Special Early Economist Update: Yes, they picked Barack Obama as their candidate. And while, yes, a lot of various news publications have picked their candidates, this one actually means something because, hey: the Economist is better then those magazines. Or worse. Hey, it all depends.
The World Last Week
-The Republican Party was revealed to have spent $150,000 on Sarah Palin's clothing, but that was after a trip to Neiman Marcus. Not really surprising that it costs that much, anyone who tells you different: never been to Neiman Marcus. Not very smart, though. That's pretty clear.
-People might not like their 401Ks, but they love their iPhones--the high selling consumer electronic product that nobody is irritated by, really, no one on Earth except pedophiles, gave Apple a 26% net profit over last years comparable quarter.
-ING had to get $13 billion from the Dutch government after initially thinking they were going to ride this bad boy without help. Ain't no one getting away clean.
-Well, scratch that. Exelon is looking to create the largest power company in the US by going after NRG Energy, the company that runs the grid down in SoCal, Texas and portions of the north-east.
-Samsung decided against buying SanDisk, probably sometime pretty quick after they looked at the stock market and figured that nobody wants to store digital pictures of being fired.
-Almost $500 billion has been withdrawn from usually safe money-market mutual funds, so the Federal Reserve is going to pump in $540 billion to support them. You know, if you're keeping a flow-chart of all of these type of things, you're probably on your way to a brain embolism.
-86 people are now on trial in Turkey--the group includes former army officers and are charged with attempts to force a military coup.
-Egypt has helped set up a November 9th meeting for Fatah and Hamas to meet up and talk about not trying to kill each other.
-India sent a rocket to the moon, but they didn't put any people in it, which is probably why you're finding out about it now as opposed to the day it happened. Because nobody cares unless there's possibility of "dude on moon" action.
-Evo Morales was able to get Bolivia's Congress to pass his new constitution, but was forced to accept a restriction allowing him only one more term.
Leaders
-The cover and this leader article: how will the world's emerging economies be impacted by the financial crisis? In a way, this op-ed is less a cohesive argument for anything then it is a pretty extensive table of contents for the issue itself. The idea that I'm going to summarize what is pretty much a summary already seems a bit more navel-gazing then I might care to acknowledge, but here it is: Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, Argentina, China, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey & South Africa--all of them are having to perform some kind of economic voodoo to make their way through the crisis (I think it's time for a clever name, as aren't we tired of "financial crisis" at this point?) and it's possible that, when things become more stable, the emerging economies will have longer recovery times. If you want to know more, you can start here--but most of these countries have their own specific articles, so yeah: lots and lots of information.
-Look, you don't get a lot of opportunities to read an Economist article that includes the line "What a bunch of amateurs." Don't pass up on this one, a nice little education in the history of French failures to successively navigate the waters of commerce after taking over businesses. Besides being an interesting detour into what can, and is likely to, happen when a bunch of politicians think they can run a bank better then a banker, it's just old fashioned sarcasm from one of the magazine's funnier writers.
-Although it is in Iraq's best interest, as well as America's, to come up with a solid agreement on how long troops will stay on the ground in the country, it's also important to Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, not to seem to be catering too much to US interests--both in hopes of showcasing strength in case old Iranian tensions flare up after they leave (which they have some likelihood of doing) and also so the cottage democracy attempting to lead a war-torn country rife with an internal political conflict only slightly less dangerous then the bloodier version can earn the respect of its citizens, many of whom may still be wondering how much better off they are now then--well, you know. Before.
-Sometimes your dearly foolish contributor doesn't provide a summarized link to articles out of some badly rationalized fantasy that they aren't "important" when the truth is that he just can't really wrap his head around them. Case in point, this one about Chinese land reform, which the government claims will double (in 12 years) the disposable income of 750 million Chinese citizens--and not the city living kind. The Economist had mentioned that this story was on the way, and I didn't really comprehend it then, and I'm still having trouble now, but it's definitely a big deal. Let's get back to bankruptcy and bloodshed though, because that--now that, I can totally understand. Sort of.
