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October 20, 2006
The Washington-based New Republic has apparently parted ways with one of its most outspoken critics of the Iraq war, Spencer Ackerman, former author of TNR's blog "Iraq'd." (Here's where Ackerman makes the announcement and here are some additional comments from a friend, fellow junior pundit Matthew Yglesias.)
Ackerman doesn't say much about the cause of his departure, except to say that the "ostensible reason" is some sort of clash with his editors, while the actual reason has more to do with divergent ideologies. Yglesias, however, does a wink-wink, nudge-nudge routine, while gesturing emphatically at Marty Peretz, TNR's editor in chief and part owner.
On what issues might there have been conflict? Ackerman is the rare -- if not the only -- TNR scribe to voice the view that American withdrawal from Iraq might reduce the carnage there and amount to a step forward in the war on terror. Then there's Joe Lieberman. Peretz has written that if Lieberman wins his race, or "more important, if Ned Lamont loses it and loses it decisively, meaningfully--there will be real reason for reasonable people to celebrate."
Ackerman, meanwhile, wrote in the American Prospect, a rival magazine to TNR's left, that Lieberman has been "reality-averse" in his analysis of Iraq and the GWOT. "Perhaps the most surprising thing about Lieberman's defense record," he wrote, "is the difficulty of defining Liebermanism. On the central question of why a nation should or shouldn't go to war, Lieberman's answer is simply, 'yes!'"
Since TNR's advocacy of the war in Iraq has been a sore point with many liberals, this staffing move is likely to get more attention than it otherwise would. (Full disclosure: Peretz bashes a Globe editorial here.)
Posted by Christopher Shea at 02:54 PM
October 20, 2006
My earlier post about the creeping corporate takeover of the Internet notwithstanding, there are still a bunch of labors of love out there bringing together fervent communities of enthusiasts. Comic book collectors are generally geeks, and geeks are generally prone to complex and laborious technological projects ... and voila! We have the grandly named Grand Comic Book Database.
The goal of the volunteer-driven GCBD is to catalog data -- "key story information, creator information, and other information which is useful to readers, fans, hobbyists, researchers" -- for all the comic books ever published. There are "no commerical objectives" here. Ideally each comic book page is to show an image of the book's cover. (Over 40 covers have been posted today, including some from 1952.)
Like any widely distibuted volunteer project, certain guidelines need to be observed, e.g.: "Our general rule of thumb is to look for a 25 issue commitment over a two-month time period. This is particularly true of new members who are indexing in our format for the first time. All reservations will be held for only 6 months."
The site today also displays a prominently featured ad for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, where you'll find news about a pretty fascinating case or two. Bet you didn't know the CBLDF has been "Defending the Comic Book Industry's First Amendment Rights Since 1986."
Posted by Evan Hughes at 02:49 PM
October 20, 2006
An article in the November issue of The American Prospect, posted online this week, carries the audacious title "We Answer to the Name of Liberals." It's written by Bruce Ackerman, a Yale professor of law and political science, and Todd Gitlin, the ubiquitous professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia who wrote "Letters to a Young Activist." I have always found Gitlin rather shrill, but this is an important piece.
In large part it's a rebuttal to a recent London Review of Books article by Tony Judt, who charged that American liberals have "acquiesced in President Bush's catastrophic foreign policy." Ackerman and Gitlin call that "nonsense on stilts." Their piece is written as a kind of manifesto -- "Clearly this is a moment for liberals to define ourselves" -- and carries a fairly long (and growing) list of prestigious signatories.
Ackerman and Gitlin indulge somewhat in a speechifying tone, but it's refreshing to see a couple of intellectuals lay out a political platform in no uncertain terms. I'd like to see a conservative reply.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 10:35 AM
October 20, 2006
An assistant professor of English at the University of Connecticut, Gregory Colon Semenza, has published a book called "Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities."
