Garden hose advertisement from May 1897.

Oddly enough, the military leaders to whom Krauthammer, Boot, and Barnes all insist that Obama should defer also eschew the V-word. McChrystal and McChrystal’s boss, Gen. David Petraeus, have repeatedly said that military power alone won’t solve the problems facing a country such as Afghanistan. Indeed, the counterinsurgency doctrine that Petraeus revived and that McChrystal is keen to apply in Afghanistan in effect concedes that violence alone is incapable of producing decisive and politically useful outcomes. Expend as much ammunition as you want: what today’s military calls “kinetic” methods won’t get you where you want to go. Acknowledging that battle doesn’t work, counterinsurgency advocates call for winning (or bribing) hearts and minds instead. And they’ll happily settle for outcomes—take a look at Iraq, for example—that bear scant resemblance to victory as traditionally defined. That the post-Cold War United States military, reputedly the strongest and most capable armed force in modern history, has not only conceded its inability to achieve decision but has in effect abandoned victory as its raison d’être qualifies as a remarkable development.–“No Exit: America has an impressive record of starting wars but a dismal one of ending them well,” Andrew Bacevich, The American Conservative

New York-style vowels are diphthongs— meaning they change into another sound during pronunciation. That’s just a boring way to describe the musical “aww-uhh” that New Yorkers bring to their vowels, pulling them apart like taffy, turning “sausage” into “sawww-sage.” Words like “talk” and “walk” turn into two-syllable words: “Taww-uhk” and “waww-uuhk.” Travis Bickle’s famous line from “Taxi Driver” actually sounds more like, “Yoo tawwhkin’ ta may?”…Nobody’s quite sure when these features melded into the accent we know today, though it shows up on some of the earliest sound recordings. After the British, the next generation of European immigrants to New York City — Irish and Germans in the mid-1800s, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Russians, and Italians starting in the 1880s — contributed their own features. There were references to a “Bowery accent” by the turn of the century. –“Why the classic Noo Yawk accent is fading away,” Sheila McClear, New York Post

A writer on Jezebel made a connection between your previous memoir, about your eating disorder, and your search for a partner. “Gottlieb treats dating like dieting— an unpleasant exercise in self-denial, meant to achieve a socially acceptable result,” she writes. Do you see any truth in that?

I see it as the opposite of denial– it’s about the opening up of possibilities and not denying ourselves the opportunity to fall madly in love with someone because we’ve intellectualized ourselves out of getting to know someone who isn’t our culture’s ideal of Mr. Right….

You do have a very a grim view of singlehood.

You’re right about that. For me, it’s harder to go through life alone than with a partner you love. But I don’t have a grim view of singlehood for those who embrace it. It’s that, for me and many women — we’d rather have the teammate in life. And no matter how many friends we have, there’s a qualitative difference between what those friendships can offer — it’s a completely different level of intimacy and involvement in the minutiae, the little moments in life that have so much meaning to a lot of us, especially as we get older and our priorities change. –“‘Marry Him’’s Lori Gottlieb: Settling and the single girl,” interview by Sarah Hepola, Salon

From March 1925.

Bill Martel, an international-security expert at the Fletcher School, at Tufts University, told me that Holder, having been impervious to the shifting public mood, had been sucked into “a political riptide.” The Christmas Day bombing attempt, he noted, had come only a month after Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who had exchanged e-mails with radical Islamists, massacred thirteen people at Fort Hood, Texas. Both incidents had revived public concern about America’s vulnerability to terrorism. Holder’s decisions, Martel warned, had “the makings of a sustained and self-inflicted political hemorrhage.” He added, “I think they’re going to have to give up on civilian trials. And Eric Holder is in for some pretty brutal days.” Indeed, on January 31st, Senator Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, declared on Fox News that Holder should “step down,” for his inability to make “a distinction” between “terrorists who are flying into Detroit, blowing up planes, and American citizens who are committing a crime.” –“The Trial: Eric Holder and the battle over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” Jane Mayer, The New Yorker

Examining one particular part of the limbic system– the ventral striatum– was especially revealing, as its level of activity corresponded with the perceived funniness of a joke. “It’s the same region that is involved in many different types of reward, from drugs, to sex and our favourite music,” says Mobbs, now at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK. “Humour thus taps into basic rewards systems that are important to our survival.” –“The Comedy Circuit: When your brain gets the joke,” Daniel Elkan, NewScientist

Climate change will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration. While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world. In addition, extreme weather events may lead to increased demands for defense support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster response both within the United States and overseas. –The U.S. Department of Defense Quadrennial Defense Review Report, as quoted in “Pentagon Considers Climate Change a National Security Threat,” Matthew Cordell, UN Dispatch

From February 1909.

It’s hard to talk about the dangers of cell-phone radiation without sounding like a conspiracy theorist. This is especially true in the United States, where non-industry-funded studies are rare, where legislation protecting the wireless industry from legal challenges has long been in place, and where our lives have been so thoroughly integrated with wireless technology that to suggest it might be a problem—maybe, eventually, a very big public-health problem—is like saying our shoes might be killing us. Except our shoes don’t send microwaves directly into our brains. And cell phones do—a fact that has increasingly alarmed the rest of the world. Consider, for instance, the following headlines that have appeared in highly reputable international newspapers and journals over the past few years. From summer 2006, in the Hamburg Morgenpost: Are we telephoning ourselves to death? That fall, in the Danish journal Dagens Medicin: Mobile phones affect the brain’s metabolism. December 2007, from Agence France-Presse: Israeli study says regular mobile use increases tumour risk. January 2008, in London’s Independent: Mobile phone radiation wrecks your sleep. September 2008, in Australia’s The Age: Scientists warn of mobile phone cancer risk. –“Warning: Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous to Your Health,” Christopher Ketcham,” GQ

I don’t want to have a salty, transgressive mini-adult around. The joke is not that great. My parents raised me with rules and standards, which I gradually learned to break over time. I can remember my mother remonstrating with me, probably in the middle-school years, for my overreliance on “holy crap.” It was no doubt a relief to my father when I devolved into full foul-mouthed teenagerhood and he could go back to saying “dog-fucking son of a bitch” during Eagles games or whenever. But he didn’t try to speed up the process. So it was guilty and mortified laughter that I was stifling, ineffectively. No one will mimic you more cruelly and accurately than your own child. “Daddy made a mistake!” is his favorite gag line of all. Daddy made a mistake! It’s not funny. It’s funny. Fuck! I mean, drat. –“Underparenting: Words!” by Tom Scocca, The Awl

The Court has given lobbyists, already much too powerful, a nuclear weapon. Some lawyers have predicted that corporations will not take full advantage of it: they will want to keep their money for their business. But that would still permit carefully targeted threats. What legislator tempted to vote for health care reform or Obama’s banking reorganization would be indifferent to the prospect that his reelection campaign could be swamped in a tsunami of expensive negative advertising? How many corporations fearful of environmental or product liability litigation would pass up the chance to tip the balance in a state judicial election? On the most generous understanding the decision displays the five justices’ instinctive favoritism of corporate interests. But some commentators, including The New York Times, have suggested a darker interpretation. The five justices may have assumed that allowing corporations to spend freely against candidates would favor Republicans; perhaps they overruled long-established laws and precedents out of partisan zeal. If so, their decision would stand beside the Court’s 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore as an unprincipled political act with terrible consequences for the nation. –“The ‘Devastating’ Decision,” Ronald Dworkin, The New York Review of Books

From January 1859.

The direct and selfish exploitation of a feudal era has been transformed in the modern age into a juridically constrained and almost disinterested state kleptocracy. Today, a finance minister is a Robin Hood who has sworn a constitutional oath. The capacity that characterizes the Treasury, to seize with a perfectly clear conscience, is justified in theory as well as in practice by the state’s undeniable utility in maintaining social peace—not to mention all the other benefits it hands out. (In all this, corruption remains a limited factor. To test this statement, it suffices to think of the situation in post-Communist Russia, where an ordinary party man like Vladimir Putin has been able, in just a few years as head of state, to amass a personal fortune of more than $20 billion.) Free-market observers of this kleptocratic monster do well to call attention to its dangers: overregulation, which impedes entrepreneurial energy; overtaxation, which punishes success; and excessive debt, the result of budgetary rigor giving way to speculative frivolity. –“The Grasping Hand: the modern democratic state pillages its productive citizens,” Peter Sloterdijk, City Journal

The one thing you expect from your dog is unconditional love and tail wags at the end of the day. There’s something kind of heartbreaking about coming home from work, from providing the income to make the house function, and being hated and feared when you walk in the door. So I thought maybe Dave the dog was beaten up by a man at some point, right? But male friends would come over, friends who look like me, and Dave would be fine. It was just me. My dog hated me. Fortunately, I had one last card to play. There were health and safety reasons, concerns about the dog population, and I didn’t want to have to do it. And yet, there was one move that I could use on him that I didn’t think he could use on me: removal of testicles. Dave was not neutered when we adopted him, and I was confident that if this behavior was an alpha-male thing, well, a little scalpel work ought to take care of that nicely…. I expected a certain amount of calmness to have set in after Dave’s procedure. I thought he’d be docile, a sort of cat-dog…. Then the barking started. Loud, shrill, frightened, it came in the same familiar staccato bursts, even though Dave was still somewhat sedated and disoriented. It was like being verbally assaulted by some sort of sleepy incoherent hippie eunuch. –“The Dog Who Hates Me,” John Moe, New York Times

Prior to Craig Claiborne’s tenure at the Times, reviews in newspapers and elsewhere had often been looked upon suspiciously by the dining public, seen more as a reflection of a publication’s advertising aspirations than a straightforward analysis of a restaurant’s virtues. Published regularly from 1935 through the mid-1950s, the Duncan Hines guides, known as Adventures in Good Eating, had been something of a national standard. They were at least partly the work of Hines, a traveling salesman of printing paper and ink, who undertook to tell other travelers where to eat, using prose that verged on puffery. Of the Oregon Caves Chateau in Oregon Caves, Oregon, the guide reads, in its 1944 edition, “Without the hospitality of the Sabins, this place would still be nice indeed. When you add their personalities, it makes it ‘tops.’ The Chateau is lovely, and unusual.” This is the totality of the review, and quite typical. One can only imagine how the hosts had fawned over the reviewer. –“Everyone Eats: But that doesn’t make you a restaurant critic,” Robert Sietsema, Columbia Journalism Review

June 1912.

But at what? Magee’s landing on the stone floor of that French train station was softened by the skylight he crashed through a moment earlier. Glass hurts, but it gives. So does grass. Haystacks and bushes have cushioned surprised-to-be-alive free-fallers. Trees aren’t bad, though they tend to skewer. Snow? Absolutely. Swamps? With their mucky, plant-covered surface, even more awesome. Hamilton documents one case of a sky diver who, upon total parachute failure, was saved by bouncing off high-tension wires. Contrary to popular belief, water is an awful choice. Like concrete, liquid doesn’t compress. Hitting the ocean is essentially the same as colliding with a sidewalk, Hamilton explains, except that pavement (perhaps unfortunately) won’t “open up and swallow your shattered body.” –“How to Fall 35,000 Feet—And Survive,” Dan Koeppel, Popular Mechanics

Words are wallpaper here, so it’s easy to see why McSorley’s has inspired writer after writer to sing of the Bowery bar. Joseph Mitchell made one of the earlier stamps in a 1913 New York Times article, and later in a book, “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.” Then came poetry, notably ee cummings’ 1923 poem “i was sitting in mcsorley’s.” A sample: “tinking luscious jigs dint of ripe silver with warm-lyish wetflat splurging smells waltz the glush of squirting taps plus slush of foam.” “The poetry is God-awful. You’ve got to be loaded to understand it,” said Jim Wilk, 41, a regular who works construction in Manhattan. –“McSorley’s Old Ale House: Where words and beer still flow,” Baxter Holmes, Los Angeles Times

Karl Marx in his Eighteenth Brumaire wrote that those trying to master a new language always begin by translating it back into the tongue they already know. And I was limiting myself (and ill-serving my readers) in using the pre-existing imagery of Stalinism and Eastern deference. I have recently donned the bifocals provided by B.R. Myers in his electrifying new book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, and I understand now that I got the picture either upside down or inside out. The whole idea of communism is dead in North Korea, and its most recent “Constitution,” “ratified” last April, has dropped all mention of the word. The analogies to Confucianism are glib, and such parallels with it as can be drawn are intended by the regime only for the consumption of outsiders. Myers makes a persuasive case that we should instead regard the Kim Jong-il system as a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right. It is based on totalitarian “military first” mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia. –“A Nation of Racist Dwarfs: Kim Jong-il’s regime is even weirder and more despicable than you thought,” Christopher Hitchens, Slate

From January 1923.

