Program the Web

This site provides a variety of code, links, and articles for web programming, along with news items of interest — at least to me :)
Note, this site is a work in progress so "please pardon my dust!"

Slate Magazine

[Sat, 4 Sep 2010 17:06:55 PST]

Slate V: Could Today's Tennis Pros Win With Wood?

As the U.S. Open Tennis Championship gets underway, Slate V asks two world-class players what would happen if today's pros had to play with old-fashioned wooden rackets.

Rupert Murdoch's News of the World lectures the New York Times on—gasp!—ethical standards.

Let's review the recent ethical conduct of Rupert Murdoch's London tabloid, News of World.

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Rupert Murdoch - New York Times - News of World - London - Newspaper

The Slatest: Saturday Edition

Blackwater has received up to $600 million in classified CIA contracts since 2001; Ariz. gov. admits she was wrong about beheadings; White House crasher will take off clothes for .

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The president refuses to stand up for immigration, gay rights, and religious freedom.

Barack Obama's redecoration of the Oval Office includes a nice personal touch: a carpet ringed with favorite quotations from Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, both Presidents Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King Jr. The King quote, in particular, has become a kind of emblem for him: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." For all the carping about his every move, the only big problem with the Obama Presidency is the gap between what's written on his rug, and what's buried under it—the distance between the President's veneration of moral leadership past and his failure, so far, to exhibit much of it himself.

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Barack Obama - Martin Luther King - Oval Office - John F. Kennedy - Abraham Lincoln

Play Lean/Lock and test your skills as a political pundit.

Test your powers of political forecasting.

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Slate - United States - Video Games - Games - Programming

Welcome to Slate Labs: Experiments with multimedia journalism.

Experiments with multimedia journalism.

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Journalism - Education - Media - Multimedia - Business

How did Operation Iraqi Freedom turn into Operation New Dawn?

The name of the U.S. military's mission in Iraq changed on Wednesday from "Operation Iraqi Freedom" to the soap-sudsy "Operation New Dawn." How does the military choose operation names?

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Iraq War - Iraq - United States armed forces - Warfare and Conflict - Operation Iraqi Freedom

Why the NRA suddenly cares so much about Supreme Court nomination battles.

This may finally be the year the NRA traded in its safety goggles for rose-colored glasses. Certainly the nation's most powerful lobby group is entitled to take aim at anyone it wants. But the fact that the National Rifle Association has begun picking targets based on fantasy rather than fact says something sad about both the NRA and the state of American politics. The NRA's recent foray into the judicial confirmation process reveals that, when the subject is guns in America, legal aspirations now trump legal reality.

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National Rifle Association - United States - Supreme Court of the United States - Supreme Court - NRA

The Political Gabfest for Sept. 3, 2010.

Become a fan of the Political Gabfest on Facebook. We post to the Facebook page throughout the week, so keep the conversation going by joining us there.

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Facebook - Online Communities - Social Networking - Politics - Government

The case against long-distance relationships.

You're sitting in the airport terminal, rolling your copy of the Economist into a sweaty tube and waiting to see a significant other who lives far away. You're excited. You're aroused. But there's something else, a nagging feeling that gurgles in your stomach and won't go away. Is it pangs of guilt? It should be: The planet is about to suffer for your love.

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Economist - Business - United States - Recreation - Middle East

Obama's economic policies aren't ambitious enough to reverse America's decline.

Fears that the United States is on the cusp of a Japanese-style "lost decade" are grossly overstated: We've already had it—from 2000-2010. Sure, the last two years of the decade were defined by a cataclysm of historic proportions that almost made us forget the bad news of the prior eight years.

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United States - Economic - Lost Decade - Barack Obama - President

What went wrong with Marc Hauser's search for moral foundations.

The recent (self-)destruction of Harvard evolutionary biologist Marc Hauser is both hard to watch and impossible not to. When the university last month found Hauser guilty of scientific misconduct—ugly and serious words, those, meaning in this case either tweaking data or fabricating it outright—someone really, really big started a long fall in slow motion.

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Marc Hauser - Harvard University - Scientific misconduct - Education - Evolution

Four shows about little people, some of whom make chocolate.

