Ghost in the Machine
Culture
The Pleasures of the Void.
To kick off his new Slate column “Anything Once,” friend Seth Stevenson finds himself reveling in the sensation of sensory deprivation. “I emerged in a profound daze. I spoke slowly and quietly, like a smooth-jazz DJ, to the person at the spa desk who inquired how my session had gone. I felt more rested than if I’d slept for 16 hours on a pile of tranquilized chinchillas. Outside, colors were saturated; sounds were vivid. I had to try this again, as soon as possible.”
That’s Exactly What They Want You to Think.
PPP polls America’s taste for various conspiracy theories. “37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax, 51% do not. Republicans say global warming is a hoax by a 58-25 margin, Democrats disagree 11-77, and Independents are more split at 41-51. 61% of Romney voters believe global warming is a hoax…20% of voters believe there is a link between childhood vaccines and autism, 51% do not.” Sigh. Don’t blame me, I voted for Lizard People.
The Shawshank Bowl.
Our culture veers even closer to self-parody upon the news that Florida Atlantic University will name its stadium after a private prison conglomerate. “GEO Group reported revenues in excess of $1.6 billion in 2011, income generated mostly from state and federal prisons and detention centers for illegal immigrants.”
What the?! Honestly, how shameful is it that we ostensible lovers of freedom — mainly on account of our ridiculous incarceration rates (for anything other than white-collar crimes) — not only have a private, for-profit prison industry flourishing in our country — one that routinely maintains substandard prisons and undercuts workers’ wages by outsourcing their captive labor force — but that we’re sufficiently unembarrassed about it to start naming stadiums after them? Pathetic.
Update: FAU students make their displeasure known.
Whither Happiness? (At Wal-Mart).
Happiness where are you? I’ve searched so long for you. A statistical analysis of states’ relative happiness, as determined by tweets. (Red states above are happy, blue states are not.) David Simon is 2-for-2: Next to the mouth of the Mississippi, the Maryland-Delaware area is apparently the saddest in the nation. Perhaps due to proximity to Washington DC? Definitely maybe.
In probably related news, a different map of the United States shows the most popular places cited in Craigslist’s Missed Connections. “The most popular place to spot potential love in Texas, New Mexico, Missouri, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Florida? Wal-Mart.”
Of course, this begs the question: Do people actually ever meet up on Missed Connections? Every time I’ve perused them, that section is overwhelmingly the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, just damaged, lovelorn people sending out messages in a bottle to lost exes who are actively ignoring them.
Bicycle! Bicycle!
“The popularity of the program is due to the attractiveness of the sturdy red bikes–every distinctive Capital Bikeshare vehicle on the street is a rolling advertisement for the program–and its incredible convenience. The system is very easy to use, and riders may pick up a bike at any station and drop it off at any station, perfect for short, one-way trips. The first 30 minutes of each trip are free, making a year’s membership a bargain for $75 if one uses the bikes for in-city commuting and errands.“
Bicycle sharing is coming your way, so forget all your duties, oh yeah… From Kevin Spacey to Fratty McFrattersons, Kaid Benfield briefly surveys the rise of DC’s Capital Bikeshare in The Atlantic. “‘Capital Bikeshare’s success right out of the gate has far exceeded our expectations,’ said program director Terry Bellamy.” (LivingSocial helped.)
I joined in March after my crappy Target bike was stolen, and, while it definitely has logjams at the morning and afternoon rush hours (hopefully soon alleviated by 25 more stations), it mostly works out for my daily commute. Now if only they could get users to wear helmets.
Mr. Smith Moved to Washington.
“America is a nation of Smiths, Johnsons, and Sullivans — but also of Garcias and Nguyens. Zoom in on the map below to see what surnames proliferate in your part of the country.” By way of a friend, National Geographic breaks down America by surname. Good to see the Murphys holding it down in Massachusetts.
Slainte 2010.
A very happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and yours.
The Kingdom.
“The guy is sculpting the toddler id while also designing a domed metropolis with a monorail. How did this happen? A man who got famous drawing a cartoon mouse was now going to solve all America’s urban problems?” Old friend Seth Stevenson spends a week in the realm of Disney, and lives to tell the tale. “After spending the past five days here, I’ve come to the conclusion that Disney World teaches kids three things: 1) a meaningless, bubble-headed utopianism, 2) a grasping, whining consumerism, and 3) a preference for soulless facsimiles of culture and architecture instead of for the real thing. I suppose it also teaches them that monorails are cool. So there’s that.”
Breathing is for Closers.
We’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re waterboarded. Uh…As part of a “team-building exercise,” a Provo-based motivational speaker apparently held a waterboarding “in front of his sales team to demonstrate that they should work as hard on sales as the employee had worked to breathe.” We just took a big step closer to Brazil. (Via TPM.)
