion or invading Iraq, you might think he was a blinkered ideologue.

Soccer and Diversity

2010-07-06T08:57:00.000-05:00

Another reason to object to World Cup soccer: Its appalling lack of diversity!

Steve Sailer has a fantastic post about the SWPL-ness of the World Cup:

At the highest levels of global soccer, about 75 percent or more of the top players are white. Soccer in 2010 is like basketball in 1959. . . .

The World Cup is a paradox: it's pretty random but the results always come out about the same: traditional soccer powers get to the finals. . . .

Much of the glamor of the World Cup stems from it being a mostly white sport. Do you think up-and-comers like the South Koreans would be fascinated by the World Cup if it were traditionally dominated by, say, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Bolivia? Would SWPLs in the U.S. love soccer if it were associated in their minds with "Kinshasa" rather than with "Barcelona"?

He also makes an interesting note about the paradox of World Cup soccer: "It's pretty random but the results always come out about the same: traditional soccer powers get to the finals. "

Mind you, at the end of the day, I'm pretty much with Czabe: For all its many, many faults, the World Cup makes for a pretty good time for a casual sports fan.

In Praise of Axis & Allies

2010-07-01T20:11:00.000-05:00

I'd give just about anything to sit across the board from Niall Ferguson.

A Live-Action Star Blazers

2010-06-29T11:35:00.002-05:00

Fire up the wave-motion cannon, Wildstar.

And . . . I'm spent.

David Weigel, Journolist, and the Washington Post

2010-06-28T12:52:00.018-05:00

There's so much to say, but let's start with this little dare from Weigel in his self-congratulatory, "I shall return" essay for Big Government:

No serious journalist has defended the leak of my private e-mails; no one who works in politics or journalism would accept a situation where the things they said off the record could immediately become public. (Side note: On a conservative listserv, there is, apparently, an internal debate going on about leaks, after I learned of its existence and content. These conservatives have not opted to publish their private e-mails, and they shouldn’t.) But no serious journalist — as I want to be, as I am — should be so rude about the people he covers.

I'll take that action. Not only is the leak of Weigel's rantings defensible, it was nearly a professional duty for any serious reporters who witnessed them on Journolist. Not doing so is like having been at the infamous Strom Thurmond birthday party and deciding not to mention what Trent Lott said. Weigel was revealing himself on a (semi?) frequent basis to be something opposite what he was advertising to readers and the public. He was making himself a story. Hiding behind some sort of Journolist Omerta policy wouldn't fly for a person of note who was overheard making bigoted remarks at a private club. It shouldn't shield Weigel. Whoever leaked his writings was a whistleblower performing a public service.

(Also, "private emails" is a deceptive term of art. What Weigel was doing was more akin to posting on a bulletin board that he believed could never be seen by outsiders. Writing something that is read by a circle of 400 people, at least some of whom you have never had any formal contact with, is not sending a "private email.)

The Weigel incident creates so many unhappy questions--about why 20-somethings are encouraged to pontificate instead of report; about why the Post never even bothered to call someone at Reason and ask about their prospective hire; about why any media employer would tolerate reporters being participants in a project like Journolist. One of the niggling questions that bothers me is why, in the wake of scandal, people feel the need to air-brush fallen bright young things. Remember all the chin-tugging about Jayson Blair? Oh sure, he was a plagiarist (fabulist?), but it was a double tragedy because he was such an immense talent! Ditto Stephen Glass. There's a lot of this going around with Weigel: Oh, sure, he was privately a jerk making terribly uncouth generalizations about people he was supposed to be covering fairly, but the real tragedy is that he was such a great reporter!

Really? Maybe by the standards of blogging. I can't claim intimacy with his entire oeuvre, but I can't think of a single, blockbuster piece of Weigel's. David Grann? Great reporter. Matt Labash? Great reporter. Mark Bowden? Great reporter. On the next level down you have guys like Ryan Lizza and Tom Edsall. Below that, guys like the Politico crew and the platoon that does NYT and WSJ work. (Go read Brooks Barnes some time to see what great, every-day reporting looks like.) Below that I'd put a class of writers who deal with numbers and theory, as opposed to personalities and palace intrigue--people like Michael Barone and Jay Cost. They don't pound the shoe leather, but they spend a lot of time researching what they write.

It seems safe to say that Weigel would be so far down the list that it's not even worth doing the math. What people mean, I suppose, is that compared to other 20-something bloggers, Weigel makes more than the average number of phone calls and goes on more than the average number of field trips. And hey, that's great. We'd rather have more of that in the blog world. But let's not re-touch this in post to make him into Bob Woodward. Or Jeff Toobin. Or even Adam Nagourney, for that matter.

Finally, there's Ezra Klein's explanation that he needed to keep Journolist a liberals-only group in order to make it a safe-space, trust-tree, etc. This seems exactly wrong.

Being free from the consequences of your writing is rarely a good thing. Take a look at message boards that allow anonymous comments. It allows discourse to devolve into, well, ratfucking and back-biting. The best way to have kept a group like Journolist civil and productive would have been to put people together who had reason to mistrust one another. It would have encouraged self-policing and, if the circle was well-chosen, might have gotten participants to engage with the best of each other's arguments, rather than the worst. By larding up with fellow-travelers and pretending that the dialogue would always-and-forever be off-the-record, Klein was creating a rant box, doomed to implode exactly as it now has.

For whatever it's worth, the idea of having smart people openly engaging one another on topics of great import and in good faith is worth pursuing. And there is a fantastic conservative version of it, too.

It's called the Claremont Review of Books.

Update: Say what you will about Ross Douthat, but he'll never be a traitor to his class. After defending Weigel initially, Douthat now calls Weigel's "I shall return" essay "a model mea culpa: Forthright and self-critical rather than defensive and self-justifying." Sure.

"I’m a reporter. I’ve been a reporter since high school."

"It was the hubris of someone who rose — objectively speaking — a bit too fast . . ."

"Anyone who wanted to force me out of this business will have to settle for the consolation prize of me having to tediously inform sources of a new e-mail address."

And that leaves aside Weigel's coloring of his firing from Reason to make himself a martyr--which does not square with Matt Welch's version of events.

Douthat then defends Weigel by saying that lots of other Journolist participants surely said worse and didn't lose their jobs, so Weigel shouldn't have lost his. Okay. Of course, there are people walking around today who committed murder and were never caught. Should the justice system not prosecute someone who is discovered committing robbery?

Finally, Douthat can't help referring to Weigel as a "talented reporter." QED, this says more about Douthat's work, than it does about Weigel's.

Ron Fournier Is Andrew Sullivan's New Boss--Updated

2010-06-24T11:00:00.002-05:00

Galley Friend P.G. sends word that Fournier has been named "editor in chief" of the National Journal Group. Who knows what that title implies in terms of org chart authority.

What we do know is that two years ago Sullivan wrote this about Fournier in an item headlined "The AP Going Fox?"

Ron Fournier's dramatic use of opinion in the first paragraph of the Biden story going out on all the wires is an aggressive Republican spin. Fournier has already weakened the AP's rep for pretty straight-up reportage. It just got a lot weaker. Last spring, by the way, Fournier was lambasting Obama for arrogance. Now, apparently, it's a lack of confidence. Whatever works, I guess. But please, get a blog.

Update: Boy, Sullivan really doesn't like Fournier. Makes you wonder how he could possibly--in good conscience--work under him.

On Fournier's skills as a political analyst.

On a Fournier column about the possibility of criminal charges being filed against Dick Cheney.

Anatomy of a Soccer Scold

2010-06-24T10:50:00.002-05:00

Pursuant to this post from last week, Santino sends along the following to posts from Nation writer Dave Zirin. I'll let Santino do the talking:

Zirin on June 14: Conservatives should love soccer but don't, because they're racist.

Zirin on June 23: It's a shame conservatives love soccer so much right now because it promotes ugly American cultural hegemony.

You can't make this up. What you also can't make up is this bit from Zirin's post yesterday:

I was watching the game in the offices at National Public Radio in Washington, DC, waiting to go on the air to discuss the outcome. Remember, this is NPR: the station that defines calm, even-tempered talk. Let's just say that almost every cubicle and office let out an extemporaneous yelp. Yes, NPR went wild.

They don't shout or cheer at NPR. They "yelp."

Also precious, but not quite as fantastic is Zirin proclaiming:

The United States is not my favorite team by a long stretch. I'm an Argentina guy, myself.

But of course.

In-Game Alert: Isner vs. Mahut

2010-06-23T13:10:00.002-05:00

If you're able, go find some Wimbledon coverage. Jon Isner is all knotted up at 43-43 against Nicolas Mahut in the fifth.

You read that right.

Match time approaching 8 hours. Isner has 85 aces and is 73 of 112 net points. Serving at 73 percent.

Insanity.

Update: The decision to suspend play was exactly right. You don't want a match--particularly a historical epic like this one--to be decided by low-light. (Which is a problem not just for the players, but for the linesmen.) Mahut shouldn't have had to ask for it, though. I would have hoped that the tournament referee would have been thinking through the decision since about 50-50.

The stats on the match are really impressive. Isner served at 74 percent for the affair so far. Both players are something like +170 on winners/unforced errors. Only 2 breaks of serve total (none since the second set) and only 16 total break chances. That's pretty clean tennis for a couple of guys who must be about to drop for exhaustion.

My default setting is to root for Isner. But after watching Mahut give up his body on those two ridiculous dives--who dives on the baseline?--his fighting spirit and reckless disregard for injury were mighty impressive. Isner was clearly trying to manage his service games and coast where he could. Mahut was fighting for every point. God bless the both of them.

It will be terrible to see someone lose tomorrow. I'm reminded of something the great Dikembe Mutombo said during Game 7 of the 1994 Finals. During half-time, Mutombo was asked about Ewing and Olajuwon and Deke said (I'm quoting from memory, so this may not be quite right), "It it like seeing two great men in the desert who come upon a glass of water and you wish so badly that they both could drink."

Contra Walter Russell Mead

2010-06-22T18:24:00.000-05:00

WRM has a typically incisive post on Brazil's retreat from its Iranian indiscretion. However, he includes this strange note:

[t]he light and casual way in which the world’s pundits (many of them utterly ignorant about Brazil’s long history of diplomatic disappointment) concluded from a single, ill-advised diplomatic initiative that Brazil had decisively changed its place in the world is evidence of just how little reflection and experience goes into world politics today.

Second, we should think about why so much commentary (and, unfortunately, serious policy making) is so frequently seduced by quick and silly analysis.

Says the writer with Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Reynolds placed prominently on his blog roll. (Go ahead and look. I'm serious.)

The answer to Mead's question--or at least a very large part of the answer--is the internet, which favors speed over deliberation and rewards people like Andrew Sullivan rather than people like, well, Walter Russell Mead.

Manute Bol, RIP

2010-06-21T10:36:00.001-05:00

I note with sadness the passing of Manute Bol, one of the great characters of the NBA. More importantly, he was the sport's most courageous humanitarian. His life serves as something of an indictment to many current players.

I saw him play once as a kid. The Bullets were visiting the Sixers at the Spectrum and I was there way early. Before the pre-game shoot around, Bol came out to shoot on his. I watched as he bombed away from the 3-point line for several minutes. I don't think he made a single one. Sometimes his shots would miss everything. I think he clanged one off the top of the backboard.

Despite being 7'7", Bol wanted to be a 3-point threat. So much so that during the 1988-1989 season he took 91 attempts from behind the arc. Just think about that for a minute.

What's really amazing is that he finished his career shooting .210 from 3-point range. (In his final season he was a gaudy 3 for 5.) .210 doesn't sound like much, but I doubt I could ever get that accurate, while being defended, from the old NBA distance. Like everything else in his life, it was a testament to a man who believed--really and truly, not simply as a sentiment--that anything is possible.

Top Gun

2010-06-21T09:39:00.000-05:00

Caught a large chunk of Top Gun in Glorious High-Definition over the weekend, and a few thoughts occur to me:

* You could argue that the movie would not have succeeded without the brilliant second-unit photography which opens the film. It's gorgeous, amazing stuff and it captures the world of naval aviators better than anything which follows it. In fact, without it I don't know that the rest of the movie really works. I wonder if Tony Scott did it himself or let one of the assistant DP's do it, as is usual.

