Month: February 2013

Well, he asked for it. He is a stenographer, who is very, very well connected to the old Washington (which Obama’s online political revolution disturbed), and a dutiful gatherer of whatever those in power say they do and have done. But after his implosion over the last 24 hours – exposed as a whiny liar by his own email – Chait puts the boot in:

His more recent books often compile interesting facts, but how Woodward chooses to package those facts has come to represent a barometric measure of a figure’s standing within the establishment. His 1994 account of Bill Clinton’s major budget bill, which in retrospect was a major success, told a story of chaos and indecision. He wrote a fulsome love letter to Alan Greenspan, “Maestro,” at the peak of the Fed chairman’s almost comic prestige. In 2003, when George W. Bush was still a decisive and indispensable war leader, Woodward wrote a heroic treatment of the Iraq War. After Bush’s reputation had collapsed, Woodward packaged essentially the same facts into a devastating indictment. Woodward’s book on the 2011 debt negotiations was notable for arguing that Obama scotched a potential deficit deal. The central argument has since been debunked by no less a figure than Eric Cantor, who admitted to Ryan Lizza that he killed the deal.

You never really expect to read it – especially in the business world where lies and public relations and reputation management are endemic. And then suddenly, it pops up, shocking in its candor. Here’s the resignation letter of Andrew Mason, Groupon’s CEO:

“People of Groupon,

“After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today. If you’re wondering why . . . you haven’t been paying attention. From controversial metrics in our S1 to our material weakness to two quarters of missing our own expectations and a stock price that’s hovering around one quarter of our listing price, the events of the last year and a half speak for themselves. As CEO, I am accountable.

Now if only the Pope could have been as honest.

Due to declining ice coverage in the Arctic, the NOAA is being forced to quickly generate maps of previously uncharted Arctic waters for commercial vessels. Meanwhile, John Timmer talks to geologist Richard Alley about glacial melt in the Antarctic:

The key thing that regulates the flow of these glaciers is what’s called a “grounding line,” or the place where the glacier’s end is in contact both with the ocean floor and with the ocean itself (this is in contrast to the floating ice that sometimes spreads past this site). While a glacier is on the grounding line, Alley said there are a lot of feedbacks that tend to keep it there. … The problem is that, when the feedbacks are finally overcome, the grounding line fails catastrophically, and the ice tends to retreat rapidly to the next potential grounding line.

Alley identifies areas in which this effect could “raise sea levels by two meters”, faster than we would be able to adapt. Unfortunately, worldwide concern about the need for action on climate change is fading:

Despite years of studies showing the impact of global warming on the planet, only 49 per cent of people now consider climate change a very serious issue – far fewer than at the beginning of the worldwide financial crisis in 2009. Worries about climate change first dropped in industrialised nations but they have now also fallen in developing economies including Brazil and China, according to the survey by GlobeScan Radar.

Ann Friedman ponders dislike of Anne Hathaway and our feelings towards celebrities more generally:

What does it really mean when we say an actress “annoys the shit” out of us, anyway? That we hate the roles she chooses? The paparazzi’d version of her life we see in US Weekly? Her insufficiently funny quips on the red carpet? Or, as Salon asked today, is it her face? In some ways, the point of sitting on the bleachers of celebrity culture is the thrill of judging with impunity. Unlike our neighbors or co-workers, we convince ourselves that famous actors, by dint of making their living entertaining us, have chosen to be judged. And judge we do. (This isn’t just a byproduct of our Twitter-enforced instapundit culture, either: “Let’s get Entertainment Weekly and play my favorite new game: Love Her/Hate Him,” exclaims Will in a 1999 episode of Will & Grace.)

Sasha Weiss theorizes that certain people detest Hathaway because “she represents the archetype of the happy girl, which is one that many people resist.” TNC chips in his two cents:

I recognize that there is an entire publicity industry designed to get us to “like” people whom we essentially pay to see work. And perhaps it’s fair to judge whether or not that industry has been effective in making you think you know Hathaway in a way that you probably do not. But the fact remains that you don’t really know any of these people.

Earlier Dish on Hathaway here.

Keith Phipps finds that watching deleted scenes can radically alter interpretations of a film:

Take Blue Velvet: When David Lynch’s landmark 1986 film was released on Blu-ray 25 years later it contained nearly an hour of previously lost footage. That’s nearly half the running time of the final film, which allows for plenty of room for perception-altering scenes, even one in which the film’s hero Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) watches and initially fails to stop an apparent date rape, a moment that, as Bill Wyman noted in Slate “would have made Blue Velvet a different movie.”

On the one hand, I’m not sorry I watched that scene or the other lost Blue Velvet footage. They’re examples of a filmmaker working at the height of his powers. On the other hand, I wish I had the ability both to watch those scenes and forget it. I’ve seen Blue Velvet many times over the years and I’m sure my next viewing will find me attempting to plug what I’ve seen into the narrative. So that’s what the college Jeffrey’s left to take care of his ailing father looked like [here]. And who knew he dated Megan Mullally while there? [above]