the Scott Stein

As reported on CNN.com, Denmark is the happiest place on Earth.

At the bottom came the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Burundi. The United States came in at 23rd, Britain was in 41st place, Germany 35th and France 62nd.

Readers might not like the claim that "[s]maller countries tend to be a little happier because there is a stronger sense of collectivism." Some collectivism, like a strong community or tradition, probably does give people a sense of belonging that translates to their happiness. Perhaps when that collectivism prevents the expression of individualism, or when the larger collectivism of the society or government interferes with the sense of belonging to a family or voluntary group, then happiness declines, at least for some people. The study doesn't say that collectivism equals happiness. Researcher Adrian White was

"surprised to see countries in Asia scoring so low, with China 82nd, Japan 90th, and India 125th. These are countries that are thought as having a strong sense of collective identity which other researchers have associated with well-being."

The study's definition of happiness has explanatory power:

"We're looking much more at whether you are satisfied with your life in general," White told Reuters. "Whether you are satisfied with your situation and environment."

Even in the best of times, I don't think the U.S. would place very high in a study with happiness so defined. In dynamic societies (i.e., capitalist societies, or somewhat capitalist societies), people are often not "satisfied with [their] situation and environment." They want to make more money, buy bigger homes, get better educations, and in general move up the economic ladder. Unfulfilled desires abound in a society where the fulfilling of those desires is at least possible.

In societies where such economic improvement is not possible, there might be more satisfaction--less envy of neighbors, less sense of having failed to be successful and rich, and so on. Happiness is tied up with our expectations. That's why at our ages, our grandparents weren't necessarily less happy than we are now, even though they generally had far fewer material comforts and opportunities. Our grandparents had no expectation of having a big house, so they weren't disappointed when they couldn't afford one.

I wonder how powerful this expectation factor is. Our ancestors (maybe going back a couple of generations before our grandparents) didn't expect all of their children to survive into adulthood. Does that mean that the loss of a child didn't reduce their happiness as much as it would reduce ours?

The expectation explanation certainly falls apart when the society is so poor that misery is the only option. Zimbabwe is a miserable place to be. Even though people have no possibility of improving their situations and therefore can't blame themselves, and even though there aren't rich neighbors to envy, and even though they can expect no better, they're still miserable.

I haven't read the study, just the CNN article, but it seems that the definition of happiness is key here. If there were a way of measuring the joy of achieving a goal, making a business succeed, being able to choose one's own profession, charting one's own course, writing late at night to perfect that novel you've been working on for a couple of years, pursuing dreams, it wouldn't register in this study. Because always striving to improve yourself is the same as never being satisfied or content, and is nearly the opposite of the study's definition of happiness.

We must destroy the Sun, or at least block it out.

My son had his four-year doctor visit today. He got his second MMR shot. I know there is some controversy over vaccinations--some people fear they can cause autism, and others object that because schools and camps require them, there isn't freedom of choice. The autism argument doesn't seem very strong. And on the freedom of choice count, I suppose there's some coercion involved, though it is debatable whether getting the measles is merely a matter of personal freedom. Unlike so many behaviors and conditions improperly categorized as "public health," like obesity, preventing an infectious disease that can kill or really harm other people is not simply a personal matter. Which is not to say the government doesn't ever overreach, or that parents should not have any choices, or that it can't be argued that most people would continue to get vaccinations even if they were not required to by any government school or law. In any case, if I send my child to school or camp, I expect that other kids won't be spreading the plague while he's there. This isn't an ideological issue for me--principles and philosophy are important, but as a parent I'm not trying to make a stand against or support government intrusion when I have my child vaccinated. I'm just trying to keep him from getting the measles.

Of more concern to some might be that at the exam, our pediatrician asked my son whether he wears a helmet when riding his bike and whether he sits in a car seat when riding in the car. The answer to the former is "yes," now that he's riding a taller bike and a fall could really cause harm. The answer was "no" (despite what the law or the nannies might say), when he was only riding a tricycle and his head was not even as high off the ground as it would be when he was walking or running. The answer to the latter is "of course." My son uses a seatbelt and appropriate car seat, not because of the laws of the government, but because of the laws of physics.

