New Yorker :: The Anti-Anti-Americans
Article

> When the country and its joys can be shut down by part-
> time trombonists, however, something is wrong, or at least
> ridiculous.

As any right-thinking American knows, this is a job properly left to full-time
Pentecostals.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 9:00 AM

New Yorker :: Pox Populi
Article

> Meanwhile, even as California voters have insisted on keeping
> property taxes low, they have made ever-increasing demands
> on the state budget... Last November, with California already
> facing a twenty-billion-dollar shortfall, voters approved
> measures to fund various housing programs, float a series of
> clean-water bonds, and increase spending on after-school
> programs. This last initiative, Proposition 49, necessitated
> some five hundred million dollars a year in new expenditures
> while providing no new revenues to pay for them. The
> campaign for Proposition 49 was led and, in part, financed
> by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It makes sense that only a New Yorker would be capable of any perspective on the current state of California politics.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 4:43 PM

Onion :: Horrified Teen Stumbles Upon Divorced Mom's Personal Ad
Article

> According to psychiatrist Ann Cohen, author of Post-Divorce,
> Pre-Death, an event like Tuesday's discovery can shake a
> teenager's entire sexual worldview.

I'll have to remember to tack that on the summer reading list.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 9:34 PM

New York Times :: Big Board Chief Will Get a $140 Million Package
Article

> This is a phenomenal unrisked return for the head of a
> quasipublic organization," said Charles M. Elson, chairman
> of the corporate governance program at the University of
> Delaware. "It's really a staggering sum because it's cash
> that was never at risk. It's mind boggling, more of an
> entrepreneur's fortune, and may well be more than the
> earnings of some of the companies that trade on the
> exchange."

Another executive compensation success story. It's not about performance. It's about friends taking care of friends. And we'd all get a better deal if these positions were put out to bid among the executive class. Kinda like political offices.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 9:25 PM

New York Times :: Fighting 'The Big One'
Article

> You'd think from listening to America's European and
> Arab critics that we'd upset some bucolic native culture
> and natural harmony in Iraq, as if the Baath Party were
> some colorful local tribe out of National Geographic. Alas,
> our opponents in Iraq, and their fellow travelers, know
> otherwise. They know they represent various forms of
> clan and gang rule, and various forms of religious and
> secular totalitarianism — from Talibanism to Baathism.
> And they know that they need external enemies to
> thrive and justify imposing their demented visions.

Friedman, the sensible hawk.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 10:19 AM

New York Times :: Conan the Deceiver
Article

> What is true is that California's taxes are highly
> inequitable: thanks to Proposition 13, some people
> pay ridiculously low property taxes. Warren Buffett,
> supposedly acting as Mr. Schwarzenegger's economic
> adviser, offered the perfect example: he pays $14,401
> in property taxes on his $500,000 home in Omaha,
> but only $2,264 on his $4 million home in Orange
> County. But the candidate quickly made it clear that
> Mr. Buffett should stick to the script and not
> mention inconvenient facts.

Arnold takes us to a whole new level of demagoguery. Feel the burn.

Meanwhile, don't miss the Onion's "Focus on the 87 Front Runners":

The best part is Bill Simon is't even listed among them.

posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 2:02 PM

MIT Technology Review :: Kill the Operating System!
Article

> It wouldn’t take much to enable today’s computers to
> store every version of every document they have ever
> been used to modify: most people perform fewer than
> a million keystrokes and mouse clicks each day; a paltry
> four gigabytes could hold a decade’s worth of typing
> and revisions if we stored those keystrokes directly,
> rather than using the inefficient Microsoft Word
> document format. Alas, the convenient abstractions of
> directories and files make it difficult for designers to
> create something different.

I've heard the point made before, but Garfinkel's column is the first time it's been explained to my full appreciation. Excellent metonymical per-unit illustration. I guess the Internet provides the obvious paradigm.