When your heart grows cold.
“The weather is appalling, the Christmas credit card bills are landing on the doorstep…and you’ve already broken your New Year’s resolutions. But don’t worry, if you can just get through today, things will start to look up.” Once again, some depression experts hypothesize, it’s Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Well, as with last time, I can think of worse, just around the corner…
The Last Jump is the Hardest.
“‘They started out watching me bust my ass, and I became part of their lives,’ Knievel said. ‘People wanted to associate with a winner, not a loser. They wanted to associate with someone who kept trying to be a winner.” Robert “Evel” Knievel, 1938-2007.
It’s the thought that counts.
This site’s been languishing in the bookmarks for a good while now, but that doesn’t make it any less hilarious. By way of mkh at Hidden City, Someecards.com, for “when you care enough to hit send.” It’s got exemplary Onion-like ecards for almost any occasion, and many, many ways to express the inexpressible. Hallmark, you are in a world of pain.
Salon of the Cave Bear.
“The implication of these careful cultural signifiers: The caveman has grasped not just literacy and reason but also the affectations of the modern hipster aesthete. (That knowingly antiquated racket might easily have been stolen from a Wes Anderson set.)” Old friend Seth Stevenson ruminates on the proposed Geico caveman TV show for Slate.
If you’re feeling sinister.
By way of Dangerous Meta, a new NBER working paper finds that left-handed men make 13-21% more than their right-handed counterparts (although the same doesn’t apply for women.) “The study is the latest to suggest there’s something special about lefties. Other researchers have found that left-handers are overrepresented on university faculties, as well as among gifted students, artists and musicians.” Update: Slate‘s Joel Waldfogel considers the results.
Ashes to Asteroids, Dust to Dusk.
“It broadens the market, which is important to us because our whole business plan is about getting more people access to space…Space needs to be affordable for all in some way.” For a small fee, a number of fledgling private space companies will soon send your remains (or personal mementos) into the cosmos, including Space Services, Inc., Beyond-Earth Enterprises, and ZeroG Aerospace. Families paid $995 to $5,300 to have their loved ones’ ashes aboard SS, Inc’s maiden flight next month, which sounds eminently reasonable to me given the usual financial costs of bereavement.
Captain Emo.
“Money is a funny thing with hipsters. They exist in a state of perpetual luxuriant slumming. They drink blue-collar beers but hold white-collar jobs. Or vice versa.” As seen on Slate, two choice essays on the Wes Anderson aesthetic and the cultural baggage of contemporary hipsterism (the former by a college friend of mine, Christian Lorentzen of N+1.) They said that irony was the shackles of youth.
Like Cats and Dogs.
Via Webgoddess, catpeople and dogpeople are going claw-to-paw over at AskMeFi. You can probably guess where I fall on this spectrum.
Father to the Man.
A very happy Father’s Day to you and yours.
Yum-Yum, Boo-Hoo.
Crying while Eating. So much food, so many reasons… (including winning this hit-counting contest, which is why the site was created.)
Mothers Talk.
A very happy Mother’s Day to you and yours.
I Took Your Name.
By way of Pickle in the City, the Baby Name Wizard is a fun tool that helps you trace the popularity of a given name over the course of the twentieth century. (For what it’s worth, Kevin topped out in the ’60s.)
A Day to Forget.
Be careful out there, y’all: A British psychologist has run the numbers and deemed that today, Jan. 24, is the most depressing day of the year. Hmmm. It’s early yet, but I can think of worse. Perhaps someone should acquaint the good professor with last November’s election, or, for that matter, Valentine’s Day.
Kinsey on Lincoln.
Schindler, Rob Roy, Darkman, Qui-Gon, Kinsey…why not Honest Abe? Liam Neeson is apparently in talks to play Lincoln in a Spielberg-directed biopic, to be based on Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s forthcoming book, The Uniter. Ok, that’s not bad…but hopefully this project turns out better than Amistad.
Also in loosely related Lincoln-by-way-of-Kinsey news, Salon‘s Andrew O’Hehir casts a troubled eye at C.A. Tripp’s Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. As he ably points out (as does George Chauncey in the excellent Gay New York), “the difficulty with assessing Lincoln’s private life (or that of anyone else who lived before the 20th century) is that the nature of private life has changed dramatically from his time to ours, and the distance between us distorts the view…Whether [Lincoln and Joshua Speed's, with whom Lincoln shared a bed] relationship had a sexual component or not, it belongs to a vanished world of intimate male friendships of a kind almost unrecognizable to us.” In other words, sexual orientation is an historically dynamic idea. Homosociality does not necessarily imply homosexuality, and one cannot simply read 19th century sources and infer a 20th century mindset. You have to delve a little deeper. Update: Columbia’s David Greenberg also weighs in for Slate.
