Month: June 2010

Tyler Cowen is skeptical of them:

I'm not sure if these places will still be going in three years' time. Part of the problem is if you're a customer and what you pay is voluntary, you're under pressure to pay a lot of money. You do it once to prove to yourself and others how charitable you are, but how many people go back 17 times? I would find it a burden — my reputation is on the line. What if I only pay $ 27 instead of $ 34? What does my date think? What does my wife think? You end up wanting to feel liberated and just paying a listed cash price. I think there's no way to solve that problem.

Truth in advertising:

(Hat tip: Welch. Update: We swapped out the video for another version, via Josh Green, that doesn't contain the overlong intro.)

Ruy Teixeira continues to warn (pdf) Republicans about looming demographic challenges. Tom Schaller summarizes:

The nature of the GOP's demographic-electoral problem is three-fold. First, the challenge of trying to evolve and adapt is itself limited by demographics because the GOP's older and whiter residual white minority coalition is simply less amenable to the sort of changes it would take to modernize the party. Second, so many of the figures within the party who might be able to lead a center-right revival have been beaten in recent cycles, with the old Ford/Dole/Rockefeller wing decimated by the 2006 and 2008 cycles. (Relatedly, it doesn't help when people like Frum are cast out from their intellectual circles.) Finally, it is simply not in the nature of conservatism to foment change or be out in front of demographic and social changes: Conservatism works best as a reaction to–not necessarily reactionary, but a reaction nonetheless–to oncoming, rapid changes.

Andrew Gelman throws a couple grains of salt at Teixeira's analysis.

Drezner daydreams:

Most approaches predict that the living dead would have an unequal effect on different governments. Powerful states would be more likely to withstand an army of flesh-eating ghouls. The plague of the undead would join the roster of threats that disproportionately affect the poorest and weakest countries.

The different international relations theories also provide a much greater variety of possible outcomes than the Hollywood zombie canon. Traditional zombie narratives in film and fiction are quick to get to the apocalypse. The theoretical approaches presented here, however, suggest that in the real world there would be a vigorous policy response to the menace of the living dead. Realism predicts an eventual live-and-let-live arrangement between the undead and everyone else. Liberals predict an imperfect but nevertheless useful counterzombie regime. Neoconservatives see the defeat of the zombie threat after a long, existential struggle. These scenarios suggest that maybe, just maybe, the zombie canon's dominant narrative of human extinction is overstated.

Apparently he's working on a book along these lines.

Who knew?

Give it a personality:

When we see the device as having a few human attributes, we start treating it like a human, and not like a tool. So here's my advice for designers of mediocre gadgets: Give them voices. Give us an excuse to endow them with agency. Because once we see them as humanesque, and not just as another thing, we're more likely to develop a fondness for their failings.

Meet Zach Anner, "a young man with cerebral palsy (which he believes is 'the sexiest of the palsies')." Vote to give him a TV show here. He's reclaimed the lead after accusations of vote-rigging.

Of course, Matt and Trey got there first.

Friedersdorf interviews Mark Oppenheimer about religion reporting and his new book on debating. On the latter:

When I made it to junior high school, I discovered the debate team, and that really turned me around. Having a healthy, constructive way to channel my verbosity (and my budding adolescent anger) made a big difference in my life. It made me happier, for one thing. And the rest of the book takes off from there, as I immersed myself in the weird, wacky subculture of competitive debate and oratory….I really think we need competitive debate to start before high school. I was lucky to be at a junior high school with a debate program. But why is it that we have activities for 9-year-olds who love music, or math, or nature, but not 9-year-olds who love talking? And now that I am a dad of a talkative daughter, I can foresee wanting to send her someplace where she can argue with somebody other than me and her mom, you know? 

And the former:

The most common flaws in religion reporting are the same as common flaws in all reporting: lack of skepticism, taking the speakers' words for it. We always have to be skeptical, even of monks and priests and imams and rabbis. And we have to remember that power corrupts, so the people we are likely to revere may be the most likely to fail us.

Evan Osnos notes:

North Korea succumbed 7-0 [in its match against Portugal], and the result does not appear to have been reported in the North Korean press. No sign of it in North Korea’s main newspaper—accessible by a Japan-based portal—and, so far, the official North Korean news agency has not yet gotten to the story. Instead, lead pieces for the day include “Revenge-vowing Meetings Held,” “Russian Dance Company Performs” and “US, Provoker of Korean War.”