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- Slate V: When Fireworks Go Wrong
As Americans mark another Independence Day, Slate V celebrates by mining YouTube for amateur fireworks displays gone awry.
- Smokey Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, and more of history's greatest pedagogical animals.
This year marks the 65th anniversary of the creation of Smokey Bear, one of the most recognizable animals in the pop culture canon. In honor of this milestone, the Ad Council launched a new wildfire prevention campaign this week titled "Get Your Smokey On." Animal characters have long been entrusted with instructing children?and adults?on everything from what to do in a nuclear attack to road safety. In 2007, Josh Levin compiled a slide show of pedagogical animals throughout history. The original article is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Gov. Sarah Palin resigns, fueling speculation about her political future.
Alaska Governor Sarah Palin capped off a week of bad publicity with a stunning decision: The Republican captured the lead story in all the papers today after announcing Friday afternoon that she will resign her post, effective at the end of the month. Palin did not indicate if she plans to run for political office again, but framed her choice as a personal one undertaken after prayer and consultation with her family. She wants to avoid the media spotlight that has often plagued her family members in the past year, as well as the costly ethics probes receiving attention in Alaska this week that have strained the family finances. "I thought about how much fun other governors have as lame ducks: They maybe travel around their state, travel to other states, maybe take their overseas international trade missions," Palin said outside her Wasilla home. "I'm not going to put Alaskans through that."[more ...]
- In Sarah Palin's GOP, the leaders keep quitting and the troubles don't.
"It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down [and] plod along," Sarah Palin said Friday, in an attempt to suggest that serving her full term as governor would add to the nation's apathy. "That's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out." Sarah Palin is no quitter. That's why she's quitting.[more ...]
- Sarah Palin picked the wrong day to resign as governor of Alaska.
If Sarah Palin wanted to avoid the speculation and attacks that drove her crazy as governor, she should have picked a different time to leave office. She made her surprise announcement on the day before a national holiday--a day reserved for news of impending investigations, affairs, or habits that need treatment.?[more ...]
- The Political Gabfest for July 3, 2009.
Become a fan of the Political Gabfest on Facebook. We will be updating the Facebook page more frequently and including content that you will only be able to find there, so get your Gabfest fix during the week by joining us there.[more ...]
- What are Fourth of July celebrations like abroad?
Hillary Clinton announced in June that, for the first time since 1979, Iranian diplomats could be invited to July Fourth celebrations at American embassies and consulates. It was all for naught: None of those invitations were accepted, and then the State Department rescinded them in the wake of post-election violence in Tehran. Why all the fuss? What are embassy- and consulate-run July Fourth parties like, anyway?[more ...]
- Back to the Futurists: Italy's first avant-garde turns 100.
"It is not by chance this work is published during a world economic crisis, which has clearly inspired a dangerous depressing panic, though its future direction remains unclear. We propose as an antidote to this panic a Futurist way of cooking, that is: optimism at the table."[more ...]
- Is it better for the planet to grill with charcoal or gas?
As Americans fire up their grills this Fourth of July weekend, the charcoal vs. gas debate will rage in backyards countrywide. The question is not simply which produces a tastier burger, but which is better for the planet? Last summer, Brendan I. Koerner explained that charcoal is the bigger carbon emitter, but gas has its drawbacks, too. The original article is reprinted below.[more ...]
- The past and future of competitive eating injuries.
On July 4, six-time Nathan's-hot-dog-eating champ Takeru Kobayashi will try to reclaim his title from Joey Chestnut. Last year, Chestnut beat Kobayashi in a five-hot-dog overtime period after the rivals both ate 59 dogs and buns in 10 minutes. In a 2007 "Sports Nut," Jason Fagone explained the brutal consequences of eating all that meat. The piece is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Corrections from the last week.
In the July 1 "Explainer," Christopher Beam incorrectly stated that a freezer cools at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. That is the temperature of a refrigerator.[more ...]
- Recession redux.
A summary of what's in the major publications.[more ...]
- Surprisingly high unemployment numbers mean recovery could be a long way away.
The Washington Post and New York Times lead with, while the Wall Street Journal banners, the unexpectedly grim unemployment numbers released yesterday. While the rate only increased slightly to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, from 9.4 percent, the raw numbers led many to warn that economic recovery isn't on the horizon. The U.S. economy lost 467,000 jobs in June, marking the first time the monthly losses increased after they had been steadily shrinking from the January peak of 741,000. "There's nothing in here to show that the economy and the market are pulling out of the grip of recession," an economist tells the NYT. Stock markets around the world decreased, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping 2.6 percent.[more ...]
- Who decides how much White House staffers get paid?
The Obama White House recently released the salaries of its 487 staffers. The highest-paid administration staffer, the president's director of public health policy, David Marcozzi, earns $193,000, while salaries bottom out at $36,000. The president himself makes $400,000, a salary set by Congress. Two advisers, Michael J. Warren and Patricia G. McGinnis, forgo pay altogether. How does the White House decide who makes what?[more ...]
- The Washington Post's boneheaded—and aborted—plan to lobby for lobbyists.
Mike Allen's early-morning report in Politico that the Washington Post intended to sell access to its newsroom to lobbyists forced the paper's publisher and editor to back down from their plan at record speed. Allen reported that the Post had circulated a flyer offering "lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to 'those powerful few': Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and?at first?even the paper's own reporters and editors." The quoted cost of admission to these "Washington Post Salons," the first of which Post Publisher Katharine Weymouth would host at her home, ranged from $25,000 to $250,000. That price would include dinner.[more ...]
- What to do if you survive a plane crash over water.
Agence France-Presse reported yesterday that Bahia Bakari, a 12-year-old girl from Comoros, is the lone survivor of Tuesday's Yemenia airlines crash. She clung to debris for 10 hours before being rescued. If your plane crashes and you find yourself floating in the ocean, what should you do?[more ...]
- This Is Why You're Fat and other great single-topic blogs.
"Look at this fucking hipster" was a universally recognized gibe before it became a Web site. Anyone who's ever taken a stroll with a friend down Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn or accidentally veered into San Francisco's Mission District on a Saturday afternoon has had occasion to whisper these words. Look at this fucking hipster with the 1985 New England Patriots Super Bowl T-shirt and forearm tattoo of Ralph Nader. Look at that fucking hipster with the butterfly-collar paisley shirt, the sweater vest adorned with what looks like the face of Tony the Tiger, and those tie-dyed shoelaces borrowed from Zack Morris. It was no surprise, then, that when a site collecting pictures of hipsters?appended with snarky comments about their get-ups?hit the Web in April, it went viral faster than H1N1. Though Look at This Fucking Hipster's mastermind, comedian Joe Mande, initially pooh-poohed the idea of turning the site into a book, he relented last month and signed a deal with St. Martin's Press.[more ...]
- Slate's create-your-own-toy-movie contest.
Upon the release of the near-unwatchable yet wildly successful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I challenged Slate readers to come up with their own movie titles and tag lines based on a toy from their youth. And you rose to the occasion like a Jenga set. Here are some favorites from the hundreds of submissions that poured in over the past week. (Thanks to Slate interns Adrian Chen and Inci Atrek for helping me cull through the inbox.)[more ...]
- Troy Patterson plays Remote Roulette.
Hey, gang! Do you need fresh ideas for rainy-day fun? Are you?in common with Burt Malkiel and John Cage?intrigued by random walks and chance operations? Do your employers expect you to write a TV review in a week when the most dynamic new program is the reality show Dance Your Ass Off? If so, can you not bear to contemplate the following sentence? "The dance score and the weight loss are combined for an overall score, which determines who is sent home each week."[more ...]
- Reviews of: Public Enemies, Ice Age, and I Hate Valentine's Day
A daily video from Slate V.[more ...]
- The damage done by the Supreme Court in the New Haven firefighters case.