An example of how insidious policies can create insidious habits implying insidious ideas is found President Obama’s first speech before Congress. In it he echoed ideas he often advocated in his campaign, specifically, a rejection of self-ownership and acceptance of self-sacrifice. “I know the price of tuition is higher than ever, which is why, if you are willing to volunteer in your neighborhood or give back to your community or serve your country, we will make sure you can afford a higher education,” Obama said….It is easy to see the economic absurdity of such schemes. Americans pay high direct taxes into government coffers. Further, their purchasing power is reduced through indirect taxes in the form of government regulations that drive up the price of goods and services. The government then allows individuals to ransom back some of their earned income in exchange for doing service for the government. And for many of these services, program participants receive some form of federal compensation, that is, more money taken out of taxpayer pockets. –“The Servile Citizen,” Edward Hudgins, The New Individualist

1980 was an insane time, at least for me: drugs were spiraling up, romance was spiraling down, and melodrama was abundant. I had gotten a job in the mailroom of a prominent literary journal, a job that permitted me to arrive at noon—since my co-worker had to leave early to attend music lessons—and then not return after taking the mailbag to the post office, which I usually contrived to do before four o’clock. I was not serious. I was fucking around heavily, not writing, pretending to be a musician but not managing to practice. I walked around in a daze of self-kidding. Late one night in early summer I was perhaps on my way to or from a party, probably high, when I happened to pass the 24-hour copy shop on Mercer Street just south of Eighth. I glanced in briefly—it was the place where I had put together my zine, and I knew most of the employees. A few doors south I felt a hand on my shoulder. Once again I didn’t recognize him. I’ve never been good with faces, but this time there was an additional reason. Carluccio had grown, broadened, darkened—he was very nearly a different person altogether. He led me back to the copy shop, where he was collating and folding stacks of sheets laid out in a row. He finished assembling one, stapled it, signed it, and handed it to me. We must have made some sort of conversation, but I remember none of it. I didn’t even remember the chapbook until days later, when I picked my jacket up off the floor next to the bed and discovered it sticking out of the side pocket. –“Hooliganism and Literature,” Luc Sante, Guernica

What we know about love in the times that preceded ours we have learned from proverb, myth and literature, and that knowledge remains, to this day, somewhat spotty. Love may be blind, a baptism and many splendored. A red, red rose or a wild plant born of a wet night; unlucky at cards; the course that never did run smooth; done with the compass, done with the chart! A labor we lose. The lineage of love is provisional and perhaps discontinuous: if the reign of love commenced with Adam and Eve soon after the dawn of the world, then the textual traces of their union were many years out of date by the time the Book of Genesis arrived a few centuries before the common era. Did Adam profess undying love to Eve before the serpent stole her heart? Perhaps not, but how are we to know? –“A Fine Romance: On Christina Nehring,” Miriam Markowitz, The Nation

From March 1925.

It didn’t take long. Cunningham had canceled a home alarm service with ADT Security after two months, and the company had billed him a $450 early termination fee, which he disputed. ADT sent his account to Equinox Financial Management Solutions, a third-party debt collector. The collection agency sent him a letter asking that he call back immediately. He dialed, armed with a voice recorder. “Can you garnish my wages if I don’t pay?” he asked. “Yes,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Can you put a lien on my house?” “Yes.” Wrong answers. Turns out, Texas consumer rights laws are some of the most consumer-friendly in the country. And according to a federal consumer protection law, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), debt collectors are prohibited from threatening legal action that would violate state laws. In this case, garnishing wages or putting a lien on Cunningham’s house would violate the Texas Debt Collection Act. Cunningham knew he had a good enough case to file a lawsuit against the debt collection agency, and for his first lawsuit, he decided to enlist the help of a lawyer. Two months later, he had a check in his hand for $1,000. “It’s like discovering fire,” says Cunningham, thumbing through the stack of lawsuit papers on his table. –“Better Off Deadbeat: Craig Cunningham has a simple solution for getting bill collectors off his back. he sues them.” by Kimberly Thorpe, Dallas Observer (via)

I do not pretend that uploading or downloading unpurchased electronic books is morally correct, but I do think it is more of a grey area than some of your readers may. Perhaps this will change as the Kindle and other e-ink readers make electronic books more convenient, but the Baen Free Library is an interesting experiment that proves that at least in that case, their business was actually enhanced by giving away their product free. That is probably not a business model that will work for everyone, but what it shows is that as a company they have their ear to the ground and are willing to think in new directions and take chances instead of putting their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and railing against their customers, as the music industry is doing. The world is changing and business models have to change with it. –“Confessions of a Book Pirate,” C. Max Magee, The Millions

Niches on the internet may have begun that way, but it’s precisely that expectation that the growth of the internet seems to have changed. The things people put on the internet can very easily be interpreted as public speech — global speech — even if they’re not intended that way. (Put a goofy video on YouTube for your friends, and you invite the comment/criticism of the world: “Why are you asking me to watch this?”) And because the web is a totally seamless space, people are far less aware of the specific audience for any given place they wind up; if the content is Not For Them, they’re likely to blame the content. (Start a journal of highbrow lit criticism on the web, and you will likely get called pretentious by people who’d never even notice the thing in a print environment. That opinion will not be “incorrect” or inauthentic, but it will be a kind of feedback you weren’t getting before, and now you’ll have to decide whether it matters.) And because the web puts your material within reach of so many people, it can create the impulse to make the material useful/accessible to as many of them as possible, even if it’s just to avoid the mockery of folks who weren’t in your target market to begin with. –“Internet Paradox,” A Grammar

From “The Flight of the Clamoplane: A ballad of Cow Bay,” Harper’s Magazine, April 1911

The genocide of the Rwandan Tutsis, Gourevitch claims, was “the product of order, authoritarianism, decades of modern political theorizing and indoctrination, and of one of the most meticulously administered states in history”. This clichéd image, which could not be applied even to the Third Reich, is as banal as it is misleading. Gourevitch’s characterization can be understood as a reaction against the earliest accounts of the genocide, which saw it quite simply as an outburst of uninhibited tribal violence. But Gourevitch’s thesis of complete order is no less lazy, and treats important facts as mere details. For example: the genocide occurred in parallel with a bloody civil war, which over the preceding three years had put a large part of the Rwandan population to flight; it was triggered by the murder of the Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana, which unleashed panic in an already confused political situation; the genocide took place against the background of an ongoing power struggle between several elite groups, and the first to be killed by extremists following the murder of the President were not Tutsis but Hutu members of parliament, among them the Prime Minister. In short, the genocide was enacted in a climate of great fear and political bewilderment. –“Kigali’s Ambassador-at-large: How Philip Gourevitch wrote the victor’s history book,” Felix Holmgren, Eurozine

Boredom is woven into the very fabric of the literary enterprise. We read, and write, in large part to avoid it. At the same time, few experiences carry more risk of active boredom than picking up a book. Boring people can, paradoxically, prove interesting. As they prattle on, you step back mentally and start to catalog the irritating timbre of the offending voice, the reliance on cliché, the almost comic repetitiousness— in short, you begin constructing a story. But a boring book, especially a boring novel, is just boring. A library is an enormous repository of information, entertainment, the best that has been thought and said. It is also probably the densest concentration of potential boredom on earth.–“Our Boredom, Ourselves,” Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times

HUO: Could you tell me about the freeness principle?

