Month: November 2011

Robin Williams, star of Disney's 1992 hit Aladdin, is the reason most animated movies now star celebrities rather than professional voice actors:

The marketability of a big-name celebrity voice actor gave way, perhaps inevitably, to an even more insidious trend: directly basing a character's appearance on the famous actor providing its voice. The examples range from the Jerry Seinfeld bee in Bee Movie to the Tina Fey-esque reporter in Megamind, but the apex is Dreamworks' 2004 animated film Shark Tale, which features creepy human-fish hybrids of actors like Will Smith and Angelina Jolie.

Pixar, ahead of the curve as always, has attempted to back away from relying on A-List actors, with terrific results; the studio's two best films in recent years (and, arguably, of all time) are Wall-E­—whose robotic leads can only speak variations of their names—and Up, which starred Ed Asner and newcomer Jordan Nagai.

James Traub is cautiously optimistic:

[T]he fear that sectarian violence will rise to the level of civil war has subsided as Iraq's own security forces have improved. It is widely recognized that, as a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concludes, "Iraq's military has the ability to contain internal violence with limited help from" the United States. Iraq's political institutions have also matured, if haltingly. As Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution recently wrote, Iraq's "young democracy has been characterized by a good deal of political brinksmanship to date, but in general they have pulled back from the brink so far."

Matt Eckel looks to Iraqi demographics for some basis for speculation. Exum rounds up and evaluates three straggler arguments as to whether this future had to be American troop-free. For my part, no one ever lost any money predicting doom and chaos in Iraq. None of the core issues were resolved in the face-saving exit strategy called "the surge." They will be going forward.

Umair Haque genuinely wants to know. John Tamny says it can't be manufacturing: 

Considering agriculture, from 1900-1920 in the U.S. agriculture and mining accounted for 30-40% of total employment. Today that number is a fraction, but far from pushing Americans to the breadlines, economic evolution pushed them into better, higher valued work. Would anyone in their right mind really like to return to the days in which the U.S. economy was largely farm based? The same applies to manufacturing. … [T]o dream of a manufacturing future for the United States is to pine for excruciating poverty.

Edward Glaeser turns to entrepreneurship: 

[W]e should place far less emphasis on the industries of the past and more on those of the future. Federal policies that bail out auto companies and subsidize agriculture aren’t merely expensive; they also encourage people to stay in declining industries rather than strike out on their own.

(Photo taken in Detroit by Flickr user Angela Anderson-Cobb.)

Christopher Perren tries to rescue the liberal arts from Limbaugh's incoherence and disdain:

Today a classical education may not result in a quick hire as a web developer, project manager or accountant. But study the people who have had a good classical education. You will find them leading and serving others. … The classically-educated serve well, and have for about a thousand years. Perhaps the most famous CEO of all time (Steve Jobs) repeatedly said that he sought to make Apple the intersection of the liberal arts and technology.  

Joseph Knippenberg and David Freddoso are on the same page:

If American conservatives are trying to conserve any particular thing, that thing is precisely the subject of a "Classical Studies" major.

My only serious academic mistake was in learning German rather than Ancient Greek in high school. My dad was convinced we'd all be run by Germans in the future (and how right he was) but the now rusty skill hasn't helped much at all. A Heidegger sentence makes a teensy bit more sense in the original, but that's about it. (Yeah, I know: poseur alert material). But Greek? I could tackle the Gospels in the original! I could read Plato and Aristotle as they were meant to be read.

But the main reason for a classical education is precisely its uselessness. True learning is practically useless; and it should be. It is not about deploying knowledge to master the world, it is about the pursuit of truth for the sake of nothing else. It is about the highest things. How is a life worth living if it ignores them?

Surf's up:

Rip Curl has again created a technological world-first by capturing full-tilt surfing action using a "30 camera Array" — a line of cameras firing consistently as surfers ride towards and past it. The results are unique "frozen moments of time" – that can be viewed in a combination of angles for a true in the round perspective.

Richard Kim's article on an underemployed puppeteer with student loan debt has been widely mocked. Alex Tabbarok uses the story as further evidence that the young are picking degrees unwisely:

What astounds me is not that someone could amass $35,000 in student loans pursuing a dream of puppetry, everyone has their dreams and I do not fault Joe for his. What astounds me is that Richard Kim, the executive editor of The Nation and the author of this article, thinks that the failure of a puppeteer to find a job he loves is a good way to illustrate the "national nightmare" of the job market. Even in a wealthy society it’s a privilege to have the kind of job that Kim thinks are the entitlement of the middle class.

Yglesias, who is more sympathetic, pivots to talk about teacher pay. Reihan thinks along the same lines.

Dan Amira:

Bialek's emergence seems like a very bad development for Cain in three ways: First, it marks the first time that Cain has been accused of something specific. Secondly, the charges are far worse than an off-color joke — in fact, what Cain is accused of doing sounds more like sexual assault, not sexual harassment. And third, as Ben Smith pointed out earlier today, the press conference provides the scandal's first TV footage that can be replayed endlessly on cable and network news. Any Republican voters open to believing the charges against Cain will now have plenty of lurid details to mull over for at least the next few days.

