By George Soros
Judy Woodruff: You write in your new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, that 'we are in the midst of a financial crisis the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression.' Was this crisis avoidable?
By Sanford Schwartz
Frida Kahlo
an exhibition at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, October 27, 2007–January 20, 2008; the Philadelphia Museum of Art, February 20–May 18, 2008; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, June 16–September 28, 2008.
Frida Kahlo was an ironic and devilish person, and so she might be intrigued by the thought that, for this writer, at least, her finest single work is in an outward respect her least typical. Kahlo is known, of course, for her many unsparing self-portraits, images where she can confront us with tears on her cheeks or exhibit herself as a bedridden patient or victim. They present a woman who, facing us as well with her distinctive and unforgettable dark, unbroken, single eyebrow and clear suggestion of a mustache, and often wearing clothes or accompanied by details that are redolent of her native Mexico, exudes a smoldering fury--an expressionist tension that, until recent decades, was rarely encountered in the work of women artists.
If the exit polls (and the pre-election polls) are accurate, Hillary Clinton is set to win West Virginia by roughly a 2 to 1 margin over Barack Obama. Oregon, next Tuesday, favors Obama. But Kentucky, which votes the same day, seems likely to yield a similar margin for Sen. Clinton. So what is it about these two states that makes them so favorable to Hillary Clinton?
There's been a lot of talk in this campaign about Barack Obama's problem with working class white voters or rural voters. But these claims are both inaccurate because they are incomplete. You can look at states like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states and see the different numbers and they are all explained by one basic fact. Obama's problem isn't with white working class voters or rural voters. It's Appalachia. That explains why Obama had a difficult time in Ohio and Pennsylvania and why he's getting crushed in West Virginia and Kentucky.
If it were just a matter of rural voters or the white working class, the pattern would show up in other regions. But by and large it does not.
In so many words, Pennsylvania and Ohio have big chunks of Appalachia within their borders. But those regions are heavily offset by non-Appalachian sections that are cultural and demographically distinct. West Virginia is 100% Appalachian. If you look at southeastern Ohio or the middle chunk of Pennsylvania, Obama did about the same as he's doing tonight in West Virginia.
Below is a map of the Appalachian counties stretching from New York down into Mississippi. Below that is a map of counties that Hillary Clinton has won by more than 65%. As you can see match up quite closely -- the grey gaps are Kentucky and West Virginia which hadn't voted yet.
So what is it about this region?
Let me offer a series of overlapping explanations. First, some basic demographics. It's widely accepted that Hillary Clinton does better with older voters, less educated voters and white voters. These demographics perfectly match West Virginia -- and, more loosely, the entire Appalachian region. A few key points from tonight's exit polls demonstrate the point: 4 out of 10 voters were over 60 years of age. 7 out of 10 lacked a college degree -- the highest proportion of any electorate in the country. And 95% of the electorate was white.
Basically you have a state that is made up almost exclusively of Clinton's voters. But there's a deeper historical explanation that we have to apply as well -- one nicely illustrated by the origins of West Virginia itself.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, in the middle Atlantic and particularly in the Southern states, there was a long-standing cleavage between the coastal and 'piedmont' regions on the one hand and the upcountry areas to the west on the other. It's really the coastal lowlands and the Appalachian districts. On the other side of the Appalachian mountain range the pattern is flipped, with the Appalachians in the east and the lowlands in the west.
These regions were settled disproportionately by Scots-Irish immigrants who pushed into the hill country to the west in part because that's where the affordable land was but also because they wanted to get away from the more stratified and inegalitarian society of the east which was built by English settlers and their African slaves. Crucially, slavery never really took root in these areas. And this is why during the Civil War, Unionism (as in support for the federal union and opposition to the treason of secession) ran strong through the Appalachian upcountry, even into Deep South states like Alabama and Mississippi.
