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- Slate V: Dear Prudence: Managing Multiple Girlfriends
A guy who's dating more than one woman at once seeks counsel from Slate's advice columnist, Prudence. - What Viktor Yanukovych's election victory means for Ukraine.
Every revolution sparks a counterrevolution. The French Revolution in 1789 was followed by Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy. Following the Russian Revolution, the czar's forces regrouped and fought a bloody civil war.[more ...]
Ukraine - Viktor Yanukovych - French Revolution - Civil war - Orange Revolution
- Eight ways to fix the Senate—and why they won't happen.
Calls for Senate reform peaked over the weekend after Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., put a "blanket hold" on more than 70 Obama nominees, not out of principled opposition, but because two projects in his home state of Alabama weren't getting enough attention.[more ...]
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- How many ways can you bow in Japan?
Toyota president Akio Toyoda held a press conference Friday to apologize for the quality problems that led to a massive automotive recall and at least 19 deaths. The Los Angeles Times noted that Toyoda performed a short bow to express regret rather than a long, sustained bow to indicate contrition. How many kinds of bows are there in Japan?[more ...]
- Case reopened: reviewing new examples of plagiarism by the Daily Beast's Gerald Posner.
Last week, a reader tipped me to an instance of potential plagiarism by Gerald Posner in the Daily Beast, for which Posner is chief investigative reporter. After I called the plagiarism to the attention of Daily Beast Executive Editor Edward Felsenthal, the site deleted five pilfered sentences and added an editor's note to explain the deletions and to apologize.[more ...]
- Why televised negotiations won't get us health reform.
During the early 1990s, Slate's founder, Michael Kinsley, was co-host of CNN's Crossfire. The title described the show accurately, and (though a model of civilized debate by today's cable-chat standards) it was criticized for rewarding noisy disagreement for its own sake. A few years later, Kinsley proposed a show called Ceasefire that would be Crossfire's opposite. Instead of locating areas of disagreement between opposing parties, its hosts would cajole warring parties into finding areas of agreement, however fragile. This approach had been shown to work, Kinsley observed, in labor mediation and marital counseling. Why not politics? "For a while," Kinsley e-mailed me, "every time there was a new head of CNN or MSNBC ? I would email them with the idea. They would usually write back 'this could be interesting' and then nothing would happen."[more ...]
- The Slatest: Evening Edition Rep. John Murtha dies at 77; Michael Jackson's doctor is charged with involuntarily manslaughter; Tea Partiers get worked up about "isms" other than conservativism; A bank robber-turned legal eagle is one of the best minds in the Supreme Court business.[more ...]
- Why the filibuster is OK for Democrats but not for Republicans.
The unraveling of the congressional debate over health care reform is already renewing calls to abolish the Senate filibuster. As many have argued, the filibuster undermines the democratic principle of majority rule and compounds the unrepresentative character of the Senate's design. The health care debacle suggests that the filibuster may also be rendering our country ungovernable. So why not just do away with it?[more ...]
- The death of Phoebe Prince and the connection between bullying and cyberbullying.
Last September, South Hadley High School in Western Massachusetts hosted a workshop on bullying for parents and anyone else interested. Attendance was low. As the school year progressed, a 9th grader who'd recently arrived from Ireland, Phoebe Prince, got caught in a torrent of mean-girl taunting. In school, girls who didn't like the way she was talking to their boyfriends called her a slut. Someone scribbled Prince out of a student-body photo hanging in a classroom, one student said. Outside school, her tormenters ganged up on her on Facebook, making the bullying incessant.[more ...]
- Slate's sports podcast Hang Up and Listen for the week of Feb. 8, 2010.
Listen to Hang Up and Listen with Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:[more ...]
- Why haven't responsible Republicans spoken out against Sarah Palin?
Are there any Republican grown-ups out there, and, if there are, will they ever start coming to the aid of their party?[more ...]
- Dear Prudence chats live with readers at Washingtonpost.com
Emily Yoffe: Good afternoon. I hope everyone in the D.C. area has their shoveling arms in shape for Tuesday![more ...]
- I would love to see Don Graham do my job.