* If Top Gun was made today, it would be heavily reliant on CGI effects and it would be lousy. Nothing reminds you of the limits of CGI like seeing real planes flying. Sure, you don't get the sexy camerawork, you don't get missile-eye POV shots, you don't get long, arial tracking shots that swing around one plane and then zoom to another.

What you do get, however, is infinitely more powerful.

* It is nearly inconceivable that the movie never got a sequel. A sequel would have been terrible, of course. But if Top Gun was released today, no studio head alive would be able to resist trying to turn it into a franchise.

* I've said it before and I'll say it again: We'll all be sad when we don't have Tom Cruise to kick around as a leading man anymore. He's not a great actor, but he's always better than he has to be. And unlike most of his contemporaries, he takes being a movie star seriously: He never, ever mails it in. And even when he's bad, he adds value.

* Also adding value: Michael Ironside. In every damn scene he's in. Nothing against Tom Skerritt, but I'll bet that Ironside also read for the Viper role. And if it had been up to me, I would have switched those parts.

Chris Nolan Speaks

2010-06-15T10:16:00.003-05:00

AICN has the transcript. Some interesting stuff. Most tantalizing insight:

He doesn’t have email or cell phone. “It gives me a little more time to think.”

Makes you love him all the more. Also, he has reservations about 3D at the technical level:

“On a technical level I think it’s fascinating. On an experiential level I find the dimness of the image extremely alienating. The truth of it is, when you watch a film you’re looking at 16 foot-lamberts. When you watch it through any of the conventional 3-D processes you get about 3 foot-lamberts. It’s a massive difference.

You’re not that aware of it because once you’re in that world your eye compensates, but having struggled for years to get theaters to get up to the proper brightness you’re now sticking polarized filters into this thing and we’re going back worse than we were.”

- Also from a shooting standpoint, Nolan has even more issues with 3-D: “It requires shooting on video, if you mask it to 2.40 you’re only getting 800 or 900 lines of resolution. You have to use a beam-splitter.”

- Nolan doesn’t use use zoom lenses, only primes, because the image quality isn’t sharp enough on the long end of a zoom, so the idea of shooting a whole film through a beam-splitter doesn’t appeal to him. “There are enormous compromises, in other words.”

"Nothing that a good set of leggings can't cover."

2010-06-15T10:06:00.001-05:00

Arrested Development is back in the saddle, thanks to Orbit.

It's not selling out if it's funny.

Join me, and together we will . . .

2010-06-14T06:46:00.000-05:00

And you think I take Star Wars too seriously? Galley Friend T.J. sends notice that a team of French psychiatrists have released a study concluding that Darth Vader was mentally ill.

their report, which was recently published in the medical journal Psychiatry Research, concludes that young Anakin Skywalker exhibited behavior that is consistent with borderline personality disorder, which may in turn explain his decision to embrace the dark side and become Emperor Palpatine's apprentice.

American shrinks are pushing back, though:

"Anakin shows borderline traits, but these do not persist into his adulthood," UCLA psychiatrist Dr. H. Eric Bender said. "It's important to note that any person, when put in highly stressful situations, may display certain traits, such as impulsivity, which are associated with borderline personality disorder." The paper, he said, failed to prove that Skywalker had "enduring and maladaptive patterns" over the course of his entire lifetime, which would be necessary to adopt a formal diagnosis.

Dr. Sue Varma, assistant professor of psychiatry at the NYU Langone School of Medicine, agrees.

"Teenagers are impulsive and can practice risky behavior," she said. "They are trying to find out who they are and in playing around with identities, they show characteristics similar to borderline. But this is not enough for a diagnosis. Most teens come out the other side by their 20s."

Geeks Gone Wild

2010-06-14T06:38:00.000-05:00

Galley Reader M.C. sends along this fantastic story about how the Rube Goldberg contraption in the instant-classic OK Go video was built. Turns out, it was partly some NASA scientists geeking out in their spare time:

There were a few guiding principles behind the machine. No magic: Mechanisms should be understandable and built from found objects where possible. Small to big: The size of the modules and parts becomes bigger over the course of the video. One take: As in their other videos, the band wanted the entire piece shot in one piece by a single handheld camera. . . .

We learned something very important about physics in the process of making this video. It is much harder to make small things reliable. Temperature, friction, even dust all greatly effect the repeatability and timing of the small stuff. The first minute of the video failed at a rate that was tenfold of the rest of the machine. Remembering that rule about getting everything in one shot -- if your module is further down the line in the video, you're in big trouble if it doesn't work! The machine took half an hour and 20 people to reset.

The Ritual Attack of the Soccer Scolds

2010-06-11T09:52:00.001-05:00

It's happening again.

The most puzzling part of anti-American soccer obsession is that it's not like Americans don't like the game of soccer. We all play it at the youth level and--for the most part--have a good time. It's just that we graduate up to other sports and don't have much of an appetite for soccer played at the elite level.

And what's wrong with that? Our interest level in soccer is the mirror image of our interest level in football, which, comparatively few people play at the youth level, but which has great popularity at the professional level.

But the thing is, you never hear football--or baseball, or ultimate frisbee, or tennis, or cycling, or hockey, or curling--or any other kind of fans railing against people who don't share their passion as if there's something morally and politically wrong with them. Why is it that soccer fans care so much about what American's don't care about?

We'll never know.

I, for one, choose to be soccer agnostic in an attempt to facilitate world peace. Imagine, for a moment, if Americans really did care about high-level soccer and put real effort into producing professional-caliber players.

Now imagine what would have happened if, in 2006, the U.S. had won the World Cup with the dastardly George W. Bush as president!

Really, the rest of the world should be grateful that we don't care about their sport.

Update: The Czabe holds forth on why soccer doesn't blow his skirt up:

There are many stupid things about soccer, but the lack of scoring remains the stupidest.

A 1-0 deficit, and your side is playing with the burden of 11 elephants on their backs.

A 2-0 deficit and you are now just out there getting some exercise.

A 3-0 defeat and the newspapers back home will call you an “embarassment.”

This level of scoring just doesn't make sense. It is so hard to score in soccer, it would be like basketball played on 30 foot rims.

Soccer eliminates the most fundamentally exciting thing about sports: the comeback.

Tom Bissell

2010-06-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

Elsewhere I have a review of Tom Bissell's very interesting new book Extra Lives. Extra Lives is something new, I think: a travel book about video games. If you're interested in games qua games, I highly recommend it.

The most interesting section is about Jonathan Blow's Braid and the problem of dynamical meaning in video-game narrative. It's worth the price of the book on its own.

From the Vault

2010-06-10T09:40:00.001-05:00

Was talking with someone about the (criminally underrated) Minority Report the other day and immediately thought of Peter Stormare's crazy, off-kilter performance in it, which is pleasantly unsettles the film and creates the kind of nearly-out-of-control atmosphere which you never see in Spielberg pictures.

And like Dennis Hopper, I'd argue that one of Stormare's finest performances is in a commercial. What time is it?

Time to un-pimp za auto . . .

Pure. Gold.

For NYC Readers

2010-06-09T10:27:00.001-05:00

I just got my copy of Galley Friend and Superstar Foodie Sherri Eisenberg's book about Brooklyn restaurants, The Food Lovers' Guide to Brooklyn.

If you live in (or visit) New York a lot, I highly recommend it.

Sherri has a blog about the book which is a fun read, too.

Steroids

2010-06-08T11:41:00.005-05:00

Galley Friend and Super Smark A.H. just passed along the most interesting article on steroids I've ever seen: A 2003 Stuart Stevens piece in Outside:

I'd read reams about cheating as an issue, but I'd never read anything describing what it felt like to do it. Obviously, the allure of victory was incredibly powerful—why else would the best athletes in the world risk their health and lives abusing these drugs? So I wondered, Do performance drugs make you just 1 percent faster and stronger? Or 10 percent? Are the enhancements so subtle that only elite athletes gain an edge, or are they powerful enough that an everyday wannabe like me would notice a dramatic change?

What follows is the author's story of spending a year taking roids, and describing the experience. Fantastic stuff.

Update: Galley Reader J.O. says that this Sports Illustrated piece (mentioned only in passing in the Outside essay) is even better.

In Cupertino, Someone Is Already Dead

2010-06-07T12:44:00.002-05:00

10:43AM "I'm afraid we have a problem and I'm not going to be able to show you much today... let's just go take a look at some photos here... take a look at that."

Belated Dennis Hopper

2010-06-04T13:19:00.001-05:00

It says something--though I'm not sure what--that a large part of what people under a certain age remember most about Dennis Hopper is his Nike commercials.

That said, those commercials provided Galley Brother B.J. and I with hours of catch-phrase enjoyment: "I hear the footsteps." "Like a freight-train--with stick-um!" "Like cosmic twins."

Pure gold.

Choo-choo.

Just for the Record

2010-06-02T09:59:00.002-05:00

I had the Clintons plus the points.

Also, I take it all back: Federer is clearly still an untouchable giant at the height of his powers.

PS: Hatred for The Swiss? Commenter A.K. doesn't quite know what he's talking about . . .

Peggy Noonan Is Disappointed

2010-05-28T09:25:00.000-05:00

"But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent."

Let's wind the clock back to early 2008. You're taking the measure of Sen. Obama, trying to figure out what kind of president he might make. Try coming up with three accomplishments of his that would suggest he was a competent manager. No? Okay, try two? Still nothing?

Fine, let's shift the emphasis off managerial competence and just look for general, professional achievements. Aside from getting new jobs, had the young senator ever actually accomplished anything?

Well, there was that best-selling book, I suppose. Although the story of how it got written doesn't indicate an awesome amount of competence.

Shemale Scheiss Überrashung

2010-05-28T08:54:00.000-05:00

While some conservative ninnies get all bent out of shape about pornography, I'm prepared to defend porn. Especially in the workplace.

Via cleft stick.

More "A is for Awesome"

2010-05-27T15:16:00.002-05:00

Galley Reader E.B. sends in this followup: an alphabet entirely in Wolverine.

Billy Cerveny's Donnelly Carter Payne

2010-05-25T09:40:00.000-05:00

Billy Cerveny is one of my favorite singer-songwriters--he's up there in the pantheon with Aimee Mann. After a long, long wait, he has finally released a new album (do the kids still call them albums?)--Donnelly Carter Payne. You can sample it on iTunes here.

I really can't recommend it highly enough.

Goodbye to Law & Order

2010-05-24T11:52:00.001-05:00

I have a short piece over at In Character about "What Law & Order Taught Us." You may disagree with some of the lessons, or have better ones yourself.

True story: I met Dick Wolf at a party once and used the opportunity to lobby for more of the gray V-neck tops for Angie Harmon. You know the one I'm talking about.

I wasn't even drunk.

Fringe

2010-05-24T10:38:00.001-05:00

Finally caught up with the Fringe season-ender over the weekend and was very happy with it. Fringe has gone from being an X-Files clone to being a top-notch sci-fi genre piece with a great core idea. I don't know who deserve the credit for this transformation. I wouldn't be surprised if the show's direction firmed up once J.J. Abrams moved on--Abrams is great at building mythology (and lots of other things) but he's not at his best when it comes to thematic coherence and narrative drive.

In particular, I was kind of blown away by how elegant the writing was in the Thomas Yatsuko-penned "White Tulip" (ep. 2.18). I couldn't think of a genre-piece that slow-played its hand so well, had such a pained, beautiful antagonist--and simultaneously did serious heavy-lifting for character motivations in the larger series.

The season ending episode "Over There pt 2" (2.23) was written by the crazy over-rated Akiva Goldsman wasn't as sublime, but it did one thing exceptionally well. By positing that it was Walter Bishop himself who asked Bell to cut out parts of his brain, Goldsman (1) Explains a central riddle of the series; (2) Resolves the relationship between Bell and Bishop; (3) Backfills the motivation for pre-series Walter and explains how this daffy, but sweet, man could have done and created such horrible things; (4) Creates all sorts of space for Earth 2 Walter to be the heavy. All of that with about 8 lines of dialogue. Very nice stuff.

There was also a wonderful Easter egg in Peter's apartment on Earth 2: The framed Earth 2 comic book covers on the wall. There's a post about them here. Not only are they kind of delightful, but it's gratifying that they used DC books, since Fringe owes it's multiverse to DC. (And also gratifying that they included a Crisis on Infinite Earths cover.)