This Monday, in the New Haven, Conn., firefighters case Ricci v. DeStefano, the Supreme Court held that it's unlawful race discrimination for an employer to refuse to act on the results of a promotion exam because the test eliminated a disproportionate number of minority candidates (in the New Haven case, all the black firefighters up for promotion). I've written before that this argument threatens to burn down civil rights law. Now that the fuse has been lit, I'm writing to explain just how far the fire could spread.[more ...]
- Will my video get 1 million views on YouTube?
"Charlie Bit Me," the fourth most-viewed YouTube clip of all time, is a viral video in the truest sense of the word. In May 2007, the father of two British tykes uploaded a home video he wanted to share with the kids' godfather in Colorado and a few American colleagues. After three months, only a few dozen people had seen the video, and he considered taking it off the site. Then, something strange happened: On Aug. 24, 2007, the video was viewed 25 times in California. Three days later, that number was up to 79, with a dozen more coming in from Washington, Texas, and Wisconsin. The number of daily views doubled roughly every week as "Charlie Bit Me" spread around the country and through Europe. On Nov. 5, a couple of guys in Canada filmed a frame-by-frame remake. Two weeks later, CollegeHumor.com linked to the video, and by January it was on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. A year and a half later, it's been watched 104 million times.[more ...]
- On not owning a vacation home.
It's that time of year again, when dinner conversation in rarefied circles dwells on escape to the Vineyard or the Keys. Some around those tables have less to contribute, including Timothy Noah, whose 2005 article on the subject is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Email, adultery, and Mark Sanford.
Back in the old days, if you loved somebody far away, the only way you could communicate was by letter. That wasn't so great, for three reasons. First, it was slow. Second, you couldn't see or hear her. Three, she could keep your letters, and if the relationship was forbidden, you could be exposed. The letters were evidence.[more ...]
- My fiance is irrationally jealous of an old boyfriend.
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 ...]
- Iranian opposition leaders make it clear they're not giving up.
The Los Angeles Times leads with a look at the growing signs that the economy could recover without a significant decrease in unemployment. The concept of a "jobless recovery" is hardly new, but many economists say the situation now could be far worse than what we saw after the last two downturns in 1990-91 and 2001, and could even threaten the recovery itself. The Wall Street Journal leads its world-wide newsbox with Iranian opposition leaders accusing the government of carrying out a virtual coup and urged supporters to continue protesting. A student wing of the pro-government Basij militia called for an investigation into the role that leading opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi played in "destabilizing national security," which could send him to prison for 10 years. But Mousavi, along with another opposition candidate, Mehdi Karroubi and a former president, Mohammad Khatami, decided to up the ante and said Iran's leaders are turning the country into a dictatorship.[more ...]
- Fireworks really suck.
With Independence Day upon us, Americans are coming together once again in celebration of all our many freedoms, among them the freedom to drink outside during daylight hours. Some of us will fish Bud tallboys out of an Igloo on the National Mall; others will knock back rosé on picnic blankets and applejack at backyard barbecues; still others will sip on a pint bottle of Cutty Sark on the same park bench as always. We are a diverse nation.[more ...]
- Is Michael Mann's Public Enemies historically accurate?
Did FBI agents shoot and kill John Dillinger on the streets of Chicago on July 22, 1934? Or was it the cops from East Chicago who fired the fatal rounds, the very officers who later received the reward money? Did the famous bank robber pull his gun at the last moment, as the feds maintained? Or were the eyewitnesses, who said they saw no weapon, telling the truth? Did he die with a mere $7 in his pocket, proof of J. Edgar Hoover's mantra that crime does not pay? Or was he wearing a very full money belt and an expensive ruby ring, as the Indiana bandit's sister claimed as long as she lived?[more ...]
- Why reporters won't shut up about their encounters with Michael Jackson.
I never interviewed Michael Jackson, making me one of the world's few journalists who couldn't capitalize on the singer's death last week by writing a rush piece about my encounter with him.[more ...]
- Is it legal to bury Michael Jackson at Neverland Ranch?