RV: Freeness is the only absolute weapon capable of shattering the mighty self-destruction machine set in motion by consumer society, whose implosion is still releasing, like a deadly gas, bottom-line mentality, cupidity, financial gain, profit and predation. Museums and culture should be free, for sure, but so should public services, currently prey to the scamming multinationals and states. Free trains, buses, subways, free healthcare, free schools, free water, air, electricity, free power—all through alternative networks to be set up. As freeness spreads, new solidarity networks will eradicate the stranglehold of the commodity.

HUO: What are the current conditions for dialogue? Is there a way out of this system of isolation?

RV: Dialogue with power is neither possible nor desirable. Power has always acted unilaterally: by organizing chaos, by spreading fear, by forcing individuals and communities into selfish and blind withdrawal. As a matter of course, we will invent new solidarity networks and new intervention councils for the well-being of all of us and each of us, overriding the fiats of the state and its mafioso-political hierarchies. The voice of lived poetry will sweep away the last remaining echoes of a discourse in which words are in profit’s pay.–“Raoul Vaneigm: Dialogue with power is neither possible nor desirable,” interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obist, Adbusters

From “Elephantine metamorphoses,” Harper’s Magazine, August 1857

Today, prosecutors tried to introduce a document from actress, Mia Farrow, alleging that supermodel Naomi Campbell had informed her that Mr. Taylor had sent his men to give her a rough-cut diamond after they had all attended a dinner that was hosted by former South African President, Nelson Mandela. Defense lawyers for Mr. Taylor objected to the use of the document, arguing that while the document was a declaration made by Ms. Farrow to Special Court for Sierra Leone prosecutor, Nicholas Koumjian, there is nothing indicating that the declaration was made under oath or whether it was a sworn affidavit. Mr. Taylor’s lead defense counsel, Courtenay Griffiths, further stated that Ms. Farrow’s declaration that certain guests at the dinner, including Mrs. Mandela, raised concern about the presence of Mr. Taylor at the dinner, meant that the document was prejudicial, and that the best person to have made any statement about the transfer of the the diamond would have been Ms. Campbell herself, not a third party. Mr. Griffiths called the document “third-hand hearsay.” –“Judges Order That Prosecutors Cannot Use New Documents Alleging That Charles Taylor Gave Sierra Leone’s Blood Diamonds To Supermodel Naomi Campbell,” Alpha Sesay, The Trial of Charles Taylor

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can’t live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed. –“How to Write about Africa,” Binyavanga Wainaina, Granta (2005)

What I should really do is just commit suicide. I have this little Sunday ritual I started around the time I publicly compared the torture at Abu Ghraib to a fraternity prank, where I climb into my Jacuzzi and put a gun in my mouth. But I can never work up the guts to pull the trigger. A few times I came close to overdosing on prescription pain pills, but my goddamn doctors were always there to save me. If I had any sense, I would just hole myself up in a Red Roof Inn with a case of Jack Daniel’s and slowly drink myself into the gaping maw of death itself. –“I Don’t Even Want To Be Alive Anymore,” by “Rush Limbaugh,” The Onion

From September 1958.

Haiti is everybody’s cherished tragedy. Long before the great earthquake struck the country like a vengeful god, the outside world, and Americans especially, described, defined, marked Haiti most of all by its suffering. Epithets of misery clatter after its name like a ball and chain: Poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. One of the poorest on earth. For decades Haiti’s formidable immiseration has made it among outsiders an object of fascination, wonder and awe. Sometimes the pity that is attached to the land — and we see this increasingly in the news coverage this past week — attains a tone almost sacred, as if Haiti has taken its place as a kind of sacrificial victim among nations, nailed in its bloody suffering to the cross of unending destitution. –“To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature,” Mark Danner, New York Times

Ha, who manages a stall that sells artificial maidenheads at a commercial center near Tan Thanh border gate, said the hymens are sold two at a time in a box that costs VND700,000 (US$38), accompanied with a solution that costs VND380,000. Customers are told to use one hymen first to see how it feels and the other one in a “real situation”…. The artificial hymen, which is a 6.5×3.5 centimeter rectangular piece made of a transparent material that shrinks and dissolves after being soaked in hot water, will expire in two years, according to the label. Ha said she sells almost all the hymens to beauty salons in Hanoi. “Retailing it here could easily get me caught.” –“Virginity Protected for $38 at China Border,” Thanh Nhien

The garden-based curriculum has good news for the state’s catastrophically underachieving students: a giant team of volunteers is ready to help them. Here is how our garden-loving, home-cooking, recycling superintendent of instruction describes one of the program’s principal advantages in the introduction to A Child’s Garden of Standards, a gargantuan compendium of charts and lesson plans intended to link the beloved method of gardening with the hard-ass objectives of the state standards: “Some families, particularly those from other countries, may feel uncomfortable when asked to help out at school because their English skills or educational background do not give them a solid classroom footing. For these families, the living classroom of a garden can be a much more inviting environment in which to engage in their children’s education.” If this patronizing agenda were promulgated in the Jim Crow South by a white man who was espousing a sharecropping curriculum for African American students, we would see it for what it is: a way of bestowing field work and low expectations on a giant population of students who might become troublesome if they actually got an education. –“Cultivating Failure,” Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic Monthly

November 1917.

