Saturday, February 14, 2009

14 Feb 2009 06:32 pm

The End Of Permanence

Nick Carr explains how ebooks can be revised after publication:

One of the things that happens when books and other writings start to be distributed digitally through web-connected devices like the Kindle is that their text becomes provisional. Automatic updates can be sent through the network to edit the words stored in your machine - similar to the way that, say, software on your PC can be updated automatically today.

My last book, whose first print run was bollixed by HarperCollins, would have been salvageable. Stephanie at UrbZen gets paranoid about retroactive censorship.

14 Feb 2009 04:05 pm

Quote For The Day

"When it comes to the culture, conservatives should promote an awareness of the costs of unchecked individual autonomy, while challenging conceptions of freedom that deny the need for self-restraint and self-denial. When it comes to economics, they should emphasize the virtue and necessity of Americans, collectively as well as individually, learning to live within their means. When it comes to foreign policy, they should advocate a restoration of realism, which will necessarily entail abandoning expectations of remaking the world in America's own image," - Andrew Bacevich, TNR.

14 Feb 2009 03:58 pm

The Running Of The Bears

Duff McDonald makes a list of economic pundits you'd better pray are wrong.

14 Feb 2009 03:22 pm

Is Food The New Sex?

Mary Eberstadt tut-tuts changing mores:

Just as the food of today often attracts a level of metaphysical attentiveness suggestive of the sex of yesterday, so does food today seem attended by a similarly evocative — and proliferating — number of verboten signs. The opprobrium reserved for perceived “violations” of what one “ought” to do has migrated, in some cases fully, from one to the other. Many people who wouldn’t be caught dead with an extra ten pounds — or eating a hamburger, or wearing real leather — tend to be laissez-faire in matters of sex. In fact, just observing the world as it is, one is tempted to say that the more vehement people are about the morality of their food choices, the more hands-off they believe the rest of the world should be about sex. What were the circumstances the last time you heard or used the word “guilt” — in conjunction with sin as traditionally conceived? Or with having eaten something verboten and not having gone to the gym?

It's a fascinating read, although I think Eberstadt tries a little too hard to argue that the moralization of food is somehow directly related to the demoralization of consensual adult sex. Modernity has allowed us, via technology, far less dangerous and consequential ways of enjoying both food and sex. And society adjusts to this new freedom as we discover the lingering problems with each. Still, who can resist a subtitle like "Broccoli, Pornography and Kant"?

14 Feb 2009 02:58 pm

Why The Flu Flourishes In Winter

Lower humidity?

14 Feb 2009 02:29 pm

The View From Your Window

Wick, Scotland, 9 am

14 Feb 2009 02:11 pm

Dog Blogging

Katie Rolnick lists ten pet trends that must die:

As if we don't waste enough time on Facebook, there are a slew of sites for pet owners to create profiles for their beloved companions. According to a story in Time, the canine social networking site Doggyspace.com had nearly 700,000 users last July. For dogs who can't stop checking their profile, there's Doggyspace Rehab Program -- which even includes a theme song, sung to the tune of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love.'" Meanwhile, blogs like Max the Golden Retriever and the St. Louis Meezers are written from the pet's perspective.

I refuse, however, to give up my occasional beagle photos.

14 Feb 2009 02:00 pm

Voice Drawing

A time-waster:

Ze Frank...made a little flash drawing tool. You won’t need a mouse but a microphone if you want to draw. A low volume tone will make the line curve counterclockwise, a medium will let it run straight and a high volume will turn the line to the right...You can try it out for yourself here.

Most fun.

14 Feb 2009 01:12 pm

How The Crash Will Reshape America

Packer ponders the political implications of Richard Florida's cover story:

The landscape of the future seems more favorable to Democrats than Republicans. And the country seems at risk of dividing into wealthier, better educated, more liberal cities, where new populations will flow, and poorer, less educated, more conservative suburbs and rural areas, where the populations will grow sparser. This transformation might usher in a new era of liberal ascendancy, but it will bring new problems, new inequalities, new resentments.

A very cool interactive map showing just how innovative many Democratic leaning areas are, compared to the GOP's base, can be viewed here.