Title doesn't sound so thrilling. But the book, which has a forward by Michael Bérubé, author of "What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?," seems to be an unusually blunt and useful guide to navigating the purgatory that is graduate school. Judging by the review excerpted here, it may also sneak a little candy in with the medicine:
Imagine, if you will, the next big thing in reality television: You're Not Hired! -- the inside scoop on the job market in the humanities. A mixture of Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Batchelor(ette), You're Not Hired! would take an audience thirsty for vicarious punishment into the secret workings of search committees, the countless hours rehearsing suitable answers to adversarial interview questions, the agonizing days waiting by the phone or checking e-mail inboxes constantly, and the marathon campus visits (a mixture of speed dating, boot camp, and Survivor-like immunity challenges).
Thanks to The Valve for the tip.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 09:45 AM
October 19, 2006
In Sunday's Ideas section, Harvey Blume interviewed PBS documentarian Bill Moyers. Moyers spoke about his program "The Net at Risk," which can be watched and discussed here. The program, as Blume put it, "asks if Net neutrality -- broadly defined as equal access to the Internet -- will survive Congress rewriting the Telecommunications Act of 1996." Moyers told Blume:
Giving control of content and access to big corporations will mean that the Internet, the most revolutionary democratic phenomenon of our time, where all of us are equal, will slip through our fingers. I did this documentary to say, Hey people, pay attention. Something is about to happen that will be very hard to change.
Now I wonder what Moyers would make of the New York Times report that corporations are making inroads into an exceedingly popular online game/alternate world called Second Life, which is now getting loads of attention. The likes of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Sun Microsystems, Nissan, Adidas/Reebok, Toyota, and Starwood Hotels are advertising and setting up virtual resorts and stores "in world." Makes you long for the Wild West days when the Internet was a tool for research only if you were geeky enough to "get it," poorly designed fan sites were the name of the game, and nytimes.com didn't exist.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 05:55 PM
October 19, 2006
In the latest issue of "In Character," Jeffrey Rosen makes a classic contrarian argument: Supreme Court Justices have abandoned the concept of justice -- and that's a good thing!
What Rosen means (he's a law professor at George Washington U. and also the legal-affairs editor at the New Republic) is that today's Court has dropped from its job description the task of righting society's wrongs. It prefers incremental decisions that clarify existing law -- that further the rule of law -- but do not infringe on the duties of Congress.
For Rosen, Roe v. Wade is the classic instance of the Court's imperiously trying to settle a question involving social justice on which the Constitution is unclear. He's relieved that no one on today's court possesses such arrogance about the role of the court (save, in his own way, Clarence Thomas, in Rosen's account).
Like other arguments of this type, Rosen's appears to fail what might be called the Brown v. Board of Education test. No decision is more canonical in 20th century constitutional law -- and in none did the Court more clearly attempt to resolve a divisive question involving social justice.
Many people make a version of Rosen's argument. But few are so intellectually consistent as to conclude that, by their logic, the court should have stayed out of the desegregation battle, too. (A recent Harvard Law hire, Adrian Vermeule, whose book I just linked to, is one who does.) Yet isn't that what the argument implies? All of this ignores another problem with Rosen's thesis. A majority of today's Court supports Roe, his bete noire.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 05:09 PM
October 19, 2006
Jay-Z is back. James Parker noted this in Ideas a few weeks ago, as did the Times's Kelefa Sanneh in a great review last Thursday comparing the comebacks of Jay and Puffy. But I saw Jay's return for myself last night.
Flipping through the channels waiting for the Mets game to start, I alit on BET, which was airing Jay's new video, for the single "Show me what you got." The video had already begun when I came upon it, and having perhaps missed an establishing shot or two, I found myself rather confused regarding the video's conceit. There was Jay, dropping his lyrics over a beat by Just Blaze and riding shotgun in a sports car (a Lambourghini Countach? Nope, I checked and they don't make those anymore). Jay's car was racing another sports car, driven by a woman. Hardly a pathbreaking scenario for a rap video, I realize. What threw me, however, was the rather plain-looking white guy driving Jay's car and the attractive, but not really video girl attractive, woman they were chasing.
