What came first: the crime, or the recession?

A recent nytimes article ascertains that crime is still going down, though resists overturning the conception that hard times lead to desperate measures.

But crime statistics and people’s feelings about public safety “are not perfectly correlated,” Professor Smith said.

“People have had this longtime misconception that crime came down in New York City because the economy improved, and I have been telling people that it is just the reverse — the economy improved after crime went down,” Professor Smith said. “Hotel occupancy went up after crime went down. Airport arrivals went up after crime went down. Employment went up after crime went down.”

Ah, the chicken or the egg question. Both Prof. Smith and the other expert cited have a vested interest in the policing methods of the NYPD (the former studies said methods, the latter is a police historian and retired cop from Chicago), so rather unsurprisingly, they chalk it up to the methods: CompStat (tracking crimes, basically. Who knew stats could help police?), and the broken windows theory (the slippery slope for crimes. First comes the graffiti, then the murders). Click the link for the criticisms of broken windows: NYC's drop in crime rate matched that of cities where there was no such effort underway, of zero tolerance for misdemeanors. However, this study does make an interesting point that cleaning up areas and improving the physical appearance of an area does quite a bit (and which ties back into one aspect of the broken windows theory: persecute the petty criminals who "degrade" the city, whether through graffitti or jumping subway turnstyles or squeeging the windshields of motorists).

And, seriously, "demographic changes" (aka gentrification, or white in-flight), and the subsiding of the crack epidemic were a little out of the hands of the NYPD...

The article has deeper issues: in the first part of the quote, the report cites a key distinction, then procedes to completely ignore it: actual crime versus the perception of crime. (As well as a historical distinction: the sources of income cited come mostly from tourists, i.e., non-residents.) Areas with broken windows seem more dangerous. Fix the windows, perhaps stop people from breaking more windows, and in the meantime, the area will be perceived as safer.

In general, people consider what they know to be safer than what they don't know; subway surveys report this year after year--people feel safer in familiar settings, on their own lines.

I would argue that New York may prove more resilient, because of a shift in residency patterns. Rather than fleeing cities, cities have become the place to live. So unless things get really bad, for a long time, then NYC will be okay.

The real question is subjective, for this depends on what people feel: how bad is too bad? and how long is too long?

(And wouldn't out-of-towners not be traveling anyway, because a vacation moves out of reach? These people would be more likely to consider the City to be more dangerous, since it's exotic and unfamiliar. So perhaps tourism would drop. But that doesn't mean terrible things, unless you love love LOVE Time Square right now.)

Twitter... 6?

From Slate's debate-o-matic, presenting the rhetoric for each side in an argument:

Oh, please, no more: At least with the hula hoop fad, someone was getting exercise. I prefer to talk to my real friends and have real experiences. Isn't this the complete fulfillment of Aldous Huxley's vision in Brave New World? We're amusing ourselves to death. One day we're going to wake up and every Twitter post will simply be, "Me, me, me, me." Outside will be a howling wilderness of shriveled civilization bereft of ideas and reason.

Relax. You're killing a fly with a shotgun. Nothing limited to 140 characters can do as much harm as you're suggesting. Plus, Shaq tweets!

P.S. of Word Nerdery

Because I can't help myself:

quis⋅ling

–noun

a person who betrays his or her own country by aiding an invading enemy, often serving later in a puppet government; fifth columnist.

---

Origin:
1940; after Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945), pro-Nazi Norwegian leader

Okay, first off, that is so weirdly specific. And how humiliating is that? He must feel like a Benedict Arnold... or a Judas? Oh wait, where were they in the thesaurus entry for collaborator? Nowhere to be found. Plus, how many people need a word to describe one who serves in a puppet government?

Buried beneath a number of articles on tips for jogging with your pet, I found the elusive running dog definition:

Running Dog is a literal translation into English of the Chinese/Communist insult 走狗 'Zou Gou', meaning lackey. Its first recorded use in English was in 1937.

Running Dog is also the title of a 1978 novel by Don DeLillo. At its center is a rumored pornographic film of Adolf Hitler, purportedly filmed in his bunker in the climactic days of Berlin's fall. The novel follows a journalist as she tries to penetrate a murky black market of wealthy erotic-art collectors in order to locate the film. The tale grows increasingly wild and violent as she closes in on this bizarre grail.

Umm... good?

Yisreal Beitenu/Isra'il La Beituna

Israel is certainly in a strange position right now (though it thankfully allows me to combine two recent topics: the Eurovision song contest and Israeli politics!)

The Israeli entry into said song contest has stirred some controversy: of course, you might say, a left-wing peacenik with an Arab collaborator, at a time when Israelis voted for right-wing parties and, during the recent invasion of Gaza, told peace protestors to stay home on this one.

More accurately though, the left is mad (though to be fair, the artist has had to cancel threats because of bomb threats from the extreme right, so confusion is warranted).

Chosen by Israel to represent the country at the Eurovision Song Contest — this year being held in Moscow in May with an expected television audience of 100 million — Ms. Nini asked if she could bring along her current artistic collaborator, an Israeli Arab singer, Mira Awad.

