Let no woman say that Tech People — and here I mean the real architects of technological progress–can’t express themselves. Reading Larissa MacFarquhar’s epistolary article about Aaron Swartz in The New Yorker, I was struck, and moved, by how open Swartz and his friends were in their public and private writing. Swartz wrote raw, intensely personal things on his blog; Reddit is full of people expressing themselves in ways that are often shocking. But a novel requires something a little different.
It is my understanding that most writers feel some sense of being outside of things looking in. A good social novel requires a particular balance of alienation and access to be successful. (Tom Wolfe had to get invited to all those dinner parties; the tech novelist has to get invited to the Teach-Up.) Tech, the way it happens in San Francisco at least, seems to present some real deterrents to the access part of the equation. Tech companies, even when they are in the city proper, seem like compounds evoking non-disclosure agreements and badges and loyalty. The buses that ferry the workers from their San Francisco neighborhoods to their Peninsula offices are unmarked. I think these are insular, fortified environments in which it would be hard to achieve the balance of outside and inside status. And when you work twelve hours a day, how would you find the time?
The documentary Room 237outlines various interpretations of The Shining – that the film is about the slaughter of Native Americans, the Holocaust, or is Kubrick’s apology for faking the footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing:
Kubrick’s longtime assistant and collaborator Leon Vitali (who played Lord Bullingdon in “Barry Lyndon”) recently said that “Room 237” had him “falling about laughing most of the time” because he knows these ideas are “absolute balderdash.”
What “The Shining” is really about will remain opaque. Beyond child abuse, writer’s block, and insanity is the history of the hotel, which seems to weigh Nicholson down more than anything. One commenter in “Room 237” makes this point: “This is a movie about the past. Not just our past, but ‘pastness’.” This, interestingly, parallels something Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker in her original, appreciative but skeptical review: “I hate to say it, but I think the central character of this movie is time itself, or, rather, timelessness.”
The resort to esoteric, secret meanings behind reality is a psychological comfort when the capriciousness of that reality is too threatening. When we badly need reality to make sense – to be sending us a message – secret codes and vast conspiracy theories provide that sense. So in a way, the existence of “Room 237″ is a testament to the success of “The Shining” in capturing the unassimilable horror of reality. If it weren’t so terrifying, nobody would see the need to tame it by explaining what it’s really about.
Ann Napolitano toured Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home in Savannah. The tour guide emphasized a photo of the author at age three:
“A little after this point,” he said, “something happened to change this little girl into the Flannery we recognize. Between the ages of four and six, she started to call her parents Edward and Regina. She began to speak to everyone as if she were an adult. She called her teachers by their first names, and that got her into some trouble at school. Her parents allowed it, though. They were ever after Edward and Regina to her.”
I love this anecdote, because the obvious assumption would be that something sinister had happened to Flannery during that period to alter her, or force her to grow up too quickly. But, as the tour guide assured me, and as I’d learned from my own research, that simply wasn’t the case. Flannery had, on the whole, a happy childhood. She simply did away with the trappings of childhood as soon as possible. She became herself earlier than most of us do. The vision of a fierce five-year Flannery pleases me, but it also rings true. The true Flannery could never be denied, not even by childish impulses.
You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.
Aman Russom, senior lecturer at the School of Biotechnology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, says that his research team converted a commercial DVD drive into a laser scanning microscope that can analyse blood and perform cellular imaging with one-micrometre resolution. The breakthrough creates the possibility of an inexpensive and simple-to-use tool that could have far-reaching benefits in health care in the developing world.
Standard HIV testing already uses a laser-based method called flow cytometry to count the CD4 cells (a low count of which would be an indicator of the disease). But access to these kinds of tests—with machines costing upwards of $30,000—has been highly limited in the developing countries that need it most. By contrast, the Lab-on-DVD units, could be mass-produced and sold for less than $200. Plus, these relics of media yesteryear are far more portable.