To the extent that our doctor was just doing his job--giving parents reminders about how to keep their children healthy and safe--I have no objection. However, though I am not as paranoid as some out there in the blogosphere, the potential for this sort of questioning to get out of hand--in the long run--is something those looking for slippery slopes might want to think about.

The full title, Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe, might be a bit misleading. Much of the book is focused on the history of astronomy. The latter part of the book does explain the Big Bang and defends it against detractors, so it isn't that the title is that far off. I was just expecting a sustained, book-length treatment of the Big Bang, which this isn't. Still, I suppose that the background provided by the rest of the book is needed to understand the Big Bang section. Even though I found a good deal of it to be ideas and facts I'd encountered before, I really enjoyed Singh's book. Maybe that's partly because I'd liked the astronomy course I'd taken in college and this book felt like a refresher. Also, Singh's style is engaging and the many stories about individual astronomers are fascinating. If you're looking for an astronomy refresher or are encountering the topic for the first time, and if you want to have a better understanding of the Big Bang theory, I recommend Simon Singh's book as a pleasurable and informative read.

Support this site by using the below link to buy Big Bang. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

We visited the Six Flags drive-through safari yesterday. Despite signs prohibiting it, people had their windows open and were holding out bread and pretzels for camels and giraffes. One giraffe had his entire head inside a car, eating from someone's hand. People were patting their heads and legs as you would with a large dog. This obviously happens every day at the safari, and the animals still seem to be alive, so maybe it isn't a big deal. It's such a widespread practice, the employees must be aware of it. And no one was stopping the people from doing it. People did follow the rules when their own safety was at issue. No one tried to feed the ostriches, who pecked at car windows, and no one--not even the enthusiastic giraffe-patters--was foolish enough to use food to lure animals to the car window in "Bear Country." The black bears roamed free, but the brown grizzlies were kept behind low wire fences.

We're all more fortunate than we often acknowledge.

Four years ago today my son was born. My wife started having contractions the morning before, July 24, and at 8:00 p.m. we went to the hospital. She wasn't "in enough pain," so they sent us home. By around 10:00 p.m. she was in lots more pain, so back we went. We walked the maternity wing hallways for a good part of the night, hoping gravity would convince this kid to come out. No luck. Hours and hours passed. Finally at 6:00 a.m. they gave my wife an epidural. Then we waited, had some meds to encourage dilation, waited some more. At around 3:00 p.m., the doctors finally concluded that my wife was not going to dilate, so they rushed her into the O.R. and performed a C-section. I had time to get into scrubs and play doctor. All went well, and at 3:44 we had a healthy baby boy.

Two days later, a cousin visiting us in the hospital, after hearing that my wife hadn't dilated and the baby had to be removed via surgery, innocently wondered aloud, "What did they do back in the old days, before modern medicine and technology?"

The answer was simple, if cold. One need only look at infant and mother mortality rates back in the good old days.

"They died," I said. "That's what they did."

Since I recently blogged about the problem of ridiculous reviews and book blurbs written by the professionals, it's a good time to mention that this is also a problem with the amateurs on amazon.com. See the book-blog's (Debra Hamel) take on bogus amazon reviews here and in her comments to this post here.

In the interest of full disclosure, when I self-published my first novel Lost, back in 2000, before everyone on the planet was publishing their own books, I was unable to get reviewed in Publishers Weekly and similar publications and feared that the book would never find any readers. At the time, I was running the online magazine When Falls the Coliseum, which had quite a few readers, and I sent an announcement to my subscribers "reminding" them that if they liked my novel, they could say so on amazon.com. So most of the reviews on amazon came from people who either knew me, or knew my magazine (a couple were from people I would clearly call friends). They weren't just random readers who happened to love the book--without a marketing budget, the book had no way to be discovered by random readers. Although friends of the author are certainly a biased review source, I think the reviews in this case reflected the reviewers' opinions and do give some sense of what the novel actually is (the reviews of Lost that later appeared in major publications aren't that far off from the ones on amazon). I recognize one of the amazon reviews as written by a former student. This review was not solicited--he reviewed the novel because he wanted to and without my prior knowledge, after he was no longer in my class and I had no power over him. (Anyway, if you are interested in Lost, I prefer that you get it here, not from amazon, but it's a mostly free country, so do what you want.)

