Premium – Page 191

Smartphone Sex

Megan Patterson interviews Kara Stone about Sext Adventure, a game she designed to be played on smartphones:

You mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that a lot of women that hear the title Sext Adventure, and they just hear the word “sext” and assume that it’s made to appeal to guys, and not women. When that’s not remotely true at all!

Yes, totally! I think partly it’s the assumption that video games are for men, and I think if I heard about a sexting game, I’d be like, “Ugh, it’s gonna be hetero, it’s gonna be for men, and it’s gonna be by a bunch of white dudes who think they’re funny.” So I recognize that.

It has been funny seeing guys who play it, expecting one thing, and then they end up getting random dick pics, or not being able to get the exact kind of body type they want, or the gender they want. I’ve gotten a few emails being like, “Um, how do I make sext bot a woman?” I can imagine them having played a few times, like, “I can’t get the right narrative!” I didn’t make this game to troll dudes, but it’s a very funny consequence.

I was thinking more about making a game everybody could play, and also explore sexuality in a cyborg light, to get people thinking about the roles of gender and technology. We often gender technology, and sentient technology might not have gender. What would that mean? How would it express desire? How would it understand humans?

In other sex-and-tech news, Kottke points to amusing erotic poetry formed exclusively from snippets of iPhone 6 reviews:

I have really big hands

Would be an understatement.

This is quite helpful.

When the tips of your fingers are grasping on for dear life,

Your fingers need to secure a firm grip.

I can still wrap my fingers around

Well…

More of everything.

More here.

(Image via Sext Adventure)

Authoring Anxiety

Ben Mauk sums up The Emerald Light in the Air, the new story collection from Donald Antrim:

These stories appeared in The New Yorker over the span of about 15 years. Yet how conspicuously consistent their interests! They are at once many stories and the same story, with slight but ultimately trivial differences among the various shades of alcoholism, childlessness, parental ambivalence, dead mothers, artistic ambitions, mood-stabilizing medications, and myriad other signifiers of middle-class “anxiety and suicidality.”

This arresting sameness … I would attribute not to any creative drought on the part of Antrim (whose novels are enormously fecund, fun, and surreal), but to the peculiar ambition of the collection: it wants to be a miniature mythology. Its stories don’t aim to delight us with rare and precise Flaubertian details, or to present a wide and sparkling array of humanity. Instead, the book wants to wash over us in waves of familiarity. We are made to recognize the human hubris at work in each story precisely because the humans depicted are sketchily, almost indifferently drawn.

In a profile of Antrim, John Jeremiah Sullivan offers insight into the roots of the author’s “art of anxiety.” He relates the story of how Antrim got over his fear of electroconvulsive therapy – with the help of a phone call from David Foster Wallace:

On the phone, Wallace said immediately, without prompting: “I’m calling to tell you that if they offer you ECT, you should do it. You’ll be all right.”

Wallace, who had undergone the procedure himself, spent at least an hour telling Antrim that he shouldn’t be afraid, that he would still be there when it was over, that it would still be there. He was saying it as one writer to another, giving the only kind of reassurance Antrim could possibly take seriously at that moment. Wallace told him that the treatment was going to help him, he would see. “He just kept repeating his own story,” Antrim said, “sort of cycling through it, because he could tell it was comforting me. When we hung up, I walked straight to the doctors and told them I was ready to start.”

A month passed in the ward, while nothing happened — not nothing, only flickerings. “Green conductive gel dried on my forehead. Weeping.”

Around the 11th time he underwent the shock, Antrim said, something shifted. Not subtle, dramatic. “The color came back on.”

It wasn’t a permanent fix — he went back into the hospital again, in 2010, and again underwent ECT. In all, between those two periods, he submitted to the procedure 55 times. He is unequivocal in his belief that without it he would be dead.

In another review of The Emerald Light in the Air, David L. Ulin returns to this theme of mental illness:

Depression is a theme, and also suicide, or not suicide so much as the threat, the possibility of it, like another form of solace to be called upon when the living gets to be too much. “Some days, he’d curled in a ball on the floor,” Antrim writes of the protagonist in the title story, “and promised himself that soon, soon, soon — it would be his gift to himself — he’d walk up to the barn and lie down with the rifle.” That he never does is something of a Pyrrhic victory: survival, yes, but at its own psychic price.