Letters
-Well, they doubled the printed amount of letters this week, but even with a surfeit of choice, I am left wanting. How is it that a blathering Francophile obsessed with proper capitalization, an arrogant assistant professor of political science from Florida, and a man obsessed with the adverb "mildly" could so disappoint me in my search for cocky irritation? Am I mellowing with age, like a fine wine? Or this stolen prescription of expired medication having some kind of effect that I've yet to understand?
United States
-You'd think that the Economist would jump on the opportunity to quote Daft Punk for this articles subtitle regarding Barack Obama's volunteer operations, but they end up using "smarter" instead of "stronger," keeping them, once again, in the lame box. For those of you who have yet to read an article about how much better Obama has been at running a campaign, then let me be the first to welcome you to the world of the news, because you've clearly never, not once, had any experience with it. Enjoy your first time learning about how money, intelligence, and a vaguely draconian style of "message" control can help you win an election, especially when your opponent has decided to pick a vice-presidential candidate that terrifies a decent portion of their own parties constituents.
-The Economist points out that Barack Obama's campaign manager once said "We don't pay attention to national polls" back when the polls where pointing in John McCain's favor, but I don't think it's that controversial--after all, does anybody ever respond to a negative poll by saying "Yeah, we saw that on CNBC too, so we just kind of gave up. What's the point of trying, really?" Other then that little adventure in "remember this statement" journalism, this is another one of those short pieces about how polls aren't really that useful, except when they are, but even then not so much. You know, for all the talk from journalists about what a big deal an American presidential election is, it sure seems like they have it pretty easy: a good 60% of these sorts of articles are the same, from week to week, and many could even be interchangeable with the ones from the last election.
-The Economist zeros in on Georgia's Saxby Chambliss, a Republican senator, to deal with the overall story of the multiple southern Republicans in heated electoral battles. Months ago, Republican senators in places like North Carolina and Georgia were in little danger of being replaced. Now, with the steamrolling success of the Obama political machine (and a miserably unpopular bank bail-out that the South may be blaming Republicans for), everyone is having to fight for their job again. While there's little suspense up here in the boroughs of how the New York vote will turn out, things are starting to look a little dynamic in a part of the US that had once turned completely red.
-Utah and their Mormons continue to do financially well despite being surrounded by states that aren't, in the borders of a country that's freaking out, smack dab on a globe that's in the midst of recession fears. Apparently, it's because they all had their babies really young, stick to wherever they grew up, have a healthy housing market, and have turned into the go-to spot for corporate relocation. The Economist ends the article by mentioning that Mormons "do not come to work nursing hangovers," which is sort of odd--is that really a big factor in the unemployment rate in California? Whatever: here's your Utah.
-More and more conservatives are joining the Obama camp, and Lexington wants to know if this is a seismic shift, similar to the one in 1980 when "liberal intellectuals abandoned a spineless Democratic Party," or if it's just a one-time thing, predicated on a distaste for McCain's handling of his run for office. Obviously, it's a question that will have to wait until the president is elected, and everybody gets a chance to see how said-president does in office. On a side-note, the article includes what I find to be one of the most adorable editorial cartoons of recent memory, and I mean that with no sarcasm. It's really cute.
The Americas
-Back in 1994, Argentina's conservative president set up a private pension system to help out workers who were watching inflation and a greedy, fund-raiding government dismantle the countries state-run pension systems. Nine years later, 84% of the workers were utilizing the private systems, a testament to what had become one of the few reliable financial institutions in Argentina. And now, in 2008? President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner wants to permanently nationalize the pension funds, and she claims it's because she worries that the private system, which is run by managers like HSBC and Spain's BBVA, will suffer the same adverse financial impact that the rest of the world's pension funds are facing. The Economist, never a fan of de Kirchner, thinks that is a complete lie, and that the real reason for the nationalization is so that an insanely broke government plans to raid the funds of their own citizens while mouthing protectionist sentiment. If it were just an opinion, that would be one thing--but it's Christina, and neither she nor her idiotic husband (the former president) should be trusted with a bag of rusty corkscrews, much less the future and savings of the citizens of Argentina.