The selection committee liked the idea of having both Arab and Jewish citizens in the contest for the first time. But coinciding as it did with Israel’s Gaza war and the rise of Avigdor Lieberman the ultranationalist politician who threatens Israeli Arabs with a loyalty oath, the committee’s choice was labeled by many on the left and in the Arab community as an effort to prettify an ugly situation.

A petition went around demanding that the duo withdraw, saying they were giving the false impression of coexistence in Israel and trying to shield the nation from the criticism it deserved. It added, “Every brick in the wall of this phony image allows the Israeli Army to throw 10 more tons of explosives and more phosphorus bombs.”

Neither Ms. Nini, 39, nor Ms. Awad, 33, has been deterred. But since they consider themselves peace advocates, they are a bit surprised. The antiwar movement, they say, seems to have turned into a Hamas apology force. That, together with the political turn rightward in Israel, means that while the two are being sent to represent this mixed and complex society, they also feel a bit orphaned by it.

Not to detract from the seriousness of an issue, but permit an aside: slightly provocative to use the word "collaborator" in such a context?

A quick thesaurus search doesn't provide the WWII (dare I say it?) connotation of the word, as a traitor, unless you happen to know what a quisling is (and I suppose fellow traveller if you're Joseph McCarthy ... perhaps confederate if you're Abraham Lincoln):

assistant, associate, co-worker, colleague, confederate, fellow traveller, helper, partner, quisling, running dog, team player, teammate

Running dog? Anyway...

Both singers and their collaborator, Mr. Dor, say that they spend many hours arguing over the meaning of a Jewish democratic nation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how to do their part to make things better.

Ah, if only we all had the leisure time to do so. Just you and your running dogs.

Help our children

Or rather, help rename the act to help our children learn gooder!

Education Secretary Anne Duncan has proposed renaming the No Child Left Behind Act; thankfully eduwonk.com is soliciting the rabble for a new name.

A sampling:

Hey, Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone Act
All American Children Are Above Average Act
Double Back Around to Pick Up the Children We Left Behind Act
the Rearranging the Deck Chairs Act

Most are in the vein of "the Teach to the Test Act," though less witty and just really cynical and pessimistic. It's pretty dispiriting to look at the national mood regarding education reform.

Perhaps it's just become infected by association with our dearly departed president.

Thankfully the Onion has just the allegory: a White House haunting (just as Kubrick would want it).

Sasha Obama Keeps Seeing Creepy Bush Twins While Riding Her Tricycle Through the White House

Sasha, who was playing in the East Wing of the executive mansion so as not to disturb her busy father, reported seeing the former first twins while riding her Big Wheel tricycle down the Cross Hall corridor. The frightening apparitions, the 7-year-old said, emerged out of thin air and were dressed in identical outfits consisting of spaghetti strap tank tops and denim skirts.

[...]

According to White House security documents, Sasha told Secret Service agents that the ghostly twins spoke to her in unison and repeatedly beckoned her by chanting the phrases "come play with us," "come play with us, forever," and "Daddy's making fajitas."

White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, also detailed a disturbing vision experienced by Sasha, who at several points during her encounter suddenly saw the twin girls lying motionless in a pool of spilled strawberry margaritas.

"She said they kept whispering 'we want to party' over and over again," said one Secret Service agent, who comforted Sasha following the incident. "God, it's so horrifying."

With her father often tied up with work for hours on end, this is not the first time Sasha has reported seeing malevolent spirits while exploring the 132-room mansion. Earlier this week, the 7-year-old was startled to find an angry, silver-haired woman named Barbara in the Map Room, and on Monday, the first daughter saw what appeared to be former attorney general John Ashcroft lying naked and unconscious in a bathroom tub.

AHHH!!

Georgia to Russia: We don't wanna PUT IN

But we do want fake facial hair and disco dancing!



Get it? Pretend there's no space between the last two words of the song's title.

"The title of the song, sung in accented English, is “We Don’t Wanna Put In,” a barely successful play on words involving the Russian prime minister’s name," says the nytimes.

The song, by a Georgian group called Stephane and 3G, was chosen by popular vote on Wednesday as Georgia’s entry for Eurovision, the megapopular and kitschy European song contest that will be hosted by Moscow in May.

Georgia was planning to boycott this year’s event to protest Russia’s de facto annexation of two Georgian separatist regions after the August war, but it apparently settled on taking a musical swipe at Mr. Putin right in the Russian capital.

This song is unbelievably bad, perhaps because the group's front man said the song is supposed to be a "marketing trick."

“The most important thing for us was to create the project that would attract as much attention as possible,” said Mr. Mgebrishvili, a slight man of 29 who in a YouTube video performs the tune in a large black wig with sideburns as his three bandmates dance in spandex and hot pants to a disco beat that evokes “Saturday Night Fever.”

“We don’t wanna put in / the negative mood / is killin’ the groove,” goes the chorus.

Mr. Mgebrishvili, who participated in street protests against Russia in Tbilisi during the August war, said his group received “moral support” from some government ministers.

