Month: November 2011

For Germany to allow the unraveling of its currency would be economic suicide:

[I]t would be much, much cheaper for Germany to simply bail out Greece, Ireland, and Portugal outright (that would cost about 1,000 euros for every German man, woman and child in one swoop) than it would be for Germany to exit the euro zone (which would cost the average German 8,000 euros the first year and 4,500 euros thereafter). Bailouts are deeply unpopular in Germany, and for good reason, but they look like the cheaper path. Even Bernard Connolly’s estimate that it would cost Germany 7 percent of its GDP for several years to bail out all troubled euro zone countries, up to and including France, looks like a less-painful option at this point. 

And yet, as we have seen, 80 percent of Germans would rather go down in flames than concede this is now the reality. Maybe Berlin is merely trying to secure the harshest terms for fiscal rectitude in the peripheral countries before finally agreeing to back the euro with the ECB. Maybe not. But this is arguably the most significant turning point in European history since 1989. And it will affect us all. Soon.

(Photo: German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Chairwoman of the German Christian Democrats, attends the second day of the 24th CDU Party Congress on November 15, 2011 in Leipzig, Germany. By Sean Gallup/Getty Images.)

Yglesias believes so:

It used to be that a sporting event only had to compete for my eyeballs against whatever other TV programming happened to be on right at that moment. Oftentimes a regular season Mavericks-Celtics game or an ALCS matchup would win that competition in my eyes. But today thanks to Netflix, DVR, Hulu+ and related technologies that ALCS matchup has to compete against continuing to work my way through Breaking Bad. That's a much tougher threshold. 

Here's Cain's non-denial denial:

Subsequent interview with the alleged mistress, Ginger White, here. A key part of Cain's lawyer's statement:

[T]his appears to be an accusation of private, alleged consensual conduct between adults – a subject matter which is not a proper subject of inquiry by the media or the public. No individual, whether a private citizen, a candidate for public office or a public official, should be questioned about his or her private sexual life. The public's right to know and the media's right to report has boundaries and most certainly those boundaries end outside of one's bedroom door.

Nick Gillespie sticks a fork in Cain:

While I think the statement by Cain's lawyer is an eminently reasonable one, it has no chance of carrying the day, not least because the Cain train had already been derailed by the Herminator's own demonstrated lack of capacity for the job of president (the sexual harassment stories didn't help that of course).

It seems to me to be extremely important that we distinguish, as CNN didn't in its teeing up the question, between claims of sexual assault and harassment, and claims of a consensual extra-marital affair. I see the first two as abuses of power, and therefore relevant to public office. I find the latter to be a human weakness that is best left to those who have no human weaknesses to condemn. But I should add that I haven't believed Cain for quite a while now, and his blanket denial of any sex whatever with Ms White, given her story and the evidence behind it, lacks credibility. I mean, seriously:

She showed us some of her cell phone bills that included 61 phone calls or text messages to or from a number starting with 678. She says it is Herman Cain's private cell phone. The calls were made during four different months– calls or texts made as early as 4:26 in the early morning, and as late as 7:52 at night. The latest were in September of this year.

“We've never worked together,” said White. “And I can't imagine someone phoning or texting me for the last two and a half years, just because.”

The phone was his – and still active. Poor Gloria. Lucky Newt.

Richard Chappell critiques anonymous donation:

[R]eal people aren't angels: we're always going to have some degree of mixed motivation. So it's all a matter of degree. But the less we obsess over our own (real or apparent) "virtue", and the more we attend to real needs and opportunities out there in the world, the better. And that means doing what we can to promote a "culture of giving", making it easier for people to act on their philanthropic values.

(Photo: A Robert Procop necklace, part of the 'Style of Jolie Exhibition' is seen in Beverly Hills on April 6, 2011. The exhibition showcases the artistic jewelry collaboration between Robert Procop and actress Angelina Jolie with all proceeds from the collection benefiting children living in regions affected by conflict or the devastation of natural disasters. By Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.)

Keith Humphreys responds to Dish readers who don't believe that, on average, marijuana goes for $120 an ounce.