-Brazil may finally get rid of some old laws from 1967 regarding who is permitted to practice the art of journalism, which is kind of an odd little turtle-head of a story...doesn't that imply that there's a bunch of people that want to be journalists? And do any of these people, these people desperate to be journalists, read the newspaper? You know, that thing that keeps firing all it's employees and forcing the rest to riff mindlessly off whatever quotes they yank off Reuters?
-It's always nice (in a cruel way) when a story about Canada comes along that reminds you that Canada isn't a Candyland of magic and universal health care: for example, this one. One of Canada's successful forms of export is the international sale of chrysotile, otherwise known as white asbestos. Although the United Nations has pushed for a law to be passed so that chrysotile can rightly be placed on the list of hazardous substances that requires "prior informed consent" before it's exported, Canada is attempting to stop the bill from including the substance. There's really no controversy here, unless you work in the industry: chrysotile is straight up poisonous, even Canada's own Medical Association agrees, and the idea that a country is standing around fighting, not to sell it, but to even acknowledge that what they're selling is poisonous--this is old school "fucking disgusting." Of course, Canada is hawking the stuff to poor countries, so it's no surprise that they are currently the loudest voice being heard.
Asia
-Remember when the iPhone came out, and there were all those people who waited in line and paid full price, only for Apple to drop the price just a few months later? And then all those people got all bitchy, and Apple gave them coupons and stuff to shut them up? Remember how you thought that was kind of pointless, because the kind of person who would wait in line for a phone is also the kind of Apple customer who thinks that Steve Jobs would be willing to hang out with them and play Jenga if he wasn't so busy, and that despite all their bitching they'd probably be just as willing to stand in line all over again if Apple told them that they might get an aluminum keyboard? Yeah, well that's what happened in the Chinese housing market, except that instead of coupons, some real estate developers actually gave back money to the early adopters. The rest are just waiting for the city officials (which means Communist party) to tell the citizens to shut the hell up.
-And here's another follow-up on how badly China handled the poison milk scandal, this time focusing on the nasty laws that prevented journalists from doing their job and reporting on it, despite some having knowledge that there was something awry. While now would probably be the time to make some cocky, Western based comment on how "journalists have an obligation to report the truth," it would behoove (me) to remember that this ain't The Insider, and the Chinese Communist Party wouldn't have handled rule-breaking the the way Gina Gershon's character did.
-If the only thing you've read about Pakistan lately is how America keeps screwing up and killing it's citizens, then here's what greets the rest of the country: inflation is almost 30%, the fiscal deficit is now 10% of the gross domestic product, and attempts to get help from Saudi Arabia, China and America failed miserably. Now it's up to the IMF to bail them out, and the last time Pakistan went to the IMF, the countries economy was near-destroyed in an attempt to avoid hitting IMF default status. The world: it looks a lot worse when you read a lot more. Alternatively, the front page of local Hawaiian newspapers carried a biography on the creator of Thundercats the day the war in Iraq started. So it's relatively easy to control your mood.
-Kashmir's has only one year-round source of water, the Kolahoi glacier, but how much longer they'll have it is now up to--well, no one, really. It's melting. Frighteningly, the glacier is assumed (due to a lack of extensive scientific research) to be the only reason the Kashmir valley is livable--besides providing an environment capable of growing rice, wheat and corn, the loss of the glaciers water could force millions to leave the area. Oh, and it's also Kashmir, which means that dealing with an environmental concern--no matter how important this one is--has to take a back seat to the non-stop fighting that the area is so famous for.
Middle East and Africa
-Another week without a Zimbabwe update, which is odd.