See also this interesting piece on retro-coders.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 12:56 PM

New York Times :: An Industry Trapped by a Theory
Article

> Electricity can't be stored in large quantities, and the
> system needs a lot of spare generating and transmission
> capacity for periods of peak demand like hot days in
> August. The power system also requires a great deal of
> planning and coordination, and it needs incentives for
> somebody to maintain and upgrade transmission lines.
>
> Deregulation has failed on all these grounds. Yet it has
> few critics. Evidently, even calamities like the Enron
> scandal and now the most serious blackout in American
> history are not enough to shake faith in the theory.


New York Times :: The Road to Ruin
Article

> Incidentally, there seems to be a weird reluctance to face up to
> what happened in California. Since the blackout, I've seen national
> news reports attributing California's woes in part to environmental
> restrictions, while ignoring the role of market manipulation. Huh?
> There's no evidence that environmental restrictions played any
> role; meanwhile, even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
> which strongly backs deregulation, has concluded that market
> manipulation played a major role. What's with the revisionist
> history?

A couple recent New York Times op-ed pieces addressing the blackout and its fallout. Although Gov. Davis continues to be hammered over his handling of the California energy crisis, I still have not heard an explanation of what he did wrong, or how he might have handled it differently -- likely because he handled it as best it could be handled. None of the major replacement candidates has been forthcoming on how he or she would have solved the problem. (Have they been forthcoming with anything other than half-assed cliches?)
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 8:29 AM

New Yorker :: Leave No Parent Behind
Article

> The Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and her daughter
> Amelia Warren Tyagi demonstrate, in their forthcoming book “The
> Two-Income Trap,” that having a child is now the best indicator
> of whether someone will end up in “financial collapse.” Married
> couples with children are twice as likely as childless couples to file
> for bankruptcy. They’re seventy-five per cent more likely to be
> late paying their bills. And they’re also far more likely to face
> foreclosure on their homes. Most of these people are not, by the
> usual standards, poor. They’re middle-class couples who are in
> deep financial trouble in large part because they have kids.


And yet, paradoxically, where would our economy be right now without tweens?
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 12:45 AM

uk.gay.com :: Gay People the "Pinnacle of Evolution", Study Says
Article

> Bromhall claims that infantilism is rejected by straight people
> as they age -- and that by remaining in same-sex relationships,
> gay men and women are actually displaying superiority over
> their peers.
>
> "We've known for years that homosexuality is linked to a
> playful, creative character," he said.
>
> "Homosexuals excel as artists, thespians and other playful,
> mimetic professions. Being playful is at the heart of being human.
> It's something that should be celebrated. You could say that
> homosexuals are at the pinnacle of human evolution."

This article was among the Yahoo! most emailed for a while last week. Lacanian nonsense. Homosexuality doesn't mark the pinnacle of evolution, just another functional niche among many. Here it seems to involve a counter-reproductive variation (or multiple variations) in the sexual development of some organisms preserved matrilineally (as it would have to be, at least for men.) See the "Chromosomes X and Y : Conflict" chapter in Matt Ridley's book Genome for a succinct and informed overview of the issue. It is also almost certainly the case that the developmental mechanisms related to sexuality and their evolutionary development differ between gay men and lesbian women.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 7:53 AM

The New York Times :: Believe It, or Not
Article

> Today marks the Roman Catholics' Feast of the Assumption,
> honoring the moment that they believe God brought the
> Virgin Mary into Heaven. So here's a fact appropriate for
> the day: Americans are three times as likely to believe in
> the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28
> percent).

Actually, yesterday (when this Nicholas Kristof column was printed) marked the Feast of the Assumption. I'm impressed that 28% of Americans believe in evolution -- that's about twice as much as I would have guessed.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 7:36 AM

Slate :: Teen Hooker Hysteria: Newsweek's Bogus Trendspotting
Article

> "Potentially good sex is a small price to pay for the freedom
> to spend money on what I want," Stacey tells Newsweek. "The
> easiest way, she discovered, was to offer her body in trade,"
> writes Newsweek reporter Suzanne Smalley.