It wasn't until I leaned forward and squinted at my set that I realized Jay's chauffer was none other than Nascar's Dale Earnhardt Jr., and their quarry Formula 1's Danika Patrick.
Now it all made sense. Say what you will about Jay-Z's abilities as a rapper -- his detractors accuse him of serial plagiarism flagrant even by hip-hop standards -- he's an astonishingly good salesman. That car chase was as dizzying for its culture clashes as for its speed: I mean, rap + Nascar? And, for that matter, Nascar + Formula 1? Not too many people could put these elements together and make it work. Jay pretty much does.
As if all this weren't enough, not a half hour later, now happily taking in the Mets defeat of the Cards, I had the deja vu experience of seeing Jay's video again -- only this time, during a commercial break on Fox. It was the same video, only edited down to a 30-second advertisement for Budweiser, the sponsor of Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s #8 Chevrolet. Not, I gather, a coincidence.
Again, all very impressive from the standpoint of promotion, self- and otherwise. Yet while I couldn't help but tip my hat to Jay for the feat of cross-branding he'd pulled off, I also couldn't help feeling a bit nostalgic for a different era of hip-hop. The refrain in Jay's "Show me what you got" features a sample of Flavor Flav saying "Show 'em what you got," from the Public Enemy track "Louder than a bomb." The latter was an angry protest song in which Chuck D, with encouragement from Flav, accuses the government of tapping his phone and the CIA and FBI for trafficking in lies (among other crimes).
Hip-hop has changed since that track dropped in 1988. Public Enemy, as they were fond of lamenting, could barely get a few spins on the radio; Jay's track gives new meaning to the word commercial. Of course, it's not as if Flavor Flav himself isn't enjoying the current state of affairs...
Posted by John Swansburg at 02:17 PM
October 19, 2006
A member of the Conservative Party in Canada, Garth Turner, has been expelled from Parliament -- or "suspended indefinitely," if that's in fact any different. The source of his party's disapproval seems to be his popular, controversial, and free-swinging blog:
“[The caucus] had concerns about confidentiality, lack of respect of confidentiality through discussions in their caucus, also issues of personal attacks on various members that had come up on blog sites related to Mr. Turner at different times,” [the party’s national caucus chair, Rahim] Jaffer told reporters.
Turner seems uncowed in a statement on said blog:
Well, this has turned out to be one interesting day. This blog has been melted down a few times over the last couple of hours with Canadians logging on because, I would presume, they'd like to see why it is I have been removed from the Conservative bosom.
Well, knock yourself out. All my words are here. Judge for yourself.
Political blogs are now apparently enough of a force to be reckoned with that they have stoked fear at the top of the food chain. And this is Canada we're talking about.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:15 PM
October 19, 2006
According to London School of Economics evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry, the human species may "split in two" in the next 1,000 years (check out the graphic). Selective breeding among a genetic upper class, in Curry's vision, gives rise to a kind of Nietzschean overman (and -woman) -- tall, durable, and very easy on the eyes -- while the rest of the species becomes nasty, brutish, and short.
Curry may be overestimating what can happen in a thousand years; were we really so different-looking in 1006? But in one prediction he doesn't seem to go far enough:
However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology.
Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.
Heck, a number of people think that advances in technology are going to put us in deep water by 2020. Enslavement to our own machines? I don't think 10,000 years are required.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 08:38 AM
October 18, 2006
I've just happened upon a corner of the blogosphere I didn't know existed: blogs dedicated to exploring Google Earth. This may sound like a region inhospitable to those without a comp. sci. degree to keep them warm, but I was surprised at how readable some of these sites are. Ogle Earth, for instance, has a great post about how archaelogists are using Google Earth to find dig sites in France dating back to the Iron Age.
