[Boing Boing reader] Michael sez, “Someone has gone to the trouble (I don’t know how but would suspect using Melodyne DNA or somesuch) of processing REM’s minor-scale downer hit ‘Losing My Religion’ so that all the minor notes are now major. When I followed the link I thought it’d be a cover, but no, it’s the original, processed. It’s uncanny – the song is just as familiar as always but the impact is utterly different. Kind of like finding a colour print of a film you’d only known in black and white, or seeing Garfield minus Garfield for the first time. I like it.”
Jeremy Rozansky claims that athletes who took performance-enhancing drugs have “diminished the humanness of athletics by choosing to technologically enhance their bodies”:
One cannot be personally, fully excellent if the excellence stems, at least in part, from a chemical intervention. Rather than cultivate his own individual gifts, he has chosen to have different gifts. Rather than “stay within himself,” he has chosen a different self. So when [former MLB pitcher] Dan Naulty exclaims “Look, my fastball went from 87 to 96! There’s got to be some sort of violation in that,” he is intuiting how athletic achievement, once the prize of a full self who toils away at his own betterment in this activity, is corroded by the innovations of laboratories.
One might argue that chemical intervention is less morally arbitrary than genetic inheritance. Some seem born to play or run or jump or catch. Are we celebrating their skill when they win or their genetic luck? Both, of course. So why not celebrate skill and chemical balance? Samuel Goldman reframes the debate:
Many fans claim to prefer the “clean” game they’d like their children to enjoy. Their behavior, however, suggests that they actually like super-charged competition among super-humans. In this context, open doping under expert guidance is preferable to the cynical, unfair, and dangerous pursuit of competitive advantage. Consistency demands that we either accept what professional athletics is–a mass spectacle of nearly gladiatorial intensity–or reject the whole nasty business.
I’m a 24-year-old girl living in NYC and first-time emailer despite reading and loving your blog since high school. Thank you for defending us – the real-life girls whose very real lives are what everyone is actually criticizing when they criticize this show (and I’m not just projecting – many of my friends went to high school with Lena Dunham). I’m in medical school right now, following ambitions that may seem less “small and sad” than those of the show’s protagonists, but my more secure career path by no means inures me to the petty and constant growing pains of being a young woman in the big city.
We recently learned Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development, which are based on the idea that different periods in your life are marked by different conflicts. The conflict of your twenties? Intimacy versus isolation … the existential question, “Can I love?”
An older female writes:
Yes! Yes to you and TNC. The reason women are more empowered in their 30s is that they finally have the confidence to move on from sexual experiences like the ones they have in their 20s. Girls gets it excruciatingly right.
Reader TMI:
My female friends and my 20s were riddled with guys who want to pee on you; guys who want to have anal sex with you but aren’t particularly good at it; guys who are genuinely surprised when you try to tactfully inform them that 30 seconds of foreplay is not going to do the job. It’s not really fair, but for girls, so much of figuring out your own sexuality involves wrangling the sexuality of guys. For some period of time, many girls in their 20s put up with this because they don’t have the confidence or experience to insist otherwise. (My sense of the character Adam, by the way, is that he actually does have the potential to be decent in bed, but Hannah is not giving him many pointers.)
I found that masturbation scene as surprising as you did. And what I loved about it was its complexity. Hannah wasn’t expecting to be mean to Adam in that way. And Adam was completely comfortable with asking for what he needed. Very interesting.
So, yes, it is sad. For a lot of girls, sex in your 20s is often sad, because you are fending off bad sex all the time. Then guys mature, and we mature, and we learn to be better to each other. And better for each other. And Lena Dunham is showing that process. It’s awesome.
One more thing: my 15-year-old daughter watches girls religiously. She wants me to be up-to-date on it, but she definitely does not want to watch it along with me. And I will say that I am so happy that she is getting an education from that show. Because it is not from the male gaze. It shows the gaze in action, but the perspective of the show is girls.
I didn’t have anything like that when I was her age. Well, let me correct myself. I had Joni Mitchell and Chrissie Hynde. But there was no TV show – no mainstream smash hit – that reaffirmed my experience. That is a powerful thing.
Richard Sandomir and James Andrew Miller add [NYT] an ironic wrinkle to the Te’o story:
Reporters for the network had been working for almost a week trying to nail down an extraordinary story: Manti Te’o’s girlfriend… might be a hoax. ESPN decided to hold its story about the hoax involving Manti Te’o in hopes of getting an interview with him on camera.