With confessions and rationalizations out of the way, I agree with Debra Hamel that having friends review the author's book is deceptive, even though I don't think many authors have nefarious motives--most probably think their books are good, and that it is the publishing and review industry that is preventing readers from learning about them. Still, I would not send friends to amazon for any future books (and did not do so with my second book, When Falls the Coliseum). I'm not sure it's that much worse than the sort of thing that goes on with established authors writing blurbs for their friends' books and reviewing books written by authors who share their agents and so on. In some ways, the latter is worse, because when a review or blurb appears in a newspaper or is signed by a reputable author, readers might have more expectation of an honest, professional evaluation. But that's not to make excuses for the sort of thing that Hamel rightfully criticizes. And on this count I'm also guilty, since the blurbs on the back of Lost are from two writer-friends. Who else was I supposed to get blurbs from? Established authors who don't know you are not likely to write blurbs for a self-published book. I again think in this case that the blurbs accurately describe my first novel, and again are not that far off from the reviews written by strangers that eventually appeared in publications.

I don't think that all of the blurbs did much to generate sales (though the established author blurbs on the back cover did probably help convince bookstores to carry it and publications to review it). Sales of Lost really picked up only when I did bookstore signings or reviews appeared in major publications. I made relatively few sales through amazon. When my self-publishing effort was profiled in New York magazine and Lost was reviewed in the Philadelphia Inquirer and chosen as a daily pick by BookSense.com, copies started moving. What had been a self-published book that was easy to dismiss or ignore became a real book. Not that anything about the book itself had changed, of course. But it's amazing what recognition by a major publication can do for your credibility.

With my forthcoming novel Mean Martin Manning--my first that is not self-published--I also face review challenges.

One is that the book is published by a maverick independent press that by design avoids traditional bookstores and amazon.com (for reasons explained on the publisher's site), so getting major publications to review it will take effort. They all seem to prefer to review the same books by the same authors (and papers often just reprint reviews that appeared in other publications).

Two is that Mean Martin Manning isn't easy to place into a neat bookstore category and reviewers are probably not accustomed to reviewing anything as openly satirical--I don't know if reviewers approaching books looking for literary titles or thrillers will be ready to take Mean Martin Manning on its own terms.

Three is ideology. The new novel mocks a lot of things that some people take seriously. Some of these people write reviews. I have no idea whether this will come into play when it's review time.

Writers spend all of this pointless emotional energy hoping the book will be reviewed, because without a huge marketing campaign or an appearance on Oprah (my novel couldn't be less appropriate for Oprah), getting reviewed is one of the only ways to reach lots of readers. But getting the reviews then leads to the pointless spending of more energy hoping the reviews will be good. Anyway, when it comes to what readers care about, I'm comfortable that I've done my job. Is the book funny, original, entertaining, interesting, well-written, fresh, about something, all that? That's what really matters to readers. As a writer, that's what really matters to me, too.

At Frank Wilson's blog is a link to a June article by Ruth Franklin about the emptiness of over-the-top book blurbs and book reviews (read the first third of the article). Wilson is the book editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer. We're lucky to have a book editor in town with the good sense to link to an article like this, even though the paper doesn't publish as many original reviews as I'd like (or as many as he would like, I imagine).

Like many readers, I don't like being lied to by the inside-the-industry shills who take turns reviewing each other's books and share cocktails in Manhattan. I like even less that when someone reads something positive in a review of one of my books, they are apt to dismiss the praise, because according to the reviewers and blurb writers, every book out there is supposedly the funniest and most enlightening thing ever printed. To avoid disappointment, there is only one author's blurbs that you should take seriously--mine. In a 2001 review of my first novel, Lost, the Philadelphia Inquirer said:

There are a million laughs in the big city, as a sharp-eyed writer shows … Stein has a keen eye for the details of our cultural landscape … wonderfully comic … a page-turner … insightful tweaking of city living and modern times.

My new novel, Mean Martin Manning, due out near the end of the year, is far more aggressive, politically incorrect, irreverent, and scathingly satirical than my first novel, and certainly far, far more than most of what you'll find on the new release table at Barnes and Noble. We'll have to wait to see whether it receives excessive praise, faint praise, fiery condemnation (one can hope), or, worst of all, is ignored entirely and not reviewed. The press release announcing the signing of the book deal has been posted by my publisher. The release date of February 2007 is a conservative estimate. It might be in print before the end of the year.