By coincidence, I beg the attention of Skokie, Ill., at the start of the High Holidays. On Sept. 26, Matt Roloff, the star of Little People, Big World (TLC, season premiere on Monday at 8 p.m. ET), will appear at the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center (9603 Woods Dr.) in connection with its current exhibit on the pseudoscience of the Nazi leadership (degeneration). Roloff will discuss his advocacy for little people's rights. A question-and-answer session follows.

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TLC - little people big world - Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center - Skokie Illinois - Little People

Palinisms: Did she really say that?

"Those who are impotent and limp and gutless and then they go on, um, they're anonymous, they are sources that are anonymous, and impotent, limp, and gutless reporters take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references, it just slays me because it's so just absolutely clear what the state of yellow journalism is today."—In a radio interview with Sean Hannity, Sept. 1, 2010.

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Sean Hannity - Journalism sourcing - Yellow journalism - Sarah Palin - Talk radio

Corrections from the last week.

In an Aug. 31 "Slatest" entry, Meredith Simons misspelled the name of Stanford University.

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Stanford University - United States - Colleges and Universities - Education - Private Colleges and Universities

What will the president say to get Democrats excited for the coming campaign?

Labor Day traditionally begins the final sprint to Election Day. So starting today, we're going to offer a new end-of-the-week feature. Each week, I'll post some of the questions I'm trying to answer based on news of the week or something that's come up in my reporting. In the following weeks, I'll try to answer some of these questions. Feel free to weigh in with answers—or with more political questions—at slatepolitics@gmail.com or in the comments section below. Here are this week's questions:

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Labor Day - Gmail - Holidays - Politics - United States

Are the next-generation Neato and Mint robo-cleaners better than the Roomba?

If you ask a robot scientist why his industry is so interested in cleaning our floors, chances are he'll mention the "three D's." Robots, it turns out, are best suited to replacing humans in jobs that are dirty, dull, or dangerous. Sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping fit the first two D's, and depending on your dog's diet, perhaps the last one as well. It's no wonder, then, that the world had such high hopes for the Roomba, the autonomous floor-cleaning robot that first went on sale in 2002. The Roomba was built by iRobot, a company best known for its bomb-disposal machines—in other words, excellent preparation for designing a tool to help frat brothers clean up after keggers. The Roomba quickly became an icon—nerds hacked it, cats loved it, and lonely people grew to consider the bot something like a pet. There was just one problem: When it came to cleaning, the Roomba sucked, and not always in a good way.

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Roomba - Robot - iRobot - Mint - Dog

The U.S. auto industry is smaller but healthier.

Did you see the dreadful news about automobile sales in August? "U.S. Car Sales Plunged in August," the Wall Street Journal headline declared. "Auto Sales Post Weakest August Since 1983," noted Reuters.

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United States - Automobile - Wall Street Journal - Autos - Recreation

How many uses are there for a dead body?

Car manufacturers sometimes use cadavers in crash tests, according to Wired magazine. Researchers claim that, despite advances in dummy technology, there's still nothing like good old flesh and bone to validate new safety features. Everyone knows that medical students rely on cadavers, too—but are there other unexpected uses for donated remains?

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Cadaver - Technology - Safety Engineering - Automotive Safety - Recreation

Economists are making the case politicians are afraid to: Immigration is great for the U.S.

If you pay attention only to politics, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the current debate about immigration in America is limited to how severely it should be restricted—whether we need only to seal the border or actually change the birthright citizenship clause in the Constitution.

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United States - Immigration - United States Constitution - Law - Birthright citizenship in the United States of America

Drew Barrymore and Justin Long as slackers in long-distance love in Going the Distance.

Going the Distance (Paramount) is a pleasant, floppy romantic comedy that's hard to hate—the lead couple, played by Justin Long and Drew Barrymore, are too game and appealing to inspire much snark—but also hard to love. There's just not quite enough to the movie: not enough jokes, not enough obstacles, not enough sex. (Though there's plenty of talk about sex. Perhaps in an attempt to break down the wall between Apatow man-comedy and gooey chick flicks, the script by Geoff LaTulippe keeps up a steady flow of profanity.) Still, I'll give Going the Distance a pleasant, floppy stamp of approval. At least, unlike many recent romantic comedies (do I really have to name them? The Ugly Truth, All About Steve, The Proposal, et boring cetera), this film doesn't center around two mean, shallow jerks who communicate only in some sort of rigidly gendered mating code.

