Month: August 2012

Reviewing Cambridge University historian Peter Clarke's new book, Mr. Churchill's Profession, Geoffrey Wheatcroft explores the ambiguities of the Winston Churchill's literary endeavors:

"Rarely can an author’s writings have received less attention than those of the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953", Clarke observes at the outset. It is idle to ask whether Churchill deserved the prize: like the outrageous praise showered on him at the time, especially in the American press, and with none more fulsome than Isaiah Berlin, it was the mood of the age. Today we can view those writings with more detachment. Churchill was a born storyteller, and an unashamed exponent of what Giovanni Giolitti called "beautiful national legends"; at one extraordinary moment in history, his faith in such legends helped save civilization.

The Romney campaign is going after another one of Obama's perceived strengths, the auto bailout:

This is a bizarre strategy, however, as the ad is based on a baldy misleading argument:

As the ad says, loans became difficult to obtain from both Wall Street financial institutions and the lending arm of General Motors. Some dealerships struggled to stay afloat or were forced to close due to the larger financial crisis and as the government takeover and subsequent structured bankruptcy led to less access to cash, according to the Center for Automotive Research (CAR). And jobs were lost during the bailout, but only a fraction of the number that would have been lost without it. The structured bankruptcy, however, was estimated to have led to the loss of 365,000 jobs compared an estimated 1.8 million jobs if the federal government did not intervene, according to a 2010 study by CAR.

Even Jennifer Rubin thinks the ad is a mistake:

Is Romney saying that in a "managed bankruptcy" these dealershiips wouldn’t have closed? If he is saying these guys got hit because the politically-connected UAW got special treatment, that would make sense. The ad doesn’t say that. In short, I don’t get the point of the ad. It seems to be written for the Obama campaign team and not the voters. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being Reagan’s "Morning in America," this is a 2. Maybe a 1.

Romney's campaign is also still using the Obama's "it worked" quote out of context and ad nauseum:

The Obama campaign uploaded a recording of the president's Ohio speech today in what is surely a preview of attack ads to come. His new rhetoric hinges on a new study that indicates Romney's tax plan will heavily favor the rich at the expense of everybody else. Meanwhile, in North Dakota, where Republican Congressman Rick Berg has already used his mom against Democrat Heidi Heitkamp in the Senate race, now he's deploying a whole table of old ladies:

As a complement to Shelley Berkley's country western radio ad we featured yesterday, here's a hip-hop one from Rep. Lacy Gray (D-MO):

Nicolas Pistor has context:

Clay is locked in a tight primary battle with U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan.  The two were thrown together in the 1st Congressional District after Missouri lost a seat after the recent U.S. Census. The primary is next Tuesday, August 7.  Olympic icon Jackie Joyner-Kersee's voice is mixed into the hip-hop ad saying "vote Clay" and "mark it down, the 7th."  It also features Clay's father, Bill Clay, who has represented the district for many years.

Ad war archive here.

Egypt's Mohamed Salah (top) celebrates with teammate Ahmed Hegazi after winning 3-1 over Belarus in a London 2012 Olympic Games men's soccer match at Hampden Park, in Glasgow, Scotland on August 1, 2012. The Egyptian men's team now advances to the quarter finals for the first time since 1984. Egypt's national soccer league was cancelled after a post-match riot in the city of Port Said killed 74 fans last February, setting off a wave of political violence througout the country.  By Graham Stuart/AFP/Getty Images.

Nita Bhalla highlights what is perhaps the most horrific crime against women on the subcontinent – acid attacks:

Nine years ago, three men broke into Sonali’s home in the east Indian city of Dhanbad as she slept, and threw concentrated acid over her face. The highly corrosive chemical caused 70 percent burns to her face, neck and arms and melted away the skin and flesh on her nose, cheeks and ears – leaving her almost blind and partially deaf. Sonali, who was a 17-year-old college student at the time of the attack, had rejected their sexual advances for months and when she threatened to call the police, they took their revenge.

