Over the weekend, the NYT ran an obituary for Yvonne Brill, a pioneer in rocket science and recent recipient of the National Medal of Technology. The obituary originally started with this:
She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said. But Yvonne Brill, who died on Wednesday at 88 in Princeton, N.J., was also a brilliant rocket scientist, who in the early 1970s invented a propulsion system to help keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits.
Robert Gonzalez argues that this intro downplays her scholarly accomplishments:
Brill is a big deal in the world of rocket science. In the 1940s, she was quite possibly the only woman in the United States doing work in the field. In the 1970s, she developed and patented the electrothermal hydrazine thruster – a rocket propulsion system used by communication satellites to maintain a geosynchronous orbit around Earth. … All of this is, of course, mentioned in The New York Times‘ obit, which ran yesterday. Tragically, it is mentioned only after this spectacularly awful lede.
Martin’s obituary for rocket scientist Yvonne Brill attempted to underscore her accomplishments by placing them in the context of other 88-year-old women who followed husbands around the country and stayed home to raise children for long stretches. … This perceived slight is irony gone awry, not a literal exaltation of stroganoff over science. But as the great Mary McGrory once warned me, “Nuance is overrated; clarity is the thing.”
Kanan Makiya reviews Igor Golomstock’s Totalitarian Art, now updated with a new section on Makiya’s homeland of Iraq:
One cannot think of a more perfect example of the totalitarian artistic impulse than Saddam’s insistence that a cast of his own forearms be used as the mold from which the Victory Arch was to be made. But in general, depictions of the leader, perhaps the most common subject of total realism, had to be mythologized. It would not do, for example, for a Soviet artist to depict Stalin as the short, pockmarked, bandy-legged man that he really was. His physical attributes, as in F. S. Shurpin’s portrait The Morning of Our Fatherland, had to undergo the same transformation as Stalin’s version of history, to be turned into what the writer Milan Kundera so eloquently referred to as “the beautifying lie.”
He takes issue with Golomstock’s dismissal of art under Saddam:
Totalitarian art is only interesting when the best artistic talent engages in it, and this is what happened in Iraq.
Under Hitler, many of the best artists went into exile, continuing modernism on the more welcoming shores of the Unite[d] States. (The consequences of choosing not to flee can be severe: the poet Mayakovsky stayed on in Stalin’s Russia, which may have had something to do with why he shot himself in 1930.) In Iraq, by contrast, most of the talented artists of the 1950s and 1960s collaborated with the new regime. Ghani Hikmat and Khalid al-Rahal, two of the most promising young Iraqi talents in the 1960s, went on to carry out such total realist monstrosities as the Victory Arch and the Monument to the Unknown Soldier in the 1980s. They did so because their project of the reappropriation of Iraqi turath, or “heritage,” was hijacked by the Baath Party, which found it politically parallel to its own idea of a Baathist-led “renaissance” of Arabness.
It’s also likely that the lack of a coherent, monolithic ideology in Baathist Iraq allowed for more varied and interesting art. Iraq was always a totalitarian state in practice, but never really in theory: unlike its Stalinist and fascist forebears, it never sported a pure, overarching mythology on par with Marxism-Leninism or Hitler’s Nietzschean race theory—just a vision of brutal Arab nationalism with Saddam as messiah.
As a result, the state had no real literary or artistic doctrine to enforce and no need to purge the artistic class for ideological credentials. You either had the talent to glorify Saddam, or you didn’t. It seems much closer to the status of art under Mussolini, as described by Makiya:
Whereas Hitler and Stalin used both threats and rewards to co-opt artists, Mussolini used only the latter, and so pre-Fascist Italian culture was never laid to waste the way German and Russian culture were.