Chris Wilson theorizes as to why we haven't gotten in contact with aliens yet:

It’s perfectly possible that our fantasy civilization would be 500 years ahead of us—but no more likely than its being 500 years behind us, or one billion years behind, or awaiting us one billion years in the future. The universe is about 13 billion years old, and Earth’s arrival on the scene 4.5 billion years ago did not occur at some divine moment of planet formation. It’s possible that this other, Earth-like planet was at one point dotted with thriving alien cities, that it sustained an intelligent species for millions of years, but that life there winked out at around the same time we humans were working out the kinks in having opposable thumbs. If so, our neighbor’s dying signals would have passed us by millennia before we could invent the radio dishes to capture them.

Readers still have thoughts on the subject:

Chelsea Handler?  Sarah Silverman?  Kathy Griffin?  It seems Rosenberg is making a very fine distinction to claim their humor can't compare to Louis CK's. Women aren't funny for the same reason women aren't good at tech fields.  Any field that has been dominated by men keeps the barriers to entry high and artificial, and maintains an environment that isn't friendly to those who would break in.  When men decide what's funny, it turns out it's them.

Another writes:

I think the article [NYT] misses the forest for the trees. What's missing is that men use humor more frequently than women.

Whether men are actually funnier or not is somewhat besides the point, not to mention impossible to objectively measure. Part of humor is being able to take one's self and others lightly and then use it for light mocking. For whatever reason, many women do not feel as comfortable being joked about or joking about others, and certainly not in a playful way. This is the interesting fact that gets obscured by the ill-advised attempts to see which gender can write a funnier cartoon caption, which is more about cleverness than about actual day-to-day usage of humor (e.g. the people you would consider 'funniest' in everyday life are probably not particularly likely to write the funniest cartoon captions).

If you don't believe me regarding the use of humor by the genders, try joking with a guy about a physical or cognitive imperfection and then try the same thing with a woman. Indirectly, it's part of the reason so many more men can run afoul of workplace insensitivity rules. The attempt to tease or joke about one's self or friends is a part of the male socialization process in childhood, and is really not present for most women. In fact, if a woman jokes about another woman, it almost always will be behind that woman's back, and probably in the company of people who have an influence on that woman's well being.

Finally, comedians do not represent a whole gender. Comedians are professional joke tellers and they have different techniques and goals than you or I would. Either way, a Tina Fey would merely prove that women can be hilarious, and not that there are no differences in humor or in average funniness.

Another:

I don't know why this article bugs me so much. The study seems to end up saying that men aren't funnier, they are just perceived as funnier. Well, excuse me, but isn't the perception of a joke exactly what makes it funny? So in reality, if people perceive jokes told by men to be funnier … aren't they therefore funnier? The fact that people find men funnier means men are funnier.

Shawn Lawrence Otto thinks "apolitical science" is a myth:

Wishing to sidestep the painful moral and ethical parsing that their discoveries sometimes compel, many scientists today see their role to be the creation of knowledge and believe they should leave the moral, ethical, and political implications to others to sort out. But the practice of science itself cannot possibly be apolitical, because it takes nothing on faith.

The very essence of the scientific process is to question long-held assumptions about the nature of the universe, to dream up experiments that test those questions, and, based on the observations, to incrementally build knowledge that is independent of our beliefs and assumptions. A scientifically testable claim is utterly transparent and can be shown to be either most probably true or false, whether the claim is made by a king or a president, a pope, a congressperson, or a common citizen. Because of this, science is inherently antiauthoritarian, and a great equalizer of political power.

Chris Blattman zooms in on one of the ways that the modern scientific process doesn't approximate Otto's truth-seeking ideal.

Bellagio, Italy, 12 pm

Saul Kaplan wants to put students at the center of the debate surrounding education reform:

The notion of bringing kids into the conversation about what serves them best is beginning to take hold in various quarters. Ellen Galinsky did it in the midst of a cultural debate on whether children were better or worse off when their mothers entered the workforce. The audacious approach of her study became the title of her book Ask The Children. Architects who design the places where kids spend their time are doing more asking, too. Check out, for instance, these photos of the Erika-Mann Grundschule II in Amsterdam. "The school's recently revamped environment is amazing," wrote one commentator, "perhaps not surprisingly as it was designed by the kids themselves …."

Update from a reader: "The quote incorrectly places the school in Amsterdam – it's in Berlin (Utrechter Strasse)."