Jack Shafer concedes there may be something to the teen prostitution issue. It's not hard to speculate on a rationale. Given the sexual liberalization of the American media (in popular movies and music and especially online), the positive reinforcement of their peers (especially male ones), and the absence of the kind of training in subtlety, courtesy, and taste that a stronger educational system would provide, are young women increasingly just making explicit a trade-off that's always been in play? (Substitute "Christian moral values" for "a stronger educational system" in the last sentence, and I could be William J. Bennett -- well, except that I'm not sure teen prostitution is unequivocally bad -- though, admittedly, the conditions in which it might be constructive are impossible to create.) Shafer, however, lucidly points up the contradictions and misleading vagaries of the Newsweek article. An exemplary demonstration of everyday critical textual analysis and healthy skepticism that doesn't require especially specialized or arcane knowledge. Still, probably more general education by better qualified teachers than most Americans receive today. (An excellent cartoon accompanies the article.)
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 8:51 AM

The New York Times :: The Perils of Cutbacks in Higher Education
Article

> More than seven million students are enrolled as under-
> graduates in four-year colleges and universities in the United
> States, and nearly 70 percent of them attend public institutions,
> which depend on taxpayer money doled out by legislatures for
> the majority of their funds. The percentages are similar for the
> 1.8 million graduate students; 60 percent attend public
> universities.
>
> The combination makes public higher education a pillar of the
> nation's competitive advantage. That is as it should be. How
> else can bright young people from lower-income families afford
> a first-rate education? Tuition is usually too high for them at
> private colleges, and now it is shooting up at the state schools
> as they struggle to get by with smaller subsidies in a weak
> economy.

Undercutting the nation's competitive advantage, but by insuring another generation of provincial conservatives, extending the Republican party's.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 12:14 PM

New Yorker :: Love's Labor
Article

> The hero of Kipnis’s story is adultery. Conducting an adulterous
> affair amounts to a courageous insurrection against an
> inhuman social order. “Adultery is the sit-down strike of the
> love-takes-work ethic,” she says; it is, in fact, the “anarcho-
> syndicalism of private life.” And she has the revolutionary’s
> disdain for ameliorist measures.

It is a view of social progress that would necessarily benefit by the ready availability of nannies, or someone to look after the kids while the adults carried on their revolution. Young, twenty-something nannies, however (as opposed to grandparents), would offer the additional advantage of also serving as excellent adulterous fodder for the enlightened father-husband or (more utopiaic still) mother-wife.

[Note : click here for favorite cartoon from this issue of New Yorker]
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 7:35 PM

Reuters :: Researchers Compile 'Atlas' of the Brain
Article

> The project is comprised of high-definition structural maps of
> individual brains based on age, race, gender, educational back-
> ground, genetic composition and other distinguishing characteristics.
> Layered over the anatomical maps are animations of brain functions
> such as memory, emotion, language and speech. Users can look at
> individual brain pictures, composite pictures of subgroups by, for
> example, age or gender or as a composite of all 7,000 participants.

Online here : http://www.loni.ucla.edu/ICBM
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 9:49 AM

Space.com :: New Theory of Time Rattles Halls of Science
Article

> Another referee of Lynds' paper, also quoted in the press release,
> took a dim view.
>
> "I have only read the first two sections as it is clear that the
> author's arguments are based on profound ignorance or mis-
> understanding of basic analysis and calculus," said the referee,
> who was not named.
>
> The naysaying referee was overruled and the paper was published.
> The journal, however, is one that some researchers view as a
> publication for lesser papers that do not merit appearing in the most
> prestigious scientific journals.