Of course, as Makiya also notes, the boundaries of Saddam’s hodgepodge ideology left no room for a true Arab renaissance. Under the interrogation lights, all art will eventually wither away, and before long, proper tributes to the president have to be designed by the president himself. Whether in Stalin’s imperium or a tiny Arab prison-state, the words of Czeslaw Milosz apply:
This way of treating literature (and every art) leads to absolute conformism. Is such conformism favorable to serious artistic work? That is doubtful. The sculptures of Michelangelo are completed acts that endure. There was a time when they did not exist. Between their non-existence and existence lies the creative act, which cannot be understood as a submission to the “wave of the future.” The creative act is associated with a feeling of freedom that is, in its turn, born in the struggle against an apparently invincible resistance. Whoever truly creates is alone.
And you’re never alone with Big Brother around.
(Photo: Iraqi army MIA1 Abrams tanks march under the victory Arch landmark during a parade to mark the 91st Army Day in Baghdad on January 6, 2012, weeks after US troops completed their pullout. By Ali Al-Saadi/AFP/Getty Images)
I learned that it’s easy enough to short-circuit the ritual that Tomasky complains about. I’ll ask for the check when I know we’ll be adding nothing else to it, even if we are still eating. Or I’ll say, “…and we’ll take the check, too,” when the waiter is walking away with coffee orders. And when the check comes, I’m all set with my credit card, handing it over immediately so I don’t have to wait for the waitress to come back yet again. (Yes, it’s possible there is an error on the check, but that’s rare, and it can be dealt with even after the card is run.)
I don’t do this when I’m out with casual friends or in a too-large group, because I don’t want to be seen as an anal-retentive clod. But when I’m with my family? Or, especially, on my own? It’s nice to reclaim those 20 minutes.
You get an app on your phone with a QR code which changes based on the tip percent. If everything works out, you can turn on the app and the wait staff can come by with another phone, take a picture of the code, and the transaction goes through, with a receipt emailed to you. Oh, and:
– LevelUp combines purchases and charges you once every week or two (like iTunes) to reduce draconian credit card interchange fees
– For now, at least, LevelUp charges no credit card fees to restaurants
– Restaurants provide “rewards,” so if you spend $100 you get a $10 bonus (and the restaurant pays an additional percentage here, but remember, they only pay it when you’ve already spent $100 and they’ve saved on interchange fees the whole time). It’s sort of like reverse Groupon: the restaurant gets you in the door, and you get a reward after you’ve given them continued business, not up-front.
I’m not a shill for LevelUp, I just use it a lot, and it works very well. And they claim it’s safer than using a credit card.
The other:
I’m emailing you at 2:40am Eastern so clearly I work in a restaurant and have had my after-work drinks (ahem, forgive typos) so: many restaurants already do this! I’m not shilling for one particular product, but we use Tabbedout in the restaurant where I work. It’s even better than the “hand-held” credit device the author wants. You just use a free app on your phone. Your credit card number is encrypted so it’s safe and really convenient. You (the customer) pay whenever you want and … leave. Seriously, it takes :30 seconds, not 20 minutes.
But, ya know what? Consumers aren’t ready – yet. I push this fantastic app every single night at every single table. The general response: HORROR! NO WIRES! CREDIT CARD STOLEN! Ok, a bit exaggerated, but nonetheless, I could easily map a sociological study about who is ready to embrace this technology. People under 30 = cool, let’s try it! Those 30-40 = interested but must do intensive research. Those 40+ = Huh, I just learned how to text and take pics with my smartphone so there is NO WAY I will pay a restaurant bill with this “new” contraption.
Look, I am a 53-year-old server who is clearly not a millennial. I freak my friends out (even the really young ones!) when I deposit printed checks via a mobile banking app (glorious, I will never need to walk inside a bank again), so I am not the obvious demographic for mobile payment apps. But they exist and work really well. It’s a combo of restaurants not understanding how awesome and inexpensive this is and consumers still – still! – thinking that it’s a risk to pay by phone. The funniest/ironic thing is this: as a server, you give me your credit card. I process it. I could easily steal the number (it happens it all the time, unfortunately, Google it) and use it. When paying via a mobile app, I never see your credit card number. It can’t be stolen. And you don’t have to wait for me. Open app, pay your tab, leave.
