Link Banana

No doubt encouraged by the success of their technology post of a few weeks ago, Neatorama has compiled logos from many major car companies. The thing I found notable: distinct presences of a swastika behind the Volkswagen’s logo from the war years.

Meline Toumani has a very good piece about the historical clash between Turkey and its Kurdish regions in today’s New York Times Magazine. She offers much greater depth than you find most places.

According to Hisyar Ozsoy, a scholar of Kurdish origin at the University of Texas who was as an adviser to Baydemir, Kurdish politics has been moving “from war and struggle to themes of multiculturalism,” and “when you talk to Abdullah Demirbas, you hear him saying that ‘this is just a kind of richness; we are very much innocent here.’ This is not the kind of political actor who was operating effectively in Diyarbakir during the 1990s.” Multiculturalism, according to Ozsoy, also helps Kurds gain legitimacy in the eyes of outsiders, especially Europeans: “There is always this foreign gaze on Kurds. They’re looking at us like” — he mimics a baby voice — “ ‘Oh, these poor guys, they just want to speak in Kurdish and sing songs and dance, and then we can come and enjoy the richness of these cultures.’ ” In democratic societies, such an attitude might properly be criticized as condescending, Ozsoy says, but in the Turkish system, it becomes a critical force in legitimizing ethnic identity.

Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems like I’ve been hearing about this for so long that I was kind of shocked to read that it had actually happened.

Robin Henning has a great story about the study and science supporting the usefulness (or uselessness) of play. She comes to a positive but reserved conclusion:

It’s a pretty idea, the notion that play gives you hope for a better tomorrow, but science demands something a little less squishy. Science demands that if there are important long-term benefits to play, they must be demonstrated. That is why studies of play-deprived rats are so fascinating; they offer objective evidence that in at least some animals, insufficient play can have serious consequences.

In what The Page calls an “amazing wire story,” Libby Quaid explores Senator McCain’s reputation as a hothead for the AP.

“F — - you,” he shouted at Texas Sen. John Cornyn last year.

“Only an a —  —  — would put together a budget like this,” he told the former Budget Committee chairman, Sen. Pete Domenici, in 1999.

“I’m calling you a f —  —  — jerk!” he once retorted to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.

Abner Mikva, a former Illinois legislator (like one of the Democratic presidential candidates), argues that there’s nothing wrong with all of Mr. Obama “present” votes.

I recall voting “present” on many bills when I was in the Illinois Legislature. In the 1960s, for instance, I voted “present” on the annual highway appropriations bill. Like many of my fellow senators, I thought some of the money being allocated should have gone to public transportation. Still, I didn’t want to vote no, because I did not want to stand against the basic principle of maintaining our public roads. So I voted “present.”

It never occurred to me or to any of my critics that I was ducking responsibility for a making a decision. Mr. Obama was an outspoken member of the Illinois Senate, and not someone known for dodging questions, whether they were on ethics, police responsibility, women’s choice or any other hot-button issue.

The Economist shows what Slate termed “unexpected affection” for the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Crank? Crackpot? Charlatan? Maybe all three. Yet the maharishi was generally benign. He did not use his money for sinister ends. He neither drank, nor smoked, nor took drugs. Indeed, he is credited with weaning the Beatles off dope (for a while). He did not accumulate scores of Rolls-Royces, like Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh; his biggest self-indulgence was a helicopter. Nor was he ever accused of molesting choirboys; his greatest sexual impropriety, it was said, was to make a pass at Mia Farrow. He giggled a lot, and plainly had no lack of self-esteem. But his egotism did not mean he was always wringing his hands at pop concerts or blethering at Davos; after the 1960s he seldom appeared in public.

Moreover, his message was entirely laudable. He did not promote a cult or even a mainstream religion preaching original sin, purgatory and the likelihood of eternal damnation. He just wanted to end poverty, teach people how to achieve personal fulfilment and help them to discover “Heaven on Earth in this generation”. And yogic flying, of course.

