Month: May 2009

Buzzfeed rounded up the ten most ridiculous ads against Internet pornography. This one could have come out of Rove's workshop:

From the filmmakers who brought you Amy the Taxidermist, check out this fascinating look inside the voguing culture of New York City.

"OMG the amusement park is soooo bad ass!"

miniature city 2 – featuring vividblaze – from mockmoon on Vimeo.

Wired investigates:

McClatchy reports:

The White House has asked Congress for — and seems likely to receive — $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital. The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

Walt furrows his brow:

I'm all for providing U.S. officials with adequate facilities, but this idea merely underscores the inherent contradictions in the current U.S. approach.

One of America's main problems in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan is the widespread popular belief that it is now addicted to interfering in these societies, usually in a heavy-handed and counter-productive way. … And oh yes, we also drop bombs and fire missiles into their territory, which we would regard as an act of war if anyone did it to us. Even when well-intentioned, these activities inevitably lend themselves to various conspiracy theories about America's "real" motives, and reinforce negative impressions of the United States. As of last year, only 19 percent of Pakistan’s population had a favorable view of the United States.

Kevin Kelly praises it:

Rather than viewing technological socialism as one side of a zero-sum trade-off between free-market individualism and centralized authority, it can be seen as a cultural OS that elevates both the individual and the group at once. The largely unarticulated but intuitively understood goal of communitarian technology is this: to maximize both individual autonomy and the power of people working together. Thus, digital socialism can be viewed as a third way that renders irrelevant the old debates.

It has long occurred to me that the web is indeed a Marxist paradise. Pity we are not really full human beings with bodies when we are on it. But you sure can't make much money, can you?

The Chronicle of Higher Education worries:

With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is questionable. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care. Patrick M. Callan, the center’s president, has warned that low-income students will find college unaffordable.

Meanwhile, the middle class, which has paid for higher education in the past mainly by taking out loans, may now be precluded from doing so as the private student-loan market has all but dried up. In addition, endowment cushions that allowed colleges to engage in steep tuition discounting are gone. Declines in housing valuations are making it difficult for families to rely on home-equity loans for college financing. Even when the equity is there, parents are reluctant to further leverage themselves into a future where job security is uncertain.

Mary Kane considers the consequences.

William Galston previews Obama's Cairo speech:

The early evidence suggests that President Obama has chosen–or feels compelled–to reduce the emphasis on democracy promotion and to put economic and security concerns first. Given the gravity and urgency of the problems in these areas, the administration's stance is understandable, perhaps even inevitable. But Secretary of State Clinton's blunt statements to that effect have evoked negative reactions in many quarters.

 A March 10 Washington Post editorial accused her of undercutting her own department's criticisms of Egypt's repressive policies, and Egyptian human rights groups accused her of giving the Mubarak regime a "green light" to intensify them. The State Department immediately shot back with an unusually strong response, denying that Clinton had downplayed these issues and characterizing her policy as a change of means, not ends. "We are going to continue to push," said a high-ranking spokesman, "but … we want to be more effective than previous administrations have been. … You've got to try to come up with ways that you can use–the media or other elements of society–to [exert] influence in a positive direction." So it seems fair to scrutinize the forthcoming trip to Egypt for early evidence of this new and allegedly more effective strategy…

Early evidence? Why early? Doesn't this strategy work primarily in the long run?

For my part, I see in the Obama administration a move away from the somewhat utopian democratization talk of Bush in favor of a more realist take on American interests in the region and the world. He's more like GHWB than GWB. And my sense is that Obama's chief democratic emphasis will be on Iran – which is part of the audience he is addressing in Cairo. His speech will surely try to appeal subtly to the Iranian people to use what democratic leverage they have to push their rulers toward compromise with the West. His main tool will, I suspect, be a vision of true respect for Islam. It will be a speech designed for the masses, not the elites.

But even there, this will take time to bear fruit – perhaps more time than Obama actually has left.

Radley Balko considers the case of a family on the lam after a judge ruled that they have to give their 13-year-old with cancer chemo despite their religious objections, and compares it to Tim Pawlenty vetoing a bill that would have allowed patients to use pot to alleviate pain in their final days: