Editors Note: The Economist website has been running on extreme delays for most of the evening of the 25th, as well as the morning of the 26th. This may be noticeable if you click on any of the links.
The World Last Week
-Right next to the global news breakdown page is a full-page ad for Merrill Lynch that starts off with "To remain competitive." It does not continue with "get the government to insure bank deposits made by Bank of America." But you know what? It totally should.
-Remember this one? Iran is still enriching uranium and stonewalling inspectors.
-General David Petraeus, the US military man who oversaw the successful "surge" in Iraq is now in charge of Afghanistan. That's like getting a really good grade on your Social Studies test and being rewarded by getting hit in the head with a brick.
-The Indian-Mujahideen again took credit for bombings in Delhi, which resulted in the deaths of 20 people. There's still a serial lack of information on the group.
-The fighting between the Tamil Tigers and the government of Sri Lanka has forced the United Nations to pull staff from the northern zones of conflict.
-Text messaging may have contributed to the worst American rail disaster in 15 years, wherein a commuter train collided with a freight train in Los Angeles. Seriously?
-Hope you had money in gold. It's the only thing that did really well in the last few weeks.
-Porsche is on the way to a full merger with Volkswagen after increasing it's stake in the company to over 35%.
-Hewlett-Packard will be cutting around 13,000 jobs in America, which, if this was a different economic climate, would be pleasant news to anyone who has ever had to have a conversation over the phone with an HP employee.
-Samsung is tired of paying SanDisk $350 million a year to use their patented flash-memory, so they offered to buy the company for $6 billion. SanDisk turned them down, but Samsung isn't well known for backing off. An eye! Take it out, and keep it on this one.
Leaders
-If the ugly, hastily put together cover didn't clue you in, the Economist has a bit of a slap-dash leader put together for you about how "global finance" is being torn apart, and yet their faith, their faith Has Not Wavered. I've read it three times. Each time I wondered what I was missing, because the cover article can't be this slight, right? There's got to be more. Then I turned to the Finance and Economics section, covered below. That's where the info is--this is just a polemic about how you need to quit praying to God, because the Holy Dollar is still in charge. There's some cursory stuff about regulation, some acknowledgment that things are pretty shitty, but other than that, it's soft cheese. It's also one that is hilariously outdated, since so much with the financial system is changing everyday.
-There's some pluses on being a stateless multinational corporation--one of which that's certainly not the stance of some notable thinkers, is that the safest and most productive form of ethical controls is for a multinational to operate at the highest standards possible among it's varied companies, because it's too easy for things to go south when they set their sights on the middle. That sounds...lofty, somewhat unrealistic, until you realize they don't mean everybody gets paid the same, or the same benefits--obviously, there's a reason you put a shoe factory in China, and it isn't because of ethical stances. Then it goes on to say that it's because everybody gets punished by the same stick--and yet, that's not really believable either, because it isn't like CEO's are getting dealt with as roughly as an African diamond miner when they get caught stealing from the shareholders. So this entire article reads more like one of those ads for FedEx where they tell you how overnight shipping is going to increase the profit margin. The stateless part is pretty spot on, but that only makes up one paragraph.
-The Economist blames the Republicans for the recent return to negative campaigning, which is a pretty easy call thanks to that ad claiming Obama had once backed a bill that would teach kindergarten children "comprehensive sex education." God only knows what they'll have to say about the weird developments of the last few days.
-Although the Economist has two articles about the Alaskan successes of the Individual Fishing Quota system--less people dying then during a hellishly short derby system, more profitable returns and the successive growth in what had been an overexploited halibut population, they don't address the fact that most people liked the first season of Deadliest Catch more then the other seasons, because the first season was shot during the derby years.
Letters
-A few weeks back, I misread a short update and published a completely inaccurate statement. That was embarrassing. But at least I'm not Blake Hudson, an environmental lawyer in Houston, who wrote in about how Barack Obama is messing with the estate tax and that makes him angry. Because now Blake Hudson is getting his second letter printed, where he points out that his first letter was completely inaccurate. It doesn't change his point of view, but still: i've got about as many "subscribers" as a Dennis The Menace message board, and the Economist has hundreds of thousands. Blake Hudson = douchier.