Five days after pop icon Michael Jackson's sudden death, questions remain about where he will be buried. According to the Daily Mirror, Jackson wanted to be interred at his Neverland Ranch in Santa Barbara County, Calif. But his father, Joe Jackson, recently ruled out that possibility. Is it legal to get buried on your own property?[more ...]
- Is tennis really the cleanest sport in the world?
The year in sports drug scandals has been pretty typical thus far: A-Rod and Manny have both been busted, Barry Bonds is set to go on trial for perjury, the Olympic gold medalist in the men's 1,500 meters was stripped of his title, and the usual handful of Tour de France riders have been sidelined for drugs before the race even begins. The scandal of the moment in tennis, meanwhile, involves poor Richard Gasquet, the 23rd-ranked French player who this April allegedly tested positive for ? cocaine. Gasquet was shocked, of course. His friends protested his innocence, including Rafael Nadal, who said, "I'm certain that he's not taking anything." Nadal added helpfully, "If you kiss a girl who's taken cocaine, anything can happen, and that's the truth."[more ...]
- What if Paul Krugman was a Japanese woman?
"Please do not believe all the talk about the green shoots of the Japanese economy, which I suspect you might have heard. We are in pretty bad shape."[more ...]
- Slate's Culture Gabfest on the deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Billy Mays, and the future of obituaries.
Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 41 with Dana Stevens, Seth Stevenson, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:[more ...]
- A generation of plastic art objects are degrading like overused Tupperware. Can they be saved?
In the early 1960s, curators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art noticed something funny about one of their modern-art sculptures: It smelled like vinegar. Worse, the once-clear plastic sculpture had begun browning like an apple, and cracks had appeared on its surface. By 1967, Naum Gabo's translucent, airy Construction in Space: Two Cones looked like Tupperware that had gone through the dishwasher too often.[more ...]
- Medical Pot Expo
A daily video from Slate V.[more ...]
- Visiting Philip Johnson's Glass House.
It gets quite hot in the summer. Visiting Philip Johnson's most durable architectural achievement.[more ...]
- I avoid street canvassers for do-gooding organizations. Does that make me a jerk?
Do you have a real-life do-gooding dilemma? Please send it to ask.my.goodness@gmail.com, and Patty and Sandy will try to answer it.[more ...]
- Minnesota Supreme Court rules in favor of Al Franken, giving Democrats 60th vote in Senate.
The Washington Post and New York Times lead with the end of an eight-month election dispute in Minnesota as Al Franken packs his bags and gets ready to join the Senate. His victory officially gives Democrats a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority. The Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Franken's favor yesterday, declaring that the comedian turned politician won by 312 votes out of 2.9 million cast. Two hours later, Republican Norm Coleman conceded. "I join all Minnesotans in congratulating our newest United States senator," Coleman said. "I can't wait to get started," Franken said.[more ...]
- Public Enemies reviewed.
The real-life story of the final days of John Dillinger may have been scripted by God for Michael Mann to direct. All the Mann elements are there: An existential showdown between two larger-than-life manly men (Dillinger and Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who tracked him down after a prolonged manhunt); an opportunity for unpredictable bursts of stylized and bloody gunfighting; and the '30s setting, which offers the fashion-loving Mann countless occasions to show off his steely-eyed heroes in long black coats and precisely tilted fedoras. This is the material Mann's been waiting for his entire career.[more ...]
- Thanks to technology, we may be entering a golden age of journalism.
Your average journalist usually begins his career with a pop, like a big bottle of champagne. He effervesces about his profession, intoxicating all who encounter him. The party goes on for years as the young journalist conquers deadlines, corrupt politicians, and hidebound editors. But by the time a journalist hits his mid-30s, the music begins to dim and the dancing stops. He starts complaining about falling standards, muttering about the decline of the business, and griping about his place in the journalistic pecking order. Once a happy drunk, he's now a sad drunk?or worse, a mean one. It's not that the future has been canceled; he just can't see it rising over the horizon anymore. The flat and warm champagne at the bottom of his bottle has turned to vinegar.[more ...]
- What's new in The New Yorker, the New Republic, and the Oxford American.
Newsweek, July 13The cover story remembers Michael Jackson as the "Peter Pan" of pop. Jackson, as a performer and as a black man, "surely knew that part of his own appeal to white audiences?who contributed substantially to the $50 million to $75 million a year he earned in his prime?lay initially in his precocious cuteness, and when he was a grown man, in his apparent lack of adult sexuality." ? An article profiles Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, who "has long had an ambivalent relationship with exposure." Though a reluctant spokeswoman for "capital-P Poetry," her own poems "remain surprising and fresh, keeping the reader slightly off-kilter." ? Jon Meacham hosts a roundtable discussion of writers championing their craft in the 21st century. Susan Orlean "just finished reading Madame Bovary on [her] iPhone," while Robert Caro writes first drafts by hand and final drafts on a typewriter that "they stopped making about 25 years ago."[more ...]
- How do prisons deal with overcrowding?
Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm sent a letter to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Monday offering to take some prisoners from his overcrowded facilities. The California prison system is currently at twice its intended capacity. How do prisons deal with so much overcrowding?[more ...]
- The Fed botched banking regulation once already. So why does Obama want to give it more power?
The Federal Reserve Bank has managed through most of its history to reside in obscurity?little understood, rarely questioned, viewed as hovering above the political fray, the domain of technocrats and erudite economists. That should all change.[more ...]
- Books, CDs, and movies Slate writers recommend.
Slate critics and columnists often recommend all sorts of useful and fascinating stuff: books, documentaries, albums, television shows, new gadgets, and the like. Sometimes these endorsements appear in obvious spots (like our movie reviews), but just as often they come in unexpected places, like a "Dear Prudence" or "Fighting Words" column. So at the end of every month, we'll be publishing a handy roundup of all the things we like, since we figure you'd like some of these things, too. Take a look at our latest favorites:[more ...]
- Did Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina break any laws?
Glenn McCall of the Republican National Committee is organizing a rally in Columbia, S.C., for Wednesday or Thursday to demand that Gov. Mark Sanford resign. After confessing to a yearlong affair with an Argentinean woman last week, Sanford may have lost his moral authority?but did he do anything illegal?[more ...]
- What your enjoyment of sleep-away camp, or lack of same, says about your character.
It's summer, and the under-18 set has been packed off to summer camp?for joy or misery. Three years ago, Timothy Noah dissected the camp experience and found that adults will never escape the patterns they exhibited as camp-bound children, no matter how many years removed. The article is reprinted below.[more ...]
- Do peer-to-peer lending sites like Prosper and Lending Club work?
Back in 2007, it took little more than a steady pulse to get a loan, albeit a subprime one, from credit officers eager to push loans out the door. Now that the real estate bubble has gone bust, a steady job and 20 percent down is scarcely enough to persuade banks to lay out for a mortgage, home repairs, or anything else.[more ...]
- Hunting Cigarette Pirates
A daily video from Slate V.[more ...]
- The best Web-based task managers.
The typical state of my home office is what a generous person might call untidy: wobbly stacks of books, supplies gone wild, the occasional dirty plate. Most of my mess, though, comes from the reminders I leave on Post-its, backs of envelopes, and pages torn from legal pads. This same organizational chaos extends into my digital world?I'm constantly sending myself nudging e-mails and voice mails, like, "Hey, it's me, you really need to clean up your office ?"[more ...]
- Why ignoring the media is a serious threat to press freedom.
Journalists working in repressive countries are routinely jailed, attacked, and killed. So what's the big deal if reporters are ignored?[more ...]
- Breaking your legs to make yourself taller.
Remember Connie Culp, the woman who got a new face at the Cleveland Clinic several months ago? The doctor who did the surgery said such perilous transplants were justified, in part, because people with serious facial damage are "socially crippled in a society that appears to value beauty above all other human characteristics."[more ...]
- Marianne Moore's five-decade struggle with "Poetry."
I've never been completely sure what I think about Marianne Moore's celebrated poem "Poetry." Apparently, Moore had similar feelings?revising the poem many times across the span of five decades. (You can find a couple of unpublished revisions , courtesy of my friend and colleague Bonnie Costello, an eminent Moore scholar.)[more ...]
- Judge sentences Madoff to 150 years; Supreme Court rules in favor of white firefighters.
The New York Times and Los Angeles Times lead with, while the Wall Street Journal banners, Bernard Madoff receiving a 150-year prison sentence. The federal judge called Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme an "extraordinarily evil" fraud and unexpectedly imposed the maximum sentence allowed, saying the length of the sentence should serve as deterrent for any would-be scam artists. It's one of the longest sentences ever given to a white-collar criminal, but hardly a record. The sentence was met with applause in the courtroom that was filled with Madoff's victims.[more ...]
- Morocco makes peace with its past.
RABAT?If you want an antidote to the photographs of policemen beating demonstrators and girls dying on the streets of the Iranian capital, take a drive through the streets of the Moroccan capital. You might see demonstrators, but they're not under attack: On the day I visited, a group of people stood outside the parliament politely waving signs. You might see girls, but they will not be sniper targets, and they will not look like their Iranian counterparts: Though there is clearly a fashion for long, flowing head scarves and blue jeans, many women would not look out of place in New York or Paris.[more ...]
- Ricci shouldn't have happened this way.
Emily, Linda, and Dahlia:This case went off the rails when this litigation was launched in medias res. No promotion decisions had been made. Having decided not to certify the test results, the city's civil service board?had it not been for this litigation?would have next proceeded to determine how decisions would be made for this round of promotions, then applied that new criteria to those seeking promotion. What that criteria would have been and who would or would not have been promoted are completely unknowable.Given that no one had been promoted and no one had been denied promotion, it's very hard to see how the firefighters who brought suit were able to establish the very first element of a Title VII action: the existence of an "adverse employment action."In addition to satisfying the statute, it would have been far better for the process to judge New Haven actions after promotion decisions were actually made using whatever new standards the city chose to adopt. Completing the process would have shed light on the question of whether there were in fact equally good (or perhaps, better) criteria for determining promotions, and with far less racial disproportion. The city might have adopted a fine new race-neutral set of criteria that seemed fair to all, like using the assessment center approach of which Emily writes. Or, on the other hand, the city might have resorted to a terrible promotion plan that clearly used race in an unlawful way?like rescoring the test to add points to the scores of individuals depending on the race of the individual test-taker.Which takes us to the fact that Justice Kennedy's opinion relies in part on alogically flawed, categorical error. He writes: "If an employer cannot rescore a test based on the candidates' race [citing the Title VII provision], then it follows a fortiori that it may not take the greater step of discarding the test altogether to achieve a more desirable racial distribution of promotion-eligible candidates ... "This is wrong. There is a very powerful difference between setting aside the results of a test based on what you learn from general racial statistics about those who took the test, on the one hand, and adjusting individual test scores on the basis of race, on the other. The first does not require any official determination of any individual's race; one needs nothing more than a general impression of the racial composition of the group as a predicate for taking action. The second?adoption of a unlawful, race-based remedy such as racial rescoring of tests?requires the government to make an official determination of each person's race (and to benefit or burden the person on the basis of that determination). Using race to identify a problem has never before been considered problematic. It is what necessarily happens before institutions adopt the most widely accepted race-neutral actions, like using admissions criteria for every applicant that have less of a racial impact (for example, accepting students in the top 10 percent of their high-school class, which, in states like Texas, would produce a racially diverse student body). Contrary to Kennedy's assertion, deciding not to use test results should be far less problematic than "rescoring based on race."Here, all New Haven did was set aside the results of a test. It seems to me that test would have been very hard to defend, given the other questionable employment rules that surrounded it. New Haven counts the multiple-choice test as 60 percent of what determines promotion. That places twice the weight on test-taking as the median for firefighter promotions around the country. How can that unusually great a weight be justified?[more ...]
