Month: January 2013

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A reader writes:

In what I trust will not be breaking news: achievement anxiety (particularly in relation to others) is nothing new. Consider this famous anecdote from Suetonius’ “Life of Julius Caesar”:

As quaestor it fell to [Caesar’s] lot to serve in Further Spain. When he was there…he came to Gades, and noticing a statue of Alexander the Great in the temple of Hercules, he heaved a sigh, and as if out of patience with his own incapacity in having as yet done nothing noteworthy at a time of life when Alexander had already brought the world to his feet, he straightway asked for his discharge, to grasp the first opportunity for greater enterprises at Rome.

Another:

I’m a 22-year-old, freshly graduated, unemployed, parents’ basement-dwelling sometimes-writer and aspiring comic. I just watched all of Girls. I think it’s great. I think it’s also maddening how greedy Lena Dunham is with all of the material I was going to use – right down to HPV. I can’t speak for anyone else my age who similarly strives for creative success, but for my part, I’ve gradually become used to the idea that it’s not going to happen over night.

Well, viewers under 54 are doing the former anyway. I suppose I should know this but Fox’s prime-time really does skew old.  A remarkable 1.6 million watched on average in primetime in January, but only 267,000 of them were between the ages of 25 and 54. That’s the lowest number of that demo since 2001. The culture has moved on, hasn’t it?

“I’ve learned that using my wife’s blush brush to put on my own TV makeup is more than a little problematic from both a marriage stand point and the extra color it adds. I’ve also learned that my make up is more expensive than my wife’s make up, but that’s a whole other story,” – Erick Erickson, reflecting on his time as a CNN dude.

Osnos reflects on Google’s new map of North Korea:

[T]he dominant sensation in seeing the spidery new detail on the land is that it reminds us just how much we still can not see. For now, it’s hard to envision how the map will have much impact inside North Korea, because almost nobody there has access to the Web. The delight we get in a digital glimpse of the North Koreans’ land only underscores the span between their reality and ours. The map allows us to indulge our curiosity, but we are just as in the dark as ever about the mysterious realm inside the heads of Kim Jong Un and his mercurial men. Politically, North Korea remains as black as a satellite map at night.

(Image: A Google map of a North Korean gulag)

Continuing the debate, Harry Enten points out that “most of the growth in the Latino vote is occurring in non-swing states”:

The only swing states in which Latinos make up the same or a greater percentage of the electorate than nationally are Colorado, Florida, and Nevada. A modest improvement for Republicans in these states could make a difference in a close election. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but the majority of swing states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia are more likely to be determined by African-American and non-Hispanic white voters.

At least according to Daniel Altman, who isn’t worried that the increased automation of our economy might lead to a future of pure leisure:

The problem with these predictions is that providing for basic needs is not the only thing that compels us to work. We also like to follow through on our ideas by achieving goals that make us proud, creating new products to improve our lives, and feeling the thrill of power and control. In short, opportunity to do all these things can be as important as material compensation. … Even when the day comes that we can count on a comfortable lifestyle regardless of our income, we will still work to fulfill our personal goals and, of course, to keep up with the Joneses.

Ackerman wonders about them:

“I’ve disassembled mines in the Falklands islands, a very harsh climate,” says Colin King, a former British Army bomb-disposal officer, “and the last ones I did were more than 30 years [older] than the event, and some of those were in perfect condition 30 years on. I’ve seen some in Cambodia and in Jordan, particularly in Cambodia where you’ve got a wet climate and poor quality mines, which were nonfunctional very, very quickly. But there are very few IEDs that are going to last for years.”

Science and experience indicates as much. But the data, alas, is lacking.

Assuring his readers that he’s not “one of 127 sheriffs across the country whose ‘swelling ranks…lead the charge against fascism'”, Ed Kilgore defines the term:

[S]omeone with your name whose writings, life-events, legal activities or friends/enemies pop up when you enter your own self.

My most famous one is a veteran Buffalo sportscaster who for obvious reasons dominates the Google Image Search of our common name. There are various and sundry other Ed Kilgores out there, my name being more common in the Scots-Irish Diaspora than you might think.

(Photo: British forward Andrew Sullivan (L) jumps to score during the men’s basketball preliminary round match Great Britain vs China as part of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Basketball Arena on August 6, 2012 in London. Great Britain won 90-58. By Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

How Drum understands Obama’s recent comments about the limits of American power:

No matter what motivates you—realpolitik, humanitarianism, nationalism, whatever—interventionism doesn’t make sense if it doesn’t work. And the lesson of the past decade, at the very least, is that interventionism is really, really hard to do well, even if your bar for “well” is really, really low.

The first question for any kind of action in any sphere of human behavior is, will it work? If the answer is yes, then you can move on to arguments about when, whether, and what kind of action might be appropriate. But if the answer is no, all those arguments are moot. In the case of U.S. military interventions, the answer might not quite be an unqualified no, but it sure seems to be pretty damn close. This makes the rest of the argument futile.