Max Brod was Franz Kafka's lifelong friend and literary executor. Kafka only published a few of his works before he died, and had instructed Brod to destroy his remaining unpublished work. Brod famously disobeyed his friend, and eventually even Kafka's personal letters and diaries could be had in bookstores. Kafka went on to become one of the twentieth century's most influential authors. If you have read anything by Kafka, likely it was "The Metamorphosis" or "A Hunger Artist," his most frequently anthologized stories. "Letter to His Father" is also in some textbooks. Of his novels, The Trial is the one you might be familiar with.

Franz Kafka is Brod's biography of the famous author. Himself a successful writer, Brod's narrative includes analysis of Kafka's family life, religion, and writing. The biography gave me a sense of Kafka the person that is different from the one I had from the author's works. I'm not sure whether it's more or less accurate. Brod was such a central figure in Kafka's life, I would recommend his book to those who already have more than a casual interest in the author. The biography has value in that context, but I doubt it would be of much interest to readers in and of itself. Brod's style and references to and quotations from his own works (which I don't guess most people are interested in, despite one of the characters being based on Kafka) made for sometimes slow-going, though I definitely learned things I didn't know about Franz Kafka, and gained some insight into his work.

Max Brod's Franz Kafka will survive for as long as there is interest in Kafka. Although I am years past my K obsession that led me to write my master's thesis on him, I do recommend that readers check out the works by the author mentioned above, as starting points. When I get around to it, I will be writing Book Notes about Kafka's books.

Support this site by using the below link to buy Franz Kafka. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

I know all of the objections to the death penalty. I share some of them. It's a complicated issue. But if I could wave my magic wand and we all were granted certainty that we'd caught the right guy, could we agree that this monster doesn't need to be alive? At the least, can't we agree that whatever therapy he might undergo in the future, however much he might impress the psychologists, we don't ever let him out of prison? That is, if we're lucky enough to find him in the first place.

If I remember family lore correctly, my late, crazy great-grandmother was in the habit of falling on the sidewalk and then suing (she also stole soup spoons from restaurants in New York's Chinatown). One time, when I was a kid, she was walking on our block and fell in front of our house. She wanted to sue. My mother (her granddaughter) had to do some convincing to prevent my great-grandmother from siccing the lawyers on us. This case might have more merit, but I still can't imagine suing my family, especially my parents. Unless I was a Hollywood child star, and they were taking all of my money, or I was Drew Barrymore.

I'm guessing this isn't the first time a woman will give birth to her own grandchild. And I can't think of any reason it shouldn't be allowed. But it's still weird.

I thought carrots were good for your eyes.

My cousin, the very talented Ben Schwartz, has a new site: rejectedjokes.com. He has had his jokes accepted by Letterman and SNL. Visit his site to see the jokes that didn't make it.

Code of the Woosters is the first novel I ever read by P.G. Wodehouse, and (obviously) my first "Jeeves" novel. If you haven't heard of P.G. Wodehouse, you probably have heard of the name Jeeves, which is now synonymous with butlers. Wodehouse is widely hailed as the funniest fiction writer maybe ever. While I had high hopes, a part of me was in a challenging mood. We'd see how funny this writer really was--I was like an ornery audience member staring down a stand-up comic: go ahead, just try to make me laugh. I was a couple of pages in when I adjusted to the tone and vocabulary. A few pages more and I was smiling. Soon enough I was laughing out loud, smiling more, looking forward to the next chance to read. The narrator of the Jeeves books, Bertram "Bertie" Wooster, has the most engaging, amusing voice. That's what makes these books work so well. It is true that the books are about absolutely nothing. No meaning, no point, no relevance. They are pure entertainment. Really, really good entertainment. And we are lucky to have them.

Support this site by using the below link to buy Code of the Woosters. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

My nephew was born eight days ago, so today is his bris. Without the benefits of anesthesia, he will be circumcised in front of 70 people he's never met before.

Then everyone will eat.

One of the presents my son got at his birthday party today was Imaginext's T-Rex Mountain (by Fisher Price). The toy features sound effects, lights, moving parts, dinosaurs, and cave men carrying clubs. It has everything a four-year-old could want, prehistorical inaccuracy aside.