Frenchfries 9/11.
Along the same lines, Slate‘s Seth Stevenson scrutinizes the return of the (Burger) King.
Terminator J.
He’s big, He’s mean, He’s pissed…He’s the Son of God? The NY Times examines the rise of “Angry Jesus” among conservative evangelicals and other Christian groups feeling swamped amid a rising tide of secularism (Never mind that Mel’s paean to gory Christian martyrdom is the highest grossing film of 2004, and that the White House of the most powerful nation on Earth is currently manned by a born-again biblethumper.) C’mon y’all…to use the parlance of the movement, WWJD? Somehow, I’d think He’d err on the side of love and forgiveness, not run around like the Rock wreaking havoc on sinners and unrepentants. But perhaps I’m just old-fashioned.
Gnome Run.
Slate‘s Seth Stevenson weighs in on Travelocity and pilfered gnomes.
Fighting Fire with Fire.
Along the lines of Esquire’s Indefensible Proposition column, Slate questions firefighters’ place in the pantheon. Hey, they said it.
Super Sized.
Dahlia Lithwick examines the legal strategies soon to be employed against “Big Food”. Sounds like these cases’ll be tough to make, but they still might encourage Mickey D’s to back away from McGriddle and the like.
War Games.
“He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade — and then they both should burn it.” A GMU grad student finds his infrastructure research may be groundbreaking…and dangerous.
Peach?
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing finally unveils the long-awaited new twenty. If you had given me twenty guesses as to the new color, I don’t think I could have come up with “subtle shades of peach and blue.”
The Lost Twenty.
The Bureau of Engraving and Printing finally set a new date for the unveiling of the long-awaited new non-green twenty: May 13.
Green Party.
Hmm…apparently the new non-green twenty dollar bill mentioned in this post was supposed to be officially unveiled last week, but I can’t find any news about it, at the Bureau of Engraving or elsewhere. Couldn’t they at least tell us the color? (How about a nice, soothing, all-American blue?)
Tabhair póg dom, is Éireannach mé.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you and yours. Sadly, I don’t have any real plans for the occasion this year, but I’m sure I’ll find a pint of Guinness somewhere. Til then, may you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a road downhill all the way to home.
From sweatshops to dogfights.
Nike receives some bad press for paying homage to dogfighting in its new basketball ad (“The Battle: Speed,” available here once you get past the flash.) My reaction was much the same as the guy from Slate: I generally liked the ad and liked the music (even if I thought Gary Payton would kill Steve Nash in 1-on-1), right up until the shot of the pit bulls going at it at the end. Since my own dog was mauled by a pit bull owned by some dumb-ass kids aspiring to this side of street life (4/15), I also found that shot to be in very, very poor taste. I would say I’d boycott Nike for it, but I pretty much already do – I generally buy Sambas or Pumas for my daily gear, and the And-One Sprewells for my basketball kicks. (In fact, I used to have a pair of the Nike GP’s, and they fell apart on me.) At any rate, a bad call by the boys in Beaverton.
Learning is Fundamental.
Sent to me via one of my students (we discussed the Scopes trial last week), this NYT editorial has some perhaps-surprising poll numbers about Americans and evolution. Apparently, 48% of Americans – including our crusading President – believe in creationism (although I would like to see how the question is worded.) Reminds me of middle school back in the day, when I was one of three students in my 30-person history class that believed in evolution. Yes, Virginia, things are different outside of BosWash.
New Money Blues (and Reds?)
Only 5 years after introducing the Bighead Jackson, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing will introduce a new $20 bill in three weeks. And, though the word is mum at the moment, apparently the bill in question will not be green! That’s quite a change after two centuries of greenbacks…we’ll have to create all new metaphors for money. Hmmm…I wonder if the new bill will also get rid of this tasteless 9-11 folding trick.
Is this a test, sir?
Ok, that’s enough love…now it’s time for hate. Celebrities ponder, Who could you take in a fight? (Seen all over the place, but I caught it first at Webgoddess, Lots of Co., and All About George, none of whom I feel like tussling with.) Whether it be due to Gaelic disposition, number of siblings, or a decade on the school bus, I’ll generally take all comers, be they right-wingers, warbloggers, or whomever made the terrible decision that [Daredevil SPOILERS] a wounded Ben Affleck could beat up Michael Clarke Duncan in three minutes of screen time. (He’s the Kingpin, for Pete’s sake. Fisk should’ve thrown him out the window immediately. Yet another problem in a disappointing film.) At any rate, if you want to throw down, leave a message here and we can meet behind the Piggly-Wiggly after school.
Pinterested
Visions
The Great Gatsby (7.5/10)
Currently Reading
Hidden Cities, Moses Gates
Omsbudsdog.
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