Some inside the network argued that its reporters — who had initially been put onto the story by Tom Condon, Te’o’s agent — had enough material to justify publishing an article. Others were less sure and pushed to get an interview with Te’o, something that might happen as soon as the next day. For them, it was a question of journalistic standards. They did not want to be wrong. “We were very close,” said Vince Doria, ESPN’s chief for news. “We wanted to be very careful.” ESPN held the story, and then lost it.
Like Newsweek and Drudge on Lewinsky. Notice the need for the MSM to have the interview “get.” You can always ask for a statement instead. Now remember how the need for the interview “get” allowed Sarah Palin to avoid a single, open-ended press conference after being foisted on the country by John McCain. There’s a reason Drudge is still thriving and Deadspin beat ESPN. They both put reporting before access.
A gripping story of a miscreant priest that, alas, no longer surprises. Nor does this:
And this was not just any priest in any archdiocese. Wallin had been the longtime personal assistant and closest confidant to Edward Egan when he was bishop in Bridgeport, the two of them often going to see Broadway shows in New York. Egan had continued the archdiocese’s tradition of shuffling priests accused of sex crimes against children and of discounting the pain of the victimized.
Here’s the thing about “centrist” Israeli parties: they are always very popular when they first appear, and they never last.
They are popular when they first appear because they promise to square the circle that everybody wants squared. They are in favor of a negotiated peace – but on terms that are broadly popular among Israeli Jews and that are basically non-starters with the Palestinians. The same is true in domestic matters. They favor liberalization (in a European sense) of the economy – and they favor strengthening the social safety net. They are in favor of a renegotiation of relations between the state and the ultra-Orthodox – permitting civil marriage, opening up the rabbinate, drafting yeshivah students – but to be part of the government they have to agree to sit with religious parties who are resolutely opposed to these very things. And they have to join the government, or they can’t accomplish anything. And if they sit in opposition, then aren’t they just another left-wing party?
Clare Malone reports on the popularity of the Intelligence Squared podcast, which was inspired by England’s Oxford debates:
The Brits like their debates cutting (conservative London Mayor and Oxford Union alumnus Boris Johnson once said of the rival Lib Dems that they’re “not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition”), and so Britannia’s version of Intelligence Squared is, like a country garden or Rebekah Brooks’s hair, a bit untamed. British hosts announce each speaker politely, then let the snark and the savaging go on unchecked.
Intelligence Squared U.S. takes its civic duty with more gravitas. The idea is that American attitudes have grown more entrenched and insular thanks to the Internet and to TVs with more than three channels. “We want to help people understand the facts behind the emotion,” [Robert] Rosenkranz [who brought the debate series tothe US] explained to an interviewer when the show launched. “Force people to have a greater respect for civil discourse, not trying to be bland, but appreciating how complicated the issues are.” The result lacks some of the gladiatorial fun of its British cousin.
Well, without the gladiatorial fun, I might as well watch “Killer Karaoke”. But on a more serious note, go watch Killer Karaoke. You should fast-forward through the filler dialogue the way you would America’s Funniest Home Videos’. The rest is belly-achingly funny. On a “gravitas” note, my own time debating at Oxford was full of jokes and brutal humor and attack (with Boris among others). But we all drank until we were shitfaced afterwards. Maybe Americans cannot quite master that trick, because it took centuries of alcoholic arguments to develop. But Intelligence Squared is as good a substitute as any.
(Video: Stephen Fry slaps around the Catholic Church over its history with slavery during a “Fry/Hitchens/Widdecomb/Onaiyekan debate at Intelligence Squared, on the motion, ‘The Catholic church is a force for good in the world'”)
Brain scans performed on five former NFL players revealed images of the protein that causes football-related brain damage — the first time researchers have identified signs of the crippling disease in living players…The UCLA researchers used a patented brain-imaging tool to examine Fred McNeill, a 59-year-old former Vikings linebacker; Wayne Clark, a 64-year-old former back-up quarterback; and three other unidentified players: a 73-year-old former guard; a 50-year-old former defensive lineman; and a 45-year-old former center. Each had sustained at least one concussion; the center sustained 10.
CTE is caused by a buildup of tau, an abnormal protein that strangles brain cells. The scan lit up for tau in all five former players, according to the study. The protein was concentrated in areas that control memory, emotions and other functions — a pattern consistent with the distribution of tau in CTE brains that have been studied following autopsy, according to the researchers.
“The findings are preliminary — we only had five players — but if they hold up in future studies, this may be an opportunity to identify CTE before players have symptoms so we can develop preventative treatment,” said Dr. Gary W. Small, the study’s lead author and a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA.