The man has tried, of course; we’ve gotten patches of narrative around all the important issues—the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the war on terror (a.k.a. the Undiebomber)—but I’ve yet to hear anything that excites that part of my brain which loves, which craves the symmetries the pleasures of well-told tale. Just this past Tuesday we saw the consequences for the President of not having a real story to draw upon. In Massachusetts, the President was faced with an insurgent Republican candidate who was telling a story that should have been familiar to the Commander-in-Chief: the story of an upstart outsider with energy and ideas, who was going to shake things up, etc. The President tried to help Martha Coakely by campaigning, but since his Administration doesn’t seem to do story he couldn’t lend her one. He could only show up as himself, and that clearly was not enough. A man cannot withstand a story, even if the man is remarkable and the story is simple. The story always wins. –“One Year: Storyteller-in-Chief,” Junot Díaz, The New Yorker

Last summer, Louis Menand tabulated that there were 822 creative writing programs. Consider this for a moment: If those programs admit even 5 to 10 new students per year, then they will cumulatively produce some 60,000 new writers in the coming decade. Yet the average literary magazine now prints fewer than 1,500 copies. In short, no one is reading all this newly produced literature—not even the writers themselves. And with that in mind, writers have become less and less interested in reaching out to readers—and less and less encouraged by their teachers to try. –“The Death of Fiction?” by Ted Genoways, Mother Jones

Ten thousand U.S. servicemembers are now on the ground in Port-au-Prince. Ten thousand U.S. troops providing security from lawlessness and looters and adding muscle to rescue and recovery efforts. Surely their arrival will help Haitians sleep sounder these nights. (By the end of the week, another 6,000 will be helping, too.) But ten thousand is also half the number of soldiers dispatched by Washington to Haiti in 2001 when Jean Bertrand Aristide needed support as he was forging a new chance at Haiti’s revival. Three years later, when he failed to deliver, it was a U.S. Air Force jet that flew the once popular, ever populist, but increasingly despotic president to Africa with instructions to not come back. Aristide then was not up against a task as large as the one that confronts his country today. Aristide today only weeps and begs to be returned to help his homeland. –“God Hearts Haiti,” Elizabeth Kiem, The Morning News

From October 1920.

VIC CHESNUTT: Wow. I have been amazed and confused by the health care debate. We need health care reform. There is no doubt about it, we really need health care reform in this country. Because it’s absurd that somebody like me has to pay so much, it’s just too expensive in this country. It’s just ridiculously expensive. That they can take my house away for a kidney stone operation is–that’s absurd.

TERRY GROSS: Is that what you’re facing the possibility of now?

Mr. CHESNUTT: Yeah. I mean, it could–I’m not sure exactly. I mean, I don’t have cash money to pay these people. I tried to pay them. I tried to make payments and then they finally ended up saying, no, you have to pay us in full now. And so, you know, I’m not sure what exactly my options are. I just–I really–you know, my feeling is that I think they’ve been paid, they’ve already been paid $100,000 from my insurance company. That seems like plenty. I mean, this would pay for like five or six of these operations in any other country in the world. You know, it affects–I mean, right now I need another surgery and I’ve been putting it off for a year because I can’t afford it. And that’s absurd, I think.

I mean, I could actually lose a kidney. And, I mean, I could die only because I cannot afford to go in there again. I don’t want to die, especially just because of I don’t have enough money to go in the hospital. But that’s the reality of it. You know, I have a preexisting condition, my quadriplegia, and I can’t get health insurance.

GROSS: Is it true you can’t get good health insurance?

Mr. CHESNUTT: I can’t get–I’m uninsurable. The only reason I have any insurance now is because I was on Capitol Records for a while. And I had excellent health insurance there. And then when I got dropped from Capitol, I COBRA’d my insurance for as long as it was legally possible. And then–which was insanely expensive, to COBRA this very nice insurance. And then, when that ran out, the insurance company said they could offer me one last thing and that is hospitalization. It only covers hospital bills. That’s all it covers. And it’s still $500 a month. So, it doesn’t pay for my drugs, my doctors or anything like that. All it pays for is hospitalization. And yet, I still owe all this money on top of that.

GROSS: Wow. Well, I wish you the best with your health and your music. And I really want to thank you…

–Terry Gross, “Songs Of Survival And Reflection: ‘At The Cut’” on Fresh Air

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of “like” has spread through the idiom of the young. And it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables. But it didn’t start off that way, and might possibly be worth saving in a modified form. Its antecedents are not as ignoble as those of “you know.” It was used by the leader of the awesome Droogs in the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, who had possibly annexed it from the Beatnik Maynard G. Krebs, of Dobie Gillis. It was quasi-ironic in Scooby Doo by 1969, and self-satirizing by the time that Frank Zappa and Moon Unit deployed it (“Like, totally”) in their “Valley Girl” song in the early 1980s. It was then a part of the Californianization of American youth-speak. In an analysis drawing upon the wonderfully named Sonoma College linguist Birch Moonwomon’s findings, Penelope Eckert and Norma Mendoza-Denton phrase matters this way: “One of the innovative developments in the white English of Californians is the use of the discourse-marker ‘I’m like’ or ‘she’s like’ to introduce quoted speech, as in ‘I’m like, where have you been?’ This quotative is particularly useful because it does not require the quote to be of actual speech (as ‘she said’ would, for instance). A shrug, a sigh, or any of a number of expressive sounds as well as speech can follow it.” –Christopher Hitchens, “The Other L-Word,” Vanity Fair

There are many acts of destruction for which the Bush years are rightly reviled–the illegal invasions, the defiant defences of torture, the tanking of the global economy. But the administration’s most lasting legacy may well be the way it systematically did to the US government what branding-mad CEOs did to their companies a decade earlier: it hollowed it out, handing over to the private sector many of the most essential functions of government, from protecting borders to responding to disasters to collecting intelligence. This hollowing out was not a side project of the Bush years, it was a central mission, reaching into every field of governance. And though the Bush clan was often ridiculed for its incompetence, the process of auctioning off the state, leaving behind only a shell–or a brand–was approached with tremendous focus and precision. –“Naomi Klein on how Corporate Branding has Taken Over America,” Naomi Klein, The Guardian

From January 1966.

I visited Durkee in November, hoping to see the new $20 million mercury control system, reportedly in the initial phases of construction. But my request for a tour was denied. Jacqueline Clark, Ash Grove’s head of public relations, e-mailed me that the Durkee plant was facing imminent layoffs and could not accommodate a tour. Indeed, a few months earlier, Ash Grove announced plans to halt production at its nine U.S. plants, including Durkee. (In early December, the company temporarily ceased production and laid off more than half of the plant’s 115 workers.) Company officials said they might close the facility altogether if proposed federal regulations on mercury are enacted next year.–“Mountains of Mercury,” Jeremy Miller, High Country News

Consider the incident a few years ago that involved Yulia Romanova, a 22-year-old model. On a winter evening, Romanova was returning with her beloved Staffordshire terrier from a visit to a designer who specialises in kitting out canine Muscovites in the latest fashions. The terrier was sporting a new green camouflage jacket as he walked with his owner through the crowded Mendeleyevskaya metro station. There they encountered Malchik, a black stray who had made the station his home, guarding it against drunks and other dogs. Malchik barked at the pair, defending his territory. But instead of walking away, Romanova reached into her pink rucksack, pulled out a kitchen knife and, in front of rush-hour commuters, stabbed Malchik to death. Romanova was arrested, tried and underwent a year of psychiatric treatment. Typically for Russia, this horror story was countered by a wellspring of sympathy for Moscow’s strays. A bronze statue of Malchik, paid for by donations, now stands at the entrance of Mendeleyevskaya station.–“Moscow’s Stray Dogs,” Susanne Sternthal, Financial Times

Has anyone ever offended you in the bedroom?

