Saturday, June 28, 2008

28 Jun 2008 07:20 pm

"The Puppy Had A Fee!"

And other mysteries from India:

28 Jun 2008 06:58 pm

Dancing Cockatoos

From Youtubes to a cure for Parkinson's?

28 Jun 2008 06:25 pm

Feeling Your Way

Atul Gawande's article on itching blew what's left of my mind:

The images in our mind are extraordinarily rich. We can tell if something is liquid or solid, heavy or light, dead or alive. But the information we work from is poor—a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing. So the mind fills in most of the picture. You can get a sense of this from brain-anatomy studies. If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you’d expect that most of the fibres going to the brain’s primary visual cortex would come from the retina. Instead, scientists have found that only twenty per cent do; eighty per cent come downward from regions of the brain governing functions like memory. Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety per cent memory and less than ten per cent sensory nerve signals.

28 Jun 2008 05:05 pm

The Cost Of Biofuels

30 million pushed into poverty?

28 Jun 2008 04:27 pm

The Rooms Of Writers

The Guardian has a lovely write-up, with lots of photographs, from Rudyard Kipling to AS Byatt. The one above is Hanif Kureishi's, who writes:

Above the desk there's a very sexy picture of Kate Moss. I think every writer needs a picture of Kate Moss in their room as an inspiration. Kate is from South London like me, and, indeed, like my girlfriend, also a Croydon girl. I've got thousands of CDs because I always listen to music when I'm writing. I've done it since I was a teenager, when I first started writing in my bedroom in Bromley. Silence makes me feel rather uncomfortable, nervous.

The flock wallpaper was in the house when I got here, I've kept it, and indeed fought to keep it, because it is like being in an Indian restaurant, and I always wanted to spend all of my life in an Indian restaurant.

Frank Wilson liked Virginia Woolf's best.

28 Jun 2008 03:41 pm

"His Jockstrap Overfloweth"

Wolcott takes on the "man crush":

Barack Obama’s willowiness and inability to pass muster as a member of the bowling team militate against his becoming a durable Man Crush object for the Beltway dilettanti, who wouldn’t be caught dead in a bingo hall. I await the inevitable moment when Matthews or Mike Barnicle or some other barstool philosopher announces that he has a Man Crush on Hillary Clinton once she’s out of the race. It would be a tribute to her toughness and a misogynist insult in one neat wrapper, but at least it wouldn’t have any of the stale piety that leaves a haze whenever John McCain is invoked. Even Karl Rove has begun sentimentalizing about McCain in print, which you know can’t be good. A Machiavellian with a Man Crush weaves a terrible web.

28 Jun 2008 03:29 pm

Why Gun Control Doesn't Work

From the archives, Daniel Polsby's 1994 article:

Gun-control laws don’t work. What is worse, they act perversely. While legitimate users of firearms encounter intense regulation, scrutiny, and bureaucratic control, illicit markets easily adapt to whatever difficulties a free society throws in their way. Also, efforts to curtail the supply of firearms inflict collateral damage on freedom and privacy interests that have long been considered central to American public life. Thanks to the seemingly never-ending war on drugs and long experience attempting to suppress prostitution and pornography, we know a great deal about how illicit markets function and how costly to the public attempts to control them can be. It is essential that we make use of this experience in coming to grips with gun control.

28 Jun 2008 02:59 pm

Stuck On The Wrong Side

Dorian Davis thinks the GOP should pivot away from blanket hostility to gay marriage. If the Republican position weren't dictated by theological diktat, that would be a smart idea.

28 Jun 2008 02:05 pm

The View From Your Window

Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, 8.30 pm. 

28 Jun 2008 01:26 pm

The Magnifying Glass Effect

A new solar technology:

Looking at the history of solar power, one of the biggest obstacles to its broad acceptance and application has been the high cost of manufacturing photovoltaic cells, and the relatively low output. Sol Focus has a solution that they think could revolutionize the industry, and it's so obvious you have to wonder why it took so long. Rather than make a large panel of pricey semi-conductors, they use comparatively cheap aluminum and glass mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a tiny chip of photovoltaic, both reducing the cost of the unit, and increasing the efficiency of electricity production.

28 Jun 2008 01:25 pm

Face Of The Day

US Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama gestures as former candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) speaks during a rally in Unity, New Hampshire, on June 27, 2008. By Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.