The only slight complaint is about the Justice League alt cover. Note that Jonah Hex has been substituted for Green Lantern. Why? Hex doesn't exist at all within the mythological (or chronological) confines of the JLA books. No, it's there as a self-serving hiccup from Goldsman, who wrote the up-coming Jonah Hex adaptation flop, which promises to be one of the worst (and most underperforming) comic book film adaptations yet.

Ukulele-Based Geek Rock and The French Open

2010-05-24T09:40:00.000-05:00

A year or so ago The Pig put me on to Dent May's fantastic tune "God Loves You Michael Chang." It's Ukulele centered tennis-geek rock. In honor of the start of the French, here it is:

PS: Best geek-rock band ever: They Might Be Giants or Bare Naked Ladies?

First Things, First

2010-05-20T10:04:00.000-05:00

As a rule, all change is bad. This rule holds particularly fast when it comes to graphic design and print media. It's hard to think of many magazine or newspaper redesigns which do not substantially diminish their product. Which is why I was so nervous when I heard that First Things was working on a complete redesign of the magazine.

Regular readers know the esteem in which I hold First Things--it's one of my three desert island magazines, and has been for many years. Its old design was so austere as to achieve a certain elegance, a little like '80s era Volvos. I was immensely fond of it.

The redesigned First Things is out now. This link will show you a TOC, but give you no sense of what the physical magazine looks like. I haven't lived with the new book long enough to pass a final judgment, but my first and second impressions are both that the redesign is a near-total triumph, in both the aesthetic and the strategic sense.

The internet poses a different challenge to magazines than it does to newspapers. Newspapers are largely utilitarian tools. A good magazine is more of a sensual pleasure. As they confront the internet, magazines must find ways to leverage the physical virtues. I wasn't in the room as First Things thought through their redesign, but I'd bet that this goal was their lodestar.

For starters, the new First Things is beautiful. The new paper stock is soft and easy on the eyes. The fonts are absolutely gorgeous. (Font whores--you know who you are--will really enjoy the work put in on the design end here.) Everything about the foundation of the layout--the columns, the breaks, the drop caps--is elegant and inviting. The book now has art, which is done tastefully. You never think you're reading Time. (Though for whatever it's worth, my own personal preference would be for fewer photographs and more drawings, in the mode of the old WSJ.) The only real quirk is the decision to switch paper stock in the middle of the book, where you briefly have essays on the old FT paper. Some people will like this; some won't. I haven't lived with it long enough to know what I think.

Aside from the artistic virtues, First Things is now doing more of what can't--or at least, isn't--readily available on internet platforms: poetry and very long-form essays. For a variety of reasons, beginning with how we interact with our computer screens, people don't read 15,000 word essays on the internet. Ditto short poems, I think. These forms are by turns too long and too short to be good fits for the web browser.

Finally--and this is a small, but important addition--First Things has added a crossword. I'm not a crossword lover. Actually, I detest them almost as much as I do Scrabble. But lots of people like them. And while technically you can do crosswords on the internet, I can't think of any crossword lovers who do. The crossword adds an element of interaction with the physical book. It asks you to read with a pen in hand, to mark it up and work with it.

When she launched the short-lived Talk magazine, Tina Brown said that her goal for the book was to create an artifact--something to be picked up, folded, shoved into a computer bag, carried around, and lived with for a couple weeks as it was consumed. Talk didn't live up to that ideal. But while Tina Brown may be many things, stupid about magazines she isn't. Her idea for Talk has always struck me as the most viable model for magazines going forward.

The new First Things is, I think, the first magazine to accomplish what The Tina set out to do. You don't simply thumb through, read two essays, and toss it. You want to carry it around, to enjoy and savor it. It's a great success and if you're not already a subscriber, now is a good time to come aboard.

I Like Ike

2010-05-19T11:15:00.000-05:00

Most memorable speeches are eventually abstracted to the point where what is remembered has little relation to the speech. The best-known example of this problem is Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech, in which he never used the word "malaise."

Eisenhower's farewell address is another case. We remember it for his warning about the "military industrial complex." But listening to it the other day I was struck how poorly this tag fits on what is a seriously impressive speech.

Eisenhower chose to address two large historical and philosophical--not political--subjects in his farewell. The first was the "military industrial complex." He was not, however, simply "warning" his fellow citizens about it. He was, instead, making a large and complicated observation: That prior to the World Wars, America did not have a permanent arms industry. That America's pre-eminent position in the world now necessitated a large-scale arms industry. That such an industry would have transformative effects on a country which was now, for the first time, seeing itself as an important actor on the world stage. Some of these effects would be good, others would not. Eisenhower's point, was that we should enter this new era with our eyes open. Here's Ike:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States cooperations -- corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

History has shown him to be quite correct. But following his warning about the MIC was another warning, which has been altogether forgotten: the consequences of how invention and research were evolving in the new technical age.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Again, Eisenhower proved quite prescient. But more amazing than his wisdom is the fact that these were the topics he chose for his farewell. They were philosophical and historical. They had nothing to do with politics or Eisenhower himself or his presidency. It is impossible to imagine a president today speaking with such deep wisdom. It's a stark reminder of how very small the men who govern us have become.

A is for Awesome

2010-05-18T13:19:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of Galley Friend AK-47, the nerd's illustrated alphabet. Don't miss it. Sample letter:

Miss USA Is Not Miss America (And how to win Your Miss America pool.)

2010-05-17T19:13:00.000-05:00

A lot of people are up in arms about the crowning of the "gaffetastic" Miss Michigan Rima Fakih as Miss USA. I suspect many of those in a state of concern may be conflating the Miss USA pageant with Miss America. Miss America is the preeminent "scholarship program" and as such holds itself out as having some objective standards. Miss USA is a Donald Trump production. It's an entertainment vehicle. Its "standards" are the standards of reality television. So you can only really get worked up about the injustice of Ms. Fakih's victory if you're the kind of person who'd also be willing to be outraged by the results on Dancing with the Stars.

None of that, however, is particularly important. The questions about the "judging" at Miss USA are just an excuse for me to point out a wonderful and often overlooked book: William Goldman's Hype and Glory. (Don't be the sucker to pay $132 for the paperback version on Amazon.)

Goldman wrote Hype and Glory after a year in which he sat as a judge for both Miss America and Cannes. He had plenty of good stories to tell.

What always interested me most, however, was his deciphering of the Miss America voting. Goldman claimed that the judges were instructed on what to look for in a Miss America, and that with those guidelines, it was instantly clear to the entire judging panel who the winner was. He reports that from the first moment, there was never any question among the judges who the winner would be. What were they looking for? I'll paraphrase, because I don't have my copy near at hand: The Miss America judges were told to look for the woman who would best represent the Miss America organization at public and private appearances throughout the year. That meant a woman who was calm, unflappable, articulate, and politic. In other words, they wanted the young woman who most represented a polished, TV news head.

Nothing else, Goldman wrote, mattered. Not the swimsuit, not the talent. And once you know that that's the quality the Miss America pageant is looking for, most of the time the winner is obvious.

Thanks, James Cameron

2010-05-17T10:43:00.002-05:00

Just what the world needs: a 3D remastered Battle Royale.

In Praise of Walter Russell Mead, Again

2010-05-17T10:34:00.000-05:00

A fantastic post about the IPCC and the climate change movement that incorporates this show-stopper line:

Movement toward conservation, renewable and alternative fuels, and a decreasing reliance on hydrocarbon fuels per unit of GDP will continue and, I think, accelerate in most of the world’s most important advanced and developing economies. This will happen whether or not the IPCC issues another report, because it is in the interests of the major economies to cut fuel use to be economically competitive and to increase their national security. Efforts to establish comprehensive monitoring of CO2 emissions around the world will also continue — if for no other reason than that agencies like the CIA, organizations like the IMF and corporations like hedge funds and investment banks would like to have faster access to reliable data on shifts in global economic activity. The sheer blind bureaucratic lust for power that drives the culture of the United Nations and the world’s governments will also ensure continuing efforts to give politicians and their appointees the last word on regulating as much economic activity as possible.

In other words, the review panel in Amsterdam, like the IPCC itself, is something of a sideshow. To use the kind of simile that might appeal to an author of Dr. Pachauri’s ambitions, the IPCC and the review panel are like the piano in a house of ill repute: useful for establishing atmosphere, but playing no substantive role in the core operations of the firm.

I'm already planning to steal that.

Steve Jobs vs. the New Yorker

2010-05-13T12:30:00.001-05:00

Fake Steve Jobs, that is. Seems that he decided to alter the developer agreement for the iPad to ban the dieresis. And David Remnick's people are pissed. The confrontation begins here and then continues here and finally concludes here:

"Who am I? I’m Steve fucking Jobs, bitch. I invented the friggin iPod. And the iPhone. And the iPad. And I’m not changing the language. I’m making it better."

PS: Also from Fake Steve is a link to this fantastic anti-Facebook rant. Do not miss it.

Notes from the Great Recession

2010-05-12T11:32:00.000-05:00

Two interesting pieces today. First, John Judis:

Brenner’s analysis of the current downturn can be boiled down to a fairly simple point: that the underlying cause of the current downturn lies in the “real” economy of private goods and service production rather than in the financial sector, and that the current remedies—from government spending and tax cuts to financial regulation—will not lead to the kind of robust growth and employment that the United States enjoyed after World War II and fleetingly in the late 1990s. These remedies won’t succeed because they won’t get at what has caused the slowdown in the real economy: global overcapacity in tradeable goods production. . . .

Paul Volcker summed up the situation thusly: “The fate of the world economy is now totally dependent on the growth of the U.S. economy, which is dependent on the stock market, whose growth is dependent upon about 50 stocks, half of which have never reported any earnings.”

And then, Robert Samuelson:

The normal mechanics of the business cycle signal recovery, while deeper economic weaknesses threaten it. In late 2008 and early 2009, fear and hysteria were almost palpable, especially in the United States. Consumers and companies cut spending anywhere they could. From September 2008 to June 2009, the U.S. economy lost 6 million payroll jobs. In 2009, American car sales were almost 40 percent lower than in 2007. Governments' frenetic interventions stabilized confidence. People and firms are opening their wallets again, here and abroad. The world economy will grow almost 4.3 percent in 2010 and 2011, with the United States expanding at an average of nearly 3 percent, reckons the International Monetary Fund.

But the deep-seated problems remain. Three stand out: first, the weight of the welfare state and aging populations; second, the burden of huge private debts (mortgages and consumer loans in America and elsewhere); and finally, huge imbalances in global trade, with some countries -- notably China -- running massive surpluses and others -- notably the United States -- having large deficits. Each threatens a vigorous recovery that could conceivably plunge the world back into a protracted slump.

"Homophobic" Is the New "Neocon"

2010-05-12T10:50:00.000-05:00

Which is to say, it simply means "something I do not like."

Ryan Murphy, the Glee showrunner, is angry at Newsweek for running a piece about gay actors playing straight characters. Murphy doesn't just disagree with the essay--he says it's "homophobic."

The only problem is that the piece's author is gay. So he may be wrong or stupid or loathsome or evil, but he probably isn't "homophobic." If he was, he wouldn't be very good at being gay.

David Bradley: Out-Thinking the Market!

2010-05-05T12:56:00.002-05:00

The NY Observer has a big story on David Bradley's audacious plan to merge the forces of Hotline, National Journal, and Congress Daily to fight Politico.

Will someone remind me how Bradley got rich in the first place?

Nothing against Politico--it's a great product and I generally admire it. But unless I'm completely mistaken, Politico is not a money-making machine. In fact, it's rumored to be quite the opposite. Bradley's three crown properties, on the other hand, have always been spectacularly profitable. Unless their business model has gone completely upside down in the last 36 months, I can't imagine that they lose less money than Politico. They probably out-earn it by quite a lot.

So how is it that Bradley wants to "compete" with Politico? For what, page views? There was a wonderful moment in 1999 where for just a few minutes people remembered that actual dollars are worth more than digital pennies; that Kozmo.com was not the future; that business was predicated on profitability and not press clippings and Technorati scores. Even in the midst of a Great Recession, that moment has clearly passed.

Imagine if Comcast had decided to re-order its business to compete with NetZero. That's the closest parallel I can think of to what Bradley is doing with his DC-based mint. For some people, making money consistently over a prolonged period isn't enough. They want to be trendy, too.

It could have been "anything"?