And yet, the title story is in its way the most upbeat in the collection, ending on a note of reconciliation, if not quite hope. As the final effort … it suggests an arc or movement: from the surreal to the real.

Have We Outgrown Growing Up? Ctd

A reader chuckles at the notion that high culture has ceased to exist:

Responding to A.O. Scott’s essay, Freddie writes:

There is no such thing as high culture. There probably never was but even if there was it died long, long ago. Outside of your fantasies, there is no group of intellectual elitists looking down their noses at the music or TV you like. Such people do not exist.

I find that amusing, considering this article from yesterday’s issue of the New Yorker on the resurgence of the Frankfurt School (probably history’s foremost critics of “low culture”). One passage:

Culture appears more monolithic than ever, with a few gigantic corporations – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon – presiding over unprecedented monopolies. Internet discourse has become tighter, more coercive. Search engines guide you away from peculiar words. (“Did you mean . . . ?”) Headlines have an authoritarian bark (“This Map of Planes in the Air Right Now Will Blow Your Mind”). “Most Read” lists at the top of Web sites imply that you should read the same stories everyone else is reading. Technology conspires with populism to create an ideologically vacant dictatorship of likes.

I agree with Freddie’s claim that lovers of pop culture are not “an oppressed and denigrated minority,” but to say that there is “no group of intellectual elitists looking down their nose at the music or TV you like” is just plain wrong. As a PhD student in Communications, I sit in classes with some of them on a daily basis.

Another is skeptical of the entire end-of-adulthood argument:

I’m sure A.O. Scott wrote that piece with the best of intentions, but it amounts to a navel-gazing bout of bullshit.

If we have reached the “death of adulthood,” it’s because “adulthood” has in large part been a mirage. You don’t magically become “adult” by dressing a certain way, or having a certain amount of money, or going to a certain club, or deciding that you need Brahms instead of early Beatles.

The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that the adults I trusted growing up weren’t mystical sages. They were winging it. Children need older authority figures, but those figures are only doing the best they can. As you age, you still put away “childish” (I would say immature) things – unreasonable expectations of fame or wealth, the ache and burning of teenage love, and most of all, the belief that being a certain age magically mutates you into a separate “adult” creature.

Count me in with Lewis. If you’re a 50-year-old guy worrying about the culture of being “adult,” you’re exhibiting the type of immature mindset of a 12-year-old, when you thought “acting grown up” was terribly important. I like Marvel movies; I’m also a divorced 30-something working a corporate day job in a law firm. I’m sure as hell not going to devote all of my time to reading Russian philosophers at night to satisfy someone else’s illusion.

Another is on the same page:

I think we’re finally allowed to admit that in a lot of ways, we never grow up. Think about it: do we ever stop behaving like we’re in high school? Workplace hierarchies are similar to the ways we grouped or were grouped as teenagers. There’s still bullying and peer pressure. We wear “uniforms” that fit the environment, and our time is scheduled when it isn’t outright micro-managed. On a personal level, we still have our cliques that include or exclude based on the same ridiculous set of preferences and prejudices that we picked up as older teens or young “adults.”

My parents, born of the Depression, were “grown ups.” But my memories of their lives, and the lives of their friends, aren’t so different from what I see in my peers or in the peers of my adult kids. The exterior that we’re willing to show has changed, and our parents and grandparents were willing to put up with a lot more discomfort than we are. But there was never an adulthood. There was just the extent to which people were willing to conform. Which today, isn’t so much.

Meanwhile, a 23-year-old reader notes that disposable entertainments have a long pedigree:

Every generation has produced pop culture that wasn’t considered respectable and wasn’t discussed or analyzed in a serious way. Bawdy saloon and beer-hall tunes thrived in the age of Wagner and Strauss, dime pulp novels outsold Fitzgerald and Faulkner, and five-cent peep shows brought in viewers in numbers that would rival any superhero movie today. I think we’re at a pop-culture moment where we no longer put away things we enjoy simply because we fear looking childish. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have been moved to tears both by Harry Potter and Wilfred Owen. To argue that a vast swath of Americans don’t value “pleasures based on work, ambiguity, or difficulty” because adults are reading The Hunger Games is to construct a straw man of staggering size.

