The smartest take on Barack Obama's gobsmackingly premature Nobel Peace Prize I've read is Ryan Sager's.
The prize unites the president with the Iranian resistance, as once again Twitter proves to be "medium of the moment". MSNBC has collected some of the best reactions under NobeLOL.
I posted the following notice on DeepGlamour yesterday.
DeepGlamour is an Amazon
affiliate. Virginia Postrel receives a percentage of the purchase price on anything you buy through one of our Amazon
The Federal Trade Commission demands that we tell you this — they think you're idiots and are violating the First Amendment with their regulation of what bloggers publish — but it's also a friendly reminder to Support DeepGlamour by starting all your Amazon
We also get money or in-kind compensation from places that have ads on the site, our contest prizes are donated, and Virginia receives review copies of lots of books (most of which never get mentioned on the site and end up donated to the Westwood branch of the L.A. Public Library). But you could probably figure that out on your own.
Now that we've complied with federal regulations, how about a little shopping?
The same applies to Dynamist, except I don't run contests here.
An interesting point in this Forbes.com report is marred by an egregious grammatical mistake.
Gourmet's dive into "cheap eats" service stories were a big mistake, says another ad executive. "Gourmet went down-market. It made matters worse by pandering to readers' financial fears with budget recipes."
I've given up on the its/it's distinction and become tolerant of various homonyms (fare/fair) used interchangeably. But is BASIC GRAMMAR too much to ask from a respected publication? With a surfeit of unemployed journalists, it should be possible to hire ones who can write their own sentences without making basic grammatical errors.
I came across two great comics-oriented works today, both of which are interesting even if you don't care about comics. First, a moving essay about how a work-for-hire artist took a crass, licensed media tie-in, turned it into art, and inspired a generation of comics fans and pros.
And then the great Scott McCloud on Ted.com.
Usually I share these links on my Twitter feeds rather than posting them on the blog. So subscribe to vpostrel or deepglamour.
As Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up. As far as I can tell, it's not yet a reality show, but it sounds like one:
Here's your chance to put your opinions to the test -- and win the opportunity to write a weekly column and a launching pad for your opinionating career!
Start making your case.
Use the entry form to send us a short opinion essay (400 words or less) pegged to a topic in the news and an additional paragraph (100 words or less) on yourself and why you should win. Entries will be judged on the basis of style, intelligence and freshness of argument, but not on whether Post editors agree or disagree with your point of view. Entry deadline: Oct. 21, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. ET.Then get ready for the great debate.
Beginning on or about Oct. 30, ten prospective pundits will get to compete for the title of America's Next Great Pundit, facing off in challenges that test the skills a modern pundit must possess. They'll have to write on deadline, hold their own on video and field questions from Post readers. (Contestants won't have to quit their day jobs, but they should be prepared to put in about eight hours a week for three weeks.) After each round, a panel of Post personalities will offer kudos and catcalls, and reader votes will help to determine who gets another chance at a byline and who has to shut down their laptop.Eyes on the prize.
The ultimate winner will get the opportunity to write a weekly column that may appear in the print and/or online editions of The Washington Post, paid at a rate of $200 per column, for a total of 13 weeks and $2,600. [Emphasis on the bad pay mine--vp] Our Opinions lineup includes a dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, regulars on the national political talk shows and some of the most influential players inside the Beltway. We'll set our promising pundit on a path to become the next byline in demand, the talking head every show wants to book, the voice that helps the country figure out what's really going on.So what are you waiting for?
As one of his fans, I've been wondering. Greg Mankiw provides the answer.
I am convinced this much-too-conveniently-antisemitic email is a self-serving fake. Why? Because it smells way too much like this, this, and this (among many others). Maybe I'm wrong, but conservatives should know enough to be skeptical.
UPDATE: In response to a couple of inquiries, yes, I DO think the hoax originated at ALG and that the burden of proof should be on them to demonstrate that it did not. That demonstration would need to involve an uninvolved, trustworthy, and technically savvy third party.
Support FIRE. Buy a ticket, for yourself or a student guest, at FIRE's 10th Anniversary Gala.
Crossposted from DeepGlamour.net
Old Hollywood glamour is Jean Harlow lounging suggestively in a white satin gown or Fred Astaire sweeping Ginger Rogers across a ballroom floor; Rita Hayworth peeling off long black gloves or Greta Garbo staring mysteriously off to sea. It is decidedly not a gingham-clad, jolie laide farm girl and her scrappy little dog. Dorothy, Toto, and their companions may be beloved — familiar family friends introduced by each generation to the next. In our fond memories, however, they do not qualify as glamorous.
But now that The Wizard of Oz
In The Wizard of Oz, the principal characters aren't the objects of glamour. They're its audience: the dreamers who imagine their lives transformed and who learn, over the course of the film, that even illusions can reveal inner truths.
The Wizard of Oz will be shown in theaters on Wednesday evening. For information on locations and tickets, click here.
--advertisement--
At the end of my PJTV appearance on Glenn Reynolds's show last month we discussed what the dialysis and transplant system might tell us about the national health care debate. (Click on "Lessons from Kidney Donation" to go to that part of the video.)
The two lessons I drew:
1) A fiscal explosion is more likely than tight (or "rational") rationing.
2) Under a uniform system, inertia tends to set in, so that technologies and practices don't improve, even when better ones are available.
This excellent, in-depth USA Today article on the dialysis system confirms both those observations. Rita Rubin writes:
Only 8% of U.S. dialysis patients treat themselves at home. The vast majority of the more than 350,000 Americans on dialysis are treated in centers, where three treatments a week, three or four hours each, is the norm — not because it's optimal but because that's the way it has been done for nearly four decades.
A growing body of evidence suggests that longer and/or more frequent dialysis treatments, either at home or in a dialysis center, are far superior to the status quo. Although the USA spends more per dialysis patient than other countries, that does not result in higher survival rates or even, many argue, a better quality of life.
"The standard of care is really inappropriate," says Brenda Kurnik, Lustman's doctor, who practices in Marlton, N.J. "Basically, it prevents people from dying, and that's about all it does."
So why doesn't the USA do better? Many blame Medicare's End Stage Renal Disease Program. Launched in 1973, it's the only federal program that entitles people of all ages to health-care coverage on the basis of a single diagnosis: chronic kidney failure. By paying for lifesaving care for hundreds of thousands of Americans, the program is a testament to what health insurance reform might achieve if Congress were to adopt it.
But it also may be a cautionary tale: Its cost has far exceeded initial projections, and some doctors and other analysts question whether Medicare get its money's worth and whether patients get the best treatment. Less than one-quarter of dialysis patients ages 18 to 54 are well enough to work or go to school.
As I've argued before, we already have a large, government-run health care system called Medicare, which suffers from plenty of well-known inefficiencies. Before doing anything else, government reformers ought to work on improving it. Medicare First!