28 Jun 2008 01:23 pm

Obama And Abortion

Ross considers the evangelical vote:

If [Obama] moved to the center on abortion, a knowledgeable religion journalist remarked to me last week, he could win half of evangelicals under 40. But can he move to the center on abortion - by flip-flopping on partial-birth abortion, say, while making a big deal about embracing the (largely-symbolic) abortion-reduction plan being pressed by Democrats for Life -- after a bruising primary campaign in which he barely beat out a feminist icon with unimpeachable pro-choice bona fides? I've assumed that the answer is no and no again, not least because he's already ahead in the polls, and doesn't need to look for potentially gamechanging maneuvers that might blow up in his face. But if Obama wants a historic mandate, rather than a narrow win -- if he wants to cut the heart out of the GOP coalition and leave the Republicans for dead -- then breaking with his party's abortion orthodoxy to go hard after the evangelical vote is one obvious way to do it.

I do think Obama needs to explain why being pro-choice need not imply moral indifference to abortion and complacency about its frequency. A big speech on this would help the Democrats and Obama.

28 Jun 2008 12:07 pm

The Power Of Easterbrook

Did this lead to this?

28 Jun 2008 11:25 am

Journalism At Its Finest

Fox News interviews Obama:

28 Jun 2008 10:24 am

Boot Again

More flailing from the armchair general. Some points in return. Boot writes:

Sullivan thinks it’s impossible to imagine that we could have this sort of long-standing military presence in the Mideast without perpetual fighting. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that the U.S. already has a string of bases in Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other Middle Eastern countries.

Yes, er, countries. The little states that Boot mentions are essentially oil companies with territory. A few peripheral bases in Gulf states is not the same as 50 permanent bases in the sacred heartland of Islam. At least Boot acknowledged that our first attempt to station troops in a major Arab country with Islamic significance, Saudi Arabia, led to 9/11. And al Qaeda was and is motivated by Western occupation of sacred Muslim land. We may not agree with that theology but it's real. And if you want to keep the Jihadists recruiting, keep Western troops in sacred Arab Muslim land, as Boot wants. Then this lovely zinger:

The broader point is that the success of American military interventions has usually been closely related to their length. The longer we stay, the more successful we are.

We have been warned. Iraq for the next century! Then this canard:

I get the sense that Marshall and Sullivan, like many of their antiwar compatriots, don’t really care about whether we win or lose in Iraq. They simply want to get out, and damn the consequences.

No, we just want a sane response as to what "winning" means - and preferably in line with the war-aims of 2003. If it means disarming and deposing and executing Saddam, we have won. But if it means a permanent occupation of Iraq until no possible threat from there could ever emerge, we will be there for ever. That, we now discover, was the goal. Quite why we do not fully know. It cannot be an end to terror: that comes from everywhere, democracies and autocracies alike. We are left with oil, a misguided belief that the West's occupation of the Middle East will protect Israel, and, well, just because we can. None of these arguments is persuasive to me, when you factor in the enormous costs, drain on the military and absurdism of Iraqi political culture.

It's not our country; and it isn't threatening us any more. What right do we have to stay?

28 Jun 2008 10:11 am

"WTF" News

Heh:

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported Tuesday the state Division of Motor Vehicles has notified nearly 10,000 holders of license plates with the letter combination "WTF". Officials learned last year the common acronym stands for a vulgar phrase in e-mail and cell phone text messages.

28 Jun 2008 09:46 am

In Case You Missed It

28 Jun 2008 09:11 am

What Germans Eat

Germany: fried potatoes with onions, bacon and herring, fried noodles with eggs and cheese, pizza, vanilla pudding. A description of the project from the artists' website:

In Hungry Planet, Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio present a photographic study of families from around the world, revealing what people eat during the course of one week. Each family's profile includes a detailed description of their weekly food purchases; photographs of the family at home, at market, and in their community; and a portrait of the entire family surrounded by a week's worth of groceries.

More here and here.

(hat tip: Pushback)

28 Jun 2008 09:08 am

The End Of Petroleum-Based Cars

Mercedes will phase them all out by 2015.

28 Jun 2008 08:18 am

Putting Country First

McCain has a new motto:

Friday, June 27, 2008

27 Jun 2008 08:00 pm

Flatter, Simpler Taxes

A reader writes:

Almost every advocate of the flat tax (correct me if this doesn't include you) is actually proposing a progressive tax with two brackets.  These are a 0% bracket for all income below a minimum threshold (which may based on family size), and a bracket of x % for all income above that threshold.  Once you have accepted the necessity of this level of progressivity, what's so much more objectionable about having three or four brackets?