I agree with Freddie that being an adult has to do with your ability to be a productive human who cares for others and is thoughtful and self-aware both about one’s actions and place in the world. As far as I’m aware, seeing The Avengers is not an impediment to that.

Vengeance Of The Nerds

#GamerGate pic.twitter.com/Zxl8MlPUav

— Flea Mewrilah (@Flea) September 15, 2014

Writing in a NYT roundtable on the ascent of geek culture, Freddie accuses certain geeks of defensiveness, complacency, and paranoia:

By any rational measure, the geeks – fans of comic books, science fiction, video games and fantasy – are utterly triumphant. Economically, the genre in the media is dominant, earning billions of dollars a year. Critically, it is celebrated, getting sympathetic reviews in the stuffiest publications and winning national awards. In every meaningful sense, geeks are the overdogs.

For the geeks, this should be a moment of triumph and celebration. And yet instead, the typical geeks today still regard the world as fundamentally hostile to their beloved properties. The 800-pound gorilla still thinks of itself as a 98-pound weakling, and the results are ugly. The recent GamerGate controversy, so thoroughly misogynist and angry, demonstrates the problem with winners self-identifying as losers: once you’ve cast yourself as a victim in your own mind, there’s no need to interrogate your own behavior.

Alyssa nods:

Maybe this is a period of adjustment, and flag-flying geeks and nerds will emerge from this upheaval in a better place. Maybe people will see that the video game industry can survive both expansion and criticism. Maybe “Game of Thrones” fans will recognize that the show’s essence will survive even with fewer naked, threatened women on screen. Maybe the bomb threats will stop. The essence of confidence is the ability to handle critiques and the existence of challengers with grace and security in your own position. If what deBoer is describing is a permanent state, though, then a certain subset of angry geeks will prove themselves to be exactly what the once-dominant culture said they were all along: myopic and insecure.

Feminist writer Laurie Penny shows admirable and constructive empathy in the face of vile, misogynist threats:

Later in [her book Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution], Penny explores the sexism that pervades the digital world where she plays out her politics, laying out in detail the death and rape threats she receives for the crime of being an outspoken woman in the public eye. But she is also sympathetic to the origins of that abuse. “One of the most important things to understand about cybersexism is that it comes from a place of pain,” she writes, an “embattled masculinity” wrought from years of abuse at the hands of peers that for some men manifests itself in a resentment and hatred of women.

But what the boy geeks miss, she argues, is that they are not the only ones who have to deal with harassment or ostracism. Girl geeks like Penny, who spent her adolescence on “the type of chat forums where everyone will pretend you’re a 45-year-old history teacher called George,” experience the same sense of alienation that their male equivalents do.

Meanwhile, Zaheer Ali spotlights an important and growing subset of geek culture:

Today, black nerd culture thrives and continues to shape popular culture in significant ways. Music nerd Questlove serves as music director of one of the flagship late night shows, academics like Henry Louis Gates, Jr. inform mainstream discourse about American life and history, Black Twitter establishes the newsworthiness of black lives, and Melissa Harris-Perry’s show on MSNBC, which proudly identifies itself by the hashtag #nerdland, presents a diverse line up in cable news. The voices of black geeks and other marginalized nerds remind us that the best of geek culture provided refuge and inspiration for social misfits and outcasts.

The voices of black geeks and other marginalized nerds remind us that the best of geek culture provided refuge and inspiration for social misfits and outcasts. Mainstreaming in the form of recovering that geek culture is reason to celebrate.

The Length Of The Perfect Coffee Break

It’s 17 minutes, according to Derek Thompson:

DeskTime, a productivity app that tracks employees’ computer use, peeked into its data to study the behavior of its most productive workers. The highest-performing 10 percent tended to work for 52 consecutive minutes followed by a 17-minute break. Those 17 minutes were often spent away from the computer, said Julia Gifford at The Muse, by talking a walk, doing exercises, or talking to coworkers.

