Culture ArchivesMay 11, 2008Pete'sI went to Pete's New Haven Style Apizza yesterday for lunch (it's on the southeast corner of 14th and Irving) and had a pretty decent white clam slice. I've had better, but for by-the-slice pizza it's quite good. I think the "Yalie" at Comet Ping Pong is a better entrant in the DC clam genre, but that's not a very convenient location. May 10, 2008Recommended ReadingBrad DeLong and Kathy G. both recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog. I concur, but at the same time would also recommend his great piece on Bill Cosby in the current Atlantic. May 8, 2008Good TitleI have no idea whether or not S.V. Date's analysis of whether or not Barack Obama can get Florida Jews to vote for him is correct (makes for an interesting read, though) but I was interested to see that according to his byline he wrote a book called Jeb: America's Next Bush. Isn't that a great title? I wish I'd thought of that. May 5, 2008More MapHere's another effort at a schematic diagram of the NYC subway system, that I think looks a bit better than the Vignelli one I linked to yesterday. Zakaria Book ClubYou're probably all too busy reading the only book that matters to have time for Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World but I'm participating in his TPM Cafe Book Club this week and would post something there about his first contribution to the forum, but I agree with it too much. Outback Strikes Back
Ezra Klein's right to bemoan the sneering condescension in this NYT piece on suburban chain restaurants. For me, this is made all the worse by the knowledge that the attitude of contempt is almost certainly fake. I was actually born and raised in Manhattan by fancy-pants parents who wouldn't dream of darkening the door of an Outback Steakhouse. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge by father has never tasted the joys of Chili's (those two are my favorites). All of which has mostly made me aware of how rare this is. Most of New York City's elitists grew up in very conventional middle class suburbs and then moved to the city sometime after college. They may look like -- indeed, be -- Greenpoint hipsters now, but they come from the same places as all the other college educated white people in this country. Moreover, one suspects that the exotic locales visited by the Times' intrepid correspondents -- such places as Westchester and northern New Jersey -- are just where many Times readers live and dare I venture to guess that perhaps a few of the Times's writers and editors even commute in from the suburbs. Indeed, their section on the Olive Garden might have mentioned that there are three Olive Gardens in New York City one of which is about five blocks from the NYT building. Monday Rancid Lyrics BloggingSo, you're doubtless wondering to yourself, what's the deal with Rancid's "Olympia, WA" off 1995's ... And Out Come The Wolves. Okay, you're probably not wondering, but Spencer and I were talking about the issue last night. He clued me in to the fact that the reason he wishes he were going back to Olympia is that he's carrying a torch for Tobi Vail, while on tour in New York City. With that context in place, "hanging on the corner of 52nd and Broadway" suddenly snapped into place for me -- they're playing at Roseland not just hanging out in midtown. But what's on sixth street? Visiting the old Curry Row? May 4, 2008Ask, and Ye Shall...I was in New York last weekend and remarked to a few people that I thought the city would benefit from a more strictly schematic subway map. Well, low and behold what's Men's Vogue done but get Massimo Vignelli to do a more strictly schematic map of the New York subway system. May 2, 2008The Future is Bright
Well comic book fans, I went to see Iron Man and I'm pleased to report that it lived up to expectation -- funny stuff, good action, vital critique of the military-industrial complex, only one or two plot points that made no sense, etc. Among other things, Iron Man stands out from many other comic book characters in having a costume that doesn't look ridiculous in a live-action context -- no spandex, etc. In particular, Jeff Bridges, in particular, stands out for an excellent performance in probably the role that demands the most in terms of silly comic book dialogue. But beyond that, I saw new previews for The Dark Knight and The Hulk, both of which looked, if anything, better than the previously seen previews. All in all it seems to me that we can look forward to a summer of excellent comic book adaptations to make up for last year when we had to put up with clunkers like Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer. I am, however, still a little upset that the Hulk preview doesn't feature anyone saying "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." Doesn't that seem like a no-brainer? The Future is Bright
Well comic book fans, I went to see Iron Man and I'm pleased to report that it lived up to expectation -- funny stuff, good action, vital critique of the military-industrial complex, only one or two plot points that made no sense, etc. Among other things, Iron Man stands out from many other comic book characters in having a costume that doesn't look ridiculous in a live-action context -- no spandex, etc. In particular, Jeff Bridges, in particular, stands out for an excellent performance in probably the role that demands the most in terms of silly comic book dialogue. But beyond that, I saw new previews for The Dark Knight and The Hulk, both of which looked, if anything, better than the previously seen previews. All in all it seems to me that we can look forward to a summer of excellent comic book adaptations to make up for last year when we had to put up with clunkers like Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer. I am, however, still a little upset that the Hulk preview doesn't feature anyone saying "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." Doesn't that seem like a no-brainer? April 30, 2008Rise of the HumanzeesIt's not something I focus on as much as the robot threat, but via Ronald Bailey comes Jenny Hawthorne's report for the Scotsman on the possibilities of human-chimp hybrids: "A leading scientist has warned a new species of 'humanzee,' created from breeding apes with humans, could become a reality unless the government acts to stop scientists experimenting." Interestingly, I believe it was the Scotsman that also broke the story of Joseph Stalin's efforts to breed a humanzee super-soldier so they've clearly marked themselves out as your go-to source for coverage of this vital issue. Does anyone else remember the State of the Union address when Bush called for a ban on human-animal hybrids? Did such a ban pass? April 29, 2008Down She GoesCirculation declines at most American newspapers. Clearly, technology and changing habits have a lot to do with this story. Still, to me it's always striking that when journalists talk about the slow-motion death of most of the nation's major newspapers the issue of quality rarely comes into it. And yet the decline is by no means uniform: National newspapers like USA Today and the Journal have tended to hold their ground better, as have smaller-market dailies where competition from other media like the Internet isn't usually as intense. I think you see here that the issues of quality and competition from the internet are really interlinked. I've heard people worry to me about what will happen to local coverage in an internet-dominated world, and these people are correctly identifying a comparative weakness of current new media, but the answer is that the papers that specialize in covering local news seem to actually be doing okay. The newspaper, as an institution, is an odd one -- an enormous bundle of disparate kinds of content whose rationale for existing has to do with the economics of printing and distributing cheap paper and ink on a daily basis. In an online world, the economics are different and argue in favor of specialization and niches. And this is also almost certainly better for editorial quality. It would be extremely odd for one person to be well-qualified to supervise coverage of all the different things The New York Times tries to cover. Why not get political news from a political news outlet, movie reviews from a place that specializes in movies, and local news from an organization that's really passionate about covering its community rather than viewing it as a JV form of journalism to be endured before moving on to something bigger? And in the future, we will. April 28, 2008Prince's "Creep"Prince covers Radiohead's "Creep" at Coachella: I got that link via Petey so it's possible that the video embeds subliminal "vote for Hillary" messages or something. April 27, 2008Blast from the PastDC real estate classified ads segregated by race from an August 1950 issue of The Washington Times Herald. Everyone knows that much of America, Washington included, was formally segregated not so long ago, but artifacts like these are still incredibly striking. April 26, 2008BoltBusAs we speak, I'm blogging from the new BoltBus from DC to New York (they also serve Boston and Philadelphia) which features electrical outlets and WiFi. Naturally, it's quite a bit slower than the Acela, but given that it's a fraction of the price of even the slower Regional train, it seems to me that Amtrak really needs to step up its game in terms of internet access. April 25, 2008Is It The Water?
Mario Batali tells Wired that the reason you can't replicate New York pizza is the water: "Water," Batali says. "Water is huge. It's probably one of California's biggest problems with pizza." Water binds the dough's few ingredients. Nearly every chemical reaction that produces flavor occurs in water, says Chris Loss, a food scientist with the Culinary Institute of America. "So, naturally, the minerals and chemicals in it will affect every aspect of the way something tastes." I've heard this water theory, as applied to both pizza and bagels, from a variety of sources for years. To me, it doesn't add up. Here's why -- if you leave the city and head to a suburban community in Long Island or Connecticut or New Jersey featuring many ex-NYC Jews, you'll find bagels that are similar to the ones in the city. Similarly, where ex-NYC Italian-American communities exist in the suburbs, they make similar pizza. But even though these suburbs are close to the city, their water actually comes from radically different sources. I think the economics just don't translate out of the social context of the traditional northeast areas of Italian-American settlement. When you go someplace that doesn't have that pizza tradition and go build a restaurant where people are going to sit at tables and order brick oven pizza by the pie from a server, you wind up going for a more upscale ambience than you see at, say, John's on Bleeker Street. That flows naturally into a more upscale conception of the ingredients and next thing you know you have something like DC's Matchbox, which I like a lot, but is really quite different from the old-school New York experience. Photo by Flickr user Tangysd used under a Creative Commons license April 24, 2008The Book ClubWe've got a TPMCafe book club going on Heads in the Sand this week, you can check all the posts from the various contributors out here. LasersIt seems the Japanese have decided that armingrobots with lasers is a good idea: If I were president, I'd be promoting General Petraeus to a new cabinet-level position in charge of coping with the robot threat. Mmm...EggsI've suffered from a deepening obsession with Denmark in general and Copenhagen in particular for months. More recently, Passover reminded me that hard boiled eggs are a delicious snack. And now, The New York