Other dispatches from Google Earth bloggers are slightly quirkier, but interesting nonetheless. It seems several folks in the Google Earth Community have devised a new hobby, a sort-of trainspotting for the Google age. The sattelites that provide the photography that Google Earth displays have had to take a lot of pictures of a lot of Earth, and naturally they've occasionally taken those pictures while trains and planes have been passing through.
Finding the coordinates of these trains and planes has become a passion for some, particularly the planes. See, e.g., the post on Google Earth Blog, noting the discovery of a fully restored Lancaster bomber (apparently a mainstay of the WWII-era RAF) cruising around England. According to the post, a Google Community member discovered the plane when doing what everyone does when they first test drive Google Earth -- type in their home address. Most of us, however, don't find something like this when we do:
Google Earth Blog has a pointer to a list of all the planes the Community has thus far found flying the friendly skies of Google Earth. If nothing else, you've got to check out the KC-135 refueling the C-5 Galaxy over Northern California. So much cooler than that probably sounds.
Posted by John Swansburg at 05:49 PM
October 18, 2006
Seven funeral home directors have secretly pleaded guilty in New York in a case involving the theft and sale of bones and tissue from cadavers. (One of the bodies that were plundered is that of the late "Masterpiece Theater" host Alistair Cooke.) This ghoulish case is one of a number that have cropped up concerning the shocking for-profit treatment of corpses -- often a legal gray area due to a lack of effective government oversight.
Annie Cheney published an eye-widening book on the topic last year called Body Brokers: Inside America's Underground Trade in Human Remains, a project that originated as a Harper's article.
Cheney quotes one body broker from New Jersey: “That torso that you’re living in right now is just flesh and bones. To me, it’s a product.”
Posted by Evan Hughes at 03:25 PM
October 18, 2006
Readers of Ideas will remember David Barron's article about the resistance in some cities to the arrival of Wal-Mart and other big box retailers with controversial management practices. And Brainiac readers might recall follow-up posts here and here about the Wal-Mart fracas in Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley vetoed an ordinance that would have required the company to offer better pay and benefits in any store in the city.
Now Wal-Mart is advancing on China, whether China likes it or not; the company has purchased Trust-Mart, the country's leading retailer, seeking more stores in the world's fastest-growing market. On the blog of the business magazine Fast Company, Lynne D. Johnson has an interesting take on Wal-Mart's strategy. She sees the retail giant pursuing another chain in China in part because employees at the 66 existing Chinese Wal-Marts have (surprisingly) managed to form trade unions, a development Wal-Mart has fought back in the US.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 11:40 AM
October 18, 2006
A few weeks back I wrote here about change in the works in the peer review process at scientific journals.
One soon to be launched journal published by the Public Library of Science, PLoS ONE -- described here -- plans to publish articles more frequently online (rather than issue-by-issue) and take steps to introduce more transparency. PLoS ONE will use a more public peer review process that continues after publication, allowing reviewers to annotate and comment on papers on the site.
The managing editor of PLoS ONE, Chris Surridge, will be giving a talk about the journal and "open access" publishing at MIT's Stata Center at 2 p.m. on Friday the 20th.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 09:00 AM
October 18, 2006
In my column this week, I'd hoped to discuss a chapter in "The Challenge of Affluence" about the notorious tail-fin era in American car design, but ran out of space. The Oxford economic historian Avner Offer holds it up as an example of affluent consumers acting against their best interests.
From 1954 to 1958, American cars went through a period of outlandish designs. Cars grew something over a foot in length from 1949 to 1958, and consumers grew addicted to various design gew-gaws, such as those fins that caused your Buick to vaguely resemble a horizontal rocket.
(That's actually a '59 Caddy.) Domestic automakers pushed their designers to come up with new fillips each year, even though the best designers knew the trend was ludicrous, and engineers wanted the companies to stop redesigning the for a minute, so the engineers could make them actually work.
