Archive for June, 2011

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This Might Be the Stupidest Thing the New York Times Has Ever Published

By
Tom OHare
– June 22, 2011

OMG.

Anthony D. Weiner’s letter of resignation was a matter-of-fact two sentences, informing the New York secretary of state, Cesar A. Perales, and Gov.Andrew M. Cuomo that come midnight Tuesday, he was stepping down. But his signature — an oversize looping squiggle, almost larger than the entire typed text of his statement — may offer some clues into his personality, at least according to handwriting experts.

Yes, we are going to go there.

“He’s out of bounds; he’s not within boundaries,” said Dianne Peterson, a handwriting expert based in Tennessee. “His emotional slant is that his head overrules his heart; his head is in control of his heart.”

Noting the “big hump” that constitutes the core of the signature, Ms. Peterson explained, “It represents a writer who wants to cover up, that they are protecting themselves through formality, ritual and control.”

You can go to the goddamn NYTimes website to look at the image of his signature if you’re so inclined; I’m not reproducing it here. This reminds me of working on my marijuana legalization story throughout the fall (You Californian bastards didn’t legalize it, and it never got written), when I spent a month and a half camping with crazy astrology-hippies in the forest, who were all certain that since I was a Scorpio, I dunno, I liked to get laid more than other people. And that I had all this other crazy Scorpio shit going on that I wasn’t aware of. It was crazy, is what I’m saying! As the top commenter at the post puts it, it isn’t a far leap from analyzing Anthony Weiner’s handwriting to calling a 1-900 number to have your horoscope read.

ooh! ooh! I can’t wait for the NY Times analysis of Anthony Weiner’s star chart! And the numerology surrounding his birth! Awesome!

Fuck everything about this, The New York Times.

(via)

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The Pulitzer Prize Winning “Illegal” Immigrant

By
Tom OHare
– June 22, 2011

Wow. Just wow to this whole story.

[S]oon Lolo grew nervous that the immigration authorities reviewing the petition would discover my mother was married, thus derailing not only her chances of coming here but those of my uncle as well. So he withdrew her petition. After my uncle came to America legally in 1991, Lolo tried to get my mother here through a tourist visa, but she wasn’t able to obtain one. That’s when she decided to send me. My mother told me later that she figured she would follow me soon. She never did.

And:

At the D.M.V. in Portland, I arrived with my photocopied Social Security card, my college I.D., a pay stub from The San Francisco Chronicle and my proof of state residence — the letters to the Portland address that my support network had sent. It worked. My license, issued in 2003, was set to expire eight years later, on my 30th birthday, on Feb. 3, 2011. I had eight years to succeed professionally, and to hope that some sort of immigration reform would pass in the meantime and allow me to stay.

It seemed like all the time in the world.

And:

In the five years that followed, I did my best to “do enough.” I was promoted to staff writer, reported on video-game culture, wrote a series on Washington’s H.I.V./AIDS epidemic and covered the role of technology and social media in the 2008 presidential race. I visited the White House, where I interviewed senior aides and covered a state dinner — and gave the Secret Service the Social Security number I obtained with false documents.

Bad. Ass. And astonishingly beautiful throughout.

It’s truly a shame that we cannot seem to have an adult conversation about immigration reform in this countries without a bunch of reactionary lunatics shouting, “SCREEEE!!!!” and sidetracking the discussion. We get it, you’re xenophobes. Shut the fuck up for once, would you?

(via)

UPDATE: I think Atrios is uncharacteristically wrong here, when he says:

A lot of people on the twitter machine are calling this a must read and an amazing story and all that. And, yes, I do think people should read it, but I think people are reacting to it in the wrong way. The story is completely common in this country, it is not amazing because it’s the experience of some fairly well-known journalism guy. It is the experience of a hell of a lot of people. And, yes, if that story can do anything to push sane legislation on immigration that’s wonderful, but it’s the story (roughly) of millions of people.