Times brings it all together: Everything is red inside bordello-like Bo-Bi Bar (Klareboderne 14; 45-33-12-55-43): the faded Baroque-style wallpaper, the threadbare curtains, the smoke-soaked lampshades — and especially the swollen, grinning faces of the numerous regulars. Few bars in Copenhagen draw such a diverse crowd, which on a recent night included 20-something cool kids, 30-something intellectuals and some thin ageless barflies with names like Ole and Jonas. Founded in 1917, this city-center institution remains resolutely old school. Cellphones may not be used inside, digital cameras can be used only with permission, and the marquee attraction on the three-item food menu is hard-boiled eggs. (“They’re a good food when you’re drunk,” says the bartender Nanna Sarauw. “They get people straight.”) These days, though, I assume that buying a beer at a bar in Copenhagen is prohibitively expensive for those of us holding U.S. currency. April 23, 2008The Bukharin Factor
Brian Morton's Dissent article on bloggers says nice things about me, so I hate to criticize it, but in addition to what Kevin Drum says about age and Kay Steiger says about gender, I have to take issue with one of Morton's assertions about "Old Bolshevik" intellectual Nikolai Bukharin: By saying they're ambitious, I mean that most of these writers share a politics that is interested in deep-going social reform—you could say it's a social-democratic politics, although few of them would use that term. (As far as I can tell, they have absolutely no interest in socialist thought, which, in my opinion, is a good thing. At any rate, I can't see that any of them has been hobbled intellectually because of a lack of opinions about Bukharin.) I have opinions about Bukharin! Back in college, I wrote a term paper on him for a slightly weird seminar that Robert Nozick co-taught with a scholar of the Russian Revolution from the History Department. My take was that Bukharin's right deviationism (and other efforts at "reform Communism") was ultimately a mirage. The hard-liners were correct to think in Bukharin's day, just as they were when they crushed the Prague Spring and when they tried to stage a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, that Communist Party political control couldn't survive substantial liberalization of the economy. Beyond that, I'll admit to not having much interest in socialist thought. I will say that I'm pretty much a believer in Marx-style base/superstructure theory to an extent that most of my friends and colleagues seem to find somewhat appalling. I don't, for example, believe that William F. Buckley, Jr. exercised any substantial real causal influence on American history not through any fault of his own but simply because I don't think intellectuals really impact the course of events. This is, needless to say, not a popular opinion among writers. April 22, 2008Tuesday Metaphysics BloggingThere's an interesting comments thread at Edge of the American West about the status of counterfactual questions in history. Historians are, by and large, loathe to deal with counterfactual issues, viewing the whole question as un-historical and un-professional. This is an interesting contrast with the world of philosophy, where it's very common to analyze counterfactual claims as inextricably bound up with claims about causation. To say that "Bush carried Florida because flawed ballot design in Palm Beach County caused many Gore supporters to inadvertently mark their ballots for Pat Buchanan" is to say that "if the Palm Beach County ballot had been designed differently, then Gore would have carried Florida." Bigger questions, like what would have happened if Gore had become president, are, of course, not amenable to straightforward conclusions or definitive answers. But from where I sit, thinking about them is just a different way of thinking about how we've gotten to where we are today. For instance, Jason Zengerle plausibly posits that had Joe Lieberman become Vice President in 2000, he never would have taken his current turn to the cranky right. That's probably correct. By the same token, Gore seems to have been pushed left by his own misfortunes. Indeed, the whole trajectory of U.S. politics would have taken a rather different turn, with most Democrats (and certainly the Gore-Lieberman administration) hewing to the centrist trend of the second Clinton administration rather than to the now-prevailing populism. I think we can assume that by 2004, the constituency for something like a Ralph Nader left-wing third party would have grown and either Gore would have been a successful president who decisively seized the center of the U.S. political spectrum to establish the Democrats as a dominant force, or else Gore might have been a failure who bled support from both the right (from people looking, for example, for action against Iraq or Iran) and the left (from opponents of the quagmire in Afghanistan and of neoliberal economic policy) paving the way for Jeb Bush to seize the White House. April 20, 2008Forgetting Sarah MarshallI believe we can proclaim this one the "best film directed by the brother of a major blogger." Blogs aside, it's damn funny on its own right. As we now expect from Apatow-circle movies, the gender politics here are kind of problematic, but it certainly didn't stop me from laughting. April 19, 2008The Malthus CoincidencePaul Krugman reiterates: "Malthus was right for the whole of human history until his own time." Now here's my question -- is it a coincidence that Malthus' work appeared just at the time when his conclusions were, for the first time ever, no longer true? Or is the origin of Malthus' level of understanding of the economic system inextricably linked to the fact that the Malthusian era was ending. Welcome to AmericaThe John Adams miniseries got me interested in the early history of these United States, so