Quality nosedived and design novelty, by definition, is short-lived: Fords and GM cars lost 83 percent of their value in their first four years during this period, Offer suggests. Plainer, slow-changing vehicles, like the new Volkswagon, retained about twice that proportion of value. American consumers shifted abruptly toward simplicity and prudence at the end of the '50s, and the overdesign era was over. (Ford saved itself with the simple Ford Falcon, a brainchild of Robert McNamara, who later had other brainchilds.)
In short, car companies hurt their reputations, engineers lost their dignity, and consumers lost a lot of money -- all because the thrill of momentary gratification ("tail fins!") swamped considerations of real value.
Is something similar at work in the SUV craze of the past decade? Offer thinks so.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 07:33 AM
October 17, 2006
For the person who has it all: An outfit called Skyacht, out of Amherst, Mass., is developing a hot-air powered personal blimp. Why, you ask? Well, according to their project summary:
In addition to recreational uses, the Personal Blimp can fly in ways that no other aircraft can match. For instance, no other aircraft can accomplish the seemingly straightforward task of picking off the top-most leaf from a particular tree (Helicopter downblast tosses the leaves wildly; Helium airships can't hover; Previously built hot air airship and and hot air balloons are nearly impossible to steer precisely.) In contrast, the Personal Blimp flies "low, slow, and smooth." This enables one to accomplish tasks as simple as the above-mentioned picking of leaves off the tops of trees or as complex as carrying airborne gravimetric measurement equipment (used in diamond prospecting) with far greater sensitivity and spatial resolution. Other areas of application for the Personal Blimp's unique abilities include forest canopy research, wetlands survey/management, eco-tourism and aerial photography.
So there you go. Just don't fly it to Manchester-by-the-Sea.
Thanks to Chris Spurgeon, who emailed me to say he's saving up for one of these. Chris is the author of spurgeonblog, for my money one of the best blogs out there. Recent posts include a guide to where you can buy the clothes the PC and Mac guys are wearing in the current Apple ad campaign, a history of malt liquor, and, with flu season upon us, a link to a video made by a doctor in Maine explaining why sneezing into your sleave is healthier than sneezing into your hands.
Posted by John Swansburg at 04:47 PM
October 17, 2006
Tonight's episode of WGBH's Frontline (which airs on most PBS affiliates at 9 p.m.), is called "The Lost Year in Iraq." It examines the period between the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad and the departure in June 2004 of former Coalition head L. Paul Bremer.
According to Anita Gates, writing today in the New York Times, "very few punches are pulled" in this account of the mistakes and failures that followed early military success. (The program seems unlikely to please conservatives who claim that public television is too left-wing.) The story here is not a new one; much of it has been told in numerous articles and books, perhaps most notably in "The Assassins' Gate" by George Packer, who supported the war before it began.
The Frontline producers "found no shortage of highly placed people who were willing, even eager, to talk about the disaster that many perceive American-occupied Iraq to have become since the spring of 2003," Gates writes. Among them is Jay Garner, the retired Army general who served as director of the Iraq Reconstruction Group. On camera he says, "There was no plan and no staff."
Posted by Evan Hughes at 04:10 PM
October 17, 2006
If you've got Times select, or still have the Sunday Times lying around, check out Nicholas Kristof's Sunday Op-ed column, "Looking for Islam's Luthers." Kristof's focus is actually the growth of "feminist Islam," a movement advocating gender equality in the Muslim world. But he comes at it by way of a reference to Luther:
While the thread of fundamentalism is real in Islam, so is the thread of reform. The 21st century may become to Islam what the 16th was to Christianity, for even in hard-line states like Iran you meet Martin Luthers who are pushing for an Islamic Reformation.