As I alluded to earlier, this was the origin of West Virginia, which was originally the westernmost part of Virginia. The anti-slavery, anti-slaveholding upcountry seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union after Virginia seceded from the Union. Each of these regions was fiercely anti-Slavery. And most ended up raising regiments that fought in the Union Army. But they were as anti-slave as they were anti-slavery, both of which they viewed as the lynchpins of the aristocratic and inegalitarian society they loathed. It was a society that was both more violent and more self-reliant.
This is history. But it shapes the region. It's overwhelmingly white, economically underdeveloped (another legacy of the pre-civil war pattern) and arguably because of that underdevelopment has very low education rates and disproportionately old populations.
For all these reasons, if you're familiar with the history, it's really no surprise that Barack Obama would have a very hard time running in this region.
Hillary is "the Al Sharpton of white people"? So says Chris Matthews:
He actually returned to this notion a few minutes later with another guest.
Yahoo's announcement of its Internet Location Platform will be of great interest to web developers and programmers interested in geolocating data, but completely abstruse to everyone else. The platform uses something called Where on Earth ID (WOEID), a numerical tag...
My two favorite kinds of phone calls to get at work are: a) new clients referred by old clients, and b) old clients coming back for more work. Either of those are a sign of good service.
So when Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, one of my all-time favorite clients (and yes, YOU are the other one), called for a home page refresh we were extremely happy to work with them again.
The first incarnation of the page featured great big photos of Walt and Kara and did a great job of establishing the site. But, ultimately, the site needed to get more active to keep up with the news cycles. We went for a mix of blog and prominent features. More of a blog/magazine hybrid, or a blogazine, if you will.
Take a look and/or read Kara’s post about it.
Beyond the conference blog, several geobloggers are filing reports from Where 2.0. Here's a sampling: All Points Blog: Getting Warmed Up for Where 2.0; Where 2.0 Monday. Google Earth Blog: Day One. RenaLId: Day 1, Day 2 -- Morning Sessions...
'An idea to shut down portions of major city streets on Sunday mornings and open them for pedestrian, bicyclists and other exercisers has drawn the interest of Mayor Gavin Newsom.'
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by stamen to sanfrancisco tenderloin bicycle street - more about this bookmark...
It’s not quite the same as Ricky the Special-Needs Monkey (it’s more awful), but it’s the little details that really struck me as making this one special:
Police to meet with Cumberland County DA about puppy’s death
On Tuesday, Laurie Caiazzo and her 11-year-old daughter were walking the Pomeranian puppy on Burnham Road.
[You know what happens here.]
The female pit bull, named Menace, was under a confinement order[.]
“That dog, in particular, had a habit of running at large,” Creps said. “Its mannerism, charging at people — people were afraid to be in their yards.”
Henry Blodget projects that Google’s search revenue will surpass Microsoft’s Windows revenue next year.
read more about the announcement, with some fun examples [via]
Beloved WNBC anchor Sue Simmons was doing a promo during the 10 p.m. hour for the 11 p.m. news broadcast, when she went from describing a story about food prices going up and the weight of food products going down to saying "What the fuck are you doing?!" (See video above.) When the 11 p.m. broadcast rolled around, there was no mention of the mishap until after the lead stories were out of the way and then Simmons faced the camera:
"We need to acknowledge an unfortunate mistake that i made in one of the teases we bring to you before this program. While we were live, just after 10 o'clock, I said a word that many people find offensive. I'm truly sorry it was a mistake on my part and I sincerely apologize."WNBC did not have comment for the Daily News, and the Post says it's unclear who Simmons was screaming at. Three years ago, reporter Arthur Chi'en was fired from WCBS 2 after he asked two men--one Opie & Anthony intern and one Howard Stern flunky--who were harassing him, "What the fuck's your problem, man?" (See the video after the jump.)Chi'en did not realize he was on air, but WCBS 2 still fired him. A year later, an arbitrator found the station acted wrongly, saying Chi'en should have been reprimanded instead, pointed out "the evidence reveals that Mr. Chi'en did not intend for his words to be heard on-air, that this was a singular incident in which the word 'fuck' was used outside any sexual context, that the Station did not receive a single complaint about the incident."