My main problem with the flat tax proponents is that they have so strongly linked tax simplification to flat taxes that they have poisoned the well for simplification advocates.  While virtually everyone who advocates flat taxes also wants tax simplification,  there is also a large constituency (perhaps larger) that wants tax simplification while maintaining progressivity.  These constituencies should join together to achieve what may be politically possible -- a massive simplification of the tax code with minimal deductions. Most flat taxers would agree that tax simplification will do much to alleviate inequities in the tax system, even if the current level of progressivity is preserved.

Yes, in most cases a flat tax would indeed exempt those below a certain level; and yes, removal of deductions and simpler taxation is a cause worth pursuing. The two belong together, especialy since the complicated tax code always benefits those with large amounts of wealth (hence effectively as unfair as progressive taxation). The model was the 1986 tax reform. The one exemption I'd keep is charity. Imagine if the only way to exempt income from taxation was to give it to charitable enterprises.

27 Jun 2008 07:05 pm

The Cheapest Of Shots

Charles Krauthammer is better than this:

Why, the man even tossed his own grandmother overboard back in Philadelphia -- only to haul her back on deck now that her services are needed. Yesterday, granny was the moral equivalent of the raving Reverend Wright. Today, she is a featured prop in Obama's fuzzy-wuzzy get-to-know-me national TV ad.

Obama's reference to his own grandmother's fear of black men was not in any conceivable universe "throwing her under the bus." It was a way to explain how Obama has seen and empathized with racial fears on both sides of the divide. The speech remains a great one, and it is an indicator of the bitterness of parts of the right that they couldn't see and embrace that. I might add that I don't disagree with Charles' assessment of Obama's steely political skills. Obama is an inspiring figure and remains a bridge to a post-boomer discourse. But he is impressive precisely because he is neither a pure Adlai Stevenson nor a protean Bill Clinton. He's more like Jack Kennedy: cunning, ruthless, capable of political positioning as much as greatness. I don't want politicians to be saints. I just don't want them to be devoid of integrity either. Obama strikes me as better, much better, than most.

27 Jun 2008 06:30 pm

WWF Warns

Global warming will give rise to the fish-people.

27 Jun 2008 05:59 pm

The Craig-Vitter Amendment

The Federal Marriage Amendment is reintroduced. And with perfect symbolism, its sponsors are Larry Craig, whose own marriage is based on a lie, and prostitute-client and foe of HIV-positive tourists, David Vitter. But it's committed gay couples who threaten marriage! And people wonder why some of us are sick of the Republican party.

27 Jun 2008 05:56 pm

McCain Caves To Christianists

He'll do what he can to undermine gay married couples in California - all in defense of the "family."

27 Jun 2008 05:56 pm

"Progressive Taxation," Ctd.

A reader writes:

I loved this post.  Why?  It’s not because I necessarily agree with all of it, or any of it, for that matter.  But because it’s a post about real policy differences; honest, thoughtful and completely legitimate.  I fully expect that after Obama is elected, you will spend the next 4 years rightfully hammering him on his policies and then hopefully you’ll get to vote for someone more in line with your conservative ideals.

But not this year.  We have to get the big things right (no torture, sane Middle East policy, sweeping our government clean of the Christianists) before we can move back to these quaint discussions.

I look forward to the day when you expressing your conservative view infuriates me.  For now, it just makes me warmly smile, thinking fondly of times, past and future, when talking about things like “tax fairness” are the most important things we need to change in our government.

If Obama is elected, I'm sure I will find plenty to criticize him on. I'm also sure his election would be the best thing to happen for the future of conservatism as a coherent governing philosophy in a long time.

27 Jun 2008 05:25 pm

Face Of The Day

A California sea lion catches a fish on June 27, 2008 at the zoo in Nuremberg, southern Germany. In wild life, California sea lions live in coastal regions of the northern Pacific Ocean. By Timm Schamberger/AFP/Getty.

27 Jun 2008 05:04 pm

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

Rosen's pulled quote lends little support to the position that Obama has been consistent in his "support for the execution of child rapists."  The example Obama gave in the Audacity of Hope was "the rape and murder of a child."  The key word is "and."  Both rape and murder, not just rape.