So, that dude at The Daily Beast who wrote this article is simply uninformed. I know he got stats from the NRA (the other NRA), but he was talking about a device attachment. There is an app for that and it works great. Catch up to the times, restaurant diners!
Louisville sophomore Kevin Ware’s extreme compound fracture yesterday was probably the most disturbing injury I’ve ever seen in person or televised, and after seeing the replays I was unable to watch the rest of the game. Ian Crouch analyzes other reactions:
Ware’s injury quickly became about a variety of other things. It was a media story: When did CBS decide to stop airing replays? Did it do the right thing? And a tech story: How does social media capture and shape cultural responses to live events? It became an infrastructure story: Did the elevated court on which the game was played, installed largely for aesthetic purposes, contribute to the way in which Ware jumped and fell? And it has become a question about ethics: Ware’s immediate pain, and the long-term physical challenges he will face, make the mounting questions about the compensation (or lack of it) and exploitation of college players all the more significant.
Barry Petchesky provides a thorough rundown of how TV networks addressed airing the injury. Despite its gruesome nature, Will Leitch doesn’t blame sites like Buzzfeed and Deadspin for posting the footage:
Whether or not you think it’s right or wrong for Deadspin and The Big Lead and Buzzfeed and Yahoo to profit off the incident, it is undeniable that people desperately wanted to see it. You can hardly call those sites rogue or somehow sadistic, unless you are willing to call the vast majority of humanity that (and you might be). But those sites aren’t peddling drugs to children; they’re running footage of a nationally televised event that tons of people were watching. Don’t blame them for the video — blame the rest of us.
[His injury] will likely be remembered alongside Joe Theismann’s career-ender as one of the most tragically gruesome in sports history. But that’s not the only tragic and gruesome part of this episode, because unlike Theismann, who was working under a guaranteed contract, Ware was an NCAA athlete helping to generate millions of dollars for the NCAA, but not automatically guaranteed a four-year education scholarship. As in so many other similar cases, that means his injury in service to the NCAA’s multimillion-dollar machine could spell the end of his financial aid and massive healthcare bills to boot.
(Photo: Russ Smith #2, Gorgui Dieng #10, Chane Behanan #21 and assistant coach Kevin Keatts of the Louisville Cardinals react after Kevin Ware #5 suffered a compound fracture to his leg in the first half against the Duke Blue Devils during the Midwest Regional Final round of the 2013 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana on March 31, 2013. By Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
Rob Walker recounts the heartbreaking story of 46-year-old fast-food employee John Horner, who was caught by a police informant for selling painkillers. Under Florida law, Horner would be sentenced to 25 years unless he became an informant:
Horner says the problem for him, as someone with no previous drug arrests, was finding drug dealers to inform on.
“You start running the streets. You go to the places where drug dealers go, trying to find drugs. “I had gotten to the point at the end, I was desperate, I didn’t care who went to jail. I would have taken anybody down, just so I could be with my family,” says Horner.
[Law professor Alexandra Natapoff] says this is the danger the informant system poses. “We’ve created thousands of little criminal entrepreneurs running around looking for other people to snitch on,” she says. “And when they don’t have information we’ve created a massive incentive for them to create it.”
Horner is serving the full 25 years because he never found anyone to snitch on:
“What snitching does is it rewards the informed, so the lower you are on the totem pole of criminal activity, the less useful you are to the government,” says Natapoff. “The higher up in the hierarchy you are, the more you have to offer.”
As a lawyer who used to include criminal defense (including indigent defense) among my practice areas, I will agree with the original post: there is a huge, huge disparity between the resources of the state and the resources of the criminal defendant. You should include in that disparity not only the budget of the prosecutor’s office, but that of every law enforcement agency that investigates and enforces the law, including the police and sheriffs departments, state police, regional drug task forces, federal and state bureaus of investigation, and the like. The State provides very limited resources to indigent defendants, when itself has practically unlimited resources available to prosecute. It is not a fair fight, but criminal defense attorneys do the best they can with what they are given to work with.
Another goes into more detail:
When a prosecutor needs something checked or needs a witness, a staffer places a call to the police and it’s taken care of; when a public defender wants something checked, s/he pays for the investigator out of the office budget. When a prosecutor in an arson case wants an expert, he calls the fire marshall’s office, and there’s no budget impact; the public defender has to find and pay for any help out of their budget. How about a multiple-defendant case? One prosecutor, but each defendant requires a separate attorney, most of which have to be hired outside the agency, at the agency’s expense, to prevent conflicts of interest.
The list goes on, but the important point is that if you segregated out all the government expense post-arrest and compared it to the public defender’s budget, the resource gap would be even more shockingly large.
Another reader:
“It should come as no surprise, then, that you’re more likely to wind up in jail if represented by a taxpayer-financed lawyer than by one you hire yourself.” I am a public defender in Florida and I have to push back against this.
Granted, I came out of a top law school with a robust loan repayment assistance program and I practice in one of the best public defender offices in the country, so my experience may not be representative. However, I disagree with the contention that funding disparities are the primary reason my clients are more likely to be incarcerated than defendants with private attorneys.
All of my clients have one thing in common: they’re indigent. Otherwise, they would not be entitled to my services. What does that mean? For starters, they tend to be underemployed or unemployed. After any conviction there is a sentencing hearing, where the defense attorney proffers mitigation in order to get a better sentence. One common argument is “Your honor, my client has a job and if you jail him for even a month he’ll lose his job. He’ll become destitute. The family that relies on him will become destitute.” This is a powerful argument and judges respond to that.
My clients tend to be undereducated. They tend to have prior histories. They tend to be black or brown. Studies show that similarly situated minority defendants get harsher sentences than white defendants, even controlling for the nature of the crime and the defendant’s prior convictions.
The person who can hire a private attorney tends to be the accountant who got a DUI after a happy hour or the doctor who smacked around his wife in a fit of anger. It can cost more than $5,000 to defend a petty misdemeanor if a trial is involved. Defending a serious felony can typically only be afforded by the affluent.
Yes, I wish I had more funding. I wish I had a smaller case load and more investigators. But even for the smallest misdemeanor case, I can pay $2,000 to an expert witness without even requiring office approval. In fact, the prosecutors that I fight against have higher case loads and routinely complain to me about their inability to adequately prepare their cases. I am always better prepared than they are for a case. Literally always.
My clients are more likely to go to jail. This is true. It’s not because of my inability to match the prosecutor’s ability to investigate or prepare for trial. It’s because of their socioeconomic background coupled with draconian maximum sentences that result in plea deals for the vast majority of cases.
Another:
Allow a public defender to offer her perspective. But where to begin? With the fact that I have a law degree, two master’s degrees, and a PhD from an Ivy League university, but still make only $40,000 per year at my job as an appellate-level public defender? My colleagues doing similar work for the State with similar levels of legal experience make at least $25,000 more. The disparity is a function of the particular politics of my state, but there is some level of disparity in every state, even though both public defenders and prosecutors are paid by the state.
I wonder if the ADA who wrote about how difficult her/his job is as compared to the defense really believes this. Whether an indigent criminal defendant is represented by a public defender or a court-appointed private attorney, he or she is being represented by someone with a lot of education and little money. I make $40,000 a year four years out of law school. The most experienced person in my office makes $95,000 after 35 years of practice and a U.S. Supreme Court victory. Court appointed attorneys in my state are paid about $60 an hour for their work, and they are at the mercy of the judge who signs their fee statement. The same judge who just presided over the trial and likely got frustrated with their many objections gets to decide whether they actually should get paid for the number of hours they claim to have put into the case.
These attorneys go into court knowing that the judge is going to have every reason to rule for the State on every contested issue. It is true that the safest defense is often one which involves calling no witnesses, but that doesn’t mean that the defense attorney’s job is easier. The State starts with the moral high ground and always has more resources at its disposal: law enforcement officers to investigate and put pressure on witnesses, money for expert witnesses, discovery rules that can be bent to their advantage … the list is endless.