United States
-Since the way the financial crisis affects the presidential election obviously took a weird turn that the Economist couldn't have predicted, this article mainly focuses on guessing at where both candidates will be doing about the economy-also, this article was clearly written before the see-sawing polls began the definite switch to Obama. Notably, both McCain and Obama have both taken large donations from financial, insurance & real-estate industries--McCain got $22 million to Obama's $25 million, so it's not like either of them are exactly able to claim a position of objectivity. Meanwhile, the infighting continues--Obama points out that McCain doesn't really have much understanding of complex economics, which is true, while McCain points out that Obama has taken more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any politician except the chairman of the committee the two are supposed to answer too. Nice guys, those two.
-The financial shift of the election is clear, with the gap in corporate fund-raising finally even between Democrat and Republican. If you didn't know, which I didn't, the Republicans received 73% of corporate donations in 1996, and were still at 68% in 2004. While most corporations are likely to be switching sides in anticipation of a Democrat victory, and it's a lot easier to make friends if you've already given them a million dollars, the amount of proportional change is one that's on the way to record-breaking.
-Weird ballot initiatives to watch out for:
Arkansas will be voting on whether or not to bar unmarried couples from adopting children. (Yes, unmarried means gay and straight couples.)
California will be voting on whether or not to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry. (Jerry Brown rewrote the ballot measure because it's more likely to fail if it's worded to include the phrase "right to marry." Clever one, that.)
Thanks to a home schooled Baptist woman, Colorado will be deciding whether or not to classify a fertilized human egg as a person. If you want to be offended by me referring to her as a home-schooled Baptist woman, that's fine. She apparently likes to define herself as that though, so I'm just sticking with her wishes.
Florida will vote whether to ban same-sex marriage, as will Arizona. Interestingly enough, having this on the ballot in Florida will help to get more voters to the polls, and may even make things difficult for John McCain. (For some reason, blacks and Hispanics tend to oppose gay marriage more strongly then whites, yet that doesn't change the fact that blacks also tend not to vote for Republicans.) This means that conservatives who want to get blacks to vote for a ban will probably also bring in people who are voting against the conservative choice for President at the same time.
Finally, Massachusetts will be voting on whether or not to decriminalize the herb, when the herb is in small amounts.
-Lexington gives us a history lesson on Nixon and how his talk of the "silent majority" and the "effete corps of impudent snobs" in the media began what's now referred to by the Economist as the "culture wars" or "values voting." It's an interesting piece, and while I don't really have the background to tell you whether it's right on or not, it's patently inarguable that the idea of proper, rational debate regarding politics is a hidden trade, practiced behind closed doors. There's certainly a lot of people in the US right now willing to explain, as well as listen, in respectful discussion about the merits of both Obama and McCain. But you're not going to find it in the street, and you're not going to find it on television. Or here, for that matter, because I've got to read some more Little Lulu, and you can't have that previous time.
The Americas
-There's a lot to cover this week, so let's plow through this quickly: America said "Hey Cuba, you want $100,000 for that hurricane damage that left 2000,000 homeless and severely damaged crops? Wait, no, how about $5 million?" Cuba said no, but they'd like the trade embargo lifted. And the US told them that they'd get nothing, and they'd have to like it, just like when that kid couldn't decide for Dr. Pepper or Diet Coke in Caddyshack.
-Hugo Chavez finally kicked the American ambassador out of Venezuela. He followed that up with a threat to cut off oil supplies to America. Someone hopefully reminded him that the US does, despite his intense dislike for Bush, who he's called a drunkard, a donkey, and the devil, make up his main trading partner. And they buy most of his oil. And if you take away that, then the Venezuelans, who are starting to get a little sick of his nationalize everything, cheat, lie and steal antics, don't really have much use for him.
Asia
-Here's where the story of the Chinese tainted milk powder begins, and yes, it's about as ugly as you've already heard. Here's a rough breakdown: it allegedly began when the middlemen who collect milk from farmers added water to increase the amount of milk they had to sell. To disguise the watered down milk, they used melamine, a chemical that is used to make plastic materials--but also can help disguise the lowered protein content. By July 16th, there was evidence that a number of infants were developing kidney stones, and that all of these infants had ingested the same brand of milk. By September 1st, the health ministry had concluded that that brand of milk powder was causing it. But previously on August 2nd, the company who produced the milk had already made clear to their partners in New Zealand that there was a serious problem involving poisoned milk. The Chinese continue to claim that the information regarding the milk powder was in no way suppressed due to the Olympic Games--but why would a Chinese company reach outside it's own borders, yet not to it's own government? The only reason to believe that the Chinese government didn't already know about the poison milk on the same day as New Zealand businesses is this: because one wants to believe they would have done something different. They, disgustingly, did not. The recall of the milk powder was declared on September 11th.
