Month: August 2011

Economists have shown that attractive people can make $230,000 more than unattractive people over the course of a lifetime:

A common standard of beauty does exist. Based on an attractiveness scale of one to five, most people surveyed will come to near agreement on a test subject’s looks, a finding that holds true across all cultures. And while extreme beauty and extreme ugliness are rare, 10 to 15 percent or so of the population falls into the “below-average attractiveness” category, where they will endure their pronounced asymmetries as long as they live.

… Knowing the extent to which people are economically penalized (or rewarded) for their looks raises the question: Should the ill-favored be protected? And if so, how? [Labor economist Daniel] Hamermesh, in the Über-cautious fashion of an economist, predicts that the most unsightly people will eventually receive the same kinds of legal protection extended to Americans with disabilities.

 

Sarah Kliff reports on other countries who have lost a AAA rating and regained it:

Each country took its own path towards financial stability. They did, however, have one key thing in common: regaining a top credit rating required big, structural changes – no tinkering around the edges. All included some combination of spending cuts and revenue raisers, although tended to lean more heavily on the former.

After a stint as an extra in a Chinese film, Mitch Moxley appraises the burgeoning industry:

Last year's box-office earnings topped $1.5 billion, a 64 percent increase from 2009, making China's movie market on target to be the world’s second-largest by 2015.

Sometimes dubbed "Chollywood," China’s movie industry pumped out 526 films in 2010 (versus 754 in the U.S.), and the government has announced plans to more than double the size of the entertainment industries, including movies and television, over the next five years. … So eager are American studios to crack the Chinese market that MGM recently edited Chinese villains out of the remake of Red Dawn, replacing them with North Koreans. Studios can’t afford to offend the officials who decide which 20-odd foreign films are allowed to play each year on Chinese screens, whose number grows by four a day.

A Shanghaiist post from late last year provides more context:

Since Beijing only allows the distribution of 20 foreign films a year, American production companies are trying to curry favor under these restrictions by creating more China centric movies like The Karate Kid and Shanghai. Not only are there more movies being set here, but joint ventures with Chinese film companies is becoming the norm. Just last month Beijing based Chengtian Entertainment acquired a 3.3 percent share of Inception producers Legendary Pictures. … It's a slow migration, but Hollywood seems to be inching closer east.

Above is the trailer for the 2010 megahit Let The Bullets Fly, the highest grossing film in Chinese history.

A reader writes:

If you actually read the documents underlying the strategic framework for the Atrocities Prevention Board, military options represent a marginal component of the administration's genocide and mass atrocities prevention strategy. As Ulfelder notes, the purpose of the Board, and its subsequent strategy, is the creation of civilian tools, resources, and policy structures that mitigate the prospects for mass violence against civilians.

Gventer cherry-picks from the Genocide Prevention Task Force report, as well as the Obama administration's statements surrounding genocide and mass atrocities prevention policy, to misconstrue policy framework's functions. As the administration's fact sheet notes, "The President rejects the idea that, in the face of mass atrocity, our options are “limited to either sending in the military or standing by and doing nothing." The civilian tools and structures emphasized in the Board's strategic approach – early warning systems in the intelligence community, rapid response mechanisms in the development and diplomacy communities, and high-level policy coordination within the administration – are specifically geared toward preventing the political foundations for civilian protection and conflict prevention.

The Board's creation represents a smarter use of US foreign policy leverage and resources, rather than "liberal utopianism," as you put it.

Balko reports a pattern:

In the Hank Skinner case, Perry has actively fought DNA testing that could confirm the innocence (or guilt) of another Texas man on death row. Skinner was at one point hours from execution before the Supreme Court intervened (the intervening justice was Antonin Scalia, believe it or not). In Skinner’s case, the prosecution actually began to conduct DNA testing on crime scene evidence, then stopped when the first tests confirmed Skinner’s version of events. Perry again justified willful ignorance in this case by simply noting that he’s personally convinced of Skinner’s guilt.

Details on the Cameron Todd Willingham case here.

Jason Peters ponders the "satiety and aimlessness" of the annual summer vacation:

At the heart of the high internal tension, the enduring and gnawing discomfort, is the loss of the normal alternate rhythm of work and rest, work and rest, that brings such immense satisfaction, variety, and joy and that is, in fact, the very stuff of life. [Most Americans] were born into and inherited a world in which work doesn't "participate in happiness," to quote [John Crowe] Ransom once again. It isn't naturally coupled with rest or leisure. Work and rest are not paired together, like dance partners, but set at odds, like gunfighters.

(Photo from the "Surfing Trooper" series, via Buzzfeed)

"If you want all of us – black, white, or any other color – if you want us to respect you, if you want us to look at you in a different way, if you want us not to be afraid to walk down the same side of the street with you, if you want folks not to jump out of the elevator when you get on, if you want folks to stop following you around in stores when you’re out shopping, if you want somebody to offer you a job or an internship somewhere, if you don’t want folks to be looking in or trying to go in a different direction when they see two or twenty of you coming down the street, then stop acting like idiots and fools, out in the streets of the city of Philadelphia. Just cut it out," – Michael Nutter, mayor of Philadelphia, responding to a recent spate of flash mob robberies.

“Note that I’m not in principle opposed to voting for polytheists. I could see, for example, voting for a pro-life Hindu over a pro-abortion monotheist. But a Hindu does not claim to be a Christian and thus does not risk confusing people about the core doctrine of Christianity the way Mormonism does,” – Jimmy Akin, National Catholic Register.

Brooklyn in slow-motion:

Ezra explains.