Month: February 2011

Will Wilkinson continues to insist that the Tea Party and the leftist protestors in Wisconsin have a lot in common:

Michelle Malkin, a zanily Manichean right-winger, is delighting in the chore of cataloguing the many scandalous rhetorical sins against propriety committed by the pro-union crowds in Madison. Ms Malkin's ridiculous point is that the pro-union rabble is guilty of the racism, sexism and homophobia of which the courageous tea-party movement has been falsely accused. My point is that when folks get angry, they get stupid, and stupidity knows no party or clique. Progressives should not meet this truism so defensively. I know we want to believe the best of our comrades. And I know that loudly congratulating one's team for its superior intellect and virtue is a critical part of keeping a bubble of enthusiasm aloft and rising. So we adults can speak in whispers, if we must. But it's a plain fact that the fuel-mixture of potent populism includes generous helpings of stupidity and self-regard. Democrats got flattened last fall by a fired-up, pie-eyed right. They should welcome an equivalent efflorescence of inchoate rage from the left.

"Zanily Manichean". Brilliant.

Brian Christian's piece has a great premise:

In two hours, I will sit down at a computer and have a series of five-minute instant-message chats with several strangers. At the other end of these chats will be a psychologist, a linguist, a computer scientist, and the host of a popular British technology show. Together they form a judging panel, evaluating my ability to do one of the strangest things I’ve ever been asked to do. I must convince them that I’m human.

Fortunately, I am human; unfortunately, it’s not clear how much that will help.

Alex Goldmark explains:

[T]his little line for a microbus is a harbinger of the national rebirth in process, a blossoming of order out of national pride. Under Mubarak boarding a bus required a few shoves, maybe a sharp elbow or two and sturdy footing. This sight of this calm, brotherly, alternative moved Ghonim to post the snapshot with this caption:

"Egyptians standing in line to get to a microbus. A scene we never experienced during Mubarak's regime. Egyptians are changing themselves not just their regime."

“I don’t have any enthusiasm for…trying to shrink the relative importance of the financial system in our economy as a test of reform, because we have to think about the fact that we operate in the broader world…It’s the same thing for Microsoft or anything else. We want US firms to benefit from that…Now, financial firms are different because of the risk, but you can contain that through regulation,” – Timothy Geithner.

Simon Johnson responds, aggressively.

First Ben Ali, now:

Mohamed Ghannouchi, a holdover from the Ben Ali regime that collapsed in January, resigned as prime minister on Sunday after three days of huge street protests in which three people were killed, apparently by police. Ghannouchi's interim government was under heavy pressure to move faster towards democratic reform, and his departure may not end the protests, unless the entire cabinet changes course or resigns. It has released political prisoners and granted a general amnesty, but protesters want fundamental guarantees of human rights and a new constitution.

The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

The Economist provides an interactive map on the Arab League. Click on a country to see demographics and levels of corruption, democracy, and press freedom:

Mark Bittman can't stomach McDonald's idea of oatmeal:

Incredibly, the McDonald’s product contains more sugar than a Snickers bar and only 10 fewer calories than a McDonald’s cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin. (Even without the brown sugar it has more calories than a McDonald’s hamburger.)

Yglesias counters:

I see the McDonald’s oatmeal saga as in some ways optimistic. The first piece of good news about McDonald’s oatmeal is that, as a marketing strategy, they clearly think there’s money to be made in selling people food that they perceive as healthier than the existing McDonald’s options. The second piece of good news about McDonald’s oatmeal is that, as a matter of corporate policy, McDonald’s discloses extensive nutritional information about the food they sell. Thanks to the second piece of good news, we know that the promise of healthy McDonald’s oatmeal is a lie. And thanks to the Affordable Care Act, more extensive and aggressive calorie information will be coming.

Serwer adds important context:

Bittman doesn't actually tell you exactly how many calories McDonald's oatmeal or hamburgers have throughout the entire piece, which is a bit odd considering that he's trying to tell you how bad it is for you. The truth is that at 250 calories, McDonald's hamburgers aren't particularly caloric by themselves. The two varieties of oatmeal on their nutrition list weigh in at 260 and 290 calories respectively, and while I wouldn't eat it, the fact that they are more caloric than a hamburger doesn't really mean all that much.

Yvonne Yen Liu elaborates on a new report (pdf):

Half of white food workers earn $25,024 a year, while workers of color make $5,675 less than that. This wage gap plays out in all four sectors of the food system—production, processing, distribution and service—with largest income divides occurring in the food processing and distribution sectors. Women working in the food chain draw further penalties in wages, especially women of color. For every dollar a white male worker earns, women of color earn almost half of that.

Of course, like comparisons between the wages of public and private sector workers, there may be other variables contributing to this gap.