A battle over the meaning of the Tablet. Wolff to Carr:
“The tablet,” you say, “represents an opportunity to renew the romance between printed material and consumer.” In other words, you want the experience of print to be replicated through a new medium, exactly the thing Marshall McLuhan said doesn’t happen: Rather, a new medium relentlessly creates its own experience and message and, let me add, business model.
This editorial from the Twin Cities Star-Tribune is making the rounds:
It's ironic that a Minnesota member of Congress, Republican Michele Bachmann, went so far last summer to declare her intention to only partially complete her census forms, and to suggest reasons for others not to comply with the census law. If Minnesota loses a congressional seat, Bachmann's populous Sixth District could be carved into pieces. She likely would have to battle another incumbent to hang on to her seat. We've noticed that her anticensus rhetoric has lately ceased. We hope she got wise: Census compliance is not only in Minnesota's best interest, but also her own.
(Hat tip: TPM)
A reader writes:
"Socialized dentistry"! You and my English husband! He couldn't bear the idea of having teeth pulled for that very reason — his childhood memories of English methods. Still smelled the chloriform and felt the "zing!" I must tell you that when he had to have TEN (English?!) teeth pulled a couple of years ago here in Connecticut, he came home absolutely over the moon with how painless it was, and no complications or distress afterwards. Dentistry has come a long way — at least in America ;-)
Have it pulled. If any doubts, have them put you out. You'll have a nice nap and all will be well when you awake. Promise.
Another writes:
I had all four wisdom teeth out, two overgrown and two impacted. I even developed "dry socket" on one side. But it was still GREAT.
I got three days off work and was coddled by my loving and attentive girlfriend the whole time. I feasted on cheesy mashed potatoes and pudding and watched hours of "West Wing" re-runs. I took frequent Vicodin-induced naps, which were the best naps I've ever had. By the time I was healed up, I wondered if I could spare another few teeth just to keep the laziness going.
After the surgery, I no longer suffered the inflamed, infected gums that often plagued me, or the painfully chomped cheeks from my overgrown teeth. It was worth it. Call an oral surgeon, stock up on soft foods, and enjoy a few days in bed with your beagles.
Another:
Get your teeth done! I am saying this hypocritically — I have had something crazy going on with some of my molars for a few months now, and I also excuse it with "English teeth". But I doubt that you have anything like the excuse I have, and I'd never heard of this until I experienced it, and if you're going to publish dentistry horror-stories…
Women should not schedule dentist appointments at the wrong time of the month. I had no idea that menstruation can nullify novacaine. You heard me! Something to do with increased hormones or something. And you know how dentists love to say "no, don't worry, you're definitely numb now, you're just imagining things, you'll be fine"? As a direct result, I enjoyed the novel sensation of a file shoved directly into the un-numbed root of my molar. I promptly levitated about a foot off the dentist's chair and went into complete shock, and the entire experience left me, my dentist, and the dental hygienist in tears.
Warn your female readers! It's a public service! (And get your teeth done, obviously.)
Last week Evgeny Morozov once again questioned the democratizing potential of the internet:
[A]uthoritarian states and modern democracies are very much alike: both have embraced hedonism as their main and only political ideology. The recent outburst of techno-utopianism in the West may thus be just another futile attempt to imagine a world where the purest ideal of Athenian democracy, uncorrupted by special interests and popular culture, is not only possible but could actually be facilitated by its more corrupt, frivolous, and somewhat culpable western sibling. This, of course, is an illusion. Citizens of modern authoritarian states face a choice between hedonism with stable prosperity (their status quo) and hedonism with unstable prosperity – the hedonism that may follow a tumultuous transition to democracy. Stability wins, with or without Twitter.
Dreher agrees:
Isn't this the techie libertarian version of the neocon idea that all people around the world are liberal democrats at heart, just waiting to be liberated from authoritarianism by force? Both are predicated on a view of human nature that is rather romantic. Huxley had it right, alas. I'm not making a pitch for or against any particular political system, understand (I am quite fond of liberal democracy myself, but agree with John Adams that "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other"), but only arguing for skepticism of the Western view that everyone wants to be like us.
Brian O'Neill at Waq al-Waq, a Yemen blog highly recommended by multiple foreign policy writers, points out common errors made when writing about Yemen and terrorism:
[Bruce] Riedel here has committed the cardinal sin of Yemen-writing: mentioning Osama bin Laden's familial ties as if they mean something (though he avoided the traditional cliche of "the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden"). If you are reading an article where the writer mentions this, immediately treat everything else as suspect. This is the best advice we can give you here.