The reality show that debuted after the Super Bowl goes by the title Undercover Boss (CBS). I mention this for the benefit of readers who were too befuddled by saturated fats and thin lager to have caught the name?though I'm confident that the show itself made quite an impression. With each episode finding a top corporate executive covertly working among bottom-rung employees, Undercover Boss is a fanfare for the common man, a fantasy of revenge against the haute bourgeoisie, a genial riff on both types of Marxian self-alienation, and a tribute to the Protestant work ethic.[more ...]
- Republicans are winning the war of political rhetoric. Here's how the president needs to fight back.
The sense of hope that swept in with President Obama has been supplanted by existential doubt: Can the nation ever address its critical structural crises in health care, financial services, energy, and education?[more ...]
- Islamists want to prohibit non-Muslims from referring to God as Allah.
In Malaysia last month, there was vicious rioting after high court judge Lau Bee Lan issued a ruling on the proper naming of God. A complaint had been lodged by Muslim groups that local Christians were using the word Allah in their services and publications. (In the Malay language, that happens to be the word for God, a term Christians find it hard to do without.) The high court finding was very narrowly drawn; it said that the Catholic Herald could say Allah in its Malay-language edition, provided that the paper was sold "only on church grounds and bearing the label FOR NON-MUSLIMS ONLY." Even this restriction was too lenient for the Islamists. Several churches and convents have been firebombed and defaced, and the Malaysian government has publicly regretted the court's decision. According to an Associated Press report, the authorities believe that "making Allah synonymous with god may confuse Muslims and ultimately mislead them into converting to Christianity." The danger of this seems small?most of Malaysia's 2.5 million Christians are ethnically Chinese or Indian, and indeed there is a slight but unmistakable racist tinge to the Malayan Muslim demand for an ethno-linguistic monopoly on the word for the deity.[more ...]
- What Henry Paulson's new memoir misses about his own responsibility for the global meltdown.
Investment bankers are among the least reflective of financial birds. They deal with the problem at hand without asking too many questions about how it got there. One of their favorite trills is, "It is what it is." So it's no surprise that On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System, the memoir of Henry Paulson, the avid bird-watcher and former Goldman Sachs chief executive who served as Treasury secretary for 30 turbulent months, doesn't contain much second-guessing or navel-gazing. "I'm a straightforward person. I like to be direct with people," he tells us. His first-person account of the epic financial collapse is just that?straightforward and direct. Shorn of anonymous, unsourced dish, it nonetheless offers plenty of excellent color and detail.[more ...]
- Advice for a woman who thinks her friends have been stolen.
Welcome to "Friend or Foe," the DoubleX advice column for your queries about the trickiest of all love affairs: friendships. Lucinda Rosenfeld, author of I'm So Happy For You, a novel about best friends, is now taking questions at lucinda@imsohappyforyou.com. (E-mail may be quoted in a future article or elsewhere unless the letter writer stipulates otherwise.)[more ...]
- The best and worst Super Bowl ads.
Welcome to the annual Ad Report Card Super Bowl Special. Among the recurring advertising themes I noticed during the big game: Animals hot-tubbing with sexy ladies; paunchy dudes wearing tighty-whities; defiant misogyny. Not being a huge fan of bestiality, hairy male thighs, or woman-hating, I must admit I was underwhelmed by this year's commercial crop.[more ...]
- The largest American charitable contributions of 2009.
Slate 60 Introduction | Donor Bios | Interactive Feature | Searchable Database[more ...]
- How Sean Payton's daring play-calling won the New Orleans Saints their first Super Bowl.
For the last four years, fans on the message board SaintsReport.com have been adding to a thread called "Write the Times-Picayune's Headline for the Day After the Saints Win the Super Bowl." The 13 pages of suggestions that piled up between 2006 and the opening kickoff of Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV?"Convoy of Snow Plows arrives in Hell!"; "Holy *Bleep*!!!"; "We Won! We Actually Won!!!"; and "New Orleans Runs Out of Liquor," to name a few?reveal that, even for the most-optimistic Saints fans, this day was unimaginable. When it actually happened?holy bleep, the Saints really, seriously won the Super Bowl 31-17 over the Indianapolis Colts?the Times-Picayune's real-life headline writers shrugged and admitted defeat. On the field, Saints coach Sean Payton held up a paper that said, simply, "World Champs." Yeah, there really are no words.[more ...]
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- Don Delillo's Point Omega.
