Author: Andrew Sullivan

Air and Space profiles Jeb Corliss:

…what if you could jump from the sky and fly through the air and land, just like a bird? Corliss sees that as the purest form of human flight. He wants to be the first person to jump out of an airplane and land safely without a parachute, and make it repeatable. The plan has a lot of ifs, and the biggest is money. He needs about $3 million to erect, in the middle of the Las Vegas strip, a ramp hundreds of feet tall. It would look like a ski jump, but act as a landing slope. Since Corliss would bellyflop on it head forward, arms back, he’s found it difficult to persuade people with deep pockets to finance what, after all, could become a televised suicide.

Two readers have very different takes. One writes:

At first I thought it was ironic, but the more I think about it, the Log Cabin Republicans are really the only pro-gay group out there that doesn't care in the least how bad this makes the Dems and Obama look.  The Dems aren't willing to expend any political capital on the gays, and God knows HRC won't put any pressure on the Dems, so the Log Cabin is all that's really left on this.

The other:

OK, you so rightfully take on HRC for failing to get DADT repealed, but what about the Epic Fail of the Log Cabin?   They couldn't get a single GOP Senator to support repeal.   In fact, worse than that, they couldn't even get their Senators to allow an up-or-down vote on the measure.   Doesn't that show that they are even more pathetic in their power and the ability to affect change than HRC?

I think it reveals how impossible their position sadly is. Gay people are more anathema within the GOP than at any time in my adult life. So LCR has no influence and will have even less with the latest slew of candidates who might get elected. But they're trying to do something constructive, which is commendable. (Bonus: fun remix video of McCain losing, via Burroway)

Pure genius:

Gene Healy takes another look at the former president.

A reader writes:

Christopher Ryan’s response to the reasonable question posed by Jesse Bering on monogamy and heartbreak was disappointing.  While I found his book provocative and worth more exploration, this response demonstrates an astounding lack of understanding of the “real” world.

He begins with a sleight of hand.Yes, many couples (but certainly not a plurality, much less a majority) engage in “swinging”.

But by definition that is a third-party sexual activity that is inclusive to both couples.  And cuckholding is really just a sexual fetish of a much smaller minority of swingers.

Bering is describing the emotional and physical reaction (the terms “heartbreak” or “sexual jealousy” representing the extreme characterizations on both sides) that comes when your romantic partner rejects you for someone new. Any fan of Judge Judy, Oprah, or Dr. Phil can see daily what these emotions wrought.

In fact, I would venture to guess that the number one plot device or subject of our cultural arts, be they Jane Austen, soap operas, or just the latest top 40 jingle is the found/lost romance.

The number of people who end up in divorce, severe depression, suicide, violence, or even just mildly feeling lousy after infidelity far exceeds those who are partnered but frequent sex clubs.

It is fascinating to watch your blog posts alternate between (seemingly supportive coverage of) Ryan’s thesis and torpedoing the idea of marriage equality opponents that marriage is for childbearing only.  It comes close to cognitive dissonance.  After all, if Ryan’s view was any way in the majority, society would trash the idea of marriage completely and we would all live in communes.

Aberystwyth, Wales, 8 am

So says the founder of Gizmodo and Engadget:

…it will be increasingly difficult to build an online content business in an environment where quantity is the primary goal. The constant urge to publish more content and drive pageviews is not doing much for the reader. “[The web] is always trying to drive more clicks,” he said. “When everyone is doing it, it becomes a zero sum game.” When ads are sold on a CPM basis that requires huge pageview numbers to make money, publishers start pushing out more and more content. “It’s sort of a tragedy of the commons where the tragedy is our attention,” he said.

And other entertaining tweets over the site's outage yesterday.

On civil liberties, Conor tweaks the president and his critics:

Forced to choose, I’d rather live in the ACLU’s idea of the perfect America than a country where we repeal Obamacare, eliminate earmarks, and persist in chipping away at civil liberties to fight drugs and terrorists. The former may be a “road to serfdom.” The latter is a shortcut to the same place.

The rest is a curated rundown of egregious government behavior. Needless to say, none of it would be remedied by The Pledge to America.