Month: April 2012

A truly Russian tale about I.V. Pugach, who trademarked his beard, "the type with no sideburns that covers just the chin and the patch above the upper lip":

He says this beard is the exclusive province — even a "racial attribute" — of the Russian people and maintains a Web site that rants about violations of his exclusive rights to it. In his opinion, misuse of the beard, which includes its being worn by non-Russians, amounts to “genocide” (his term).

"I reprimand Barak Obama for delaying the punishment of Muammar el-Qaddafi, enemy of the Russian people, for illegally wearing the beard," Pugach has written. He has also chided the French and Egyptian crowns and challenged the Russian Orthodox Church. Pugach’s Web site reads like a parody, but it also points to documents from the Russian trademark office suggesting that he may have managed to make this beard his own and that anyone who wants to wear the thing has to get a license from him. That costs about $600 a year for most individuals but roughly $30,000 for popular actors and $4 million for television channels. 

David Axe delves into the fascinating world of "forumers", or Chinese web-obsessives who post about military developments on forums:

Even with hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of satellites and other spy gear, Washington still can’t peer inside buildings in another country or read the minds of foreign officials, scientists, and engineers to predict the emergence of new technologies. A young man with a cellphone camera and an Internet connection can take the U.S. intelligence establishment to school.

It’s a bigger problem than many people realize. "The Pentagon was not just behind the curve on the J-20 [stealth fighter]," Feng, the U.S.-based forumer, wrote in an email. "Their reports on the PLA navy basically have not changed that much, even though the kind of buildup we are seeing in the PLAN requires a lot of adjustment." In other words, the Chinese military is developing fast—too fast for the Pentagon to keep up. With their many eyes and ears, and their 24/7 schedule, the forumers are in a better position to tap the constant stream of new information. "Chinese forumers and bloggers do not seem to be aware of how influential they are,"…

Axe also raises the possibility that the Chinese government is using the forumers as pawns in a propaganda campaign with the US.

(Video: From a series of leaked footage of the J-20 that took the Pentagon by surprise last year)

Friedersdorf claims that we can't know whether Romney or Obama would be more hawkish as president. Larison counters:

It might be more instructive to think about the difference between Obama and Romney this way: Joe Lieberman has a much better chance of becoming Secretary of Defense in a Romney administration than he does in Obama’s second term.

Why I think this is first and foremost a foreign policy election here.  

Physicist Dmitri Krioukov was pulled over for running a stop sign. He got out of the ticket with a paper, The Proof of Innocence, which included the above graphs. Physics Central explains:

If you look at the graph on the right, you'll notice three lines with different colors, and each line corresponds to a different deceleration at the stop sign. The blue line with the biggest spikes represents a 10 m/s^2 deceleration — about the highest deceleration for the kind of car he was driving. This line mimics what actually happened best according to Krioukov because he had a terrible cold that day, and one sneaky sneeze caused him to slam on the brakes hard as he approached the stop sign.

The crux of Krioukov's argument is that this rapid, legal deceleration can appear very similar to the case described in the graph on the left. But the left graph actually represents a car cruising through the stop sign at a constant velocity exceeding 20 miles per hour. So surely an officer would still be able to tell the difference, right? Not when another car partially obstructs his view, according to Krioukov. When another car partially blocked the officer's view of Krioukov's car momentarily, the officer could have missed the brief yet crucial timing of his stop.

Says Felix Salmon:

[A]ny time that Netflix builds up a profit margin, the studios will simply raise their prices until that margin disappears. Netflix needs the studios more than the studios need Netflix: no one’s going to subscribe to Netflix for Lilyhammer and Arrested Development alone. And while HBO has managed to build up a good business by producing original content, Netflix really doesn’t want to be HBO, it wants to be much bigger than that. It wants to be a one-stop shop for video content, rather than a single channel among hundreds.

Today on the Dish, Andrew went for Ross' (and the Church's) jugular on homophobia, blasted the Catholic hierarchy's out-and-out hostility towards Obama, shared stories about the pain caused by DOMA and immigration inequality, punctured Slavoj Zizek's inflated reputation by airing his thoughts on religious violence, decided it was unfair to call an overturn of the mandate "judicial tyranny," and critiqued a Romney proposal on tax reform. We discovered Democratic dislike of Mormons, broke down Mitt's problem with college educated white voters, explained why a Rubio VP choice wouldn't mucy change the race, picked out the things that mattered from tonight's (yes, tonight's) primaries, and laughed at Gingrich's Delaware strategy. Veep captured a nasty sort of Washington denizen, traditional political cartoons were pronounced dead, America's institutions fell apart, manufacturing subsidies weren't the answer, and there was a way Obamacare could increase the deficit. Ad War Updates here and here.