Don DeLillo's characters feel slightly more generic with every novel. This is held against them. As detached yet filled with pungent apercus as graduate students warding off depression, these creatures of the novelist's late phase carom numbly around their synthetic environments. Rather than root his inventions in the soil of human particularity, DeLillo thins them into holograms. They become personifications of impersonal processes, and long to return to the same. They develop an irresistible urge to subsume what little they have by way of distinct identity into something purer and less subjective: financial data streams (Cosmopolis), theories of probability (Falling Man), the supernatural (The Body Artist).[more ...]
- Blame the childish, ignorant American public—not politicians—for our political and economic crisis.
In trying to explain why our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year, analysts have rounded up a plausible collection of reasons including: President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, the blustering idiocracy of the cable-news stations, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for any important legislation. These are all large factors, to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.[more ...]
- A plea to grant health care reform a papal dispensation.
A plea to grant health care reform a papal dispensation.[more ...]
- Shelby's blanket hold: Can he really do that?
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., has placed a "blanket hold" on more than 70 presidential nominees, angering both the White House and Democratic lawmakers. In 2006, Daniel Engber reviewed the history of this legislative maneuver in all its forms, including the "secret hold," the "revolving hold," and the "rolling hold." That column is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Help Slate predict the Oscar winners.
Update, Feb. 5: If you've already voted, click here to see which actors and movies are in the lead.[more ...]
- The latest updates from Barack Obama's Facebook news feed.
The State of the Union, the new budget, and Rahm Emanuel's very special apology.[more ...]
- The Red Riding trilogy reviewed.
The Red Riding trilogy, a three-part crime thriller that aired as a television series in Britain and is now being released in the United States both theatrically and with IFC On Demand, is so sprawling that it takes a full paragraph just to describe its provenance. All three parts were adapted by Tony Grisoni from a series of novels by David Peace about the Yorkshire Ripper case?a string of murders that took place in Northern England over a 10-year period. The first segment, set in 1974, is directed by Julian Jarrold (Becoming Jane); the second, set in 1980, by James Marsh (Man on Wire); and the third, set in 1983, by Anand Tucker (Shopgirl).[more ...]
- Plagiarism at the Daily Beast: Gerald Posner concedes lifting from the Miami Herald.
Veteran journalist Gerald Posner acknowledged today that he copied five sentences from a Miami Herald article this week for a piece he wrote for the Daily Beast. The Daily Beast appended an editor's note to the beginning of Posner's piece today, explaining that the copying was "inadvertent" and that the Daily Beast has deleted the copied passages.[more ...]
- Reviews of: From Paris with Love, Dear John, and Frozen
A daily video from Slate V.[more ...]
- The Political Gabfest for Feb. 5, 2010.
Become a fan of the Political Gabfest on Facebook. We post to the Facebook page throughout the week, so keep the conversation going by joining us there.[more ...]
- Obama should move on judicial nominations.
By February 2002, President George W. Bush had nominated 89 judges to the lower federal courts. This week, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy prodded President Obama, who has nominated just 42 federal judges to date, to "get up names as quickly as possible." President Obama promised to make this "a priority." He'd better.[more ...]
- A collection of the vice president's gaffes and head-slappers.
The vice president produced a classic Bidenism this week. Please continue to send your nominations (with a link, please) to slatebidenisms@gmail.com. For more, and our stab at a definition, see "The Complete Bidenisms."[more ...]
- A military wife makes it halfway through her husband's deployment to Iraq.
Most military spouses experience the mid-deployment blues, and as I near the halfway point of my husband's 14-month absence, I recognize the signs; in my case, though, the mid-deployment black-and-blues have rendered me useless. Last fall, I fractured my foot and wore a cast for six weeks; just as that was healing, I slipped on a patch of black ice and hit my head. One concussion and 15 stitches later, I emerged bloody, bandaged, and as bruised as a Civil War casualty. I looked terrible, but there was something deeply satisfying about it. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, my broken outside finally matched my (heartbroken) inside. That mid-deployment feeling of floating in time indefinitely?the separation has lasted eons, but homecoming is still many moons away?leaves some spouses angry, some depressed, and some simply exhausted. I fight hopelessness.[more ...]
