Month: March 2011

No, not Christianists in Texas; Islamists in London. And unlike the Christianists, they back up their fundamentalist claptrap with the threat of violence.

Juxtapoz explains:

Internationally renowned artist and sculptor Michael Kalish, inspired by conversations with Muhammad Ali's wife, Yolanda, created what we consider to be one of the more impressive installation/portraits we have seen in quite some time. … The project, reALIze, is a "two-story structure composed of five miles of stainless steel, two miles of aluminum tubing, and 1300 boxing speed bags. Viewed from nearly every angle, the result appears to be a massive, boxing-inspired rainstorm — but find the exact right position, and it unexpectedly becomes a 2-D vision of the timeless face of Muhammad Ali."

Impressive.

A reader writes:

I find it interesting that as a lifelong agnostic that I can name more of the Ten Commandments than a good number of Christians. Then again, I have a very helpful mnemonic from back in the day when saying our legal system was built on them was very popular:

Roughly 1/3 of them are actually laws of the land (Such as, not stealing or killing), roughly 1/3 are not (honoring your mother and father, coveting) and the remaining third are blatantly unconstitutional (Hold no other god before me, false idols, taking his name in vain) I somehow doubt that would be a popular method of remembering them among Christianists though.

Anya Kamenetz previews Deb Roy's amazing mission to capture every word uttered in his child's first five years, as a way of understanding the birth of language:

Most moving of all was the precise mapping of tight feedback loops between the child and his caregivers—father, mother, nanny. For example, Roy was able to track the length of every sentence spoken to the child in which a particular word–like “water”–was included. Right around the time the child started to say the word, what Roy calls the “word birth,” something remarkable happened.

“Caregiver speech dipped to a minimum and slowly ascended back out in complexity.” In other words, when mom and dad and nanny hear a child speaking a word, they unconsciously stress it by repeating it back to him all by itself or in very short sentences. Then as he gets the word, the sentences lengthen again. The infant shapes the caregivers’ behavior, the better to learn.

PM Carpenter thinks George Will's latest column on the absurdity of many GOP candidates is too little far too late. These candidates are merely pandering to what the Republican party has long since become in an era in which an allegedly mature leader, John McCain, selected Sarah Palin as vice-president and gained votes as a result. Money quote:

No single Republican pol is, or ever will be, capable of altering the GOP's devolutionary and even apocalyptic course. Such a desirable feat (hey, you libs, you need a conservative party to keep you honest) will instead require a tight collusion among GOP presidential candidates — a willingness free, clear and bold to agree among themselves from the start that in this election (be it 2016's or in 2020) they will not only distance themselves but vigorously denounce any "careless" and "delusional" bubblings from the foul and corrupted bottom.

It's too late now, but such a mutual agreement can and should be made in 2013, following the electoral disaster they just experienced in 2012.

I have a simple litmus test: do they take on extremist talk radio? When they do, we will know the change has occurred.

We'll know more about the looming NYT pay-wall "in a matter of weeks." I still read the NYT on dead tree every day, but that just reveals my age. And it's true that after the previous day's blogging, there is very little in it I didn't already know. But there's often something I come across I wouldn't have done otherwise. And I worry as a blogger how much the new paywall will restrict the chance of linking to the NYT, what "fair use" will become, whether the Dish's opinion-aggregation model can survive a barricaded NYT. I guess there's Reuters, AP, and the British papers. But the NYT website is, in my view, a marvel. Maybe it's time to pay for it. Meanwhile, we'll see the new Newsweek tomorrow.  Money quote:

"It's not your Grandpa Jon's magazine anymore," the staffer said. "It's slick, contemporary and feels like something out of the new millennium–sort of New York mag meets GQ, and pretty distinct from Time, with big photo spreads, graphics that pop and draw you into the page, lots of entry points into a story, infographics, sidebars, etc."

(Full disclosure: this blog will move to The Daily Beast/Newsweek April 4.)

David Grine points one out:

The Idaho Meth Project recently said it will begin running [Mexican director Alejandro González] Iñárritu's three meth ads, originally created in 2008 for the Montana Meth Project. The spots include typical meth fare: sibling prostitution, rampaging teen burglars and a writhing zombified overdose.

Seeing these spots revived makes me think Iñárritu must be getting some mixed signals from America. His most recent film, Biutiful with Javier Bardem, took months to find a U.S. distributor because no one thought a bleak subtitled movie about guilt and cancer would sell in middle America. Meanwhile, his deeply depressing ads about teen drug abuse are being applauded by the governor of Idaho. Ours is a complicated country.

A classic piece of propaganda, dressed up as an interview. Try and find a single question that challenges Palin in any way except for setting up moments when she can convey various sound-bites, talking points, and "God gave us oil" blather. (If oil is an indicator of God's favor, by the way, then maybe the Wahhabists have a point).

I know. I know. It's old news. But at some point, we may come to think of Fox as some kind of journalistic outfit. Many Americans believe it is. You just have to keep reminding yourself that this is what state television feels like in a one-party state. If it weren't for Shep Smith …

Kottke lays out the right ways and the wrong ways for company reps to respond via Twitter.

Jerry Coyne expands Richard Conniff's latest riff on the benefit of diversity:

Morality is evolving over time, so that many people now see it as immoral to cause needless pain in animals.  We don’t use chimps in medical research if macaques will do, and won’t use macaques if mice will do.  People are rising up against battery chickens.  It would be nice if we could extend that morality to ecosystems as well, recognizing that they have a simple right to exist because their species are just as evolved as we are.