Last month, Reza Aslan, author of No god but God, and owner of a snazzy website, also wrote of an Islamic Reformation. But in his Ideas essay, The war for Islam, Aslan's focus was the role of fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden in this Reformation. His point of comparison, however, was still Martin Luther:
Bin Laden has shown he is willing to use any means necessary to purify Islam of what he considers to be its adulteration at the hands of the clerical establishment. While his tactics are immoral and horrifying, his justification for the use of violence is not so different than that used by reformation radicals like Martin Luther, who defended the massacre of his Protestant opponents by claiming that ``in such a war, it is Christian and an act of love to strangle the enemies confidently, to rob, to burn, and do all that is harmful until they are overcome."
But what most connects bin Laden and the Reformation radicals of the 16th century is his deliberate attempt to seize for himself the powers traditionally reserved for the institutional authorities of his religion. Luther challenged the papacy's right to be the sole interpreter of the Scripture; bin Laden challenges the right of the clerical establishment to be the sole interpreters of Islamic law.
Two very different visions of the Islamic Reformation -- and of the Protestant one.
Posted by John Swansburg at 12:54 PM
October 17, 2006
Last night's episode of the Newshour with Jim Lehrer had a segment on the new Poet Laureate Donald Hall. Hall gave a tour of his New Hampshire farm and talked about his poetry, in an interview reproduced here in audio form.
Hall, a deserving Laureate, has written gem-like poems about New Hampshire and country life. His earliest book of essays, published in 1961, had the delightful title "String Too Short to Be Saved." Hall's work of the last decade includes eloquent verses and essays about his wife Jane Kenyon, also a poet, who died of leukemia in 1995. Our Poet Laureate, I'm happy to say, is also a maniacal Red Sox fan, and showed his range by publishing a marvelous collection of short essays called "Fathers Playing Catch with Sons: Essays on Sport (Mainly Baseball)."
Posted by Evan Hughes at 10:32 AM
October 17, 2006
From a neuroscience conference in Atlanta comes the news that scientists restored some movement and powers of speech to a severely brain-damaged man who had been barely conscious for six years. They did so by sending electric pulses to wire electrodes they had implanted deep in his brain.
This finding echoes a recent article in the New York Times Magazine that discussed scientists' success in helping a woman with treatment-resistant depression using electric stimulation of the brain.
Advances in neuroscience, one of today's wild western frontiers of knowledge, continue not only to hold practical promise but to approach the realm of sci-fi films.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 08:45 AM
October 16, 2006
What could be worse than the stereotypical smooth-talking salesman, all unctuousness and flattery? Now we know: It's the gloomsayers of today's appliance departments, who are cultivating a new apocalyptic style in retail rhetoric.
I heard it myself last week, when I phoned a big chain store to change an order for a microwave oven. Once that was done, the salesman, George, went into his extended-warranty spiel.
Now, in my family we tend to shun extended warranties; sometimes, when I'm face to face with the salesman, I'll explain the economic rationale, just for the fun of watching his eyes glaze over. But we were on the phone, so I just said no thanks.
George wasn't having it. He launched into the sad tale of his own microwaves: The first one, the house brand, had lasted less than two years, and the next failed before its first birthday. If not for his warranty he'd have been screwed.
"I'm sorry you were so unlucky," I said. "But my last one was still going strong at 20 years."
"Well," said George testily, "I can guarantee you this one won't last that long!"
What's next? Buy the warranty or we'll shoot this dog?
Turns out Consumer Reports ran a story on this spreading phenomenon in the August 2006 issue. They found salespeople at several big chains assuring shoppers that only a warranty would keep that fridge or dishwasher alive. “Manufacturers are cutting corners," said one salesman. "Everything is being made in Mexico, and God only knows what they’re doing down there.”
The truth? Warranties are cash cows for stores and ripoffs for consumers. CR quotes a warranty trade newsletter: "You sell a $400 television set and maybe make $10. But you sell a $100 warranty and make $50.”
