Month: October 2011

An Afghan girl scavenges for recyclable items on the outskirts of Kabul on October 4, 2011. Women's rights in Afghanistan risk being forgotten as international troops withdraw and the government struggles for a peace deal 10 years after the Taliban were ousted, two charities said on September 3. Separate reports by Oxfam and ActionAid say women's rights have improved since the October 2001 US-led invasion, particularly access to education, with 2.7 million girls now in school, according to Oxfam. By Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images.

Why Kevin Drum prefers Romney to Perry:

As it happens, my preference for Romney isn't due to the fact that I think he's secretly more liberal than Perry. He probably is, but I doubt that would make any real-world difference, and liberals are kidding themselves if they think it would. My preference is based solely on the fact that in a crisis, I think he'd be pretty likely to act soberly and sensibly. I don't have the same confidence in Perry.

Lisa Wade highlights a series of suggestive military recruitment posters from the two world wars.

(Image via Scribd user jasonbentley.)

Yes, but not necessarily in the ways you'd expect:

[I]f the 2012 race is close, do not pay attention to every subtle or even subliminal message in the ads. Just look to see who is spending more. Spending more does not guarantee a victory, but it is more revealing than endless speculation about whose message is more effective.

The Economist examines recent studies which show how "worryingly simple [it is] to extract a false confession from someone": 

Dr [Saul] Kassin suggests that participants may have the naive—though common—belief that the world is a just place, and that their innocence will emerge in the end, particularly in the case of the alleged video evidence. One participant, for example, told him, “it made it easier [to sign the confession] because I had nothing to hide. The cameras would prove it.” In cases like that, confession is seen as a way to end an unpleasant interrogation. But it is a risky one. In the real world, such faith can be misplaced. Though a lot of jurisdictions require corroborating evidence, in practice self-condemnation is pretty damning—and, it seems, surprisingly easy to induce.

So argues Stephen Roach:

An increasingly unbalanced Chinese economy cannot afford persistent 10% GDP growth. Provided that there is no recurrence of the severe external demand shock of 2008 – a likely outcome unless Europe implodes – there is good reason to hope for a soft landing to around 8% GDP growth. A downshift to this more sustainable pace would provide welcome relief for an economy long plagued by excess resource consumption, labor-market bottlenecks, excess liquidity, a large buildup of foreign-exchange reserves, and mounting inflationary pressures.

After yesterday's Apple announcement of Siri, a very accurate voice command assistant, Andy Balo marvels at the ad above, which takes place in September of 2011:

In 1987, Apple released this concept video for Knowledge Navigator, a voice-based assistant combined with a touchscreen tablet computer. … So, 24 years ago, Apple predicted a complex natural-language voice assistant built into a touchscreen Apple device, and was less than a month off.

Wilkinson cheers on the Wall Street occupiers:

I am not by disposition a joiner, but I'm nevertheless inclined to smile upon attempts to stick it to the man, even if the attempt is quixotic or confused and the man in the end remains unstuck. The Burkean horror of social upheaval is fine in its place, but there is no apparent danger of upheaval. And who among us doubts that the man deserves a good sticking to? So why not try?

I have the same involuntary instinct.

Taking popsicle sticks to a whole new level:

How it was done:

A stick bomb is a mechanical spring-loaded device constructed out of flat sticks woven together under tension. Other names for stick bombs include Chinese stick puzzles, and frame bombs.

Anthony Cordesman pithily explains the Congress's determination to defud the Palestinian Authority if it continues to pursue its goals at the UN:

The problem you really have here is that this kind of symbolism doesn’t do Israel any good. All it does is create more potential for some kind of Palestinian rioting or protest and convince more people in the Arab world that they can’t work with Israel, the United States, and the peace process. It’s one thing to talk about aid in the time of Arafat, where you never quite knew where the money went, but the aid today basically maintains a relatively stable West Bank. And when you cut it, you raise the risk of some kind of protest or violence; you lose leverage; and you undermine the P.A., which has enough problems in dealing with groups like Hamas, which still is a threat politically in the West Bank.

I suspect AIPAC desperately needs to undercut Abbas and Fayyad, so they can go back to defending the settlements, because there is no viable interlocutor. Matt Duss comments:

This episode really shows how successful the Israeli right and their American allies have been at cultivating anti-Palestinian attitudes in Congress. So successful, in fact, that not even pleas from Bibi Netanyahu himself can deter Congress from punishing the Palestinians. Perhaps more importantly, though, it also gets at the fact that being "pro-Israel" these days has less to do with supporting policies that actually enhance the security of Israel, and more with signaling a post-9/11 brand of hawkish American ultra-nationalism.