When I was in advertising, I wrote copy for toy packaging (dog toys, too), so I know how full of shit the descriptions on these things can be. It's my guess that the copy on T-Rex Mountain's box is not ideologically driven. Most likely, someone in the marketing department believes that some parent out there might have additional motivation to buy the toy because the box says the following (complete and unedited):

Imagine...a primitive civilization of humans and dinosaurs, living in a lush, green land. One side--the predators--is using up its natural resources, wiping out everything and everyone that gets in their way. The other side--the ecovores--wants to preserve their land. And they're willing to fight to make that happen. The battle begins at T-Rex Mountain: Will the predators succeed in destroying the land, causing their own extinction? Or will the ecovores stop the destruction and make the land a place where dinosaurs and humans can live together peacefully for all time? In the world of Imaginext, anything is possible!

Ecovores? For pure nonsense, it's hard to think of its equal. Not that there's any point in deconstructing the babble on the side of a toy box. The toy itself has no message and gives no indication of eco-anything, so the eco-copy must have been added later, after the toy was developed. The packaging will be in the trash tomorrow and my son will not encounter any incoherent socially conscious messages on the box, as it should be. Because for four-year-olds, an epic battle between dinosaurs and cave men is meaning enough.

On a related note, see Nick Gillespie's "Suffer the Little Children: The grim 'fun' of highly partisan kid lit"

This is a short, clear, reasonably objective, and not boring explanation of the Battle of Britain. Overy argues that the misperception on both sides of the other side's strength was a (or the) deciding factor. Though I didn't think it was a dry read, the book lacks the drama and thorough detail that made Dresden so memorable. Still, for a reader without much knowledge of the Battle of Britain, this dispels some myths and gives a good overview.

Support this site by using the below link to buy The Battle of Britain. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

Thanks to the Grumpy Old Bookman for linking to and blogging about me (the entry is still on his home page for now under "Something else for the weekend"). His readers looking for my book notes (brief reviews/comments on books I've read) can find them on the main page (among the other stuff) or can use the link on the left sidebar. I plan to post two notes each week, on Wednesday and Friday, and will be covering fiction and nonfiction. Comments are always welcome.

9/15/2006 Update: I said above that I planned to post book notes twice a week. I will still be posting book notes, but am not going to stick to a particular schedule or frequency. I'll write them and post them as the mood strikes.

Two inmates are suing the state of Indiana for its ban on "sexually explicit letters and general-circulation publications." Both are serving time for murder. I don't know what the lawyers will say, and I know how important the First Amendment is, and maybe this is more complicated than it seems. But do we really want murderers allowed to look at porn in prison? If yes, aren't we giving 15-year-old boys incentive to start killing people?

Just kidding, of course. Kids won't start murdering in the hope of having access to porn in jail. They already have plenty of access to porn from the comfort of their own homes, with far less chance of anal rape.

Source: CNN

A crack-dealing 80-year-old was busted for exchanging drugs for sex with prostitutes. Now that's living the golden years to their fullest. It seems to me that there were satisfied customers all around. Anyway, he's been arrested and might go away for a year or more. So you can sleep sound tonight. America is safe. Oh, wait, there's a violent crime wave in the nation's capital.

I'm really happy that this will help paralyzed people. Is it wrong that I'm even happier that we're all on the way to having very cool super powers?

To e-mail me, type my first and last name with no spaces, type the symbol for "at," and then type verizon.net

Rocky Barton was executed today for killing his fourth wife. No one deserves to be murdered by their husband. Let's not blame the victim. Seriously. Let's not. But you only have to read to paragraph six to find out that "Barton had previously served an eight-year prison sentence for the attempted murder of his second wife." I assume this was known to wife number four. And she married him anyway. Now that's love.

Source: CNN

My blogroll is divided into four categories, all listed lower on the right sidebar:

1. Political — blogs primarily about politics, news, and opinion
2. Literary — blogs primarily about books and writing
3. Journals — online literary journals
4. Authors — personal sites of writers

Most of the links in my blogroll, regardless of category, are for sites I actually visit. Or they belong to people I know. Or both.

I don't generally exchange links just for the sake of exchanging them. I choose not to put up dozens and dozens of links, most of which will be ignored by my readers. I think it's better to be more selective, increasing the chances that my readers will visit a site I actually know something about and would recommend.