I asked for some book recommendations. Having gone through Barnard Baillyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Gordon Wood's The Creation of the American Republic, and Don Cook's The Long Fuse I can now happily report that I understand this country perfectly. All are recommended for those interested in the subject, but obviously you won't have time to read any of them because you'll be busy with Heads in the Sand. Guard Your First Born!I've forgotten to wish everyone a happy Passover. And also, of course, a happy first day of the NBA playoffs. Good thing there are no Jewish players I guess. UPDATE: Forgot about Jordan Farmar! April 17, 2008Dirt off Your ShoulderThis business is pretty cool. Somewhere between a dog whistle to the kids and a reverse Sister Souljah. Check out Obama at 2:20: And now Jay-Z: Good stuff, thought I guess rap scold Douthat wouldn't approve. April 16, 2008Original WingmanBen Mathis-Lilly brings us the crucial point that contra Spike TV's current marketing, Chewbacca was not, in fact, the original wingman. Chewie was Han Solo's co-pilot, Wedge Antilles was Luke's wingman. Adaptation"Wildly Popular Iron Man Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film." Sounds like a risky concept. April 15, 2008New HulkJust five years after the Ang Lee Hulk, Hollywood is giving us a new version. Not a sequel, it seems, just another Hulk movie. Considering that the first movie sucked, it's not a bad plan: I like the cast a lot, but I'm missing my "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." Strange IndeedCommenting on John Yoo's tenure at Berkeley, Mark Kleiman remarks: "So, strange as it seems, I’m inclined to think that John Yoo belongs in prison (along with his client) but not to think that in the absence of a conviction he ought to be stripped of tenure." That strikes me as a little too strange. Either Yoo's legal advice to President George W. Bush -- i.e. that he has under the constitution an unlimited right to, for example, order his subordinates to "crush the testicles of a child" -- falls in that category of things reasonable people can agree to disagree about, or else it amounts to participating in the war crimes of the Bush administration. If the former, then he clearly doesn't belong in prison. But if the latter, then how can he teach law students? The proposition, after all, isn't that Yoo is a guy who knows something about the law and then also commits serious crimes. Rather, the proposition at hand is that what Yoo purports to have been legal advice was, as such, a crime. This seems about on a par with keeping Jack the Ripper on your medical faculty teaching people surgical techniques. April 14, 2008Ride the TrainThe idea that people are scolding this woman for letting her nine year-old ride the subway home alone when that's what he wanted to do is absurd. Manhattan is a very safe place and he was taking a route he knew and understood. The city was a substantially more dangerous place back in 1990 when I was nine, so I think I was older by the time I was allowed to roam the streets. Still, this is one of the major advantages of raising children in a city -- your kids can get places on their own! A teenager driving a car is way more likely to get hurt than a nine-year old riding the subway. April 13, 2008No Dance For YouIt seems they're now arresting people for dancing around midnight at the Jefferson Memorial. Offhand, one might think the legal issue here is that the Memorial is supposed to be closed to the public at that hour, but that's not the case, instead it's a vague disorderly conduct charge. April 12, 2008Obama and LincolnGarry Wills has a fascinating essay in The New York Review of Books comparing Barack Obama's race speech to Abraham Lincoln's Cooper Union address. Wills makes the case that though the situation today is of lesser magnitude than the occurrences of 1860, that Obama and Lincoln faced structurally similar challenges of needing to stay true to their promise of change while offering reassurance that they weren't closet radicals. Of course it should be said that for all Lincoln's greatness, he only got 40 percent of the vote in the 1860 general election, so arguably wasn't all that successful in reassuring people about his views. April 9, 2008The Harding DebateD. offers some dissent from recent pro-Harding revisionism in the blogosphere, arguing that there's less than meets the eye about Harding's progressive record on race. I wouldn't, however, quite be so dismissive of Harding's efforts to rollback the Wilson-era crackdown on civil liberties: Most of all, Harding's administration could afford to be less demagogic because (a) the Great War was over, and thus the rationale for anti-civil libertarian wartime measures was reduced; and (b) its support for restrictive immigration laws allowed the party in control of the government to claim that it was taking action to prevent "alien radicals" from entering the country in the first place (and thus making emergency deportations unnecessary). The implication here that Presidents are typically loathe to aggregate power to themselves and their appointees, making the relevant variable whether or not they can "afford to be less demagogic" seems backward to me. Their Next StepAndrew traces another step in the machines' inevitable rise to world domination: A computer capable of telling which women are the attractive ones. In conjunction with their three-dimensional printers, the machines will be able to use this technology to create the sexy spies who ultimately lead to our downfall. April 7, 2008Pow!Via Peter Suderman, an excellent new Dark Knight trailer: Just watch to see someone call a copyright foul. Absolut Counterfactual