If only all derivative disco enjoyed government support! Although we'd probably have quite a few more diplomatic incidents. Certainly, Russia won't take this lying down.

The news has already begun to excite patriotic passions in Russia, where anti-Georgian sentiment remains high after the war, which many in Russia believe Georgia started.

“In my opinion, this is amoral,” Yana Rudkovskaya, the Russian producer for Dima Bilan, last year’s Eurovision winner, told the Echo Moskvy radio station. “I think that the Eurovision board and the heads of Channel One should forbid this song because it insults our country.”

Not immoral, but amoral. Because it insults the country. (Which of course requires the equation Russia=Putin).

Is that really an insult? I don't particularly want a Put In either, but I'm still not really sure what it means (beyond being vaguely dirty).

The state-controlled Channel One will broadcast the competition live. If Georgia makes it to the final round, it is unclear how the station will handle such an affront to Mr. Putin, who receives little but fawning coverage by Russian federal television.

Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, called the song “hooliganism” and told the Ria Novosti news agency that he thought it unfortunate that Georgia would use the song competition to “promote pseudopolitical ambitions.”

Those pesky little countries with their pseudopolitical ambitions!


UPDATE: If only because I can't resist close reading the lyrics.

The bridge (1:54-2:04 in the above video), goes like this apparently:

I like all Europe countries and I love Europa

Say - give me sexy ah

Give me sexy ah

Say - give me sexy ah

Give me sexy ah

Through their accents and mumbling, it almost sounds like South Ossetia! (i.e., the region suffering from conflicting claims by both Russia and Georgia.)

Coincidence? I think not. They end the bridge by screaming "Put In" a few times, dispensing with the rest of the witty chorus.

Barry and Benjamin

The nytimes is again focusing on Benjamin Netanyahu, recently tapped to perhaps form the next Israeli government:

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Likud Party leader chosen Friday to form Israel's next government, likes to tell a story about his meeting last summer in Jerusalem with President Obama, who was then still the Democratic candidate.

As it was ending Mr. Obama pulled Mr. Netanyahu aside from their aides to a corner of the room in the King David Hotel.

“You and I have a lot in common,” Mr. Obama said, according to Mr. Netanyahu’s account. “I started on the left and moved to the center. You started on the right and moved to the center. We are both pragmatists who like to get things done.”

Whether that turns out to be an accurate assessment will determine much of what happens in the American-Israeli relationship in the next couple of years and in efforts to make progress on Middle East peace.

But what is almost as noteworthy is that Mr. Netanyahu tells the story with pride and a kind of endorsement. Although he is a hawkish man of the right and runs the largest conservative party in Israel, he considers himself a pragmatist.

Though the nytimes article doesn't draw it out, this is a pretty brilliant strategy. One of the most potent criticisms of a Netanyahu-led government is that he would not have the nearly unconditional support (at least publicly) that Israel enjoyed under Bush. So the argument goes: a narrow, right-wing government, lacking American support, would undoubtedly fail.

In one story, Netanyahu associates himself with hope and change (campaign/president-elect Obama), while capitalizing on Obama's own transformation into a pragmatist (once sworn in), and simultaneously attempts to assert his powerful connections--both political and personal--to the American goverment.

So, in his own telling, perhaps the powerful (left-wing) American patron would support a right-wing goverment?

Footnote: And this is not the first time Netanyahu has stressed the Obama connection:

Click on the Russian-language version of the campaign Web site of Benjamin Netanyahu, the conservative Likud leader running for prime minister of Israel, and up pops a picture of him with Barack Obama. On the Hebrew version, Mr. Obama is not pictured. But he is, in fact, everywhere.

The colors, the fonts, the icons for donating and volunteering, the use of videos, and the social networking Facebook-type options — including Twitter, which hardly exists in Israel — all reflect a conscious effort by the Netanyahu campaign to learn from the Obama success.

la résistance

In the final days of his presidency, GWB gave more interviews than any other outgoing American president in history (dubbed the "Bush legacy tour" by the press).

These interviews were derided as further evidence of Bush's lack of self-awareness, demonstrating his ignorance of the consequences of his actions as a president.

And yet... we can't seem to help agreeing with him, as some disasters slip into history and some successes remain.

One signal: W., Oliver Stone's suprisingly sympathetic portrait of our once proud leader.

The nytimes this week wrote about the split between Cheney and Bush over the lack of a Libby pardon. (The nytimes has speculated on such a rift between the two since at least 2005.)

Cheney spent their last days together, furiously lobbying, bringing it up in "countless one-on-one conversations," but did not succeed in the end.

The dispute underscored the raw feelings of Mr. Cheney and other supporters of Mr. Libby, who believed that he was mistreated by prosecutors and ill served by a president who, in their view, failed to return Mr. Libby’s loyalty and sacrifice.

And it points up the distance said to have grown between the two men as their worldviews, once largely in sync, seemed increasingly to diverge in their second term as Mr. Bush took a less hawkish stance.