But I do sometimes add new links to the blogroll, and if you have an interesting site that I think my readers would enjoy visiting, maybe I'll add it. A link back to the Scott Stein is appreciated.

Published by Coffee House Press, a nonprofit devoted to literary books, I worried that the novel Firmin might be too intellectual for its own good, maybe because first-time novelist Sam Savage has his Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale, but probably because of Firmin's premise: A rat living in a bookstore learns to read. As it says on the jacket flap: "Firmin is a story for everyone who has been transformed--for better or for worse--by an early diet of great literature." I bought Firmin anyway.

The good news is that it was not a painful reading experience--there is much cleverness, the references to other books are entertaining (to readers familiar with them), and the language is often pleasant; even the at-times overwrought prose fits the first-person narration by this hyper-intellectual rat. At only 148 pages and with short chapters, it was a quick read, a nice diversion. It could have been far worse, and Savage deserves some praise for his skill in pulling off his challenging concept to the extent he did. But I can't call Firmin a memorable work or a true success.

When I finished it I was thinking of Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (and not because they both feature a rat). They both deal with someone gaining exceptional intelligence and with loneliness, though there are many differences, of course. The most important difference is, as I read and at the end of Keyes's famous novel, I was sad; as I read and at the end of Savage's novel, I was not. Keyes makes readers care about his character's plight. Savage does not. The emotional connection just isn't there. Why it isn't there is something for fiction writers to study. What did Keyes do that Savage did not to make his story matter to us? At the end of Keyes's novel, as a fiction writer should, I asked myself, How did he do that? At the end of Savage's, I didn't.

Support this site by using the below link to buy Firmin. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

In a nation awash in punditry, Jacob Sullum’s work--including two books and numerous articles--stands out for its clarity, rigor, and integrity. A senior editor for Reason magazine, Sullum’s syndicated column never degenerates into the partisan hackery that characterizes the op-ed form as practiced by lesser (though often more famous) writers. Students of persuasive writing would do well to study the seemingly effortless incorporation of data and the agile connection of facts that lead the reader to his conclusions. Even when Sullum points to slippery slope implications of a position or policy he’s critiquing, he avoids the sort of exaggeration that would allow readers to dismiss him. In his books, this skill is on full display. For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health manages to include much evidence damning the tobacco industry while still leaving readers to conclude that the claims made and the public policy advocated by the anti-smoking movement are misguided, at best, and dangerous in their implications for the future of freedom, at worst. The meticulously researched Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use is a much-needed challenge to Drug War hysteria and misinformation.

This jackass needs to be locked away for a long time.

A headline today on CNN.com said: "Boy gets 26 years for murdering playmate."

When I see "boy" and especially "playmate," I would ordinarily guess that they're six years old. Maybe eight. I know they're older, because we don't give six-year-olds 26-year sentences. But maybe you guess that the "boy" is particularly young or the crime borderline in some way, because the phrasing of the headline, with "boy" and "playmate" together with "26 years," might suggest some miscarriage of justice, an overzealous prosecutor, perhaps. Then you read the story.

Evan Savoie was 12 when he murdered Craig Sorger, 13. His developmentally disabled victim "had been beaten and had 34 stab wounds." During the attack, "Sorger repeatedly cried out: 'Why are you doing this to me?' "

"Somebody is going to have to figure out how a 12-year-old can be so violent so young," Grant County Superior Court Judge Ken Jorgensen said as he imposed the maximum sentence.

Good luck with that.

Source: CNN

Headline from the New York Times: "Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Is Curbing Deficit"

Surprising? It shouldn't be. A standard argument for tax cuts is that they stimulate economic growth. And economic growth will obviously increase tax revenues. Even with lower tax rates, the government gets more money, because businesses and the wealthy pay more when they make more. Why is this so hard to understand?

Source: NY Times via Drudge

I've never listened to a Justin Timberlake song. I can't name a song by his former group, 'N Sync (maybe I'd recognize something if I heard it--there was a time when it was hard to escape them). So I am speaking here without any knowledge of his talent or lack thereof, though I suspect the latter. Still, for those worried about the future of pop music, Timberlake has good news:

"I realize that I have a platform to push the sound of pop music. That's the only responsibility that I put on myself in recording the album," Timberlake told a news conference at the start of a promotional tour.