Granted, I haven’t read the Twitterati today, so maybe I’m projecting, but I think that his gloss is at least unfair to what I find amazing about the story. It’s not that Vargas is a prominent undocumented immigrant in itself, it’s more that he so completely owns it for an audience that likely thinks of “illegal immigrants” as landscapers and back-of-the-house restaurant staff.  He is saying, “No, we are not, we are also people you hold in high regard,” which a lot of people simply Do. Not. Get. Just as Atrios bashes the point in that Unemployment Is Too Damn High over and over again, it’s worth reminding the bourgie readers of the Times that some of their best friends might be undocumented workers — at least, if that’s what makes it real for them.

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A Tale of Two Commencement Speeches

By
Tom OHare
– June 22, 2011

Stephen Colbert:

Conan O’Brien:

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Some Factual Errors in the Latest “Reason” Attack on the Slate Attack on Libertarianism

By
Ben Nolan
– June 22, 2011

Matt Welch over at “Reason” aggregates the supposed factual errors identified by his libertarian friends in the Metcalf critique of libertarianism I posted about two days ago. Worth taking a look, no?

***

Will Wilkinson, in The Economist, on Metcalf’s claim that Ludvig von Mises and F.A. Hayek were “in with the nutters and the shills,” because “between them, Von Hayek and Von Mises never seem to have held a single academic appointment that didn’t involve a corporate sponsor”:

This attempt to marginalise two great thinkers is as lazy as it is dishonest. A little light googling is enough to establish the basic facts, but it seems Mr Metcalf could not be bothered.

[much evidence cited] [...]

If only a levee separated polite discourse from the sort of ax-grinding indifference to fairness and truth Mr Metcalf displays in his essay.

Note that the “much evidence cited” saccade in Welch’s quote of Wilkinson conveniently lets readers fail to notice that Wilkinson offers no conclusive evidence at all. Instead, he writes sentences like the following:

My understanding is that after Mises fled Nazifying Europe and resettled in America, he was offered a number of academic posts in the interior of the country, but preferred to stay in New York City, where his visiting post at NYU was funded by several businessmen.

This is after he notes:

Mises left Vienna for Geneva in 1934 to accept an academic appointment at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, which was offered to him by William Reppard, the Institute’s co-founder

Which conspicuously fails to actually address the question it claims to of who funded his academic appointment. My “light googling” (to borrow Wilkinson’s words) didn’t turn anything up, and, yes, it’s Metcalf’s responsibility to justify the statement now that it’s been challenged, but this isn’t counterevidence yet.

Turning to Hayek:

As for Hayek, his post at the London School of Economics, from which he famously debated Keynes and cemented his reputation in the world of “polite discourse”, did not involve corporate sponsorship, as far as I know.

As far as you know? Did it, or didn’t it? Will: You promised me disproof from “light googling.” So far I’m getting nothing.

Again: Metcalf — clear this up for us, buddy.

And this pattern goes on. In his final engagement with Mises and Hayek’s academic appointments, no actual disproof is offered of the claim that Hayek’s position at the School of Social Thought was corporate funded:

In any case, if the LSE or the University of Chicago’s Committee for Social Thought survived, like art museums and symphony orchestras, by the good graces of wealthy benefactors

Sounds to me like equivocation if not a straight up granting of Metcalf’s point in this case. Where are “the facts,” Will? Tell me.

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Read the rest of this entry »

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A lost penguin, an open question

By
Trevor Macomber
– June 22, 2011

A lost penguin

So earlier this year I was treated to all sorts of adorableness when my fiancee introduced me to Lala, the Japanese penguin who likes to shop (for seafood, natch).

 
Then buzz began for the big screen release of Mr. Popper’s Penguins starring Jim Carrey — which, unfortunately, has a decidedly un-emperor-like score of 46% on Rotten Tomatoes right now.

Finally, just yesterday, I come across a story on MSNBC about a lost emperor penguin whose perhaps-happy-but-definitely-navigationally-deficient feet have somehow landed him in New Zealand.

Look up the word "lonely" in the dictionary and this...isn't what you'll see, but it should be, so go ahead and print this picture out, then paste it into every dictionary you can find.

