Nerd Pride

[Jim Manzi]

Here are three amazing math, science and technology blogs that I think more people should read:

1. Understanding causality in economics and social science (e.g., People who go to college make more money than those who do not – is this because college improves their subsequent performance or because people who are more likely to do well anyway tend to go to college?) is an obsessive interest of mine.  Andrew Gelman is a statistics professor at Columbia, and his blog is the place to go on this topic.  Killer post: What’s the matter with Connecticut?

2. Somebody who starts a successful technology company is usually either smart or lucky.  Somebody who does it twice is usually smart and lucky.  Marc Andreessen is both, and his blog is a running commentary on how to succeed in the new economy.  Killer post: Why there’s no such thing as Web 2.0.

3. The integration of genetics with evolutionary theory to create the Modern Synthesis plays the same role today that the integration of relativity and quantum mechanics did a half-century ago.  Gene Expression is the place to go for a conversation about its social and political implications that is simultaneously highly technically informed and completely politically incorrect.  Every time I go to this site I am offended by something and learn something.  Killer post: 10 Questions for Heather Mac Donald.

Still Waiting For More

[Patrick Appel]

Pete Abel urges everyone to withhold judgment on the McCain Iseman scandal:

In closing, let me be painfully clear. I’m not dismissing the NYT story. I’m not screaming about liberal media bias. All I’m attempting to do is offer perspective, some of it based on personal observations of inside-the-Beltway life, in order to raise legitimate questions and thus encourage all of us to resist the temptation to believe there’s fire behind these wisps of smoke, until said fire is indisputably proven. We owe all of the leading candidates — McCain, Clinton, and Obama — the benefit of such doubt, the same benefit we would want, if we found ourselves in a similar situation.

The Iseman scandal coverage has been dizzying. The left jumped (at first, anyway) at the opportunity to skewer McCain, while the right equally cherished the chance to condemn the Times. If there isn’t more to the NYT’s research, if these allegations of an affair are false, this story could be the paper’s biggest mistake since Judith Miller’s faulty reporting on Saddam’s WMDs.

If the affair is real, then this will hobble McCain. He is already dragging the weight of an unpopular president and an unpopular war. Adding a sex scandal to his load may be one handicap too many.

Like Pete, I am trying to reserve judgment until we have more than wisps of smoke.

Hillary’s Alleged Plagiarism

[Patrick Appel]

There is a lot of talk this morning about Hillary allegedly plagiarizing John Edward’s or Bill Clinton’s lines. I don’t buy it for exactly the same reasons I didn’t buy the idea that Obama plagiarized lines. Political rhetoric isn’t subject to copyright. If those standards apply to Obama, then they also apply to Clinton. The difference is I don’t expect the Obama campaign to jump all over her for allegedly lifting lines.

[Update:] Yes, I recognize the irony of this, and it is partially her fault because she is the one who made such a big deal about plagiarism, but I still doubt she "copied" or "plagiarized" lines from another politician. That is not how political speech-making works. Read James Fallows’ (who was a speech-writer for Jimmy Carter) post about plagiarism in politics.

Orr on the Oscars

[Peter Suderman] I was thinking about writing something on the Oscars, but that’s now completely pointless. Why? Because Chris Orr has written everything I wanted to write, but better. I agree with every single thing he says in the piece except for his "Ought to Win" for Best Cinematography, which I would’ve given to Roger Deakins for the breathtaking pinhole-camera look he created for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.  Otherwise, Orr’s article is the final word on predictions about this year’s ceremony.

Gitmo Puppet Theater

[Patrick Appel] Scott Horton looks at the media coverage of the Guantánamo trials:

But while the American mainstream media presented the story with the main spotlight on the Pentagon and its announcements and some trivial sideshows in which bickering lawyers raised quibbles about vexatious technicalities like the hearsay rule, access to exculpatory evidence and the ever-present torture, overseas the Guantánamo proceedings got a different treatment. Outside of the United States, “Guantánamo” is a by-word for torture, authoritarian abuse and injustice. And the fact that the U.S. had elected to put these six detainees on trial before a military commission in Guantánamo drew a predictable review. “There will not be six persons on trial, but seven,” editorialized the predictably pro-American German newspaper Die Zeit. The seventh, of course, is the Bush Administration and its hopelessly corrupted concept of justice.

…the military commissions crafted by the Bush Administration are an embarrassing stain compared to Nuremberg. One of the main reasons is that they have been crafted by political hacks out on a partisan agenda, and the experts who could have done a credible job–first among them the military lawyers in the JAG corps–have been ignored or overruled at each turn. The ability of defense counsel to conduct a meaningful defense has been impeded, with gains coming grudgingly only after the Supreme Court overturned the first, colossally incompetent structure in Rasul. Most menacingly, the specter of torture hovers over the current military commissions proceedings, with the acknowledgement that many of the defendants were subjected to techniques which the entire world (excluding only the Bush Administration) considers to be torture.

Sweded!

by Peter Suderman      

As I predicted in my review, it looks like a number of high-profile critics weren’t too kind to Be Kind Rewind (if only Reihan had reviewed it!).  David Edelstein seems sort of amused by it, but says it could have used "a little slickness." Jonathan Rosenbaum wants to like it, but writes that "it’s hard not to gag on the cuteness," and Anthony Lane is even harsher: "Every minute of Gondry’s film is irrefutable proof that charm is not enough."

Maybe not enough for Lane, but it’s certainly enough for me. Each of Gondry’s previous three films has been a paean to artistic melancholy.  He’s got a penchant for moping, innocent, childlike protagonists with a creative bent—Jim Carrey’s melancholy cartoonist in Eternal Sunshine, Gael García Bernal’s Stephane in The Science of Sleep. And to some degree, he romanticizes these free-spirited child-men, but also doesn’t force them into hero modes that might be more commercial but aren’t supported by the characters.  Instead, he allows them to experience failure, gently and with dignity, and then lightly suggests that maybe, just maybe, sometimes failure is okay. Yes, it’s an uncommercial creative’s fantasy, a universe not driven by markets or popular opinion, but it’s a refreshingly different view of the world than the manic success-driven ethos that fuels most Hollywood productions. 

The gimmick of "Rewind," by the way, is that big-budget movies get remade on the cheap free with a sort of ramshackle, reckless amateurism. For reasons that are impossible to explain, these remakes come to known as "Sweded" versions. (To give you an idea, you can see a "Sweded" version of the actual movie trailer here.) I think it may be appropriate to think of this week’s guest-posting here at the Dish this week—or at least mine anyway—as Andrew Sullivan: Sweded!

The John McCain School of Ethics

[Peter Suderman] Over at the American Spectator, J.P. Freire has what I think is the smartest take on the McCain brouhaha I’ve seen so far. The real revelation here, he says, is that even a politician as seemingly devoted to principle as John McCain can’t live up to the ethics standards he’s promoted (and run into trouble with conservatives for doing so):

The NRA and the ACLU both can’t buy ad time in the days before an election because doing so, by virtue of the ethical senator’s own philosophy, is manipulating the people and hurting democracy. But when McCain hops a flight with a campaign contributor, it ought to be obvious that he’s maintaining his integrity. Why is it that associations comprised of every day citizens are suspect, but a powerful politician is not? 

Sure, it’s a bait and switch. But it’s a very good one because it demonstrates the very problem presented by the John McCain School of Ethics. This is not a story about what happened. It’s a story about what could have happened. What was feared to have happened. What, it must be assumed in good faith, did not happen. Campaign advisers were afraid that "the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity."