William Kristol changes his tune after the election

Some conservative commentators had already swung to Obama before the election, but not so William Kristol. Unlike William Safire whose conservative columns I found rewarding to read, Kristol struck me as the mouthpiece of Dick Chenney. His transformation for this reason is all the more stunning. Pollster have long demonstrated that after an election suddenly more people claim that they have voted for the winner than is mathematically possible. Kristol did not vote for Obama, but he sure seems to be pulled by the same psychological forces that make us want to be on the side of the winner. More...

From the Land of Lincoln: Mr. Obama goes to Washington

The following text is President-elect Barack Obama’s letter published in Illinois newspapers Sunday, when he officially resigned from the Senate:

Today, I am ending one journey to begin another. After serving the people of Illinois in the United States Senate — one of the highest honors and privileges of my life — I am stepping down as senator to prepare for the responsibilities I will assume as our nation’s next president. But I will never forget, and will forever be grateful, to the men and women of this great state who made my life in public service possible. More...

The Transformation

Michael Soklove and Frank Rich of the New York Times analyze how Obama achieved his victory.

THE NATION: The Transformation By MICHAEL SOKOLOVE (NY Times)
Early on Election Day morning in the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown, Pa., Joe Sinitski, 48, stood in a long line inside a school gymnasium, inching his way toward three blue-curtained voting machines. He wore jeans, a sweatshirt and a National Rifle Association baseball cap. He said he would vote for Barack Obama, a choice that some months earlier he could not have imagined. More...

We make and watch history: President Obama

At 8pm when the polls closed in California, I was glued in front of my TV screen watching Charles Gibson. Just like many of the other Obama supporters in Grant Park and everywhere around the country, tears rolled down my cheeks when Gibson announced: “We can report that Barak Obama will be the 44th president of the United States.” The cameras swing to Grant Park. People of all colors are cheering and crying. When Wall Street melted down a few weeks ago I said to myself that his was the biggest peaceful event in my lifetime. The election of Barak Obama is even bigger. People all around country realized that history is being made in front of their eyes. I have never experienced anything like this before. The world can look again to America as an inspiration. We are lucky.

ABC TV Declares Barak Obama President

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Obama's Grant Park Victory Speech

The Cliffhanger: Read this before the election is over

If you are not already on the edge of your seat, read this article before we know who is the next president.

How smart is the American voter?
The electorate as a whole may be wiser and more rational than any individual.
By Larry M. Bartels (LA Times)

One of the bestselling books of the 2008 election season has been "Just How Stupid Are We?" by popular historian Rick Shenkman. It presents a familiar collection of bleak results from opinion surveys documenting the many things most Americans don't know about politics, government and history. "Public ignorance," Shenkman concludes, is "the most obvious cause" of "the foolishness that marks so much of American politics." But is that really true? More...

Carl Rove False Predictions

I wonder how long Carl Rove can continue peddling his "wisdom." Frank Rich reports in the NYTimes:

Once Obama wrested the nomination from Clinton by surpassing her in organization, cash and black votes, he was still often seen as too wimpy to take on the Republicans. This prognosis was codified by Karl Rove, whose punditry for The Wall Street Journal and Newsweek has been second only to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as a reliable source of laughs this year. Rove called Obama “lazy,” and over the summer he predicted that his fund-raising had peaked in February and that he’d have a “serious problem” winning over Hispanics. Well, Obama was lazy like a fox, and is leading John McCain among Hispanics by 2 to 1. Obama has also pulled ahead among white women despite the widespread predictions that he’d never bring furious Hillary supporters into the fold.

Read full story "Guess who is coming to dinner"

Blame game: GOP forms circular firing squad

If McCain comes back to win this election, it will be the story of the year. It seems like the people with the McCain campaign don't believe in victory anymore.

Report by: Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen and John F. Harris (Politico.com)

With despair rising even among many of John McCain’s own advisors, influential Republicans inside and outside his campaign are engaged in an intense round of blame-casting and rear-covering—-much of it virtually conceding that an Election Day rout is likely. A McCain interview published Thursday in the Washington Times sparked the latest and most nasty round of Washington finger-pointing, with senior GOP hands close to President Bush and top congressional aides denouncing the candidate for what they said was an unfocused message and poorly executed campaign.

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Reactions to the Third Presidential Debate

Once again the most useful piece of evaluation of the debate comes from the focus group run for Time.com. Amy Sullivan reports:

In politics it is generally not considered a good sign when voters are laughing at you, not with you. And by the end of the third and last presidential debate, the undecided voters who had gathered in Denver for Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s focus group were “audibly snickering” at John McCain’s grimaces, eye-bulging, and repeated references to “Joe the Plumber.” More...

OBAMA WINS 2ND DEBATE

McCain has 27 days to find a better way to take on his opponent or he'll be calling him Mr. President.

--John Dickerson in Slate.com

Click on more to read the analysis of how undecided voters reacted to the debate. More...

Missed the entire campaign? No problem. Slate sums in up in 4 min

The State of the Presidential Race

It is to early to open up the champaign bottles, but at the least the trends is going into the right direction. I am going to buy a good bottle for November 4 and let's hope the final numbers allow me to drink it.

Posted by: Peter on Oct 04, 08 | 5:55 pm | Profile [0] comments (101 views) | 

Reactions to the first Presidential Debate

I thought that McCain was very weak during the Republican convention. He exceeded my expectation today. He was quite good in separating himself from Bush. I don't agree with McCain and I want Obama to win the presidency. But today's debate was a tie in my view. Once again MCain proved that he can speak intelligently about foreign policy but simply recycles Ronald Reagan statement on the economy. The most interesting summary of reaction to the debate was published on Time.com. More...

John McCain: Drama Queen

I don't remember a time in my life time were a non-violent event caused so dramatic a situation as the financial crisis that is unfolding in the U.S. right now. Mickey Kaus captures well on Slate.com the fickleness of John McCain:

Drama Queen: No convention today! ... OK, it's on! ... The economy's sound... No, wait, it's going to fall apart unless I go to Washington tomorrow! ... We need a commission! ... We need to fire somebody! ... Get me Andrew Cuomo! ... I want ten more debates! ... But let's postpone the one we've scheduled! ... Do you get the impression a McCain presidency would be a bit exhausting? ...

JUICY BITS: Cheney Unchained

The best details from Barton Gellman's new book on the vice president.

By Juliet Lapidos (Slate.com)

It's often said on late-night TV that given Dick Cheney's cardiovascular problems, George W. Bush is just a heartbeat away from the presidency. In his new book, Angler, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barton Gellman suggests that this joke contains more than just a grain of truth. By immersing himself in details about national security and numerous other hot-button issues that the president was too lazy or too incurious to study, Cheney often managed to position himself as the real "decider." More...

John Dickerson's Five Greatest Political Ads

Meet the real Sarah Palin

One of the reason John F. Kennedy was so popular were his great looks. I can understand why evangelical Republicans are ecstatic about the nomination of Palin. But why she is popular in the entire Republican party cannot be explained by her record. I suspect her good looks and her outgoing personality are an important factor. But now the vetting of Sarah Palin has started in earnest. The New York Times sent a number of reporters to Alaska to find out about her history as a mayor and governor. (Click on "More" to read the story "In Office, Palin Hired Friends and Hit Critics.")The American people have re-elected George Bush after it was very clear what kind of administration he was running. It will be interesting to see whether they will elect someone to be a heartbeat away from the presidency who has so similar instincts as George Bush junior. More...

Hurrican Ike Makes Gigantic Waves

Image of Hurricane Ike on September 10, 2008, downlinked by the crew of the International Space Station, flying 220 statute miles above Earth.

Posted by: Peter on Sep 12, 08 | 10:03 pm | Profile [0] comments (146 views) | 

Alaska Lawmakers to Subpoena Palin's Husband

The only question is whether Palin's husband will be called to testify before the November election or afterwards. Alasaka will get more attention in the next seven weeks than anytime in its history.

By Gene Johnson (Associated Press)
ANCHORAGE, Sept. 12 -- Alaska lawmakers voted Friday to subpoena the husband of Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, after an investigator called Todd Palin "a central figure" regarding the governor's dismissal of the state's director of public safety.
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Palin overshadows McCain

I watched large portion of Sarah Palin's speech last week while waiting at the airport for my delayed plane. The first couple of minutes after I tuned in she seemed a bit wooden. But then she loosened up and launched into the good lines crafted by very skilled speech writers. The Republicans want to pull off what Bush junior did four years ago: to convince the voting public they would be more secure under him than under the Democratic candidate, which of course was a complete fantasy. Palin's performance was universally hailed as a great performance and a new media star was born and McCain weak speech made him into the sideshow. After Palin's speech, McCain came out onto the stage. I had never seen his fully body live. His upper body was very stiff, and he looked a bit like a Robot waving his hands, perhaps a consequence of his injuries in Vietnam. Palin's youth made him look ever older. As Frank Rich points out in the article below she offers a great distraction from the weakness of John McCain as the Republican presidential nominee. It is too early to tell how she will play out over the next 2 months. Eight years ago I was a fan of McCain. The evidence starts to get stronger by the day that he is temperamentally not fit to be president. More...

The Story Behind Palin's Selection for VP

Having search the internet, it is not clear to me that Sarah Palin has received a full vetting. McCain is making a big gamble. In two months we will know whether the move was brilliant or stupid. Here is the best background article on the nomination.

The story behind the Palin surprise
By: Jonathan Martin (Politico.com)

John McCain on Friday announced a running mate whom he met only six months ago and with whom he spoke just once on the phone about the position before offering it in person earlier this week.
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Obama gives an electrifying speech in Denver

What a finale! A few days ago after Hillary Clinton gave her magnificent speech, I worried that Obama speech would appear anticlimatic. But he outperformed everyone else at the Cconvention and reminded us why he is the person to lead America forward. Even readers of the Wall Street Journal agreed that he gave a fantastic speech. Click on "More" to see details of the reader poll.

You read watch or read the most highly watched convention speech on NYtimes.com.
You can see the introductory film preceding the speech on Youtube.com
and read Andrew Sullivan's reaction.
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Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and a Surprise Visitor on Stage of the DNC

This is the first time that I have watched more than a few minutes of the Democratic Convention. I am driven by the curiosity of a theatre critic: How is the event staged? What is the party doing to avoid disaster in November? Will Hillary or Bill be the spoilers there are rumored to be? If this is not the year to beat Republicans, when will there ever be a a chance again? I just watched Bill Clinton's speech. It was good but Hillary's speech yesterday was even stronger. Joe Biden's speech was very different. He took on John McCain the most and his style was very different. It was powerful stuff. Then came the surprise visitor: Barak Obama. Effortlessly he got he took control of the crowd after two masterful orators. Unlike the Republican commentator Peggy Noonan (click on more), I think the event tomorrow night in the stadium will be a big success. Obama has the magic touch. More...

Hillary Clinton Delivers Great Performance at the Democratic Convention

I just watched Hillary Clinton's speech. For me it was the best performance to date at the convention. The will be a tough act for Barak Obama to follow in two days.

Full text of her speech: I am honored to be here tonight. A proud mother. A proud Democrat. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama. My friends, it is time to take back the country we love. Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines.
This is a fight for the future. And it’s a fight we must win.
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High noon in duel for White House

Andrew Sullivan sums up what we can expect of the next weeks until the November election.

The phoney war is over as the US presidential candidates square up for the most compelling contest in a generation. The eagerly anticipated text message arrived on millions of mobile phones yesterday at 3am. With it, many Americans who had registered to be updated with details of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign will have been woken to the news that Joe Biden, the Delaware senator, will be his running mate on the Democratic party’s ticket. Many of them will have got the joke. In the brutal primaries, Hillary Clinton’s most effective ad showed a phone ringing at 3 am - and asked who Americans would trust to answer it in the Oval Office. In picking Biden at 3am, Obama was telling the world that he had chosen a No 2 able to take over in a crisis.
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Only in America

Is John McCain fit to be President?

While everyone was focusing on Obama's world tour last week, Frank Rich puts the spotlight on McCain and raises serious questions whether McCain is ability the see what the priorities of the day are.

How Obama Became Acting President

By FRANK RICH (NYT)
IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.
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Microphone Picks Up Private Conversation Between Obama and British Leader

If this is all I would ever say when I don't know that a microphone is recording me, I would be very happy. The relatively tame headline on ABC News "Microphone Picks Up Private Conversation Between Obama and British Leader on Need for Vacations and 'Thinking' Time" was dramatized by the Drudgereport to "BAM AND CAM: Private Obama Chat with Tory Leader Caught on Mic...'You should be on the beach... You need a break" and then picked up by newspapers around the world as if Obama had a Ronald Reagan moment (Reagan joked he had already given a command to send nuclear bombs to the Soviet Union]. Reading the Drudgereport headline I am thinking, "Oh, my God, Obama must be totally worn out." More...

The visions of Buckminster Fuller

Elizabeth Kolbert (New Yorker June 9, 2008) presents a wonderful portrait of Buckminster Fuller (yes, this a name of a person). My own imagination was fired up when I read some of Fuller's incredible ideas.


Annals of Innovation: Dymaxion Man

The U.S. Pavilion for the 1967 World’s Fair, in Montreal. The inventions that Fuller (in 1959, flying in a helicopter over Ohio) designed had a hallucinatory appeal.

One of Buckminster Fuller’s earliest inventions was a car shaped like a blimp. The car had three wheels—two up front, one in the back—and a periscope instead of a rear window. Owing to its unusual design, it could be maneuvered into a parking space nose first and could execute a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn so tightly that it would end up practically where it had started, facing the opposite direction. In Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the car was introduced in the summer of 1933, it caused such a sensation that gridlock followed, and anxious drivers implored Fuller to keep it off the streets at rush hour. More...

Watching the Supreme Court for 30 Years

LINDA GREENHOUSE covered the Supreme Court for the NY Times during the past 30 years. The review of her experience is a great read and a superb civics lesson.

2,691 Decisions

By LINDA GREENHOUSE (NY Times)
WASHINGTON — Sometime during the first of my nearly 30 years reporting on the Supreme Court, a distinct visual image of a Supreme Court term took hold in my mind and never let go. The nine-month term was a mountain. My job was to climb it.The slope was gentle when the term began, every first Monday in October; the court was busy choosing new cases and hearing arguments, but it was not yet ready to issue decisions. The upward path steepened in January and February, when grants of new cases, arguments and decisions all came at once, competing for attention. Spring brought a breather as the path flattened out again: all the arguments had been heard, and the decisions were sporadic. The steepest climb came, predictably, every June, with the final outpouring of opinions before the summer recess. And then it was over. I could look down from the mountaintop to see the term whole and clear, while off in the distance the next term loomed, another climb. More...

Collateral Damage When Small Men Become Political Leaders

Read this book review and be reminded why George Bush stepping down is going to be a big relief for America. [A day later: Frank Rich also reviews the book and comes to the conclusion that we may be in for an terrorists attack before long. Then all bets about the election are off]

THE DARK SIDE: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. By Jane Mayer: Doubleday. 392 pp. $27.50

With the appearance of this very fine book, Hillary Clinton can claim a belated vindication of sorts: A right-wing conspiracy does indeed exist, although she misapprehended its scope and nature. The conspiracy is not vast and does not consist of Clinton-haters. It is small, secretive and made up chiefly of lawyers contemptuous of the Constitution and the rule of law. More...

Where has Obama's Magic Gone?

The last couple of weeks my excitement about Obama's candidacy has cooled considerably. BOB HERBERT (NY Times) has articulated well what is bothering people like me. I wonder whether the fund-raising machine will work without a message that is one of change rather than putting together a convenience coalition. Obama has stumbled before and come back. From the beginning the question of Obama's candidacy was whether he would be a transformative president or not get anything done. The good news is that it is almost impossible to be worse than G. W.

Lurching With Abandon

In one of the numbers from “Fiddler on the Roof,” Tevye sings, with a mixture of emotions: “We haven’t got the man ... we had when we began.”

Back in January when Barack Obama pulled off his stunning win in the Iowa caucuses, and people were lining up in the cold and snow for hours just to get a glimpse of him, there was a wide and growing belief — encouraged to the max by the candidate — that something new in American politics had arrived.

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The Neural Buddhists

This is one of DAVID BROOKS'S best columns. He has done a lot of reading for you to be able to write about a revolution in our understanding of our brain and what this means for our view of the meaning of life. Enjoy.

In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists. To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident. More...

Picture of the Week: Chaiten volcano rain over Chaiten, Chile

Posted by: Peter on May 11, 08 | 3:53 am | Profile [0] comments (265 views) | 

David Brooks Explains the Reemergence of the Conservative Party in the UK

I had not followed British politics and until I read this column by David Brooks, I did not know why the Tory party won the local elections in Great Britain last week.

The Conservative Revival

For years, American and British politics were in sync. Reagan came in roughly the same time as Thatcher, and Clinton’s Third Way approach mirrored Blair’s. But the British conservatives never had a Gingrich revolution in the 1990s or the Bush victories thereafter. They got their losing in early, and, in the wilderness, they rethought modern conservatism while their American counterparts were clinging to power.

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It is definitely over for Hillary Clinton

It was an exciting day of politics. I stayed glued to news coming in over the internet. After Indiana had already been called for Clinton, it seemed like the voters of Gary might come out so strongly in favor of Obama that he might take the state after all. Contrary to reports that Hillary will fight on until the convention, I think she might drop out as early as tomorrow. Does she want to ruin her career in the senate. More...

Hillary Clinton, Fairy Princess

Timothy Noah on Slate.com walks you through the numbers why Hillary Clinton does not have a real shot to win the Democratic nomination. If she wins it in the end, Hillary Clinton will be a true princess and Timothy Noah will be transformed into an ugly frog, living unhappily ever after.


Can we please stop pretending she has a plausible chance to win the nomination?

"Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."
—former President Bill Clinton, Jan. 11, 2008. Clinton was criticizing Sen. Barack Obama's claim to have opposed the Iraq war more consistently than Hillary Clinton. This claim was, Clinton said, "the central argument for his campaign. 'It doesn't matter that I started running for president less than a year after I got to the Senate from the Illinois state senate. I am a great speaker, a charismatic figure, and I'm the only one who had the judgment to oppose this war from the beginning, always, always, always.' " More...

Behind every Animator lies an Actor

It did not occur to me until I read the obituary of Ollie Johnston, apparently one of Disney's finest animators, that behind every good animator lies a good actor.

Ollie Johnston, last of Disney's elite animators, died on April 14th, aged 95
IF YOU interviewed Ollie Johnston in the last years of his life, sooner or later he would start to change. The trim body, lean as a whippet's, would begin to prowl and strut, then round on you with an accusing, pointing arm, just like the evil prosecutor in “Toad of Toad Hall”. Or he would cock his head, gyrate it, fidget and twitch, for all the world like the rabbit Thumper as he explains to Bambi why he doesn't like clover greens. He would skip and stumble to play little Penny carrying a slithering cat in “The Rescuers”, or tilt stiffly from side to side like a waiter-penguin from “Mary Poppins”.

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What Does a President Really Do All Day?

This is a great reflection by Joel Achenbach (Washington Post) on the job of the president and how it has changed over the past 200 years. It makes you wonder. No one can really prepare for this job. My preferred candidate is still Barak Obama. But I recognize that we are all taking a leap of faith that our choice will be able to make the right decisions.

A simple and deceptively tricky question: What does a president do?

If you had to put together the Help Wanted ad for the position of chief executive, what would you write? Something like: "CEO needed to supervise 3 million employees. Must be at least 35, native-born, willing to work at home. Spectacular public failures likely." More...