It seems Absolut Vodka got in a bit of hot water over this ad, which they ran in Mexico in days when the combination of the information superhighway and worry about immigration to the USA makes it a sensitive subject. Absolut is apologizing when, as Ross says, they really should have just gone bigger and given every country a fantasy map of its own. I'd like to see a United States of North America in which one of our various efforts to conquer Canada succeeded and the stars and stripes now fly all the way to the Arctic Circle. Or Absolut Habsburb in which Charles V's empire stays together. Worst President EverIn a History News Network poll, 61 percent of historians say that George W. Bush has been the worst president ever. It's very hard to know what to make of these kind of questions. How can you possibly try to evaluate someone like, say, Andrew Jackson in contemporary terms? At any rate, it will surprise no one to learn that I think Bush has been a very bad president. More interestingly, I also take the view that Bush is probably correct to think that history will remember him kindly. American presidents associated with big dramatic events tend to wind up with good reputations whether they deserve them or not. One possible Bush analogy would be to Woodrow Wilson, who did all kinds of things with regard to civil liberties that look indefensible today and whose foreign policy ended as a giant failure, but who was associated with both big events and with big ideas that were influential down the road. Someday, I bet there will be democracies in the Middle East and some future Republican president will figure out a way to put meat on the bones of "compassionate conservatism" and Bush will be looked upon as a far-sighted figure who made some mistakes in a difficult period of time. Will he deserve a good reputation? No. Will he get one? I'd say yes. April 6, 2008Charlton HestonCharlton Heston, not a very good actor but in his way a great one, has died. To me, Planet of the Apes is vital, though your mileage may vary. His political trajectory was a little silly, but also in a very fitting way utterly typical of the larger trajectory of American history. His death, we hope, comes at a time when the great backlash of which he was a part is finally receding. Rest in peace. April 5, 2008The Colbert BumpLooks like there's a statistically significant increase in campaign donations associated with a Democratic member of congress appearing on The Colbert Report. Republicans, however, don't accomplish anything by going on the show. No Dementia for MeVia Jacob Levy, I learn that "Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests." Excellent. I drink a lot of coffee. April 4, 2008MLK's RadicalismKai Wright has an excellent piece on the forgotten radicalism of Martin Luther King, Jr. -- always a point worth making in a day and age when conservatives would like you to think they would have been standing right beside King when he marched on Washington. That said, to some extent I think the creation of the King Myth and the displacement of the more authentic radical King is a good thing. A country doesn't get official national hero types without mythologizing and sanitizing them to a large extent, and it's a good thing, at the end of the day, that King has moved into national hero status. That said, check out King preaching on Vietnam: That's some strong medicine. April 3, 2008Heritage
It seems that April is Confederate Heritage month. Why one would want to celebrate a heritage of violent rebellion against a democratically elected government in order to perpetuate a system of chattel slavery is a bit hard for me to say. When I was growing up in New York City, for example, I don't remember any mass campaigns to celebrate the 1863 draft riots as the city's finest hour. The states of the Old Confederacy are hardly unique in that elements of their historical heritage involve discreditable treatment of African-Americans. But they do seem unusual in their insistence on celebrating these historical episodes and in insisting that portraying them in a positive light is integral to a proper understanding of their local identity. Even odder, as best I can tell these days (it was different in the past) most of the folks who like to wave the Confederate flag are perfectly genuine when they get offended that others see them as waving a banner of violent white supremacist ideology. But if that's not the ideology you mean to associate with, then why not drop the flag and adopt some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways? The Revolution Will Not Be TelevisedBut it seems that the Second Coming will be: In order to prepare for the imminent Second Coming—which Robertson believes will occur on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem according to biblical prophecy—he acquired METV (Middle East Television), a station then based in southern Lebanon that could broadcast into Israel. Straub was given marching orders to be ready to televise Christ’s return. CBN executives drew up a detailed plan to broadcast the event to every nation and in all languages. Straub wrote: “We even discussed how Jesus’ radiance might be too bright for the cameras and how we would have to make adjustments for that problem. Can you imagine telling Jesus, ‘Hey, Lord, please tone down your luminosity; we’re having a problem with contrast. You’re causing the picture to flare.’” Good thing that as long as the Republicans are in charge we don't need to worry about any nutty pastors getting political influence. April 2, 2008Small SegaHornets (and, yes, they're for real) center Tyson Chandler talks about, among other things, his disappointment in the Wire finale. He also says that his "Sega was too big to put in a bag" which doesn't jibe at all with my recollection of Sega size. March 30, 2008Musical InterludeI was listening to "Oxford Comma" by Vampire Weekend and I thought of Hillary Clinton's adventures in Tuzla: "Why would you lie about how much coal you have? / Why would you lie about something dumb like that?" Oh