I don’t know if I was necessarily offended, but I’m really not a fan of dirty talk. It really throws me off and turns me off, a lot.

So a guy busted it out?

Oh, he busted it out. Which it shouldn’t have been offensive, because it was only compliments, they were just compliments.

They were dirty compliments?

I don’t know, like “Tiny Dancer.”

What? Tiny Dancer?

He called me names, as if I was some hot princess or something, like, “Tiny Dancer.” I was like, “No.” –“Talking to Strangers,” interview by Meghan Pleticha, Nerve

From October 1913.

Immediately upon leaving our position, we came under heavy enemy fire. Almost at once, Private Ames grew red in the face. Private Elder took Ames’s pack. But the pack was heavy, and Elder soon reported that his back was spasming. Also, his calves were burning. Elder joined Ames behind a small boulder, where the two men shared a Diet Coke. –“Heavy Artillery,” George Saunders, The New Yorker

It was the third day of the Mars Society’s Twelfth International Convention, a gathering of space geeks, engineers, and scientists (mad and otherwise), held from July 30, 2009, to August 2nd on the University of Maryland’s College Park campus. This year’s conference had a particular urgency: an independent panel tasked by President Obama to assess America’s human space flight program had invited Zubrin to testify in Washington the following week. Obama’s task force, led by former Lockheed Martin Chairman and CEO Norm Augustine, was a collection of industry insiders who weren’t likely to stray far from the status quo; but Zubrin had no plans to dilute his message. As he has since the early nineties, Zubrin would advocate for a radical overhaul of NASA organized around a single Kennedy-esque goal: reach Mars in under a decade. –“Mars or Bust,” Eric Benson and Justin Nobel, Guernica

DZ: I have to ask you your thoughts about Pat Robertson saying the earthquake happened because Haiti made a pact with the devil for independence.

OP: Pat Robertson can suck a big one–you can quote me on that. He is not a man of God and shouldn’t claim to be. And you can quote me on that. Please. –“An Interview with Haitian NBA Vet Olden Polynice,” Dave Zirin, The Nation

From January 1913.

For once, it seems that journalists are bristling on behalf of Haiti, a place usually painted by wariness and fear and resigned pity. Haitians themselves may be getting something like good press, no small development for the most maligned people in the hemisphere. The urgent sympathy of the news coverage helps. This disaster is different: It’s the worst yet in a country used to defining “worse” for the rest of the Americas. –“The Undercovered Country: Haiti as journalists have known it,” Sam Eifling, Columbia Journalism Review

Google is also good for history in that it challenges age-old assumptions about the way we have done history. Before the dawn of massive digitization projects and their equally important indices, we necessarily had to pick and choose from a sea of analog documents. All of that searching and sifting we did, and the particular documents and evidence we chose to write on, were—let’s admit it—prone to many errors. Read it all, we were told in graduate school. But who ever does? We sift through large archives based on intuition; occasionally we even find important evidence by sheer luck. We have sometimes made mountains out of molehills because, well, we only have time to sift through molehills, not mountains. Regardless of our technique, we always leave something out; in an analog world we have rarely been comprehensive. –Dan Cohen, “Is Google Good for History,” DanCohen.org

The problem is not the humanities as a discipline (who can blame a discipline?), the problem is its members. We are insufferable. We do not want change. We do not want centrality. We do not want to speak to nor interact with the world. We mistake the tiny pastures of private ideals with the megalopolis of real lives. We spin from our mouths retrograde dreams of the second coming of the nineteenth century whilst simultaneously dismissing out of our sphincters the far more earnest ambitions of the public at large—religion, economy, family, craft, science. –“The Turtlenecked Hairshirt: Fetid and fragrant futures for the humanities,” Ian Bogost, Bogost.com

From November 1968.

It was Hefner’s great insight that girly pictures divorced from any kind of human individuality could not be anything except dirty. And so his Playmates had names, jobs, personalities, and fact sheets, however illusory these often were. In some crucial way, then, Playboy gave what was previously considered pornography a kind of dignity. It was a deeply limiting, dingbat dignity, to be sure, but to allow the mid-century American woman any identity beyond that of mother, virgin, or whore increased her available social options by 25 percent. Women would naturally revolt against this, and no one could blame them, but the fact remains that Playboy helped liberate female sexuality from a Bastille of iniquitous morality, in the long run surely doing more to help women than harm them. –“The Bunny Revolution,” Tom Bissell, The New Republic

DEAR ABBY: I’m a 26-year-old minor league baseball player. I have been involved in two serious relationships. My first was a girl I became engaged to when I was 20 and in college playing baseball there. I loved her and was committed to her, but she was jealous of my “first love” — my sport. She constantly tried in subtle ways to get me to quit. After we had a huge fight, she finally threw my ring back at me. I stayed single for a couple of years and then met a woman and began slowly dating her. The first year our relationship was good, but over the next three years the same issues arose and I was hearing, “You’re selfish.” “You don’t love me.” “Grow up!” Being a professional baseball player has been my dream since I was 5, and I’m not ready to give up on it yet. Both these women continue to call and text me crying because it didn’t work out. I’m angry at them for not supporting me, but I also feel sad for them because all they did was love me. What do I do about them and about trusting women with my heart and dreams? — LOVELESS IN THE MIDWEST

DEAR LOVELESS: Stop allowing those women to lay a guilt trip on you.–“Dear Abby,” Abigail Van Buren

30 April 1961.

Did not sleep at all last night. It hurts like the devil! A snowstorm whipping through my soul, wailing like a hundred jackals. Still no obvious symptoms that perforation is imminent, but an oppressive feeling of foreboding hangs over me… This is it… I have to think through the only possible way out: to operate on myself… It’s almost impossible… but I can’t just fold my arms and give up. “18.30. I’ve never felt so awful in my entire life. The building is shaking like a small toy in the storm. The guys have found out. They keep coming by to calm me down. And I’m upset with myself—I’ve spoiled everyone’s holiday. Tomorrow is May Day. And now everyone’s running around, preparing the autoclave. We have to sterilise the bedding, because we’re going to operate. “20.30. I’m getting worse. I’ve told the guys. Now they’ll start taking everything we don’t need out of the room. –“Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report,” Vladislov Rogozov, British Medical Journal (don’t miss photos of Rogozov operating on himself)

From May 1965.