14 Feb 2009 12:51 pm

Obama And Torture

Why is the WSJ so blind?

14 Feb 2009 11:56 am

"Stimulus"

A drug best taken rarely:

I should add, I guess, that I'm not as sure as some that borrowing and spending a little more in a downturn as severe as this one is such a dreadful idea. The point is to put some kind of bottom on a deflationary spiral. But I sure am more interested in Austrian economics than I used to be, and certainly hope that we can at some point return to a saner fiscal regime.

14 Feb 2009 11:23 am

Internet Money

Daniel Lyons aka "Fake Steve Jobs" isn't holding his breath for his:

Last year the total spent on blog advertising in the United States was a mere $411 million, according to researcher eMarketer. That represents only a sliver of the $23.7 billion spent on U.S. Internet ads last year, which is itself only a fraction of the $276.8 billion spent on all forms of advertising in the U.S. By 2012 blog ad spending will reach $746 million, while overall online ad spending will hit $32 billion, eMarketer says. More money was spent on e-mail advertising last year than was spent on blog advertising—yet you don't see anyone touting e-mail as the next big billion-dollar media business. Technorati, a blog researcher, estimates that bloggers who run ads earn an average of $5,060 per year. Don't call the Ferrari dealer just yet.

Jason Kottke gets the blogging economy about right. I've managed to finagle a salary for this. But I wrote this blog for years as a labor of love. If you expect nothing, especially at the start, you're doing it for the right reason.

14 Feb 2009 10:46 am

A Leaner Wallet May Mean A Leaner You?

Home-cooking and cheaper foods make a comeback. Megan suggests this will make the country thinner, but healthy foods often cost more. McDonalds has been booming lately and obesity is highly concentrated in poorer communities.

14 Feb 2009 10:04 am

The Promise Of "VideoText"

Virginia Quarterly Review has opened its archives. Here's part of a very prescient 1983 article by Irving Louis Horowitz on digital media:

The new technology permits a higher level of interactional involvement. One can confirm or disconfirm exact information, test propositions, and develop comparabilities not envisioned by the author or the original source in the comfort of one's home. In discussing confirmation we generally are considering factual rather than interpretative information. Even at the level of speculation, there may be possible uses for the new technology hardly thought about in the past (e. g., tracking sources of ideas through space, time, and culture). The paired acts of verification and confirmation may become part of the everyday life of ordinary individuals rather than an exceptional event requiring extraordinary efforts and skills by specialized elites.

Horribly written - but very smart for 1983.

14 Feb 2009 09:11 am

Who Will Own The Skies?

Mark Bowden profiles pilot Cesar Rodriguez and chews over the future of the F-22 and the US Air Force:

“What happens when we no longer own that advantage in the air?” [General] Tinsley asked me. “Are our enemies going to feel a little froggy and push the limits? Why haven’t we fought that many wars? If America hadn’t built the F‑15, would it have been the same story? How much did our fleet of F‑15s keep other countries at bay? If we had been stuck with the F‑4 and someone had come along with a MiG‑29, would they have stepped out and done some damage? We have to replace all the F‑15s with F‑22s.”

This is the position you would expect from an Air Force general, whose job was to make sure America continues its unquestioned ownership of the sky. One might just as easily argue that lack of such complete superiority will act as a healthy restraint on American military aggression. After all, the latest big war, in Iraq, was one we started. If we are more likely to bleed, perhaps we will be slower to fight.

Friday, February 13, 2009

13 Feb 2009 07:42 pm

LoJacking Gramps

Saletan flags a new development:

...two companies have already put radio monitors on 18,000 people with Alzheimer's or brain injuries. Now LoJack is joining the market in a big way. Yesterday, the company announced a "diversification strategy" to "track and rescue people at risk of wandering, including those with Alzheimer's, autism, Down syndrome and dementia."