For Mr. Cheney, the failure to win a pardon was a stinging loss that led him to offer a rare public rebuke of Mr. Bush’s judgment, saying of Mr. Libby in an interview with The Weekly Standard last month that “I strongly believe that he deserved a presidential pardon,” and that “I disagree with President Bush’s decision.”

So what does this mean?

The article quotes unnamed officials early in the article, who said "Mr. Bush was unyielding to the end, already frustrated by a deluge of last-minute pardon requests from other quarters."

Bush was annoyed, eh? "Two former White House officials familiar with the thinking of both men said that Mr. Bush had been generally overwhelmed and surprised by the last-minute lobbying for pardons, but that he had believed he owed it to Mr. Cheney to listen to him as he made one last case for Mr. Libby over the course of several long discussions."

Apparently, he felt uncomfortable with going beyond his initial commuting of Libby's prison sentence, leaving him to serve no jail time. That decision drew a lot of criticism; but later, Bush decided he didn't want to issue disputed pardon in his final hours, like Clinton.

There's something admirable about not caring for criticism, when he knows what he is doing that's right. But the problem comes in the decision-making process, or the lack thereof, in Bush's case.

The article closes with an enigmatic quotation:

A former administration official involved in some of the deliberations said the outcome of the lobbying effort was evidence of something else: “The biggest myth of the presidency is that Vice President Cheney always got his way.”

Read quickly, this suggests that Bush is valiant for standing up to Cheney, the bully.

Read again, and the implications are not so nice. One of the typical Bush apologias is to attribute Bush's mistakes to having the wrong friends, surrounding himself with the wrong people (a la Warren G. Harding, not the Truman Bush wants to be).

Rather than rehabilate Bush, as this anonymous official seems to want, he's stuck with this conclusion: Bush made his own mistakes.

But maybe that's what Bush always wanted us to know. Strength of his own convictions, rather than Teapot Dome. If only he used his head, rather than his gut.

Shepherd Fairey v. the AP

What began as a dispute over the source of Fairey's unofficial Obama campaign poster has turned into a showdown over "fair-use," the wikipedia-inflamed ability to engage in rifacimento--remixing, rebranding, but above all, reposting and sharing it again. But not for commercial gain, no never!

Ripped straight from the copyright law of 1976:

The fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

This balancing test actually involves some pretty complex case law behind (and dancing around) each of the factors. Nothing is as at seems! But let me be the judge.

1. Intended for non-profit use, not commercial (adv. Fairey)
2. Copyrighted hardcore (adv. AP)
3. I think this is where the answer lies. How much of the original photo remains? To my mind, it was completely transformed, from the mundane to a work of art (adv. Fairey)
4. If anything, this made people comb the AP archives to try to find the original photo. I can't see how this would reduce the value of the original; if anything, it would increase it (adv. Fairey)

O dear readers, what say you?

Uh-oh.

Apparently, I should watch out, after criticizing Stanley Crouch.

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in the Village Voice:

Stanley Crouch is a gangsta rapper. Throughout his career, Crouch has moved through black nationalism, bohemia, and places we haven't yet developed the vocab to name. But if there's one thing we've gleaned from Crouch's recent assault on novelist and critic Dale Peck, it is this—we have found Crouch's muse, and his name is Suge Knight.

The backstory is simple, and for Crouch routine. On July 12, out for lunch at Tartine in the West Village, Crouch spotted Peck, who'd trashed his book Don't the Moon Look Lonesome a few years back. After greeting Peck with one hand, Crouch smacked him with the other. "What I would actually have preferred to happen," says Crouch, "was that I had the presence of mind to hawk up a huge oyster and spit it in his face."

Of course! Who doesn't have regrets that they did not spit phlegm upon someone who had criticized them?

Crouch's literary mean-streak is well-known, going so far as to pen vitriolic, ad-hominem attacks against his critics. Who knew that streak extended to fisticuffs? Well, apparently the entire Village Voice staff:

"Stanley deserves better than his own temper" says jazz writer Peter Watrous, who also worked here with Crouch. "There are two things that happen at the same time—one of them is that Stanley is a utopian. He strongly believes people should behave in certain way. That combines with an inability to control his own temper, and it makes for a bullying streak."

There was the time Crouch was arguing with jazz writer Russ Musto and told him that if he were a foot taller he'd knock his block off. Musto kept arguing, since he knew he wasn't growing any. Crouch went back on his word, and swung at him anyway. After the two men were separated, Crouch calmed down and offered to buy Musto a drink. Musto says they're friends to this day. Then there's what happened to Guy Trebay, whom Crouch stalked through the Voice's old offices threatening to kill him, relenting only after writer Hilton Als intervened. Another time, writer Harry Allen approached Crouch, hoping to exchange some notes on hip-hop. Instead Crouch, evidently in a bad mood, caught Allen's neck in the cobra clutch, prompting the Voice to give Crouch his walking papers.

By then the Hanging Judge had secured his rep as king of the literal literary brawlers—an accolade that ranks right up there with prettiest journalist. Really now, administering beat-downs to pencil-necked critics is about as macho as spousal abuse, croquet—or gangsta rap.