I understand that prosecutors and defense attorneys have chosen their lot, and I don’t begrudge prosecutors their higher pay and advantages in the courtroom. But for any prosector to claim that advocating for an indigent criminal defendant who has, by definition, been charged with a crime against the State is easier than being the champion of law and order and protector of public safety is just ludicrous.
One more:
As a public defender in Oregon, I’m paid for my work, but at a level far below that of the prosecutor. An entry level lawyer at my office starts out around $40,000 a year, and the senior staff here caps out at $75 or $80k. Across the street, the district attorney pays its staffers $45,000 a year on the low end, with pay capping off at beyond $100,000 for experienced attorneys. In other counties in Oregon, it’s common to have entry level prosecutor positions start at least $20,000 a year more than public defenders in the county. (Oregon is considering legislation this year, HB 3463, that would require public defenders to be paid at equivalent rates of prosecutors in their respective counties, by the way.)
Your reader who talks about all the other things prosecutors do that public defenders don’t? Please. First, the police officer who writes a report has done almost all the heavy lifting on a prosecutor’s case. A prosecutor rarely interviews witnesses on their own, because if they do, they have to discover any exculpatory information they write down under Brady v. Maryland. Most cases that I’ve taken to trial, I’ve spent countless hours tracking down witnesses, verifying my client’s statements and coming up with a theory of defense. All the prosecutor has to do is call each witness the police officer talked to and prove the elements of the crime, which is little more than checking the boxes. As for discovery, in most states, there are reciprocal discovery rules that require the defense to turn over evidence that they intend to use at trial. So both sides have to employ staff to produce discovery.
Lawyers should be paid comparably on both sides of the aisle. When you can’t pay public defenders as much as the prosecutor, it’s harder to keep and retain good lawyers. When you don’t have an effective lawyer fighting for an individual’s rights, it not only harms that individual but society as whole. Who do you think foots the bill for a new trial when a client’s underpaid lawyer missed some critical evidence or failed to investigate a key issue and the client is granted post-conviction relief?
I’m uncomfortable with the term “gay rape”. Men who identify as straight rape other men. Rape is at least as much about power as it is about sex. I have a straight male friend who was raped while hitchhiking in 1991. His rapist gave no indication that he was gay and I’m guessing would not want others to identify him as gay. They met at a stadium concert, and traveled together for a few days while following the band from city to city. On the second or third day, his rapist followed him into a public bathroom at a gas station and raped him during a fill-up stop. Afterwards he refused to give my friend his belongings back (which were in his car), so my friend continued to ride with his rapist until the next stop at a concert venue. Preparing to run, he brought all of his belongings with him and made a dash for it.
I found out what happened to him when he got home. Most people he told didn’t believe him, or they told him “that’s what you get for hitchhiking”. I was surprised that our female friends were no more sympathetic than his male friends. One of our mutual friends was an anti-rape activist who trained women in self-defense techniques and rape prevention. I was astonished that she was totally unsympathetic, even going so far as to tell him that he shouldn’t tell people what happened to him, since it would make people less sympathetic to women who get raped.
I lost track of him a few years later, but during the time I knew him, he never really got over it. I never saw him in a sexual relationship again, and he was clearly traumatized not only by what happened to him, but by how what happened to him was received by his peers.
I’ve never laughed at a prison rape joke since.
Another:
First, I’m a subscriber, but this issue still freaks me out and so I am sending this to you anonymously. I just created this account for this email.
I am married. And mostly happily so, though I am in a utterly sexless marriage. We stay together mostly because we are best friends and have two beautiful children who’s lives don’t deserve to be impacted by their parents inadequacies. That of course, is important because like many married men I have in the past cruised anonymously for gay sex (that might be a worthy series of posts in their own right). For awhile, Squirt, Grinder, and other sites provided an easy and safe outlet. I was always oral and never had an inclination for anal (either giving or receiving). But whatever. The point of this email is that about four or five years ago, my wife was out of town and I decided to meet up with someone at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, VA.