Science has its doctrinaires and dogmatics, too. Still, although my arguments are based on an even more profound ignorance and misunderstanding of basic analysis and calculus, it does seem improbable that an explanation of time that expressed itself in the common terms of the human mind (especially language), however interesting it may be in a classical philosophical sense, would be sufficent as a scientific model. What interesting predictions follow from this new view? That said, I have not looked up the paper.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 9:38 AM

Slate :: The Om Factor
Article

> What is architectural modesty, exactly? Well, it can simply be a
> rhetorical reaction to oversized, over-exuberant architecture:
> a spare symbolism of quietude and restraint. More specifically,
> it has to do with the careful arrangement of forms—often using
> muted or transparent materials like glass or a restricted palette
> of colors—to produce a building commensurate with daily life
> instead of bigger than it.

A good philosophy for one's foreign policy, too. What a shame that Bush's $2 trillion ($3 trillion?) tax-cut (and now the out-of-control costs of unilateralist war on Iraq) couldn't have been dedicated to commissioning more small-scale buildings like these in America's neediest (and not-so-neediest) communities. I guess some of the give-back will trickle down in the form of philanthropic endowments. But there's no reason why the state cannot be philanthropic and a sponsor of modesty and style, too. (Except perhaps that it's elected by Americans.)
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 8:44 AM

Scientific American :: The Truth and the Hype of Hypnosis
Article

> During hypnosis, it is as though the brain temporarily suspends
> its attempts to authenticate incoming sensory information.
> Some people are more hypnotizable than others, although
> scientists still don't know why.

I was thinking about this very subject not too long ago. Why would staring at a swinging pocketwatch elicit this particular response? I couldn't quite conceive how leaving oneself completely susceptible to the influence of others would be adapative -- at least, in this absurdly specific way. I googled hypnosis, but the only site I found on the first page of results that wasn't selling hypnosis-related services or merchandise was howstuffworks.com. Their explanation conformed to most my suppositions on the subject -- they make it out to be a more or less advanced form of zoning out. Probably another one of those unintended consequences of an overclocked brain.

Still, I wonder how deeply the studies mentioned in this article examined the influence of social perceptions -- and social distinctions -- in hypnosis. I'd be surprised to discover that most middle-class Americans aren't more readily hypnotized by anyone with a deep voice and commanding manner than by a real expert who dressed as a migrant worker and had a squeaky, uncertain voice. (I suppose most of us are willing to reveal or do many things for Dr. Phil that we wouldn't for Mr. Phil.) I'd also be curious to know how the hypnosis figures break down along gender lines. I'd be surprised again to discover that, on average, hypnotic states are not more easily induced by men (trained hypnotists or not) than women. And I'd be shocked if professional male hypnotists did not vastly outnumber women.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 6:31 PM

NY Times :: Japan's Neglected Resource: Female Workers
Article

> But it often seems that the Japanese would rather let their
> economy stagnate than send their women up the corporate
> ladder. Resistance to expanding women's professional roles
> remains high in a country where the economic status of women
> trails far behind that of women in other advanced economies.

Working for the Man in Japan. A tale of wronged female Japanese professionals forwarded by a wronged male American friend living in Japan.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 8:04 AM

AFP :: It's not your party, but we'll come if we want to
Article

> "It's a spectacle for spectacle's sake -- which is silly, but is also,
> as I've discovered somewhat to my surprise, genuinely trans-
> gressive, which is part of its appeal, I think," says Bill.

This story brought tears of joy to my eyes. What a beautifully ridiculous idea. Of course, sparrows have been doing it for years.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 8:29 AM

UC Berkeley News :: Researchers help define what makes a political conservative
Article

> The researchers said that conservative ideologies, like virtually
> all belief systems, develop in part because they satisfy some
> psychological needs, but that "does not mean that conservatism
> is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false,
> irrational, or unprincipled."

Far from pathological, it offers neuroscientists a baseline for defining normative social cognition.
posted by Tomohiro Idokoro @ 7:51 PM