Month: July 2009

The Latest Lie

Anne Applebaum is unfooled:

Perhaps the explanation for this [tsunami of scorn] lies in the final part of one of Palin's statements: that "Washington and the media" cannot understand her decision because "it's about country." In other words, for the past nine months, Palin has avoided difficult questions, preferring Runner's World to another Katie Couric interview; she has dragged her family into the spotlight when it suited her (baby Trig was in Runner's World, too) and grown angry when the spotlight became too strong; she has eschewed reason and logic (not to mention spelling and grammar), yet reacted in horror when her critics were unreasonable and illogical in response. Then, after all that, she smugly asserts the right to decide who is a patriot and who is not. It's not about "country," in other words, it's about hypocrisy. And Sarah Palin is full of it.

Having It Both Ways

This Radley Balko post is being used to defend Ross:

It is possible that Sarah Palin was both unfairly mistreated and personally attacked by the media and many on the left, and that her family was rather ruthlessly and mercilessly run through the ringer wringer . . . and that she’s a not particularly bright, not particularly curious, once libertarian-leaning governor who sadly devolved into a predictable, buzzword spouting culture warrior when she was prematurely picked for national office by John McCain.

My own view is that the mainstream media was absurdly soft on her inconsistencies and lack of qualifications. I find the notion that class snobbery is behind it to be silly. It's hard not to note the Judge Judy atmosphere that permeates Palinland, but some of us weren't born into privilege at all and simply expect minimal standards of effort, intelligence and integrity in public officials who come from nowhere. Palin failed on every count. Her candidacy was absurd on it face and indicts all those who found ways to defend it.

The Second Coming Of The Bears?

Barry Ritholtz pounces on the sluggish markets:

As we have detailed since this nonsense first started spreading earlier this year, the data simply did not support the notion of  a 2nd half recovery.  Not only below the headlines, but the actual releases. It was hope, not facts, that led the way. Second derivative improvements are not the same as expansion…I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Beware Economists who rely on stock markets to forecast economic activity…

What Excuses Are Left?

Powell called for a review of DADT over the weekend:

Powell, as much as any congressional figure, played the foil in President Bill Clinton's efforts to follow through on a campaign promise that all citizens, regardless of sexual orientation, should be able to serve openly in the military. In recent months, he and other key players from the first battle (notably, former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn) have argued that political realities have evolved to the extent that the armed forces should take a closer look at the policy's purpose and effectiveness. In December 2008, Powell told CNN that it was time to "definitely re-evaluate" "Don't Ask Don't Tell."

With even DADT's former supporters calling for a review, what is Obama waiting for?

The Birth Of Congestion

A new paper in Science argues that density made civilization possible. Jonah Lehrer comments:

For the first time, humans lived in dense clusters, and occasionally interacted with other clusters, which allowed their fragile innovations to persist and propagate. The end result was a positive feedback loop of new ideas. While it's very nice to have some statistical evidence for this idea…it's worth pointing out that the density explanation isn't particularly new. In The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs forcefully argued against the "dogma of agricultural primacy," which assumed that farmers and agricultural innovations made civilization possible. Jacobs argued that the dogma was exactly backwards, and that it was the density of urbanesque clusters which generated the innovations that made farming possible. As Jacobs writes: "It was not agriculture then, for all its importance, that was the salient invention…Rather it was the fact of sustained, interdependent, creative city economies that made possible many new kinds of work." After all, you can't learn how to grow food until you've got a system for transmitting knowledge, which is why population density is so essential.

Trading An iPod For A Walkman

The BBC had a thirteen-year-old review the walkman thirty years after its release:

My friends couldn’t imagine their parents using this monstrous box, but there was interest in what the thing was and how it worked. In some classes in school they let me listen to music and one teacher recognised it and got nostalgic. It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette. Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn’t is “shuffle”, where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down “rewind” and releasing it randomly – effective, if a little laboured.

(Hat tip: Sager)