As the article relates, this is “the first time in 44 years the aquatic bird has been sighted in the wild in the South Pacific country” — which isn’t surprising, considering that New Zealand is 2,500 miles from the Antarctic. I mean, I’ve been lost before, but goddamn, that is one hell of a wrong turn.

An open question

Reading the article, I kept waiting for someone to talk about how they were going to help the flightless fowl return to his homeland, or at least stick him in a cushy zoo to live out his days entertaining the easily captivated masses. Instead,

Peter Simpson, a program manager for New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, said…officials plan to let nature take its course. Simpson said the bird could live several weeks before needing another meal.

So my open question is this: if this penguin doesn’t get his act together and attempt to return home the same way he got here, are they really going to let him starve and/or sweat to death right there on the beach in front of onlookers? Or perhaps more to the point, should they? Or does nature only get to take its course up until the course it’s taking begins to depress us? Because I could be swayed either way, since obviously there are billions of animals in the world (not to mention, you know, all the people who are dying and shit), and yet here is one animal in particular — one very lost and, more importantly, cute-as-a-button — animal that we could, theoretically, help if it came to that.

Sooo…thoughts? What would Peter Singer do?

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Louie Season 2 Premieres Tomorrow!

By
Ben Nolan
– June 22, 2011

EXCITED!

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Gaga and Zizek / Sitting In A Tree (Note the Update: The Zizek / Gaga connexion is a fake)

By
Ben Nolan
– June 22, 2011

The NY Post:

Lady Gaga has struck up a strong friendship with mysterious Marxist Slavoj Zizek, dubbed “the world’s hippest philosopher.”

…

In a recent blog post titled “Communism Knows No Monster,” Zizek called Gaga “my good friend” and said, “There is a certain performance of theory in her costumes, videos and even (some of) her music.” He says her infamous meat dress is a reference to “the consistent linking in the oppressive imaginary of the patriarchy of the female body and meat, of animality and the feminine.”

Seems pretty obvious. *googling* Here it is. He’s quoting someone else’s take on the meat dress to set up a broader discussion of A PAPER LADY GAGA WROTE IN UNDERGRAD! (Okay, so I have some qualms about this. I’m not sure how thrilled I’d be about people reading my undergrad papers, but I do think it’s pretty fascinating, and I don’t think I’d mind so much as long as I was confident people recognized that I was like 18-21 when I wrote it, and like most 18-21 years olds, pretty stupid. She, though, apparently wasn’t stupid. It’s a not-bad paper.)

Back to the Post:

Zizek, who once described himself as “communist in a qualified sense” and a “radical leftist,” will be a visiting professor at NYU, where Gaga once studied. He’ll teach German in the fall.

No. He’ll be teaching in the department of German. He’ll teach Hegel and Freud in the fall. Now I’m envious of New Yorkers.

I still think this video is brilliant, you know…. because of the performativity of theory (that was a joke, but I kindof mean it too…. Trevor had a word for this, but I forget it). Sorry Kanye, it beats Single Ladies in this respect by a mile:

***

UPDATE: It’s a fake… the relationship between Gaga and Zizek anyway. I think the paper by Gaga is real. Will investigate. Speculation:

According to Left Eye on Books, which bills itself as a website for progressive book news and reviews, the blog post that the New York Post references is likely a fake anyway, concocted by anarchist theorists looking to discredit Žižek, whom they consider a “rigid Marxist.”

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The Rule of 70

By
Ben Nolan
– June 21, 2011

Sharp math goes alarmist. There’s truth in there, amid the hysteria:

via mburke8 who writes: ”The Rule of 70 will destroy us all!!!”

Sucks when hysteria follows from truth.

***

UPDATE: Thought I’d note that this video was posted in the discussion of the question “Can someone explain to me why basing an economy on infinite growth makes sense in a finite world?” on the r/economics board. It’s like it hit a funny bone within the community — in the thread no part seems to make sense to the other parts any more. The most notable split is between the radically optimistic ideologists of science and technology –

You are forgetting a resource that really is infinite: human ideas. We have proven as a species to be remarkably good at innovating and solving problems. I recommend you read the economist Julian Simon for more on this concept.

