Month: November 2008

Kate Mccgwire uses pigeon feathers, polystyrene, felt, and glue to create her sculptures. Her description of the work:

The twisted form of a serpent-like creature lies enclosed in an airless glass cabinet, a diverting object for museum display. Instead of the usual taxidermist’s presentation of a perfectly preserved specimen complete with beady-eyed head, this animal appears to be headless, as if it’s been gagged.

This feathered hybrid defies the naturalist’s attempts at categorisation; half bird, half snake, it lies somewhere between a creature of myth, an extinct beast and a corporeal representation of the angst-ridden contortions of the human subconscious. This unavoidably human reference is reinforced by the animal’s sinuous, bodily curves, which suggest both movement and life. Is this creature dead, as the vitrine implies, or suspended, like some eternally hibernating beast, between two states?

(Hat tip: Today And Tomorrow)

Bob Kaplan explains the Hindu-Muslim divide that helps frame the Mumbai terror attacks:

The immediate result of the Mumbai terror attacks will be a further hardening of inter-communal relations within India. The latest attacks will also increase the likelihood that in national elections slated for early 2009, the result will be a BJP-led government, as Hindus, who comprise the overwhelming majority of Indian voters, take on another layer of insecurity.

Internationally, this event will further aggravate Indian-Pakistani relations, making it harder for the incoming Obama Administration to effect a rapprochement between the two countries, necessary for progress in Afghanistan, where the two subcontinental states are engaged in a proxy struggle that goes on behind the immediate conflict between the United States and al-Qaeda.

But the real story is India itself, whose undeniable rise as a major world power is being threatened by these civilizational tensions.

(Photo: Indian soldiers take up position outside the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel hotel during an armed siege, on November 28, 2008 in Mumbai, India. The city of Mumbai was rocked by multiple coordinated terrorist attacks that targeted locations popular with foreigners, late on the night of November 26 and into the next morning, killing scores and wounding hundreds in shootings and blasts around the city. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.

A reader writes:

Maybe K-Lo got Prop 8 confused with a couple of other statewide initiative results, where common-sense marijuana law reform actually got more votes than Barack Obama.  In Michigan, an initiative to legalize medical marijuana garnered 63% of the vote (receiving 134,241 more votes than Obama), while decriminalizing marijuana in Massachusetts received 65% of the state-wide vote, earning 48,422 more votes. 

Interestingly, these initiatives that provide citizens with more freedom and personal responsibilty, performed much better statewide than Prop 8, which stripped citizens of freedom and personal responsibility.  Now which initiatives are the conservative ones again?

I’ve cited some of his more egregiously wrong predictions today. So it behooves me to note that he has owned those mistakes – to his credit:

I was wrong about the election, spectacularly so.

But why he was wrong remains elusive to him.

Jennifer Gibson tackles celebrity worship:

Much research has been conducted about who engages in celebrity worship and what drives the compulsion. Celebrity worship for purely entertainment purposes likely reflects an extraverted personality and is most likely a healthy past time for most people. This type of celebrity worship involves harmless behaviors such as reading and learning about a celebrity. Intense personal attitudes towards celebrities, however, reflect traits of neuroticism. The most extreme descriptions of celebrity worship exhibit borderline pathological behavior and traits of psychoticism. This type of celebrity worship may involve empathy with a celebrity’s failures and successes, obsessions with the details of a celebrity’s life, and over-identification with the celebrity.

One study of 372 participants examined celebrity worship, personality, coping style, general health, stress, positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction. The researchers concluded that celebrity worship is associated with poorer mental health, illustrated by characteristics of neuroticism and disengagement. Some studies have pointed out that people with poor mental health are more prone to extreme celebrity worship, while others conclude that depression, anxiety, and decreased self-esteem develop from unhealthy celebrity worship. Several studies have also demonstrated a connection between celebrity worship and drug and alcohol use, smoking, and eating disorders. Yet another study concluded that celebrity worship involves a psychological model based on absorption, which leads to delusions of actual relationships with celebrities, and addiction, which leads to a progressively stronger need to feel connected with the celebrity.