Equally amazing is the sheer realization that technology has advanced to the point where, even when on the verge of being outdated in one field, just a few tweaks can redirect it towards an incredible, innovative, and medically astounding task in another.
Evan Hughes looks at the first stirrings of discomfort about New York’s gentrification:
The Hal Ashby film The Landlord, the L. J. Davis novel A Meaningful Life, and the Paula Fox novel Desperate Characters, all dating from 1970 through ’71, paint a strikingly consistent portrait of Brooklyn at a low ebb. Though widely divergent in tone, they all depict the bleak conditions that held sway at the time, despite being set in what are now high-rent districts. Cars are stripped to the axles in minutes, rocks get hurled through windows, and bums heckle passersby from the shadows.
The protagonists in Ashby, Davis, and Fox, who dive into this mess, are the forerunners of contemporary Brooklyn’s bourgeois and bohemian crowd. They’re the shock troops of gentrification, a word that barely existed at the time. They are well-educated newcomers bucking the larger trend of an ongoing middle-class exodus. They are also, notably, all white. Their neighbors, as a rule, are not. It’s odd to reflect on the fact that the writers behind these works had no idea how this social experiment would turn out. About the prospects of the would-be gentrifier, in fact, they seemed decidedly pessimistic.
Hughes, noting that “in 2010, for the first time in a hundred years, Brooklyn was whiter than it had been a decade before,” reflects on the resulting white liberal guilt:
Whatever your intentions, to be a member of the new, more privileged wave of residents in a gentrifying neighborhood is to be a part of a process that is displacing families who have lived there for decades, even generations. You have to be something of a moral idiot not to feel some queasiness about this. Although it is rarely discussed directly, I suspect that for a lot of who are, broadly speaking, on the advantaged side in this turf war, just walking around brings regular stings of class guilt. Obviously it is worse to be on the disadvantaged side; that’s why the advantaged feel bad about feeling bad, and therefore avoid talking about it.
What the advantaged do instead is pick apart all the failings and hypocrisies of our own team. That way we align ourselves, so we imagine, with the other team, the team that seems to have justice on its side: If I’m part of something bad, at least I have the right attitude about it.
Implicated in an uncomfortable reality, we resort to a bit of psychological jujitsu to fight off the shame. Feeling the heat of the spotlight, we swing it on a fellow gentrifier who’s going about it all wrong. I’m white and raised in suburbia, but I don’t wear khakis and clog restaurants with my stroller at brunch. Or perhaps: At least I’m not this guy here on the park bench, with his beanie and flip-flops. I mean, really. Look at this fucking hipster.
A transgender woman now appears in the pages of DC Comics’ Batgirl:
[Batgirl writer Gail] Simone believes that diversity isn’t just a continuing issue for superhero comics: “It’s the issue for superhero comics. Look, we have a problem most media don’t have, which is that almost all the tentpoles we build our industry upon were created over a half century ago… at a time where the characters were almost without exception white, cis-gendered, straight, on and on. It’s fine — it’s great that people love those characters. But if we only build around them, then we look like an episode of The Andy Griffith Show for all eternity.”
She added that she thinks most superhero comics readers don’t have a problem with increased diversity, but rather with stories that promote sermonizing over storytelling. Alysia will be “a character, not a public service announcement … being trans is just part of her story. If someone loved her before, and doesn’t love her after, well — that’s a shame, but we can’t let that kind of thinking keep comics in the 1950s forever.”
I was a senior in high school in 2001. That year, I was taking a class on Caribbean Civilization, which included a trip to Cuba. September 11th was the second week of school, and all international trips were canceled in its wake. My parents, after realizing how much money they were saving (I was also slated to go on a band trip to Italy), decided that they’d always wanted to go to Cuba. The school trip was legit, with educational visas and all. My parents and I took the easy route: we drove to Canada. From there it was an easy flight to Havana (on Air Cubana, but on a leased Airbus as opposed to, say, a Soviet-era Tupolev). We had a lovely week in Cuba (perhaps not as educational as if I’d gone on an exchange with my class) and certainly broke the travel ban (which is really a spending money ban).