well. March 29, 2008Living in SinI'm going to a wedding in Chicago this afternoon -- my first-ever wedding-of-a-friend, in fact. But nevertheless it's good to learn that old fashioned cohabitation isn't problematic after all. March 28, 2008The Thor FactorThis video makes a very important point about American public policy: It would be a mistake to let undue concern about the robot threat blind us to the problem of Norse Gods and other unconventional superheroes. Feminism and Body ImageVia Kay Steiger, "The influence of feminist ascription on judgements of women's physical attractiveness" by Viren Swamia, Natalie Salemb, Adrian Furnhamb and Martin J. Tovéec: The present study examined the effect of feminist ascription on perceptions of the physical attractiveness of women ranging in body mass index (BMI). One-hundred and twenty-nine women who self-identified as feminists and 132 who self-identified as non-feminists rated a series of 10 images of women that varied in BMI from emaciated to obese. Results showed no significant differences between feminist and non-feminists in the figure they considered to be maximally attractive. However, feminists were more likely to positively perceive a wider range of body sizes than non-feminists. These results are discussed in relation to possible protective factors against the internalisation of the thin ideal and body objectification. I suppose that's about what I would have expected -- ideological commitment has a real, but circumscribed, impact on perception. March 27, 2008Knut TroubleMore hilariously over-the-top commentary on Knut the baby polar bear: "Knut the polar bear has turned from a cuddly cub into a publicity-addicted psycho, one of his keepers claimed yesterday . . . Mr Roebke added: 'The trouble is that he identifies himself as a human and not as a polar bear.'" Personally, I strictly identify as a polar bear. The Real ThreatBen Mathis-Lilley warns that recent potboiler novels about the security threat posed by China obscure the real threat from robots. I'm growing increasingly concerned about the nation's complacency on this point. March 26, 2008Operation IvyI was listening to a bit of Energy earlier today and decided I needed to look something up on the Operation Ivy Wikipedia page. What did I discover but this other Operation Ivy Wikipedia page. Apparently the band is named after an actual operation, "the eighth series of American nuclear tests, coming after Tumbler-Snapper and before Upshot-Knothole" taking place in the Pacific Proving Grounds on the Marshall Islands. Two bombs were tested, Mike and King, with Mike holding the distinction of being the world's first hydrogen bomb. And now you know. Hey -- People Put Out New Albums!Inspired by liking Lust, Lust, Lust I'm now listening to other new albums people are recommending. For example, The Kills' Midnight Boom? Good! Yeasayer's All Hour Cymbals? Also good! March 25, 2008Adams's AccentsKirk Ellis, one of John Adams's writers is jumping into TNR's exchange on the series, and provides some insight into the provenance of the accents on display in the series: Steve, you also inquire as to origins of the "hybrid accents" we use in the series. From the beginning, we wanted to emphasize that independence was a battle between British Americans and their brethren in England, not, as so often depicted, a conflict that pitted Crown officers with plumy Oxonian accents against patriots with full-blown American dialects. All our research pointed to the fact that, in written and spoken speech, America was much closer to the mother country than had been acknowledged in past dramatizations. He says they provided capsule biographies of the different characters to the series' dialogue coach to help them come up with something appropriate, sometimes based on the insight "that one's residence in America frequently depended on one's point of origin in England. Virginia, for instance, was largely settled by residents of East Anglia--in terms of dialect and accent a very distinctive region." Ellis' participation in this, along with some other similar examples, does raise some questions about the changing nature of the critical enterprise in the internet era. My sense is that, traditionally, creators have tended to shy away from direct intervention into critical debates about their work. But something about the seemingly informal nature of internet commentary seems to have subverted that rule, so you're seeing much more of this kind of intervention. It has, I think, the potential for a distorting impact on our understanding of things since, at the end of the day, it's really not the creator's role to offer authoritative accounts of what a given work "really" was or is. Lust, Lust, Lust
About a year ago a process that I believe is technically called "getting old and uncool" began to take hold and I fell hopelessly behind the curve on music matters. I kept listening to music but it was, you know, the same music I'd heard before. But for whatever reason I was inspired to download the Raveonettes' Lust, Lust, Lust and it's good. So good, in fact, that perhaps I'll be awakened from my dogmatic slumbers and start paying attention again to what the cool kids are listening to. Because everyone knows the cool kids are always right. March 21, 2008Opportunity CostSpencer Ackerman critiques Top Chef "Bravo is getting way too predictable with the foreshadowing. Ever notice how whenever you see a contestant working out, s/he's like two episodes at most from elimination? Think about it. Cynthia (though she quit). Betty. Tre. Sandee. The only exception I can think of is Elia. You never saw Hung, Harold or Ilan work out." But maybe the best chefs just don't waste time working out. Maybe they're in a constant meditative state running through possible future challenges and what brilliant dishes they'll bang out in response. Chinese Food Trivia