Commentary's Jennifer Rubin explores her own crisis.
In a classic parallel with Islamism and in a similar response to modernity's trials, the evangelical fusion of faith with politics is gathering pace, and rapidly re-defining conservatism as a politico-religious movement. A reader writes:
I realize you rarely get to travel in true "teabagger country" but here in rural Mississippi, there is an interesting phenomenon occurring that the Brit Hume brouhaha brings into clearer focus.
If you travel down any road, you will see churches popping up everywhere. I've lived here my entire life, and it used to be that each community had one church, usually Baptist, with a place name. Now they have names like Bread of Life, The Living Water, and By Faith; single-word
names like Cornerstone, Compass, and Centricity.
They pop up in the middle of nowhere, in abandoned storefronts, in closed-down factories, in metal buildings put up in the middle of the woods. And everyone has a preacher who is called Brother, or Elder, or Bishop. And all these fundamental churches spend the majority of their time either directly or indirectly involved with local, state, and national politics, involved in the Tea Bagger Movement, the War on Christmas movement, the myriad boycotts of every hue, and posters and ads of every conceivable variety.
As someone who had become immune to most of it, I can't help but be aware of the way in which religion in this area has been very deeply cheapened. It ceases to occupy a space of personal and public sacredness. It focuses not on the personal, but the political. And I am even beginning to detect this cheapening in acquaintances who I know to be quite religious.
So I think the Brit Hume incident may be very reflective of what is happening here in the South.
A reader asks a very interesting question about the undie-bomber – why did he get back into his seat to detonate a bomb that had a ramshackle detonator and where he could be overcome by fellow travelers? Read the whole email:
I keep hearing this even described as a failed terrorist attack on an airplane. But was it really? I keep hearing about how the system failed, but did it really? Think about it. First, what is the major goal of terrorism? It is not to bring down airplanes. It is not to destroy the West. It is, pure and simple, to create terror in people. Why? Because when people are afraid they overreact. And this includes most of us, yourself included.
If the intent of al Qaeda in this latest instance was to bring down an airplane, then it failed. But if its intent was to create fear and overreaction, then it succeeded Personally, I think it was the latter. It is quite possible (in fact I think probable) that the people who planned this event, and used the young man from Nigeria as a tool, were aware that due to security measures in place, there was no way they could actually get a bomb through that would actually work. The detonation equipment needed would have been detected. The same applies, by the way, to the shoe bomber.
Again, think about it. If you wanted to blow up a plane, would you attempt it from your seat, where somebody could quite possibly stop you? No, you would go to the washroom where you could set off the bomb without
disruption.
Of course, if it failed to go off, then people wouldn't necessarily know what you were trying to do. Therefore you have to make sure it is one in the open, or the very failure is perceived as a terrorist attack. The fear result is the same whether or not the bomb goes off.
In addition to the torture lovers advocating a return to waterboarding, the administration sets up more stringent guidelines for air travel (most of which are unlikely to be effective at all) and other people call for the resignation of the head of DHS. In other words, the response is what al Qaeda and other terrorist groups want.
Al Qaeda has lost a lot of its prestige and influence in the Muslim world. They need something to get it back. How better than to do something that creates a reaction on the part of the US or Great Britain that shows just how bad we are and how we are so anti-Islam. After 9/11, recruiting by al Qaeda suffered until we invaded Iraq. That alone increased recruitment. Then when our torture policies became evident, it increased more. Lately, however, it has declined again. If we as a nation respond poorly to this "successful" attack, then they will achieve all their goals.
"Can the concept of personal privacy be reconciled with the idea of naked air travel?" – Frederick S. Lane.
Why on earth not? But imagine the visuals at O'Hare.
John Harris defends Mike Allen's role as a Cheney spokesman thus:
Trying to get newsworthy people to say interesting things is part of what we do. Also in December we had a long Q and A with the other prominent former vice president Al Gore. That story might also have looked to some like providing an uncritical platform if you viewed it only isolation.
But the point is that there was no q and a with Cheney. There was just a printing of his statement, given exclusively to Politico. But Harris's reply requires a follow-up: "trying to get newsworthy people to say interesting things" is his paraphrase of what was going on. So did Allen actually reach out to Cheney and ask him for a comment? Or did Cheney call Allen?
I think we need transparency from a news organization, don't you? Did Allen or Cheney initiate the statement's release via Politico?
The Dish 