- Haiti after the earthquake.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti?Haiti's radio journalists, many of whom have long experience of operating under dictatorships and elected governments with little tolerance for critical press coverage, know a thing or two about adversity. But nearly a month ago, when Haiti's capital was devastated by an earthquake that leveled large sections of the city and killed at least 150,000 people, local reporters were suddenly faced with a whole new set of challenges."We try and orient people to where aid is being distributed, and every day we announce messages about people who are still missing," says Wendell Theodore, the silken-voiced news director of Radio Metropole in the capital's Delmas region. His own home destroyed, Theodore now broadcasts the names of the missing from under a tree in the radio station's yard, next to the tent he has slept in since his house collapsed."I saw our building shake," says Rotchild Francois, director of the capital's RFM radio in the Pétionville district, who was at his desk in the studio when the earthquake struck and dashed into the street with a dozen other employees. The station lost a reporter in the quake and was knocked off the air for five days. Reporters from Radio Galaxie, Radio Magic 9, and Radio Télé Ginen were also killed.Francois now spends his days combing the capital, trying to paint an audio picture of what is happening and to get information on the air about where aid is being distributed, the location of feeding and medical centers, and other important information. Many of the station's employees, fearful of aftershocks, refuse to enter the building.[more ...]
- Why our irrational fear of baby-snatching is wasting money and risking lives.
Last summer, a woman wearing hospital scrubs and a backpack stepped into a room of the maternity ward at the Darnall Army Medical Center in Fort Hood, Texas. She picked up a 2-day-old baby that didn't belong to her and made for the stairs.[more ...]
- Reflections on the Ozzy Osbourne's memoir, I Am Ozzy.
I Am Ozzy is the title of his book. Perfect. Not They Call Me Ozzy or The Ozz I Waz or even Why Ozz? Because. Just this bald declarative, this absolute. And here it all is, in vivid as-told-to prose, an identity and its roots: the childhood playing in a dark city (Birmingham) still half-flattened by Hitler's bombs; the industrialized young manhood in a factory testing car horns and then in a slaughterhouse; the tattooed grandmother, the early imprisonment, the graffiti-ing of the words "IRON VOID" on a roadside wall; the lost fights, the "mouthful of pub carpet"; the bestial recoil from "the hippy-dippy shit that was all over the radio"; and the epochal day when his bandmate Tony Iommi ("an incredible fighter") says, "Maybe we should stop doing blues and write scary music instead."[more ...]
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- The best way to guide your teenager through the high-risk years.
Our last article summarized the current state of research on teens and risk. That research demonstrates that teenagers do not suffer from some special inability to reason. Larry Steinberg and other researchers explain the steep rise in risk-taking behavior that comes with puberty by elaborating the interplay between two brain systems. The social-emotional system, which develops robustly in early adolescence, seeks out rewarding experiences, especially the sensation afforded by novel and risky behavior, and is also activated by the presence of peers. The cognitive-control system, which undergoes its great burst of development in later adolescence, evaluates and governs the impulses of the social-emotional system.[more ...]
- Corrections from the last week.
In a Feb. 3 "Prescriptions," Timothy Noah identified Avastin as an anti-cholesterol drug. Avastin is an anti-cancer drug.[more ...]
- The weird genius behind Carly Fiorina's "demon sheep" ad.
The Spot: Open on a pasture full of grazing sheep. A woman's voice speaks as words flash on-screen: "Purity. Piety. ? Wholesome. Honorable. True Believers. Men like Tom Campbell, who would never lead us astray, his pedestal so high." An animation shows one sheep elevated atop a tall column, high above the others. Suddenly clouds gather, lightning strikes, and the sheep falls. Ominous music as a new, evil-sounding male voice tells us about how Tom Campbell raised taxes as California's chief budget officer. "Is that fiscally conservative, Tom?" Intercut with quick images of pigs and sheep. Finally, cut back to sheep grazing. "Tom Campbell: Is he what he tells us? Or is he what he's become over the years? A F-C-I-N-O? Fiscal Conservative in Name Only? A wolf in sheep's clothing?" Cut to man in red-eyed sheep costume crawling through the meadow, scaring the other sheep away. "Might there be a better choice?" the voice asks. Cut to Carly Fiorina in a conference room. "Someone who has not made a career of politics. A political outsider. Perhaps a proven fiscal conservative. ? Now that sounds like the right choice for California."[more ...]
- The Obama administration says missile defense isn't as important as it used to be. Its budget says otherwise.