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Drew Barrymore - Justin Long - Going the Distance - Ugly Truth - All About Steve

The New York Times' "Thursday Styles" section discovers flat-chested pride.

The New York Times' "Thursday Styles" section discovers A-cup vanity.

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New York Times - New York - United States - Metro Areas - Business and Economy

Is the New York Times' book section really a boys' club?

Two weeks ago, best-selling author Jodi Picoult sent a Tweet in a fit of pique. Upon reading Michiko Kakutani's glowing review of Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom in the New York Times, the lady novelist took to her keyboard and typed out the following:

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Jonathan Franzen - Michiko Kakutani - New York Times - Freedom - Author

Prosecutors can ask for a five-year sentence for Illinois' ex-governor.

After the public spectacle surrounding the arrest and trial of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the jury's decision to hang on 23 of 24 charges has largely been viewed as an embarrassing failure for Patrick Fitzgerald, Chicago's top federal prosecutor. The editorial boards of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, among others, have suggested that a retrial crosses the line from prosecution to persecution and would be a huge waste of public resources. Still, government lawyers declared that there would be a rematch, and the judge overseeing the case scheduled it for the beginning of next year.

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Chicago - Patrick Fitzgerald - Rod Blagojevich - Government - United States

An exclusive look at the artwork of Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

An exclusive look at the artwork of Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

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Guantanamo Bay Naval Base - United States - Prison - Guantanamo Bay - Barack Obama

Palinisms: Did she really say that?

"Wow,media goofballs rearing heads this wk,big time!Wonder what's up?Taking the cake:ink re:Bristol=a diva? Silly;obviously have nvr met her"—Tweet, Sept. 1, 2010.

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Bristol Palin - Levi Johnston - Bristol - Home - Cake

The broadening backlash against American Islam.

Two months ago, Rick Lazio, the leading Republican candidate for governor of New York, challenged his Democratic opponent, Andrew Cuomo, to investigate a proposed Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero. When Cuomo replied that the issue was religious freedom, Lazio insisted that his concerns were strictly about who would fund the project and what its imam had said about 9/11. "It's outrageous, honestly, that Andrew Cuomo is raising [the] issue of religion here," Lazio told a TV interviewer. "This is about security."

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Andrew Cuomo - Rick Lazio - United States - Republican - New York

A review of Kristin Hersh's memoir, Rat Girl.

When Kristin Hersh was 18 years old, her indie rock band Throwing Muses recorded its first album, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and she became a mother for the first time. In Hersh's new memoir, Rat Girl, based on her diary, she chronicles an extraordinary year. I'm willing to bet that there are very few budding teen rock stars who have to figure out how to avoid the smoke in clubs, how to position their guitars over swollen bellies, and what maternity clothes are best for headlining concerts. (Hersh says '50s style dresses, if you were wondering.) Her original journal entries appear to have been fleshed out with dialogue in the published version, plus there are vignettes from her early childhood and snippets from her songs inspired by real-life events.

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Kristin Hersh - Bipolar disorder - Throwing Muses - Indie rock - Musical ensemble

I changed my mind and now want to have a child, but my husband won't hear of it.

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.)

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Slate - Dear Prudence - Philanthropy - Video Games - Games

The editorial lessons taught by the now-dead gunman who took hostages at the Discovery Channel today.

Rarely in my long, sweet life as a press critic have I knocked a newspaper or a news channel or a magazine for "over-covering" a subject. Oh, I may have sighed and changed the channel when I had heard just about enough about the unsolved disappearance of Natalee Holloway or the swift-boat business or the birther stuff. But my instincts have long been to judge the quality of the work of my peers and worry less about its conciseness.

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Discovery Channel - Natalee Holloway - Television - Newspaper - Arts

George Clooney plays a professional assassin in The American. Are there full-time assassins in real life?

In the new movie The American, George Clooney plays a mysterious professional assassin. The American got the Explainer wondering—are there people in the real world who commit murders for a living?

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George Clooney - United States - Assassination - Arts - Drama

How the original Preppy Handbook changed my life.

