Being, Philosophy
In Being, Philosophy on May 31, 2009 at 1:00 am
Globalization is leading to more belief, not less. Caspar Melville talks to the editor of The Economist about his new book tracing the rise and rise of religion. The book considers the United States as it is both the most modern and one of the most religious countries in the world. The United States provides solid evidence of how religions can provide a commendable array of social services in the absence of an effective welfare state. But it is also a perfect example of how religion can be kept separate from the state. If we could all become more like America, the book argues, we could all get along famously. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Economics, Politics
In Economics, Politics on May 30, 2009 at 1:00 am
The epicenters of that “Reagan Democrat” revolt are now the areas that are hardest hit by the present depression: California, the Upper Midwest, and the Sunbelt South. This is not an accident. The only places that are doing well in the Republican universe are those strongly associated with mining, plus Republican metro centers such as Phoenix and Salt Lake City, which are the recipients of the labor draining from the rest of the Republican heartland. It was, of course, doomed to failure; since none of these people made anything that could be exported; or if they did, it came at the costs of increased imports that counter-balanced them. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Culture, Technology
In Culture, Technology on May 29, 2009 at 1:00 am
A Wall Street Journal piece by Carl Bialik, and his related blog post, examine how the mania for lists amplifies behavior — and not necessarily for the better. Reporting on a study by the Princeton sociologist Matthew Salganik: Deducing merit from popularity “can lead to self-reinforcing snowballs of popularity, which can become decoupled from the underlying reality. These snowballs can grow much larger than their competitors, leading to winner-take-all markets.” The funny thing is that in today’s society, it doesn’t matter so much if the most-deserving entrant wins, whether it’s Britney Spears ruling pop, or a gossip item leading a list of most-read articles. What matters is that everyone sees the same thing and not what the thing is. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To read blog post, click here.>>>
Politics
In Politics on May 28, 2009 at 1:00 am
If you like the way President Goodwrench is running the automobile industry and the way Congress gave out millions in staff bonuses last year while lambasting Wall Street, you’ll love what their supporters are up to right now: ditching the Electoral College. That not-large-but-highly-vocal cohort of people who can never forgive George W. Bush for being president has hatched the idea of turning the entire nation blue by making the Electoral College irrelevant — and they are making headway. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Literature, Opinion
In Literature, Opinion on May 27, 2009 at 1:00 am
Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic society, speaking truth to power, and comforting the afflicted. Actually, journalists deserve low pay. Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren’t creating much value these days. Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Culture
In Culture on May 26, 2009 at 1:00 am
This is not to say such diversity training, and infinite variations thereof, don’t still transpire constantly. They do. American business, always keen to adopt suspect managerial fads and enforce them with ruthless repetitiveness, still spends $200-300 million a year on it. Ninety percent of Fortune 500 companies have had diversity training, even though studies have shown it doesn’t work as advertised. The only sort of diversity that isn’t much championed is diversity of thought, as there’s little room for those who think it’s a waste of time to overemphasize diversity in transacting business. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Being, Life, Science
In Being, Life, Science on May 25, 2009 at 1:00 am
I think I love my wife. At least most of the time. (Not counting when she makes me go see Henry Jaglom movies.) But what does that mean — I love my wife? And how does my love stack up against other husbands’? For the first time in the history of human mating, scientists may have found a way to pin down this most ethereal of emotions. We’re on the verge of dissecting this butterfly. <<<To read full article, click here.>>>
Culture, Life
In Culture, Life on May 24, 2009 at 1:00 am
You can’t fail to notice when flicking through the first 12 advertising campaigns of the May issue of US Vogue that they feature nothing but platinum-haired, blue-eyed goddesses. It’s a similar story on the pages of Grazia, British Elle and French Vogue. In the past few months, model agencies such as Premier and Storm have observed a significant increase in requests for blonde-haired, blue-eyed models, something they putdown to a fragile economy and grim financial climate. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Politics
In Politics on May 23, 2009 at 1:00 am
The torture memos released by the White House elicited shock, indignation, and surprise. The shock and indignation are understandable. The surprise, less so. For one thing, even without inquiry, it was reasonable to suppose that Guantanamo was a torture chamber. Why else send prisoners where they would be beyond the reach of the law — a place, incidentally, that Washington is using in violation of a treaty forced on Cuba at the point of a gun? Security reasons were, of course, alleged, but they remain hard to take seriously. The same expectations held for the Bush administration’s “black sites,” or secret prisons, and for extraordinary rendition, and they were fulfilled. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Science