He, in turn, had someone else he was chatting with who was also at the hotel. So we walked down to this other guys room and decided to get some group play going. After a while, the first guy left (he couldn’t keep it up), and the second guy who was literally twice the size of me (probably 6’6″ and 300 lbs of muscle – and as massive a dick as I’ve ever seen – compared to my 5’9 160 lbs) continued on with me.
After a bit, he became much more aggressive and soon pinned me down and was attempting to insert himself in me. He was on me, had my legs apart, a rubber visible on the nightstand but clearly no intention of using it, and he told me very calmly that “it was time to fuck my sissy ass.” I can still remember the smell of his breath as he calmly looked me in the eyes and told me how he was going to rape me. I told him no, struggling, and he just ignored me, spreading my legs further and attempting to enter me. Which was incredibly painful for me, but must have been so for him too. He continued to hold me down and proceeded to stick his fingers in me to loosen me up. Somehow, I managed to twist out from him. And, frankly, I have no idea how I escaped, but somehow I did. And I ran.
Luckily, being in Virginia, I can carry a gun. And I had one in my pants pocket. As I was running to the door, and as he was charging me (it seemed like forever but must have taken place over less than a second or two) I was able to grab my pants and my gun in the front pocket, where he didn’t know it was, and pull it on him (I’m still not sure how I did it so seamlessly). He didn’t expect this and the entire dynamic of the situation changed remarkably. He backed up, trying to calm me down, as I kept the gun square on him and calmly walked backwards to the door, unlocking it behind me and stepping into the hall where I put my pants on as I continued walked backwards to the elevator running through the lobby shirtless and shoeless.
Being married, and with a job in DC where I wasn’t sure how they would respond to publicity over me like that, I was petrified to report anything. And who would I have reported it to? Would they have believed me or simply told me what did I expect?
I’m lucky I didn’t have to use the gun. For one, that would have raised more than a few questions from my wife. But also, I didn’t have a bullet in the chamber. I’ll never make that mistake again. Screw the know-nothings who say guns should be unloaded. An unloaded gun is a paperweight. Had I not moved at the right moment, or not had a gun available, or had to pull the trigger on an empty chamber, I have no doubt he would have raped and assaulted me and left me in a terrible physical condition (and likely exposed to HIV and a surefire hospital visit).
I’ve significantly changed my behavior after that incident. But I still get traumatized over what happened. And of course, that’s both an attempted rape AND a defensive gun use that like so many others will never be officially tabulated. And it all makes me question how common this problem is, especially among the large segment of married men who seek to cruise anonymously.
In hindsight I set myself up for it with terribly risky behavior. And it’s a miracle I’ve not come down with HIV. But it’s not something I could ever ever report because of the impact it would have on my life and those I am closest too. I just pray that this monster was turned in by someone who was in a position to turn him in. Otherwise, he remains at large.
Tim Maly calls attention to a non-profit called ColaLife that is leveraging the popularity of Coke to deliver much-needed medical supplies to remote African villages:
You can buy a Coke pretty much anywhere on Earth. Thanks to a vast network of local suppliers, Coca-Cola has almost completely solved distribution, getting its product into every nook and cranny where commerce reaches. There are places in the world where it’s easier to get a Coke than clean water. In the 1980s, [ColaLife founder Simon] Berry was an aid worker in Zambia, and when he looked at Coke’s success, he saw an opportunity. …
The result of [ColaLife’s] efforts so far is the AidPod, a wedge-shaped container that fits between the necks of bottles in a Coca-Cola crate. For the pilot program, they are using the AidPods to distribute an anti-diarrhea kit, called “Kit Yamoyo” (“Kit of Life”).
The effort is helping local businesses as well:
By working with [Coca-Cola wholesalers], ColaLife gains a connection to locally trusted businesses. “They know about inventory control, security, how to store products properly, and retailers in the district know where they are,” says Berry. “We’ve created a desirable anti-diarrhea kit. We’ve priced it and we’re marketing it at a level where these retailers who deal in other products can make money out of taking it to their villages and selling it.” For the ColaLife operational trial in Zambia, everybody on the ground (wholesalers, distributors and retailers) is making a profit. Recommended retail for the kit is 5,000 kwacha (about $1). Retailers make 35 percent profit, while wholesalers make 20 percent profit.