You can't blame Lisa Birnbach for revisiting her greatest hit, The Official Preppy Handbook, which climbed the best-seller lists in 1980. But True Prep, a sequel that arrives in bookstores next week, doesn't compare. It simply isn't helpful enough.

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Official Preppy Handbook - Lisa Birnbach - True Prep - Preppy Handbook - United States

Joan Rivers shoots down the stars on Fashion Police.

Fashion Police (E!) trailed in the wake of Emmy coverage as if bringing up the rear in a parade of tall ships and, also, as if diving for the ultimate morsels shaken from a chum bucket. The title is a misnomer. There was no police presence. In capturing their photo evidence, the lens men of the celebrity press had already rounded up the suspects, and the eyes arrested the unusual. The function of this red-carpet wrap-up was judicial, and it would more accurately be called Fashion Hanging Judges. Its panel convened to deliberate tired silhouettes, brassiere miscalculations, and similar human atrocities. Joan Rivers was chief justice and senior executioner.

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Joan Rivers - Fashion Police - Fashion - Emmy Award - Police

George Clooney spends a long time making a gun in The American.

The American (Focus Features), the second film by the Dutch photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (Control), is like a James Bond fantasy for very patient Europhiles. The story, loosely based on a novel by Martin Booth, contains gunplay, exotic locations, and a bevy of international beauties throwing themselves at a hunky hit man. But all of these elements are suspended in a medium of near-motionless anomie that recalls the austere thrillers of Jean-Pierre Melville or, at times, the existential longueurs of Antonioni. If you're willing to let go of your Hollywood-bred expectations for a movie of this type—spectacular action set pieces, constant pulse-pounding music, a killing every 15 minutes—The American is a great pleasure to watch, an astringent antidote to the loud, frantic action movies that have been clogging our veins all summer.

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Anton Corbijn - George Clooney - Martin Booth - Control - James Bond

Stunning photos of the Pakistani floods.

Stunning photos of the Pakistani floods.

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Pakistan - Asia - Arts and Entertainment - Pakistan government - Organisations

Why is everyone always writing off Netflix?

People who think and write about technology companies for a living are prone to be wrong now and again. Try to find, for example, veteran analysts or journalists who haven't at some point made a claim about Apple that they didn't later regret. The technology sector is too dynamic, and the growth of certain technologies too explosive and unpredictable, for anyone to be right all the time. That's part of the fun.

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Apple - Netflix - Technology - AppleTV - Business

The sports media celebrate Kevin Durant for being someone he isn't.

On the morning of July 7, Kevin Durant, Oklahoma City's supremely gifted pterosaur, who is currently dunking on people's heads all along the Bosphorus at the FIBA World Championships, announced he would be re-signing with the Thunder. This was a fairly unremarkable piece of business—Durant, a year from restricted free agency, was expected to re-up—and the news arrived via his Twitter account: "Exstension for 5 more years wit the #thunder....God Is Great, me and my family came a long way...I love yall man forreal, this a blessing!"

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Kevin Durant - Twitter - Oklahoma City - Oklahoma City Thunder - Oklahoma

What Tiger didn't understand about his mistresses.

Scandals about race hold a certain queasy fascination for Americans, but why wouldn't they, given our history? And if the incident in question offers the opportunity to hurl accusations of racism at someone prominent (especially when the someone is a self-styled moral taskmaster known for her on-air sadism), this is a happy day indeed. Every scandal is a register of social anxiety, and let's face it, race is right up there with sex and money, scandal's perennial motifs, on the social neurosis meter.

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United States - Racism - Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations - History - President

Slate's Culture Gabfest on the Emmys, True Prep, and the songs of summer 2010.

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 102 with Jody Rosen, Dana Stevens, and June Thomas by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

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Slate - Jody Rosen - Emmy Award - Arts - June Thomas

My husband is finally home from his deployment to Iraq.

After a year's deployment, I can't believe the ordeal is over.

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Iraq - Middle East - Warfare and Conflict - Barack Obama - United States

What's with all the celebrities sentenced to community service? Do they really help anyone?

Dear My Goodness,An acquaintance of mine was arrested recently and sentenced to community service. I've noticed an endless parade of celebrities lately getting the same punishment for some minor violation or another. I can't help but wonder, is court-ordered community service actually helpful? And what kinds of service does the court usually offer?