-The Saudi kingdom are officially going after groups like al-Qaeda, and they're actually doing an effective job of it. There's been no big terrorist attack in the kingdom since the '06 attempt by al-Qaeda to take an oil-processing facility, and the number of Saudi's willing to join the jihad in Iraq, Afganisthan and Lebanon have dropped tremendously. In another interesting turn of events, three of the most popular radical websites were shut down for a massive amount of time, and may actually have been shuttered permanently. The websites, many of which serve as chat and recruitment forums for al-Qaeda members, so while there's probably some kind of "hey, that's free speech" argument to be made, it is, after all, Saudi Arabia, and maybe the gift horse should last a couple of months before you start massaging it's gums.
-Nigeria's president has pretty much failed to do much of anything other then possibly get really sick, and the country has taken to calling him "Baba Go-Slow," instead of his previous title, the affectionate "silent achiever." Clever nicknames and sarcasm are the only real weapon that's been unleashed on the guy for not living up to his multiple campaign initiatives, one of which has gone so badly (that being restoring peace to the Delta) that Nigeria may no longer be Africa's leading oil producer, but unless his health takes a big turn for the better, it seems it will take more then broken promises for things to change.
Europe
-In what used to be East Germany, many schoolchildren have little idea of what, exactly, their former leaders did or didn't do. (For example, they think the Stasi was "just an intelligence service.") Although there's a bit of "man, that's some shitty education" going on in this article, I can't help but throw in my own personal interpretation, which is that I'm not really comfortable with the idea that it should be up to a British newspaper to talk shit about how German schoolteachers do their job, especially after last weeks issue made the overall point that the German school system has massive problems related to the financial system that controls it--of course there are going to be specific stories like this one. It just seems a bit unfair to write this as if it's these problems are occurring in a vacuum.
-Nicholas Sarkozy's recent attempts to turn his presidency of the European Union both into a seat of power while also a seat of French public relations hit one of their funnier moments recently, when he asked Geroge Bush to host a summit of the G8 countries to discuss the rebuilding (or, as Sarkozy put it, the "refounding") of capitalism. Just to get some extra points with--well, the rest of the European world as well as people who live on Mars--he recommended doing it in America, "because the crisis took off in New York." Which is sort of like saying "hey, we should get the gang together to talk about all this crazy AIDS stuff. You should host it though, because it was your dad that fucked all those chimpanzees."
-A judge in Spain has indicted Francisco Franco and 34 former generals and ministers of war crimes. Yes, all those people are dead. The judge, Baltasar Garzon, was the same guy who had Augusto Pinochet arrested back in 1998, so he's got a history of going after former dirty boys--and while there's some truth to this being a bit of a "huh" story, Garzon may be able to help find and jail former human-rights abusers still active in places like Argentina. Still kind of weird though.
Britain
-Okay, so here's your big British political scandal, and yes, it's Bagehot, so hey: party time on the big boat. A boat that was in Corfu back in August. I imagine this story--one that involves George Osborne leaking a conversation he had with the recently recalled Peter Mandelson--is a big one for the UK, but the timing of it is sort of bananas. I hate to be that guy, but you know what? Britain has a lot bigger fish to fry right now, and they should try and nip this shit in the bud on the asap tip.
-Britain has had to be content with merely providing the birthplace of famous writers, as the literary archives of individuals like Salman Rushdie and Tom Stoppard have ended up being purchased by the rich wallets of American universities in recent years. Luckily for them, playwright Alan Bennett decided to give up his entire literary estate for free, saying that he was "lucky" to have benefitted from the British "nanny state, as it is disparagingly called."
-How will Britain's disingreting economy treat the college graduates of 2009? Not well, but beyond that "you don't need an article to know that," there's some interesting stuff here; mainly that the teaching profession, especially the math and physics category, may end up catching some of those qualified graduates that it spent the last ten years losing to the banking and finance sector. Considering that Britain has struggled in recent years to fill the education seats in these fields, the financial crisis may end up helping out--sure, HBOS ain't hiring. Oxford, however, totally is.