-While things have changed somewhat in the last few days, both of the Economist articles (one of which is an op-ed piece agreeing that there's no worthy benefit to the US ignoring Pakistan's borders) regarding the current disagreement between the West, who want to be allowed to track and kill members of the Taliban as well as al-Qaeda across the borders of Afghanistan into Pakistan, who wants to be allowed to police their own borders. Arguments on both sides make sense. Pakistan's ISI is notoriously tolerant (possibly to the point of complicity) with Taliban fighters, and one of the main reasons so many al-Qaeda members hide in Pakistan is because they know how much trouble this causes in the US/Pakistani relationship. On the other hand, the United States has given somewhere around $12 billion to fund a locally raised frontier corps, as well as payments to the Pakistani army for various improvements and weapons training, despite the lack of much popular support for the West or it's interests--at some point, they have to permit Pakistan to police their own country, or else it's going to smack of invasion. Either way, there better be some kind of agreement, or else there will be more September 15ths--the day that Pakistani border troops opened fire over the heads of American troops.
-In a delightful mix of pageantry and pomp, Taro Aso ran for leadership of the LDP against three other Diet members. Even though it wasn't like this was going to change much for him, because everybody in Japan thinks he's totally adorable, it was a fine show. If you have a niggling feeling in the back of your head that maybe this is a weird time to be playing games, then yeah, go with it. Weird shit.
Middle East and Africa
-So the final agreement seems to have been made between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, and while it certainly isn't the best one could have hoped for--that would have involved Morgan Tsvangirai standing alone--it's the one that exists, and must be dealt with. For the time being, Mugabe will remain executive president while Tsvangirai will be the executive prime minister. The Economist leader section gives a hopeful prescription of what they believe Tsvangirai should push for, it's the standard boilerplate: overhauling the state run media, allowing outside reporters back into the country, most of all, dealing with the West--they are, after all, the only ones who can provide the food needed. Little of this will change the inflation rate, one that is roughly around 40 million percent. (Yes.)
Morgan is facing one of the toughest, and scariest, individuals in Africa, and Mugabe is even more nefarious when he faces serious opposition--the 1980's saw a similar "government of national unity" fall apart under his hand. Besides that, Mugabe has not given up control over the army, and who will control the intelligence services is as of yet undetermined. It seems unlikely that there won't be a struggle, but it should be noted that the the majority of Mugabe's most violent tactics have been served under the aegis of intelligence officers--even if Tsvangirai is given control in name, it's impossible to guess at how they will handle it. This situation remains one where hope is still out of reach. The best that can be said about is that Morgan is still alive, and that he didn't get punished for putting his head in his hands and sighing when Mugabe recently started ranting about the West at a press conference.
-In Saudi Arabia, a 79-year-old religious scholar who happens to be the head of the Supreme Judicial Council (the highest court of appeals in the land) was on a talk radio show where he said that owners of offensive satellite channels were "apostles of depravity" and that it would be lawful to kill them. I double checked on this one myself, because I wanted to make sure he wasn't referring to Showtime or some American channel--he's not. He's talking about Saudi Arabian owned channels. When people started freaking out he said that what he meant was that the owners should be given a chance to mend their ways, and if they didn't, then they should be put on trial and executed. Which is...better, I guess?
Europe
-The Russian stock market was crashing so bad on the 17th and 19th that the authorities finally shut down share and bond trading. This is tied in with the financial crisis, yes, because the financial crisis is worldwide and more confusing then short piecemeal articles written by Clark Howard can explain, but also because even people in Russia where kind of taken aback by the whole "let's invade Georgia for big dick reasons."
-Speaking of Russia, they are still working on the shift from being a conscript army to a volunteer force, but it's tough to get volunteers when you offer weapons from 1960-70 and your most up to date technology is an air-defense system, you can't build any new aircraft carriers because the only shipyard large enough is now in the Ukraine, which isn't your country, and your army had to depend on mobile phones to beat the shit out of Georgia because your radios don't work. A smart critic pointed out that old, shitty weapons can still kill you, but truthfully: this is not the Russia of your fathers. It's not even the Russia of your older siblings. As a wise fat man once said, "Shit done changed."