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Community service - People - Celebrities - United States - Education

Obama's frustrating, unfocused speech on Iraq.

President Barack Obama's speech from the Oval Office Tuesday night was a strange muddle—a televised prime-time address that lacked a bottom line, a consistent theme, a clear road to the future.

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Barack Obama - Iraq - Oval Office - United States - President

Neither libertarians nor the Kochs should try to hide their relationship.

Congratulations, libertarians! August 2010 was the month when you joined an exclusive club: people accused of shilling for amoral and scary billionaires.

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United States - Politics - Libertarianism - Libertarian - Parties

How does booze extend your lifespan?

People who drink heavily live longer than those who completely abstain from alcohol, according to a new study conducted by a psychologist at the University of Texas. How, exactly, does booze extend your lifespan?

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Alcoholic beverage - University of Texas - Health - Psychologist - United States

The Los Angeles Times takes on the two L.A. sacred cows—teachers and unions—and lives to print again!

Nobody but a schoolteacher or a union acolyte could criticize the Los Angeles Times' terrific package of stories—complete with searchable database—about teacher performance in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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Los Angeles Times - Los Angeles - Los Angeles Unified School District - Teacher - United States

Troy Polamalu's hair is insured for $1 million. How does body-part insurance work?

A shampoo manufacturer has insured the flowing hair of Pittsburgh Steelers football player Troy Polamalu for $1 million, according to the Associated Press. When a rumor that pop star Mariah Carey had insured her legs for $1 billion spread in 2006, Daniel Engber explained how body-part insurance works—and whether it's all just a publicity stunt. The article is reprinted below.

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Pittsburgh Steelers - Troy Polamalu - Insurance - Mariah Carey - Sports

Mad Men Week 6: Is Peggy one great campaign away from being treated like Don?

I love the character of Ted Chaough. The actor who plays him just looks like a smug operator. And he's certainly obsessed enough with Don to dig into his past. Remember, he already keeps "the boy who used to work for Don" on the payroll in order to divine his enemy's thinking. But it wasn't as if Don seemed freaked out by the general. Perhaps this is some period fad that we've forgotten? Could you rent a general for an event in the same manner that you could rent a beatnik? The more you think about, it was a weird move on Chaough's part.

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Mad Men - Actor - Don Draper - Roleplaying - Games

Why killing "criminals" with drones is a war crime.

Are the masters of "drone porn" committing war crimes by remote control? It's a bit shocking that more people aren't asking this question. I have a feeling that many of us, particularly liberal Obama supporters (like myself, for instance), haven't wanted to look too closely at what is being done in his name, in our name, when these remote-controlled and often tragically inaccurate weapons of small-group slaughter incinerate innocents from the sky, in what are essentially video-game massacres in which real people die.

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War crime - Remote control - Video game - Warfare and Conflict - Iraq

Corporate bosses are whining, even though they're reporting record profits.

It's hard out there for a CEO. There's a Democrat in the White House, and Washington is being ruled by a coalition of socialists and anti-capitalist thugs. There's uncertainty about taxes and policy. Business leaders are constantly being vilified for taking home huge paychecks without providing meaningful returns to shareholders, or creating jobs, or boosting wages. The newly passed financial reform bill requires CEOs of public companies to measure and report the ratio of their pay to that of their workers. Blackstone Group CEO Steve Schwartzman is complaining that the Obama administration is like Hitler invading Poland.

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White House - Washington - Adolf Hitler - Blackstone Group - Presidency of Barack Obama

The Tea Party would love The Hunger Games.

I also mourned Finnick. His male prostitute past fit the books' internal logic while providing one of the series' more adult moments, which made me worry a little about what younger readers would make of it. I think you're right, Nina, that it's for their benefit that we don't get more details about the Capitol secrets he gleaned.

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Hunger Games - Male prostitution - Shopping - United States - Mockingjay

Palinisms: Did she really say that?

"Silly media reports 'maybe thousands' @Beck's 'irrelevant' event; insinuating MSM sheeple mustn't believe their own eyes&ears re: event's truth"

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Glenn Beck - Beck - Domain Names - Disputed Domain Names - glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com

The bliss of an 18-month, paid, Swedish paternity leave.

