Link Banana

The whole world seems to be expect massive and sweeping change when a new president takes office in 2009. The Economist, which has a large special report elaborating the point, doubts that’s what will happen.

There are several ways in which the next president can indeed act fast to restore America’s world standing. But the list is short. The mere fact of not being Bush will bring a dividend of goodwill. On top of this, he or she should send out an early message that on some issues the change of guard will mean a change of heart. An America that closed Guantánamo, imposed a clear ban on any sort of torture (by the CIA as well as the army) and shut the CIA’s secret prisons could once again claim to lead the free world by example and not just by military power. A new president should also say more forthrightly than Mr Bush ever dared that America means to co-operate in the fight against global warming, and will consider joining the International Criminal Court. Mr Bush’s cavalier rejection of the Kyoto protocol, and his hostility to the ICC, did much to antagonise the world even before the war in Iraq.

All these would be welcome changes of substance and symbolism. But even this short list will throw up difficulties. Closing Guantánamo may require America to try the suspected terrorists it can build a case against but let the others go free—free, if nobody else takes them, on American soil. And although it is easy for a president to promise international co-operation on climate change, it is hard to make Congress enact laws that trample on vested interests, threaten to hamper growth or price Americans out of their huge cars. The Senate would not have ratified Kyoto even if Mr Bush had asked it to.

The Independent has a rather long grouping of excerpts from Robert Frank’s The Economic Naturalist. They’re essentially questions answered with straight-forward but verbose (and sometimes questionable) economics. An example:

Why are DVDs sold in much larger packages than CDs, even though the two types of disc are exactly the same size?

Making the CD cases a little less than half as wide as the album sleeves they were replacing thus enabled retailers to avoid the substantial costs of replacing their storage and display racks.

Similar considerations seem to have driven the decision regarding DVD packaging. Before DVDs became popular, most film rental stores carried videotapes in the VHS format, which were packaged in form-fitting boxes that measured 135mm wide and 191mm high. These videos were typically displayed side by side with their spines out. Making DVD cases the same height enabled stores to display their new DVD stocks on existing shelves while consumers were in the process of switching over to the new format. Making the DVD package the same height as the VHS package also made switching to DVDs more attractive for consumers, since they could store their new DVDs on the same shelves they used for their VHS tapes.

(via Gems Sty)

Breifings by the Economist Intelligence Unit are rarely compelling reading, but this one I actually read. And I found it thoroughly disheartening for sounding so… accurate.

In theory, the Chinese government stands ready to negotiate with the Dalai Lama on two conditions: that he renounces violence, and that he accepts Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. In the West’s view these conditions have already been met, as the Dalai Lama has repeatedly argued that his goal for Tibet is real autonomy, not independence. On March 25th, moreover, the Dalai Lama repeated his threat to resign as head of Tibet’s government-in-exile if anti-Chinese violence continues. Both the Dalai Lama and the leader of the parliament of the Tibetan government-in-exile in India have also recently said that they support China’s hosting of the Olympics and would oppose a boycott of the games. China, which has traditionally accused the Dalai Lama of insincerity, argues that these statements are belied by his alleged role in masterminding the violence in Tibet.

As a result, the prospects for meaningful negotiations are exceedingly dim. Even if it were possible to envision a scenario in which China, concerned about the damage to its pre-Olympic international credibility, agreed to negotiations in principle, it would be very difficult to imagine the government approaching such negotiations with a view to making significant compromises. Since China sees the problems in Tibet as primarily rooted in separatist elements based outside the country, it is unlikely to consider granting Tibetans more autonomy or easing religious restrictions.

Carol Williams assembled — through the shards of information made public — what a day is like for prisoners at Guantanamo. There are several interesting bits, but this really caught my eye.

More than 2,000 books and magazines in 18 languages are stocked for the prisoners, each vetted for its potential to incite. The “Harry Potter” series had been the most popular selection before a recent influx of nature and music books.

At the new Camp 7 facility for high-value detainees — which jailers have dubbed “the platinum camp” — the book most in demand now is “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” a nearly 20-year-old treatise by Stephen R. Covey.