Telling people to focus for 52 consecutive minutes and then to immediately abandon their desks for exactly 1,020 seconds might strike you as goofy advice. But this isn’t the first observational study to show that short breaks correlate with higher productivity. In 1999, Cornell University’s Ergonomics Research Laboratory used a computer program to remind workers to take short breaks. The project concluded that “workers receiving the alerts [reminding them to stop working] were 13 percent more accurate on average in their work than coworkers who were not reminded.”

Lisa Evans stresses the importance of stepping away from the computer screen:

What was particularly surprising about the study’s results, however, was what the most productive individuals did during their breaks. “Those 17 minutes were spent completely away from the computer–not checking email, not on YouTube” says Gifford. Taking a walk, chatting with co-workers (not about work), or relaxing reading a book were some common activities the most productive employees did while on break. While many of us often feel the need to look like we’re working hard and putting in long hours at our desks, Gifford says the study shows managers the importance of ensuring employees know it’s okay to step away without fear of appearing lazy or unproductive.

Rouhani Doesn’t Have To Cut A Deal

As Iran and the P5+1 resume negotiations at the UN in New York over the country’s nuclear program, Trita Parsi flags a new poll of Iranians that “may shed light on the thinking behind Iran’s negotiating position, but also explain why the Rouhani government may think it can live with a no-deal scenario”:

The poll shows that the Iranian public is resistant on two key matters: rolling back the number of operating centrifuges and limiting Iran’s ability to conduct nuclear research. Demands for strict limitations on these issues by the P5+1, the group of six world powers negotiating with Iran, would essentially be deal breakers for the Iranian public: 70 percent oppose dismantling half of Iran’s existing centrifuges and 75 percent oppose limits on Iran’s research activity.

The public’s position on these matters is likely rooted in both a long-standing narrative of the West seeking to keep Iran weak, dependent, and downtrodden by depriving it of access to advanced science, as well as the government’s own rhetoric about nuclear “red lines” on centrifuges and nuclear research. Regardless, the public’s position on these critical variables poses a major challenge for the Rouhani team. It’s not a coincidence that these are the very issues that have caused a deadlock in the talks.

Mitchell Plitnick considers Rouhani’s motivations, noting the political pressures the Iranian president faces from all sides. He also cautions against assuming that Rouhani will agree to a deal for the sake of his political survival:

Rouhani has options and he need not accept a deal that can be easily portrayed by conservatives as surrendering Iran’s independent nuclear program. This issue is particularly fraught in Iran. It has been a point of national pride that Iran has refused to bend to Western diktats on its nuclear program that are widely regarded as biased. That estimate is not an unfair one, given the history of this dispute and the long-standing Western standards for Iran that include a prohibition on Iran enriching uranium itself. That created a dependency on other countries, most notably Russia, which is subject to the whims of international politics. Other countries are not held to such a standard, a point that is deeply held across the Iranian political spectrum.

Rouhani has wisely chosen not to challenge the public on this point, but rather commit himself to finding an agreement that would end sanctions while maintaining Iran’s nuclear independence, albeit under an international inspection regime. This is far from an impossible dream. The Arms Control Association published a policy brief last month with a very reasonable outline for just such a plan which would satisfy the needs of both Iran and the P5+1.

(Photo: By Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images)

Apple Locks Itself Out Of Your iPhone

Apple has announced a new feature in iOS 8 that prevents the company from complying with search warrants:

In an open letter posted on Apple’s website last night, CEO Tim Cook said that the company’s redesigned its mobile operating system to make it impossible for Apple to unlock a user’s iPhone data. Starting with iOS8, only the user who locked their phone can unlock it. This is huge. What it means is that even if a foreign government or a US police officer with a warrant tries to legally compel Apple to snoop on someone, they won’t. Because they can’t. It’s a digital Ulysses pact.