2010-05-05T11:01:00.000-05:00

Michael Bloomberg has come in for deserved criticism from the right for this idiotic comment:

"If I had to guess, twenty five cents, this would be exactly that," Bloomberg said. "Homegrown maybe a mentally deranged person or someone with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything."

People tend to focus on the "health care bill" part--which is ridiculous enough. But the really offensive portion is Bloomberg saying that the attempted bombing "could be anything." Because of course, there are plenty of groups it absolutely could not have been.

For instance, how many terrorist incidents have there been in the last 20 years from Unitarian groups? Episcopalians? Tibetans? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

If Mayor Mike doesn't want to be candid about the obvious--that the overwhelmingly likelihood of the involvement of Islam with this terror incident, that's fine. You could cobble together a rationale for such a demurral. But to affirmatively construct the idea that it could have been lots of groups who absolutely could not have been behind the incident is worse than dishonest.

At some point America is going to get over its multi-culti sensitivities regarding Islam's alarming rate of coincidence with violence. And it won't be a happy day.

Joe Sarno, RIP

2010-05-03T11:27:00.003-05:00

Joe Sarno--who may or may not have been the real-life Jack Horner--died last week. The NYT, funnily enough, carried a lengthy obit. A particularly dedicated Times watcher might be able to pinpoint the exact moment with the New York Times became the kind of paper that would run a 900-word obit on a semi-obscure soft-core porn director. My non-educated guess would be some time around July 1975. Whatever the case, here's a taste:

His early films were straightforwardly, even single-mindedly erotic, although flashes of nudity came only intermittently and the sex act took place outside the frame. Shot in a self-consciously artistic style, films like “Red Roses of Passion” (1966) and “Odd Triangle” (1968) explored the anxiety-haunted, tentative steps toward sexual liberation of middle-class suburbanites born too early to experience the uninhibited self-expression of the baby-boom generation.

“He was one of the pioneers of the American sexploitation film and a driving force in the sexual revolution of the 1960s,” Mr. Bowen said. “The films were gritty, down to earth, with a very distinctive style. At their best they were very dirty — they just did not have explicit sex.”

Mind you, I'm not judging. Sarno had one of those only-in-America lives:

Joseph William Sarno was born on March 15, 1921, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and grew up on Long Island in Amityville. His father was a bootlegger, and his mother was a socialist labor organizer. He enrolled in New York University but dropped out immediately after Pearl Harbor to enlist in the Navy. As an airman, he saw action in the South Pacific. . . .

After the war Mr. Sarno found work as an advertising copywriter and sold ripping-yarn feature stories to digest magazines like Coronet. His film career began when the Navy, mistakenly believing that he had filmed bombing runs during the war, asked him to direct training films. He accepted the offer and then headed off to buy a book on cinematography.

Over the next several years he made dozens of training films for the Navy and industrial films for military contractors. His first venture into feature films came when an independent producer approached him to write the screenplay for an erotic film, “Nude in Charcoal,” which was released in 1961 and shown, like all of Mr. Sarno’s films, in grind-house theaters.

Mr. Sarno wrote the screenplays for all 75 of the 35-millimeter films he made over the next 15 years, and for his subsequent hard-core films. The first film for which he received sole directing credit, “Lash of Lust” (1962), was never released. Atypically, it was an erotic costume drama about Gaul in the time of the Romans, shot in the forests of upstate New York.

Despite what the obit says, I'd like to think that he never shot on videotape.

Update: While we're talking porn, AICN has this trailer up for Vivid's Batman XXX. (Totally SFW, btw.) How excellent does it look? Very!

Among the many questions it raises, however, is whether or not Vivid can hide behind the "parody" label and its legal protections against copyright infringement.

More Greek Tragedy

2010-05-03T11:08:00.000-05:00

Walter Russell Mead has another long, interesting essay. The key take-away:

The three countries who did the most to build the modern global, liberal, capitalist and democratic world order (the Netherlands, Britain and the United States) were blessed by both the geography fairy and the culture fairy. Geographically they were placed where they were relatively free to develop on their own without being the playthings of foreign interests. Culturally they were the products of a history which gave them a set of attitudes and values that promoted their success as capitalist countries. The combination of favorably geography and success in capitalism helped to propel each of these countries to global power in their day, and further gave them the power to reshape the world to their liking.

Other countries and cultures like capitalism less and for a variety of reasons are not as good at it. Some, like China and India, gradually get the hang of it and start to gain power and influence in the world system. Others, like Egypt, have a harder time.

For many Greeks, capitalism still feels wrong. The substitution of market forces for traditional social relations undermines aspects of Greek life that are very dear to many people; the inequality that so often results from capitalism offends deeply held social ideas about fairness. More, since the rising powers whose policies and interventions have done so much to shape Greek history have been capitalist, Greeks associate institutions like the IMF and the ECB (European Central Bank) with foreign meddling and unjust usurpation. And the successful capitalist countries (and the foreign multinational corporations who come with it) have never scrupled to press their advantages in less developed or weaker countries like Greece.

In many parts of the world it is easy to spot a vicious cycle at work. Because a country or a culture missed the visit of either or both of the two modernization good fairies (geography and culture) it starts out handicapped in the race to master capitalism and control their own destiny. As a result, they fall behind, and lose power and control to other, faster rivals. Capitalism becomes ever less popular, ever more associated in the public mind with a world system felt to be wrong and unfair. Those feelings of alienation make it steadily harder for the country to adopt and follow the policies that could reverse the cycle and bring it success. And so it goes.

On a global scale, the Greeks are not doing so badly. They belong to three of the rich world’s most exclusive clubs: the OECD, the European Union, and NATO. Their per capita GDP, while low by west European standards, puts them ahead of places like Hong Kong, Israel and South Korea. Yet the feeling of being victims, manipulated by powerful interests who do not have their best interests at heart, and locked into an economic system that violates some of their most deeply felt values is very real.

Greece has a history of muddling through, if not always very happily. It is likely though not certain that this crisis too will pass, leaving Greece still in the eurozone, still linked to a prosperous EU and still relatively well placed in the global order. This is certainly what I hope, and given the debt of gratitude the whole world owes Greece for its extraordinary and unparalleled contributions to global culture it is the outcome that we all ought to seek.

But whatever happens in Greece, we need to remember that its problems are not unique, and the clash between those who like the world that capitalism has made and those who hate it is not going away. The global capitalist revolution offers the best and indeed the only hope that I see for the relief of poverty, the advance of human rights and the protection of the environment worldwide. Like all great revolutionary movements, however, it creates divisions, inequalities and resistance. Revolts against the liberal capitalist world system — fascism and communism above all — shaped the history of the twentieth century and inflicted unprecedented misery and harm until they were defeated. The radical terrorist movement led by Islamic renegades has more recently inflicted grave harm in many places and its violent course has not yet come to an end; we are likely to see more crises and conflict in the twenty first century as the anti-capitalist counter-revolution finds new forms and new allies.

The Greek tragedy now taking place offers us an opportunity to study the forces at work in our world, reflect on the human dilemmas and difficulties that lead to social and economic strife, and perhaps think more wisely about how we can advance the capitalist revolution in ways that make this global transformation a little easier to bear for those who are caught up in it and who feel that their lives are being overturned by hostile and immoral hidden hands.

NBA Playoffs Post

2010-04-30T10:42:00.000-05:00

Galley Friend R.S. sends along a link to this cliched-yet-entertaining Bill Simmons column. Check out #62, in particular.

But what will really drive you insane is this:

I haven't watched more than 5 minutes of NBA basketball since Answer was traded in 2006. And I don't miss it. Stuff like this is why.

Another reason, however, is stories like this one: So the Caps lose Game 7, the victim of one of the greatest upsets in NHL history. A mother and daughter who had been at the game got a flat tire heading home and were stranded on the Roosevelt Bridge. They called AAA. While they were waiting, Caps forward Brooks Laich drove by. He pulled over to see if they needed help. And then changed their tire for them.

It's a great story, and one you can imagine happening with NHL or MLB players. Not so much the NBA.

More on Europe, Greece

2010-04-29T11:54:00.000-05:00

Felix Salmon is also very smart and his discussion of Greece and the future of the Eurozone is disturbing.

I covered emerging market sovereign bonds for many years, but I’ve never seen anything like this: a country trading at levels where the bear case is terrifying, the bull case is very hard to articulate, and everybody is talking about a possible default even when the country has an investment-grade credit rating from two agencies and is only one notch below investment grade at the third. Maybe the only thing which really explains what’s going on is that both yields and ratings are sticky. Which would imply that Greece has a long way to deteriorate from here.

It's also, in a way, kind of awesome. An astute commenter on WRM's blog yesterday noted that Americans should take no pleasure from the E.U.'s troubles right now, since what is bad for the E.U. will eventually be bad for America, too. True enough. And certainly, that's the mature response.

However, since we can't alter the outcome in any meaningful way, why not enjoy the spectacle? After all, these are the same twits who've been lecturing us about how the "era of American hegemony is over." Suck it, Europe!

I kid, of course. Europeans are our friends and allies. They're like like that kind of annoying guy you always hung out with in college. Pretentious and kind of an ass, but he'd been with your posse for so long that everyone just kind of went with it.

But the PIGS financial crisis does revive some structural questions about the European project--all of which were completely foreseen decades ago. Namely:

* European elites viewed the euro as the practical means to a political union, since no currency union has ever existed without a political union.

* It was always obvious that a currency alliance in Europe could prove impractical, given a perfect storm of economic circumstances. If the E.U. encountered such dangerous waters before the political union had been boot-strapped into place, then there would only be unpleasant options available: (1) Massive bailouts--meaning wealth transfers from one country to another. (2) Reduction or dissolution of the eurozone.

* Even the end-goal of a political union was foolish. European elites wanted a political union so that they would be able to project power onto the international stage--power which, separately, individual European countries lacked.

By definition, though, the E.U. would only be able to project soft power. That's because modern Europe lacks the capability to project actual force in the world. This is both by design and necessity. First, few Europeans seem to have the stomach for force projection. Second, the cost of the European welfare state makes force projection difficult. Projecting force is expensive. And soft power without the capacity for hard power is no power at all.

Sooner or later, the Europeans were destined to figure this all out. Truth be told, the PIGS crisis is probably a cheap way of exposing the fallacies of the European project.

David Bradley: The Quickening

2010-04-28T13:50:00.000-05:00

Stuart Taylor and Clive Crook are out.

Andrew Sullivan and Ta-Nehisi-Coates stay on the dole.

Rock on.

Walter Russell Mead on Europe

2010-04-28T12:21:00.000-05:00

Mead is very smart and this piece on Europe's current crisis is very interesting:

Internally, the Greek problem is showing signs of mutating into a full scale crisis of the European project. Externally, the decisive shift of Ukraine into Russia’s orbit reveals the bankruptcy of European foreign policy and the inability of the 27 member European Union to formulate, much less carry out, a comprehensive foreign policy on matters affecting its vital interests.

Ydiot

2010-04-27T09:25:00.000-05:00

Matt Yglesias calls Ydiot "witless" and "obtuse." Sounds good to me! Someone should get the Ydiot guy this Kaus for Senate shirt.

Batman vs. Superman

2010-04-23T10:10:00.000-05:00

Logic proves what everyone knew must be truth .

Advantage: Blogosphere

2010-04-23T10:02:00.001-05:00

Every so often someone in a comments section is so clever that they nearly justify the existence of the entire blogosphere. Galley Friend R.S. sends us a link to this Tom Maguire post where Maguire points to video of a kid from Fordham doing the leap and forward roll over the catcher. A commenter responds:

"That's nothing. Last night Alfonso Soriano went to right field on a 3-1 pitch. When you've seen that, you've seen everything."

Rock on.

Update: Unfortunately, reminders of the blogosphere's . . . limitations . . . abound.

Against Modern Family

2010-04-22T11:06:00.001-05:00

A lot of people seem to like the ABC sitcom Modern Family. That's fine, of course. Modern Family is often clever and sometimes very funny. However it suffers by comparison to its obvious forbearer, Arrested Development. Again, that's fine--unlike fans of The Sopranos, fans of Arrested Development never talked themselves into believing that the tiny, elite audience their show captured meant anything to the culture at large.

But my complaint with Modern Family, isn't that it's not AD. It's that the show suffers from two structural problems born of lazyness.

The first is Modern Family's POV. About 80 percent of the show is standard one-camera perspective. The characters go about their business oblivious to the audience. There are occasional static-camera scenes, where we see the characters from the point of view of what could be a hidden camera, almost like ATM security video footage. That's fine, too.

But every so often the fourth wall comes down and the characters go into "confessional" mode. They sit and address the camera directly, as if they were being interviewed by a documentarian. Or they were on Survivor.

Why is this? The show has no reason why the characters would be talking to an interviewer. Instead, the writers default to the confessional mode to get to jokes that would be harder to arrive at without it. And I suppose they assume that, because The Office uses the confessional, every other sitcom in American can, too.

This is laziness, pure and simple. The perspective of a show should fit within a logical, coherent framework. It's difficult--but not impossible--to get to some jokes using nothing by traditional one-camera, 3rd party mode (see 30 Rock). And if you want more options, you can be creative, the way Arrested Development used an actual narrator to grease the rails for the show. Modern Family's use of the confessional camera is both derivative and nonsensical.

The other problem with Modern Family is that, despite its often subversive trappings, it really is a pure-blood sit-com. Seinfeld remade the situation comedy by tossing out all the hugging and learning. (Something other shows--like The Bonnie Hunt Show--had been unsuccessfully trying to do for years.) The traditional situation comedy always has a "moment of shit," where the characters come together to learn some lesson and be momentarily serious about their lives. Good sitcoms managed this architectural feature well; bad sitcoms handled it clunkily. But Sienfeld showed that you didn't have to have it at all. It was hard to do sitcoms in the Seinfeld mode, but post-Seinfeld, that's what lots of writers tried to do.

Arrested Development innovated the form further by establishing a central moral theme--the importance of family--and allowing the show to have the occasional moment of shit, but not in every episode and only when it pertained to show's guiding moral mission. AD wasn't, by any stretch a morality play--it was a very, very funny saga. But the writers did allow themselves to have one area about which it was safe to be half-serious, whenever they wandered into that territory.

There's one more thing: Seinfeld, 30 Rock, and Arrested Development--what I consider the three best sitcoms of the last 20 years, also found ways to create mini story-arcs. The traditional sitcom was always a stand-alone construct, meant to be viewable out of sequence in syndication. More than any other sitcom, Arrested Development found ways to create episodes viewable as standalone pieces while also telling stories on two different levels: most episodes are part of a six-episode mini-arc (George Sr. in Mexico, Mr. F, etc.) and also part of a season-long story arc, where the larger narrative is being driven from Point A to Point Q.

Modern Family is much more traditional. Every episode has a lesson, which is usually hinted at in the first few moments and concluded just before the final commercial break. And the individual episodes serve no larger narrative ambition.

Modern Family is a step backward. An entertaining one much of the time, to be sure. But it is, nonetheless, a retreat to toward the bad old days of conventional television.

The Downfall of Downfall

2010-04-22T09:41:00.002-05:00

Galley Friend T.R. sends along this final, fantastic Downfall parody. The category is now closed.

Kaus For Senate!

2010-04-20T10:36:00.000-05:00

Frequent G.S. commenter TubbyLover69 sent an email over the weekend alerting me to his very excellent store peddling Kaus for Senate gear. I can't recommend it highly enough. He's put an ad over there to the right with one of the styles of t-shirt, but I prefer this bit of awesomeness:

No matter who your least favorite blogger is, TubbyLover69 has you covered: there are styles taking shots at Sullivan, Yglesias, Bob Wright, Ezra Klein. He's got it all! (That Shep Fairey-stizz [--ed.] really is an instant classic.) You might as well buy two.

And don't forget to donate to the real Kaus for Senate. All the right people hate him.

PS: One quibble for Tubby--Why nothing for people who hate on the JournoList? Or a "Secrets of Cafe Milano"?

Thor Is Pissed

2010-04-20T10:10:00.000-05:00

Galley Sis K.P. send along this amazing shot of a lightning strike near the Iceland volcano eruption.

Buckley Gold

2010-04-16T10:09:00.002-05:00

Galley Friend A.W. sends in this bit of greatness from WFB:

"I think it's wrong theologically to assume that the world is doomed before God decides to doom it."

Red Letter Media: Attack of the Clones

2010-04-15T11:35:00.000-05:00

Red Letter Media came out with his epic Attack of the Clones review last week. It's not to be missed.

It's full of great stuff. For instance, did you know that Joe Klein was one of the sculptors working for Lucas? Check it out at the 2:31 mark.

The Ever-Lovin' Hulk

2010-04-15T09:51:00.001-05:00

For reasons that will remain obscured I've spent a lot of time over the last two weeks watching short YouTube videos of superhero theme songs from days past. Some of them I remember vividly from my childhood (the amazing '60s Spider-Man song, all big-band and swing--"Is he strong? Listen, Bud: He's got radioactive blood!"). And some of which I was totally ignorant of. Such as this Iron-Man opening:

It's pretty wild. But not nearly as crazy as this perversion of the Incredible Hulk. Listen to the lyrics carefully: the song imagines the Hulk as a cuddly innocent, the "ever-lovin' Hulk":

There are lots more if you dig around. But what surprised me the most was the them from the Lynda Carter [ed: it's "Lynda"!] Wonder Woman, a show I revered as a kid, largely because of Lynda Carter. As a 4-year-old I didn't really know what a babe was, but I knew that Carter was one. What I didn't realize was that this was a hippy feminist version of the character:

Listen to those lyrics. Wonder Woman is "fighting for her rights" and "changing hawks into doves" (not to mention "changing minds") by using the power of "love." What, the gods of Olympus sent the Amazonian princess to America to lobby for the ERA? It's crazy. Rightly understood, Wonder Woman is the least empathetic, least liberalized of the major DC heroes. She's royalty from a culture which barely understands, let alone celebrates, the mores of the West.

That's the prime (though not the only) reason she's such a hard character to write. I've only seen three interesting depictions of Wonder Woman through the years and each of them is based in her apartness from the world she's serving. The most interesting Wonder Woman is probably Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier where she basically goes native in Vietnam and starts massacring Vietcong soldiers after deciding that she is no longer willing to serve as an agent of the U.S. government. There's this great scene where she mocks Superman for his Boy Scout sensibilities as she's basking in the blood of her vanquished foes. It's Wonder Woman as Greek mythological figure and it's pretty great.

Five Guys

2010-04-11T15:50:00.000-05:00

The Pig sends along this fascinating piece about the Five Guys CEO. Don't miss it.

Sorry for the extended absence--lots of travel and work stuff going on--but don't forget you can follow me on Twitter.

It's not quite New Warden. But it's close.

2010-03-30T10:01:00.003-05:00

EMBED-Scarface School Play - Watch more free videos

Hit him with a pillow-case full of batteries.

Philly Pride

2010-03-30T09:31:00.002-05:00

Good news: The most sacred record in Philadelphia sports is safe.

White Collar

2010-03-30T09:29:00.002-05:00

The new issue of Wired is a good example of how Chris Anderson's book is often both fabulous and mildly frustrating. The cover story is about How the iPad will Change Everything About the World As We Know It. And look, maybe it will. (Though I kind of doubt it.) But Wired always thinks that the next new thing is going to Change Everything About the World As We Know It. In part, I suppose that this is part of the magazine's institutional mission, the evangelize about technology with minimal skepticism. The thing is, as pieces like this one on "good-enough technology" show, they do actually know better.

Anyway, that's the minor gripe. Because as silly as the iPad piece is, Joshuah Bearman's story about Gerald Blanchard makes up for it tenfold. Blanchard is a super-thief:

The plane slowed and leveled out about a mile aboveground. Up ahead, the Viennese castle glowed like a fairy tale palace. When the pilot gave the thumbs-up, Gerald Blanchard looked down, checked his parachute straps, and jumped into the darkness. He plummeted for a second, then pulled his cord, slowing to a nice descent toward the tiled roof. It was early June 1998, and the evening wind was warm. If it kept cooperating, Blanchard would touch down directly above the room that held the Koechert Diamond Pearl. He steered his parachute toward his target.

A couple of days earlier, Blanchard had appeared to be just another twentysomething on vacation with his wife and her wealthy father. The three of them were taking a six-month grand European tour: London, Rome, Barcelona, the French Riviera, Vienna. When they stopped at the Schloss Schönbrunn, the Austrian equivalent of Versailles, his father-in-law’s VIP status granted them a special preview peek at a highly prized piece from a private collection. And there it was: In a cavernous room, in an alarmed case, behind bulletproof glass, on a weight-sensitive pedestal — a delicate but dazzling 10-pointed starof diamonds fanned around one monstrous pearl. Five seconds after laying eyes on it, Blanchard knew he would try to take it.

The docent began to describe the history of the Koechert Diamond Pearl, better known as the Sisi Star — it was one of many similar pieces specially crafted for Empress Elisabeth to be worn in her magnificently long and lovely braids. Sisi, as she was affectionately known, was assassinated 100 years ago. Only two stars remain, and it has been 75 years since the public had a glimpse of…

Blanchard wasn’t listening. He was noting the motion sensors in the corner, the type of screws on the case, the large windows nearby. To hear Blanchard tell it, he has a savantlike ability to assess security flaws, like a criminal Rain Man who involuntarily sees risk probabilities at every turn. And the numbers came up good for the star. Blanchard knew he couldn’t fence the piece, which he did hear the guide say was worth $2 million. Still, he found the thing mesmerizing and the challenge irresistible.

He began to work immediately, videotaping every detail of the star’s chamber. (He even coyly shot the “No Cameras” sign near the jewel case.) He surreptitiously used a key to loosen the screws when the staff moved on to the next room, unlocked the windows, and determined that the motion sensors would allow him to move — albeit very slowly — inside the castle. He stopped at the souvenir shop and bought a replica of the Sisi Star to get a feel for its size. He also noted the armed guards stationed at every entrance and patrolling the halls.

But the roof was unguarded, and it so happened that one of the skills Blanchard had picked up in his already long criminal career was skydiving. He had also recently befriended a German pilot who was game for a mercenary sortie and would help Blanchard procure a parachute. Just one night after his visit to the star, Blanchard was making his descent to the roof.

Go treat yourself to the whole thing, it's awesome. And here's why Wired is so great: Bearman's piece has nothing to do with the magazine's mission; it's just a fantastic story. Yet Anderson runs pieces like this all the time. Which is why, despite everything, it's such a great book.

The Greatness of Jay Cost--Updated

2010-03-25T12:13:00.001-05:00

Probably the best thing David Frum's Frum Forum (say it three times fast) does is occasional podcast interviews with Jay Cost. Cost did one of them earlier this week and it's gold. There's so much to love about Cost, from his command of congressional politics minutia to his serious funny ("what really bakes my clams is . . ."). But what I like most is that Cost is (1) Open about having his own policy preferences while (2) Firmly believing that his policy preferences are irrelevant to how the political world works.

One of the biggest problems with punditry (maybe the biggest problem?) is how writers align their preferences with their situational analysis: Pundit A favors Legislation X and therefore believes that Legislation X will be wildly popular and beneficial to Pundit A's party. My favorite example of this is the Sarah Palin Rorschach Test: Whether a pundit believes that she is a serious contender with a plausible path to the Republican nomination and/or White House depends entirely on whether said pundit likes or dislikes Sarah Palin.

Anyway, Cost will have none of that. He's just fantastic.

Incidentally, he touches briefly on something I wrote about this week: The disparity in job approval rating numbers between black respondents and the rest of the country. In case you're interested, here's the nub:

Obama’s black job approval numbers are more than double his overall [job approval] numbers. What that means is that the level of support the president receives from this group moves the overall number more than you might imagine. When you do the math, accounting for percentages of population (roughly: 75 percent white, 12 percent black, and 13 percent Hispanic/other), you find that today the black vote moves the overall number significantly. Using Gallup’s data, blacks push Obama’s overall number up by about 5 points; using Rasmussen’s by roughly 7 points.

Now all core supporters move the overall number of their candidate upwards; that’s why they’re called a base. In a presidential election, this trend has few ramifications. The presidency is a nationally elected office, and nationwide approval indices are a good measurement of the prospect of reelection. But this skewing of the president’s job approval number creates complications for congressional candidates. While about 12 percent of Americans are black, relatively few congressional districts have an average demographic make up. Because of gerrymandering, mandated majority-minority districting, and simple geographic diversity, blacks tend to be concentrated in certain congressional districts. There are 31 districts with a black population over 40 percent. Only 132 districts are above the national average in terms of black population—leaving 303 districts below the national average.