Andrew also revised his position on Tarek Mehanna somewhat, debated Europe with Noah Millman, delved into the latest details in the Murdoch case, noticed the paucity of corrections on Fox News, awarded Von Hoffmans to everyone for primary coverage, got excited about reading Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings" tonight at Cooper Union, and implored you to Ask Manzi Anything. The AP received a fisking on Afghanistan, the "donate to the US government" debate continued, factories moved back to the First World, and readers discussed the least walkable cities. It wasn't clear how many women raped men, men's bathrooms had rules, Tina Fey explained pregnancy hiding, more evidence embarrassed Big Football, and readers defended video games as art. Ask Ackerman Anything here, Creepy Ad here, Chart of the Day here, VFYW Contest Winner here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here. 

– Z.B.

Be a good friend:

In a study appropriately titled "Very Happy People," researchers sought out the characteristics of the happiest 10 percent among us. Do they all live in warm climates? Are they all wealthy? Are they all physically fit? Turns out, there was one—and only one—characteristic that distinguished the happiest 10 percent from everybody else: the strength of their social relationships. 

Will Wilkinson admits it's harder than it sounds:

If I had to name my single greatest flaw, I'd say it's dereliction of friendship. I don't actively cultivate new friendships. They either happen to me or they don't, and mostly they don't because I don't put in much effort from my side. I'm not sure why, but I think it's mostly because I find the idea of extending a hand stressful. Worse, I'm terrible at keeping in touch with old friends. After too much time without calling or emailing or texting or anything, I feel really embarrassed. And then, perversely, that embarrassment makes me more not less averse to reestablishing contact.

The RNC embroils Obama in the North Carolina Democrats' sexual harassment scandal: 

Meanwhile, the Republican group American Future Fund ties the GSA scandal to the president: 

Alex Burns has more: 

AFF will go on the air starting Wednesday in eight states at a cost of approximately $2 million. The most heavily targeted states appear to be Florida, where AFF is spending over $600,000; Ohio, drawing at least $200,000 in ads; and Michigan, where the ads cost at least $157,000, according to a GOP media-tracking source. Other states where ads will air include Michigan, Nevada, Virginia and Colorado. … The TV ads follow an earlier AFF campaign against Obama, in February, charging that the president stocked his administration with "Wall Street executives." Between the two anti-Obama media pushes, AFF will have spent about $7.5 million against the president this year, an AFF strategist said.

Obama's Super PAC and the Dem group American Bridge partner on this hit on Romney's aversion to subsidizing student loans: 

Romney is now recalibrating. 

Previous Ad War Updates: Apr 23, Apr 18, Apr 17, Apr 16, Apr 13, Apr 11, Apr 10, Apr 9, Apr 5, Apr 4, Apr 3, Apr 2, Mar 30, Mar 27, Mar 26, Mar 23, Mar 22, Mar 21, Mar 20, Mar 19, Mar 16, Mar 15, Mar 14, Mar 13, Mar 12, Mar 9, Mar 8, Mar 7, Mar 6, Mar 5, Mar 2, Mar 1, Feb 29, Feb 28, Feb 27, Feb 23, Feb 22, Feb 21, Feb 17, Feb 16, Feb 15, Feb 14, Feb 13, Feb 9, Feb 8, Feb 7, Feb 6, Feb 3, Feb 2, Feb 1, Jan 30, Jan 29, Jan 27, Jan 26, Jan 25, Jan 24, Jan 22, Jan 20, Jan 19, Jan 18, Jan 17, Jan 16 and Jan 12.

The ACA's Medicare Advantage cuts may be delayed. Josh Barro worries:

The Administration has apparently decided that it’s politically problematic to reduce some seniors’ benefits in advance of the election. But there is always an election coming up, and cutting Medicare spending will always mean that somebody gets less of something. Eliminating Medicare Advantage subsidies was supposed to be the low hanging fruit among the Medicare cuts in PPACA. If these can’t withstand political pressure, how are IPAB’s cuts (which would hit traditional Medicare) supposed to survive?

Bryan Caplan doubles down on the voluntary taxes talking point:

All genuinely charitable donations suffer from the Prisoners' Dilemma problem that Will describes.  That's probably a big part of the reason why charity is only a few percent of GDP.  But none of this explains why out of the more $300 billion that Americans give to charity, the American government garners about $3 million.  Despite widespread nationalist and statist sentiments, Uncle Sam's share of the charity market is microscopic – less than .001%.  How very odd.

Jonathan Bernstein pushes back:

Suppose that Buffett believes that $1000 … would create $1500 in benefits if it was given to charities he selected; $1200 in benefits if it was given to government; and $800 in benefits if it was given to the charities everyone would actually choose (because in practice a ton of people are going to give to scams, or to charities which he believes do more harm than good). So if it's just his $1000, he'll give it to the charity he supports (over government) — while still preferring a system in which he's constrained to pay that $1000 in taxes as long as everyone else is. In other words, he'll accept using his own money sub-optimally (in his own view) if it will buy everyone else contributing.