In Science on May 22, 2009 at 1:00 am
In the late nineteen-sixties, Carolyn Weisz, a four-year-old with long brown hair, was invited into a “game room” at the Bing Nursery School, on the campus of Stanford University. The room was little more than a large closet, containing a desk and a chair. Carolyn was asked to sit down in the chair and pick a treat from a tray of marshmallows, cookies, and pretzel sticks. Carolyn chose the marshmallow. Although she’s now forty-four, Carolyn still has a weakness for those air-puffed balls of corn syrup and gelatine. “I know I shouldn’t like them,” she says. “But they’re just so delicious!” A researcher then made Carolyn an offer: she could either eat one marshmallow right away or, if she was willing to wait while he stepped out for a few minutes, she could have two marshmallows when he returned. He said that if she rang a bell on the desk while he was away he would come running back, and she could eat one marshmallow but would forfeit the second. Then he left the room. “The science of self-control” is fascinating and offers numerous practical applications. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Literature
In Culture, Literature on May 21, 2009 at 1:00 am
When Matthew Crawford finished his doctorate in political philosophy at the University of Chicago, he took a job at a Washington think tank. He quit after five months and started doing motorcycle repair in a decaying factory in Richmond, Va. In his new book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work, Crawford asks us to look around in the field of which we toil, be it advertising, finance, or consulting. Who really gets to face new problems and make decisions based on their knowledge and instincts, and who is just another clerk, following instructions? <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Economics
In Economics on May 20, 2009 at 1:00 am
The television cartoon South Park offers a useful allegory for the administration’s flight from realism. In one episode the children’s teacher, Mr Garrison, gets a sex change, little Kyle gets negroplasty (to turn him into a tall black basketball star), while Kyle’s father undergoes dolphinplasty, that is, surgery to make him look like a dolphin. Looking like a dolphin, of course, doesn’t make you one. Sadly, the Barack Obama administration hasn’t figured this out. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Being, Culture
In Being, Culture on May 19, 2009 at 1:00 am
Today’s prevailing social consensus about pornography is practically identical to the social consensus about tobacco in 1963: i.e., it is characterized by widespread tolerance, tinged with resignation about the notion that things could ever be otherwise. After all, many people reason, pornography’s not going to go away any time soon. Serious people, including experts, either endorse its use or deny its harms or both. Also, it is widely seen as cool, especially among younger people, and this coveted social status further reduces the already low incentive for making a public issue of it. In addition, many people also say that consumers have a “right” to pornography — possibly even a constitutional right. No wonder so many are laissez-faire about this substance. Given the social and political circumstances arrayed in its favor, what would be the point of objecting? <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Being
In Being on May 18, 2009 at 1:00 am
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Life
In Culture, Life on May 17, 2009 at 1:00 am
Here is an anniversary which makes some of us feel old. It is 30 years - yes 30 years! - since the appearance of the first Sony Walkman. It is 30 years since we first got on a bus or a train and heard that infuriating tsst, tsst, tsst, tsst noise emanating from a wired-up earhole just behind us, 30 years since one section of the population became literally deaf to the existence of the other half. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Economics, Life
In Culture, Economics, Life on May 16, 2009 at 1:00 am
Ellen Moncure and Joe Wong first met in school and then fell in love while living in the same dorm at the College of William and Mary. After graduation, they got married and, in 1999, moved to Washington, D.C., where they worked amid a large community of single and childless people. Like many in their late 20s, the couple began to seek something other than exciting careers and late-night outings with friends. “D.C. was terrific,” Moncure recalled over lunch near her office in lower Manhattan. It was an extension of college. But after a while, you want to get to a different ‘place.’” The ‘place’ Ellen and Joe looked for was not just a physical location but something less tangible: a sense of community and a neighborhood to raise their hoped-for children. Although they considered suburban locations, as most families do, ultimately they chose the Ditmas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Joe had grown up. It seems that recently everyone has been talking about how young families are staying in the cities and revitalizing the city’s neighborhoods. The truth of migration patters tells another story. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture
In Culture on May 15, 2009 at 1:00 am