This racial concentration creates a great many districts which are significantly less black than the nation as a whole. For instance, 62 districts are less than 2 percent black; 107 districts are less than 3 percent black; 177 districts are less than 5 percent black. The median congressional district has a black population of only 6.41 percent.

This uneven dispersal magnifies the disparity of approval between Obama’s base and the rest of the country. If relatively few congressional districts look like America, then in most congressional districts Obama’s job approval is likely to be lower—anywhere from 2 to 7 points lower—than the national average. (Conversely, in a smaller number of districts it is likely to be much, much higher.) . . .

It’s not hard to see why this phenomenon might concern the folks running Democratic campaigns. Charlie Cook has 23 Democratic-held seats currently rated as toss-ups, and this sample looks a lot like Congress as a whole. Only six of the 23 have black populations above the national average and in five of these districts, as you might expect, the black population is over 20 percent. But of the 23 districts, the median black population is only 5.67 percent. Eleven of these seats have a black population under 5 percent. In seven of them the black population is under 2 percent.

Click through for greater detail and some historical perspective.

Update: Cost has a new post up filled with great nuggets, like this:

Witness, for instance, the number of members who are defecting on minor procedural matters. For instance, seventeen brave House Democrats voted with the Republicans on the highly controversial resolution yesterday to adjourn the House of Representatives! That includes 10 Democrats who just voted for ObamaCare but who were courageous enough to defy the Speaker's demand to send members home for Easter vacation: Chris Carney, Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth, Jim Himes, Suzanne Kosmas, Harry Mitchell, Scott Murphy, Tom Perriello, Mark Schauer, and Joe Sestak.

Kidding aside, there is no other reason for such a vote than to lower the percentage of agreement with Speaker Pelosi.

Andre the Giant: A Brief History

2010-03-24T10:44:00.001-05:00

Fantastic stuff from Galley Friend A.W.:

André was billed as being undefeated, which was presumably untrue but functionally valid; he certainly never lost a straight singles match to pinfall or submission during this period. He didn't need to, though — he would elevate his opponents in the audience's eyes just by letting them get in a few good minutes against the giant. As Jerry "the King" Lawler, one of the many local heroes to get the rub from André, put it to Krugman: "He'd let you do anything you wanted in a match. Other than beat him… But if he didn't like you, he'd make you look like crap, and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it." This became a pattern in André's career, the willingness to make his opponent look good, unless he personally disliked the guy. The explanations for this are assorted — that André was protective of his place on top of the food chain, that André respected the tradition of wrestling and detested anyone who didn't — but the result was a legend of André's temperament that was less a story of personality dispute and more like the old tales of the angry and unpredictable Greek gods. And if you were one of the unlucky few whom André decided to smite, well, god help you.

By this time, André was undeniably a megastar. In 1974, the Guinness Book of World Records named him the highest paid professional wrestler, with a one-year take of $400,000. The Washington Redskins offered him a tryout — and even viewed as a publicity stunt, it shows the degree of André's celebrity. He appeared (in costume) onThe Six Million Dollar Man, playing a dastardly Sasquatch. In 1976, on the night that Muhammad Ali fought Japanese pro wrestler Antonio Inoki in a terribly ill-conceived inter-disciplinary match, André fought ham-and-egger Chuck Wepner (the inspiration for the Rocky movies) in Shea Stadium.

Thoughts on ObamaCare's Brave New World

2010-03-22T12:23:00.000-05:00

I get the sense that very few people are non-plussed by the passage of President Obama's healthcare reform bill last night--you are either enthusiastically happy with the new bill or vociferously unhappy with it. Some mildly-interelated thoughts for both camps:

* As a political matter this was a destabilizing act. Passing a gargantuan piece of legislation with permanent consequences for the country using only the support of one party (and against bipartisan opposition) against significant popular unhappiness with the legislation will have large political consequences, both immediate and long-term.

Seats that were safe will not be. Candidates who are not ready for prime-time will find themselves winning the political lottery. ObamaCare will destabilize the political environment in the same way the Iraq war did, upsetting coalitions, elevating new figures, and dooming once solid-seeming politicians on all sides.

* No Democratic politician can any longer credibly claim to be anti-abortion. This is particularly worrisome because once abortion becomes a purely party-driven issue (as opposed to a mostly party-driven issue) it will become even harder to find common ground of the "safe, legal, and rare" variety. By necessity Democrats will cease to be pro-choice and become objectively pro-abortion.

* For people who like to think of themselves in ideological, rather than party-based, political terms, ObamaCare is a hard lesson. When push comes to shove, political parties matter, quite a bit. Any Republican who, say, voted for Jim Webb as a sensible, hard-nosed Democrat over George Allen, a bumbling, embarrassment of a Republican, is now confronted with the stern truth about the power of parties. To paraphrase the great Midge Decter, at the end of the day you have to join the side you're on.

* At the same time, George W. Bush deserves at least some small sliver of credit for ObamaCare. He was so careless with the final term of his presidency, so completely uninterested in the fate of the Republican party aprés moi, that he helped Democrats to the Congressional majorities which made this possible.

ObamaCare End-Game Game Theory

2010-03-19T07:36:00.003-05:00

I have no deep thoughts about the substance of President Obama's health-care scheme, but I do find the game-theory of the last few weeks (and next 60 hours) very interesting.

One of the principle failings of economic theory is that it always assumes rational actors. I don't think you can assume that many of the wavering Democrats are behaving rationally:

* By their own lights, very few people--and by definition none of the waverers--like this bill in and of itself. If the bill was self-evidently great, they wouldn't be wavering.

* There's no credible way to claim that for a wavering congressman, voting for the bill will help with their re-election. A "yes" vote might help some Democrats, but it's not going to help the swing-district Dems who have to face the music in seven months.

* There are certainly Democrats for whom even the highly-imperfect bill--with all its attendant political ramifications--would be deemed an ideological bargain at twice the price. Let's pretend for a minute that we had a Republican president and a Republican Congress poised to pass a deeply unpopular bill that would outlaw abortion. All Republicans understood that such passage would cause the GOP to lose the next three election cycles. Would many Republican office-holders make that deal? My guess is: Yes.

The problem is, the kind of Republicans who would take that bargain would be the ones who already have the best chances of re-election. For the anti-abortion bill to pass, it would need the support of more marginal Republicans ("marginal" here applying to their ideological status, not their moral worth, obvs). Mike Pence might be willing to lose his seat to outlaw abortion. But would Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe give up their jobs to pass an anti-abortion bill? I very much doubt it.

So what the president and the Congressional leadership is trying to do is persuade the marginal members of their party to act irrationally--that is, against their electoral self-interest and against their ideological bias. (I'm sure some of the wavering Dems are "for" health-care reform in the abstract, but probably not much more than moderate Republicans are abstractly "for" choosing life. And I doubt that very many of the waverers are "for" this particular health-care reform in any meaningful, ideological way.)

At the end of the day, I suppose that's what real power is: The ability to convince people to behave contrary to their best interests.

***

Which leads us to the end-game game theory. There are two countervailing imperatives on any remaining "undecided" congressmen.

1) Hold out as long as you can in the hope that the issue will become settled before you have to render your decision.

2) Make your decision as soon as you can so that you don't become the deciding vote, thereby putting a giant target on your back.

I'm sure John Nash could work the numbers and give us a graph showing the equilibrium point of these two equations and predicting the hour and minute at which the final congressman will make up his mind.

There is, however, one other pressure, which I assume exists, but which is not being talked about.

3) Assuming your re-election is out of reach, hold out for long as possible in the hope of extracting some iron-clad post-Congress income from the Democratic establishment or friends thereof.

It was hilarious hearing Obama threaten not to campaign for "no" Democrats earlier this week. Any Democrat who has to even consider voting "no" is going to run as far away from Obama as possible come November. This president is going to be electoral poison in vulnerable districts. What I assumed Obama's threat implicitly meant was this: The president is not going to take care of any "no" Democrat who loses in November.

When people euphemistically talk about the leadership trying to "change minds" I assume they're not just referring to government pork for the district.

***

Speaking of, Marjorie Margolies-Mazvinsky--who did okay for herself after doing a kamikaze for her party--had a charming op-ed the other day telling Democrats that she was glad, in retrospect, that she voted for the Clinton '93 budget, lost her seat, "saved" the presidency, etc. I wonder if she really means that.

By which I mean this: By their own lights, would Democrats really trade the first 2 years of the Clinton presidency for the 12 years that followed it? You can't make a straight-line projection from the 1993 tax increase to the 1994 Republican re-alignment, but they're closely related. If you're a Democrat who believes that the Republican Congress which existed more or less from 1994 to 2006 and did all sorts of dreadful things to the country--welfare "reform", tax cuts, war authorization, rolling back women's reproductive rights, et al--might have been avoided by tanking the 1993 tax increase, wouldn't you jump at the chance to go back in time and re-do that vote?

***

For vote counts, Fire Dog Lake seems pretty good (which is to say, both well-researched and modest) as does The Hill.

NCAA Wrap-Up

2010-03-19T05:13:00.000-05:00

If I was in a pool and I had gone heavy on the Big East and I was a Georgetown alum, I'd hope that my friends and family welded the windows shut and hid sharp objects from me.

NB: I've already removed the stapler and letter opener from Matus's office.

Justified

2010-03-18T15:01:00.000-05:00

There, it's my gift to you. Go put it on your DVR schedule and catch up with this week's premier on On Demand or the Hulu machine or whatever. Just get in now on the ground floor, because this series is going to be crazy awesome.

The first episode was some of the best TV I've seen in years. Justified is an Elmore Leonard rough adaptation. On the surface it plays like Hillbilly Heat, but only the chassis is crime story. Underneath the hood, Justified is pure Western. The premise is a U.S. Marshal who gets himself banished from the Miami field office and back to a small branch in rural Kentucky, which happens to be where he's from. There he immediately gets involved in tracking down a fellow he was buddies with in high school, who now happens to be an Aryan brotherhood, white-supremacist type. It is, by turns, tense, engaging, and even funny. And it changes speeds effortlessly.

Also, I suspect it's going to (finally) make a big star out of Timothy Olyphant. A tease below of the awesomeness:

Finally, the Sex Cannon Has Come Back to Washington!

2010-03-17T10:49:00.000-05:00

Skins Superfans were jazzed enough about the Larry Johnson signing but hold the phone! The new era of responsible management in Washington has continued with the Redskins signing 2 tons of twisted steel and sex appeal--Sexy Rexy Grossman!

Let's celebrate with a dip back into the Sex Cannon archives:

Is that Berrian? I think he’s triple-covered. You know what? Fuck it. I’m throwing it downfield.

Yeah, I see Jones open on the flank. But fuck that. Dumpoff passes are for faggots. I’m fucking Sexy Rexy Grossman. I can get that ball in there. And, even if I can’t, I bet I’ll be able to pull it off the next go round. I like throwing the ball long. It makes my dick hard.

What’s that? I should throw a quick slant? Fuck that. That’s gay. Button hook? Gay. Flare out? Gay. Screen pass? Kevin Spacey gay. This is fucking football. You can’t just expect wins to come to you. You can’t massage that shit. You gotta grab that game by the throat and rape the ever-loving shit out of it. You think a 5-yard out is gonna win you a game? You’re a pussy. This ain’t John Shoop running this offense. Sexy Rexy’s got the arm. The dragon. You gotta unleash the dragon.

Okay, I’m throwing it. Nice. Look how far it went. I look good. I bet I made that Pats cheerleader wet her panties with that throw. She fucking wants me. I bet she likes it over a stair railing. I can hit that with 100% accuracy, my dear. Mmmmmm. I am delicious.

Oh shit. Looks like Samuel caught it. Again. Oh well. It still felt fucking great to throw that shit. Tell me that wasn’t one of the prettiest passes you ever saw. You know what? Not only am I gonna throw it long the next time we hit the field. I’m gonna throw it even longer. Harder. You see that kid in wheelchair sitting in the end zone bleachers? I’m gonna nail him right between the fucking eyes with a Sexy Rexy fastball. Why? Because I can.