At the time, everything in Cuba was available for US dollars, so we had no issue paying for anything. We were with a tour group, but we were four of the six in the group, so we were able to cajole the driver to let us drop in on state-run stores, fruit stands and the like. We were certainly tourists. But there was something fulfilling to flouting a ludicrous ban.
When we arrived, our passports weren’t stamped, but customs gave us a separate sheet of paper to get stamped (this is SOP for Americans visiting). Coming back in to the States from Canada there was no passport check at the time, and customs in northern Vermont thought we were a family coming back from a week in Quebec. (We were, we just happened to jet south for a few days.) At the time, enforcement of the ban was very sporadic. Apparently, if you were caught, you’d get a letter telling you that you were being fined $11,000. If you ignored it, you’d get a second, strongly-worded letter. If you ignored it, the Feds would go do something more useful – which is, of course, pretty much anything.
Apparently, the Bush administration went and staked out some airports (good use of government resources, guys!) but that has lapsed in the Obama presidency. In fact, there have been efforts to have the fine applied to push the law into the courts (it’s dubious whether it would withstand constitutional scrutiny, especially in the current state where people with family in Cuba are regulated differently than everybody else) but even open flouting has not been punished. And when Forbes is publishing opinion pieces by AEI guys arguing the ban is folly, well, there you go.
In any case, had Jay-Z and Beyonce been caught, they would have been hit with a $55,000 fine. Which I’m sure they could have afforded. Maybe the only way to get rid of the ban is to say that the fine amounts to a tax, and the Republicans in the House will all jump up to vote it down.
Another reader:
I travelled to Cuba almost exactly one year ago, and it was eye-opening. I didn’t need to obtain special permission from my government to travel there because Canada, despite its conservative government’s open opposition to the Castro regime, permits its citizens to freely travel to Cuba.
It’s a beautiful country, and full of natural wealth just waiting to be exploited. (We drove passed several Chinese- and Canadian-run oil wells on the way to Havana.) But its greatest resource is its people. Cuba is a country with a bright future ahead of it, because its people, while poor, are very well-educated. The Communist regime in Cuba does a lot of things wrong, but education is not one of them. Education at all levels is free for everyone in Cuba, and people take advantage of this. Sure they teach a specific version of history etc., but despite the government’s efforts to inculcate loyalty to the Revolution, the young people are just not buying it, much to the chagrin of their elders.
And things are changing. Our tour guide into Havana operated a private taxi company – he owned his taxi and made his own money. He was a fountain of information, actually the main source for most of what I’m writing. He believed that Raul Castro was going to accelerate the pace of change, because unlike Fidel, Raul is not an ideologue. He wants two things; for his regime to survive him, and for Cuba to thrive.
The fact that Raul claims to be stepping down in a few years offers hope that America might finally end its ghastly embargo, which succeeds in doing nothing but keeping Cuba’s educated and industrious population poor and driving a museum of classic cars from the 50s (which is very cool for visitors, but very uncool for them). Our guide claimed that the government just uses the embargo to stay in power anyway – they have the ultimate excuse. Every economic woe can be blamed on the embargo. They even blame natural disasters on the embargo he joked. (Or maybe he wasn’t joking?)
So the embargo is doubly ineffective – it impoverishes Cuba’s population by robbing them of their natural trading partner, and it gives the Communist government a trump card it can always play against all criticism. That’s pretty much a textbook lose-lose.
Oklahoma Sooners football coach Bob Stoops doesn’t see the need for college athletes to get stipends, even if it means they have to skip an occasional meal:
“You know what school would cost here for non-state guy? Over $200,000 for room, board and everything else,” Stoops said. “That’s a lot of money. Ask the kids who have to pay it back over 10-15 years with student loans. You get room and board, and we’ll give you the best nutritionist, the best strength coach to develop you, the best tutors to help you academically, and coaches to teach you and help you develop. How much do you think it would cost to hire a personal trainer and tutor for 4-5 years? I don’t get why people say these guys don’t get paid. It’s simple, they are paid quite often, quite a bit and quite handsomely.”
