Jonah Lehrer marvels:
This computational efficiency is the single most astonishing fact of the mammalian brain. Here you are, reading these words, daydreaming about lunch, processing the richness of reality, thinking about tomorrow, and your brain requires less energy than a low wattage lightbulb. Evolution is an impressive engineer.
Judah Grunstein notices what is missing:
No significant works of art have yet emerged from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If that seems like a trivial observation, consider the impact of "All Quiet on the Western Front" or WWII-era literature (Mailer, Heller, Vonnegut) on American society and culture, or Vietnam-era cinema (Deer Hunter, The Boys of Company C, Apocalypse Now, even Platoon) and TV (MASH).
He thinks this has to do with the transition to a professional military and publishing's emphasis on memoir and non-fiction.
Here's a photograph of the t-shirt he was wearing:
Now perhaps the constant attempts to call anyone who works for Obama a communist have some more context. The dog-tags obviously don't belong to him. But they are a nice touch.
Or: why I am not a tea-partier:
The kid holding it, according to the reader who took this picture, was maybe 16. Obama is a communist and a fascist and a traitor! Then this:
The above protestor is comparing an attempt to privately ensure millions of people currently uninsured is the equivalent of this:
Action T4 (German: Aktion T4) was a program, also called Euthanasia Program, in Nazi Germany spanning October 1939 until August 1941, during which physicians killed 70,273 people specified in Hitler's secret memo of September 1, 1939 as suffering patients "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination", but described in a denunciation of the program by Cardinal Galen as long-term inmates of mental asylums "who may appear incurable".
This is as sick as those who called Bush a Nazi before the Iraq war. But unlike the Iraq war, the proposal for universal healthcare was a big issue in the last election, was widely debated, and the winners of that election are fulfilling a clear pledge. So what we have here is unhinged hysteria. I certainly think pent-up anger at Bush (which partisanship and religious devotion meant they could never vent) is a part of this; but the fact of a non-white, non-Southern effective president should not be discounted.
Andrew Leigh ponders the economics of sex workers:
Economists have proposed two theories for why prostitutes (at least, those not working the street) earn such high wages. Clearly, part of the answer is that these earnings are a form of ‘hazard pay’, akin to that received by coal miners, window cleaners and motorcycle couriers. Another more controversial explanation is that prostitutes’ high pay is effectively a form of compensation for the fact that current or former prostitutes have more difficulty finding a marriage partner. Intriguing as it is, the marriage hypothesis is not yet compelling, since the evidence shows that many women combine prostitution and marriage.
Congrats to the tea-partiers for the impressive crowds in DC today. One wonders where these people were when Bush was massively increasing debt, spending like LBJ, detaining citizens without charges and torturing them, and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan? I guess limited government is an elastic notion. But any serious grass-roots movement against constantly expanding government is fine by me. But then you see the images and pictures and hysterical rhetoric … and you see that this extremism and demonization of the president is as damaging to their cause as ANSWER was to the anti-war movement.
Here's a test: when you see as many posters lambasting Bush and Cheney and the GOP for getting us into this crisis in the first place, I will take these people seriously as genuine small government non-partisan conservatives and independents. In so far as they can pressure the Congress and president into taking the debt seriously in the future, good for them. In so far as they are proposing no practical solutions, and echo truly disturbing hatred of a president barely eight months in office, facing huge crises on all fronts, they are doing their own cause far more harm than good.
One more ugly picture after the jump:
Not such a great legacy:
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.
But those who voted for him are absolutely enraged at the possibility of any change.
A reader writes:
I'm writing mainly because I'm a birder who can't help myself, but just in case you're interested, the birds on the wire appear to be Brown-headed Cowbirds (assuming the photo was taken in the U.S.).
Reihan calls Chris Caldwell's new book on Muslim immigration to Europe 'the best non-fiction book published in 2009." He also praises Perry Anderson's criticism of it and admits that Anderson has a point here:
Caldwell explains that his book focuses on “the difficulties immigration poses to European society”, not “the difficulties faced by immigrants”. The two can hardly be separated, however, as if the objective experience of immigrants at the hands of European society were irrelevant to their subjective attitudes towards it, about which Caldwell writes at length. Tacitly, he is certainly aware of this side of the situation, though choosing not to dwell on it. But there is a much larger dimension to which he appears completely blind.
Capturing the sounds of Berlin, Amsterdam, and LA:
Soundscapes – by Ace Norton from IE HAGY on Vimeo.
The Dish 