This is Rex Grossman we’re talking about here. We’re talking 210 lbs. of twisted steel and sex appeal. I’m not just a gunslinger. I’m a cumslinger. Throwing that ball long tells all the Rexettes that I am fucking out there. On the edge. Where I gotta be. The ladies love the danger. The unpredictability. Oh, maybe I’ll tease them with a pretty touch pass every now and again. But then I’m gonna go right back to pumping that ball out for all it’s worth. It tells them I throw like I fuck. That’s how we do things in the sexy business.

The Big Short

2010-03-16T16:32:00.000-05:00

Galley Friend M.C. points us to this 60 Minutes piece on the new Michael Lewis book. It looks pretty great.

But has anyone else noticed how very, very much Steve Kroft looks like Ryan O'Neill?

Smash the Internet

2010-03-16T14:28:00.000-05:00

Cracked has a truly fantastic post on five dangers to the internet as we now know it. Great tech writing in breezy, layman's terms. I can't recommend it enough.

Andrew Sullivan, Jeffrey Goldberg, and The Atlantic--Updated

2010-03-12T12:33:00.002-05:00

Jeffrey Goldberg deserves some credit for pushing back against Andrew Sullivan instead of just going along to get along. But he adds a curious addendum:

UPDATE: When I implied above that a magazine with standards would not allow Andrew to misinterpret history, I should have stated that the Atlantic's website has no fact-checking standards, and not that it has no standards at all.

In all seriousness, what standards are those? They allow profanity, misrepresentation, public criticism of fellow employees, the endorsement of criminal activity, descriptions of sex, and truly pornographic use of the first-person. What is explicitly ruled out-of-bounds by TheAtlantic.com's Standards & Practices Handbook?

Update: Goldberg now says that he simply isn't going to respond to Sullivan anymore. Well, okay. That's one way to do it. Go along, get along it is!

BSG Sabotage

2010-03-11T12:57:00.002-05:00

From Galley Friend B.W.

Turn it up. Way up. And drink in the awesome.

"Now" vs. Last Year

2010-03-09T11:32:00.000-05:00

Galley Friend M.C. has a post up about David Gelernter's lament about the internet and "nowness." It's very smart. Around the time of the Iranian election last year I wrote a long post (which I never published) about my dream to launch a magazine that was the anti-thesis of nowness, theoretically called Last Year. Here's the resurrected idea:

***

During the beginnings of the Iranian post-election uprising, someone posited that the Twitter/Blogo-sphere had finally succeeded in creating two distinctive species of news consumers: People who relied on Old Media, whose understanding of the world was shallow and lagged something like 48 hours behind reality and people who relied on the newest of New Media, whose perceptions of events were broad and immediate. The suggestion being that those relying on the Twiblosphere were much better informed and much more up to date, culiminating in a better grounding of the world around us.

Let's grant a couple things. First, let's grant that if you were plugged into the Twiblosphere last weekend, you knew (or thought you knew) that events in Iran had suddenly shifted and that the regime was imperiled by a mass backlash against what was taken to be a rigged election. (Or rather, an election more rigged than the rigging everyone had already assumed to be built into the affair.) By relying on hundreds, or thousands, of mostly anonymous, burst transmissions you were able to piece together a pixelated version of events in something like real time. You couldn't be sure that any given pixel was true, but the sea of them was able to tell you that something was happening.

Second, let's grant that if you were part of the great unwashed getting your news from the papers--or even skipping out on news during weekends altogether--you were absolutely behind the time curve in understanding what was happening in Iran. And when you did finally figure out what was going on, the perception you got was already outdated.

The obvious question is, does it matter? Practically speaking, unless you're part of a very small circle of people--DoD, State, the White House, a dissident group, someone with financial interests or family in the region--is there any real value to immediacy? I'd argue no. I doubt events in Iran would have been altered much if bloggers at the Atlantic hadn't learned about the uprising until last Tuesday.

But more importantly, is it possible that the immediacy of information diminishes our understanding of the world around us? It certainly seems possible. At nearly every level of the physical and intellectual worlds, speed creates uncertainty and mistakes. Time allows deliberation and judiciousness. This is true of everything from writing to quarterbacking. The faster you have to go, the more mistakes you make.

The Twiblosphere has its place. And even if it didn't, it's not going away anytime soon. (By "it" I mean forms of instaneous publishing; I think it's very possible that Twitter will be seen as a bizarre fad a few years from now.) But as the Twiblosphere has expanded, it has seduced and absorbed a bunch of projects which used to be devoted to long-view reflection and converted them to the realm of the Now.

I'm not sure that's a good thing. Actually, I suspect it's very, very bad in the long term. One of the founding hopes of the blogosphere was that all writing was forever and that your links could haunt you until the end of time, that the blogosphere could "fact check your ass." There's been some of that. But I think you could reasonably argue that the volume of writing has actually had something of the opposite effect on serious thinking: It's hard to remember arguments or schools of thought from even two months ago.

It seems to me that the Now has become a terribly over-served niche. Long-view reevaluation has become dramatically underserved.

One of my little fantasies is to have some think tank start a journal--we'll call it Last Year, just for giggles--which dealt exclusively with events from 12 months ago. So, for instance, the June 2010 issue would look back at the initial weeks of the Iranian uprising, explain the contemporaneous thinking surrounding it, and then evaluate how such thinking held up. Were the people claiming that the election was obviously rigged proven correct? Was the school lauding President Obama for his caution shown to be wise? In retrospect, was the uprising, more, or less, serious than it initially appeared?

That's a magazine I'd read, anyway.

Sad News--Updated

2010-03-08T17:16:00.001-05:00

Variety has just let go of Todd McCarthy, who I have long regarded as America's best movie critic. McCarthy's reviews were so objective, informed, and modest that they often read less like critiques and more like appraisals. He wasn't telling you if he liked or disliked a movie: He was telling you what was objectively good about it, what was objectively not good about it, and what the data suggested its commercial prospects might be like. While the rest of America's critics tried to shout one another down (or show off their erudition), McCarthy came as close as anyone could to divining some measure of truth about the movies he reviewed. The closest analog I've ever seen is Walt Mossberg's tech reviews.

I'll miss his work.

Update: Roger Ebert has a fantastic little essay about how he met McCarthy as a high school kid:

I met him so long ago. When I was new in my job at the Chicago Sun-Times, I got a letter one day from a high school kid who said he loved the movies and wanted to have a talk with me about them. The letter struck a note. I met Todd and his friend Charles Flynn at Andy's, a place with pretty good hamburgers, outside the back door of the Sun-Times.

They knew everything about the movies. They had seen them all, debated them all, written about half of them. They became for me examples of a species I thought of as "Doc Films Kids," named after Doc Films at the University of Chicago, the nation's oldest film society. Other Doc Films Kids included Dave Kehr, now at the New York Times. They'd seen so many movies I didn't see how it was possible in such brief lifetimes. Once at O'Rourke's, Flynn was telling me how much Otto Preminger hated over-the-shoulder shots, and I nodded wisely while asking myself, how in the hell does he know that?

There's more great stuff in there.

Even Further Thoughts on Alpha Males

2010-03-08T13:27:00.000-05:00

Galley Friend T.R. sends in some deep thoughts on men and women, in response to that long, meandering post on alpha males, the new dating game, Tod, etc:

I fear you neglect three points in generalizing about the creature Today's Woman:

1) You are actually only talking about the (heartbreakingly large) subset of women who have been abandoned or neglected by their fathers. The whole wanting to connect with the guy who blows you off thing pretty much reduces to that. Women who have always had close and affectionate relationships with their father find the bad boy attractions of their friends mystifying and the guy who ignores them irrelevant.

2) The phenomenon you describe precisely inverts over time. The 20-year old is thrilled by the cool older guy who doesn't remember her name. The 30-year old is mildly miffed... maybe mildly intrigued. The 40-year old mom is just annoyed - though she DOES like that nice Dad who knows her childrens' name, and thinks the guy who remembered and praised her homemade dip from last year's Super Bowl party is actually quite charming. The 50-year old is positively delighted by the guy who notices her shoes, and the 60-year old is smitten by the guy who simply remembers her name.

3) Do not underestimate the power of peer validation among women. This is a longer topic for another time, but men rate all other men on a scale of 1 to 3 (loser, good guy, rock star). Women rate each other on a scale of 1 to 100 (it may be 1 to 1000, I am still exploring this), with gradations based on clothes, where their kids go to school, hair, butt size, career, husband's car, promiscuity, house size, etc. Their principal social interaction consists of hot-syncing with each other over who is where on this list and, most importantly, which bitch is trying to act like a 62 when we all know she's a 59, right? The point for this discussion is, if the high status girl sleeps with a guy, it rockets his desirability up the chart faster than any single thing that he could do or be. Success breeds success, failure failure. The pleasant mopey guy in his 30s is a leper. If he's a widower, he's attractive. If his dead wife was a high status knockout . . . he's fishin' with dynamite.

"Fishing with dynamite"? No comment.

Eric Massa: BSG Nerd?

2010-03-08T13:10:00.003-05:00

Galley Friend T.R. sends this excellent observation about Democratic Rep. Eric Mass: When describing his alleged mis-doings, Massa uses BSG slang!

"And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and I said, 'What I really ought to be doing is frakking you,' and then tossled the guy's hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where I shouldn't be there."

Oscars? Let's Talk Alice

2010-03-08T13:08:00.000-05:00

The giant opening weekend for Alice in Wonderland ($116M) shows you that studio execs aren't stoopid for making pre-existing properties. For all the records Avatar broke, one of the most interesting was "Biggest opening weekend for an original property." Even with all the hype and all the ad support and fanboy love, etc, etc, Avatar could only do $77M. That's saying something.

Second, is it just me, or is the Oscar weekend becoming a pretty good box office weekend? I'm not going to go through the charts, but I think Watchmen, 300, Bringing Down the House, and maybe Pink Panther all did very good business right around this time. One of the real changes we're seeing in the industry is that in the bad, old days (even into the late 1990s) to open wide you had to be in the summer or December. Execs have figured out how to create a summer-like opening weekend any weekend of the year.

Third, Depp is a big movie star and everything, but I'm struck by how very, very many pre-existing properties he's starred in. All of his biggest hits are pre-solds (Alice, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Pirates, etc.). When he makes a movie that's original (let's count Public Enemies even though it was based on a book based on a true story), it doesn't open all that big.

Fourth, is $100M the new $50M for opening weekends? It looks that way. Before 2002, a $100M weekend was thought to be theoretically possible, but practically almost impossible. After all, if The Phantom Menace--the most hyped movie ever created--could only do $65M in three days, it was going to take a lot of ticket inflation to get a picture over the $100M hump.

Since Spider-Man broke the century mark, 13 other movies have done it.

Living the Dream, cont.

2010-03-04T10:54:00.000-05:00

Like last year, I have come into possession of a book I never imagined I'd own:

Also like last year, this is only temporary. In a few weeks I'll turn it over to its new owner. Even so, it's a charge to be able to hold onto it for a little while.

The BBC Restructures

2010-03-02T14:18:00.001-05:00

This story will probably not get a ton of attention, but it strikes me as being important for the media world.

Further Thoughts on "The New Dating Game," Alphas, and Manliness.

2010-03-02T10:45:00.004-05:00

Two weeks ago I talked a little about Charlotte Allen's excellent piece on "The New Dating Game," the "seduction community," etc. On further reflection, something else stands out at me from the piece: Bloggers such as Roissy spend a lot of time talking about the difference between "alpha" and "beta" men, but I think they misunderstand these types and that this misunderstanding is part of a general inability of modern culture to come to grips with what I'll call, for lack of a better term, manliness. This could be a long digression, so feel free to check out now if the topic bores you.

The one great insight which Roissy et al have is this: Chicks dig guys who don't particularly care about them. This isn't a universal truth, of course, but it's predominant enough to be reasonably treated as universal. The greatest swordsman I ever knew was a guy in high school named Tod. Tod plowed his way through dozens of girls in high school alone. Probably upwards of 30, maybe as many as 50. He was such a stud that he even bagged hot seniors when he was an underclassman, an unheard of achievement in our milieu.

Tod was a good athlete, though not exceptional; he was from a good family, though not particularly wealthy by the standards of our school. Tod's three relevant characteristics were: (1) He was very good looking; (2) He was genuinely friendly to everybody around him, from teachers and nerds to the other cool kids; (3) He absolutely *did not care* whether or not a girl was into him. This wasn't an act. He really didn't give a shit. As a result, girls threw themselves at him, day and night.