- Why is polling about health care reform so unreliable?
Quick: Do you want the government to tax your employer health benefits to pay for health care reform? When asked this question straight up, most Americans?54 percent?say they do not. But that number drops to 36 percent when people are reminded that right now, higher-wage workers get a bigger tax break than lower-wage workers. When they're told that taxing benefits would mean that fewer employers would offer health insurance, opposition surges to 73 percent.[more ...]
- The Audio Book Club on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.
Thousands of socially networked bibliophiles have pledged to tackle David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest over three months this summer, endnotes and all, as part of the Infinite Summer challenge. Back in March, Troy Patterson, Katie Roiphe, and James Surowiecki waded through the massive tome for Slate's "Audio Book Club." Use the player below to listen to their discussion. You can also download the file here.[more ...]
- Why Madoff got a longer sentence than he can possibly serve.
Disgraced financier Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison Monday morning for running a massive Ponzi scheme. Why give a 71-year-old man a 150-year term instead of just life or life without parole? In 2005, Daniel Engber explained that judges hand down impossibly long prison sentences for both practical and symbolic purposes. The original article is reprinted below.[more ...]
- The cost of poppy production.
Richard Holbrooke announced in Rome on Saturday that the U.S. will shift anti-poppy efforts in Afghanistan away from destroying crops and toward supporting alternatives. How easy is it to grow poppy?[more ...]
- Firefox 3.5 reviewed.
Lately I've been worried about Firefox. Ever since its debut in 2004, the open-source Web browser has won acclaim for its speed, stability, and customizability. It eventually captured nearly a quarter of the market, an astonishing achievement for a project run by a nonprofit foundation. But recently Firefox seemed to go soft. Even its fans complained that it had gotten slow, bloated, and was prone to crashing. Apple and Google, meanwhile, began to pour money into Web development, producing a pair of stable and lightning-fast programs, Safari and Chrome. The Norwegian software company Opera, which has always been on the forefront of browser innovation, has continued to improve its cult-hit product. And even Microsoft got its act together?Internet Explorer 8, which launched in March, is a pleasure to use. Hence my worry: Was Firefox withering under the competition?[more ...]
- What the placebo effect can teach us about health care reform. An interview with Peter Orszag.
Last week I started an exchange of questions and answers with Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, on the issue of health care. Our first Q&A is here. Our second is here.[more ...]
- What you should know about free-range pigs.
The horrible fates of factory-farmed pigs are relatively well-known: They live crammed in drab confinement. Their tails are docked, they're castrated to reduce aggression, and they're stuffed with growth promoters and antibiotic-laden feed. In the minds of most, the humane alternative is the free-range cultivation of pigs, an arrangement that affords access to open space and the chance to behave like pigs. As a system of swine management, however, free-range?even though it mercifully allows ample pig mobility?is in many ways far from the ideal that most people imagine it to be.[more ...]
- Dear Prudence answers readers' questions live at Washingtonpost.com.
Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, is on Washingtonpost.com every Monday at 1 p.m. to chat with readers about their romantic, family, financial, and workplace problems. (Read Prudie's Slate columns here.) An unedited transcript of this week's chat follows.[more ...]
- The strange, underground world of Chinese counterfeit cigarettes.
YUNXIAO, China?On first approach, Yunxiao seems like any other Chinese backwater caught in an uneasy industrial transition. Faded advertisements line the downtown streets, where motorcyclists wearing bamboo-frond hats vie for paying passengers in a riot of honking. A cheerful red banner in the city center exhorts citizens to develop the local economy. The message seems ironic. After all, since the 1990s, Yunxiao has sprouted its own league of millionaires, famous throughout China.[more ...]
- Citizens United v. FEC, the anti-Hillary ad case.
If Republicans were wondering how their 2012 presidential candidate is going to compete against President Obama's $600 million fundraising juggernaut, the Supreme Court seems poised to provide an answer: unlimited corporate spending supporting the Republican candidate, or attacking Obama.[more ...]
- What the Nixon tapes tell us about the Republican Party.