For nearly 18 months, I woke up at 4 a.m. with my all-too-alert toddler son. Three hours later, when my Swedish wife left for the day, I would set out a second breakfast and then dress the boy and his 4-year-old sister and walk them to her state-subsidized preschool. Then my boy and I would go build sand castles in one of five nearby neighborhood parks. I packed snack bags, changed diapers, and pretended to be a grumpy old troll. I sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" more times than I want to think about.

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Swedish language - The Itsy Bitsy Spider - Arts - Crime - Sweden

The prescient cultural criticism of Max Headroom.

There's a scene in Back to the Future Part II in which Marty McFly, having traveled to the year 2015, walks into a retro diner. Marty is greeted by a digital maitre d' with white hair, a gentle voice, and smooth, almost plastic skin. "Welcome to the Cafe '80s," he says, "where it's always morning in America, even in the afternoo-noo-noon," the final word skipping out of his mouth as though recorded on a scratched CD.

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Marty McFly - Back to the Future Part II - Max Headroom - United States - Shopping

How do you measure a crowd as big as the one at the Glenn Beck rally?

According to CBS News, Glenn Beck's rally in Washington, D.C. on Saturday attracted about 87,000 people. Beck himself put the number at more than 500,000. Other sources, like NBC News, had it somewhere in between. In an "Explainer" column from last year and reprinted below, Juliet Lapidos described how experts come up with these estimates.

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Glenn Beck - CBS News - Washington DC - rally - Sports

Feisal Abdul Rauf defends his plan for an Islamic center near Ground Zero.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero, is traveling through the Middle East at the request of the State Department. As part of this ambassadorial tour, he has given an interview to The National of Abu Dhabi, published yesterday, in which he responds to questions about the U.S. uproar over his project. Are his answers adequate? Let's take a look.

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Middle East - Feisal Abdul Rauf - Islam - Abu Dhabi - United States

"Through a Glass Darkly"

Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Traci Brimhall read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes..

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Slate - Poetry - iTunes - Arts - Online Writing

Cut down on e-mail chaos with Gmail's new Priority Inbox.

I get about 200 spam e-mails a day. The senders go to extraordinary lengths to get my attention—they torture the English language, they offer me great discounts on life insurance and exotic pharmaceuticals, they promise to make my wife a very happy woman—but it's all for naught. Over the last few years Gmail, like other e-mail services, has become very good at spotting spam. It catches just about every junk message before it hits my inbox; the messages are rerouted to my spam folder, which I almost never open (and when I do open it, I almost never notice legitimate messages marked as spam). In other words, spam—which was once the great boogeyman of the Internet, a scourge that was often predicted to bring down e-mail entirely—is no longer a problem for me. When I polled my colleagues at Slate recently, many reported a similar situation. They don't spend much time dealing with junk mail. I bet you don't either.

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Gmail - Spam - E-mail spam - email - Google

The conservative rebellion against the establishment is doing wonders for the GOP. Seriously.

The life of an Establishment Republican used to be simple. If you dodged scandal and could produce polls showing you could get re-elected, the party back in Washington would go to bat for you. You'd win. Your biggest threat came from a group called the Club for Growth, a well-funded political machine that bundles money and bombs the airwaves on behalf of candidates who challenge wrong-voting "Republicans in Name Only"—RINOs. Stay out of the Club for Growth's way, and you're safe.

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Republican - Washington - Republican In Name Only - Club for Growth - United States

On the trail of the question, Who first said (or wrote) that journalism is the "first rough draft of history"?

Many journalists give former Washington Post President and Publisher Philip L. Graham credit for being the first to describe journalism as "the first rough draft of history."

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Journalism - Washington Post - Media - President of the United States - Education

How Obama's struggles with disaster and war may be casting Bush's presidency in a more favorable light.

In November, George W. Bush will publish a memoir, Decision Points, in which he will try to put the tough moments of his presidency into perspective. His successor is already helping. On Sunday, President Obama spoke in New Orleans to commemorate the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. On Tuesday, he will speak to the nation about the final stage of the Iraq war. The back-to-back events could be called the Cleaning Up Bush's Messes Tour—what many Democrats would call the entire Obama presidency so far—and yet both events highlight Obama's struggles with disaster and war, potentially putting his predecessor in a more favorable light.