27 Jun 2008 04:59 pm

Hewitt Award Nominee

"By the way, I -- I'm still trying to find two tickets to the Ohio State-USC game. And none of the USC people will give up their tickets to me. I'd pay fair price. They -- they know Ohio State's gonna slaughter the Trojans. They know that they're gonna slaughter the Trojans, and therefore they do not want me there at the bloodbath, since it's probably the last football game we'll ever get to see before the United States gets blown up by the Islamists under Obama," - Hugh Hewitt.

27 Jun 2008 04:53 pm

Quote For The Day

"I don't want you to take out of context what I said during the campaign," - Lanny Davis, to Barack Obama today. Heh.

27 Jun 2008 04:46 pm

Do Women Write Hate-Email?

Tyler Curtain wants to know.

27 Jun 2008 04:29 pm

Yglesias Award Nominee II

"This case, for me, is one of those uncomfortable situations in which my honest opinion is not the one I'd desperately like to be able to argue. As much as I abhor the possible real-word impact of the ruling, I fear that it's probably right," - Eugene Robinson, Washington Post.

27 Jun 2008 04:22 pm

Can Emily's List Recover?

They had a terrible 2006 election cycle and threw their entire weight behind the Clinton campaign. Ellen Malcolm, an IBM heiress, is the big macher and uncowed:

In April, she suggested that her group might not back some of EMILY's List's brightest stars, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who supported Obama during the primary.

"We'll just have to wait and see," Malcolm said when asked whether the senators could lose their seats because they backed Obama, the Associated Press reported on April 18. That quote incensed many in progressive Democratic circles, who viewed it as a threat. "That is a big, big mistake," Fenn said. "Listen, you're trying to expand the tent, not shrink it."

27 Jun 2008 04:07 pm

Prudence and Progressive Taxation

A reader makes the best case I know of for progressive taxation at this present time:

We have seen during the Bush and Reagan eras the negative effects of a more regressive tax policy.  The gap between rich and poor widens.  The middle class stagnates, while incomes for the top 10% explodes.  Crime rates rise, families crack under the strain, whole communities undergo upheaval, the wealthy separate themselves in gated communities, and on and on.  If Burkian conservatism is based on a respect for societal traditions and community institutions, one of its greatest adversaries must be unencumbered market forces and the "creative destruction" it unleashes.  Have you read your "Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism" lately?  I'd say if you want to avoid  a future of wholesale class conflict and radical socialism, the smart thing to do would be to keep the gap between the rich and the poor from becoming a chasm.

This is also why Ross and Reihan may be ideologically difficult for me to agree with but are making an important contribution. Conservatism is defined, to my mind, by a respect for practical wisdom, the knowledge of when to abandon certain principles in the face of emergent realities. It is a perfectly conservative worry to follow Aristotle in hoping for a strong middle class as a bulwark for a stable mixed regime. If global economic forces shred that class or drastically exacerbate social and economic inequality so as to threaten the stability of the polity, conservatives should be open to some measure of redistributionism as a palliative. Not as a general principle - but as a temporary pragmatic response to a social danger.

The question then becomes one of whether progressive taxation is the right way to go - or whether raising exemptions, expanding the EITC, investing in public education are not better routes. Where Obama has made me pause is his assertion that we need some re-balancing after the last twenty years. I'm still skeptical for all the reasons I stated here. But it would not be a conservative thing to dismiss the argument at the present time. And the need for greater fiscal responsibility might push some Obamacons toward gritting their teeth and accepting a more liberal Obama administration than we'd like.

27 Jun 2008 03:47 pm

$7 Gas By 2010?

It's looking more and more likely that Americans' long vacation from energy reality may be coming to a close. Details here. Bradford Plumer comments. The full report is here (pdf).

27 Jun 2008 03:38 pm

Pork Invaders!

McCain's trademark issue has been made into a video game. Have fun.

27 Jun 2008 03:19 pm

How The Music Industry Will Survive

Nine Inch Nails shows the way: giving away their new album online and then using their website to shower coolness on downloaders via Google Maps:

P.S. - If you are one of the people from Fiji who got the record, can we crash on your couch?

27 Jun 2008 02:48 pm

Obama On The Death Penalty

Jeff Rosen rightly defends him from charges of expediency:

Obama's support for the execution of child rapists wasn't invented for the presidential election; it dates back to The Audacity of Hope, where he wrote:

"While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes--mass murder, the rape and murder of a child--so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment."

His longstanding opinion on the death penalty is a particularly nuanced one. He has opposed expanding the death penalty to include gang activity, for example, on the grounds that it would disproportionately punish men of color, but he supports the execution of especially egregious murderers who are clearly guilty.