Tangent: did you know the world doubles in economic output every 15 year? That remarkable measure of productivity will give you an idea of what humanity is really capable of.

– and the pessimists people who live in the world…

That might be true but the fact is that we are burning through our resources at increasing and unsustainable rates. For example, I just read that most of the major food fish are on the verge of extinction. We can’t just “invent” a new ocean full of fish.

Not sure if this is the exact article he was referring to, but it’s probably reporting the same study. And a nice little visualization, c/o the Guardian:

Information is Beautiful on vanishing fish stocks

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Drinking Too Much = Hangover: Explained! (In a British Accent)

By
Tom OHare
– June 21, 2011

First, a general note: the BBC should really allow me to embed their videos.

Now that that’s out of the way, here is a video that explains the physiological process your body goes through every time you get shitfaced. (Pro tip: drink water before you go to bed shitfaced. Otherwise your brain shrinks. Which might explain why you feel so stupid the day after a night of hard drinking. Also, you’ve likely made a fool of yourself somehow.)

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INTERNET FITES! or Answering the Question: “Just How Ridiculous Can Libertarians Be?”

By
Ben Nolan
– June 21, 2011

Libertarians are horrible people. The following exchange was a tangent off of a discussion of that Stephen Metcalf’s piece about Libertarianism we discussed yesterday:

Libertarian:

Government spending on education. The fact is you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. And the American horse has become such a lazy, entitled piece of shit, that the only way to wake him up is to make him feel some pain.

Retort:

Gonna need to know more about the data in that chart before I can accept it.

And the American horse has become such a lazy, entitled piece of shit, that the only way to wake him up is to make him feel some pain.

What the fuck is that? American workers score among the highest in terms of productivity in the world, and they work some of the longest hours with the fewest vacation days in the world. And I’ll tell you — the average American feels a lot more pain than the average German (since you’re bringing up Siemens with the article you linked to) who, incidentally, works far far fewer hours and has much more of her or his higher education subsidized by the state.

Libertarian:

Your statistic is incredibly distorted by those at the top. It says nothing of the median, to which I was referring. Furthermore Americans lack impulse control, and have a much lower saving rate than their counterparts abroad.

Retort:

What evidence do you have that it’s so skewed? Why aren’t they similarly skewed in other countries?

Americans do lack impulse control, not only compared to other countries, but compared to their past selves. They had much higher savings rates 30 years ago in an era of much higher unionization, taxation and much more public-sector employment. The end of saving was in large part a consequence of incredibly freely available credit (an initiative of the financial elite) and the ideology (pushed by the financial elites) that housing prices would go up forever, and that you didn’t need to save because you could just count on that to pay off what you owe.

Libertarian:

It was a consequence of a closer reminder of how harsh life could be, and how utterly government could fail. Our coddling via the social safety net has removed all care, and restraint, from our complacent populace.

Retort:

America started to strip back the coddling in the early 80s. Savings rates began to decline in the mid 80s. Coincidence? No. Lower rates of savings are a natural consequence of a more unequal economic system. The poorer majority has to spend more on necessities, leaving less for them to save, pulling the stats on personal savings rates down (increased rates by the rich few can’t compensate for it because each person’s % is weighted equally in the stats). This isn’t a sign of laziness or complacency. That’s a self-serving myth advanced by privileged people who want to think they’re self-made.

Libertarian:

The poorer majority has to spend more on necessities, leaving less for them to save

Right, because they can’t touch their leisure budget????

***

I’m still inclined to think it was a joke, but checking through the guy’s comment history…. if it’s a joke, he’s been living in it for a while now.

Homeless chic:

(I doubt if this person is actually homeless)

 

UPDATE BY TOM: I maintain that we should not even bother engaging in debate with libertarians.

UPDATE BY BEN: I agree that it would be nice to ignore them, but people think this is a “serious” ideology. If things don’t change, it’s going to continue to be one of the major fallbacks for people who, reasonably, become disillusioned with the bullshit binary ideological system that structures politics today. Things need to change. How can we change the things that need to change but by engaging them?

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