Month: January 2011

Krauthammer thinks not:

Nate Silver reassesses her chances::

In the near term, I would look toward two things. First, what is being said about Ms. Palin on conservative blogs, on conservative talk radio, and on Fox News? These reflect the middle ground between elite and popular opinion and may provide a leading indicator — perhaps more so than polls — about how much the elite’s criticisms of Ms. Palin, and their concerns about her electability, are penetrating into the general public.

Second, I would look toward whom Ms. Palin is hiring as her support staff. A presidential campaign is a huge endeavor, comparable to a medium-sized business. Perhaps, because of her facility in commanding attention, Ms. Palin requires less assistance than a typical candidate might. Perhaps, because she sometimes seems to have an impatience for details and has not run for president before, she requires more. But all presidential candidates need some help: those candidates, like the Republican Fred Thompson, who have become too enamored with the notion of running a “viral”, nontraditional campaign from the confines of their living rooms have usually failed miserably. Is she hiring good pollsters, media strategists, fundraisers, consultants, logisticians, and advertising gurus? If so, she may still be as likely as anyone to prevail from a large, but fairly weak, Republican field. If not, her campaign, if she decides to run one, is liable to be a bust.

Charlie Jane Anders shows how far we've come in the past ten years:

(Hat tip: JoeMyGod)
 

Rob Horning ruminates on the London conference of boredom enthusiasts held this past December:

It sounds like this was less about boredom than an elaborate parody of self-obsession and connoisseurship, that is, about things we fail to find boring about ourselves that bore everyone else. It sounds pretty hilarious, and I imagine the pressure to keep it all deadpan made it more so. It also seems like more evidence that boredom is situational, relational; it doesn’t adhere in subject matter but in relationships. I am almost never bored when alone, probably because I find myself endlessly fascinating but also because I can ricochet between any number of distractions without any negotiation or warning. I don’t have to justify what I am preoccupied with in any given moment. The presence of others conjures the boredom of compromise.

That was about as mellow and as quiet and as stress-free a Christmas as I can remember (thanks, in great part to Patrick, Chris, Zoe and Conor's management of the Dish). Another reason: we didn't go anywhere. Aaron's in a show that didn't allow enough lee-time for us to get to Michigan and back, so we just did the stay-at-home thing, which in our case meant eating Aaron's mom's provisions, playing with beagles, and streaming Netflix.

Oh – and angry birds. Lots of Angry Birds. Happy 2011.

by Zoë Pollock

James Fallows points to this post about the healthcare act lawsuits, by Atlantic correspondent Garrett Epps, as exemplary of the best kinds of journalism:

One of the basic functions of journalism is to say: This is true, and that is false. There are other functions, but establishing bedrock "world is round / sun rises in the east / 1+ 1 = 2" verities is a big one.

In today's political environment, when so many simple facts are disputed, journalists can feel abashed about stating plainly what is true. With an anticipatory cringe about the angry letters they will receive or the hostile blog posts that will appear, they instead cover themselves by writing, "according to most scientists, the sun rises in the east, although critics say…." … It's one thing for Stephen Colbert et al to joke about the new age of "truthiness," but it's something different to see a writer lay out, with facts and history, what the truth of an issue is.

by Zoë Pollock

That's the gist of Ireland's advice to women who want an abortion. Linda Greenhouse does a close reading of the European Court of Human Rights in the Case of A, B, and C v. Ireland:

The women’s lawyers had asked the court to take account of the strong trend toward liberalizing European abortion laws, demonstrating, they argued, the existence of a consensus on a matter of international human rights.

The court did take the European consensus into account. But, perversely, it used that fact not on the women’s behalf, but against them, emphasizing Irish women’s ability to travel to any of dozens of countries, with “no legal impediment,” to end their pregnancies. Given that ability, the court concluded, Irish law “struck a fair balance.”

by Zoë Pollock

Vorjack proposes one:

Think of how useful it would be to if we had a unit of wrongness. Let’s say we had a unit – for absolutely no reason at all let’s call it a “beck” – that would allow us to express how wrong something is. “Ooh, close, but you’re wrong by 3 millibecks.” or “Whoa, off by a kilobeck.”

It could join other useful measurements, like the GRay unit, which is a measure of the amount of insanity on display, or the millihelen, which is the amount of energy needed to launch a single ship (think about it).

by Zoë Pollock

Chris Faraone tracks the infopocalypse on the road to storage privatization:

Our nation is drowning in data. At any given time, federal agencies use more electronic storage units than could fill every NFL stadium from Oakland to Foxboro. At last count, the US government owns or leases at least 2100 data centers, and spends about half of its multi-billion dollar IT budget on digital storage. The United States Census Bureau alone maintains about 2560 terabytes of information — more data than is contained in all the academic libraries in America, and the equivalent of about 50 million four-door filing cabinets of text documents. … Storage capacity is increasing, but the volume of data is also increasing, perhaps just as quickly. Over the next decade, the world will produce the informational equivalent of nearly 100 million Libraries of Congress per year, according to Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group.

by Zoë Pollock

n+1's Year in Review features almost anonymous capsules from around the world, including Idaho, England, Tumblr and bedbugs. Money quote:

The British people drank tea from their commemorative William and Kate Engagement Mugs and sat next to space heaters in Fair Isle sweaters that seemed to be fraying at the cuffs. Now, thanks to 2010, they will have insurmountable student debt, like Americans, and an Arctic climate, like Canadians, and Kraft Foods will make their Dairy Milk. This is the Big Society. This is the Age of Austerity.

by Zoë Pollock

"Before The Flood" by W. S. Merwin appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in October, 1998:

Why did he promise me
that we would build ourselves
an ark all by ourselves
out in back of the house
on New York Avenue
in Union City New Jersey
to the singing of the streetcars
after the story
of Noah whom nobody
believed about the waters
that would rise over everything
when I told my father
I wanted us to build
an ark of our own there
in the back yard under
the kitchen could we do that
he told me that we could
I want to I said and will we
he promised me that we would
why did he promise that
I wanted us to start then
nobody will believe us
I said that we are building
an ark because the rains
are coming and that was true
nobody ever believed
we would build an ark there
nobody would believe
that the waters were coming

(Image of plans for the Kentucky theme park (featuring unicorns and "land dragons"), Ark Encounter.)