In case you’ve missed it, nearly everyone — even Toshiba, the chief advocate for the format — now agrees that if there’s to be a next generation of video discs — something Apple especially would prefer didn’t happen — it will be on Blu-ray.

Slate’s Troy Patterson thinks so.

Liberals would seem to believe that Bush strategist Karl Rove is a monster genetically engineered from the DNA material recovered from a fair copy of Il Principe, Pat Nixon’s cloth coat, and one of Lee Atwater’s old guitar picks, while moderates regard him with a vague but considerable sense of respectful queasiness. I will not pretend to understand what our friends on the Right think of the man, but the president of the United States calls him “Boy Genius,” and those nicknames have got to count for something. All concerned parties must be a bit unnerved by Rove’s recent performance as a contributor to Fox News.

Since materializing on-air on Super Tuesday, Rove has merely offered clarity, concision, humility, good humor, good posture, and dispassionate analysis. To be sure, there are lefties distraught that he does not eat babies on-air. Maybe some conservatives, too. But the only thing more impressive than hearing the man drop political science—what other cable-news analyst has lately name-checked Henry Cabot Lodge?—is seeing that one of our culture’s most controversial figures is one of its most mild-mannered. Given the jaunty clattering of MSNBC’s 24/7 locker room, the rapid-fire banter of CNN’s endless phalanxes of conventional wiseguys, and the screeching maelstrom summoned nightly by Rove’s Fox colleagues, the guy plays like a human comma, a very welcome thoughtful pause.

John Heilemann deftly handles the oft-ignored disparity between the media coverage of Senators Obama and Clinton.

Theories abound as to why the media has treated Clinton and Obama so differently. The simplest is that reporters simply like Obama better; that he’s new and fresh and unburdened with anything resembling Clinton fatigue. Another theory revolves around cultural bias. “The fact is that the national press is a bunch of northeastern liberals,” says the adviser to an erstwhile Democratic runner, “and they just love the idea of this post-racial black dude being the nominee.” A third revolves around the respective dramatic arcs embodied by Clinton and Obama. Citing the Times primary-beat reporters assigned to the candidates, a competitor of theirs observes, “Pat Healy’s job is to challenge the Clinton myth and machine. Jeff Zeleny’s is to write the epic rise of Barack Obama. That’s generally the media’s approach—Clinton and Obama are just at different points in their stories.”

All these theories contain at least some truth, but it’s the last one that edges closest to what I think has actually gone on. Campaigns are, at bottom, a competition between memes: infectious ideas that gather force through sheer repetition. The most powerful of these memes are what Just refers to as meta-narratives, the backdrops against which everything plays out in the media. “Clinton’s meta-narrative,” she says, “is that she’ll do anything to win; she can’t be trusted, she’s ethically challenged; she’s manipulative, calculating, and programmed.” Obama’s meta-narrative is decidedly otherwise. “It’s the same, in a way, as John McCain’s,” says Just. “He’s authentic, honest, free of taint. Then you add in new, charismatic, and an agent of change.”

(via The Page)

Turkey’s recent easing of its headscarf ban has raised roughly equal amounts of praise and concern. The Economist asks why the government is lifting it at all.

Some believe they were designed merely to win votes in the local elections due next year. If the AK were serious about bolstering equality between the sexes, “there would be more than one woman in the cabinet,” says one AK-supporting lady. And if letting women cover their heads were a matter of rights, as Mr Erdogan claims, why has the government not scrapped Article 301 of the penal code, which criminalises free speech?

Judith Warner makes the case that we may not be as drug-obsessed as people (like myself) tend to think.

Just because it feels like, just because it sounds like, just because soaring drug company profits and obnoxious direct to consumer advertising seem to indicate that everyone around us is popping pills like mad doesn’t mean that they are doing so. Nor does it mean that we’re in the grip of some new, previously unheard-of, and uniquely epoch-defining social phenomenon. […]

All of which suggests that what social critics now identify as the signature event of our time (the urge to manage psychic pain through substance use) may, in fact, almost always have been a facet of the human condition. It may just be that we’re better at it than ever before – with cleaner, safer, less addictive and debilitating tools at our disposal.