The Alzheimer's market looks pretty lucrative. LoJack anticipates up to 16 million Alzheimer's patients by 2050, most of whom wander away at some point. But the company also notes that "autism, which is the fastest growing developmental disability that now afflicts one in every 150 babies born, can also cause children to wander." In fact, LoJack aims to address the whole range of potential wanderers. According to CEO Ronald Waters, "This offering is a natural extension of LoJack's family of products and services and takes our solutions beyond ‘getting the bad guys' off the streets to now protecting those afflicted with cognitive disorders."

13 Feb 2009 07:29 pm

Some Perspective

Mark Murray:

With zero House Republicans voting for the stimulus -- and with just three Senate Republicans expected to vote for it later this afternoon -- it's worth noting that 28 House Democrats and 12 Senate Democrats voted for the final passage of Bush's big tax cut in 2001. (And remember, too, that Bush had barely won the presidential election the year before.) The size of that 2001 tax-cut package? $1.35 trillion.

Bipartisanship means nothing if it is only ever respected by one party. The GOP is borderline autistic in its understanding of the necessary to-and-fro of democratic government. Or rather: its ideological nature prevents it from engaging in the actual tasks of pragmatic government. Or from seriously thinking of the long-term national interest rather than the short-term partisan one. 

13 Feb 2009 07:09 pm

Waste Not

Tyler Cowen combats Jon Chait over the utility of waste. Drum frets over Tyler's final point.

13 Feb 2009 06:55 pm

The GOP's War On Obama, Ctd

Specter blurts out the truth:

"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today, one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.' ... I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation."

As I said, the proper response to the GOP's gamesmanship in a downturn as severe as this one is: contempt.

13 Feb 2009 06:21 pm

About Those Bank Stress Tests

They may well be a subtle and strategic means to pull of nationalization. Ambers:

The point here is that the administration CANNOT force broad nationalization down Congress's throats; they CAN begin to make that argument when there is proof that a major bank is insolvent. How does the administration prove this? By giving these banks physicals -- stress tests.

13 Feb 2009 06:19 pm

The Stimulus Breakdown

ProPublica has a detailed list of spending and FT has a livelier interactive chart. (Gauging by Time's comments section, only some readers can get through to FT. Apologies if the link is broken.)

13 Feb 2009 06:17 pm

Aligning All The Wheels

"The good news is that we're going through this cycle more rapidly than Japan--dithering faster, you might say. The bad news is that it's hard to see how the banking system is going to be in any shape to support the stimulus unless we get a good plan much faster than is likely," - Megan McArdle.

13 Feb 2009 05:43 pm

Faces Of The Day

Robin Tyler (L) and Diane Olson (R), the first two women to be legally married in Southern California, renew their wedding vows on the steps of the Beverly Hills Courthouse, where they were married last June, on Valentines Day eve, February 13, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California. By David McNew/Getty.

13 Feb 2009 05:13 pm

Quote For The Day III

"She was our best fundraiser and organizer in the fall," - David Plouffe on the farce of Sarah Palin.

13 Feb 2009 05:02 pm

Meanwhile, Back On Planet Earth

Noam Scheiber notices that it isn't Planet Washington:

...the stimulus wasn't a political question--none of us wants to live through a decade-long depression. It was an engineering question--how do you prevent the economy from collapsing? And engineering questions do have objectively right answers.

Continue reading "Meanwhile, Back On Planet Earth" »

13 Feb 2009 04:49 pm

Pick Your Own Reality

Matt Welch is forever a cynic:

The focus on political teams blurs one central, overriding truth: When it comes to bailout/stimulus/econ, there is no significant break in policy between George W. Bush and Barack Obama, no matter how much it benefits enthusiasts and detractors from pretending there's a sharp break between the two. The biggest...political event last fall was not the election, it was the bipartisan, unpopular, panic-driven bailout.

While Paul Ormerod defends the bailout:

People are generally right to be sceptical of policymakers.  But despite this, and all the current problems, the response of the authorities in September of last year was brilliant.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nationalised; AIG effectively taken into public ownership; money market funds guaranteed by the Fed; huge, failing retail banks forced into mergers; investment banks eliminated. (OK, letting Lehman go was one Darwinian experiment too many.) 