When Defense Secretary Robert Gates laid out his $708.2 billion budget proposal this week, he also submitted a 48-page document called the "Ballistic Missile Defense Review." Reading this review, you might think that Gates was slashing the missile-defense program. You'd be wrong.[more ...]
- Hey, Tim Shriver! Get off Rahm Emanuel's case for using the word "retarded"!
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel earned a trip to the pillory this week after a Wall Street Journal story reported that he had used forbidden language last summer in a strategy session with liberal groups and White House aides. Emanuel, who knows his way around obscene, venomous, and cruel language called one idea presented at the session "Fucking retarded."[more ...]
- Why "don't ask, don't tell" is only half-true.
The secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs both endorsed the eventual repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy at a Senate hearing on Tuesday. Since its implementation in 1994, more than 13,000 members of the armed services have been discharged for homosexual conduct. We know what happens to a soldier who tells about his sexual orientation, but what happens to one who asks?[more ...]
- Dear John reviewed.
This is the hardest letter I've ever had to write ?[more ...]
- Lost: Theories from around the Web.
If Lost is going to fracture its narrative in two, I feel entitled to do the same with my crackpot TV Club entries. I have one more dispatch to share, with a few points I didn't have time to cover yesterday.[more ...]
- The crazy perversities of civil asset forfeiture.
Last month, the Supreme Court tossed out the case Alvarez v. Smith, a challenge to a portion of the asset forfeiture in Illinois that allows the government to keep seized property for up to six months before giving its owner a day in court. The Court declined to rule on the case after determining it to be moot?all of the parties had settled with the government by the time the case made it to Washington.[more ...]
- Why Google Chrome is better than Firefox and Internet Explorer.
I like to think of myself as the Dick Cheney of the Browser Wars?an unyielding proponent of greater and greater hostilities between the developers working on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Opera. As all these programmers compete with one another to make faster, more stable, and more intuitive browsers, we Web surfers keep winning. Just two years ago, nearly half of the folks online used Internet Explorer 6.0?the slowest, buggiest, most security-flawed browser on the market. Since then, Microsoft, spurred by its rivals' advances, has released the very good I.E. 8, which is now the Web's most popular browser. I.E. 6 is still around, but now that many sites (including Google) are dropping support for it, its share is sure to plummet. All hail the great Browser War![more ...]
- Peyton Manning is a genius. He's also a pain in the ass.
A common theme in virtually every profile of Peyton Manning is the Super Bowl quarterback's legendary devotion to football. At age 12, he exhorted his pee-wee linemen to block harder. He started deconstructing NFL game video in high school. He arrived at college six weeks early to work out with upperclassmen. A few days after the Indianapolis Colts made him the first pick of the 1998 draft, he had the team playbook memorized. He orders rookies to meet him on the field at 8 a.m. the Monday after they are drafted. He falls asleep watching tape in the basement of his Indianapolis home; his wife slips the remote from his hand. Isn't that sweet?[more ...]
- If Filmmakers Directed the Super Bowl
A daily video from Slate V.[more ...]
- What's with all the prayer breakfasts?
On Thursday morning, President Barack Obama and the first lady joined various members of Congress for the annual National Prayer Breakfast. In 2009, Juliet Lapidos examined how breakfast became the choice meal for politically charged prayer sessions. The original article is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Bikini boy and the black Taylor Swift.
Every Idol season, the Road To Hollywood is paved with good intentions, crocodile tears seeking attention, and some things I'd rather not mention. Oh, Lord. You know things have been dull when I resort to rhyming.[more ...]
- Vancouver's experiment with helping addicts get high.
One study of Vancouver's injection-drug users has taken harm reduction to a level even beyond Insite. In 2003, the same year that the supervised-injection site opened its doors, an epidemiologist named Martin Schecter began planning a trial that had never been conducted in North America: heroin maintenance. Would a daily course of heroin, administered in a clinical setting, release users from the destructive aspects of maintaining their addiction? Would it benefit society and allow users to stabilize their lives? Similar studies had been conducted in Europe with positive results. Switzerland alone has 38 heroin maintenance centers, and they are a fully integrated part of its national health system; Germany followed suit last year. Schecter, who has worked in Vancouver since the first signs of the AIDS epidemic in 1983, wanted to see whether such a program would make a difference in Canada.[more ...]
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- Risk and the adolescent brain.