Jason Kirk pushes back, calling it the “worst argument against paying college football players”:
American colleges are overpriced almost across the board, so what about the value-conscious education shoppers among college football players? What if we whittled that number down to the actual costs of providing education, not the number the University of Oklahoma gets to charge? Are cheaper schools closer to doing players wrong because their intangible numbers are closer to zero? …
Don’t act like every Sooner is a quarter-millionaire just because college costs are farcically bloated. You can’t eat a degree. You can’t trade one for something to eat, either. You can’t use college credits as loan collateral while your impoverished family, if you’ve got one of those, waits three or more years for your first NFL contract. Education is wonderful, but it has never paid a bill.
Go here to read the whole Dish debate over whether to pay college athletes.
Friday on the Dish, Andrew shined a light on the gruesome trial of Kermit Gosnell, brought up the threat and answered readers’ alarm over North Korean nukes. He considered the conservative split between Burke and Buckley, and noticed some progress on marriage equality at the latter’s old journal, even if the GOP is now globally behind on the question. Later Andrew aired a suggestion to Prince Charles, catalogued San Francisco’s gay bar scene, and gave a peek into his recent dinner with Rod Dreher
In political coverage, a reader reacted to our first post on the plight of American veterans, Nate Cohn dismissed the suspicions of racism chipping away at Obama’s electoral victories and Shikha Dalmia revealed another economic boon illegal immigrants contribute. Barro asked liberals to think of education like health care, Derek Thompson compared teen spending to adult spending, and Ann Friedman found reasons some women are staying home.
We found that the Senate’s gun control bill hasn’t lost all potential and readers remained vocal about silencers. Henry Barbour earned an Yglesais Award for his realkeeping on GOP and marriage equality as Caleb Cain did the tax math on what gay couples have missed out on.
In assorted overage, explored the latest scene of synthetic drugs, gobbled down some red meat, and Boris Johnson dribbled a bit. Alan Sepinwall questioned the massive surplus of TV programming, Alyssa praised the social commentary of District 9 and the coming Elysium and a Youtube sensation snagged an amateur a contract. We bemoaned a new rule of the National Spelling Bee and learned that running a country can itself be a manner of speaking.
We dug deeper into the heap of recycling, took stock of the publishing industry and Kmart channeled Cartman in the Cool Ad Watch. Jason Vorhees gave a deep sigh in the Face of the Day, we looked out at snowy Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Google Street treated us to a timelapse in the MHB.
–B.J.
The rest of the week after the jump:
Thursday on the Dish, Andrew drew attention to the state of America’s veterans, sunk his teeth into the new budget offer, and gave Rand Paul some credit for attempting outreach to black Americans. He extolled Maggie’s sensible position on Israel, described Thatcherite counterculture from his youth (underlining the vitriol of her enemies) and yet noted that critique of her relationship with Augusto Pinochet is totally valid. Later, Andrew saw the end of gay culture watch and explored the possibilities of monetizing blogs.
In political coverage, we checked in with the upcoming consequences of the sequester, gathered reax to the trials of the bitcoin, and pointed to the next possible push for marriage equality. Waldman was skeptical of the gun control bill in the Senate, readers continued to hash out the right to bear arms, and pushed back against Goldblog on silencers. Nate Cohn remained positive that the Republicans are facing demographic trouble as we revisitedBrown Vs. Board of Ed and heard an anecdote on Thatcher’s modern attitude toward same sex couples. Readers countered the idea that only women are objectified in politics and the New York Times made a Freudian slip.