-Here's some basic absurdity: Muslims make up over half of the French prison population, despite only making up around 8% of the population. Because of the nature of prison, where the young and frightened are drawn to the tough and charismatic, more and more Muslims are becoming radicalized as they get packed into crowded jails with the militant. There are only 117 Muslim chaplains (imam is the proper term, but it may be a job title) out of 1,100 available to serve the population. And nothing is currently in place to change this. Keep up the good work over there.
-Charlemagne reminds us of the twist and turns of the Lisbon treaty, and I wonder if I'd pointed out that around half the people who voted "no" on Lisbon were under the impression that the treaty called for a new Euro-army built out of a draft? People do this shit all the time when they're trying to sway the public, create these ridiculous lies like "yeah, if you vote for Kerry, that means your mother gets sterilized" or "you do know Mitt Romney will make it illegal to be Jewish if he gets elected" but it's not like that makes a major impact. But here, a straight up lie might have done it, because a whole bunch of people didn't bother to check. Charlemagne makes the argument, and I love him forever for this, that this stems from the fact that the European Union is totally boring. And don't get all worked up thinking this is me being sarcastic. That's his words, by Jove, and they're accompanied with a cartoon where an EU spokesperson doesn't notice their words putting a man to sleep.
Britain
-British universities may not be preparing their students for a life beyond even the most simple and mediocre dreams. In fact, it might be more profitable in the long term to invest their college money in the market and play around with it. (I assume the Economist wrote that sentence before the stock market started farting knives.) Either way, if there's one thing I hate, it's college students, and I can't believe I even read this article. If giving a shit about the most entitled individuals on the planet (next to a two-year-old) is your thing, then here you go. I, for one, was hoping it was just going to be a litany of reasons why english majors often end up wishing they'd learned an actual trade. (Oh, and yes, I went to college. After college, then you get a personality. But in college? Omigod shut up you aren't a real person.)
-Three years ago, Jean-Charles de Menezes was shot in a London Tube carriage, which I'm assuming means the subway train, by the police. They suspected the 27-year-old Brazilian of being a suicide bomber--he was not? The article doesn't say, although I'm assuming he must not have been, but this article is really skimpy on facts. If a Tube carriage is a subway car, then why are 40 policemen giving anonymous evidence? How could that many individuals be involved? Either way, this may be the last time a case like this is dealt with by a jury, as the current Counter-Terrorism Bill wants all "sensitive inquests" to be held in chambers, without juries. It may not pass--but then again, Britain was able to get away with some pretty draconian arrest laws in the last six months. Wouldn't put it past them.
-Oliver Barker was given a pair of fancy white gloves. That's what you get when an auction you ran was a sell out grossing around $199 million. Oh, it was that Damien Hirst thing--which means the answer to "arrogant or crazy" is a resounding: arrogantly successful! Natter on, you nattering ponces!
-Gordon Brown and the Labour party: oh how I though I was done with you. But no, thanks to a subtitle that says "Gordon Cassidy and the Sundance Balls," Bagehot wins me back with the tale of the recent attempt at a coup by a small group of Labour-rebels, attempting to upset Gordon Brown from power. Good times, this one. On top of that, or on the side, there's a history of what Tony Blair called "New Labour" the story of a man, his party, and a country that has started to move on. It's a real piece of work, and it boils down to this if you don't have the time: New Labour killed itself. Still, check it out if you're at all interested in this stuff. It's unlikely we'll get another big examination like this until the leadership of the party, or a general election, changes the UK power dynamic.
International
-The nice thing about a crisis like a water shortage is that it's the kind of thing we can all relate to. Sure, you might not have any stocks, and you might not keep up enough with your 401K to realize what's happening to usually reliable low-risk money market funds, but hey: you drink water, don't you? You like food and stuff, and you understand that food needs water too, right? Well tough. The world is going to take it away from you, in the form of inefficient water use in farming. And before you get all pissy about how you're sure that this is because your wife won't go for the low-flow toilet, or because your neighbor takes six minute showers, remember: farming accounts for 70% of human water consumption. Oh, and unlike some of us city dwellers, farmers don't have to pay a market price for water. So remember: when you start killing people for their back-up supplies of Poland Spring, start with the farmers. It's their fault.
