News That Stays News

The Chinese Internet, Capable of Shame March 17, 2011

1. Chinese netizens react to the Japanese earthquake on Chinasmack. Some deplorable nationalist gloating, but mostly a concession to greater civilization.

2. Chinese newspaper covers plenary session of the National People’s Congress, prints the same front page two years in a row. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess that this is someone’s inside joke.

3.The story of two British snipers, who killed 75 Taliban in 40 days.

4. The history of literary bureaucrats, from Tocqueville to Kafka, in Lapham’s Quarterly.

5. An analysis of the economic implications of Japan’s earthquake.

6. MIT Nuclear Engineering students explain the science of the nuclear crisis at Fukushima.

7. NYT paywall is finally here.

8. We’re bombing Libya?

Credits: Julia, The Browser, Banyan

Aftermath March 13, 2011

In the NYT: Satellite photos of Japan, before and after the tsunami.

Leaving New York March 12, 2011

Joan Didion’s piece from Slouching Towards Bethlehem, “Goodbye To All That,” is a story of outgrowing the city, a story about putting away childish things.

Credits: Longform.org

Eulogy and Euphemism March 11, 2011

1. Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, has a word or two for yours truly, among others. One wonders if he would appreciate the irony.

“Aggregation” can mean smart people sharing their reading lists, plugging one another into the bounty of the information universe. It kind of describes what I do as an editor. But too often it amounts to taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material. In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model.

2. From the Baltimore Sun: Snoop from the Wire arrested in drug raid.

3. Nora Ephron on her adolescence.

4. David Foster Wallace’s piece in Gourmet, “Consider the Lobster”

5. In 1980, Pauline Kael asked why movies had become so bad in a long piece in the New Yorker. Interesting incidental critique of Kramer vs. Kramer. N.B. The article will be easiest to read if you copy and paste it into a word document and make it double-spaced.

6. George Orwell revisits the Politics and Aesthetics debate and explains why he writes.

7. The day Ronald Reagan got shot, told from the perspective of a secret service agent.

8. Another article about college admissions and Tiger Mom, this one from a former college counselor.

Credits: The Browser, Longform.org, Julia

June, 1998 March 10, 2011

1. I remember the shot. I understood what it meant, why it was worth jumping up and down on the bed. You can relive it, courtesy of one of the best pieces of sports journalism I have ever seen, by David Halberstam in The New Yorker.

2. A breezy profile of a social class: the assistant in publishing.

3. If you have a good credit score, you are also likely to be a good driver. A look at what companies try to glean from our credit habits.

4. The former head of McKinsey, Rajat Gupta, was recently charged with insider trading. Is McKinsey founded on the same, corrupt premise?

Credits: The Browser, Longform.org

Memories of Oppression March 10, 2011

1. The GOP-controlled Utah legislature has created a guest-worker program for illegal immigrants that allows the undocumented to work legally. The measure was passed with the support of the Mormon church, after lobbying by business groups. Perhaps the Mormons remember their persecution well enough to defend other marginal groups.

The same story seems to be at work for the Japanese Americans who are the loudest voices against House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King’s (R) hearings on radical islam. Lexington doesn’t like the man much, either.

2. Gary Locke will replace John Huntsman as US Ambassador to China. No word yet on whether the third-generation Chinese American, currently Secretary of the Commerce Department, is having a hard time dealing with accusations of race treason on the famously nationalist Chinese internet.

3. One of the Western Intellectual advisors to Saif-Al Qaddafi takes questions on his pupil and compares him to Michael Corleone, reformer turned underboss. One of the better interviews around.

Credits: the Browser

Chopping Up Chuck (with his consent) March 10, 2011

1. Should inmates on death row have the right to donate their organs after death? Or is that just asking for trouble?

2. Wired tells us how Angry Birds came to be.

3. Reply-All Horror Stories in the WSJ. The concept of an email-storm explained. Members of the Idiot List, take note.

4. Nicholas Wade previews Francis Fukuyama’s new book on the development of Political Order in the NYT.

Credits: The Browser, Aaron Sin, Eddie Lameire

What’s on the Table? March 7, 2011

1. Over at the Volokh Conspiracy we have a long post on the law and politics of intervening in Libya. A good look at the contortions of international interventions. Also, incidentally, there are apparently a number of Egyptian commandos on the ground in Libya, aiding the rebels. Shades of the aftermath of the French revolution if you ask me.

2. Also, companies vying for US security contracts have started to put up dog-whistle advertising in DC- ads full of jargon that only government procurement officers can understand. I think this is a bad sign: first, there’s obviously too much money in all of this now, and second, under what circumstances do we want our national security decisions to be based on what some bean-counter happens to see on the side of a bus on his way to work?

Credits: Julia

Satisfaction March 6, 2011

From Wikipedia: the Motivation-Hygiene theory, which says job satisfaction comes from personal growth, challenging work, and responsibility, while dissatisfaction is governed by a completely separate set of factors: salary, status, company policy among them, capable of making you unhappy but not of making you happy.

Also: the well-worn chestnut, “Everyone rises to the level of his incompetence,” has a name- the Peter Principle. The Up or Out policy, practiced by the US Military and most law firms, is an attempt to combat the Peter Principle.

How to Make a Double-Double at Home March 4, 2011

Kenji Alt over at Serious Eats does a scientific investigation of the In-N-Out Double-Double, Animal Style. The MIT-trained chef is a man of many ways; he’s also managed to recreate the McDonald’s French Fry in his kitchen.

Credits: Julia