We're hoping to add more classic poetry from the Atlantic archives in the coming weeks and months. If you have a favorite, please let us know.
(Photo: A visually impaired child plays during a 'dahi-handi' (curd-pot) celebration at the Victoria School for the Blind in Mumbai on September 1, 2010, on the eve of 'Janmashtami' which marks the birth of Hindu God Lord Krishna. Scores of Hindu devotees of Lord Krishna take part in the dahi-handi celebrations during which a large earthenware pot is filled with milk, curds, butter, honey and fruits and is suspended from a height of between 20 to 40 feet. Sporting young men and boys come forward to claim this prize by constructing a human pyramid till the pyramid is tall enough to enable the topmost person to reach the pot and claim the contents after breaking it. Normally, currency notes are tied to the rope by which the pot is suspended and this prize money is distributed among those who participate in the pyramid building. By Punit Paranjpe/AFP/Getty Images)
James Fallows quotes George Friedman's essay "The Nine Year War" as a brave assessment of where we've been and where we're going on this anniversary of 9/11:
Let me state a more radical thesis: The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States. Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attack. That is a tragedy, but in a nation of over 300 million, 3,000 deaths cannot be permitted to define the totality of national strategy. Certainly, resources must be devoted to combating the threat and, to the extent possible, disrupting it. But it must also be recognized that terrorism cannot always be blocked, that terrorist attacks will occur and that the world's only global power cannot be captive to this single threat.
Fallows continues the discussion in a later post. I recommend Fareed's latest as well.
You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. Country first, then city and/or state. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@theatlantic.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book, courtesy of Blurb. Have at it.
Bradley Voytek has a highly amusing post on the glories of scientific self-experimentation. None of the examples hold a candle to the story of a certain Sir Henry Head dunking his penis in warm water, to test nerve damage and touch:
In the case of [Head], the tip happens to be devoid of heat-spots but is sensitive to cold and to pain. When… it was dipped into water at 40° C, no sensation of heat was produced, but [Head] experienced an unusually disagreeable sensation of pain… But, as soon as the water covered the corona without reaching the foreskin, both cold and pain disappeared, giving place to an exquisitely pleasant sensation of heat.
Molly Young marvels at a Hollister store and its innovative, if unnerving, retail model:
Immersive retail is … a way to counter the allure of online shopping, which boils down to its convenience … IBM describes the goals of immersive retail the way a party planner might envision a successful bar mitzvah, aiming for a “memorable, interactive and emotional” experience full of “personalized dialogues.”
The paper explains that immersive retail “is more about involving the customer than it is about the merchandise.” It is about shirtless male employees miming one-armed pushups on a rack of distressed jeans, yelling, That’s what I’m talkin’ about! and Party at my house! on a script every ten minutes.
I could handle that. But I prefer it in a nightclub myself. The rest is Konsumterrorismus for me.
Pace Guy Deutscher, John McWhorter argues that as "cool as it would be if grammar were thought, the idea is a myth":
Deutcher’s favorite evidence is people who sense direction not as a matter of front and back but as north, south, east and west. In their languages you say not “in front of me” but “west of me” and so on — meaning that where if we were turned around after saying something was in front of us we’d say that it was now in back of us, speakers of these languages would still say that it was west of them.
Neat. But are these people’s languages making them sensitive to direction rather than position – or is it, as almost anyone would intuit, that the culture focuses on direction and thus the language does? Americans have a plethora of terms referring to psychology– complex, affect, syndrome, superego, compensation. Yet who would say that it’s the English language that makes us sensitive to these things? It sounds like something a Martian anthropologist might come up with, too eager for the exotic to perceive – or settle for — the more mundane truth.
Artists Thomas voor ‘t Hekke and Bas van Oerle’s latest project:
‘panoptICONS’ addresses the fact that you are constantly being watched by surveillance cameras in city centres. The surveillance camera seems to have become a real pest that feeds on our privacy. To represent this, camera birds – city birds with cameras instead of heads – were placed throughout the city centre of Utrecht where they feed on our presence.