-Angola, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan & Rwanda all have quotas in place to ensure that a certain proportion of women are guaranteed seats in the government, or in some cases, guaranteed to have a spot on the ballot. It's a spreading trend in those sorts of places, despite it clashing with the basic concept of best person for the job, and it's arguable that it's benefiting the governments using them by bringing the sorts of cases men seem more averse to dealing with to the table. (Rwanda has finally started defining rape and protecting the victims of sexual abuse.) It's an interesting enough case, one not gone into detail here, mostly so because what seems to be at odds with democracy (a quota forcing a specific group into power) also seems to be creating serious benefit--but there just isn't enough of a history to make anything but general observations. That being said, won't this cast a pall over the women who needed no such quota to achieve an election win in those countries?
Business
-If AIG hadn't been saved, then it's ILFC subsidiary would have sent 900 planes into the hands of receivers. If oil prices hadn't dropped, airlines would've continued losing money. It's still not good enough, as it's presumed that about 30 more airlines will join MAXjet, Eos, Silverjet, Zoom, Aloha, Oasis, XL, Furura & ATA in the place where Pan-Am lives. (I miss you, Pan-Am.) Meanwhile, Silvio Berlusconi continues to scupper sensible deals for Alitalia in what can only be described as someone placing personal interest in front of economic, all the while doing it under the guise of national pride. Considering that the airline industry continues to be one of the worst offenders when it comes to begging for government help on the planet, and considering that now is not the time to expect presidents and prime ministers to open taxpayer funded pocketbooks for companies that aren't literally on fire, this is starting to look like a time when the entire industry, from the ground up, will have to fend for itself.
-Nobody yet has figured out the financial reason why Carlos Slim, a Mexican tycoon, bought 6.4% of the New York Times--the Economist wasn't able to give any new information beyond the boilerplate "he has faith, and it's a great opportunity," but it's certainly good news for the newspaper industry, which is probably the only time I'll write the phrase "good news for the newspaper industry" this year.
-JetBlue is still the weird little airplane company that could, as it found some popularity selling tickets on eBay, with the bids starting at five cents. (Including tickets to "destination unknown" which is only interesting until you remember all the sleazy cities in Florida that JetBlue flies into.)
-India is getting into the "grow poisonous crops for biofuels" market, but unlike previous forays into the field of growing biofuel-related products where food could be, jatropha plantations aren't usually found on the type of land conducive to food growth. Of course, it takes about four or five years for jatropha to be useful, and there's still the problem inherent in a product that's not in wide enough use for it to be a big seller, but hey--it's India. The larger the population gets, the more industry they're going to need to supplement their economy, which still has to struggle with words like poverty on a semi-regular basis.
Finance and Economics (Every Article From The Section Included--This Is Obviously The True Leader)
-Ok, let's try not to screw this up too badly.
Article 1: This is your basic "who's in trouble" article. Morgan Stanley, HBOS, Goldman Sachs, American International Group, Merril Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac--all those cats are basically done with for now, as they've either been rescued by Hank Paulson (the US treasury secretary) or bought out by others. In one specific case, Lehman, they've been left to declare bankruptcy--although that just means that they'll get picked over by the survivors, as was seen in the past few days. Washington Mutual, which is now officially out of the game too, was only headed that way when the article was written, but it should be pointed out that it's capable of wiping out half of the nation's deposit-insurance fund. Still in the loop of upcoming problems are money-market funds, which are no longer as safe as previously thought. This is where some more concern to be had, as they are big buyers of corporate debt.
Article 2: Although Richard Shelby, the lead Republican Senator for the banking panel claimed that Hank Paulson's bail-outs seemed arbitrary, the Economist disagrees. It should be noted that Lehman had a lot of friends in the Senate--whether that includes Shelby, I don't know--but the Economist thinks Paulson made the right call. I'm inclined to agree, but that's unimportant. Paulson had said back in July that a program for taking over and winding down investment banks and insurers should be set up--obviously, this program could've lessened the horrific blow of Lehman, possibly even Fannie & Freddie, but Congress at the time thought they could wait until the next President was in office. (That worked out well.) The system that Paulson seems to be operating when it comes down for the "to save or not to save" question is this: step one: cut a hole in the box. No.
Is the firm so large that failure could be catastrophic? If not, like Lehman, then let it burn. If yes--like AIG, Bear Stearns or Fannie and Freddie, then give first claim on assets to the taxpayers, punish the stockholders as much as possible, and replace the management.