For margins like that, apparently, salespeople will say just about anything to customers – even "You knucklehead, that appliance I just sold you is a piece of junk."
Posted by Jan Freeman at 08:53 PM
October 16, 2006
A tip from a reader: McSweeney's has published another amusing list, with a more cutting tone, related to New Yorker cartoons. This one, "Future Winners of the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest," appears both online and in the highly entertaining new book "Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists."
My favorite: "I'm saying a cliché in a different context, Pam."
Posted by Evan Hughes at 03:01 PM
October 16, 2006
Following up on cartoonist Drew Dernovich's piece in Ideas about the new book "The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker," I thought I'd point out a funny little piece on McSweeney's Internet Tendency that lists "In-Progress Ideas for New Yorker Cartoons." They include:
Two guys are sitting on a desert island with their backs against a single palm tree.
"I miss blogging."
Or, no, wait, maybe one of them is standing near the water with a bottle at his feet, reading a letter. "It's from the former treasurer of Nigeria." You know, making fun of those fraud e-mails. But on paper. Or maybe something else involving the Internet, which you don't get on desert islands. "It's a good deal on vi_jgra" or "I wonder what Google is doing."
Doesn't everyone have some New Yorker cartoon idea and wish they knew someone who could draw? Maybe we need a Web site where we can pool our inner cartoonists' brain power. A Caption Contest for the people.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 02:12 PM
October 16, 2006
Readers of Christopher Shea's piece about the weak connections between a nation's wealth and its happiness might be interested in two important recent books that take up the subject. Chris writes that new research suggests that "the richest societies ... particularly America and Britain, have reached a point at which their wealth and growth are actually harming citizens’ health and quality of life." That is the central argument of Peter Whybrow's book "American Mania." Whybrow, director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA, writes that rising rates of stress, anxiety, depression, obesity, and time urgency are now grudgingly accepted as part of everyday life in the world's most affluent society. He grounds both our extraordinary achievements and our excessive consumption to an understanding of the biology of the brain’s reward system.
Whybrow draws on the works of the prominent British economist Richard Layard, who published a book last year called "Happiness: Lessons from a New Science." Like Chris's article, Layard's book discusses the surprisingly loose correlation between a nation's wealth and its citizens' well-being. It also demonstrates that people from developed nations are no happier than they were 50 years ago, even though real incomes have more than doubled.
Posted by Evan Hughes at 01:55 PM
October 15, 2006
Which popular musician do lawyers and judges quote most? According to a report today on WNYC's "On the Media," it's Bob Dylan (whose lyrics, coincidentally, are the subject of today's "Word" column in Ideas).
The top 10 also include the Beatles and the Stones, Woody Guthrie and Joni Mitchell, and Paul Simon, both solo and with Garfunkel. But author Alex B. Long doesn't just report the rankings. His analysis, online at the Berkeley Electronic Press, also covers the demographics of musical taste:
While it is unlikely that the volume of Tupac, 50 Cent, or Ludacris lyrics will ever rival those of Bob Dylan in legal scholarship . . . "rap music vernacular" will become more prevalent as the legal profession becomes more diverse.
And what makes a lyricist quotable:
[Chuck] Berry has been dubbed the poet laureate of rock 'n' roll, yet his lyrics are rarely used in legal writing. This may be because his poetry is often though of as the poetry of cars, girls, and being young and bored. Important themes all, but only infrequently do they find their way into the courtrooms.
And when – as in the case of an opinion that cited both the Beatles and Pink Floyd -- quoting lyrics may do more harm than good:
While the music of the Beatles . . . transcends any number of age or cultural barriers, the music of Pink Floyd is not nearly so universally loved. In order to be effective, a metaphor must not only be descriptive, but it must be easily accessible. . . . The "Another Brick in the Wall" reference is likely to be lost on a sizable portion of the readers and may, in fact, be off-putting.
Posted by Jan Freeman at 05:12 PM
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