The Economist says black is the new white. At least as far as fleeing poorer urban neighborhoods in California is concerned.

Since 1990 the city’s black population has dropped by a quarter, from 488,000 to 364,000, even as the overall number of residents rose. The exodus is most noticeable in areas where blacks were once concentrated, such as Compton and Crenshaw. The population of the 35th congressional district, over which the old-fashioned race warrior Maxine Waters holds sway, is now less than one-third black. “It’s becoming hard to find black neighbourhoods,” says Dowell Myers, a demographer at the University of Southern California.

There is also the important point that this movement, like most movement affected by real estate prices, has stalled with the recent mortgage crisis.

Fred Kaplan’s not completely satisfied that Robert Gates wants 187 of the planes, and he’s even less satisfied that the Air Force still wants 381.

Still, even stodgy bureaucrat-generals need a rationale to keep their favorite programs afloat. The F-22 is the centerpiece of Air Force procurement at the moment. It has nearly no role in the sorts of wars that the United States has been fighting in the last 20 years—or has much prospect of fighting in the next 20.

And so, the China threat is dragged out of the cellar once again, as it has been to justify troubled weapons systems for 40 years now.

For no good reason that I can find, The Economist decided to chart annual chocolate consumption against the frequency of sexual activity in places around the world. To no ones’ surprise, they find no meaningful correlation.

Nicholas Kristof’s latest column is worth perusing. He makes a rather cogent argument for both the repudiation of torture and swift justice for all detainees at Guantanamo.

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system.

Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

That’s us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.

If the Bush administration appointed an Under Secretary of State for Antagonizing the Islamic World, with advice from a Blue Ribbon Commission for Sullying America’s Image, it couldn’t have done a more systematic job of discrediting our reputation around the globe. Instead of using American political capital to push for peace in the Middle East or Darfur, it is using it to force-feed Mr. Hajj.

My apologies for the cringe-worthy title — it took all my creativity to think of and now I can’t think of another. Despite that, Carol Paik’s essay about how she’s really not Vera Wang but has made similar mistakes is unexpectedly funny.

Still disappointed with whats on TV? In steps this excellent show about well, Mark living in Ikea. Mark Malkoff works on The Colbert Report, and also visited 171 Starbucks in 24 hours last summer.

(via TV Squad)

Apparently this album, which I randomly stole “borrowed” from a friend a few years ago and instantly loved is ten years old. Appently it has a nearly totemic status in the indie-sphere. Who knew? That’s a rhetorical question, as the obvious answer is not me. I also didn’t know this bit (emphasis mine) — though now that I do, I see it clearly:

One of the reasons that Aeroplane has aged so well is that it deals with heavy stuff in this really personal way. It’s almost never precious, and when it is, it has the balls to be. The record works partly because Mangum addresses Anne Frank obliquely throughout (another “lesson” of the album is that the best concept record is the one you can listen to without even being aware it’s a concept album).

(via brijit)

Catherine Price sets out to hide in plain sight for an entire week and found it far harder than you might think.

He laid out my basic tasks: Pay for everything in cash. Don’t use my regular cellphone, landline or e-mail account. Use an anonymizing service to mask my Web surfing. Stay away from government buildings and airports (too many surveillance cameras), and wear a hat and sunglasses to foil cameras I can’t avoid. Don’t use automatic toll lanes. Get a confetti-cut paper shredder for sensitive documents and junk mail. Sign up for the national do-not-call registry (ignoring, if you can, the irony of revealing your phone number and e-mail address to prevent people from contacting you), and opt out of prescreened credit offers. Don’t buy a plane ticket, rent a car, get married, have a baby, purchase land, start a business, go to a casino, use a supermarket loyalty card, or buy nasal decongestant. By the time I left Hoofnagle’s office, a week was beginning to sound like a very long time.

(via brijit)