Month: April 2011

Bruce Schneier takes a look at various kinds of e-book fraud:

The first is content farming, discussed in these two interesting blog posts. People are creating automatically generated content, web-collected content, or fake content, turning it into a book, and selling it on an ebook site like Amazon.com. Then they use multiple identities to give it good reviews. If it gets a bad review, the scammer just relists the same content under a new name.

Felix Salmon believes that media piracy in the developing world isn't economically damaging. Reihan agrees:

Piracy builds a market for the culture produced in rich countries. As poor consumers in poor countries grow richer, they will pay for convenience, or for concert tickets, merchandise, and other goods associated with popular brands. The case against panicking over media piracy seems pretty strong.

Today on the Dish, Andrew commended Ryan for rebranding the GOP with a real dedication to fiscal reform. The hard left freaked out, Douthat thought it an important gamble, Andrew kept an eye on Ryan's blindspots, Gleckman anticipated Obama's response, and the war costs added up even in the face of proposed benefit cuts for the poor and elderly. Andrew despaired at the coverage of KSM's trial, and the politics of fear Obama's decision indicates. Noah Millman reminded the US we sometimes have to be a fickle friend, Yemen beat the US (just barely) in gun ownership, and the Nationa Review came around to civil liberties. Andrew skewered Karzai for keeping US welfare alive in Afghanistan, the situation at the Ivory Coast came to a head, and Andrew Exum explored whether Muslims fully grasp freedom of religious speech.

Contra Beinart, Andrew eagerly awaited the circus of 2012, third party candidates and all. Joyner tangled with the Republican candidates, Trump milked the birther vote, and not voting is like not doing anything about pollution. Andrew weighed love and friendship as a choice,  and demanded that we see the casualties that result from the policies we choose. Biking wasn't as yuppy as you think,  Nathan Yau jammed out to traffic patterns, and we remembered sad geniuses. Aaron Bady analyzed journalism's booty on the internet, Annalee Newitz examined why rejection hurts like physical pain, and America diversified. Will Wilkinson pondered David Foster Wallace's work ethic, Emily Bazelon bemoaned the wrong way to fight bullying, and a reader re-cartooned Andrew.

More takes on the Beast switch here, cool ad watch here, Malkin award here, quotes for the day here, here and here, MHB here, FOTD here, VFYW here, and VFYW contest winner #44 here.

–Z.P.

Zeynep Tufekci believes that access to graphic content is a social necessity:

I understand that there are awful things happening somewhere, every minute, and we cannot always be immersed in such misery and sorrow. However, I am firmly of the opinion that the massive censorship of reality and images of this reality by mainstream news organizations from their inception has been incredibly damaging. It has severed this link of common humanity between people "audiences" in one part of the world and victims in another. This censorship has effectively relegated the status of other humans to that of livestock, whose deaths we also do not encounter except in an unrecognizable format in the supermarket.

The Dish has a long history of showing images that the MSM tries not to. That goes for the beheading of Daniel Pearl, the brutal sectaran warfare in Iraq, the devastation of the Gaza war, and the blood on the streets of Tehran. Those who want to look away can read another blog. But to my mind, forcing what can become abstract arguments to confront the human cost of war and terror is necessary. If we are to judge policies and events, it's vital we see them as they really are.

It may be, for example, that responsiblity for the dead child above should be shared by Hamas, who used human shields, and by the IDF who remained on a mission to destroy Hamas's bases and institutions. But which ever position you take, this infant died. Now we have no draft to remind us directly of the horrors of war, the least we can do is to face the consequences – as vividly as we can.

(Hat tip: Alexis. Photo: Palestinian relatives carry the body of baby Ala Athamna during the family funeral in Beit Hanoun town on November 9, 2006 in Gaza Strip. The Families of 18 Palestinian civilians including the children and women who were killed by Israeli tanks shelling, in the town of Beit Hanoun on November 8 buried them in the new cemetery of AL-Shohada or the Martyrs. By Abid Katib/Getty Images.)

Howard Gleckman asks a number of good questions about Paul Ryan's plan. His bottom line:

Make no mistake, this plan is a dramatic—some would say radical—change in the role of the federal government.  It is curious: Republicans spent two years blistering Obama for his supposedly extreme political agenda.  Yet the president is very much a liberal incrementalist. Rhetoric aside, his health law fiddled around the edges of the same private insurance-based health system we have today.  His response to the economic crisis was little different from President George W. Bush’s.  And despite the demands of the left, the White House recipe for reducing greenhouse gases has been modest at best.

Real change, like the direction or not, is alive and well in Washington. But it is thriving at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. I anxiously await Obama’s response.

A reader writes:

I'm a huge Elliott Smith fan, ever since "Good Will Hunting."  One of my favorite memories is of the Oscars that year, with the contrast between the over-the-top spectacle of Celine Dion singing "My Heart Will Go On" and then just Elliott with his guitar singing "Miss Misery," both nominated for best song.  I saw Elliott not long after that at the 9:30 club in DC, and he refused to play the song, even though the crowd was screaming for it. He was clearly uncomfortable with the attention he was getting.   I remember him saying something like, "I have other songs besides Miss Misery…"

Anyway, on to the main point of my e-mail: One of my favorite movies of all time is "The Royal Tenenbaums." 

In the movie, the Luke Wilson character, a former tennis star who loves his adopted sister (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), attempts suicide.  I don't remember the order, but the songs before and after the suicide scene were by Nick Drake and Elliott Smith. (See where I'm going with this?)  Nick was a '70s British folk singer also known for sombre songs, the best ones accompanied just by acoustic guitar, who, yes, committed suicide in 1974.  (His music gained new life with the use of "Pink Moon" in a sweet VW convertible ad a while back.) 

Elliott was still alive when the movie came out, but we know how the story ends.

James Capretta wonders:

[W]ith a Republican plan on the table, the media will surely start to ask Democrats, “Hey, where’s your plan?” This will force them to either come clean with their tax-hike vision, or become the party that pushed the country toward a debt-induced economic crisis. Either way, with more clarity about where the parties actually stand, Republicans can win the public fight.

Riehan makes related points and modifies Capretta's argument slightly:

I wouldn’t put it this way. I actually don’t know if the president and his allies understand the scale of the tax increases their long-term spending priorities will require.

Friends hang a poster of Arab-Jewish actor and director Juliano Mer-Khamis outside The Almidan Theatre on April 5, 2011 in Haifa, Israel. The 52-year-old and director of the theatre was shot dead by unknown gunmen in the West Bank city of Jenin. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.

Earlier Dish coverage here.

Ezra Klein thinks it's possible:

I wouldn’t be surprised if, a year from now, it’s broadly agreed that the main thing Paul Ryan’s budget did was persuade Democrats — and perhaps some Republicans — to adopt something pretty close to the Fiscal Commission’s recommendations (which are currently being turned into legislation by a bipartisan group of senators).