Jim Geraghty:

If she’s telling the truth, Herman Cain is a creep (and probably guilty of what legally would be considered misdemeanor sexual abuse, defined as sexual contact without the other person’s permission). If she’s lying, she’s trying to destroy the man’s presidential campaign and reputation over… some as-yet-unknown motive.

Pema Levy:

Where there's smoke, there's usually fire—or at least more smoke. Someone in a powerful position who used it to assault one woman probably did it more than once. Cain denies Bialek's claims, as well as those of his other accusers who have not come forward. But as the number of women stepping forward increases, it’s harder and harder not to believe that we’re dealing with a serial predator.

Doug Mataconis:

Cain is likely to be benefited somewhat by the fact that the two debates coming up this week are limited to the topics of the economy and foreign policy, at least he won’t have to worry about facing a question from the audience about this issue. The one thing that’s for sure, though, is that this is another week when most of the public exposure he gets in the media is going to be about an alleged sex scandal rather than what he’d rather be talking about.

Dave Weigel:

[T]he accuser created a few legitimate questions for Cain. Is her story true? Did he encounter her again at a Tea Party conference in Chicago this year, as she claimed? There is a straight denial in this statement — "false accusations" — but now Cain has to contend with video (live-streamed by TMZ) of a blonde woman who claims that have been propositioned for sex. Bialek isn't taking any legal action right now, and she really couldn't. The statute of limitations for third and fourth degree sexual assault in D.C. is 10 years. (When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas, nine years had passed.)

Rod Dreher:

Cain can yak all he wants about how he’s not going to talk about this stuff anymore, but that’s all anybody is going to talk about until and unless he firmly and convincingly rebuts this stuff. This drip-drip-drip is going to kill his campaign. I’d say it’s probably dead anyway.

Live-blogging here and here. Image from here.

This post ruffled the feathers of many readers. One writes:

If you are going to link to something as utterly wrong-headed as D.G. Myers's argument, at least take the time to read the many comments beneath refuting it and link to some of them as well. Has Myers actually read any fantasy literature aside from Lewis, Tolkien and Rowling? I doubt it. And I seriously doubt any Christian would want to claim George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire – currently the world’s most successful fantasy series – as their own. In Martin’s books, no good deed goes unpunished and mercy and pity are seen to lead only to catastrophe.

Or, in the realm of children’s classics, how about Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence, which explicitly draws on Robert Graves’ The White Goddess, not the Bible, for inspiration? Or Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, which has its roots in the haunting dream logic of the Welsh Mabinogion. I could go on and on, but what’s the point? Anyone who’s read any fantasy literature of the last 40 years knows how ludicrous Myers’ thesis is.

Another writes:

Certainly it is possible to make a stronger case that science fiction isn’t based on religion with great authors like Asimov and Author C. Clark, who were atheists.  They also wrote stories involving explicit parallel universes, as well as the implicit kind that Tolkien and others wrote about.

Another:

Fantasy does not require a spiritual assumption, but rather a literary assumption of powers that can be manipulated by non-mechanistic techniques, and of a world that defies complete human comprehension. Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy is anti-theist, at the very least.

Another:

Myers's post references a Weingrad essay written in Spring 2010 that was eviscerated all over the Internet. In fact, the Atlantic compiled some of those eviscerations and Weingrad took it upon himself to respond with a much narrower claim (which also included lots of "yeah, I read that Jewish fantasy work, but I didn't like it" remarks). So a little more research at the beginning might have shown you that Myers doesn't have the factual basis that he thinks he does. (The fact that Myers associates fantasy with children's lit should tip one off that he's speaking from a very limited set of knowledge. Not even Tolkien considered himself a writer of children's literature.)

Maria Pawlowska has a theory as to why the vast majority of straight men don't want to be anally penetrated despite "good physiological reasons" that it can cause "mind-blowing orgasms":

[B]elieve it or not, but according to research in this area most heterosexual men exclude the possibility of using dildos precisely because they don’t want to act "gay" and be "passive." It’s got nothing to do with what they like or dislike in bed (mostly because they don’t know if they do if they haven’t tried it). It’s more illogical and subconscious than a superficial sexual preference. Heterosexual men’s deep-seated aversion to this form of sex-play is mostly the result of what society has taught us about sex and gender roles and not what our bodies might enjoy. Whether you like it or not, most of the time there really is way more than just you and your partner(s) in the bedroom.

Dan Drezner rounds up some evidence in favor of the former view, specifically the price of Italian bonds. Joshua Goldstein defends the latter:

I doubt any big change will come out of the crisis. Rather the Europeans will once again muddle through, following the path of least resistance. The Greeks will grumble but sign on to the bailout plan, and their inept prime minister will resign. The euro zone will stay intact. No big reforms in fiscal policy will take effect. And the wonder-that-is-Europe will keep doing what it does — keeping hundreds of millions of people peaceful and prosperous.

My own view is that the stakes keep getting higher. There will come a point a which only a transformed and more politically unified EU will be able to stay ahead of the markets. And then the Germans will face the moment they have long dreaded: do we own this thing or leave it? And the German elite will try to own it, because an unraveling Europe means the end to everything the country has stood for for the past half century.

The question is: what will the German people decide? Or do they not matter?