But without these measures, we would already be looking at a recession of 1930s proportions, with unemployment rising inexorably over the 20 percent mark.  The hotly disputed TARP programme was second-order compared to the measures actually carried.

13 Feb 2009 04:20 pm

Mental Health Break

Entering a dust storm in Australia:

13 Feb 2009 03:53 pm

The Root Of Fiscal Cancer

Ben Smith wrote a few days ago about the left's "silence" over entitlement reform. Hilzoy responds:

Speaking for my personal corner of The Left: I am not silent because I am prepared to let Obama do things I would have criticized had Bush attempted them. I haven't written about entitlement reform for two main reasons. First, Obama hasn't yet said anything specific about what, if anything, he intends to try to do. And second, this is one of those issues where the details really matter.

Continue reading "The Root Of Fiscal Cancer" »

13 Feb 2009 03:47 pm

The Hill Needs Speed Readers

Rob Bluey wants more time to review the bill:

Assuming Hoyer's plan is carried out, he would give House members about 13 hours to read the 780-page bill. A congressional staffer did the math. That means lawmakers would be required to read one page per minute without sleeping or taking bathroom breaks.

It seems that the bill was posted around 10 pm last night.

13 Feb 2009 03:30 pm

The Census Canard, Ctd.

Weigel tries to find what Republican "organizing principles" were revealed in the Gregg withdrawal.

13 Feb 2009 03:19 pm

Economics Big And Small

Via Yglesias, Arnold Kling explained a few days ago why there is no economic consensus over the stimulus:

...the consensus of economists is likely to be more reliable on microeconomic issues than it is on macroeconomic issues. In my view, fundamental macroeconomic issues are unsettled...

This makes sense: it is much easier to do experiments with micro-economic principles and, as Manzi has written, "experiments end debates." In other Kling news, Megan has demanded retractions from Wolcott and Adam Serwer. She got a response from Serwer, but Wolcott remains mum. And now Paul Krugman has piled on the thug bandwagon even after the quote was disputed. Lovely. My second post on Kling here.

13 Feb 2009 03:07 pm

The GOP's War On Obama, Ctd

Gregg delivers up a classic gaffe. Sam Stein:

There is something remarkably candid about admitting that Obama "always" had a margin of error of three Republican Senators when it came to an economic recovery package that the vast majority of elected officials consider vital.

13 Feb 2009 02:30 pm

The Top 17 Homo Love Songs

For the gays, Valentine's Day doesn't have many classic pop songs that actively include at first blush. But we all have our secret faves - and if you look hard enough, there are quite a few gems out there. Zack Rosen, aka Indie Rock Fag, has compiled a very post-gay list on his  website for the next generation of homos, The New Gay. And any list that has an Electronic classic and Dusty's Breakfast In Bed on it is worth taking seriously. Then there's Antony and the Johnsons:

People seek out relationships for a lot of different reasons. Some are interested in sex. Others want companionship. Some people can't cook for shit and enjoy having a hot boyfriend with an endless mastery of vegetarian cuisine (not that I'm speaking from personal experience.) As a function of my age and good health, though, I never consider another impetus for love: to be cared for in your old age and on your death bed. That's probably why this song doesn't get played at very many clubs.

My fave? Nervously. You know who.

13 Feb 2009 02:24 pm

Quote For The Day II

""If we tried to suppress the expansion of the subprime market, do you think that would have gone over very well with the Congress? When it looked as though we were dealing with a major increase in home ownership, which is of unquestioned value to this society -- would we have been able to do that? I doubt it...We could have basically clamped down on the American economy, generated a 10 percent unemployment rate. And I will guarantee we would not have had a housing boom, a stock market boom or indeed a particularly good economy either," - Alan Greenspan, Former Federal Reserve chairman.

(hat tip: Dreher)

13 Feb 2009 02:16 pm

Commander-in-Chief

The military adjusts:

Pentagon officials don't normally gush, but Whispers has learned that top staffers were positively enthusiastic following their first meeting with the commander in chief in the secure conference room dubbed "the Tank" recently. They were impressed by the "high-level, global-strategic" discussion and by President Obama's detailed grasp of the difficulties that face the U.S. military. Said one senior Pentagon official: "He asked a lot of really, really good questions."