More hilarious moments in Sue Simmons' on-air WNBC history:
Falling out of a chair
Her Groundhog impression:
Pictured: Jon Crow entering Union Hall; from surveillance video.Before the big meeting tomorrow at Borough Hall, the Brooklyn Paper weighs in on the great Union Hall debate of Aught Eight. Recently some neighbors, led by Jon Crow, rallied together to stop the renewal of the establishment's liquor license at the end of the month; one neighbor, who has since moved, told us, "This place had a serious impact on my life, on my wife's health, and threatened the health and well-being of my child. No one's fun is worth that, to me."
Last week at the CB6 meeting, comedian and Park Slope resident Eugene Mirman spoke in favor of the venue, and he wasn't the only one. However, the anti-Union Hall folk took over the room and turned to heckling and name-calling tactics. Still, CB6 voted in their favor.
Today The Brooklyn Paper reports on the controversy, which now involves some more ugliness! There are currently charges that one of the bar’s competitors, and CB6 seat holder, has a conflict of interest; Lou Sones is the owner of the Brazen Head bar which is down the block from Union Hall's sister bar Floyd.
“The committee member who made the motion and spoke most aggressively in favor of it is a direct competitor to Union Hall’s sister bar [Floyd, on Atlantic Avenue],” a board member wrote to CB6 in an e-mail shared with The Brooklyn Paper. “It looks like the community board is being used to further the narrow business interests of one of its members.”An anonymous board member, who voted in favor of Union Hall, is concerned that the neighbors have exaggerated their complaints; something that is backed up by video! Watch it here. Jon Crow is caught on the surveillance camera entering the bar, after which he called 911 to complain that it was over-capacity when it clearly wasn't. The FDNY later reported Crow to the fire marshal for filing a false report.Tomorrow night the saga continues, as the two sides meet again. Pick a team and head over to Borough Hall (209 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn) at 6:30 p.m. to show your support.
Would you vote for someone older than your food? As the Things Younger Than McCain blog points out, Cobb salad, Spam and McDonald's were all born after the septuagenarian Republican presidential hopeful. Most baffling on the list is the chocolate-chip cookie. Seriously? Dinos didn't dunk them in milk after watching Eve eat one? When McCain was one, the Toll House Cookie recipe first appeared in Ruth Wakefield's cookbook.
Here's a few other food-related items we came up with, all younger than McCain: Cheerios, M&Ms, Ranch dressing, Denny's, In-N-Out Burger and the frappuccino.
Doug Dyment reveals his secrets to packing light for trips.
Dyment has two big tricks for packing a bag correctly: Don't let any space go unused, and wrap your clothes in bundles.
"If you're packing a pair of running shoes, say, don't forget there's a lot of space inside those shoes that you can use to pack stuff," he says.
When it comes to clothing, Dyment says travelers who fold items individually, put them in a stack and force them in the suitcase are making a huge mistake.
More info here, including a diagram of how to bundle wrap your clothes to save space.
(link)
Not dumplings made out of penguins; dumplings that look like penguins! Wendy ate these cute penguin dumplings at Super Star Restaurant in Hong Kong.
Related
Photo of the Day: Little Dumpling
Photo of the Day: Giant Soup Dumpling
Photo of the Day: Soup Dumpling In Spoon
If you draw a line from Shinro Ohtake to Joseph Cornell, and another from Ed Fella to William Harnett, you will find yourself at a monumental, unavoidable intersection. At this great pinnacle sits Robert Rauschenberg, who died yesterday at the age of 82.
I would have liked to have known him. His sincere appreciation for the pedestrian, which energized modern art, ultimately came to inform a major theme in modern typography as well. “I really feel sorry,” he once said, “for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly.” This sentiment applies equally to the once-maligned universe of vernacular lettering; how many of our typefaces born of humble origins would have happened without Rauschenberg?