Much like the acts he derides, Crouch has a taste for swinging that is nothing short of a variation on the "I ain't no punk" theme seemingly encoded on the DNA of all black males. "I have a kind of Mailer-esque reaction to the way some people view writers," Crouch once told The New Yorker. "I want them to know that just because I write doesn't mean I can't also fight." Put another way, Crouch wants you know he keeps it gangsta.

Um... I don't even know what to say.

It's a shame that this man's views represent(ed) the idea of jazz to the American public. Or rather, his own demented conception of jazz.

The widening Gulf

The nytimes published a recent article on the bleak prospects of foreigners in Dubai:

With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.

The government says the real number is much lower. But the stories contain at least a grain of truth: jobless people here lose their work visas and then must leave the country within a month. That in turn reduces spending, creates housing vacancies and lowers real estate prices, in a downward spiral that has left parts of Dubai — once hailed as the economic superpower of the Middle East — looking like a ghost town.

In Qatar, I heard horror stories of foreigners who got sick or were involved in an accident, leaving them with huge debts and no way to pay them off. And in Qatar, you cannot leave if you have any outstanding debts. That really doesn't leave you with any option than debtors' prison.

No one knows how bad things have become, though it is clear that tens of thousands have left, real estate prices have crashed and scores of Dubai’s major construction projects have been suspended or canceled. But with the government unwilling to provide data, rumors are bound to flourish, damaging confidence and further undermining the economy.

Instead of moving toward greater transparency, the emirates seem to be moving in the other direction. A new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s reputation or economy, punishable by fines of up to 1 million dirhams (about $272,000). Some say it is already having a chilling effect on reporting about the crisis.

Yikes. Good luck to the new locations of "CNN, the book publishers HarperCollins and Random House, the British Broadcasting Corporation, The Financial Times and the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charity arm of the financial news giant Thomson Reuters," in the Abu Dhabi Media Zone. Why does the "zone" part of the name suddenly sound sinister?

NIGHTMARES!

While the Obama administration is stressing the need to diversify America’s fuel supplies and wean the nation from its dependence on foreign oil, Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is warning about a “nightmare scenario” if consumers seek to speed up the development of alternative fuels.

Ali al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, said Tuesday evening at an oil industry conference in Houston that a push to develop more renewable fuels might jeopardize investments in conventional fuels.

“While the push for alternatives is important, we must also be mindful that efforts to rapidly promote alternatives could have a chilling effect on investment in the oil sector,” he said. “A nightmare scenario would be created if alternative energy supplies fail to meet overly optimistic expectations, while traditional energy suppliers scale back investment due to expectations of declining demand for their products.”

Is that a threat?

Saudi Arabia, along with other oil exporters, has long complained about what they view as the uncertainty of energy policies in Western nations. This uncertainty, oil producers argue, hampers their ability to make long-term plans to develop their resources.

:(

If only energy policy and prices were more certain... I have an idea! Monopolistic cartel, anyone? I see a few hands...

At the moment, the slowing economy and collapsing demand for oil is freezing investments around the world. The secretary-general of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said recently that cartel members had canceled 35 drilling projects because of lower prices.

AHHHHHHHH! If only America would stop talking about alternative energy!

Twitter 5

David Pogue of the nytimes finds out what Twitter is for!

He searched "twitter tips for beginners," and came up with a ridiculous number of advice lists--all contradictory.

My confusion continued until, at a conference, I met Evan Williams, chief executive and co-founder of Twitter. I told him about all the rules, all the advice, all the “you’re not doing it right” gripers. I told him that the technology was exciting, but that all the naysayers and rule-makers were dampening my enthusiasm.

He shook his head apologetically — clearly, he’s heard all this before — and told me the truth about Twitter: that they’re all wrong.

Or, put another way, that they’re all right.

Twitter, in other words, is precisely what you want it to be. It can be a business tool, a teenage time-killer, a research assistant, a news source — whatever. There are no rules, or at least none that apply equally well to everyone.

In fact, Mr. Williams said that a huge chunk of Twitter lore, etiquette and even terminology has sprouted up from Twitter users without any input from the company. For example, the people came up with the term “tweets” (what everyone calls the messages). The crowd began referring to fellow Twitterers by name like this: @pogue. Soon, that notation became a standard shorthand that the Twitter software now recognizes. The masses also came up with conventions like “RT,” meaning re-tweet — you’re passing along what someone else said on Twitter.

So Twitter is both everything and nothing. A koan? blah blah blah... okay, this is what the almighty Pogue does:

I’ve finally harnessed Twitter’s power for my own nefarious ends. I pass on jokes. I share little thoughts that don’t merit a full blog or article post.

If Twitter is both everything and nothing, his thoughts may also be partly not thoughts. Perhaps better left not shared?

M.I.A. TO WORLD

"There's a genocide going on," Maya Arulpragasam, aka the globalized rap (kinda?) star M.I.A., said about the chaotic civil war in Sri Lanka.