13 Feb 2009 02:14 pm

The GOP's War On Obama: Confirmed

Byron York confirmed that it was Republican partisan pressure that forced Gregg to pull out. The idea that a Republican could help give Obama cover on entitlement reform and that he would preside over a big increase in Hispanic representation in the Census was too much for the Rovian partisans. Shill Kristol lets the cat out of the bag:

they were worried that clever “post-partisan” or bipartisan tactics by Obama could split and weaken an already uncertain and demoralized GOP.

Party first. Country always always last. Welcome to today's Republicans.

13 Feb 2009 02:09 pm

Does Diet Soda Make You Fat?

Jonah Lehrer summarizes a few studies:

The essential lesson is that the brain doesn't like being tricked. When you give us sweetness without the caloric energy, we end up craving calories more than ever.

It tastes awful too, with the sole exception, in my humble opinion, of Coke Zero.

13 Feb 2009 01:55 pm

The Elephants And The Mice

Why the only thing to feel toward the GOP right now is contempt.

13 Feb 2009 01:18 pm

Quote For The Day

"You know, the last thing that I think we're looking for at this juncture is advice on fiscal integrity or ethics from Karl Rove. I've never seen anything really like it . . . [former White House chief of staff] Andy Card saying that we were somehow denigrating the presidency because people were wearing short sleeves in the Oval Office. We're wearing short sleeves because we have to roll up our sleeves and clean up the mess that we inherited," - David Axelrod.

13 Feb 2009 01:04 pm

About Defending Blasphemy

I linked to Johann Hari's excellent defense of free speech in the face of religious intimidation here. The piece was eventually published in India - and this is what happened:

That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested – or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was "prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet" and I should be sent "to   hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol? He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech."

Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged – in the world's largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech – with "deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings". I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.

Read the original piece. It is a classic piece of political polemic, the kind of thing that no free society should ever suppress. And yet in one of the world's largest democracies, fundamentalism is strong enough to arrest a publisher for printing it. Put that with the pathetic collapse of the British government in the face of Islamist thuggery, and it is hard to be encouraged. 

13 Feb 2009 12:37 pm

If The Right Were Intellectually Honest ...

This Manzi post would be their argument going forward. Here's why they are not being intellectually honest, and Manzi's post includes the relevant facts. The GOP has passed what amounts to a spending and tax-cutting and borrowing stimulus package every year since George W. Bush came to office. They have added tens of trillions to future liabilities and they turned a surplus into a trillion dollar deficit - all in a time of growth. They then pick the one moment when demand is collapsing in an alarming spiral to argue that fiscal conservatism is non-negotiable. I mean: seriously.

The bad faith and refusal to be accountable for their own conduct for the last eight years is simply inescapable. There is no reason for the GOP to have done what they have done for the last eight years and to say what they are saying now except pure, cynical partisanship, and a desire to wound and damage the new presidency. The rest is transparent cant.

There is a way to spend and borrow enough to mitigate the sudden downdraft - while working to mend long-term fiscal problems. Manzi sets it out here:

2. Make an at least off-setting change in future liabilities under entitlement programs. This would include things like means-testing benefits, increasing the retirement age and making this sustainable by linking it to a longevity measure and so forth.

3. Reduce the military budget by reducing military commitments. The United States is increasingly a nation among nations. This will likely become ever truer as the economic rise of the Asian heartland continues. We need to recognize this, and scale our expenditures accordingly.

The great tragedy of the Gregg withdrawal is that this was precisely what he had been selected to achieve. The chance of real entitlement reform - the one thing that can indeed put the US back on a path to fiscal sanity - is real in the first year of an Obama presidency. But it will require bipartisanship; and if a decent fiscal conservative like Gregg is simply forced by his own party to have no role in it, then it will not happen. My sense is that this is indeed why he felt it necessary to withdraw.

The GOP is not interested in the long term fiscal health of this country. Their reckless stewardship over the last eight years proves that. They are not interested in helping this new president, who has done everything he can to create a civil atmosphere, to use this moment to prevent the worst in the short term and move to improve matters in the long term. Instead, they spin.