You also don’t care when they say that you glorify political violence.

For me, the 20th century communism is the biggest ethical-political catastrophe in history, greater catastrophe than fascism. But in the first years of the October Revolution, in spite of the so-called Red Terror, there was sexual liberation and literary explosion before it turned into a nightmare. I don’t accept the right-wing critique that says it was evil from the very beginning.

But what’s your stand on political violence?

In an abstract sense, I am opposed to violence. But nobody is actually against violence. Look at the Buddhists. They say you shouldn’t kill, but then they have all the exceptions. During the 40s, one of the great Zen philosophers was writing articles not only justifying Japanese invasion of China but also giving advice on how Buddhist enlightenment allows you to kill without guilt.

How can you dismiss Buddhism so easily? It’s the fastest growing religion in the world.

In the West, Buddhism is the new predominant ideology. Things are so unstable and confusing that with one speculation you can lose billions of dollars in a minute. The only thing that can explain this is Buddhism which says that everything is an appearance. That’s why the Dalai Lama is so popular in Hollywood. –“First they Called Me a Joker, Now I Am a Dangerous Thinker,” Shobhan Saxena interviews Slavoj Zizek, Times of India

Of course it seems risky for a brand to go negative on itself. But imagine if Domino’s had spent two years and tens of millions of dollars reformulating its pizza (which it did), and then launched the revamped pie with a simple “new and improved” spot. A “We took our great pizza and made it even yummier!” kind of ad. Would anyone notice? Would anyone talk or tweet about the fact that the Domino’s recipe had been altered? “Google the words new and improved,” says Domino’s chief marketing officer Russell Weiner, “and I think you’ll get about 160 million hits. They’re two of the more overused words in marketing. They’ve become wallpaper.” –“Like Cardboard,” Seth Stevenson, Slate

I signed the marriage license papers in front of the notary lady from the bail bonds place across the street. My wife-to-be, Shayonna, wasn’t allowed upstairs, so we signed it separately. After that, a guard took me into this little room where Shayonna was waiting. She looked so pretty. Her hair was in this little cute bun with a ponytail. She had braids and little spikes coming out of the bun. She was wearing a silver skirt with a champagne-colored shirt and orange shoes. The only thing I could do special was my hair– I put a little ponytail at the top of my single braids. We said our vows, and I cried like a big baby, because I couldn’t believe I was really getting married to this beautiful woman. We both said “I do,” and then we took a picture. We were about to touch each other–but the guard said we couldn’t. –“My Big Phat Same-sex Prison Wedding,” Dawn Davis II, Salon

From September 1963.

Is there anyone out there who still expects anything from the Angelides Commission? After AIG? After TARP? After Treasury’s gargantuan tax breaks for banks, Geithner’s preposterous asset buying program, the Citigroup $300 billion plus “ring fence,” or the FDIC’s guarantees of bank debts? Or, for that matter, the proposed new financial “reform” legislation that does little to rein in “too big to fail” banks and their long deadly chains of derivatives and credit default swaps? Probably not. But since the Commission is finally holding its first hearings this week, let’s just for a moment suspend disbelief and imagine how we skeptics might be proved wrong. One telltale sign will come right at the start: Are the bankers who are testifying required to do so under oath or not? If the answer is no, relax and go see a disaster movie. You can be sure that it will all be just for show. –“Ask Holder to Be Bolder: Resolving the Mysteries of AIG,” Tom Ferguson, New Deal 2.0

Emet means truth. It is my ur-word. It is the essence of Hashem, the impetus of creation, the midwife of the Covenant. These are poor words, but they will do. I could go on for hours. Ruth has advised against that… Ruth had a job as a community worker. She arrived unbidden at the home of an at-risk youth to give his parents a list of behaviors to stop. They nearly pushed her down a flight of stairs. She was fired. She had a volunteer position at a daycare. A boy asked her what it was like to not have a thingie. She answered, in great detail. Some policemen were called, most certainly an overreaction, but Ruth raised her voice and informed them that law is a deterrent to crime, not to gender. She is no longer welcome at the daycare. –“Marked Man,” The Golem Blog, The Morning News

When executives at Unilever noticed that much of their office space was either unused or unoccupied as workers traveled, they took away 36 percent of their employees’ personal space. The company’s offices in Leatherhead, England, now feature “agile” space: a largely open office where workers rearrange themselves throughout the day depending upon their tasks. They can collaborate with one another while sitting at a table, take a break in a curvy “vitality” space or concentrate alone in a small individual work area. The company’s design for its corporate offices in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., resembles a large house more than a cube farm. Renovations in Bogota and Singapore are scheduled to be finished in 2010. –“On the death of the Cubicle,” Susan E. Reed, Global Post

From May 1913.

It was at this point that I decided to kill him. After all, would the world really miss this fatuous little suppository, with his preening self-confidence and emetic cuteness? At first I thought of trampling the bespectacled vontz, but I felt that to do the job properly I’d need about two hundred more head to really stomp him good. There were no rocky cliffs where I could brush against the wretch with a little hip action and send him plummeting. Then it hit me. A nature walk had been mentioned, and all were anxious to participate. All, that is, except for a certain cringing homunculus, who carried on like Duse over the prospect of being in the woods among Lyme ticks and poison oak. He chose to remain in his room and make phone calls to check on the grosses of his new movie, which Variety had said would have limited appeal and suggested should open in Atlantis. My plan was to enter the house, sneak up on him from behind, and strangle the nattering little carbuncle with a sash. With everyone away, it would appear to the police to be the work of a drifter. –“Udder Madness,” Woody Allen, The New Yorker