Law enforcement has a variety of legal tools it can use to compel a tech company to turn over data on its users. In some cases the tech company is even legally prohibited from talking about those requests publicly. If Apple’s correct and it truly has built an encryption system that they themselves can’t break, then they’ve found a pretty ingenious workaround to the problem tech companies face constantly — of being stuck having to choose between their users and the law.

The Bloomberg View editors argue that this is a bad idea on multiple counts:

Apple has now removed itself from this legal drama. If authorities come asking for information stored locally on a customer’s phone, Apple can say it doesn’t have it and has no way to get it. If police want anything on the phone, the user is going to have to let them in — and it’s an open legal question whether the government could force users to give up their passwords, because doing so could violate the Fourth or Fifth Amendments. In other words, Apple’s new privacy policy will make it harder for police to do their jobs.

It could also create new hassles for Apple’s customers. For one thing, the company now can’t help them access what’s on their phones if they’ve forgotten the password. And for all that, this feature would almost certainly do nothing to help them stop the kind of surveillance the NSA conducts. Apple may hope to burnish its reputation with this policy. But it was already something of a corporate exemplar with regard to security and privacy. If it turns out that this new feature is making life more difficult for law enforcement and more confusing for customers — well, it may not be quite the P.R. triumph Apple was hoping for.

Oren Kerr also finds the new design “very troubling”:

If I understand how it works, the only time the new design matters is when the government has a search warrant, signed by a judge, based on a finding of probable cause. Under the old operating system, Apple could execute a lawful warrant and give law enforcement the data on the phone. Under the new operating system, that warrant is a nullity. It’s just a nice piece of paper with a judge’s signature. Because Apple demands a warrant to decrypt a phone when it is capable of doing so, the only time Apple’s inability to do that makes a difference is when the government has a valid warrant. The policy switch doesn’t stop hackers, trespassers, or rogue agents. It only stops lawful investigations with lawful warrants.

But Andy Greenberg points out the cops can still get your data:

[A]s the media and privacy activists congratulated Apple on that new resistance to government snooping, iOS forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski offered a word of caution for the millions of users clamoring to pre-order the iPhone 6 and upgrade to iOS 8. In many cases, he points out, the cops can still grab and offload sensitive data from your locked iPhone without Apple’s help, even in iOS 8. All they need, he says, is your powered-on phone and access to a computer you’ve previously used to move data onto and off of it.

“I am quite impressed, Mr. Cook! That took courage,” Zdziarski wrote in a blog post. “But it does not mean that your data is beyond law enforcement’s reach.”

When Corporations Make Journalism

First, it was sponsored content – advertisements designed to look like articles. Then it was a full-fledged fusion of journalism and advertizing, as sites like Buzzfeed and Upworthy actively worked with corporations to create “brand journalism.” Increasingly, however, the middle-man may be by-passed altogether. And you can easily see how this may come to be: why try cooperating with a website to get their “editors” to come up with ideas and concepts to promote a company’s bottom line, when you can simply hire the journalists yourself, pay them more and make your own publication?

Google is on the case, natch:

While Google has yet to formally introduce its native offering, numerous AdExchanger sources with knowledge of its plans say the company is taking a multi-pronged and deliberate approach to the native trend, stitching together multiple native ad offerings geared to different media sellers. Among those solutions are ad-serving support for sponsored posts on premium publisher websites, and a content recommendation engine of the sort pioneered by Outbrain and Taboola, both of which may launch in 2015.

And new research shows that the most common form of “disclosure” used by websites to demarcate paid posts isn’t working:

Sponsored content using disclosure techniques like the home page buyout (used, for example, by The Wall Street Journal) and the persistent disclosure banner (used by Slate) were only identified as ads by readers 29 percent of the time. In contrast, Nudge found that over half of the 100 people it polled were able to to identify ads that featured disclosures within the content itself. In-content disclosures are rare compared to the other techniques, though … It’s easy to understand publishers’ hesitation toward overly disclosing the brands sponsoring their content. A recent poll by content marketing company Contently found that two-thirds of readers felt tricked when they clicked on sponsored content, and over half of readers said that they don’t trust sponsored content at all.

