Month: December 2010

"Our elites, broadly defined as the top third of our society, aren't nearly as decadent as advertised. According to Wilcox's data, the highly educated (with a college diploma or higher) are less likely to divorce, less likely to have children out of wedlock, and less likely to commit adultery than the moderately educated (high-school degree or some college) and the least-educated (no high-school diploma)," – Rich Lowry, fan of Sarah Palin.

David Zetland takes another look at Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962):

A big thought: Most farmers will tell you that they minimize the volume of chemicals (and fertilizer) that they apply to their land, because they do not want to waste money and time on over-application. It's thus important (and sad) to note that the biggest abusers of chemicals in Silent Spring are bureaucrats whose jobs dictate that they should "do something" with other people's money (OPM!) and homeowners who do not understand the dangers of the chemicals they use and who think that "some is good, so more is better" when applying them to their yards. …

Bureaucrats apply them to other people's land; homeowners just wash excess into storm drains and distant environments. Farmers may be willing to chemically sterilize their land, but at least they experience most of the costs and benefits of those actions.

Alexey Sidorenko has the disturbing story of Russian cops who came out on YouTube against corruption within the police force and have since been persecuted with "arrests, beatings, firings or criminal prosecution":

The story of ‘YouTube cops' vividly shows how Russian law enforcement structures react to the attempts of online whistle-blowers. [Alexey] Dymovskiy and his followers have not experienced the same glorious fate of Frank Serpico, a New York policeman who testified against city corruption. Unlike Serpiko, Dymovskiy has not received any awards, and his story has not been turned into a Hollywood movie (other than the movie he made himself, of course). So far, he and his supporters have been persecuted, marginalized, and their claims were ignored.

The kicker? A number of the YouTube cops have been involved in crimes themselves. This is Russia, after all.

Grady Hendrix sounds the death knell for a once-thriving profession:

Jose Ramos has been the projectionist at the Anthology Film Archives since the '90s, but his career started back in the '80s in New York City's porno houses. "I remember one time I had a break in the film," he says. "I forgot where I was and turned on the lights like I was in a normal theater. You could hear everyone screaming, because the porno houses were just about backdoor sex.

At the Roxy, I used to have to do the music and the lights for the strip show and the live sex acts. It was wild times. The strippers would change clothes in my booth to get away from the tricks, and you'd get to know each other. We're all just people, regardless of our chosen profession."

 

Steven Grant argues that the Tea Party "movement was detailed in the Bible." I kid you not. PZ Myers scoffs:

Yeah, this is the fourth Tea Party movement: the first was after the death of Solomon, the second was led by Jesus Christ himself, the third was the Boston event, and the fourth was begun by a ranting overprivileged ass on the Chicago stock exchange, which makes Rick Santelli some kind of prophet, apparently.

Tony Woodlief – understandably – wonders if orthodox Christianity in the West may have jumped the shark. The news from Poland does not suggest optimism; it reflects what will, I fear, at some point be regarded as the catastrophic papacy of Benedict XVI with respect to Europe's faith.

Chris Blattman spins some bad news from his hotel stay in Liberia:

I draw some solace from the fact that a rebel war criminal turned Senator and Presidential candidate, Prince Johnson, would be staying in the same room a couple of days later. I did not tell the manger about the bedbugs. Bite away, little buddies, bite away.

Now science has stumbled upon it:

In the December issue of the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, Bulgarian doctors report results of a 6,200-boy survey showing “a modest though significant difference … with respect to penile size between urban and rural populations.” Country boys were born with longer ones and the disparity continued as the boys grew.

(Hat tip: Dodai Stewart)

A pilgrimage in perpetual motion:

Hajj.. A journey of purity | الحج .. رحلة نقاء from KDMart on Vimeo.

Mark Vernon salutes and compares the recently passed Reverend Colin Slee and Christopher Hitchens:

What both men have, or had, is a kind of personal, as opposed to political, freedom – an inner freedom that allows them to speak of what they see to be true. It's a great gift and stands out, I guess, not just because of the courage it requires, but because of another rare quality both have displayed: clear convictions about what is good and true. (This is not the same as having clear convictions about what is bad and false, an easier set of opinions to hold. You also have to be prepared to take the risks of being proven wrong.)

Elizabeth Minkel takes issue with Maria Bustillos’s take on class in the Harry Potter series, and this sentence in particular:

It is a horrible thing to be teaching children, that you have to be ‘chosen’; that the highest places in this world are gained by celestial fiat, rather than by working out how to get there yourself and then busting tail until you succeed.

Minkel rebuts:

My only serious qualm with the article is its conclusion, because for all of the moralizing, the only prescription seems to be, ‘Yank that Potter book out of your child’s hands and give them something by Philip Pullman.’ It feels tacked on—Pullman is championed without enough explanation—and it left me wondering how Bustillo feels about just about every other work of British children’s literature, fantasy or otherwise, reflections of a society in which class is an entrenched construction.