International
-By the end of the century, around 50% to 90% of the 6,900 languages spoken in the world could have gone extinct. Okay, so there's an accurate summary of this article, and there's an accurate depiction of why it's sort of a pointless article. First up: 50 to 90. Any theory that comes up with something that's as widely divergent as that? It's a theory to put in the cooler until it's figured out a little better. Second: the use of the words "could be extinct." Well, you "could" get a hand-job from Osama bin-Laden. You "could" not get addicted to crack cocaine if you only smoke it on the weekends. Green Lantern "could" be a movie that doesn't make you feel like you've wasted your life by having watched it when you're past the age of 14. And thirdly: the end of the century? Well, that's a long time in which to buy some people some Berlitz books and learn how to put things in priority, like what you're going to do about that serial killer who "could" be waiting to catch your boyfriend on his way to pottery class.
-Huh, I don't pay much attention to papal politics, as I wasn't raised around a lot of Catholics, but if I did pay attention, I'd probably have more to offer on this short piece about the current attempts by a few Catholics to beatify Pope Pius XII, who happened to be in charge of all God-related matters during that period of time when Adolf Hitler was sort of proving that God didn't really give a shit at all about what human beings were doing to each other.
-Ha, here you go. The "axis of diesel." Haven't heard that before, it's good, right? Russia, Iran and Venezuela have done pretty well for themselves in recent years, due to the skyrocketing price of oil--but as the price drops, they may not continue. Once again, here's an International article that actually needs to be here, as it does a fine job of painting the three countries for what they really are--not the Evil Empire, but three countries playing the game while relying on the schizophrenic price of oil. Good times, these. (Not really.)
Business
-And yes, I think I will steal that not-very-funny joke, thank you. Here's your old man breakdown!
Kirk Kerkorian, 91 year old billionaire, 41st richest person in the world, lost about $12 billion when MGM Mirage experienced an unusual bottoming out, and he'll be following that with his next trick: losing about $700 million trying to unload his stake in Ford.
Hank Greenberg, 83 year old goose of a rich dude, lost huge amounts of cash when it turned out that neither AIG nor Lehman Brothers were good places to have a stake at all, much less big ones.
Sumner Redstone, another 80-something billionaire watched as both CBS and Viacom hit historic lows and then was forced to burn off $233 million in both to maintain loan covenants. (Covenants?)
Oh, but Paul Volcker? Yeah, he may be your next Treasury secretary. So it's not all bad, for old white rich guys. Keep 'em smiling!
-One of the causalities of Iceland's almost completely collapsed economy may end up being the incredibly successful drug companies contained within their borders. Despite having built up advanced gene-sequencing techniques and the country itself serving as an excellent location for the study of genetic connections to disease, few of the firms are able to find financing in the face of failing banks. While these companies will probably end up being supplemented somehow, by somebody, it looks less and less likely that it will be a financier with a name like Thor Olafsdotter, and more likely instead that companies like DeCode and Actavis may end up finding new homes.
-Although the Guardian once cried that "all hope is lost" when Stavros Dimas was appointed to be the EU's environment commissioner in 2004, Dimas has proven himself to be far more talented at the job then anyone expected, even winning praise from the impossible-to-please Greenpeace. Now, he's stuck between some hard-won policies--legislation on fining carmakers whose vehicles fail to meet emissions targets and an actual legally bind to maintain a cut in Europe's overall carbon emissions--and an economically wracked Europe whose main concerns no longer include the environmental variety.
-So there isn't a "bankruptcy breakdown," but here's the status of some retailers in America. Wal-Mart? Totally doing fine, thank you very much. Sears and Whole Foods? Oh, their share prices are in the toilet, but that's nice of you to ask. Best Buy? Hey, she's still changing in here, come back when Circuit City goes bust, and then you can zip up her dress. The big problem is that consumers--and this cracks me up--are actually thinking before they make a purchase, which is kind of brilliant. Because that means that a lot of retailers are wholly dependent on a large consumer base that just shows up, opens their wallet, and says "Gimme whatcha got. Don't care what it is, but I need at least two of them." Look, I think we all knew that. But the fact that retailers are openly saying it--god, that's pretty great.
-Burger King is going full-tilt for China, hoping to grab some of the profits that have been shared amongst McDonald's, KFC and Pizza Hut whenever Chinese citizens get tired of eating their own, much better, food and are tempted to eat--you know. Shit. Oh--and Burger King will be calling the Whopper by the much better name "Emperor Burger."