Catherine Andrews asks: Did you know that one of the world’s best Chinese restaurants can be found in Dubai? That General Tso’s chicken was probably invented in New York City? Or that the Chinese characters outside the Hooters in DC’s Chinatown translate to “Owl Restaurant”? I actually knew all of those things, but the online chat with Jennifer 8. Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, that she's introducing with those teasers has even more interesting stuff. For example, "Also amazingly good and unique food (though the Chinese food there is a bit of an acquired taste): Mauritius, island country off the coast of Madagascar, which has a history that produced a cuisine that is a blend of French, Indian, Chinese and island (Curried octopus on French rolls, or adding cheese to the lo mein)." Meanwhile, did you know that the szechuan peppercorn isn't really pepper? Photo by Flickr user Stu Spivack used under a Creative Commons license March 20, 2008Based OnI watched John Adams OnDemand yesterday and it was pretty good stuff, but it raised a question in my mind as to in what sense the series is based on David McCullough's book? McCullough didn't acquire ownership over historical facts (defended the perpetrators of the Boston Massacre! delegate to the constitutional convention!) when he wrote his book, and it's not as if he did stunning new original reporting. March 19, 2008Our Only HopeCommenter low-tech cyclist reminds us that in this brave new world of robotic dogs, we may need to rely on Yoshimi: I'm still under the weather and have been taking my vitamins as well. March 16, 2008The Surge
Whatever you think of the initial decision to form the band, the success of The Surge last night was undeniable and those who can't see it desperately need to remove their ideological blinders. March 15, 2008The SurgeTonight at the Velvet Lounge, Spencer Ackerman's new band The Surge will be offering their debut performance. Doors open at 9:30 PM. Also: 23 Rainy Days, Stalking Horses, and The City Veins. March 14, 2008Must-ReadsEzra Klein wonders what the must-read magazines are. I think this is an unduly touchy subject for someone who works in the magazine industry to take on. I'll just say that excluding publications that anyone I know works for, I like Dwell, Monocle, N+1, and (yes!) ESPN the best. March 13, 2008Rocco SpeaksAs per the post below, I think Rocco would have been open to a chef just making a real pizza: Now, no offense directed at the lovely people of Chicago, but their pizza leaves a lot to be desired. It’s neither thin crust nor thick crust (what we call Sicilian here in NYC), it’s usually comprised of some random combo of ingredients, and it’s heavy as lead. The beautiful, defining characteristic of pizza is that it’s light, crispy, and a foil for wonderful toppings like cheese, sausage, basil, and anchovies. Deep-dish pizza leaves no room on the palate for much else but crust. It sort of pains me to admit it, but I actually think the best pizza may be in New Haven rather than New York, Thursday Pizza Blogging
When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire; and in a similar vein with no further episodes of The Wire you have to blog about Top Chef 4 which debuted last night. Scrutiny tends to focus on the elimination challenges due to the high stakes involved, but let me just say that as a New Yorker I found it painful to watch multiple NYC-based chefs whose names suggested Italian-American origin cooking . . . Chicago-style deep dish pizza. I was hoping that one of them would show some pride and cook, you know, an actual pizza. But they all chose the path of appeasement. And then the judge turned out to be none other than Rocco diSpirito, himself an Italian-American from New York City who ought to know the difference between a pizza (pictured above) and a gooey mess. Photo by Flickr user Skinnydiver used under a Creative Commons license March 12, 2008Awake on My AirplaneSpencer Ackerman takes note of a DOD press release that includes the fact that former Filter bass player Sgt. Frank Cavanagh is an Army reservist scheduled to deploy. "For reasons of patriotism," writes Spencer, "Filter no longer officially blows." I say Filter never blew. Spencer wants to make them out to be nothing more than "Hey Man Nice Shot" but there's also "Take a Picture": I think that's at least "okay" though the video is annoying. March 11, 2008Wire WomenThe weakness of The Wire's portrayal of woman characters, driven most likely by a lack of women on the writing staff, has been widely noted but it's worth being clear on how this gives a distorted view of the entire ghetto. It was a particular failing, I think, in season four which was all about putting the cops-and-robbers stuff in a broader sociological context but also seemed to rely heavily on Demon Mothers rather than real people to drive the plot. March 10, 2008Endless Wire CommentaryIn a special "culture" edition of The Table (also a special Yglesias-free edition), Ross Douthat, Mark Bowden, and Jeffrey Goldberg talk about Season Five of The Wire: A chance to mock someone else's physical appearance for a change. Rapture ReadyI had only managed to read a few pages of my advance copy of Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture before it turned out that my girlfriend, the lovely and talented Sara Mead, had snagged it for myself. Fair enough, I thought, she can have it, but only if she agrees to write a review for my blog! The nefarious plot worked: March 9, 2008Wire FinaleWow. The newspaper plot was still hokie, but in essence all is forgiven and season five delivered in the end. Best show ever. March 8, 2008My MistakeI couldn't tell you why, but at some point years ago I developed the opinion that Kill the Moonlight was overrated and not really an album I liked. In fact, it is an excellent album. That is all. March 7, 2008More Wire StuffI