It's often said that adolescents are fearless and see themselves as invulnerable, that they're irrational in how they reason and process information, that they act with no logical basis for their decisions and don't really understand risk. This is all a little true, but only to the extent that it's true of everybody. People of all ages are bad at assessing risk and making rational decisions. People of all ages underestimate likely dangers and overestimate unlikely ones.[more ...]
- The "groundbreaking sex robot" Roxxxy is neither groundbreaking nor a true robot.
Usually when I write about a new tech product, I like to have a little "hands-on" time with the device. Perhaps fortunately, that's not the case with the Roxxxy TrueCompanion, the latest in high-tech sex toys, unleashed at this year's Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. While I was next-door at the Consumer Electronics Show, checking out the latest in 3-D televisions and e-book readers, Roxxxy was making waves with sex industry professionals and robot bloggers alike.[more ...]
- Sex in the Salinger archives?
The great mystery J.D. Salinger left behind, of course, is just what he'd been writing all these years. There have been repeated sketchy reports that he was still writing in those last 45 years or so since he stopped publishing. There were, supposedly, completed manuscripts in his lonesome house of refuge on a hill in Cornish, N.H., a house I once paid a conflicted visit to.[more ...]
- The problem with Davos is that it reduces complex issues to catchphrases.
ZURICH?We inch forward, and then we stop. Then we inch forward again. Then, for half a mile or so we speed up, and it seems we are actually going to start making real time. Then we stop. A few more inches forward , and then we stop again.[more ...]
- My brother had sex with my wife before we dated.
Get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)[more ...]
- Terrorism Derangement Syndrome: The GOP's scare tactics work so well because the public is already so afraid.
America has slid back again into its own special brand of terrorism-derangement syndrome. Each time this condition recurs, it presents with more acute and puzzling symptoms. It's almost impossible to identify the cause, and it's doubtful there's a cure. The entire forensic team from House would need a full season to unravel the mystery of what it is about the American brain that renders us more terrified of terrorists today than we were five years ago and less trusting of government policies to protect us.[more ...]
- Health reform and moral hazard.
Last week I debated the merits of health care reform in Grand Rapids, Mich. The crowd was mostly conservative, and a worry I heard voiced more than once was that expanding access to health care would increase the number of frivolous visits to the doctor.[more ...]
- Bogus trend stories of the month—the New York Times corners the market.
Once upon a time, rounding up the most egregious examples of bogus trend stories in the U.S. press was a lonely grind. But now, thanks to the editors and reporters of the New York Times?and my industrious readers?locating the silliest examples of journalistic overreach is a simple matter of reading the newspaper of record closely.[more ...]
- What happens when a space program gets canceled?
Barack Obama's budget for fiscal year 2011, released Monday, would kill NASA's plan to return astronauts to the moon?a program that has already cost $9.1 billion. What will NASA do with all the technology that it has already developed but can no longer continue financing?[more ...]
- Read the transcript of a live chat between Slate's David Plotz and the Daily Caller's Tucker Carlson.
Slate Editor David Plotz and Daily Caller Editor Tucker Carlson chatted live about President Obama's proposed 2011 budget as well as the administration's plans to repeal the military's anti-gay "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Read a transcript of their conversation below.[more ...]
- The locker room affair, the biggest taboo in sports.
The British press is reporting that John Terry, the captain of England's national soccer team, had an affair with teammate Wayne Bridge's girlfriend and paid for his mistress' abortion. Back in the United States, it emerged this week that former American soccer captain John Harkes was dismissed from the 1998 World Cup squad due to allegations that he was carousing with teammate Eric Wynalda's wife. Back in 2004, Josh Levin explained that "[s]leeping with your teammate's wife isn't typically the best way to build team unity." The original article is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Is my Super Bowl party illegal?
Super Bowl XLIV planning list: Beer? Check. Deep-fried snacks? Check. Large-screen television? Check. Cease-and-desist letter from the National Football League? Uh-oh. In an "Explainer" column originally published in 2007 and reprinted below, Daniel Engber reviewed the rules for showing the big game.[more ...]
- People who make $250,000 or more a year can afford a tax hike.
Here we go again. Whenever the subject of taxes comes up?and it's come up in the debate over the Obama administration's decision to let many of the Bush-era tax cuts expire this year?we're treated to a chorus of complaints that people who make $250,000 a year aren't really rich. Raising taxes on these people, we're told, would be raising taxes on the middle class. Media Matters has assembled a few choice quotes on the topic.[more ...]