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George W. Bush - Hurricane Katrina - New Orleans - Barack Obama - President of the United States

Ruth Bader Ginsburg shows how feminism is done. Again.

Anyone who didn't already believe Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be fashioned of pure steel was reminded of the fact Friday night as she delivered a speech to a group of lawyers and judges that was meant to have been delivered by her husband. Martin Ginsburg had been invited to deliver his remarks at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., but he died in late June of metastatic cancer. As Ginsburg explained Friday evening, "He had his speech all written out." And so she read it—with a handful of interpolations—in its entirety to several hundred rapt listeners.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Colorado Springs - United States - Colorado - Cancer

How can the trapped Chilean miners keep from getting depressed?

Thirty-three men trapped in a collapsed Chilean gold and copper mine will have to sit tight for four months as rescuers drill an escape route. The miners are living in an underground chamber about 540 square feet in size—slightly smaller than the average studio apartment in New York City. Chilean authorities have called in NASA to help deal with the physical and mental health effects of prolonged confinement. How do psychologists keep people in tight quarters from getting depressed?

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Mental health - Gold - Copper - New York City - Health

Slate's Hang Up and Listen on Stephen Strasburg, Albert Pujols and Glenn Beck, and the Madden video-game series.

Listen to "Hang Up and Listen" with Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

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Albert Pujols - Mike Pesca - Glenn Beck - Video game - Stephen Strasburg

Taking the new Preppy Handbook for a test drive.

This September sees the publication of Lisa Birnbach and Chip Kidd's True Prep, a sequel to Birnbach's The Preppy Handbook, which according to the New York Times has sold 1.3 million copies since 1981. I was not one of those 1.3 million—I bought my copy years later in a used bookstore—but I read that thing constantly for months, joined the cult, earned the T-shirt (pardon me, the polo shirt). And I've spent too many hours thinking about how I would update Birnbach's funny and too-true dissection of the world of Lacoste, squash, and boarding schools.

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Chip Kidd - Official Preppy Handbook - New York Times - Lisa Birnbach - Preppy

Dear Prudence chats live with readers at Washingtonpost.com.

Emily Yoffe Writes: Good afternoon, everyone. Let's get to it.

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Dear Prudence - Washington Post - Washingtonpost.com - Advice - Good News

An Emmy for the first sitcom character with Asperger's: The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper.

The 2010 Emmy for lead actor in a comedy went to Jim Parsons, who plays Dr. Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, the popular CBS sitcom. (It was the only award for the series.) In 2009, Paul Collins took a close look at Sheldon's hilarious, geeky, gawky character and argued that although the series never describes him as such, Sheldon is the first sitcom star to have Asperger's syndrome. The article is reprinted below.

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Big Bang Theory - Sheldon Cooper - Jim Parson - Emmy Award - Paul Collins

Glenn Beck's rally was large, vague, moist, and undirected—the Waterworld of white self-pity.

One crucial element of the American subconscious is about to become salient and explicit and highly volatile. It is the realization that white America is within thinkable distance of a moment when it will no longer be the majority. This awareness already exists in places like New York and Texas and California, and there have even been projections of the time(s) at which it will occur and when different nonwhite populations will collectively outnumber the former white majority. But it also exerts a strong subliminal effect in states like Alaska that have an overwhelming white preponderance.

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United States - Glenn Beck - California - White American - New York

How Huge and Fat Camp win our hearts.

Is ABC Family the best network on basic cable? No, no, it isn't. For consistency of vision and quality of programming, it lags behind frisky, risky, darkly handsome FX. But that is about the extent of its competition. This column has ventured before that there is notable substance to the channel's glossy melodramas, and the column was totally sober at the time. Pretty Little Liars, Make It or Break It, Greek: These are not your father's teen soaps. More to the point, these are not yours. Their soapiness is not just frothy but purifying—morally sensible though not preachy or, like, uplifting. The characters are drawn roundly enough to streamroll the characters of our beloved Saved by the Bell, never mind the camping little brats of the CW.

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ABC Family - Pretty Little Liars - Television - Fat Camp - Cable television

True Blood Episode 11: How many great characters have to die before the season is over?

How many great characters have to die before the season is over?

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True Blood - Arts - Television - Programs - drama

"Modern Love" revenge.