also wrote a Current on the Wire's end. I also understand that the final episode has leaked on the web so some folks have seen it. I haven't. No spoilers, please. UPDATE: Also, I agree with Ross about this: "The Wire's greatest story was the rise and fall of Stringer Bell, and nothing's matched it since." I almost wish the great stuff with the kids had just been part of a separate, excellent television series rather than an additional narrative arc of The Wire. WireTAP 3I discuss Season Five of The Wire with the American Prospect expanded universe. March 5, 2008Fictions and FalshoodsI'm reading Ross talking about another first-person non-fiction narrative that turns out to be B.S. and it's making me think of how a lot of old-school novels involve this pretense to accuracy. Often they'll begin with a narrator telling the "true" story of how he heard the story that makes up the heart of the plot. Or else the manuscript will be discovered somewhere. For reasons that I'm sure are well known to people who were paying more attention in lecture, early audiences seem to have been incapable of digesting something like "this is a story I made up because I thought you would get something out of reading it -- enjoy!" Instead, prose had to be true. Meanwhile, contemporary fiction is pretty sharply bifurcated between crappy "genre" fiction and literary fiction that often seems very artsy-fartsy. For a well-crafted but basically straightforward story of people doing things and interacting with each other in a moderately realistic way, you need to turn to narrative non-fiction. You can tell people you've just been reading Bill Buford's Heat and hold your head high in sophisticated circles, it's not like copping to owning Tom Clancy's Op-Center: State of Siege. But if you sold the story as fiction, I think it would be deemed inadequately literary. And yet the facticity of the narrative has nothing to do with anything. Do I actually care if Buford really sliced his finger dicing carrots that one time? Or if Dario the butcher really yelled at some restaurant owner in some other Tuscan town? To me it seems basically irrelevant. The verisimilitude of a lot of the mise en scène really is integral to the book's appeal, but the same could be said about Moby Dick and any number of other straightforwardly fictional works. The literal accuracy of the whole thing, by contrast, contributes very little to the actual work. What it does instead is alter the marketing possibilities and likely critical approaches, opening up space for a certain kind of narrative to be taken seriously. Which isn't to say that people should lie in their memoirs, but maybe there's something to be learned from the fact that there's such an appetite for made-up stories of a certain kind. March 2, 2008Clause of the DayJonathan Kulick, "The National Review of hardcore zines, Maximum Rock’n’Roll, ... ." Brilliant. March 1, 2008The NinetiesI saw the amusing Definitely, Maybe last night and was eager to proclaim it our world's first nineties period film. Obviously, we have a lot of movies set in the nineties, but I thought this was the first movie made in a distinctly post-nineties time about the nineties. This morning, though, I'm remembering Primary Colors as an earlier example. Are there others? Any that don't involve Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign? I can't remember if the film version of About a Boy follow the book in using Kurt Cobain's death as a plot point? February 29, 2008The Dated John Rawls
Yesterday, Tyler Cowen asked "Which 20th century classic of American conservative political thought has held up best?" Ezra Klein decided to turn it around on the liberals, noting that "Rawls would seem an obvious contender, as would Susan Moller Okin." As it happens, I finished Samuel Freedman's excellent newish book Rawls -- an extended explication of the man's body of work -- recently and among other things it served to me as a reminder of how dated A Theory of Justice seems some respects. Now don't get me wrong, I think it "holds up" perfectly well in the sense of continuing to be a vital work of political philosophy. But in another sense of "holding up" it has pretty little to say about our contemporary political debates. The main antagonist of Rawls' egalitarian liberalism is, in the book, some form of utilitarianism which just isn't at all the structure of our political arguments at all. That's not really a failing on Rawls' part as his project is his project, and not some other thing, but it is a noteworthy aspect of the situation. Okin's Justice, Gender, and the Family by contrast seems to me to have a much more clear and direct relevance to things people argue about today. The premise that women and men deserve political and social equality is something few people would disagree with these days, but Okin shows that some surprisingly radical conclusions about the status quo can follow from that in a way that's relevant in some obvious ways to arguments that you see in the cut-and-thrust of contemporary practical political debates. Rawls has created something vastly more theoretically ambitious, but in part in virtue of that ambition it's much less clear what the actual implications are. Arguments about what sorts of policies do or do not maximize the well-being of the worst-off turn out to be extremely controversial in ways that make it extremely difficult to say what a Rawlsian take on this or that would be. Talking to David SimonThe Wire's creator was in DC earlier this week and did some press and events, prompting reports from Kay Steiger and Peter Bryce. At this point, I'm just eager to see how things end . . . I've found substantial elements of season five to be disappointing, but there are substantial elements of brilliance and it is quite possible that the end will wind up vindicating much of what I've thus far found unsatisfactory. |