The Tamil minority could probably make a case for ethnic cleansing and forced deportation, but that's a far cry from genocide:

Although the government has brutalized and killed Tamil civilians over the past 25 years, human rights organizations spread the blame around, estimating that 70,000 people on both sides have been killed in the fighting.

“This is a conflict in which both sides have terrible human rights records,” said Yolanda Foster, a specialist on Sri Lanka with Amnesty International in London. “The Tamil Tigers have a long history of child recruitment, hostage taking, forcing civilians to the front lines. It’s complicated to assign blame.”

Don't forget they popularized the female suicide bomber, an innovation this world could probably live without. (Women of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or Tamil Tigers, have perpetrated 30–40% of the organization's suicide bombings, which number more than 200.)

I'm all for M.I.A., and Tamils certainly have a complaint. It's pretty obvious why: Her father is a leader in the seperatist movement, but it wouldn't hurt to check out some other sources.

Beware of falling snow

The impeccable nytimes City Room blog recently wrote about a truly horrendous snowstorm of 1969, killing 42 and injuring 288. I'm still trying to figure out how that happens. Falling trees? Slipping on ice? New Yorkers snowed-in, starve to death because they can't eat out?

My guess: Lack of heat=hypothermia? Impassable streets=zero medical attention?

Anyway, then Mayor of the New York City John V. Lindsay failed abysmally in snow removal, providing an abject lesson for most of his political ilk:

There were no buses, taxicabs or delivery vehicles, and no trash or garbage collection for days. “As far as getting to the United Nations is concerned, I may as well be in the Alps,” Dr. Bunche wrote. “This is a shameful performance by the great city of New York, which should certainly condone no second-class borough.”

Mr. Lindsay traveled to Queens, but his visit was not well-received. His limousine could not make its way through Rego Park, and even in a four-wheel-drive truck, he had trouble getting around. In Kew Gardens Hills, the mayor was booed; one woman screamed, “You should be ashamed of yourself.” In Fresh Meadows, a woman told the mayor, “Get away, you bum.”

Mr. Lindsay’s predecessor, Robert F. Wagner, had spent an enormous amount during the last major blizzard, in 1961, but the Lindsay administration was wary of going over budget. And there were rumors that sanitation workers — still angry about the Lindsay administration’s heavy-handed actions during their strike in 1968 — had deliberately ignoring Queens to sabotage the mayor.

Dr. Cannato reveals a fascinating episode. During the mayor’s walk through Fresh Meadows, a woman called him “a wonderful man,” prompting the mayor to respond, “And you’re a wonderful woman, not like those fat Jewish broads up there,” pointing to women in a nearby building who had criticized him.

The comment was recorded on tape, but The New York Times, The Associated Press and WNEW radio declined to run with the story.

Hmm... wonder what the reasoning was there.

A number of other mayors have followed Linday's diastrous lead (though I don't think you can really say that Lindsay lost re-election because of this one event... the blogpost doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, but it's a fine story, even as it folds back in on itself... either one too many or one too few rewrites with this one.)

O, Proud District! You'd never fail us like Lindsay did Queens? Right?

And then there was Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. of Washington, who somehow survived his mishaps with bad weather. In 1987, Mr. Barry was in southern California attending the Super Bowl — getting a manicure and playing tennis at the Beverly Hills Hilton — when a winter storm buried the District of Columbia. The nation’s capital became the butt of ridicule. In 1996, Mr. Barry — who was elected to a fourth, nonconsecutive term in 1994 after serving a federal sentence on cocaine possession charges — was excoriated by residents after it took nearly a week to clear the streets of snow.

First he had to clear the snow out of his nose. ZING!

Yes, we... something?

So Geithner flopped, and the markets tanked.

But Barry's got the cure!

From the folks who brought you "Yes, we can," and "Obama, Ibama," comes a new chant--sure to save the Economy!

In an unexpected turn of events that even his most ardent supporters are calling extremely ill-advised, President Obama, known for his simple yet stirring slogan "Yes we can," debuted a new, extremely annoying catchphrase Monday during an address on proposed economic policy reform, saying, "It is time for America to move forward, not backward—and in conclusion, hot diggity ding dang!" The new catchphrase, White House officials announced, will replace the former slogan as the focal point of the president's public image effective immediately, and will be implemented in all appearances, official correspondence, and executive paperwork from now until at least mid-2012. Publicity materials featuring the wince-inducing phrase—and picturing Obama smiling wildly and giving a double thumbs-up to the camera—were distributed this week to thousands of media outlets. "We have no idea why he's chosen to do this," said former Obama supporter Kyle Hammersley. "It's unbelievably irritating." "Hot diggitty ding dang" was reportedly selected by Obama and his advisers from a final list of potential taglines that also included "Hanker down—soup's on!" "That's what the doctor told me!" and "Mama mia, where's-a mah pizza?!"

The Onion moves onto dork from nerd.

Now that's what I call change.

Scary monsters, super creeps

Pope Benedict the 162389th, rehabilitator of a Holocaust denier (he apparently disbelieves the gazillion Hollywood movies on the subject, putting faith in "historical evidence" over Kate Winslet), has now overseen an explosion of indulgences.