Finance and Economics
-Buttonwood sells it well, after a few weeks where I was starting to wonder if it was time to start filing his columns back on the doldrums of the Economist web-only edition, which is where his or her writings used to live. But the old cat has done well--for those who are unaware, the strong profits of 2003 and 2006 may have the adverse effect of rapidly shuttered companies when the markets downturn begins to branch beyond the stock and into the amount of capital available to the corporations that survived the 2001-02 period. It's impossible to simply put everything that's in here, and for those of you who have tried the taste of the 'wood before and found the column wanting, here's your chance to give it a go with the difficulty level set at normal. Tasty, informative stuff.
-The IMF is back, and they're giving tiny bits of money to people! Let's take a look at their crappy ass attempts to help out, and try to ignore the fact that they are pretty slow to react to something like a global finance crisis because the managing director was trying to come up with a nice severance package for his ex-girlfriend.
Iceland can have $1 billion! Gosh, that'll be really helpful. Everybody can have a flag, or maybe you'll fill up their tanks with gas so they can drive to the jobs they don't have anymore.
Pakistan can have $10 billion! Maybe! Over the course of two years! It's like God is smiling, right at me!
The Ukraine is likely to get $14 billion! Which they'll probably have to sneakily spend on guns and ammo, since Russia keeps looking at them funny!
-The thing about the financial crisis that makes it a bit different from Enron--well, there isn't really just one "thing" is there? It's a global financial crisis, based in the unusually massive success of emerging economies during the earlier parts of the decade, expensive wars, fluctuating energy markets, the forced embrace of fair-value accounting, a housing market made insane by both amoral bankers and idiotic homebuyers, and probably, oh, definitely some kind of illegal behavior on the part of Wall Streeters. Of course, you can't put any of that stuff on trial and make it a scapegoat--except for the illegal behavior thing. So that's what the Department of Justice is doing, and while that's obviously a great, important thing--lawbreakers should be punished, hey, punish away--the idea that some sleazy bankers can form the figurehead of a crisis that is rooted in far more then individuals is one that's more than a little infantile. Break them for what they've done--but the mob's desire to ignore it's own culpability? That's not the way it should work.
Science and Technology
-If your taste for technology news is that of the Orwellian variety, well, here's your cake. Eat it up. Cybernet Systems, a company that thought "let's name ourselves something that sounds vaguely similar to the evil computer from the Terminator film series" is hard at work--under the behest of the US Army Research Laboratory--to finish up a type of behavior recognition software that can be used in tandem with surveillance cameras at security checkpoints. Using various types of object- and motion-recognition software, the goal is to come up with a computer system that can "read" the human face, looking specifically for what's called--no bullshit--"micro-facial leakage." That delightful sounding term refers to the study of what are encompass "micro-expressions," of which the human face generates about 40--apparently, you can't hide these bad boys, but humans can't spot them. (Can dogs? I used to live with a dalmatian that always went crazy over this mild co-worker of a fellow roommate, a guy whose demeanor hid the fact that he was a serial crazy who believed that angels talked to him, audibly, about what color he should paint his bedroom. As the roommate put it "that dog can't see nothing behind them eyes.") Anyway, enough digression: if you like to be a paranoid agoraphobic, here's the article that will keep you on the Fresh Direct tit for another six months.
-Maybe there's water on the moon. If there is water on the moon, some scientists want to go live there. I find this story interesting mainly because I wasn't aware it was going to be that easy to convert moon water to the type of water you and I can use for drinking and people stuff. Wouldn't they need to do years of experiments to figure out if that's the case? Obviously, first steps, but really: why are we already talking about building a house now? I'm sure you can't just boil it into Evian.