The history of games is as old as civilisation. Competitive games are recorded as far back as 2,600BC, while archaeologists have found game “boards” that were apparently scratched onto the backs of statues by bored Assyrian guards in the 8th century BC. Technology has not changed human nature but it has given unprecedented rein to some of our innate impulses and, in particular, to those parts of us that the world of work and business have not used to best advantage: our love of exploration, learning, interaction and, perhaps above all, our sense of fun. Playfish has created ten games to date, and most of them are a long way from the traditional idea of videogames as a violent, crude form of escapism. Its first title, Who Has the Biggest Brain?, is an IQ quiz. Starting to play it takes less than 30 seconds: having logged into Facebook or MySpace (or switched on your iPhone), you look up the application and, after a few clicks and no expenditure, start playing…. The game does all the basics well: it features a bouncy, appealing interface and is challenging without being infuriating. The key to its success, though, is its integration into the social network itself. The moment you finish a game, it tells you how you rank compared to anyone on your “friends” list who has played the game and invites you to send a “taunt to a friend” to show off your prowess. –“All the World Is Play,” Tom Chatfield, Prospect

There are people out there who reject the existence of the tribe and have willed away their own sense of tribal affiliation. These dissidents think that sports fans are simpletons–immature, shallow, mentally damaged people without inner lives, who need vicarious attachments to feel like they are at least minimally alive. Such people view eternal tribal warfare–such as that between Sunni and Shiite Moslems–as the specific ongoing consequence of an ancient dispute over religious doctrine. They don’t see that tribal blood is lifeblood, that it can flow out of a body, but it can never go away. People who have opted out of the tribe–many are academics and intellectuals highly serious about subjects like deconstruction and penis envy–seem to be spectral figures, too thin, gnawing on the insides of their cheeks, hopped up over abstruse ideologies and theoretical abstractions. They are like atheists who, now that they have reasoned God out of existence, are disconsolate about having no one to blame for their troubles. –“Tribal Bloods,” John Wenke, The Gettysburg Review

From April 1913.

Filmic and most photographic images of war are shorn of the heart-pounding fear, awful stench, deafening noise and exhaustion of the battlefield. Such images turn confusion and chaos, the chief element of combat, into an artful war narrative. They turn war into porn. Soldiers and Marines, especially those who have never seen war, buy cases of beer and watch movies like “Platoon,” movies meant to denounce war, and as they do so revel in the despicable power of the weapons shown. The reality of violence is different. Everything formed by violence is senseless and useless. It exists without a future. It leaves behind nothing but death, grief and destruction. –“The Pictures of War You Aren’t Supposed to See,” Chris Hedges, TruthDig

A full 80 percent of the abuse reported in the study was perpetrated not by other inmates but by staff. And shockingly, 95 percent of the youth making such allegations said they were victimized by female staff. 64 percent of them reported at least one incident of sexual contact with staff in which no force or explicit coercion was used; staff caught having sex with inmates often claim it’s consensual. But staff have enormous control over inmates’ lives. They can give them privileges, such as extra food or clothing or the opportunity to wash, and they can punish them: everything from beatings to solitary confinement to extended sentences. The notion of a truly consensual relationship in such circumstances is grotesque even when the inmate is not a child. –“The Crisis of Juvenile Prison Rape: A new report,” David Kaiser and Lovisa Stannow, The New York Review of Books

Question: Is there an afterlife? —Matt

Answer: If you ever need to make your own Grand Canyon, start with a river and lift up the earth. As the ground rises the river will carry some of it away. Wait seven million years, at which point tourists will come. Some will see eons of erosion at work; others will believe that, a mere 4,500 years back, God dragged His fingernail across the desert. Like the group of evangelical-Christian creationists that rafted through in 2005. “One of the things it says to me,” a rafter was quoted as saying, “is I’m small and God and the world He created is huge. This is a man-dwarfing place.” –“Just Like Heaven,” Paul Ford, The Morning News

From February 1879.

While Palin enjoys support from some prominent Jewish conservatives, it is not an exaggeration to say that, more so than any other major political figure in recent memory (with the possible exception of Patrick J. Buchanan), she rubs Jews the wrong way. In a September 2008 poll by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), Jews disapproved of Palin as the pick for McCain’s vice-presidential running mate by a 54 to 37 percent margin. (By contrast, 73 percent approved of the selection of Joseph Biden as Obama’s.) Ask an average American Jew about Palin and you are likely to get a nonverbal response—a shiver, a shudder, a roll of the eyes, or a guffaw. Naomi Wolf, the feminist writer, sputtered that Palin was the “FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal,” articulating the mixture of contempt and fear that seemed to grip many Jewish women. The disdain is palpable and largely emotional. While 78 percent of American Jews voted for the Obama-Biden ticket, it is fair to say that most did not harbor animosity toward or contempt for Senator John McCain; the same cannot be said of their view of Palin. –“Why Jews Hate Palin,” Jennifer Rubin, Commentary

My brain boggles my mind. Its mystery. Its moody monologue. I walk down Bagley Avenue this fine April day. The Seattle sky is blue. The Brain, wrote Emily Dickinson, is wider than the Sky, since it contains both Sky and You. My own brain contains this blue sky plus six cherry trees in full bloom. Plus the memory of my granddad’s face. Plus bungalow yards and rock gardens bright with tulips, violets, camellias, and azaleas. The passing scene enters my eyes in the form of light waves. Neurons in my retina convert these light waves into electrical impulses that travel farther back into my brain. Our brain contains 100 billion neurons (nerve cells). Our gray matter. Each neuron has an axon—a little arm—that transmits information in the form of electrical impulses to the dendrites—receivers—of nearby neurons. Dendrites branch twig-like from each neuron. Between axon and dendrite, the synapse is the point of connection. Axons commune with dendrites across the synaptic gap. When neurons “fire,” they emit a rat-a-tat-tat of electrical pulses that travel down the axon and arrive at its terminal endings, which secrete from tiny pockets a neurotransmitter (dopamine, say, or serotonin). The neuro­transmitter ferries the message across the synaptic abyss and binds to the synapse, whereupon the synapse converts it back into an electrical pulse . . .So there you have the brain: a three-pound bagful of neurons, electrical pulses, chemical messengers, glial cells. There, too, you have the biological basis of the mind. “Anything can happen,” says the poet C. D. Wright, “in the strange cities of the mind.”…But what, then, is consciousness? –“My Brain on My Mind,” Priscilla Long, The American Scholar

Eleven years after the Nisga’a became the first tribe in British Columbia to sign a treaty, gaining self-government over 2000 square kilometers on the northwest coast, the nation went a step further and decided to let its citizens own the homes they live in. The news that private ownership would be legal on Nisga’a land rippled out of the Nass River valley in November, reminding those who heard it of how things work for the rest of Canada’s First Nations. If you live on a reserve in this country, your home belongs to the Crown, effectively barring you from the single most important economic tool in Western society: credit. –“Indigenous Capitalists, From BC to Peru,” Arno Kopecky, The Tyee