Should stewardesses flying to Saudi Arabia be required to wear head-to-toe coverings and walk behind men? One airline thinks so. British Midland Airways is going to absurd and insulting lengths to patronize backward habits of the Middle East by forcing its female flight attendants to dress and behave in a stereotype of subservient Saudi women. When flight attendant Lisa Ashton stood up to the policy, she was fired. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Economics, Politics
In Economics, Politics on May 14, 2009 at 1:00 am
As Franklin Roosevelt understood, Americans will postpone immediate gratification and endure hard sacrifices–if they must–so long as they are convinced the future can be better than the past. But we face a far more difficult problem at our moment in history. What do you promise people who have been told they can have anything they want, who are repeatedly congratulated for living in the best of all possible circumstances? How do you tell them “the good times,” as we have known them, are not coming back? Americans need a new vision that helps them deal with reality, a promising story of the future that helps them let go of the past. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Life, Literature
In Life, Literature on May 13, 2009 at 1:00 am
Alive! The word pops into my head as we enter Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo Airport. Ironic really, isn’t it, for a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world? Yet I feel it. Sense it. Am reminded of a friend who says he comes alive every time he returns – feels boring, bland and disconnected for weeks in his new country, Australia every time he goes back. With the recent elections having taken place in South Africa, it is time to examine this country I call home. <<<To read full article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture
In Culture, Technology on May 12, 2009 at 1:00 am
The idea that people deserve a second chance is an important American value. Perhaps it grows out of our history, in which those who got into trouble in Europe (whether it was their fault or not) moved to the United States to start a new life. And as the American West was settled, many easterners and midwesterners found a place there for a second beginning. More profoundly, the belief in a new beginning is a tenet of Christianity, which allows sinners to repent and be fully redeemed, to be reborn. In a similar vein, the secular, progressive, optimistic, therapeutic culture of today’s America rejects the notion that there are inherently bad people. As individuals, we seek insights into our failings so we can learn to overcome them and achieve a new start. From a sociological perspective, people are thrown off course by their social conditions—because they are poor, for instance, and subject to discrimination. But these conditions can be altered, and then these people will be able to lead good lives. Under the right conditions, criminals can pay their debt to society and be rehabilitated, sex offenders can be reformed, and others who have flunked out can pass another test. Just give them a second chance. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Gossip, Life
In Culture, Gossip, Life on May 11, 2009 at 1:00 am
Actress Kate Winslet last week denied her middle-class roots by insisting she came from an impoverished, working-class background. Here, in the second of a series of essays on Britishness, the editor of GQ magazine, Dylan Jones, says enough is enough – and that it’s time to take pride in the middle-class values that have shaped Britain and the world in which we live. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Ideas, Politics
In Ideas, Politics on May 10, 2009 at 1:00 am
People and ideas influence events, but geography largely determines them, now more than ever. To understand the coming struggles, it’s time to dust off the Victorian thinkers who knew the physical world best. Geographical determinists must be seated at the same honored table as liberal humanists, thereby merging the analogies of Vietnam and Munich. Embracing the dictates and limitations of geography will be especially hard for Americans, who like to think that no constraint, natural or otherwise, applies to them. But denying the facts of geography only invites disasters that, in turn, make us victims of geography. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Life
In Culture, Life on May 9, 2009 at 1:00 am
Yes, Starbucks has come to Warsaw at last. The brand might be out of fashion in the States; the company might be losing money. Its shares might be worth a third of what they were at their peak in 2006; it might have diluted its once-exclusive image through massive overexpansion. (After drinking the watery brew served by a sullen barista in a Starbucks at the Salt Lake City airport recently, I mentally cheered the chain’s decision to shut down 600 U.S. shops.) But here in Central Europe, the arrival of Starbucks has been greeted with undiluted enthusiasm — so much enthusiasm, in fact, that the phenomenon seems to require further explanation. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Economics
In Culture, Economics on May 8, 2009 at 1:00 am
Because Americans have turned a blind eye onto their democracy, groupthink and the erosion of individual responsibility could cause America to fail. It is amazing that American society accepted the incredible assumptions of economic gurus such as Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin that unregulated financial markets would naturally deliver economic growth and serve the public good. The goal of these financial professionals was always to enhance their personal wealth, not to serve the public interest. So why was Greenspan’s nonsense accepted by American society? The simple and amazing answer is that most Americans assumed that their country has a rich and vibrant “marketplace of ideas” in which all ideas are challenged. Certainly, America has the freest media in the world. No subject is taboo. No sacred cow is immune from criticism. But the paradox here is that the belief that American society allows every idea to be challenged has led Americans to assume that every idea is challenged. They have failed to notice when their minds have been enveloped in groupthink. Again, failure occurs when you do not conceive of failure. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Life