(A brief aside about Tod: All of this was impressive enough, but what elevated Tod as a grandmaster was that none of the girls he plucked ever had anything bad to say about him afterwards. They all still loved him and liked being around him. My buddies would joke that watching Tod work was like being in the presence of Michelangelo. Last I heard, Tod had become a born-again Christian, gotten his doctorate in molecular biology, had kids, and was teaching college.)

Anyway, Tod was exceptional, but what made him so was his very real indifference regarding any particular girl. And that indifference is why so many guys with all-consuming interests--think skaters and surfers and pot-heads--also get a lot of girls. They're not necessarily "alphas"--they just exhibit the core of what Roissy et al think "alpha" means.

And here's where the question is a little more broadly interesting. What is an alpha male? We can start with what alpha-ness isn't: It isn't simply money or power. Those are effects, not causes. Ted Turner and Dan Snyder, for instance, are both very rich dudes. Turner, if you've ever seen him up-close, is probably an alpha. Snyder probably is not. American presidents are the most powerful men in the world. Ronald Reagan was probably an alpha. Jimmy Carter probably was not.

Likewise the ability to bag a lot of girls. Some of the Roissy et al group might actually be alphas, but the ability to score isn't the definition of alpha-ness. The key mistake Roissy et al make, I think, is believing that alpha status has anything to do with women. Just the opposite: What makes alphas different is their ability to relate to other men. And if we had to come up with a one-sentence descriptor of what makes an alpha male, I'd argue that this is as good as anything:

An alpha male is a man with the ability to convince other men to follow him into battle.

Presence, command, authority--the alpha qualities are charismatic. That makes them hard to define. But in general, you know one when you see one. I doubt very much that you'll find all that many alphas in an Adams Morgan club on a Saturday night. You can find them by the dozen down on the Marine base at Quantico, though.

Alphas aren't exclusive to the martial life. Pope John Paul was almost certainly an alpha (if that's not heretical to say). Laird Hamilton is a an alpha, as are lots of other high-level athletes (particularly in team sports--think Tom Brady). Some businessmen are (the aforementioned Turner and Steve Jobs both come to mind). Everybody has probably met a man here or there, even from ordinary walks of life, who exudes competence and inspires trust. That's what makes an alpha. And alphas are the archetypes of manliness.

There has been a general diminution of manliness in the last 40 years or so. Some of it lamentable, some of it not. (To pick just two writings on the topic, here and here.) A large part of this cultural shift is the byproduct of the feminization of America. (I use this term descriptively, not pejoratively; again, some of the feminization has been lamentable, some has not). But when even devil-may-car men who revel in their indifference to polite society (such as Roissy et al) begin to mistake effect for cause and to misunderstand what the real markers of manliness are. Well, that suggests that manliness hasn't just been diminished, but has been somewhat perverted, too.

Update: Galley Friend C.L. says he would define alpha male thusly, "an alpha is one to whom other men naturally defer, or against whom, in a head-to-head contest, other men will usually back down."

Who's the Worst Colleague in Journalism?

2010-03-01T16:45:00.001-05:00

I've long believed that Michael Kinsley was the least-gracious guy in journalism. Well Andrew Sullivan wants a shot at the title. The Atlantic has redesigned its website and Sullivan doesn't like it. Not one bit. So he's made his criticisms public.

To be this insulting not only to the people you work for, but work with . . . it's just breathtaking. At this point, David Bradley must be like some kind of battered wife.

You don't understand what it's like with Andrew when it's just the two of us alone together--he's so smart and counterintuitive. When he shreds the magazine's credibility and pisses all over those other drones . . . that's as much my fault as it it his. I should have asked him about the redesign first. I should have made him a bigger part of the long-range planning of the institution. That's why he lashed out like that. If only I could really prove to him how much I love him, then everything would be perfect. Oh God! I just realized we took the green away! Now the Islamic Republic of Iran will never fall and it'll be my fault. He's going to be so mad. Maybe I could stay with my sister . . .

Steph Currie Doing His Best Pistol Pete Impersonation

2010-03-01T12:00:00.001-05:00

Joel Engel on the Dodgers

2010-02-26T11:57:00.000-05:00

Galley Friend Joel Engel has started up an excellent blog over at the LA Times: The Death of Common Sense. Today he writes about taxes and the L.A. Dodgers:

Sometime this spring or summer, when you're drinking a $20 beer at Dodger Stadium surrounded by the fortysomething-thousand fans who attend every game (for seven innings) at $15 per carload regardless of how mediocre the home team is, ponder for a moment that every single one of you (who is still employed) had more money withheld from just your last paycheck than the owners of the ballpark and team have paid in taxes over the last four years on reported income of $108 million.

Excellent stuff.

Nerdgasm

2010-02-24T10:51:00.000-05:00

Unless you're deep into the Whedonverse, you probably don't know who Felicia Day is. She's a nifty little actress and although she's not Tricia Helfer, she's beautiful in the way that most Hollywood actresses are, which is to say very. For instance:

Simple enough. Except that there's this little nugget from her blog, where she talks about taping an episode of Whedon's Dollhouse:

Fortunately I have been friendly with everyone on Dollhouse before shooting this episode, so it was very comfortable, being on set. Working with Zone again was very easy, because between Epitaph One and Two (cute fact) we’ve played D&D together every weekend! He randomly knows my DM, so when I walked in one day, he was sitting at the table ready to play.

What's Elvish for awesome?

Brief Healthcare Aside

2010-02-23T16:44:00.003-05:00

If both Jon Chait and Ezra Klein are talking about the healthcare "narrative" within hours of one another, then the JournoList must have finally reached consensus on the most important political aspect of the healthcare issue: Is it better to pass an unpopular bill, or to fail to pass an unpopular bill? As usual, peoples' analysis tends to dovetail nicely with their personal preferences. How convenient!

That said, the question isn't ridiculous. I just think the parties involved are approaching it from different perspective. Let's frame it in a different way:

A husband makes a pass at a woman who isn't his wife. He winds up not following through with the flirtation. His wife finds out anyway. Imagine how unhappy she might be. Now, would she be more unhappy if, instead, she found out that her husband had actually gone through with the affair? Or would her unhappiness be about the same?

That's the lens through which the politicians involved have to approach their decision. And I think that in most instances the wife (ie, the voters) would be more upset if her hubby actually nailed Tiffany from accounting (that trollop!) than if she learned that he merely made a sloppy pass at the office holiday party.

The problem, I think, is that a lot of the non-elected people on the left are viewing this not from the wife's perspective, but from the husband's. In other words, instead of thinking about the question as framed above, they're thinking about it this way:

A husband makes a pass at a woman who isn't his wife. He immediately realizes that, for whatever reason, he isn't going to be able to keep this quiet and his wife is going to be pissed. Envisioning all the trouble he's likely to be in come morning, he thinks to himself, "Jeez, if I'm going to get Elin-ed, I might as well earn it . . ."

That's fine so far as it goes. The problem is that while political opinion writers have the luxury of thinking like the husband, elected officials, by necessity, tend to think like the wife.

Great Moments in Law Enforcement

2010-02-23T14:00:00.000-05:00

Academic freedom does not extend to discussion of facts a sheriff does not like being discussed.

The Saddest Thing You'll Read Today

2010-02-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

From the headline "Growing Pains Actor Missing":

Police and worried loved ones are searching for actor Andrew Koenig, best known for playing "Boner" on 'Growing Pains,' who went missing in Vancouver a week ago.

Koenig, 42, was last seen on Feb. 14 and missed his flight out of the Olympic host city two days later, according to a statement from TV host Dave Holmes on MaximumFun.org. Authorities are searching for the actor, who has recently been working as a camera operator on the comedy podcast, 'Never Not Funny.'

Andrew's father is Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the 'Star Trek' series and films.

City of Heroes

2010-02-23T10:48:00.000-05:00

I don't love New York the way people are supposed to love New York, but it does have its highlights. The Pig sends me two links. The first is to a bar called the Gotham City Lounge, which takes the real Gotham as its model. Second is shop called Superhero Supplies which sells exactly what you'd think: invisible planes, chaos in a bottle, matter transformers, stately mansions, etc.

Awesome.

Ezra Klein

2010-02-22T20:23:00.003-05:00

Mickey Kaus has a real hard-on for Ezra Klein. Here he is poking at Klein's latest bit of analysis:

Obama's compromise health care plan is out, and "the impact on the politics will be tremendous," gushes WaPo's health care cheerleader Ezra Klein. "The release of this plan marks the end of the Scott Brown election and the resumption of the health-care process." It enables the Democrats to "take back control of the media's narrative," just as they did when they waited out the Tea Parties last August, then "used the president's big speech to pivot to the release and subsequent passage of the Senate Finance Committee's bill." ...Remember the stunning success of the president's speech? It's right here on this graph--if you squint hard you can see the temporary pause in the seemingly ineluctable rise in public opposition to Obama's health care reform right around the beginning of September. It lasted a couple of weeks. Then opposition started rising again. Now it's over 50%, with support ten points lower. ... The Dems must have lost "control of the media's narrative"!

Does Klein really believe this stuff? I don't know which answer would be more embarrassing.

Wait a minute--I actually know the answer to this one!

What would be more embarrassing is: publicly admitting that you just figured out where one of the most famous lines of dialogue in the history of cinema comes from.

Update: Santino piles on. In a good way.

A Serious Question About the E.U.

2010-02-22T13:43:00.000-05:00

The thing I always wondered about the European Union--and which no one was ever to explain to me--is what the mechanism for secession is.

If a country wanted to leave the E.U., or did something to merit being kicked out, how would that work? I assume the planners in Brussels had some contingency for this, however unlikely. After all, it's not hard to think of a few doomsday scenarios under which it becomes advantageous either to the Union or to individual member states for the two to part ways.

Maybe it's just as simple as dropping the euro and reverting to your own sovereign currency?

Ann Althouse Misses "Obama the Pragmatist"

2010-02-22T13:37:00.000-05:00

No, really: "I don't care about the labels and generalities. I voted for Obama the Pragmatist, not Obama the Ideologue or Obama the Lefty."

All due respect to Althouse, I'm not sure how you can seriously make the argument that "Obama the Pragmatist" ever existed. Here's Obama in New Hampshire in 2008:

I]n my own life, I've discovered that if you really know what you stand for, if you know what you believe in, if you know who you are fighting for, if you know what you care about and cannot be compromised--then you can afford to reach out across the aisle. You can talk to people who don't agree with you. And you do so not just because you think that you're always going to persuade them, but because people out in America, outside of Washington, are listening.

And they want to see that we can--that we don't have to agree on everything to work on something. That we can disagree without being disagreeable. That's how we can attract independents [to the] change agenda. That's how we can attract some Republicans. That's how we build a working majority for change. . . . And you can afford to be courteous. And you can say, "Yes, sir." And "No, sir." "Yes, ma'am." "No, ma'am." But if you're going to be in the way of change, get out of the way--we're pushing you aside. Very politely of course. That's how we win elections.

Dept. of Broken Promises

2010-02-19T07:44:00.001-05:00

Boy, those Canadians sure did talk big.

But hey, they're totally owning the Koreans.

Worst Video Game Movie Ever?

2010-02-19T07:41:00.003-05:00

Quite possibly. (Hey, they shoe-horned in Jack!)

Other contenders: Double Dragon and Street Fighter. Both of which make Mortal Kombat look like Citizen Kane.

Bonus: How bad was Double Dragon? Sure, it had Robert Patrick, Scott Wolf, and Alyssa Milano. But pull up the trailer, freeze fame it at the 1:22 mark, and check out the giant boom mic looming across the top of the frame.

The Dubai Assassination--Updated

2010-02-18T13:42:00.001-05:00

I think this is all pretty obvious: The operation has Treadstone written all over it.

These guys, they don't make mistakes. They don't do random. There's always an objective. Always a target.

Update: All kidding aside, two things occur to me, aside from how awesome it is that some countries still have functional wet-works divisions.

(1) The really crazy thing about a complicated op like this is that it makes you wonder how often these scenarios occur. One assumes that the logistics involved don't simply pop into place overnight, that the operatives aren't simply pulled in from other divisions, and that planning and expertise is the product of neither luck nor improvisation.

(2) To get back to Bourne: "Kill Wombosi? We can do that anytime we want. I can send Nicky to do that, for Christ's sake."

For such a sophisticated op, wouldn't the real goal be to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh and have his death appear to be either accident/unexplained, or the result of some third party?