So we may soon begin to see concussion-related dementia as it develops in football players during their careers. I sure cannot see the NFL denying players the brain scans to see just how much damage they are sustaining. TNC notes:
I don’t know what the adults will do. But you tell a parent that their kid has a five percent chance of developing crippling brain damage through playing a sport, and you will see the end of Pop Warner and probably the end of high school football. Colleges would likely follow. (How common are college boxing teams these days?)
After that, I don’t know how pro football can stand for long.
Daniel Mendelsohn reflects on the way being gay, with its frequent “knowingness and irony and the sense of access to special codes and secret knowledge,” has impacted his sensibility as a critic:
I was doing an event with James Wood a couple of years ago when my first collection came out and somebody asked me, “Do you think your being openly gay for so many years as a writer influences your criticism even when you’re not writing gay things?” And I said yes because you’re trained as a gay person to smell bullshit a mile away. You know when people are bullshitting because you’re bullshitting so much yourself, just to get by; so you know when people are faking it. And that is a kind of tool that comes in very handy as a critic. You’re always looking for the secret hidden patterns, the secret codes that will unlock something for you—because that’s what you’re trained to do as a gay person. So I think I’m always a gay writer in that sense because the tools that I acquired just from being a gay person are necessarily the tools you need as a critic.
Or a blogger, for that matter. Readers will not be surprised by my admission that I am often alert to weirdness on the surface that others dismiss (a flight from Alaska to Texas? Abu Ghraib pictures that just happen to look exactly like approved procedures? an effeminate Pope with a super-hot room-mate and red Prada slippers?) and that I do not have much of a filter between my head and my laptop. I think both are just the way I am (my mother makes me look like a pillar of discretion and, for some reason, I’ve always just wanted to know more about things).
But I’d also be lying if I said my sexual orientation is irrelevant. As Daniel notes, when you know you are different, especially in your teens, you keep very careful tabs on what is regarded as “normal.” You become obsessed with giving nothing away. You have to develop much sharper skills of human observation, and learn how to mimic what comes easily to others. This is one pet theory of mine about the long history of gay involvement in theater and art. The art of mimesis comes early – as part of self-defense. That’s why I put this new Youtube from Towleroad at the top of this post. Jacob Rudolph is explaining that for much of his teens, “acting: was his only option.
But then there is the opposite. What happens when you decide to tell the truth about yourself knowing it could divide your family, alienate friends, threaten careers, etc? Coming out – much more often in the past but still true now in many places – is a form of liberation into truth. And the truth really does set you free. I once described the impact of my first kiss with another man as being in a black-and-white silent movie that suddenly becomes full of color and sound. Then I came out as HIV-positive (because I could not ethically write about a subject I felt I had to write about without being honest about my bias). The result? A scarred soul from the hatred that came my way from so many gays, but a psyche highly trained to observe and pathologically unable to keep what I see in front of my nose as a secret.
Bob Wright interviews Demba Boundy on the ground in Bamako, Mali:
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Meanwhile, Andrew McCarthy recently said on Hannity:
But I think what’s really interesting, Sean, if you remember — you’ll remember this, Judy, you will, too, 2004, 2005, 2006 we were arguing whether George Bush had brought al Qaeda to Iraq. Now we have a situation where al Qaeda has been basically given the northern portion of a continent and they’ve been armed, because this ridiculous thing we did in Libya where we took out someone who was at the time was deemed to be an American ally, didn’t worry about who was going to come behind him and what ended up happening? His arsenal is now in the hands of terrorists.
Hayes Brown rebuts McCarthy and joins others in questioning the connection between Qaddafi’s fall and the Islamists’ rise:
Leaving aside the moral questions in allowing Qaddafi in power after his threatening to massacre his people, the idea that the intervention in Libya led directly to the current state of play in Mali has yet to be conclusively proven. The quick spread of AQIM in Mali was sped along by two factors: a new wave of rebellion by the Taureg ethnic group in the North and a coup by low-level officers in April 2012. That neither one of those events would have happened without the Libyan intervention is uncertain, given the weakness of the Malian government, shifting explanations the coup leaders gave for their takeover and that the rebellion appears to have been previously planned. None of which backs McCarthy’s claim that Obama is to blame for Mali’s current troubles as Bush was for Iraq’s.
That latter claim is loony. But those of us who warned about the unintended consequences of high-minded military interventions without a full Congressional debate or approval beforehand would not be surprised by this turn of events. It’s always easy to go in. Not so easy to get out without others filling the vacuum. What you break, you own. And what you reap, you sow.
The Dish 