The FT’s US news editor, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, has a must-read on how all these trends are combining to end independent journalism as we’ve known it:

General Electric’s online news site has evolved from a list of press releases to a virtual magazine using animated gifs, professional photography, videos and infographics (“all the different points of entry we used at Forbes”, Tomas Kellner, [a Columbia Journalism School-trained former Forbes journalist] notes) which features tales of innovation, science and technology from around the giant industrial group. Many are engaging and informative, and some – such as a feature on a Japanese indoor lettuce farm powered by 17,500 GE LED lights – get as many as 500,000 readers …

“There have been corporate newsrooms for ever but they were putting out press releases to try and get you guys to cover it,” notes Richard Edelman, whose family firm is the world’s largest PR agency. “Now it’s self-publishing. That’s the big difference.” Every company is now realizing that it can be a media company, he says.

Notice the pedigree of the dude running the corporate p.r. show: a Columbia J School alum from the mainstream media. The financial incentives for younger journalists to become PR purveyors could not be starker:

For every working journalist in America, there are now 4.6 PR people, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 3.2 a decade ago. And those journalists earn on average 65 per cent of what their PR peers are paid.

Gene Weingarten has the perfect quip:

I am longing for the days when you merely had to sell your soul to appease commercial demands. Now, you have to beg advertisers to take your soul, and then help them pry it out of your body with a claw hammer.

It seems to me that the critical avenue for this denouement is the new media structure.

In the words of Kellner: “People these days don’t care as much about where the story comes from as long as it tells them something.” When the news is consumed as a stream of tweets or Facebook likes coming from everywhere and nowhere, the power of existing independent institutions to enforce ethics, to delineate a space in which paid messaging is nowhere near actual journalism, has attenuated. And the confusion leads inexorably to fusion.

The low barriers to entry into publishing once empowered lone bloggers like yours truly. But of course corporations can play the same game. What troubles me most about “native advertising” is not just that it’s a corruption of journalism, but that, once this principle has been conceded, there’s no stopping the web from becoming a seamless stream of p.r., advertising and journalism, in which it is increasingly impossible to tell any of them apart.

As far as business is concerned, no big deal, I suppose. As far as most readers are concerned, the same seems to apply. But democracy matters – and if the space for an independent and robust press is squeezed even further, the ability of journalists to write the truth for their fellow-citizens, and make a living at it, will slowly disappear. You may think this could never happen. But it appears to happening simultaneously faster and more quietly than anyone might have once predicted.

Now: England’s Turn?

It’s been a tumultuous day in British politics. Alex Salmond, the charismatic Scottish Nationalist leader who galvanized the independence referendum has resigned as First Minister of Scotland. From his statement:

The real guardians of progress are not the politicians at Westminster, or even at Holyrood, but the energised activism of tens of thousands of people who I predict will refuse meekly to go back into the political shadows. “For me right now , therefore there is a decision as to who is best placed to lead this process forward politically. “I believe that in this new exciting situation, redolent with possibility, Party, Parliament and country would benefit from new leadership.

The promises of devo-max for Scotland – made as a panicked last ditch attempt to preserve the union – are now, however, provoking a backlash in England, especially the Tory parts:

In his speech [after the results], Cameron made clear that the constitutional reforms, including in Scotland, would not be delivered until after the general election, and that Scottish measures would proceed in tandem with changes in England. “We have heard the voice of Scotland and now the millions of voices of England must be heard,” he said.

Cameron threw down a challenge to the Labour opposition to say whether it would agree to the introduction of English votes for English MPs, and announced that William Hague, leader of the House of Commons, would advance the issue in a special cabinet committee.

You can see the point: if Scotland gets to determine its own policies in Holyrood, then why should it also get full representation in Westminster with respect to English laws and English policy? The constitutional complexities are enormous, but figures as disparate as the former prime minister John Major and the Liberal Democratic leader, Nick Clegg, are in favor of devolution to England as well:

“Clearly when you have that degree of devolution [to the Scottish parliament], saying that … a Scottish MP has precisely the same say over matters in English as an English MP, doesn’t make any sense. That’s why you then decide how you divvy votes in the Commons,” Clegg told his regular LBC phone-in audience this week.