Discovery Channel: I Love the World

Catholic Heaven & Hell: The Pope Visits America

I consider myself an honorary alumnus of the catholic church since as child I went to catholic mass, was asked to go to confession even though at the time a had nothing to confess, and served as an altar boy although I did not belong to catholic faith. Like any alumnus of an old successful institution, I like to receive updates on where the organization is going. As I have written before, the current Pope is an smart fellow and I was curious how he would handle his visit to America.
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The Pregnant Man

I wondered how is it possible. Has technology advanced so far that female organs and an embryo were implanted into a man's womb? See this mind-bending story from the Oprah Show on YouTube.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Two Girls Strolling By

When I was going for lunch today, two girls strolled by and one said to the other: “I have to figure out to how say to him graciously, ‘It’s over.’” The most expressive part about this statement was her face. The girl was relieved that she had figured out for herself that she needed to end the relationship. She had gained a sense of liberation. At the same time she still felt some tenderness towards the poor John who was going to lose his girlfriend for good. Did he have any inkling what was going to happen later in the day?

The Fall of Eliot Spitzer

Last week I was reminded again of the sage observations that real life generates stories that no fiction writer could ever imagine. Who would have thought that the prosecutor who went after prostitution rings would fall with lightening speed precisely because he was involved with the kind of ring in his previous role as attorney general of New York? To his credit he stepped down swiftly after his sky-high hypocrisy rendered him politically impotent. What made this sex scandal different the Lewinsky affair or senator Craig's airport arrest was that from beginning to end it only took 48 hours. Spitzer in my mind was even more reckless than Clinton. Clinton only jeopardized being an effective president while the Republicans were trying to use Lewinsky affair to throw people out of office. Clinton stayed and continued to be a high popular elder statesman until he momentarily became the bulldog for his wife's pre-presidential bid. But Spitzer threw-away his entire political career that might have led to the presidency for 22-year old hooker. Unlike many other politicians, he already had a beautiful wife. Why? Why are politicians often so reckless? N. R. Kleinfield of the NY Times provides some answers. More...

Stealing 11 days from history

It is a leap year again. I barely noticed it until I read this fascinating article.

A Great Leap Forward By CHRIS TURNEY

WHEN Frederic, the hero of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance," learns that his Feb. 29 birthday means that he is not 21 years old but 5, he figures he'll have to serve out his apprenticeship to the Pirate King for 60 more years, and swears to the love of his life that he will return in his 80s and marry her. Such are the tales that have always been told about today's date. But now we're in the 21st century, and time is measured according to oscillations of vaporized atoms of cesium-133. Why do we still need something as oddly quaint as leap year? More...

Meet the Renaissance Man: Benjamin Franklin

I had no idea how prolific a writer Ben Franlin was. Here you can read a short biography of one American Founding fathers and learn how to educate yourself to be a great writer.



Benjamin Franklin’s genius gave him no rest. A discontented man finds no easy chair. On April 4, 1757, he left Philadelphia by carriage, and reached New York just four days later, ready to sail for London. But one delay piled upon another, like so much ragged paper jamming a printing press, and he found himself stuck for more than two months. In all his fifty-one years, he could barely remember having “spent Time so uselessly.” (From childhood, Franklin, the son of a chandler, had toiled from dawn to dusk only to squander the tallow “reading the greatest Part of the Night.”) Waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough. More...

Can Mrs. Clinton Lose?

By PEGGY NOONAN (WSJ)
If Hillary Clinton loses, does she know how to lose? What will that be, if she loses? Will she just say, "I concede" and go on vacation at a friend's house on an island, and then go back to the Senate and wait? Is it possible she could be so normal? Politicians lose battles, it's part of what they do, win and lose. But she does not know how to lose. Can she lose with grace? But she does grace the way George W. Bush does nuance.She often talks about how tough she is. She has fought "the Republican attack machine" that has tried to "stop" her, "end" her, and she knows "how to fight them." She is preoccupied to an unusual degree with toughness. A man so preoccupied would seem weak. But a woman obsessed with how tough she is just may be lethal. More...