-A group of medical researchers in Australia are at work on coming up with some form of evolutionary explanation how homosexuality could be a genetic trait, following recent studies that have shown that it medically seems to be. I don't doubt that this article will be controversial to some--not because of the "genetics prove homosexuality isn't a choice" thing, that's not really part of it--but because the Australians are entering the emotional minefield of labeling homosexuality with behavioral traits. At the same time that their various theories are somewhat offensive in their usage of stereotypes, this is certainly a field that merits some serious, sober examination. After all, if genetics can explain the existence of homosexuality, then there's a real intellectual question of how a trait that, at its core, rejects biological procreation, could have survived human evolutionary development. Still, this is early scientific theorizing, and as has been noted by this publication before, freaking out and getting offended by the early stages of scientific theory is for people who don't have a basic understanding of how the scientific process works. (Meaning wait until the paper is published, which will be in another couple of weeks. Then freak out and get offended.)
Books and Arts
-Hey, move over Kramer's Ergot 7! (For those who don't know what that means, Kramer's Ergot 7 is an anthology of comics that, when released, will cost a lot of money.) But you're ain't nobody's whipping boy no more--because Routledge has decided to publish a book called Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and Human Rights, a book that is 246 pages, a book that (according to this review) is "an important book, whose ideas deserve to be widely heard" and a book that will cost $140 dollars. Ha hahahha nobody is going to buy it never ha hah ahahah.
-It's the 50th anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe's damn fine book that, hopefully, is still getting shoved down middle schooler's throats. Shoved, seriously. Damn fine book, that one. To help celebrate, Achebe is translating the book into his native Ibo tongue for the first time.
-I remember when they put up that obituary of the talking parrot last year, and I've got the same feeling now, reading the kind review that's up about the relationship between the bird and it's owner, a scientist named Irene Pepperberg: I don't buy it. Maybe there's evidence for it, but yeah, I just don't buy that because a bird can say "What's your problem?' that the bird also knows what it means, or that it can comprehend your answer. (Which is probably along the lines of "You, not shutting up.")
-I occasionally mention these art show reviews that the Economist does just to prove to myself that I read them, but rarely do I actually get that excited by the shows that they describe--not because some of them aren't great, but mostly because I'm enough of a realist to know that neither I nor my wife have the time to go flying across the pond to look at masterworks, and that knowledge keeps the demons of lust at bay. (Also, fucking.) Thankfully, this is one of those "remarkable" pieces that I like to focus on, in the sense that the Economist is actually telling you that the show itself--one about the Byzantium world--is a lousy, unimpressive one. So if you're just interested in a droll wrist slap along the face of the Royal Academy, here you go, there it is, and oh well, tea will be served at three.
Obituary: Ted Briggs
-For those well versed in naval or World War II history, this obituary of the last survivor of the HMS Hood probably comes across as a melancholy bit of old news. For the rest of us, Ted Briggs was one of three men to survive what the Economist calls the "most demoralizing disaster for Britain in the second world war." Because although three made it home, 1,415 men died, and Briggs went to his grave convinced that Winston Churchill's pointless decision to put unstable rocket-launchers on the Hood, compounded with a vain choices by Briggs' commander-in-chief were what led to it. He spent the rest of his life writing and talking about what happened on May 23rd, 1941, and if you're the type who believes in that sort of thing, he's finally made it back amongst what were, for him, the greatest friends he'd ever known.
All art from the Economist, unless otherwise noted below:
That table of contents belongs to voyager arcade, pictures of daft punk will always belong to daft punk, although you probably have to credit anything old and weird to chip kidd and chris ware sugar smacks actually belong to kellogg's, you can find a million pictures of people waiting in lines for iphones this was from the terribly named mp3newswire, pat on the back machine came from this surgeon blog, i pretty much had zero problems with the lives of others, man corfu is pretty what kind of freak would want to talk politics there, ive never seen chicken little but i assume the meaning is clear, man non-american movie posters are so much better then american ones, that old picture of the buttonwood tree is in the public domain but you can read about why he calls himself that here at wikipedia unless you are john byrne, i will gladly steal images of that crappy sandra bullock movie for the chance to laugh in irwin winkler's face, and Kramers Ergot belongs to buenaventura you should buy it.
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