What did I think about the decision to construct a "mosque" this close to ground zero? I thought it was a no-brainer. Of course it should be built there. I sometimes wonder if those people fighting so passionately against Park51 can fathom the diversity of those who died at ground zero. Do we think no Muslims died in the towers? My husband, Eddie Torres, killed on his second day of work at Cantor Fitzgerald while I was pregnant with our first child, was a dark-skinned Latino, often mistaken for Pakistani, who came here illegally from Colombia. How did "9/11 victim" become sloppy shorthand for "white Christian"? …
But here is what's been lost in this Park51 controversy: We are not experts, we are victims. We deserve to speak up, we need to speak up to acknowledge the pain and suffering, but we were never meant to be leaders in a national debate. Because the only thing we really know intimately is grief. The only thing we really know is what it feels like to lose a loved one in 9/11.
We talked tax cuts; Schwarzenegger couldn't see Russia from Palin's house; and being compared to Bristol Palin lowered Meghan McCain's self-esteem. The Tea Party might be good for gays; considering the Obama administration is now battling Republicans to prevent gay servicemembers from serving openly. Mayor Fenty losing in DC could be bad for education reform; climate change skeptics could throw our whole understanding of the world into chaos; and Americans wanted something for nothing.
We wondered about the corrupt Karzai clan; there was more political impasse in Iraq, and China very kindly paid for the war in Iraq. VFYW here; smug alert here; View From Your Recession here; FOTD here; and MHB here. "Black" was not "what white people do not do" and men were lied to about their waistlines.
In international news the Chinese loved their cars; North Korea was about to get an even crazier successor; and we may need more modesty in Afghanistan, while the world could use a happy planet index.
In response to the recession, Beth Boyle Machlan played the lottery; college educated young women outearned young men; and the final shoe on real wages was about to drop. We harnessed the power of the personal brand; and readers responded to the emergency room debate and the peak oil problem. VFYW here; creepy ad watch here; MHB here; and FOTD here.
Remembering those lost to AIDS didn't get any easier, but Iowa's gay marriages were prospering with their own version of the suburban American dream. One day, the New York Times will stop being printed, date TBD, and this guy won the award for the worst stump speech ever.
Wednesday on the Dish, Feisal Rauf urged peace; and Leon Wieseltier closed the books on the Mosque with the most beautiful response yet. We parsed Petraeus's comments on Koran–burning; and honoring 9/11 got pretty pricey with Palin and Beck.
The Iraq war via Wikipedia was bound; Castro had lunch with Goldberg; and Pakistan's problems weren't going anywhere. Andrew promised a response on the Iran-Israel article soon; Greece might default on its debts; and we argued over isolationism.
Boulder was burning, America faced fiscal collapse; and the housing hangover was just beginning, but peak oil didn't scare Reihan. Andrew warmed to redistribution rather than soaking the rich and Manzi outlined the hard work ahead on education and immigration. We assessed the GOP's anti-debt rhetoric and the budget behind Obama's proposal; and Conor kept at the Heritage Foundation over Addington. American novelists were in decline according to Time; Santorum had a Google problem; and emergency rooms didn't always fit our schedule.
Karl Smith wrote a pessimist's manifesto; the Chesterton fetish was called into question; and "jumping the shark" may mark the "end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end." Humanity thrived while the earth died; erotic capital still ruled the beauty premium; and magic mushrooms could help the terminally ill. We watched Tom Hardy work out; and we wanted the sex ads back on Craigslist. Quote for the day here; VFYW here; MHB here; FOTD here; and email of the day here.
Joaquin Phoenix was a mountain-top-water-drop and this woman sacrificed sex for the occasional sherry.
By Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images.
Tuesday on the Dish, Andrew returned. He asked the big questions about humility and humiliation in religion and politics and extended a hand to Ross to embrace the equality of their respective marriages.
Obama stepped up his game; we remembered the 1990s; and we read the tea leaves of today's political polls. We looked at which party might get to claim the business tax cuts and whether Obama's transportation proposal was any good. Marty Peretz weighed in on the Mosque; Chait volleyed with Conor on what makes a good opinion journalist; and the era of free lunch ended but the GOP didn't want to make a different sandwich.
The algorithm for war didn't get any easier; Afghanistan went on the back-burner; and we assessed Obama's foreign policy legacy. The history of Margaret Thatcher doesn't fit into soundbites; burning Korans could endanger troops;and Stephen Hawking thought philosophy was dead.
Gateway drugs were still a hoax; a college education made cops less violent; and anarchy might break out if corporate speak didn't exist. MHB here; FOTD here; VFYW here; and the winner for the slightly easier labor day VFYW contest #14 here. We closed the accounting book on hip religious music with some final inductees; Craigslist censored their adult services; and we took a trip to red state liquor stores. And the shark may not have been jumped, after all.
The Dish 