There is static above the dinner table many Democratic families

I did not realize just how deeply families across the country are divided over who should be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. Fortunately the air will clear within a few weeks.

In Democratic Families, Politics Makes for Estranged Bedfellows

By JODI KANTOR
Maria Shriver woke up Sunday morning and decided to surprise the audience at a rally for Senator Barack Obama in Los Angeles, materializing alongside Oprah Winfrey and telling the crowd she was there because she sought "an America that's about unity." But not the family kind. Ms. Shriver is a member of the Kennedy clan, and in the past week, her relatives have split over the Democratic race, publicizing their preferences on opinion pages and at campaign events.
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Henry Hertzberg on the Clintons vs. Obama

During the four or five weeks leading up to February 5th--"Tsunami Tuesday," when voters in states with half the nation's population participate in a not quite national primary--the emotional texture of the Democratic side of the Presidential campaign changed profoundly. For most of Year One of this insanely elongated process, the Democratic Party had been a peaceable kingdom. Its voters were proud of and pleased with the array of choices before them: proud of its diversity, pleased with its unity. More...

The Smell of Romantic Attraction

Different languages have come up with a way to express that the smell of other people has a profound effect how attracted we are to them. English talks about the "chemistry" that two people have. In German, you literally say "I cannot smell you" (Ich kann dich nicht riechen) to express that you don't like another person. The Economist reports on the latest developments in the science of smell and interpersonal attraction.

How to find a mate: The scent of a woman (and a man)


A new kind of dating agency relies on matching people by their body odour
ONE of life's little mysteries is why particular people fancy each other—or, rather, why they do not when on paper they ought to. One answer is that human consciousness, and thus human thought, is dominated by vision. Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, regardless of the other senses. However, as the multi-billion-dollar perfume industry attests, beauty is in the nose of the beholder, too. More...

How the Brain Makes Moral Judgments

STEVEN PINKER pulls together in the New York Times magazine evidence that suggests that the human brain is pre-wired for developing a moral instinct. The article is a bit long but well worth reading.

The Moral Instinct

Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, itÕs an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in ÒI Hate GatesÓ Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?

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Hillary's problem

Today I read for the first time in a major newspaper (the Washington Post) the key argument against Hilary Clinton's run for the presidency.


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The Next President of the United States

Barring a major terrorist attack on the United States, my money is on Obama. Elections are decided by the independents. They will vote for him rather than the Republican candidate because they want to be part of restoring American values. Here you can hear why Obama is going to be the frontrunner for the presidency in a few days.

How to make religious fanatics

The Economist reviews two interesting books that put Islamic fundamentalism in perspective.

Religion in Europe: The discovery of tolerance

A TYPICAL Protestant view of European religious history might go like this. In medieval times, the Roman Catholic church grew increasingly corrupt and impervious to criticism. Then came the Reformation, with its new breath of freedom and tolerance. After a brief fightback that culminated in the ghastly Thirty Years War in 1618-48, Europe moved smoothly towards the Enlightenment and today's ideal of secular tolerance. It was all quite unlike, for example, Islam and the horrors of the Ottoman empire.

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Artistic Pepptalk for Girls

--------------Girls-----
-----------are like apples-----
-------on trees. The best ones----
-----are at the top of the tree.----
---The boys don't want to reach---
--for the good ones because they--
-r afraid of falling and getting hurt.-
-Instead, they get the rotten apples-
from the ground that aren't as good,
but easy. So the apples up top think
something's wrong w/ them when in
-reality they're amazing. They just--
---have to wait for the right boy to
---- come along, the one who's--
----------- brave enough to----
---------------climb all--------
---------------the way-------
--------------to the top-------
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The latest recommenations for achieving an optimal diet

I have been improving my diet over the past five years. But the new scientific recommendations prompted me to re-evaluate my eating habits. I did not know that processed meet like salami is so bad for you while red meat properly cooked is healthy. Click on "More" to see what foods you should eat or avoid. More...

Are men and women different in how they chose their dates?