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- Slate's Culture Gabfest on the Oscar nominations, the state of grief in the U.S., and the loss of author J.D. Salinger.
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 72 with Stephen Metcalf, Meghan O'Rourke, Troy Patterson, and Dana Stevens by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:[more ...]
- My adventures answering J.D. Salinger's mail.
On my first day of work at Harold Ober Associates?one of New York's oldest and most storied literary agencies?I was shown the enormous, outmoded IBM Selectric on which I would type letters for my boss, the clunky Dictaphone that would provide me with the content of those letters, and the vast metal cabinets in which I would file all correspondence with authors. I was then escorted into the dimly lit corner office occupied by Phyllis Westberg, the company's president, whom I would be assisting.[more ...]
- A new paper suggests U.S. military aid does nothing to reduce drug production in Colombia.
Last month, the U.S. military got some positive international P.R., as Marines landed in Haiti to provide food, supplies, and security for earthquake victims. That our other military aid efforts typically fail to garner such praise is hardly surprising given their focus on American interests around the globe. Drone attacks in Pakistan and bulldozing coca and poppy farms in Bolivia and Afghanistan may be critical to U.S. national security but are more controversial, particularly overseas. Proponents of military assistance argue that it can be good for people in recipient countries as well, pointing to the critical role of military aid in stabilizing nascent democracies (and market economies) by keeping the government?rather than vigilantes or rebels?firmly in control.[more ...]
- The East Building, the John Hancock Tower, Fallingwater, and other ambitious architectural failures.
The East Building, Avery Fisher Hall, Fallingwater, and other ambitious architectural failures.[more ...]
- Sex addiction is a feminist victory.
When Tiger Woods checked himself into the Gentle Path sex addiction clinic, many women writers and activists reacted with suspicion and rancor. Lemondrop asked if the treatment is "merely a way for philandering men to pay lip service to their outraged wives?" Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon found the diagnosis "nothing short of maddening." A group of female protesters in Australia showed up at a golf tournament carrying photos of Tiger with a purple pimp hat and a scepter, implying a certain winking noblesse oblige. Our own Amanda Marcotte wondered whether Woods had a disease or a "fairly typical set of attitudes about women coupled with a lot of opportunities." Or, as she succinctly put it, are celebrities such as Woods who rack up the mistresses " 'addicts'? Or just pigs?"[more ...]
- Slate adds in-page comments to our articles and blogs. (Finally.)
Today we're making one of the most important?and overdue?changes to Slate in many years: We're adding in-page comments to Slate articles and blog posts. We've always known that Slate's intelligent, engaged readers?yes, I'm talking to you?are an extraordinary group, but we haven't done a very good job involving you in the site. Whenever we ask for your ideas, you dazzle us (see: the Write Like Sarah Palin contest, the Fix Airline Security contest, the Pass Health Care Reform contest). And the quality of discussion in the Fray, our longtime reader forum, is exceptional.[more ...]
- Why it could take years to repeal "don't ask, don't tell."
In late 2006, John McCain told a live audience that he supported "don't ask, don't tell," the policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military as long as they keep their sexuality a secret. "But the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, 'Senator, we ought to change the policy,' then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it, because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to."[more ...]
- A wild theory about how Inglourious Basterds could win best picture.
A wild theory about how Inglourious Basterds could win best picture.[more ...]
- How to destroy a sex tape.
In his new tell-all book, The Politician, Andrew Young claims to have discovered a sex tape recorded by John Edwards and his mistress, Rielle Hunter, in a box of trash. Although Hunter apparently tried to dismantle the video by pulling the tape out of the cassette, Young was able to restore it and view the footage with his wife. How do you destroy a sex tape so that it actually stays destroyed?[more ...]
- Harper's magazine disputes Shafer's critique of its Guantánamo expose.
Harper's Senior Editor Luke Mitchell?who edited the Guantánamo feature by Scott Horton I criticized last week?takes sharp issue with that assessment in an e-mail that he sent me and has posted at the Harper's site. My response follows his e-mail.[more ...]
- Will Apple's iPad kill Flash?