"If I'm not going to push it, then who's going to push it?"

Good news, right? You can relax now. Timberlake will push the sound of pop music. Because, you know, if he doesn't, who will?

Source: CNN

Last week two people were killed for watching soccer. Now CNN reports that a Somalian band was beaten for playing music at a wedding.

"We had warned the family not to include in their ceremony what is not allowed by the sharia law. This includes the mixing of men and women and playing music," Sheik Iise Salad, who heads an Islamic court in the northeastern Huriwaa District, told The Associated Press. "That is why we raided and took their equipment." (Source: CNN)

Aside from informing us that this Sheik Iise Salad must be a real dick, this story reminds us that Somalia just can't catch a break.

A long time ago, when Phil Hartman was still alive and Bill Clinton was President-Elect, Saturday Night Live had a funny sketch with Hartman as Clinton at a McDonald's discussing the crisis in Somalia. You remember it: Hartman-Clinton kept taking the food from customers and shoving it into his mouth as he tried to explain that warlords were preventing food aid from reaching the Somalian people.

Now, Somalia is lucky enough to have won the Islamic-law lottery.

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Leave aside my problems with the hysteria over the obesity epidemic (that if given enough time will become the War on Obesity). It is amusing to see nanny state political correctness battling itself.

On the one hand, being obese is not okay, because we owe it to society and the government to be healthy, are obligated to save the public money on our healthcare costs, and must set a good example for others.

On the other hand, we need to accept everyone, shouldn't judge people, and don't want to injure a child's self-esteem.

It's quite a conflict. Hence the debate over whether we should call obese children obese:

Paola Fernandez Rana of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has a 9-year old daughter who at 40 pounds overweight is considered obese. Rana said doctors "refer to it as the 'o-word'" in front of her daughter "in an effort not to upset her."

Rana "said she agreed with the term [obese] and thinks that at some point it should be used with her daughter, too."

This Rana let her nine-year-old daughter get 40 pounds--40 pounds--overweight. Clearly, she's qualified to be giving advice. Fortunately, not everyone is as cruel as Ms. Rana, willing to use the o-word in front of an obese nine-year-old girl (at some point).

Chicago pediatrician Rebecca Unger [...] said she likes using the term "at risk for overweight" because it gives patients hope that "we can do something about it."

The research is still being conducted, and the experts have yet to make final recommendations about what exactly doctors should call these kids. I'm guessing they won't decide to just go with fat bastard and be done with it.


Source: CNN

Because people need to waste even more time on the Internet when they're at work, here's a fun hand-eye coordination test. I don't know whether it's accurate that a score of 18 is "phenomenal" or that US Air Force pilots are expected to go for at least two minutes. It reminds me of the old arcade game Berserk. Except in Berserk the moving obstacles were shooting at you. And you could shoot back. Apparently, my generation and younger have been training to be Air Force pilots all along. After about eight tries I got to 37.274 seconds. I could go longer if I succumbed to the addictive nature of this thing (why not throw around addictive inappropriately?). I don't know if I would come close to two minutes with some practice, since it speeds up as you go. I don't play video games at all anymore, though through college I played plenty. I'm sure some of you and many of my students who play all the time and are combat-ready will crush my score. Thanks to Kevin for the link.

This one seems a little close for comfort. Not that I'm worried. After all, we still have Bruce Willis.

Some Americans like to throw around the word censorship, when in an effort to please its listeners, a privately owned radio station doesn't give the Dixie Chicks airtime, for example (please don't bother me with talk of public airwaves, as if any station has an obligation to play the music of every band out there). The Dixie Chicks are hardly oppressed, appearing on the cover of national magazines and making the rounds on television talk shows seen by millions of people.

In case anyone has forgotten what censorship actually is, here's a reminder from our friends in China, just in time for Independence Day. The good news:

The government tries to block Internet users from foreign Web sites of human rights groups and political activists, but many have found ways to evade the controls.

It's Independence Weekend--it deserves more than just a day, don't you think? You should be barbecuing and hitting the beach, not reading blogs. But if you are online, you should be reading this. Because when's the last time you actually read the whole thing? That Jefferson sure could write. After you're done, get off the computer and get some sun, you pale bastards.