Ray Fisman filed this interesting report in Slate:When economists began broadly applying their theories of rational choice-making, love and marriage were among the first areas they colonized. Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker laid the foundations back in 1973 with his two-part article "A Theory of Marriage." Becker imagined society as an immense cocktail party with rational-minded daters searching for the most desirable partner who would have them. His analysis predicted a pattern of "positive assortative matching," where men and women of similar desirability would partner with one another. More...

A Short Primer on Conservatism for Liberals

David Brooks articulates the intellectual conservatism that will give any Democrat and Republican food for thought:

The Republican Collapse

Modern conservatism begins with Edmund Burke. What Burke articulated was not an ideology or a creed, but a disposition, a reverence for tradition, a suspicion of radical change. When conservatism came to America, it became creedal. Free market conservatives built a creed around freedom and capitalism. Religious conservatives built a creed around their conception of a transcendent order. Neoconservatives and others built a creed around the words of Lincoln and the founders.

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Jealous of the people at 15 Central Park West

It was always clear that me that with a lot of money New York City would be even a more spectacular place to live. I accepted with buddhist equanimity my low position in the money hierarchy until I read this review of the new building at 15 Central Park West. Should I have tried to become a rock star or a Wall Street Mogul so that I could have moved into this splendid building?

In an essay titled "The Plight of the Prosperous," published in 1950 in this magazine, Lewis Mumford dismissed the living accommodations of upscale New Yorkers as little better than slums. "I sometimes wonder what self-hypnosis has led the well-to-do citizens of New York, for the last seventy-five years, to accept the quarters that are offered them with the idea that they are doing well by themselves," he wrote. More...

Are you the next Buddha?

How would you ever know if you are the next Buddha? Or are you Christ, as in the second coming of Christ? Slate reflects on the difficulties of identifying the next Buddha.

The 100 Most Influential Americans of All Time

The Atlantic Monthly came up with this list:

1 Abraham Lincoln
He saved the Union, freed the slaves, and presided over America's second founding.

2 George Washington
He made the United States possible--not only by defeating a king, but by declining to become one himself. More...

Grandma, what are you doing naked in bed?

It is commonly held that old people are no longer interested in sex. Indeed, young children and grandparents are stereo-typed as sexless creatures. Now comes the first scientific study that investigates just how sexually active old people are. I am looking forward to a study of children under the age of ten. More...

Fantastic Picture Show with Music

Ingmar Bergman, Famed Film Director, Dies at 89

By MERVYN ROTHSTEIN (NY Times)
Ingmar Bergman, the “poet with the camera” who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said. Bergman was 89. Critics called Mr. Bergman one of the directors — the others being Federico Fellini and Akira Kurosawa — who dominated the world of serious film making in the second half of the 20th century.

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America, the land of limited opportunities?

New evidence suggests that old Europe provides more opportunities economic mobility than the U.S. Even Canada comes out ahead. Read this interesting article by Clive Crook.

Rags to Rags, Riches to Riches: Maybe it’s time to stop calling America the “land of opportunity.”

Opportunity is the crux of the American idea. Opportunity is what the New World has always represented: struggle, risk, self-determination, and the hope of spiritual and material progress. Even now, to new immigrants, that or something like it is the pull—and for them at least, it is no false promise. If you move to America, you move up, and this is true whether you are rafting across the Rio Grande or negotiating the hazards of the H1B visa program. British emigrants (I am one) are fond of Spain and the United States. They go to Spain to retire; they come here to rise to new challenges. This lure, barely diminished after more than three centuries, has ever been an incalculable source of national strength.
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Mrs. Queen goes to Washington

Queen Elizabeth is arriving in Washington in a few days. The state dinner at the White House is billed as the social event of Bush's presidency. George Tenet is not on the guest list. The press is full of stories about whether George Bush will be able to behave as one is supposed to in the presence of the Queen. What nobody seems to worry about is that the Queen might try to pay respect to the manners of her host country and smack George Bush in the face. "Georgie that's for Iraq."

The picture on the right is the Queen on her first visit to the U.S. in 1957. More...

News from the battle between Science and Religion

As readers of this web diary know, I love the