(via brijit)

Also of note: Raymond Bonner’s “Forever Guantanamo” rife with outrage about torture and having surprisingly little to say about the place itself.

I was rather taken by Robert Gottlieb’s critique of John Steinbeck’s oeuvre. Though he’s been largely discarded by literary types, he’s probably the twentieth-century author who I’ve read most. (Though that more a sign of how little reading I’ve done than of how much Steinbeck I’ve read.)

Steinbeck’s final work years were spent on journalism, and his subject was almost inevitably America. A collection of think pieces and nostalgia called America and Americans (1966) reveals him at his most characteristic. He’s moralizing, he’s didactic, he’s searching for big answers to big questions. He’s generous and vulnerable and touchy. And he’s more and more dismayed by what he sees around him: “I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security—out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism.” You could say that by the end he had evolved into a kind of minor and irrelevant prophet, both disillusioned and irredeemably optimistic.

Speaking of (things I’ve been ignoring+Slate)… Slate’s economics columnist Daniel Gross does his best to eviscerate McCain.

By virtue of his history as a deficit hawk, a foe of earmarks, and an opponent of the Bush tax cuts—not to mention the presence of reality-based advisers like Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office—McCain deserves some benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, the brains behind the economic operation seems to be former Sen. Phil Gramm, the Texas A&M economist-turned-senator who confidently forecast in 1993 that the Clinton program of spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy would be “a one-way ticket to recession.” And the sections on McCain’s Web site about domestic policy reveal, as Matt Yglesias noted, “a nearly astounding level of vacuity.”

Proving myself right, I’ve again been ignoring Iraq news. Slate’s Fred Kaplan has some valuable details about the mess that’s engulfed Basra.

The fighting in Basra, which has spread to parts of Baghdad, is not a clash between good and evil or between a legitimate government and an outlaw insurgency. Rather, as Anthony Cordesman, military analyst for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes, it is “a power struggle” between rival “Shiite party mafias” for control of the oil-rich south and other Shiite sections of the country.

Both sides in this struggle are essentially militias. Both sides have ties to Iran. And as for protecting “the Iraqi people,” the side backed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (and by U.S. air power) has, ironically, less support—at least in many Shiite areas, including Basra—than the side that he (and we) are attacking.

Also of note, Kaplan’s piece about what victory will really mean in Iraq.

The epic battle that accompanies every children’s toy.

(via clusterflock)

I’m fascinated by typography even though I don’t understand a thing about it. This link includes a visual of the following:

They speak the arm (of, say, an E), the crotch (of an M), which could further be described as an acute crotch or an obtuse crotch, the ear (of some g’s), which might be a flat ear or a floppy ear, the eye (of an e), the leg (of a k), the shoulder (of an n), the tail (of a j or a Q), and the spine (of an S).

I love titles that write themselves. The substance:

Japanese television used to broadcast domestic games almost every day, and high-school tournaments still fixate the nation. But in recent years the Americans have lured Japan’s best players with fat salaries; 17 now play in MLB, including two pitchers for the Red Sox. American games attract huge television audiences, pushing aside domestic teams. Sales of merchandise jump when American clubs sign Japanese players. MLB’s revenue in Japan, $100m last year, now accounts for 60% of its income outside America. Japan risks becoming a mere farm-team and fan base for America, frets Masaru Ikei, a professor at Keio University and author of “Baseball and the Japanese People”.

Sudhir Venkatesh has some answers from Mindy and Dorothy, two sex workers, about their profession. They had some interesting things to say; this bit about legalization surprised me:

DOROTHY: I think legalization is really bad for the women because they will just get exploited. They’ll get paid a lot less and be forced to do a lot more.

I don’t condone prostitution, but I do understand survival.

Women sell their bodies for survival — I don’t care how much money they make. You don’t want to make that a permanent thing.

A haunting Flickr photo set of a decaying Ohio theme park.