27 Jun 2008 02:31 pm

Google Earth's Directions

From Sydney to Los Angeles. Direction # 6 is priceless.

27 Jun 2008 02:18 pm

A Culture Of Life

Noah Millman reflects on the Supreme Court ruling that child rape is not grounds for capital punishment:

It does seem to me that if you start from a premise of such a right to life, then you can only barely justify the death penalty in cases of murder (on the grounds of satisfaction and/or expiation – the consequentialist justifications will never fly), and certainly not in any other cases. If our humanity is inalienable, that really does mean that nothing we do can take it away from us. In which case you cannot say that raping a child makes someone into such a monster as cannot be suffered to live.

This is the Catholic position. But not the theocon one.

27 Jun 2008 02:12 pm

The Rarest Clouds

It's summer on the Cape and the mind turns to cirrus and mammatus and lenticular, among others. A handy guide from cloud-centric Britain here.

27 Jun 2008 02:06 pm

The View From Your Window

New York, New York, 6 pm.

27 Jun 2008 01:47 pm

The Failures Of The Surge

Larison responds to Reihan:

Harmonious and cosmopolitan [Baghdad] may not have been, but it was far more so in the “bad old days” than it has been since, which is really what is behind Klein’s point about the cleansing of sectarian enemies out of mixed neighbourhoods. Destructive sectarianism has restored some measure of peace in the same way that the burning of the Greek and Armenian quarters in Smyrna more or less ended the Greco-Turkish conflict, which is to say in the worst possible way.

Continue reading "The Failures Of The Surge" »

27 Jun 2008 01:33 pm

Advance For The Obama-Clinton Love-Fest

A leaked "memo".

27 Jun 2008 01:33 pm

One Less Soldier

The Pentagon moves against Army Sergeant Darren Manzella:

Manzella, 30, enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2002 and was twice deployed to the Middle East in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. While under fire on the streets of Baghdad, he provided medical care to his fellow soldiers, Iraqi National Guardsmen and civilians. He was awarded the Combat Medical Badge, and also received several other awards recognizing his courage and service.

Now booted for being gay.

27 Jun 2008 01:17 pm

Battery Booster

Some mixed views from experts in the field on McCain's $300 million prize for a better battery.

27 Jun 2008 01:05 pm

Fuck You, He Explained

Leave aside the gravity of the charges against David Addington. Just check out his attitude toward the elected congressmen and congresswomen in yesterday's hearings. The total contempt for democratic processes, for the most legitimate of questions in the face of proof that war crimes have been committed: it tells you a lot about the arrogance at the heart of the Cheney operation:

David Addington was there under subpoena. And he wasn't happy about it.

Could the president ever be justified in breaking the law? "I'm not going to answer a legal opinion on every imaginable set of facts any human being could think of," Addington growled. Did he consult Congress when interpreting torture laws? "That's irrelevant," he barked. Would it be legal to torture a detainee's child? "I'm not here to render legal advice to your committee," he snarled. "You do have attorneys of your own."

He had the grace of Gollum as he quarreled with his questioners.

Gollum? He's Sauron, mate. That kind of arrogance lay behind the decision to secretly authorize torture against the law, to pack the US Attorneys with partisan cronies, to out undercover agents, to spin critical WMD data to suit an already fixed policy, and to use a national crisis to force through contentious, divisive and self-defeating expansions of executive power. It's a vision of government as an elected four year despotism, answerable only to itself. Whatever else happens, we must not let this type of thinking back into the government any time soon.

(Photo: David Addington, Chief of Staff and former counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, by Melissa Golden/Getty Images)

27 Jun 2008 12:54 pm

Ygelsias Award Nominee

"Sometimes in life (and in law), there are things that we might desire from a policy standpoint -- like certain forms of gun control, or restrictions on some election-related speech -- which are nevertheless forbidden by the Constitution.  And as liberals -- unlike the other guys -- we ought not try to pretend that the Constitution doesn't exist when it gets in the way of our policy preferences," - Adam B at Daily Kos.

27 Jun 2008 12:51 pm

Neocons In Ireland!

Who knew?

27 Jun 2008 12:45 pm

The Bush Era Finds Its Quote

"No, I wouldn’t be responsible, is the answer to your question. Legally or morally," - David Addington, answering whether his own approval of torture methods had anything to do with the CIA's subsequent use of waterboarding and other torture techniques against prisoners in US custody.