So far, they’re happy with Hillary:

She had resoundingly rejected the idea of negotiating with Hamas; she has endorsed the security fence; and she supported a resolution sponsored by Senators Kyl and Lieberman that urged the White House to designate Iran’s revolutionary guard as a terrorist organization, a measure opposed by both Obama and Biden. These stances have won many fans among pro-Israel hawks. "Senator Clinton’s track record during her years in the senate has been outstanding," says Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "In addition to the public record, she has done many things quietly without seeking recognition that were significant in regards to the Middle East and other international concerns."

Eli Lake explores whether this sets her up for conflict with Jim Jones. It will be one of the more fascinating internal debates of the Obama administration. Having both Clinton and Jones gives Obama more freedom of action, and more leverage both within his administration and beyond it.

Some juicy quotes from Michael Wolff’s new book:

It is not just Murdoch (and everybody else at News Corp.’s highest levels) who absolutely despises Bill O’Reilly, the bullying, mean-spirited, and hugely successful evening commentator, but [Fox News chief executive] Roger Ailes himself who loathes him. Success, however, has cemented everyone to each other …  The embarrassment can no longer be missed. He mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it. [Murdoch] barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.

Rob Horning, veteran music reviewer, adds to Peter Suderman’s post on the ubiquity of positive album reviews:

Suderman has no real explanations for the surfeit of positive reviews. I had some theories back when I was writing more music reviews and was trying figure out why anyone bothered. Unlike films, many many records get released, and just noticing one and running a review of it already marks it as significant. The substance of the review itself is almost beside the point. Acknowledging its existence is already an admission that it’s “pretty good,” so it would be strange for the review to suggest otherwise.

In general, it’s hard coming up with compelling descriptions of music, and with readily accessible sound files, reviewers are competing with the songs themselves, which are easier to sample for oneself than ever. Many review editors try to compensate for this by urging writers to craft tightly wound prose explosions with lots of active verbs and implausible metaphors. The poetic quality of the review has to make up for its inability to beat the music, which basically speaks for itself. Generally, explaining whether the record is good or not is secondary to the writer’s making the reader laugh or think, Wow, that was cleverly phrased. And if all else fails, reviewers can work a variation on the formula of “sounds like artist A plus artist B doing some crazy thing”: e.g., “sounds like Bob Dylan making a pass at Joan Armatrading while landing a helicopter in a minefield.” (Here’s a good example from Klosterman’s review of Chinese Democracy: “It’s like if Jeff Lynne tried to make Out Of The Blue sound more like Fun House, except with jazz drumming and a girl singer from Motown.") These descriptive conglomerates typically come across as positive but don’t really help readers, unless they have a clairvoyant capacity to get on the reviewer’s wavelength.

Megan makes many excellent points in this new post. Money quote:

It is safe to say that almost everyone involved in this mess, from the borrowers to the bankers, thought that they were getting away with something–at the very least, that they had found a way to get rich without working.  It is an old saw that no one can be conned unless they are willing to believe in something for nothing, and the best cons generally get the victim to believe that he is putting one over on the con man.

I don’t disagree. But I’m not sure I buy this:

So while yes, part of this story has been simple greed, a willingness to believe that we could and should massively increase consumption no matter what, I tend to take this desire as a given.

I see a simple desire to enrich oneself as a given. What I think is culturally influenced is the imperative to "massively increase consumption no matter what."

We have lived in a culture which is unwilling to say enough. When Christian churches are celebrating wealth Jesus called an absolute impediment to salvation, when the president sets an example of borrowing at insane levels with nary a word of caution, when thrift is deemed stupidity and gluttony becomes the norm, we are reminded that no institution, however robust, exists in a vacuum where human virtue and character are irrelevant.

Our freedom rests on our personal responsibility. Which is why it has become so shaky, and why the government seems posed for a massive power-grab.