I wonder sometimes whether the Nixon tapes really will just continue to be the gift that never stops giving. I was in college when Richard Milhous Nixon was first elected president, and I can still remember the profound sense of loathing and disgust that I experienced at the mere sight, let alone the sound, of him and of his most especially repellent sidekick Henry Kissinger. Wiser and older people tell you that the passions of your youth will dry up and that a more sere and autumnal condition will overtake you as maturity advances, but the thought of the Nixon gang in the White House still infuses me with a pure and undiluted hatred and makes me consider throwing up things that I don't even remember having eaten.[more ...]
- Why does Japan, the world's most efficient economy, have so many elevator operators and gas station attendants?
More than any other country in the world, Japan is a case study in the triumphs of human engineering. Every Japanese manufacturer prides itself on energy efficiency and zero-landfill waste policies. The train and subway stations are models of precision and the application of information technology. Late last week, I visited Toyota's astonishing Tsutsumi auto plant, near the car company's headquarters in Toyoda City. With a capacity of 400,000 vehicles per year?this is where the Prius is made?it's clean, bright, full of erector-set conveyer belts, and thinly staffed. The welding shop is like a scene from The Terminator?a thicket of robots extend their arms, moving large pieces of metal and blasting them with shots of heat. (The section where robots stamp "Obama '08" and "NPR" bumper stickers on the hybrid vehicles must have been around the corner.) On Monday, I visited a small company in Osaka that hopes its cardboard, female-shaped robot will garner a share of the mannequin market. The engineers also demonstrated a robot that can dance and act and a third that can identify whether people are men or women ("You are a beautiful lady!") and guess their ages (inaccurately, it turns out).[more ...]
- Dear Prudence: Riding Shotgun with Tipsy Pal
A daily video from Slate V.[more ...]
- Richard Bernstein's The East, the West, and Sex.
The porn of the Western world is saturated with the belief that Eastern women are more sexy and sultry and slutty. The most googled brand in the porn world is "Asian Babes." The very phrase evokes legions of solitary sweaty teenage boys in basements across America and Europe. But this stereotype did not emerge with the World Wide Web. It originated with worldwide empires. Suppressed beneath these casual flicks of the wrist, there are five centuries of colonial exploitation screaming to be heard.[more ...]
- Military ousts Honduran president; Iran continues crackdown of demonstrators.
The Los Angeles Times leads with the Honduran army ousting President Manuel Zelaya and forcing him into exile in Costa Rica yesterday. Soldiers stormed the presidential palace early in the morning, hours before a controversial referendum was set to begin that could have paved the path to rewriting the country's constitution to potentially allow presidential reelection. It was the first military coup in Central America in 16 years. "This has been a brutal kidnapping," Zelaya said at the airport in San Jose, Costa Rica, where he was still wearing his pajamas. Leaders throughout the Americas condemned the coup. The Wall Street Journal leads its world-wide newsbox with the latest from Iran, where nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy were arrested. Iranian media tried to portray the British Embassy employees as instrumental players in the recent unrest. Meanwhile, security forces forcefully beat back thousands of protesters in Tehran. The Washington Post also leads with Iran but focuses on taking a look at how opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi faces a tough choice now in choosing whether to continue contesting the election at a time when leaders in Tehran are consolidating their power.[more ...]
- The papers take stock of Iran, national security, and the death of the King.
The New York Times leads with a look at the push-and-pull between the U.S. and Russia over how to regulate cyberspace, an increasingly perilous frontier as governments rely more on computer networks and hackers get better at destroying them. The Washington Post leads with news that left wing groups?Moveon, the SEIU, and others?are trying to whip moderate Democrats into line behind a strong healthcare reform package by targeting ads against them in their home states. The legislators, though, don't seem to be listening, and some in the advocacy community think high-profile finger-shaking isn't the best use of money. The Los Angeles Times leads with a snapshot of crunch time in Sacramento, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to veto any budget plan that doesn't close the deficit, a do-or-die move that could force the complete shutdown of state government.[more ...]
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