Kevin Ashton claims the meme had “nothing to do with community and everything to do with commerce”, noting that one of the first imitations of the original “Harlem Shake” videos was from a company called Maker Studios trying to promote itself, and that soon after the song’s record label, Mad Decent, got in the game as well. Then came the advertisers and media companies:
This is abnormal. “Single Ladies,” “Somebody That I Used To Know,” Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe,” and Psy’s “Gangnam Style” were made by professionals and first imitated by professionals–Saturday Night Live in the case of “Single Ladies,” indie Canadian band Walk Off The Earth in the case of “Somebody That I Used To Know,” and Justin Bieber in the case of “Call Me Maybe”–then later by fans and amateurs. “Harlem Shake,” was a meme made by an amateur, George Miller, but its rapid replication was driven by media and marketing professionals, led and orchestrated by three companies: Maker Studios, Mad Decent, and IAC.
It’s an interesting theory, and Ashton has a great handle on the evolution of the “Harlem Shake” meme from its beginning … through its viral comedown, but the underlying statement is loaded in a way that skirts certain details—like the fact that fan-made “Harlem Shake” videos amassed several hundred thousand views, a number strong enough to be considered “viral,” prior to any “corporate” involvement in the meme. Ashton also goes to great pains to point out the corporate ties for some of the outlets responsible for contributing to the “Harlem Shake” meme that directly benefited from its popularity while glossing over the fact that the meme, like many before it, got its footing through corporate-funded channels: Maker Studios got wind of the meme after employee Vernon Shaw discovered it on uber-popular social site Reddit, which is owned by monolithic media empire Advance Publications, and all the fan-made videos were largely uploaded to a hugely popular corporate entity, YouTube. While Reddit and YouTube foster unique digital communities and everyday contributors have the ability to affect every denizen that doesn’t negate the fact that they are corporations.
The results of our Urtak survey show that 7% of married readers have had a prenup, 24% of unmarried readers say they plan to get a prenup, and 24% say it would be a dealbreaker if their intended spouse insisted on having a prenup. Regarding the question graphed above (where orange means “no” and blue means “yes”), male and female readers were both evenly split. A reader writes:
I write in response to the reader who had to declare bankruptcy after a divorce, I don’t think a prenup would have helped his case. First, it’s not realisitic to think that a guy who couldn’t afford $10k for a divorce lawyer could afford to pay a lawyer for a prenup. Second, I’m not sure a typical prenup would include a “no getting credit cards without the consent of both parties” clause because, if you need one of those, you probably shouldn’t get married. Third, a prenup can be challenged in court, and a good divorce lawyer can find ambiguities in the prenup to drag out litigation. So he could have been faced with $10k in legal bills even with a prenup.
Another:
I have a bit of a different perspective on prenups in one niche demographic group: Orthodox Jews.
You see, Orthodox Judaism is a patriarchal religion in which women have less rights – or, as it is sometimes spun by the “Modern Orthodox” wing of Orthodoxy (as opposed to the haredi, or fundamentalist, wing) – “different” rights. When it comes to divorce, an Orthodox woman cannot get a religious divorce (and therefore cannot remarry) unless her husband grants her the divorce. When a man refuses to do so, the woman is referred to as an agunah, or a “chained woman.” They can still get a civil divorce on the woman’s initiative, but not a religious divorce.
When I got married, my rabbi required me to sign a prenup that stated that in the event we get a civil divorce, I am required to grant my wife a religious divorce. Many Modern Orthodox rabbis will not perform a wedding unless such a prenup is first signed. It is impossible, in the view of Orthodoxy, to change the religious divorce requirements, but they are using the modern prenup as a way to equalize the power between men and women and ensure that women do not become chained. For an example of what happens when such a prenup is not entered into, one needs to look no further than the US Congress.
The Dish 