A recent paper (pdf) explains why acid attacks in India are increasingly common: 

Acid attacks occur at high rates in Bangladesh, India, and Cambodia because the acid used to perpetrate attacks—such as sulfuric acid and nitric acid—is cheap and easily available. Neither India nor Cambodia has enacted laws to regulate the easy availability of acid or criminal laws to adequately punish perpetrators of attacks. On the other hand, Bangladesh enacted two laws in 2002—one that heightens criminal penalties and improves criminal procedures and another that attempts to decrease the availability of acid. Acid attacks are on the rise in India and Cambodia, but have decreased by 15% to 20% in Bangladesh each year after the country adopted specific laws to address acid violence.

Meanwhile, some Indian women are taking matters into their own hands:

Navdeep, a housewife in Ludhiana, said she had a shotgun at home for security when her husband was working away from home, and recently bought a lighter pistol for use outside the house. "A lot of lower-class men, they harass women, so a gun is very good way of telling them to back off. If I am coming home late at night on my own, it is very necessary. Even if the police come, it is too late," she said.

Trevor Paglen's new project intends to immortalize human culture in space. Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan explains:

The project will reach its climax this September, when a small gold-plated disc containing 100 laser-etched images of humankind will hitch a ride into space, courtesy of a communications satellite called EchoStar XVI. Affixed to the outside of the EchoStar, The Last Pictures could remain in orbit for as long as five billion years–or when the sun becomes a red giant, engulfing the earth.

After the EchoStar reaches the end of its life, it will move into Graveyard Orbit, where drag is so low that the satellite can remain there indefinitely. So, how did Paglen decide what images to send?

"The instinct I think most people would have is to create a representation of humanity, but to me, that’s ludicrous. That’s absurd."

He began looking at other examples of lost civilizations, like the Easter Island monuments. "I thought it should be more subtle," he remembers, "less of a history." So for six years, he posed a single, "ridiculous" question to dozens of anthropologists, art historians, and scientists: What one image of human civilization deserves to be made permanent? "Often," Paglen remembers, "a single image would emerge in every conversation." Brainstorming sessions with a group of research assistants turned up other options, and Paglen eventually narrowed it down to 100, which together form a patchwork quilt of impressionistic glimpses of human life, rather than a chronological history.

Update from a reader:

I clicked through to those Trevor Paglen links. Can it really be tha all the photos are moody black-and-white shots? This is the record of humanity that is to endure for five billions years, yet no color at all?? Funny to think of something as arbitrary as the predilection for b/w in art photography having such a potentially lasting consequences.

Update from another:

In response to your reader who thought it sign of an obnoxious artist that the images are in black and white, consider the medium. Etching into metal can only be done mono-chromatically. Moreover, our particular biology lends itself to viewing colors as we do, and though I'm well outside my expertise, I would think that an alien's would be very unlike to have evolved identically.

(Image: An early operating theater for surgery, one of the images chosen for Paglen's project)

Yesterday both campaigns released smartphone apps but for very different purposes. Obama's app is all-in-one campaign tool, while Romney's app promises people (once they become MyMitt members) an exclusive sneak peek at his VP choice. Alex Fitzpatrick compares the two:

Whereas Romney’s app is useful mostly to the campaign, Obama’s app empowers that side’s supporters to be more effective at reaching their goals. Obama campaign staff and volunteers no longer have to print hundreds of sheets of addresses and turf maps when going door-to-door, only to spend hours digitizing their work later that evening. Instead, they can receive and transmit their day’s work via the new app. Obama’s app also uses a supporter’s location data to show how Obama’s policies have affected the user’s immediate area, and it takes a page from digitally-savvy NGOs (non-government organizations) by providing voters with a mechanism to report potential voting abuses on Election Day, which could become an issue this year as several states are adopting stricter voting laws.