Most especially, I think I would have enjoyed his sense of humor. His famously Erased de Kooning Drawing merely hinted at the wickedness in store: the obituary in today’s Times describes a fine exchange with fellow troublemaker John Cage. Once, while staying at Cage’s apartment,
"[Rauschenberg] decided he would touch up the painting Cage had acquired, as a kind of thank you, painting it all-black, being in the midst of his new, all-black period. When Cage returned, he was not amused.”Maybe this was a prank born of the same exuberance that inspired his earlier work, with its bicycle tires and taxidermied eagles, or maybe it was a concise way of unseating a highflown comrade’s hypocrisy with a couple of merry brushstrokes. (It was probably a little of both, which makes it all the more delightful.) Whatever it was, I’m glad that it nourished the decades of work to follow. —JH
A short list of items lost in taxi cabs and how they were returned.
Thierry Belisha and Haimy Mann, jewelers from Montreal, left a suitcase full of diamonds and other gems in the back of a cab they took to La Guardia Airport after a show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Mr. Belisha, an Orthodox Jew, called several rabbi friends in Israel and asked them to pray for him, prayers that were answered when Hossam Abdalla, a Muslim cabdriver, found Mr. Belisha's business card in the trunk and returned the suitcase (with all the gems).
The list is a sidebar to the story about a cabbie's return of a $4 million Stradivarius to its owner and subsequent concert performed in the Newark airport taxi holding area, a delightful piece of reporting.
(link)But despite the setting -- or maybe because of it -- Mr. Quint's audience seemed particularly moved by his gesture. "I like that he came here," Ebenezer Sarpeh, 46, said, in the accent of his native Ghana. "And, yeah, the music, I like it." It was Mr. Sarpeh who burst into spontaneous applause on several occasions and started yelling "magic fingers" during one particularly deft moment. Later, he took a turn in front of the stage and his fellow cabdrivers laughed and cheered while he shimmied and moonwalked, the Newark Taxi Cab Association's answer to Justin Timberlake.
Cookies, jam-filled biscuit, and cupcakes from Babycakes.
Yesterday, Restaurant Girl Danyelle Freeman posted her list of the best Vegan Dessert Spots in New York City. We are well aware that for most people the words "Vegan" and "dessert" and "delicious" are words that when spoken together don't normally evoke a pavlovian response, but that being said we think there are a few vegan sweets in the city that could convert even the most hard core butter and egg lovers. Two of our favorites made Danyelle's list, but one we were sad to see left off. Birdbath-Build a Green Bakery: I think Cookie Monster put it best when he said, "Me want cookie! Me eat cookie! Omm nom nom nom!" and that's exactly how we feel about the Green Bakery's over-sized vegan cookies. Restaurant Girl was right to mention the oatmeal raisin cookie, which along with the chocolate chip are two of our favorite all-around cookies in the city. It's probably worth mentioning that the banana-sesame-agave cake won New York Magazine's "Best Vegan Treat 2008" but we found it a little too healthy tasting for our liking. 223 1st Avenue, New York NY 10003; 646-722-6565; buildagreenbakery.com Teany: The triple chocolate brownie at Teany, Moby's vegetarian cafe on the lower east side, is totally decadent, as is their chocolate peanut butter mousse cake (both sourced from Vegan Treats). Or, you could go for their "afternoon" tea special (it is actually available all day) which includes a pot of tea, two kinds of tea sandwiches, and a scone of the day, or cupcake or cookie (both vegan). 90 Rivington Street, New York NY 10002; 212-475-9190; teany.com Babycakes: We were bummed to see that Babycakes didn't make the list, a heaven on earth for folks with gluten, dairy, casein and egg allergies—or people like me who like to partake in sweet indulgences with less of the guilt and fat. I know it doesn't sound delicious, but the spelt chocolate cupcake totally is. The biggest surprise? The biscuit with jam is a mighty fine stand-in for the traditional butterific southern biscuit. Other worthy bites: brownie and chocolate chip cookie 248 Broome Street, New York NY 10002; 212-677-5047; babycakesnyc.com
A dream longtime coming: the ability to use your phone's camera to scan barcodes and then scrape all kinds of APIs to deliver data about the product. Be sure and watch the video demo.