I have always related to the world by messing with media, in one way or another. As a teenager in the 1980s I made sound collages and mixtapes, and today I write books, produce documentaries, and teach college classes on popular culture. Wikipedia summarizes me as a "performance artist or 'media prankster' who filed an application in 1997 to register the phrase 'Freedom of Expression' as a trademark in the United States." Media saturate most everything I do, and they are also hardwired into the life I share with my wife, Lynne.

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Collage - United States - Performance art - Art - Visual Arts

Don't ridicule Glenn Beck's tribute to MLK. Celebrate it.

Saturday, on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 March on Washington, Glenn Beck held a conservative rally on the National Mall. Civil rights activists called it a fraud. "He's mimicking Dr. King, in some sense humiliating the tradition," scoffed Jesse Jackson. Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, declared, "We will not stand silent as some seek to hijack, as some seek to distort and contort, as some seek to bamboozle and confuse the vision of Dr. King's dream."

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Martin Luther King - Glenn Beck - National Mall - National Urban League - Civil and political rights

What seven years of war in Iraq has done to American society.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will make a speech about Iraq. With 50,000 troops still in the country "in an advisory capacity," he can't declare victory, so he will instead celebrate "the end of combat operations." If he follows others who have already marked this occasion, he will focus his comments on Iraq: the state of Iraqi democracy, the level of violence, the impact of seven years of war on Iraqi society.

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Iraq - United States - Barack Obama - Iraq War - Democracy

Jonathan Franzen's Freedom is an epic map of our imprisonment.

A person who read only the first chapter of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom might be tempted to dismiss it as a pretty callow piece of writing. That chapter freeze-dries the novel's protagonists, the Berglunds, at a moment in history, the 1980s, when they and their kind were still relatively unselfconscious and thus shrink-wrappable. "Walter and Patty were the young pioneers of Ramsey Hill—the first college grads to buy a house on Barrier Street since the old heart of St. Paul had fallen on hard times three decades earlier." They drive a Volvo 240, listen to public radio, cook from The Silver Palate cookbook, worry about lead in their Fiestaware, use cloth diapers, fret about maximizing their children's brilliance.

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Jonathan Franzen - Freedom - Diaper - Saint Paul Minnesota - 1980s

The evolution of the Minnesota State Fair.

The milk at the Minnesota State Fair is ice cold with a thick mustache-forming layer of foam on top, and you can drink as much of it as you'd like for a dollar. It quenches thirst like water, especially after you've eaten a dozen warm, soft-centered cookies. My third and final glass is served to me by a beauty queen—one of the 12 finalists in the Princess Kay of the Milky Way pageant. When they are not busy having their heads sculpted in 90-pound blocks of butter, these beauty queens are everywhere, reminding fair-goers of the wholesomeness of dairy with an evangelical fervor.

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Minnesota State Fair - Princess Kay of the Milky Way - Minnesota - Milk - Butter

Glenn Beck's rally was about as angry as a Teletubbies episode.

On Friday night, FreedomWorks was capitalizing on Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally on Saturday with a rally of its own. Activists crowded inside the ideally named Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall, where Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., ripped the roof off of the place with a speech that started with district-by-district politics and built to a call-and-response: "Are you in? I'm in! Be in!" Mike Lee, a Republican lawyer who is all but certain to be the next senator from Utah, told the crowd about his favorite constitutional power (letters of marque and reprisal) and described the Constitution as a sort of Tony Robbins manual: a "recipe for economic prosperity," a way to make "amazing things" happen. As the politicians talked, volunteers walked up and down the aisles handing out signs for the candidates—"champions of freedom"—endorsed by FreedomWorks PAC.

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Glenn Beck - Utah - Politics - FreedomWorks - United States

How those foreign visitors in Times Square are helping to balance the trade deficit.

After traversing a mountain path 6,000 feet up the Swiss Alps, under the face of the forbidding Eiger, where cows with clunky bells far outnumbered the people, I stumbled into a barebones restaurant—and was shocked to see a college classmate whom I hadn't seen in at least 15 years. The surprise wasn't so much that I saw someone I knew—we all have tales of random encounters in out-of-the-way places. Rather, it was that I ran into an American at all.

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Swiss Alps - Times Square - United States - Eiger - Switzerland

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