Article 3: In January, there were five independent investment banks--Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. Now Chase and Bank of America are in charge of Bear and Lynch and , while Barclays (and anybody else with cash) is ripping apart what is left of Lehman. The italicized portion comes not from the article, but from my own research--take that as you will. This article ends with Goldman and Morgan still breathing--because it wasn't until September 21st that Goldman drastically changed their status and went hat in hand to the Federal Reserve Board. Morgan Stanley went down the next day. The era of the independent investment bank--an era that hit its stride over the last decade--is over.
Article 4: Buttonwood tries to lighten things up with an article for those of us who are as of yet unaffected financially by the crisis--first up, it's a dour quote from the laugh-a-minute Winston Churchill, and then a notably optimistic reminder that "It is quite plausible that those who buy shares today will look smart in five years' time." Good, right? Wait, here's the rest of the quote: "It is much less certain they will look smart six months from now." Buy! Just not yet. But soon.
Article 5: AIG used to be the largest insurance firm in the world, but it was brought to crushing humiliation by it's investment bank, who had exposed it to $441 billion in credit-default swaps. Because of the increasing subprime losses, it ended up having to put up more collateral, and the cycle sent it into a liquidity crisis. The way the Federal Reserve is covering it is to extend it a two year $85 billion credit facility, in hopes that the time period will allow it to improve it's liquidity. Unfortunately, it's just as possible that they won't.
Article 6: What are the major impacts that the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy could bring to bear? First up--everybody who sold insurance against Lehman going broke will lose a serious amount of money. Number two: if Lehman was involved in a deals as buyer or seller, then the other party is out of luck--the bankruptcy is obviously designed to protect them from that. Everyone in this situation won't lose--some, maybe most, will. Number three: seriously, I have no idea whatthis is, so if you know, man up and tell me--synthetic collateralized-debt obligation markets are comprised of credit-default swaps, the sort of swaps Lehman was involved in (and is what brought them down), meaning the holders of the swap will lose big. I realize this one is headier then most, and it would help if the article unraveled more of who their potential partners in these enterprises were--but this one specifically ended up being a bit beyond me. Next year, maybe. I'm trying.
Article 7: HBOS, Britain's biggest mortgage lender was taken over by Lloyds TBS, another large British bank. The difficulty here is that more European banks may be losing out in the cards, as all of the major ones (Barclays, Deutsche Bank and UBS are a few) are suffering massive jumps in the price of insuring their debts against a default. And if one of them goes down while America is still struggling through, things can get far worse.
Article 8: Emerging markets like China and Brazil were big customers of the type of investment that is now disappearing, as more and more banks are becoming consumed with survival, and even the mildest of risks (which isn't a description of Chinese or Brazilian investment) is a laughable enterprise. With oil prices dropping, both Brazil and Russia are no longer looking as healthy, and China is no longer going to enjoy the export demands they saw during happier, more fluid times in the West.
Article 9: None of this would've happened if fair-value accounting wasn't in use? Is that what some are saying? Yes, that's what some are saying. Fair value accounting is when you rate the worth of an asset at what it could sell if you sold it right now instead of it's historical value. If the assets held by...shit, by everybody, was rated at the historic value, they wouldn't have had to show more collateral, and if they didn't go into liquidity crisis trying to show more collateral, then they wouldn't have seen their credit rate drop, which means their credit-default swaps would've been valued higher, and jesus, are you getting it now? What I'm getting? You can't comprehend this in an easy format. You can't boil it down in three paragraphs. I'd like to, shit, I'd like John Updike to do it, or Anthony Lane, and I'd like to read that. it would definitely be funnier.
Science and Technology
-There's a couple of Italians who never sleep, like really never sleep, not that the thing you claim to do when you've stayed up really late trying to finish the third season of C.S.I. Miami because you're just sure that you'll find an episode that doesn't make you want to kill yourself. Seriously, they never sleep. They have a disease. What's problematic is that sleep, which is part of that branch of science that gets listed under "stuff we haven't really figured out yet," has been assumed to have some correlation to memory for so long now that it was sort of an accepted thing. Yet these two Italians, these two non-sleeping Italians? No memory problems. Which puts the whole "what's sleep for" question back at square one, and also, because mixing metaphors is fun, brings whether it's a square into question as well. Could be a hexagon.