It's interesting to me that the APIs he scrapes for data aren't Google's. I was shocked to find out that Google's replacement for their excellent Search API was a very light-weight AJAX search widget last month. I am hoping Google releases the real Search API at their developer conference this month.
thnx Brian White.
Tomorrow's episode of Top Chef centers on healthy eating. Cheftestants must re-invent the salad for the quickfire, turn an unhealthy meal healthy for the EC, and season 2 alum and rep for diabetes and healthy eating everywhere, Sam Talbot, guest judges. But from the above clip, it looks like the more interesting theme at play is sabotage! Will Lisa go home for her screwed up rice, and what are Dale and Andrew trying to talk their way out of? We'll know tomorrow.
· All Top Chef Coverage [~E~]
Today the temperature in San Francisco will reach 75 degrees, which means it’s warm enough outside to wear short sleeves. In celebration of this (and also because warm weather makes us want to SLASH things) we are reducing the price of many of our fine wearables to just 10 DOLLARS!
Get your clever t-shirt soon, at these prices they’ll be going like hot cakes*.
*Or something else that sells out very quickly.
Want to play around with a site already using Google’s Friend Connect? Head over to BibleApps running on Joyent Accelerators. The “Sign In” infrastructure is part of the gadgets available from Google Friend Connect. God bless them.
With Hillary Clinton simultaneously expected to win big today in West Virginia but lose overall for the nomination, the campaign has sent out a memo insisting that Barack Obama shouldn't be allowed to set low expectations here.
"Given the attempts by our opponent and some in the media to declare this race over, any significant increase in voter turnout, coupled with a decisive Clinton victory, would send a strong message that Democrats remain excited and energized by Hillary's candidacy."
Full memo after the jump.
To: Interested Parties
From: Clinton Campaign
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Re: Why West Virginia Matters
With a record turnout expected in today's primary, West Virginia Democrats will make clear who they believe is the strongest candidate to take on Sen. McCain in the Fall.
The Mountain State is used to picking winners. Every nominee has carried the state's primary since 1976, and no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916.
Democrats carried West Virginia in 1992 and 1996, but lost the state--and the White House--in 2000 and 2004. Hillary has predicted victory against Sen. McCain in West Virginia based on the strength of her economic message.
Given the attempts by our opponent and some in the media to declare this race over, any significant increase in voter turnout, coupled with a decisive Clinton victory, would send a strong message that Democrats remain excited and energized by Hillary's candidacy.
In the face of grim poll numbers, the Obama campaign has attempted to dismiss today's outcome despite the fact that Sen. Obama has outspent us on advertising, has more staff in the state, and more than double the number of offices.
He has also benefited from the support of the most high-profile endorsers in West Virginia--Sen. Jay Rockefeller and Congressman Nick Rahall. By every measure, the Obama campaign has waged an aggressive campaign in the Mountain State.
Despite being the so-called "presumptive nominee" and benefiting from these advantages, Sen. Obama has been unable to close a significant gap in the polls.
Sen. Clinton has already won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan. With a win in West Virginia, Sen. Clinton will have once again proven her greater ability to win in the key swing states.
Fashion photo retouching (i.e. high-brow Photoshopping) gets the New Yorker treatment with this story on retoucher Pascal Dangin, one of the best in the business.
In the March issue of Vogue Dangin tweaked a hundred and forty-four images: a hundred and seven advertisements (Estée Lauder, Gucci, Dior, etc.), thirty-six fashion pictures, and the cover, featuring Drew Barrymore. To keep track of his clients, he assigns three-letter rubrics, like airport codes. Click on the current-jobs menu on his computer: AFR (Air France), AMX (American Express), BAL (Balenciaga), DSN (Disney), LUV (Louis Vuitton), TFY (Tiffany & Co.), VIC (Victoria's Secret).
The article touches too briefly on the tension between reality and what ends up in the magazines and advertisements. As Errol Morris points out on his photography blog, it is often difficult to find truth in even the most vérité of photographs. Even so, the truth seems to be completely absent from Madonna's recent photo spread in Vanity Fair that was retouched by Dangin, especially this one in which a 50-year-old Madonna looks like a recent college graduate who's never lifted a weight in her life.