(via kottke)

The same people who brought you crowdsourced color names, have crowdsourced the evaluation of media bias. Their results look interesting, even if I’m not sure they’re trustworthy. (It appears they let people know the source of the story, which could very well change their perception of that story’s bias.)

I’ll leave the explanation to Foreign Policy’s Passport:

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s populist president, has signed up with a minor league soccer team in La Paz.

The 47-year-old will be a reserve player for the team Litoral, which hopes to earn a spot in Bolivia’s top professional league next year. Morales was once a standout player for a local cocoa grower’s team and as president, has been an outspoken critic of the worldwide ban against high-altitude soccer games.

Wow. Robert Radin’s story about the troubled life of his sister is hard to put down. It’s tragic and touching and troubling. You should definitely read it.

(via brijit)

Yesterday, it was revealed that the LA Times’s story about Sean “P. Diddy” Colmes being linked to the 1994 assault of Tupac Shakur was based on documents that were probably forged. Though I edited my original post about it, I didn’t think it merited a new one. Thanks to Vulture, it now does. By combining the story with it’s implications for everyone’s new favorite show, The Wire, they found something rather interesting to say.

Simon’s critics — Vulture included — complained that he had a too-cynical view of modern newspapers, and that a slippery rat like Templeton would have been flushed out. In fact, one critic wrote that “life at The Wire’s Baltimore Sun seems oddly cut-and-dried, which is surprising given the series’ usual fondness for shades of gray. Hard-nosed editors in the trenches: good; upper management with their eyes on the (Pulitzer) prize: bad. Given the standards the show has set, it’s a bit disappointing.” Wait, which paper was that again—oh yes, the L.A. Times.

So while the Times eats crow, Simon should be crowing, right? Well, yes and no. After all, Philips’s shoddy story got busted just days later by online watchdogs — as, we suspect, Scott Templeton’s would have, had he existed in real life. So Simon got the beginning of the fable right, but not the ending. Templeton wouldn’t have bagged a Pulitzer. He’d have been shamed by The Smoking Gun.

Someone knows the truth about DRM — digital rights management, for those living under rock — and is saying it. It surely doesn’t hurt that it’s to his company’s advantage.

Amazon’s Baltaxe says the best defense against piracy is a good offense. “Songs sold without DRM, at high quality, with album art, that’s the best way to get people to buy music instead of stealing it. DRM is a way to punish people who are buying,” he says. “Offering a great product at a great price is [the] way to combat piracy.”

(via Marco’s Tumblelog)

Intent on following the pessimism of the horror story the paper told about rice prices, The Economist’s Asia.view columnist makes clear that a few recent elections do not mean that historical conflicts will quiet down.

IN NORTH-EAST Asia run the world’s most potentially lethal geopolitical faultlines, along which historical animosities and devastating weaponry are arrayed. Yet for Panglossians, particularly American ones, the regional picture looks suddenly better, thanks to the promise of three new national leaders in little more than six months: Yasuo Fukuda, who became prime minister of Japan last September; Lee Myung-bak, who assumed South Korea’s presidency in February; and Ma Ying-jeou, who won Taiwan’s presidential election by a landslide and will take office on May 20th.

For a while, Slate’s media critic Jack Shafer has been saying that “pharm parties” — parties where teens throw a bunch of prescription drugs into a bowl and take them by the handful — are a myth made for newspapers. Now he’s also found their historical predecessor: “fruit salad parties.”

The March 30, 1966, Lowell Sun was the earliest clip I located, and it is a classic of the genre. In a general piece about drug use, the Sun’s reporter confided:

In Medford, several months ago, a group of teen-agers had a “fruit salad party.” Each person brought three pills. The pills were mixed together in a bowl, and each person took three. Most of the takers were hospitalized, and one is still in serious condition, in a coma.

Observe the journalistic rigor practiced by the Sun. No sources. No names. No mention of specific drugs. How do you gauge the truth value of such a paragraph?

Okay, Adobe’s new Photoshop Express is probably even less powerful than Photoshop Elements, but it is online and it is free. And you can try it without even signing up.