Such a change would mean a structural shift rightward for the English parliament, which is why the Labour party is so ambivalent about this. But Cameron may need to get more radical, if only to address the pressures from the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, who said today:

It’s quite interesting to see Mr Cameron today on the steps of Downing Street relieved that he didn’t manage to lose the union but now panicked by the English question. I think that short-term, as far as English voters are concerned, I’m going to write today to all 59 Scottish MPs and I’m going to say to them in the spirit of finding a fair settlement for the United Kingdom, will you please commit from today not to take part in debates or votes in Westminster on English devolved issues. Short-term that’s what we can do. Longer-term, and I think all the constitutional experts talking on your show say, this stuff is complicated, getting this right matters as it will be for many, many decades to come and I really do think now we absolutely need to have a constitutional convention to talk about how we create a fair, federal United Kingdom.

That process is vital. All I’ve heard from Mr Cameron is that William Hague will head up some committee to discuss the English question and I simply don’t think that’s enough.

I guess we’ll see what’s enough after the next election. But it would not be the first time that Scottish nationalism awakens something just as deep: English patriotism.

(Photo: Leader of the UK Independence Party, UKIP Nigel Farage gives interviews on Abingdon Green on September 19, 2014 in London, England. By Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.)

A Bridge Scandal To Nowhere?

Some welcome news for Christie:

The U.S. Justice Department investigation into Gov. Chris Christie’s role in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal has thus far uncovered no evidence indicating that he either knew in advance or directed the closure of traffic lanes on the span, federal officials tell NBC 4 New York. … Federal officials caution that the investigation that began nine months ago is ongoing and that no final determination has been made, but say that authorities haven’t uncovered anything that indicates that Christie knew in advance or ordered the closure of traffic lanes.

Morrissey reacts:

Does this make Christie a winner in Bridgegate? Well, that might be a stretch, but he’s not going to be the big loser in it. Had his critics just stuck to focusing on his executive skills and lack of control in his office this scandal might have hurt, but the hysteria of blowing up Bridgegate into a Watergate-scale scandal created a bubble that popped in their faces.

Cillizza views this as “very good news for Christie and his potential 2016 presidential prospects”:

For the first time in a long time, Christie can at least see a plausible path back to the top tier of a Republican presidential primary. He remains the most naturally gifted communicator in the potential field and, assuming that Bridgegate is truly behind him, the person with the best relationships with the Wall Street major donor crowd that helps provide the financial backbone to presidential candidates. Now, with the dark cloud of the looming investigation seemingly gone, those traits have a far better chance of shining through.

Jennifer Rubin talks up his presidential prospects:

The question for Christie and his supporters is how much damage this has done and what, if any, are his prospects for a presidential run. On one hand the scandal froze the donor community and may have stirred the Jeb Bush buzz. But ultimately no clear frontrunner emerged and while he’s been more focused on New Jersey, other big names have gotten banged around (e.g. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul) or have disappeared from the national stage altogether (e.g. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker). Moreover, Christie has kept up a furious pace of fundraising and campaigning for the Republican Governors Association, work that earns appreciation from candidates and close contact with big donors. All the while Christie remained near the top of the 2016 polls.

In short, his momentum was stopped but there doesn’t seem to be serious damage to his prospects.

Adam Wollinger agrees that Christie’s work with the governors association could set him up for a run:

Christie insists that he is completely focused on the elections at hand this fall—and he’s undoubtedly provided a great deal of help to Republicans on the ballot in 2014. The RGA has raised $75 million since he took over as chairman in November 2013, and candidates’ campaign coffers have benefited from Christie’s visits. But that doesn’t mean he can’t tend to his own political ambitions along the way, too.

At a press conference in Trenton on Thursday, Christie said his recent campaign stops will factor into his decision regarding the 2016 presidential race. “That’s all stuff for me to consider, to take into account,” he said. “It affects it in the sense that it gives me a window into … what that would be like. And it gives my family a window into what that would be like. And so that will all wind up, I believe, affecting the decision that we make come the beginning of next year.”

(Photo: By Kena Betancur/Getty Images. Title hat tip: Jeryl Bier.)