-Do you have a baby? Does a friend? Do they heat up milk in a plastic bottle? And now that you've answered yes to probably two of these questions, did you know that one of the commonly used plastics in baby bottles is associated with heart problems, diabetes and liver complications when it's found in concentrated doses...like the doses that a baby gets when you heat up the bottle and give it to them? Here's the part where it gets a little scarier: they don't know what to do about this, don't know if you should do anything, and aren't even sure what it all means yet. The sad thing about these kind of studies is that, because of the news cycle and free press, the early inklings of something that's scary and upsetting get published long before a solution does, even scarier, because it involves infants (where time is obviously a factor.) I'm not saying they shouldn't publish it, or withhold the information. But I'm glad I don't have a kid yet, and I feel nervous for those that do. I also feel somewhat disgusted, because this is totally exploitative fearmongering, but then again--you can't responsibly deny these studies exist.
-I've pointed out articles the Economist likes to publish frequently, like the interminable ones about Muslim and Chinese specific finance, but here's another one: Web 2.0 tools, and yes, whoever came up with that term should be killed, are very helpful to some branches of science, because it helps spread information around among scientists who haven't published papers yet, but it's also bad, because it means somebody might make the jump that another scientist hasn't hit yet and get credit. So it's an article anybody could write if they have a basic understanding of logic and they get asked to do about five minutes of research on the subject. And the Economist publishes a version of it every couple of months.
Books and Arts
-The Economist wants to make the world safe for disparging the later work of Marc Chagall's career, and they've found a book that backs them up. This review feels like that moment when you find out that your buddy that you've known for years has some odd idea of what should happen to the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers, and it's a bit extreme and makes you sort of uncomfortable, even though you don't give a shit about the Trailblazers. One of those, yeah, okay man moments.
-Bruce Riedel thinks that the towers fell so al-Qaeda could deliberately pull the US into an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, so that America would be stretched thin and end up alienating enough young Muslim men that a healthy proportion would start joining terrorist organizations. Alison Pargeter thinks that al-Qaeda went to New York because the resulting horror would convince the US to withdraw forces from Saudi Arabia. The Economist doesn't say who they agree with, but at the end they go from saying that Alison's book is more nuanced to saying that it "could well become a seminal work on Islamist radicalism." Out of all the stuff that's in her book to pull from, the Economist most wants to focus on this little tidbit: that it's a mistake to define Muslims as either being radical or moderate, because the group of people who define themselves by their religion is already a minority within Islam. So when one starts distinguishing "moderate" from "extremist," you're already dealing with a minority, because most Muslims, like most religious members, are more likely to say "I'm an Egyptian" or "I'm an American" before they say "I'm a Muslim." Something new? Everyday.
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The Economist gives
a vaguely positive review of a book called "The Case Against Barack Obama," which might be because it's a good book, or because it appeals to their own irritations with the candidate. (Even though they do seem to be starting to lean closer towards supporting him.) The book hits on some of the
Economist's pet irritations with the man--the creepy lusting stemming from all the "yes we can" rherotic, the ugh-y methods Barack used to get his Illinois Senate seat, and, of course, the period where he failed to team-up across party lines, which can also be referred to as "the entire period he's been a Senator." Still, it's a grain of salt you have to take when reading the article, a much bigger one you'd have to take when reading the book, and overall: who exactly buys these books anyway? The title alone alienates buyers itself.
-Google has a stated goal, and that stated goal is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," which I could fully get behind until I start wondering if I really want angry six-year-olds to know how much money their miserable father makes, and whether or not I want all my high school "mistakes" to start showing up at my door and asking me why I put them up for adoption. But I'm sure they meant the other thing, but then again, Google just sounds like such a ridiculous place to work, and it's got a 300 year plan which just reminds me of that notebook that Dignen has in
Bottle Rocket, and probably reads just as pathetic as his did. Too often do people, the
Economist especially, equate success with likeability or human interest value.
While I might be interested to read about Google, the company, I'm never going to want to read about Google, the people. It's the difference between enjoying an iMac and stopping there, and enjoying an iMac so much that you make fun of other people's computers, as if they cared, and you weren't just a dick.
Obviously, you probably haven't heard of this guy. He was the go-to guy in New York, probably the entire world, when it came to typewriters. Fixing them, building them, finding them--he pretty much did it all, and he did it better then anybody else. He died at 94 a little over two weeks ago, and the Economist gave him one hell of an obituary--which is somewhat unusual, knowing that the majority of the Economist's writers are a too young to have actually used a typewriter out of anything other then purely nostalgic choice. But somebody over there knew and loved this guy. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
-Next week in Economist Versus Idiot, it's another badly put together cover invented at the last possible second, the statement "Thabo Mbeki was a rotten president" and another goddamn movie review that I'll probably hate.
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