The uncanny valley comes into play here, which we usually think of in terms of robots, cartoon characters, and other pseudo anthropomorphic characters attempting and failing to look sufficiently human and therefore appearing creepy and scary. With an increasing amount of photo retouching, postproduction in film, plastic surgery, and increasingly effective makeup & skin care products, we're being bombarded with a growing amount of imagery featuring people who don't appear naturally human. People who appear often in media (film & tv stars, models, cable news anchors & reporters, miscellaneous celebrities, etc.) are creeping down into the uncanny valley to meet up with characters from The Polar Express. I don't know about you but a middle-aged Madonna made to look 24 gives me the heebie-jeebies. Perhaps the familar uncanny valley graph needs revision:
Rober Rauschenberg died last night. He was 82.
“I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”As an awkward immigrant kid growing up in the 80’s I was obsessed with “American-ness” and the ultimately stupid idea that discovering this American-ness would lead to “belonging.”
Discovering the work of Robert Rauschenberg, among others, made me understand that difference and not belonging, or even better—rejection!—were the most American traits of all. And that attempting, and failing, on a larger scale was far more exciting than succeeding on a small one.
Thanks for that, and rest in peace.
Filed under: Humor, UNIX / BSD
Today in 1983, "Beat It" by Michael Jackson may have topped the charts, but a slight bug in the *dir() library was found only a few days ago by OpenBSD developer Mark Balmer (no rela -- oh, wait). OS News has the entire amusing tale of the bug in BSD (the UNIX foundation of Mac OS X) that's been alive and kicking for nearly 25 years. Balmer contacted Marshall Kirk McKusick, the original developer of the *dir() library, who confirmed the error.
Thankfully, the fix was simple, but Balmer kidded, "[s]orry that it took us almost 25 years to fix it."
Thanks, Cameron!
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
Carville: "I still hear some dogs barking. I'm for Senator Clinton, but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee. As soon as I determine when that is, I'll send him a check."
Every time I worry that we are, in fact, in the end times (trying to remember if those wackaloons have bred their red heifer yet, and then beginning, ridiculously, to wonder what exactly would be the best thing to wear to the Apocalypse -- certainly it would need a lot of pockets, and of course if you are facing the Apocalypse surely you wouldn't care about eventual lung cancer, but could use asbestos cloth ... and would red be too matchy-matchy?) I remember that, even if we are rapidly approaching the time of Peak Everything; there are consolations; even if the world is running down, we can make the best of what's still around.
Like, for instance, the Internets. Which lets me, with the click of several buttons, browse through an exhibit from the Met back in 2002 -- Blithe Spirit: The Windsor Set, and see the dresses of another time when some had it that there was no use planning for the next year, much less the next decade; a time when they were going to party like it's 1939.
It always surprises me that mere electrons can manage to carry such treasures to me through wires and waves; treasures nearly as ephemeral as those electrons. How improbable, how ridiculous! What petite main in Vionnet's studio would believe it, if she were told that some American woman would, seventy years in the future, look at this dress--basically over the telephone? She'd stick you with a pin, and tell you to stop wasting her time. The woman for whom this dress was made would snort -- she'd believe that in a year, maybe two, her dress would be hopelessly out of style, and not worth anyone's attention.
This dress is black silk satin and black silk net, with sequins. (A dress made of wet toilet paper would probably be less fragile.) And yet -- it's still here. Its maker is gone; its wearer is gone; every man who guided it through a foxtrot, long gone: but it's still here. Still here, and since it's in a museum, safe and protected from everything from excess humidity to violent video games, likely to continue to be here, and through various generosities and some very clever engineering, we can up our brass periscopes outside our daily concerns and just, for a moment, look at it.
It might be taken (black birds, so ill-omened!) as a memento mori, but it might also be taken as kind of defiant monument: if something so delicate could abide through such terrible history, why shouldn't we? I'd like to call this a reverse Ozymandias; no "look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" but instead, a quiet invitation to rejoice.
Mule Design is hiring!
- Talking Nixonland (Books)