What was Steve Jobs thinking? That's been the general reaction to the most obvious shortcoming of Apple's new iPad?the tablet doesn't support Flash. While Jobs claims his new device will offer the best browsing experience on the planet, that's a hard argument to make when the iPad throws up little blue Lego icons when it encounters most Web videos. Load up the New York Times' home page, for instance, and you'll see the sorry-this-doesn't-work Lego where you'd normally see a video player.[more ...]
- Slate's reviews of the 10 movies nominated for best picture.
Nominations for the 82nd annual Academy Awards were announced on Tuesday morning. For the first time since 1943, the academy selected 10 films instead of five for the best picture Oscar. You can find Slate's reviews for all these films below.[more ...]
- DoubleX is back on Slate.
In November we announced that DoubleX would move back into Slate. As of today, we've officially rejoined the mothership. We'll continue to edit DoubleX, and our fantastic writers and bloggers are coming with us.[more ...]
- Why there's no dispelling the myth that vaccines cause autism.
On Tuesday, the medical journal the Lancet retracted a 1998 paper that linked the MMR vaccine to autism. The controversial paper was challenged and debunked by the scientific community, but it nevertheless sparked a panic among many parents. In 2007, Arthur Allen explained why scientists are unlikely to convince the parents of autistic children that vaccines are not to blame. The original article is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Should Rahm Emanuel have used the word "retarded"?
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called the CEO of the Special Olympics last week and apologized for having used the phrase "f---ing retarded" in a 2009 strategy meeting with liberal groups. In an "Explainer" column first published last summer and reprinted below, Adrian Chen looked at whether it's still OK to use the word retarded.[more ...]
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and the evolving nature of medical consent.
In February1951, Henrietta Lacks lay unconscious, her feet in stirrups, at Johns Hopkins Hospital as doctors examined the particularly aggressive cervical cancer that would soon kill her. The 31-year-old had traveled 20 miles to Hopkins, the nearest major hospital that would treat black patients. She may have been a regular patient, but she was about to achieve an odd form of immortality in the medical world.[more ...]
- How do you know whether Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow?
Early Tuesday morning, notorious groundhog Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his home and was declared to have seen his shadow, ushering in six more weeks of winter. This weather-prediction ritual raises an important question: How does one determine whether a groundhog has seen its shadow? In 2004, Timothy Noah traced the answer back to pre-Christian pagan rituals. The article is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Daniel Gross on what he learned at the World Economic Forum.
Daniel Gross on what he learned at the World Economic Forum.[more ...]
- An excerpt from Dani Shapiro's memoir about spirituality, Devotion.
Arthur Miller takes the bus, the real estate agent in Connecticut said, killing four birds?writer, Jew, Democrat, New Yorker?with one stone. The bus being the sole mode of public transportation to New York City. Arthur Miller being a resident of one of the towns in which we were house-hunting. Arthur Miller takes the bus became such a frequent refrain that I began to envision a blow-up doll of the great playwright propped up in the back seat of the Bonanza Bus from Southbury to the Port Authority.[more ...]
- Are kosher and halal meats safer or more environmentally friendly than regular meat?
I usually buy organic, sustainably raised meats, but sometimes when I can't find them, I get kosher meat instead. Does that make environmental sense, or is the stuff approved by rabbis just as bad as anything else?[more ...]
- Cooking with the iPhone.
My iPhone is absolutely filthy, and not because it's clogged with frisky NSFW photos. The screen cover is coated with streaks of flour and butter and overlaid with a haze of anonymous kitchen grease. For the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to suss out whether the iPhone can earn a place in my kitchen. And just as any new pair of sneakers must one day be scuffed, I've had to let my shiny wireless pet get mussed.[more ...]
- Precious, The Good Girl, North Country: How Hollywood makes beautiful actresses look working class.
Every now and again, Hollywood makes a go at depicting the working class, often around Oscar season and usually to hilarious effect. The story is generally some slow-moving, minor-key piece involving ordinary folks struggling with ordinary problems in ordinary parts of the country. To offset the dreariness of such an errand, the lead character?a waitress, maid, or stripper with kid/husband problems?is usually played by a jaw-droppingly attractive star, who wins positive press for being willing to subvert her beauty in order to portray one of the great unwashed doing whatever it is they do out there in the dull diabetic landmass between Los Angeles and New York City. (Hiring ugly people to play working class is a job best left to the English.)[more ...]
- "Figures in a Landscape"
Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Gail Mazur read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes..[more ...]
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