Fun with words!

Ezra Klein points us to a fun new toy:

Citizens for All That Is Good About America
By Ezra Klein

Americans for America. The New Century Foundation for Progress. A Bright Future for Children and Families. PAC names are a genre unto themselves. A proud, optimistic, vapid genre that's designed to sound so much like apple pie that you never think to look at the filling -- or, to be less metaphorical, the money. The Sunlight Foundation decided to have some fun with this and set up a PAC-name generator. Some of these PACs are the real deal, but most are just perfect PAC names waiting to find a home.

He seems to have chosen "Strong Women, Good-Looking Men and Above Average Children for Liberty" as his flag to fly, but me? Well, unbeknownst to all, I am actually the founder of "New Englanders against Sinister Sentiments."

You're welcome, world.

Rolling Stone ventures to MENA (!)

Rolling Stone is launching Rolling Stone: Middle East.

Needless to say, I subscribed immediately. I hope it's obvious why this is a huge deal; for one thing, this is a major American pop-culture publication showing major interest in the cultural products and pop life of a region that is almost uniformly understood as backward, primitive, and totally lacking in anything Rolling Stone could ever be interested in. That in itself is a huge deal.

If people in the region read it, that could be even better. It would be complicated, as validation by Western observers always is for almost any Arab group, individual, movement, or trend; but it could also be very valuable. It depends on how they play it at RS, and on how many people in the region actually read it and take it seriously. (Those variables are, of course, related--it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing). As much as it can be fun to make fun of RS these days, when I was in high school that magazine was incredibly important to me. I was the proverbial sad indie kid, and it was kind of a lifeline at times. There are some kids in the Middle East who are probably already consuming this kind of Western media, whether they can actually get their hands on the glossy or whether it's via an Internet cafe; how great is it that they could get their own deal? Something actually meant for them?

The major caveat is that as far as I can see, it's all in English. That worries me a little, and it throws the emphasis back toward the remedial-Orientalist perspective. Maybe there is or will be an Arabic-language version or website; I really, really hope so. Even if that doesn't happen, I still very much applaud this step.

And finally, it'll just be fun for me.

rollingstone.me.com, people: go. Read. Be pleased.

Proof

We can now see once and for all that the Mongols were the biggest badasses of all time. I think at the end the video should have marked Damascus in addition to Baghdad and Jerusalem--it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, after all--but then, I'm biased.

H/t Juan Cole.

Oh no pigeons!

Thanks, Pictures for Sad Children, for explaining everything!

Que maravilloso!

Congratulations to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina on affirming the legality of gay marriage!

It's Idiot Day and this time someone told me

Reproducing John Cole's post in its entirety:

And 100% of Popes are Catholic

by John Cole

Here is the MSM’s go-to guy on terrorism, Rep. Peter King (R, NY), on Fox News:

The fact is while the overwhelming majority of Muslims are outstanding people, on the other hand 100% of the Islamic terrorists are Muslims, and that is our main enemy today.

We are to the point that merely exposing yourself to right-wingers makes you dumber.

This on the same day that I read this discussion of environmental economics from Ezra Klein featuring a lovely quotation from Larry Summers:

THERE ARE IDIOTS. Look around.

Too good

For once, Reuters was entirely correct in filing a story under "Oddly Enough": Women Disappointed by Gaddafi 'Party' is a pretty odd story.

Basically, it seems Qaddafi was in Rome on diplomatic business (whatever that means when you're Muammar Qaddafi) and put out an ad through some sort of agency saying the following:

"Seeking 500 attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old, at least 1.70 meters (5 foot, 7 inches) tall, well-dressed but not in mini-skirts or low cut dresses."

And then roughly 200 women actually showed up to what they thought was going to be some sort of VIP party but was actually a two-hour lecture on Islam and the role of women in Islam, topped off with an exhortation to convert and a free Qur'an!

This whole thing is hilarious to me on a number of levels. First of all, everything Qaddafi does is amazing. Secondly, while I personally cannot comprehend responding to any ad that is seeking women based on their appearance, I can well imagine that a woman who might do so a) might not know what she was getting into if it involved Qaddafi, and/or b) might have good reason to expect a fancy party at the other end. The image of all these gorgeous Italian women all done up and expecting a party having to sit through two hours of Qaddafi telling them that Jesus was not, in fact, crucified--it was a stunt double, apparently--is just incredible.

Finally, the fact that Qaddafi could be under the impression that all that's standing between Italian women and the light of Islam is a lecture from him is just beautiful. Of course, the poor dears have just never thought about it before! And who better to open their minds than Qaddafi--the leader of Libya since 1969, whose little Green Book is taught in schools, and who is clearly the greatest advocate for Islam since, um, whenever.

The cherry on top is that he wants to make sure his Italian converts are hot. Just raising the Ummah's average attractiveness one lecture at a time, eh, Qaddafi?

Qifa Nakbi makes many funnies

The Qnion is totally my new favorite thing. It's like the biggest inside joke ever (in that people who don't follow the Middle East wouldn't find most of it funny, but if you do it's brilliant).

From a recent post from Alex at Syria Comment:

“The Syrians knew that the Israelis were following their official in the U.K,” says retired Russian intelligence specialist Vladimir Balakhoff. “So they loaded all of these false photographs of nuclear reactors, diagrams, and documents in North Korean onto his computer. And the Israelis fell for it.”