13 Feb 2009 12:06 pm

The Gamble

Violence remains white noise in Iraq at this point. Tom Ricks discusses his new book and the empirical reality some are simply ignoring:

I think the message of my book Fiasco was that Iraq 2006 was worse than you think, while the message of The Gamble is that Iraq 2009 isn't as good as you think.

The surge has brought us to an uncertain place. No one knows if there will be full-blown civil war in Iraq. Indeed, no one even knows the real strength of the Sadrists at this point. Or whether the Baghdad government indeed will keep its promises to bring into the fold the former Sunni insurgents who have been on the American payroll for the last 18 months. In fact, none, not one, of the major political questions that faced Iraq before the surge have been resolved--and the purpose of the surge, we were told, was to create the space to solve them.

My real worry is that all those tensions still exist, but all sides in Iraq are militarily stronger than they were a couple of years ago, because we have trained and armed a Shiite-dominated Iraqi army, but also helped organize the Sunni insurgents now known as the "Sons of Iraq."

But we "won", didn't we?

13 Feb 2009 11:37 am

An Election To Watch

The Economist on Khatami entering the race:

Mr Ahmadinejad’s populism still wins admirers and gets the backing of the hawkish security apparatus and the courts. But simmering public discontent and the rising anxiety that has followed the oil-price collapse now worry even his fellow conservatives, to the point where it is not clear whether the president will end up as their favoured candidate in June.

13 Feb 2009 11:27 am

The View From Your Window

Windsor, England, 10.57 am

13 Feb 2009 11:25 am

Freedom, Not Power

Here's a superb piece by Jacob Sullum on the illiberal temptations for the gay rights movement. Jacob's distinction between public equality and private freedom was the core conservative-libertarian argument of Virtually Normal.

13 Feb 2009 11:23 am

The Value Of Marriage

Ross and Ta-Nehisi have been having a back and forth about marriage and family. Here's Ross arguing for marriage:

...the best relationships shouldn't need institutional hedges against infidelity and/or abandonment. But an awful lot of relationships worth fighting for do end up benefiting from being hedged around with institutional supports - because life is long, people are complicated, and you don't always know when you're starting out what you'll need to reach the end of the road together. Yes, relationships are about the two people involved far more than they're about anybody else. But that doesn't mean that they aren't also about the community, particularly when kids are involved. The private is central and essential, but it still spills over into the public; your relationship is about you and your partner, but it's also, inevitably, about your friends and neighbors as well.

Exactly. And the support of family and friends is critical to helping a relationship through good times and bad. Why it is good for a society to deny this to a small minority is beyond me.

13 Feb 2009 11:17 am

Who Won In Gaza?, Ctd.

Ilya Somin highlights this poll:

A new poll by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion found that 51% of Palestinians and 56% of those living in the Gaza Strip now believe that Hamas is leading Gaza in the "wrong" direction. Only 28% of Gaza Palestinians say they support Hamas, down from 52% in a survey conducted in November, before the recent conflict.

Those numbers seem to contradict this poll. We need a Nate Silver for the Middle East.

13 Feb 2009 10:52 am

Malkin Award Nominee

"In my opinion, pretty much everything the Democrats have done or propose to do will hurt the economy. We will see unprecedented budget deficits, more wasteful spending than ever, higher taxes, inflation, and a stagnant stock market. I haven't gone back to re-check the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that Jimmy Carter was more popular at this stage of his administration than Obama is now, and I don't think the Carter administration did anything as directly damaging to the economy as what we're seeing now from the Obama administration," - John Hinderaker.

13 Feb 2009 10:39 am

The Joy Of The Internets

You can get your kittens straight up:

Or mashed up with David After The Dentist.

13 Feb 2009 10:26 am

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

While valiant, your use of the word "pwn" in the context of the Greenwald piece falls flat. A more appropriate structuring of the verbiage at hand would be “Greenwald serves up a mug of hot pwn sauce” or “Greenwald utterly pwns the n00bs at the Wall Street Journal”.