In Culture, Life on May 7, 2009 at 1:00 am
A young man I’ll call Alex recently graduated from Harvard. As a history major, Alex wrote about a dozen papers a semester. He also ran a student organization, for which he often worked more than forty hours a week; when he wasn’t on the job, he had classes. Weeknights were devoted to all the schoolwork that he couldn’t finish during the day, and weekend nights were spent drinking with friends and going to dance parties. “Trite as it sounds,” he told me, it seemed important to “maybe appreciate my own youth.” Since, in essence, this life was impossible, Alex began taking Adderall to make it possible. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Politics
In Culture, Politics on May 6, 2009 at 1:00 am
This is an exhilarating time for proponents of freedom and individual opportunity. The last several years have brought malaise, in which the “conservative” politicians in power paid little more than lip service to free enterprise. Today, as in the late 1970s, we have an administration, Congress and media-academic complex openly working to change American culture in ways that most mainstream Americans will not like. Like the Carter era, this adversity offers the first opportunity in years for true cultural renewal. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Economics
In Economics on May 5, 2009 at 1:00 am
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time. <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Culture, Literature
In Culture, Literature on May 4, 2009 at 1:00 am
Exclamation marks – those forms of punctuation derided by the funless and fastidious – are making a comeback, thanks to an internet renaissance that is bleeding over into every form of written communication. Once it was bad form to end a paragraph with an exclamation mark. Now it’s borderline obligatory. Once it was enough to put a sign on your door: “Back in five minutes.” Now, without the flourish of an exclamation mark, that sign lacks verve or at least zeitgeisty voguishness. Go figure! What is it about email that makes people so excited? <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Politics
In Opinion, Politics on May 3, 2009 at 1:00 am
Have you ever found yourself in the position of asking, on your own behalf or on behalf of others, how many or precisely which people it would be useful to kill in order to secure a benefit for yourself or your cause? And just how to do it? No? Others have. Their answers have ranged from Cain’s original “Abel, with my bare hands” to Hitler’s “all the Jews, mainly by gas,” and the widespread Hutu view in the Rwanda of 1994, “the Tutsis, with machetes.” The question burns today for the government of Sudan and in the Congo. Right now, would-be genocidaires are out there thinking about whom to kill, how many, how to do it, and whether they will get away with it. Will you let them? <<<To read this article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Literature, Politics
In Literature, Politics on May 2, 2009 at 1:00 am
If black firefighters in New Haven can’t make a decent showing on for a test that’s required for promotion, then the question is how we can help them do better, right? It should be. But in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, the idea is that the test is inherently “biased” against black people because black people haven’t been doing well on it. The claim that such tests are biased is heard regularly–for example, one quick way to set heads black and white nodding at a forum on education is to toss off that the SAT is “racially biased.” However, the notion of bias here is a peculiar kind of sidestep: If black people tend not to do well on a test, then we are to pretend that regardless of any evidence in the test itself, it must be unfair in some way, because otherwise, why wouldn’t black people do as well on it as others? <<<To read article, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
Life, Politics
In Life, Politics on May 1, 2009 at 1:00 am
The Jerusalem Post wrote a two piece series on what Israelis and Palestinians teach their young. Part I discusses some of the problematic issues in textbooks and curriculum including those dealing with history as “there is little or no chance that Israelis and Palestinians will share the same understandings and interpretation of the history of the land and the conflict of its people.” Part II discusses who will stand up to the challenge of teaching peace. Both peoples have struggled for their freedom and liberation. Students therefore know that their history is an essential element of collection nation building and in defining their identity. However, as education is a powerful agent of change and socialization into society’s values, it sometimes also acts as a transmitter of conflict-producing and conflict-sustaining myths. How then will a systematic educational approach be created that teaches conflict-solving values and skills and brings together Israeli and Palestinian teachers and students, on equal footing, to encourage discussion, and empower both sides at the same time? <<<To read Part I of the series, click here.>>> | <<<To read Part II of the series, click here.>>> | <<<To comment on article, click here.>>>