“Why do you think that no one in Israel made a big deal out of the bombing?” asks Egyptian political affairs expert Gamal Galagala. “Once they realized that they’d been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they tried to sweep it under the carpet, but that’s hard to do when the milk’s already been spilled. If you catch my drift.”

High-level Syrian sources are now confirming that the laptop decoy was intended to veil a much more sophisticated security project, one with the potential to change the strategic balance of power in the region.

This project, known as the Syrian Computer Society (SCS), is headquartered in another remote town, Hassake, not far from the site of the fake nuclear power plant. It boasts three desktop computers – two IBM compatibles with 486 processors and an iMac G3 – and a 14.4 kbit/s dial-up modem.

The project’s director, Dr. Samir Mahdoum, suggested that Syria could use these advanced machines to spy on Israel, thereby denying their arch-enemy the element of surprise. “Using Google Maps Satellite View, we see all of Israel,” said Dr. Mahdoum, stroking an albino hamster. “Their troop movements, their weapons, everything!”

Regional specificity be damned, it was the albino hamster that really did me in.

Shoddy work

Ezra Klein has a great takedown of Stephen Levitt's new book.

It's terrifically shoddy statistical work. You'd get dinged for this in a college class. But it's in a book written by a celebrated economist and a leading journalist. Moreover, the topic isn't whether people prefer chocolate or vanilla, but whether people should drive drunk. It is shoddy statistical work, in other words, that allows people to conclude that respected authorities believe it is safer for them to drive home drunk than walk home drunk. It's shoddy statistical work that could literally kill somebody. That makes it more than bad statistics. It makes it irresponsible.

But hey, it makes for a fun and unexpected opener.

Levitt teaches at my school and I can't say as I've ever heard anything good about him. His reputation is that he's full of himself, a bit of a jackass, and--much, much worse--a bad teacher. You'd be hard-pressed to find a big-name prof at this school, especially in econ, who isn't a bit full of himself and a bit of a jackass, but that's what we expect from big-name profs here. It's all part of the schtick. It works for them because they're legitimately great scholars and effective, enjoyable teachers. Copping the attitude and not delivering the pedagogy is really just not okay.

It's pretty typical economist fare to go for the cheap thrill or the controversy rather than the staid-but-valuable contribution to the field, and I'm not saying Levitt is obliged to aim for a Nobel rather than NYT-blog fame--but your cool stories have to at least make sense if it's going to be a good kind of pop culture fame. Ezra's take was satisfying to read as a longtime anti-fan of Levitt; God knows every time I've ever taken the time to read his blog entries I've finished them angry, sardonic, and unimpressed.

To quote the man,

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Dick (Uncut)
Hoooolyyyyyy shiiiiiiiit. href='http://www.thedailyshow.com/'>thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Economic Crisis

Amazing

I love baseball. I love it a lot. What can I say, I'm from Boston.

So good

Good times

I am so beyond pleased to be from New England these days, what with gay marriage rolling through the region. Massachusetts' pioneer status on the issue has always been a point of pride (among many), but it's truly fantastic to see this sort of regional snowballing taking place. You can cross whole state lines within the U.S. now and still have your marriage count on the other side.

Of course, the longer this goes on the more bizarre and untenable DOMA becomes on a Constitutional level, but I'll leave that for another time. Right now I'm just happy.

BRILLIANT

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10/31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

I would marry Stephen Colbert. I about died laughing watching this thing.

For more mocking of Glenn Beck, let's go to Shep Smith of Fox News:

Break down the walls

If there's one thing the death throes of the Republican Party is teaching me, it's that clearly there are a lot of conservatives out there that I would actually love to be friends with [emphasis added]:

"Hi gentlemen," [Poulos] began. "Um … in the interest of fun I’m going to taunt the panel first, and then try to justify running the gauntlet by phrasing it as a serious question." Poulos was wearing a charcoal suit and a brightly colored tie, which stood out in the ballroom’s sea of navy blue and khaki but was subdued by his standards, which tend to run toward things like monochromatic three-piece suits and velvet jackets. (He also has sideburns that are shaped like New Hampshire and almost as big; the combination of muttonchops and fine tailoring suggests a character in a Victorian political cartoon, or one of the white guys in Superfly.) [...]

"In the interest of being more than provocative," he said, getting to his serious question, "are we ever going to be able to address the question of cultural necessitarianism without being confident that we’re getting our cultural criticism right?"

Stripped of its woolly academese, what Poulos was asking was, can conservatism properly push back against a popular culture that it doesn’t really understand? How does a movement that yearns for the values of the past confront a culture that prizes novelty? This was a problem that had bedeviled modern American conservatism since Buckley first inveighed against the Beatles in his syndicated column. It was something that Poulos, who had dabbled in screenwriting and indie rock (his band was called the End of History) in Los Angeles before moving to Washington, had kicked around in his own writing.

This individual sounds, as Posh would say, MAJOR.

The piece, by the way, is about the demise of Culture11, one of the more interesting experiments in conservative journalism to have popped up recently. I was initially sad to see it go--well, I still am, somewhat--but Homans makes a good point about the potential value in its demise. Let's end the echo chambers and set everybody writing in the same publications together, with the standard being the quality of their journalism and their thinking rather than the purity of their beliefs.

Speaking of the comedian

This is past comedy into total annihilation. Colbert took Dinesh D'Souza and ate him for breakfast. I don't even know what to say. I spent most of the interview rolling my eyes and then in the last thirty seconds or so, HELLO.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Dinesh D'Souza

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

Via Coates.

Off topic awesome

BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo.

This man is my hero in SO MANY WAYS.