Month: October 2010

Paul Collins traces the chain letter through its trickster history:

Like any truly great crooked scheme, it began in Chicago.

It was there in 1888 that one of the earliest known chain letters came from a Methodist academy for women missionaries. Up to its eyes in debt, that summer the Chicago Training School hit upon the notion of the "peripatetic contribution box"—a missive which, in one founder's words, suggested that "each one receiving the letter would send us a dime and make three copies of the letter asking three friends to do the same thing." …

[W]hat happened to Natalie Schenck, the teenager who nearly capsized her Long Island town with chain-letters for the Spanish-American War troops? The one who shook down a cascade of money, embarrassed a respected institution, and left government agencies tied up in knots?

Reader, need you even ask? She became a Wall Street banker.

Sarah Kessler collected eleven sci-fi predictions and their real-life counterparts today. Money quote is Arthur C. Clarke's description of something akin to an ipad in 1968:

“When he tired of official reports and memoranda and minutes, he would plug in his foolscap-size newspad into the ship’s information circuit and scan the latest reports from Earth. One by one he would conjure up the world’s major electronic papers…Switching to the display unit’s short-term memory, he would hold the front page while he quickly searched the headlines and noted the items that interested him. Each had its own two-digit reference; when he punched that, the postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand until it neatly filled the screen and he could read it with comfort. When he had finished, he would flash back to the complete page and select a new subject for detailed examination…”

I gave in, by the way. I find it pretty useless for reading the web, and the lack of flash is simply bizarre. But the visual interactive apps are a joy, and I have to say I love iBooks. Somehow, for me, it beats the Kindle because it better represents the actual exerience of reading a real book – the fonts, the pages, the turning of them, even little design things like that bookmark. I know it's not so great in sunshine, but I've found myself wanting to read on it more than I ever did on the Kindle. And especially lying down on the couch or in bed, where, it appears, I am not alone.

The Economist sent a correspondent to the off-the-beaten path Ascension Island for a series of reports:

The fact that there are no native people on Ascension Island does not mean there are no native traditions. There are lots. Two of them have their physical manifestation at a road junction called One Boat. It has become the custom that when sporty types depart from the island, they leave their trophies inside the bus-shelter-like boat that gives One Boat its name, perhaps on the basis that they mean more on Ascension than anywhere else.

A few hundred yards away sits the rather garish lizard rock. The tradition here, a more longstanding one, is that if you are leaving Ascension and keen not to come back, you have to paint the rock, unseen, at night. It is a live enough tradition that some of the paint looks pretty fresh.

That both these traditions focus on departure is not that surprising. Departure is a central fact of Ascension life.

Jillian Lauren found erotic inspiration, not in romance novels but in J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories:

I first read Nine Stories and felt the nakedness of being recognized in my loneliness. Desire wasn’t a narrative device with a neat payoff; rather, it was an ocean of longing that unfolded toward an ever-receding horizon. The book got inside me in a way that changed me irrevocably and, conversely, felt like it had been there all along. And that, I imagined, would be what having a lover would feel like.

Trashy novels encouraged me to employ sex as a strategy. But it was ultimately Salinger who made me want to fuck.

Johann Hari wants to help them:

In the Western world today, there is a group of people who live in a haze of unreality, and are prone at any moment to break into paranoia, hallucinations, and screaming. If you try to get between them and their addiction, they will become angry and aggressive and lash out. They need our help. I am talking, of course, about the Drug Prohibitionists: the gaggle of politicians, bishops and journalists who still insist that the only way to deal with the very widespread drug use in our societies is for it to be criminalized, where it is untaxed, unregulated, controlled by armed criminal gangs, and horribly adulterated.

(Hat tip: Drug Warrant)

Neetzan previews:

This has been around for a minute but is making the rounds because it is awesome and deserves to be watched again: Spy cameras attached to the backs of a Peregrine Falcon — the fastest bird on the planet — and a Goshawk (AKA “the master of maneuverability”).

In part three of Sam Kean's interview with famed biologist E.O. Wilson, Wilson explained why he decided to write his first novel after all these years:

My favorite story along these lines has to do with this great evangelist of the 1920s. … I heard a record of him giving one these hellfire sermons of the kind that’s typical of Southern evangelicals. And here’s what he said, and here’s the accent—I can do it real well, having grown up with it. …

I’ma agains’ sin. I hayte sin sooo much, I’ma gonna fight it ‘til I cain’t move my airms no more. …And when I cain’t move my airms no more, I’ma a gonna byte sin. … And when all my teeth falls out, I’ma gonna gum it.

… I love that. That’s what I’m doing. I’m gumming it.

Just a note to say how grateful I am for the many emails in response to my post yesterday, some of which have indeed made me rethink parts of my argument. I am also grateful for Glenn's response, which you can and should read here. I'm not ducking the factual, legal, moral or political objections made by you and Glenn – I just want to mull them over, read some more, get a little rest and respond on Monday (when alas I will also be traveling), when they will have a wider audience. It says something about the blogosphere that waiting a couple of days to respond to such deep and complex waters requires an apology. But there you are. Be patient with me, please.

Again, thank you. As readers know, I respect Glenn's work deeply and regard him as a friend. With any luck this dialogue will help flesh out some of the difficult issues we have to grapple with. As always, I hope posts like his and mine and his again are the start of a conversation and debate, not an end to either. I also recommend Barry Eisler's rebuttal here; and Scott Horton's piece here.

Money quote:

I'm telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they, the people in this country who are Jewish, are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

The CNN statement, as Allahpundit notes, is brutally brief. MJ Rosenberg rightly does not deny the anti-Semitism of Sanchez's rant, but rather compassionately tries to contextualize it:

I feel bad for Sanchez because his attack on Stewart and Jews was not the adult Sanchez talking but the hurt Latino immigrant child who has always felt (rightly or wrongly) that white America looked down on him. That is how it must have been for him at 6. And he still can’t get over it.

He thinks that when people like Jon Stewart see him they see a dumb Latino who should be cleaning tables. He’s wrong. They see a smart, provocative and movie-star handsome guy who has it all, and got it through hard work (and luck too, like everyone).