In miscellanea, Chris Oates spotted a reflection of the British Empire in Doctor Who, Noah Berlatsky rebutted Alyssa’s critique of Romeo and Juliet, and Jeffery Overstreet pondered the Cohen brothers’ theological streak. We found more tributes to David Kuo, awed at the reality TV flooding over Alaska, and readers sounded off on the novelization of the small screen.
Later we saw a super secret social network, readers weighed the nutritional value of guinea pig and Seth Rogen went Breaking Bad for a Cool Ad Watch. Finally, we got a taste of summer movies in the MHB, visited Banner Creek, Alaska for the VFYW and recognized a chubby control freak in the Face of the Day.
Wednesday on the Dish, Andrew shared his experience of attending the David Kuo’s funeral and expressed his feelings on a reasonable, Christian understanding of life and death. He took on more criticism from readers for his take Thatcher’s legacy, posted the results of our reader survey on Dish policy of featuring graphic war imagery, and paid respects to Goldblog.
In political coverage, we debated MSNBC’s TV spot calling for collective responsibility of your kids, provided an introduction for those bamboozled by the bitcoin and wondered how long it will take for the rest of us to join Jay and Bey in Cuba. Bobby Jindal’s stock crashed as News Corps put Fox News on notice. Millman reassured us that our trade deficit is a red herring, China and Brazil clocked in richer but tubbier, and we questioned whether we owe the Arab Spring to the Iraq War. Also, the navy drew up designs for a doomsday laser.
Ambider sensed incoming relief in Congress’s partisan stalemate, McWhorter unpacked the terminology of immigration, and Drum supplied some data to back up the backlash against Obama’s remark on Kamala Harris’s attractiveness. Finally, Goldblog pointed out the NRA’s unhelpful stance on silencers and readers fleshed out more contrasting views of the second amendment.
In assorted coverage, Ashley Fetters expected a cameo from Ralph Nader in Man Men, Brad Leithauser relayed stories of his grandfather’s casual catchphrases, and we learned that e-books can be bound study-ready. Balko pointed out that cops don’t have it as bad as they used to, Ben Smith vouched for the success of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, and we charted the ongoing plummet of newspaper ad revenue.
Waldman queried our fascination with listicles, we asked whether life is about creating life and sampled a taste of guinea pork. We played out a quick day with the band the Real Ones in the MHB, checked in with the Syrian rebels for the Face of the Day and peeked out at Matamata, New Zealand in the VFYW.
Tuesday on the Dish, Andrew responded onscreen to critics of Thatcher, and revealed how foreign the Baroness would have been to the Republican program, from climate change to AIDS. Andrew also implored us not to wait for politicians to spearhead social change, pointed out one such case (of gay rights in Uganda), and considered the Obama administration’s role in the change sweeping America. Elsewhere, Andrew continued to express hope for Pope Francis, gave an interview with Vanity Fair, and daydreamed of a future career as a canna-critic.
In political coverage, we tried to measure what racial animus cost Obama in both elections, located the GOP in the 12-step plan, and explored some new ideas of class in Britain. We discovered most scandals don’t torpedo careers and reassessed animal rights’ victory on horse slaughter as Francesca Mari peeked between the grand moments and figures in history. Reading up on WWII, TNC pushed back on lofty assurances against barbarism, as we granted certain elements of the nanny state a second look.
In miscellanea, Laura Bennet and Willa Paskin panned Vice’s new HBO show, Tom Shone triangulated the elements of good cinema, and we counted music sharing as just one new struggle over intellectual property. We uncovered the history of the suicidal dogs of war and considered whether loneliness is a killer while the world markets craved red hot chili peppers. We came across a Fargo-style self-kidnapping service, looked beyond calories for healthy eating, and studied elite chic.
Later we read David Foster Wallace on Fyodor Dostoevsky, spotted the difference between hardcovers and their paperbacks, and wondered if the art gallery is becoming history. Things got beardy in the MHB, we met the gaze of an anti-Maggie Briton celebrating Thatcher’s death for the Face of the Day, spotted a shadowy VFYW in the East Village, and tracked down Rohrmoos-Untertal, Austria in the results of the latest VFYW contest.