That's right, indulgences.

Conservative Catholic schismatics of the world, unite!

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (where Martin Luther denounces the selling of them in 1517 and ignites the Protestant Reformation) simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.

Oh yeah, remember the Protestant Reformation? NO MONEY DOWN, CASH4INDULGENCES!

Well, sort of. They reduce Purgatory time, apparently. Confused as to these concpets, non-Catholics? The nytimes to the rescue:

The indulgence is among the less-noticed, less-disputed traditions to be restored. But with a thousand-year history and volumes of church law devoted to its intricacies, it is one of the most complicated to explain.

According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it. You can get one for yourself, or for someone else, living or dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1857 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.

One per customer, please. Can't have people loadin' up.

The return of indulgences began with Pope John Paul II, who authorized bishops to offer them in 2000 as part of the celebration of the church’s third millennium. But the offers have increased markedly under his successor, Pope Benedict, who has made plenary indulgences part of church anniversary celebrations nine times in the last three years.

BENEDICT!!

The Forever Post

Dexter Filkins may be the best (war) reporter of our times. Remove the parenthetical phrase, as you like.

You can read the first chapter of his stunning book, The Forever War, here. As a war correspondent in both Afghanistan and Iraq, he knows his stuff about the War on Terror/Islamic Fundamentalism/Islam (select noun here according to personal or cultural perspective).

And now he's back in Afghanistan again. His most recent article highlights the incredible decline of Hamid Karzai, both in his country and in America. Here's the lede, then read on here.

A foretaste of what would be in store for President Hamid Karzai after the election of a new American administration came last February, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator, sat down to a formal dinner at the palace during a visit here.

Between platters of lamb and rice, Mr. Biden and two other American senators questioned Mr. Karzai about corruption in his government, which, by many estimates, is among the worst in the world. Mr. Karzai assured Mr. Biden and the other senators that there was no corruption at all and that, in any case, it was not his fault.

The senators gaped in astonishment. After 45 minutes, Mr. Biden threw down his napkin and stood up.

“This dinner is over,” Mr. Biden announced, according to one of the people in the room at the time. And the three senators walked out, long before the appointed time.

Narco-state, "unreliable," take your pick. And that's what American's foreign leadership (Hillary, Barack respectively) say. What's next for Afghanistan? 85 percent of the population intends to vote for someone else in th upcoming election.

With the insurgency rising, corruption soaring and opium blooming across the land, it perhaps is not surprising that so many Afghans, and so many in Washington, see President Karzai’s removal as a precondition for reversing the country’s downward surge.

But he still holds all of the power, and he could still take a turn for the populist. It depends on how the summer goes, before the election. Or perhaps not:

At a ceremony last month for the first graduates of Afghanistan’s National Military Academy, Mr. Karzai stood and addressed the assembled 84 cadets as well as a group of diplomats, including Mr. Wood. Mr. Karzai turned the occasion into a populist barnburner.

“I told America and the world to give us aircraft — otherwise we will get them from the other place!” Mr. Karzai roared, prompting applause. “I told them to give us the planes soon, that we have no more patience, and that we cannot get along without military aircraft!

“Give us the aircraft sooner or we will get them from the others!” Mr. Karzai roared again. “We told them to bring us tanks, too — otherwise we will get them from other place!”

Mr. Karzai never said what the “other place” was.

Long form journalism

Cover story: One Saturday night on patrol with university campus special police.

Glossy old timey media

The New York Times Magazine ends its print edition with a reader-submitted short work of non-fiction, usually hit or miss fare.

I have never seen anything better than the story from this past weekend. Please read it, you owe it to yourself.

“Don’t fall, Papa!” we called behind us. My brother and my sister and I were smuggling our 85-year-old grandfather across the deck of a cruise ship, at his request, toward the faint port pulse of the Savoy Nightclub. During the day this deck was covered with seminude Midwesterners, but now the landscape was lunar, as empty as the future. The railings were slippery and cold, and we kept checking to make sure that Papa, who had started coughing, was still with us. This was a bad idea, we all agreed.

About an hour before, our mother instructed her father to stop knocking back $14 cocktails named for bad weather. We were supposed to escort him to bed; he was bunking with us in the de facto “kids’ cabin” (my siblings and I are actually all surly people in our mid-20s). Now I worried that our mother would discover our empty beds and think that somehow everybody fell through the porthole.

Continued on the nytimes website, Disco Papa! Prepare for grinding, it is imminent!

Shot five: Bonus! Something to ponder

Why does "Rolling Stone" still exist?

Shot four: No pun intended

A turn to the dark side, where a former inside pursues formal allegations against a corrupt government. Sounds like a script, but this is no Hollywood production.

Umar S. Israilov saw the men who had come to kill him. They confronted him in the neighborhood where he lived in hiding in Vienna. He must have sensed their intentions, because he ran.

For more than two years, Mr. Israilov, a Chechen in exile, had formally accused Russia’s government of allowing a macabre pattern of crimes in Chechnya. Even by the dark norms of violence in the Caucasus, his accusations were extraordinary.

