Alex Knapp warns against over-interpreting this research:
[W]hile there may be a correlation between pathological lying and more white matter in the prefrontal cortex, it doesn’t necessarily follow that more white matter is the cause of pathological lying. In fact, the opposite could be true. Thanks to the plasticity of the brain, it may well be that the practice of frequently lying causes underlying structural changes in the brain.
Laura Kipnis is unimpressed by the recent treatment of celebrity stalker-photographer Ron Galella as an artist:
The term paparazzo derives from the name of one of the swarming photographers in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita; it’s also supposedly a play on the Italian word for the annoying buzzing of a mosquito. One thing you can say about Galella is that he never feared being annoying, or shirked the hazards. Marlon Brando knocked out five of his teeth when Galella wouldn’t stop photographing him; Galella sued, settling for $40K, the amount it cost to reconstruct his jaw. Which didn’t prevent him from again lying in wait for Brando following a benefit at the Waldorf-Astoria, though this time he wore a customized football helmet emblazoned with his name.
Derek Thompson examines the explosion of ticket prices and the rise of "limited-engagement" shows:
In 2001, "The Producers" taught real-life producers that theater-goers were willing to pay $500 for a two-plus-hour musical. Since then, more shows have started using dynamic pricing to charge the most when they expect demand to be strongest.
Last year, "Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway" (a one-man show, which is as labor-efficient as you can get) made $1,468,189 for eight performances, a record for its theater. The limited-engagement star-studded show, which can push $600 a pop, is a perfect storm for high prices. Covering the celebrity's pay check and the cost of the space requires producers to charge high prices to cover the costs in a short period. The short run itself creates scarcity, concentrating audience interest in a small window where they're less price sensitive. … Throw in the rise of tourism to New York is – up 8% since 2008 – and you're a long way toward understanding why Broadway ticket prices are going to keep going up as long as the rich keep getting rich.
David Schneider checks in on Google's latest efforts to make the web smarter:
The Knowledge Graph is very different from the basic search strategy Google was founded on, which was to crawl the Web and build up a giant index of the words contained on each of the documents found. With such an index, Google could easily return links to pages that included your search terms. The company’s secret sauce was the algorithm it used to rank results. This approach, while somewhat daunting to carry out at the scale required, is fundamentally straightforward. The computers doing the crawling, indexing, and ranking don’t need to have any sort of understanding of what the strings of letters you are searching on signify.
Google’s Knowledge Graph adds a new dimension to searches, because the company now keeps track of what many search terms mean. That’s what allows the system to recognize the connection between Margaret Thatcher (the person) and Grantham (her place of birth)—not because the two strings show up together on a lot of Web pages.
(Image: Googling The Daily Dish)
Steve Walt imagines how America would pick allies if we could start over:
If one could really start from scratch, I doubt we'd give security guarantees to Taiwan, even in a period when we're worrying about the Asian balance of power. It's too small, and will be increasingly difficult to protect over time. But most of America's other Asian allies would still be valuable, and we'd probably be courting them today even if we didn't already have strong ties. As noted, one could make a case for NATO as a limited security partnership, but I doubt we'd try to build an elaborate multilateral institution in 2012 if it didn't already exist. The United States would still need allies to maintain a balance of power in the Persian Gulf, but it's not entirely clear we'd pick the same allies we currently have.
Robert E. Kelley, whose post sparked Walt's discussion, defends his initial list of Top 11 allies. A counterintuitive take on the Muslim world:
I do think we have really overhyped the ME in the last decade. Elsewhere I argued that we broadly misread 9/11 as the first step in a ‘long war’ of waves of salafist extremists coming after us. That just didn’t happen. Binladenists are scary, but there aren’t that many of them, and 9/11 was a one-time sucker punch when we weren’t paying attention, not the start of massive umma-wide uprising. So Turkey is not as valuable to America as we think perhaps. It is important for the EU and Israel, but not so much for US. Insofar as Egypt sits astride the canal and is the heartland of Arab thought, which is where the pathologies of 9/11 are worst, it too ranks above Turkey – only just though. I would probably put Turkey in at 12. But the real story of American commitment in the Muslim world should be Indonesia. Not only is it valuable as a bulwark against Islamic extremism where the majority of the world’s Muslims live (SE Asia), it’s also a valuable hedge against China, and it’s the fourth largest country on earth.
More follow-up from Kelley here.
A duo with Mother Nature:
Wade Davis, a gay former Titans cornerback, discusses what kept him from coming out while still in the pros. Asked whether a non-star player should come out in today's NFL, Davis is unsure:
"I'm going to be flat out honest with you, it probably shouldn't if he wants to keep his job. If he's the 53rd man on the roster, if he's a free agent who's fighting for a job, maybe he shouldn't." But after about 40 seconds, Davis caught himself and expressed support for anyone who wants to come out publicly: "You know what, yes, it should be. Screw it. I don't want to be in the business of telling anyone they can't live their life authentically.
TNC laments:
We would like to think that the it would not have been "a problem at all" for a openly gay man to play in the NFL a decade ago. That, of course, leaves us with the fact that there still isn't one today.
Newbury Park, California, 12 pm
"Man hitchhiking crosscountry for memoir titled ‘The Kindness of America’ shot on side of highway"
Apparently, not everyone gets the John Waters treatment.
Beinart plays devil's advocate.
The Dish 