Both apps are clearly intended to collect demographic information as well, just as Obama's VP-pick text alert did in 2008. From an early customer review of the Romney app:

I just wanted to know when VP picked. App wanted to much info from me and wanted me to be evangelistic in promoting Romney to others. I'll just wait for CNN app to give me notice 10 minutes late and delete this app.

Naturally a tumblr was launched forthwith:

Context here if you're just catching up. Another Dish fave after the jump:

Weigel checks in on the effort "to bring the president back down from Olympus on national security" with regard to OBL.

Paleo diets are all the rage, but as Rob Dunn argues, the term obscures as much as it reveals. The key question is which ancestors we should be emulating:

A paleo diet is an arbitrary thing. Which paleo diet should we eat? The one from twelve thousand years ago? A hundred thousand years ago? Forty million years ago? I would argue that, IF we want to return to our ancestral diets, we might reasonably eat what our ancestors spent the most time eating during the largest periods of the evolution of our guts. If that is the case, we need to be eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables—especially fungus-covered tropical leaves.

Early discussion of wheat allergies and my own diagnosis here. Update from a reader:

Don't forget that along with the paleo diet one needs to follow the paleo exercise program.  Our ancestors were up hunter-gathering all day, not sitting in front of a computer or TV.

As media accusations of doping continue to dog the Olympic phenom, Ross Thomas puts forward an explanation for her Lochte-beating freestyle leg:

[T]he sport shows that you have a normal pattern, a typical ratio of medley freestyle to best freestyle — they SHOULD BE between 18 and 23% slower at the end of a 400m IM than in a 100m freestyle by itself. Yet Shiwen is not. She does a 58.68s final leg, which is only about 10% off the best 100m freestyle swimmers…. The only way to interpret that is to recognise that the physiology of a fast finish tells us that she must have a significant reserve for that final leg. It says that her first 300m was an extremely conservative effort.

There are other factors that could be at play as well:

Ye's proportions give her an edge, [Ye's coach Ken] Wood says. At 5 feet 8 and 141 pounds, Ye has better power-to-weight ratio than counterparts in other countries, he said. There are also her hands—which the 6-foot-2 Wood says are as big as his—and her size 10.5 feet, which turbocharge her strokes.

June Thomas attributes the media's skepticism to Ye's nationality:

[T]he biggest reason these doping accusations are so prevalent is that Ye is from China, a country with a history of doping in swimming; a highly regimented, state-run sports system; and a recent, paranoia-inducing dominance of the medal table. Toronto’s Globe and Mail pointed out that "Chinese athletes—and their respected Australian coaches—are insisting that this isn't the same China that was a disgrace in the 1990s, when ripped, drug-fuelled swimmers emerged from nowhere to beat the world." The obvious subtext here: Why should we believe them? To that, I would say: Why shouldn’t we? In 1987, a 15-year-old who weighed 95 pounds broke the 800-meter freestyle world record by more than two seconds. Janet Evans’ triumph was rightly celebrated as the amazing achievement of a once-in-a-generation athlete.

China's blogosphere is naturally up in arms over the accusations. A representative comment:

Europeans have never been able to get away from racism, and when they talk about freedom and democracy it is even more laughable. When one is only democratic to oneself, that isn’t called 'democratic.'

Not so fast, says The Science of Sport:

There is a reality that can't, and shouldn't be ignored, and that is that Chinese athletes have a history of doping. I quoted figures the other day of 40 Chinese swimmers failing tests, three times more than the next nation. Yesterday I received a tweet saying it's 57, a shade over twice the next nation's numbers. Regardless, it's clear that Chinese athletes have "earned" the mistrust that accompanies them. That's just a fact.

(Photo: Gold medalist Ye Shiwen holds her national flag after the podium ceremony of the women's 200m individual medley final during the swimming event at the London 2012 Olympic Games on July 31, 2012. By Christopher Simon/AFP/Getty Images)