A rebel fighter turned bodyguard of Ramzan A. Kadyrov, Chechnya’s current president, Mr. Israilov had access to the inner ring of Chechen power. Mr. Kadyrov’s career has been sponsored by Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who as president lifted him from obscurity with unwavering Kremlin support.

In written legal complaints, Mr. Israilov described many brutal acts by Mr. Kadyrov and his subordinates, including executions of illegally detained men. One executed man, Mr. Israilov said, had been beaten with a shovel handle by Mr. Kadyrov and Adam Delimkhanov, now a member of Russia’s Parliament. Another prisoner, the defector said, was sodomized by a prominent police officer and at Mr. Kadyrov’s order put to death.

Mr. Israilov said he and others had been tortured by Mr. Kadyrov, who amused himself by personally giving prisoners electric shocks or firing pistols at their feet.

I'm unsure what conclusions to draw from this.

A series of aphorisms: Oh the barbarity of the East, etc., etc., particularly Putin, KGB, resurgent Russia

Lucky to live in the West? Perhaps.

Or just a reminder: Things could always be worse.

Shot three: Baddest Blackberry

Barack Obama keeps his Blackberry, with new super-secret email address. The inevitable result in Washington:

It is now the ultimate status symbol in a town obsessed by status. Mr. Obama was spotted last week trying out his new BlackBerry — or actually a more sophisticated, encrypted variation — and aides say that he uses a computer in the study next to the Oval Office but that he has agreed to limit the number of people he would exchange e-mail with. In the process, he created a new measure for Washington to judge who really has the ear, or the thumb, of the president.

Clinton had a private fax line, which is actually kinda funny. I can just imagine him sitting, forlorn by the fax, waiting for something to print out.

In the meantime, Obama hasn't even redecorated the Oval Office. The "optimism" rug of Bush's remains, designed by Laura, beloved by Bill (I LOOOOVE THIS RUG). As do some decorative plates, though I don't imagine they'll last long:

When Mr. Bush moved in, he exercised his presidential decorating prerogatives and asked his wife, Laura, to supervise the design of a new rug. Mr. Bush loved to regale visitors with the story of the rug, whose sunburst design, he liked to say, was intended to evoke a feeling of optimism.

The rug is still there, as are the presidential portraits Mr. Bush selected — one of Washington, one of Lincoln — and a collection of decorative green and white plates. During a meeting last week with retired military officials, before he signed an executive order shutting down the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Obama surveyed his new environs with a critical eye.

“He looked around,” said one of his guests, retired Rear Adm. John D. Hutson, “and said, ‘I’ve got to do something about these plates. I’m not really a plates kind of guy.’ ”

Shot two: Super Bow-legged

Slate's Stephen Metcalf on Bruce at half-time last evening:

Nothing will ever compete for sheer tone-deafness with Paul McCartney playing a zealous Super Bowl rendition of "Live and Let Die" at the height of the Iraq war. But Springsteen would have put America on its ass—its mind shortly to follow—had he strolled out with a Martin and played "The Wrestler." (And how about a nice "This one's for Danny," aka Danny Federici, the recently deceased keyboardist who was with Bruce for more than 40 years?) The national mood is sober bordering on a galloping panic. Lively as he was, I wouldn't say the Boss did much to either banish or capture it.

Lively... perhaps more live-ish? Springsteen was hoarse and out of breath for the entire medley

My favorite moment had to have been sliding on his knees across the stage... crotch-first into the camera.

No, that's a lie. Clarence Clemons, taking a page from George Clinton and Sun Ra: saxaphonist, or priest from Mars!?

Machine gun articles: first shot

Okay first: Dating a Banker Anonymous.

These girls are in relationships, but only if healthy, not in sickness.. You know what? Rewrite the whole vow: only in health, for richer or richest.

These alcohol-fueled confessionals from the women of the wealthy may represent the pinnacle of self-absorption, the inabiility to see beyond their reduced credit limits to the wider economic and social ills.

Best quote?

Another, though, seemed chagrined, after her boyfriend told her to “grow up” and stop “complaining about vacations and dinner” since he had to “fire 20 people by the end of the week.”

Yikes. The girls seem mostly concerned, however, with discussing what they did or did not sign up for.

Despite the seemingly endless stream of disparaging remarks and shaking heads, some of the appeal of dating a banker remains.

“It’s not even about a $200 dinner,” Ms. Petrus said. “It’s that he’s an alpha male, he’s aggressive, he’s a go-getter, he doesn’t take no for an answer, he’s confident, people respect him and that creates the whole mystique of who he is.”

And now he's altogether human. I guess some people forget that we all are?

End sabbatical... at deadline

Reading and writing take time; I was out on patrol with the Department of Public Safety this weekend (more on that to come).

In the meantime, one of my life goals edges closer to fulfillment (generating awareness of the impending zombie threat), with the impending publication of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Revised opening line: "It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

Indeed. Now, if only if I can avoid parentheses for the rest of this post...

(Success! Oh...)