News That Stays News

The Glory and the Grime March 4, 2011

1. Vanity Fair takes us back to the aristocratic, Man in the Arena origins of the CIA, via a portrait of its founder, Wild Bill Donovan.

2. US helicopters killed nine Afghan boys, ages nine to fifteen, when they were out collecting firewood. The credit for the story:

An Afghan employee of The New York Times contributed reporting
from Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

This is not the first time that US helicopter gunners were responsible for some civilian casualties. The scene may have looked something like this video, available courtesy of Wikileaks, in which two journalists from Reuters were killed.

3. After the Arab revolutions, I’ve been waiting for someone like David Brooks to write this article: Huntington was wrong.

Credits: The Browser

Lady Gaga: the Paris Hilton of our times March 4, 2011

1. The folks at the Front Porch Republic have the smartest appreciation of Lady Gaga I’ve ever read.

2. Ken Jennings, quite the charmer on Reddit.

3. South Indians may be three times as likely to die of heart disease as members of any other ethnic group.

4. US economy posts the best job-report figures in three years, unemployment down to 8.9%.

Credits: Julia, the Browser

And we’ll say, we knew him when March 4, 2011

1. Katy Waldman’s interview with Adrienne Rich is in The Browser!

2. James Franco, host of the Oscars, Yale English Ph.D. student. Among those making appearances in the NYT: Jessica Brantley, Atticus, The Study.

Fruits of the Iraq War March 1, 2011

In the NYT: Libya was scared into giving up its WMD program in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq War in 2003. What would the Qaddhafi regime do today with artillery shells filled with mustard gas and casks of highly enriched uranium?

This leads to the larger question- would the Arab revolutions of 2011 have happened at all, or in the same way, without the second Iraq War? Or did US intervention in Iraq discredit the idea of democracy and postpone the public upheaval we see today?

Then there is door #3: these revolutions should be understood in economic and country-specific terms, and we have to get out of the habit of assuming the US is the unmoved mover in the Middle East.

Who Knew? February 26, 2011

Julia’s dad mourns the decline of Kodachrome, vinyl records, and the analog age in the WSJ. A snippet:

Photography and music have been hobbies of mine ever since I was a child when I built Dynakits and had my own darkroom. I was introduced to high-end audio by the political theorist Allan Bloom, who back in the early 1980s had what seemed to me a crazily expensive Linn Sondek turntable and a collection of over 2,000 records. I started collecting historical Nikons when I inherited an F2A from my father, and these days I seem to spend as much time thinking about gear as I do analyzing politics for my day job.

A Man in Full February 25, 2011

1. An elegy for Baron Davis, a famously bearded man, gourmand, documentary filmmaker (his Crips & Bloods piece was nominated for an Emmy), and until recently, overweight & underachieving point guard for the LA Clippers.

2. The American Interest on Russia: a Neo-Feudal State in which the poor pay tribute and the rich provide protection.

Credits: Truehoop, The Browser

Imagining Chinese Girth February 25, 2011

An awesome chart from the Economist compares the GDP, GDP/person, and population of various Chinese provinces to entire countries. We learn that the average resident of Shanghai is about as rich as the average Saudi, while the average resident of Gansu is as rich as the average Iraqi. Also interesting- Sichuan has as many people as Germany, and the province where I was born, Hubei, is as populous as Italy.

More-on Gaddhafi February 23, 2011

1. A guide to Col. Gadhafi’s eccentric family, via Wikileaks. Full of surprises: i.e. his second son and heir-apparent, Saif al-Islam, has a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.

2. Updates on the Libyan situation from the NYT and the WSJ. The articles help explain why some parts of the military were so quick to defect and why civil war is becoming a real possibility.

Credits: The Browser

Background on Libya February 22, 2011

The WSJ provides an analysis of the tribal politics that are behind the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi.

The Best-Read Presidents February 21, 2011

A slightly silly Daily Beast piece on the reading habits of US Presidents.