Month: April 2012

Why being generic gives Romney little room to maneuver:

When a poll showing an exploding gender gap in the presidential race was released on Sunday, Romney’s pollster, Neil Newhouse, argued that “it goes beyond Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum to a partisan gender gap. It’s not Romney-specific. I would argue that it’s broader than that.” Newhouse is surely right, but that’s just the point: If the Republican Party has a serious image problem – with women or with any other group of voters – a generic Republican candidate is not going to be well-equipped to separate him or herself from it.

Jefferson Morley profiles the humdrum but deadly world of drone piloting:

Finding people to pilot the drones has proved unexpectedly difficult. The ground control station had many flaws that required work-arounds, such as accessing fuel gauge information and creating more work space. Accidents were common. One pilot mistook the "kill engine" button for the adjacent landing gear switch, resulting in the crash of a $4.5 million Predator drone.  The pilots of traditional manned vehicles who moved in remotely piloted aircraft did not always make the best drone operators. A lot of people dropped out of the program and retention was low. There are reports of post-traumatic stress disorder and many more of sheer boredom.

Eric Schwitzgebel ponders studies suggesting that professional ethicists behave about as morally as people who aren't paid to think about morality:

[W]e might consider some countervailing forces. One possibility is that there's some kind of "moral licensing" effect. Suppose, for example, that a consequentialist donates a wad to charity. Maybe then she feels free to behave worse in other ways than she otherwise would have. Suppose a Kantian remains rigorously honest at some substantial cost to his welfare. Maybe then he feels freer to be a jerk to his students. One depressing thought is that all this cancels out: Our efforts to live by our ethical principles exert sufficient psychic costs that we compensate by acting worse in other ways, only moving around the lump under the rug.

How Google's augmented reality glasses might work:

Tech Crunch captions:

This is terribly, terribly cool stuff, but I’d caution users to take the images and video with a grain of salt for now — not because I don’t think Google will eventually make good on them, but because they represent just one direction that the project could go in. According to Wired, Project Glass is still more of a concept than an actual product, and won’t see an official release for a very long time.

A slideshow.

A reader suggests the following quote from James Baldwin to explain some of the delusions and hatred:

"An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger: the stranger's presence making you the stranger, less to the stranger than to yourself."

I think I correctly gauged the American public's willingness to elect a biracial president. I think I drastically under-rated their willingness to actually be governed by one.

Greg Beato sees the appeal of cremation:

Get buried in a cemetery, and all you’re doing is consigning yourself for eternity to the place where we ghettoize dead people. Get cremated, and you preserve your mobility. Part of you can set up camp on your favorite mountaintop in Utah. Another part can stay close to your loved ones above the fireplace. Another part can be blasted into space, or turned into an artificial reef off the coast of Florida, or transformed into a pair of simulated diamond earrings. Whatever variation one chooses, the metaphorical cachet is obvious. Instead of being stuck in an airtight casket, static and out of the loop, a sedentary shell of your former self, you metamorphasize into something new, dynamic, perpetually connected, eternally in the mix.

Try to look away:

Via Buzzfeed. Recognize the soundtrack? Update from a reader:

South Park used it, yes.  But deconstruct it some more and you’ll find the theme song of the '60s TV show “I Dream of Jeannie,” all but the melody.  It’s clever how modern compositions taunt.

A reader writes:

I am no fan of the MPAA, but how many people have heard of Bully thanks to The Weinstein Company challenging its rating in the press? Make no mistake, this is as much about savvy marketing as it is censorship. (See also the Weinsteins' handling of Clerks and Blue Valentine.)

Another suggests the same:

While the MPAA is easy to criticize, I don't really buy the argument that the makers of this documentary are upset because an R-rating will make it harder for kids to see it.  The statistics that you cited about how an R-rating affects the odds of winning an Oscar are probably closer to the mark.  If their highest priority was to have this film seen by bullies and their victims, they should have released it direct to the Internet and cable TV.

How many people go to theaters these days?  How many go to see documentaries in theaters?  And how many children will go to the theater to watch a documentary?

Moreover, everyone knows what the movie is about.  So any child who is a victim of bullies would be mortified to be seen going into or out of a theater playing Bully whether or not they are accompanied by their parents.  It would just be one more thing that the bullies would tease the victims about. 

Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" series is online, allowing kids and young adults to see it in private, so that none of their family, friends or, perhaps, their own personal bullies can see them watching it.  What if, instead of doing "It Gets Better" on the Internet, Dan made a documentary called "Gay Boys Should be Really Happy!"  and released it to theaters?  How many 14-year-old boys would you see buying tickets to that one?

So if they really care about the kids, and want their documentary seen by as many bullies and victims as possible, the makers of Bully should release it to cable TV and the Internet.  And they should also create a PG-13 version with bleeps so that it can be shown in schools. But having artistes throw a tantrum over the MPAA is not going to help any kids.

Another:

Andrew O'Hehir posted a picture of the film's scrawny victim above his article, equivocated the MPAA with the bullies in the film ("In short, the MPAA has sided with the bullies and creeps") and informed us that the film is too altruistic and important to not be seen by unaccompanied kids under 17. There's an intellectually honest case to be made against the MPAA that doesn't involve barnacling onto the celebrity cause du jour, but O'Hehir doesn't bother.

So, what makes Bully important, exactly?

Even among the glowing early reviews is an acknowledgement that the film's scope is extremely narrow: it's restricted to five intimate stories in red state America and it provides no statistical evidence about anything. Statistical evidence seems to be the bugaboo of the Bullying Epidemic hype men; for all the heartbreaking anecdotal stories of bullied kids on YouTube, Ellen, etc. no one has bothered to present evidence that schoolyard bullying is increasingly dangerous, increasingly prevalent or how it's unique to the ancient dilemma of natural human cruelty.

From the early reviews, it also appears that Bully doesn't take on the burden of explaining the nature of bullies, or where they come from … or, that bullies are often in need of as much help and compassion as the bullied themselves.

As with Kony2012, if a complicated cause is presented as too altruistic and two-dimensional to be real, it's usually emotional rage-fuel crafted by an opportunist.

Various Republicans are touting Ryan:

Paul Ryan took the stage last night in Wisconsin to introduce Mitt Romney and thank supporters ahead of his victory speech. Conservatives reacted favorably, sparking speculation that the speech was a trial balloon for Ryan as a Vice President candidate for Romney.

Larison dismisses the hype:

Ryan’s budget plan makes him a much greater political risk than either Rubio or Martinez; he is "safer" only in the sense that he has already been scrutinized at the national level. Ryan is not as "boring" because he is currently much more controversial with non-Republicans and appealing to conservative activists, which may make him less attractive to the independents that Romney currently alienates in large numbers.

Earlier veep speculation here.