Monday on the Dish, Andrew returned from vacation to reflect at length on the death of his hero and idol Margaret Thatcher. He measured the scorn of her enemies, contemplated the fruits of her legacy, and praised the strength and savvy that made her the first woman to become Prime Minister. Also, readers asked Andrew if he regrets his attacks on leftists over Iraq. On an even more personal note, he eulogized as his dear friend David Kuo who died last week.
Meanwhile, we rounded up reax to the death of Lady Thatcher, as well as a batch of her one-liners. On the home front we gathered analysis on Obama’s new budget proposal while the administration’s FDA scored a win in the contraception battles, and Josh Marshall suspected that money talks in the struggle for marriage equality. And on the foreign beat, Osnos parsed China’s stance on North Korea as Pat Buchanan gritted his teeth at America’s presence over the border.
In miscellanea, we let more readers ask Rod Dreher anything, considered whether the advantages of a college degree are shrinking and tallied up the lives saved by nuclear plants. Readers caught up with the debate over randier sex and learned that sometimes in space, no one can see you cry. Owen King pondered book titles that might have been, Nathan Bransford expected books to end up over our eyelids and we browsed the prints left on Americans over the years. Brian Jay Stanley took on a new dimension of life in fatherhood as we imagined what it would mean to lose a twin and surveyed the punishment of deserters throughout history.
We explored the history of verminous myth, got real about CPR, came across a spoiler firewall, and considered whether stupid is as stupid says. We peered out at Tokyo, Japan for the VFYW, spent a moment with a few fans at Fenway in the Face of the Day, and slow-jammed alongside snails in the MHB.
Last weekend on the Dish, we provided our usual eclectic mix of religious, books, and cultural coverage. In matters of faith, doubt, and philosophy, Gary Gutting urged us to put love first, Wesley Hill contemplated the crucified God, and Matthew Sitman defended Christian Wiman’s new religious memoir. Damon Linker considered the theocons’s case against same-sex marriage, Scott Galupo analyzed the compartmentalization of the fundamentalist mind, and Andrew Cohen revisited a brilliant essay on God and evolution. Lauren Winner realized doubt is essential to the religious life, The Economistmused on the footwear of the faithful, and Rachel Johnson paid a visit to a kibbutz she spent time at in her youth. We also featured a video series from John Corvino about the morality of homosexuality, including what the Bible really says about the matter, here and here, while Marc Ambinder reminded us of the tragic lives that still await many gay teenagers. In the latest installment of The Mind Report, Charles Randy Gallistel made the case that we don’t really know how memories are stored.
In literary and arts coverage, Elizabeth Wurtzel pondered the fate of the rock star, Michael Leary unpacked Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder, and Christina Pugh argued for the conservatism of poetry. Michael Kimmage found Philip Roth to be the last of a dying breed, Justin Ellis applauded the NYT’s serendipitous poetry, and Doug Allen explained his minimal social media presence. Rodney Welch read a mediocre play by Nabokov, Patrick Feaster found a way to recover the audio of old records, and Alexander Huls described the profound impact of the special effects developed for Jurassic Park. Read Saturday’s poem here and Sunday’s here.
In assorted news and views, Emily Urquhart chronicled her daughter’s albinism diagnosis, Joseph Stromberg provided the science behind the smell of rain, and women proved to be thought the hornier sex for much of history. Rose Surnow profiled a novel approach to matchmaking, Colin Lecher examined your sense of smell’s role in dating, and the demand for American sperm increased. William Breathes reviewed pot dispensaries in Colorado, Seth Masket wondered where the Youtube politicians were, Bijan Stephens was pessimistic about his post-Yale job prospects, and Josh Horgan thought the social sciences are still struggling to find their place in the shadow of the hard sciences. MHBs here and here, FOTDs here and here, VFYWs here and here, and the latest window contest here.
The Dish 