Wonklife

"Apple Operations International is registered in Cork, Ireland, but has “no physical presence at that..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:47:10 -0400

“Apple Operations International is registered in Cork, Ireland, but has “no physical presence at that or any other address,” according to the report. Indeed, the corporate entity has existed for 30 years and apparently never had a single employee. Of the three people on its board, all Apple employees, two live in California; 32 of its last 33 board meetings took place in Cupertino, and the Irish director participated in seven of them. Its assets are managed by a Nevada company, and held in bank accounts in New York.”

- How to make $30 billion and pay no corporate income tax, the Apple way

My problem with the Great Gatsby

Sun, 12 May 2013 13:09:44 -0400

Warning: This post contains spoilers from The Great Gatsby. On the other hand, the book is 88-years-old. Perhaps it’s time to get on that.

I can’t go quite as far as Kathryn Schulz. I don’t “despise” the Great Gatsby. I don’t mind Fitzgerald’s moralism. I’m comfortable with the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy being something of a black box. I love the writing and, for that matter most of the book. What I can’t stand is the finale.

The book’s denouement is a series of ever-more insane coincidences. Gatsby and Daisy hit a pedestrian. The pedestrian proves to be Tom’s mistress. Tom persuades her husband that Gatsby was driving the car. The husband kills Gatsby then kills himself.

That’s fine for fiction. Dark Knight Rises wasn’t very believable, either. But it’s a problem for a book with Something To Say. The end of the Great Gatsby doesn’t feel inevitable. It feels unlikely. And thus its lessons don’t mean much.

Reenter the world of the book. Gatsby and Daisy are driving home after the confrontation with Tom. Imagine Myrtle doesn’t run into the street. Gatsby and Daisy just arrive after an emotional, but otherwise uneventful, car ride. Perhaps Gatsby apologizes for trying to persuade Daisy to say she never loved Tom. Perhaps he doesn’t. Maybe Daisy waffles for a few days and leaves Tom and all ends happily for Gatsby. Maybe she doesn’t leave Tom, but Gatsby gets some closure and moves on with his life, luxuriating in being an insanely rich dude who throws great parties. Maybe he meets someone he ends up loving more than Daisy. Maybe he ends up with Daisy but then he goes to jail for bootlegging.

All of these endings are vastly likelier than the ending we actually get. And so the ending we get actually doesn’t tell us that much about America in 1925, or about the conflict between old and new money, or about the decadence of wealth. The book is held up as saying something universal. For me, the unbelievable coincidences that drive the ending means it can only ever say something specific. All things being equal, it’s better to avoid being in the car when your love runs over a pedestrian who happens to be the mistress of the guy you’re cuckolding. That’s good life advice, but rarely applicable.

The counterargument here is obvious: Plenty of other famed books rely on coincidence, or deus ex machinas, to reach their inevitable conclusion. But that’s precisely my problem with the Great Gatsby: Absent its ending, its conclusion is very different. The ending doesn’t repeat the book. It contradicts it.

As Nick Gillespie writes, most of the Great Gatsby perceptively sketches a moment in which new money, new immigrants, a new economy, and new social mores were overwhelming the old order. The old order triumphs in the book, but only with the help of authorial providence. Absent that car ride, Gatsby’s story might have proven a happy one. And 88-years-later, when the film is being made by a guy named Baz Luhrmann in a country run by a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, we know who really won, and it isn’t Tom. F. Scott Fitzgerald had it right, at least up until the end.

"For Gary Bass, a Princeton professor who has written about humanitarian intervention, the remarkable..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 12:37:25 -0400

“For Gary Bass, a Princeton professor who has written about humanitarian intervention, the remarkable thing about Clinton’s taking action in Bosnia was that he did it at all. Bass’s general rule is that every time a President sends troops to save lives overseas he risks political disaster; if he stays out, even in the face of calamity, there is little downside.”

- Dexter Filkins: What Should Obama Do About Syria? : The New Yorker

It’s not all bad news on guns. (via Chart of the day: Gun...

Tue, 07 May 2013 15:24:46 -0400

It’s not all bad news on guns. (via Chart of the day: Gun homicides are down 49 percent since 1993)

"There is a bias in medicine against talking to people and for cutting, scanning and chopping into..."

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 15:15:00 -0400

““There is a bias in medicine against talking to people and for cutting, scanning and chopping into them. If this was a pill or or a machine with these results it would be front-page news in the Wall Street Journal. If we could get these results for your grandmother, you’d say, ‘Of course I want that.’ But then you’d say, what are the risks? Does she need to have chemotherapy? Does she need to be put in a scanner? Is it a surgery? And you’d say, no, you just have to have a nurse come visit her every week.””

- If this was a pill, you’d do anything to get it

I can’t stop thinking about my meal this morning at Big Star in Chicago. That is all.

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:02:19 -0400

I can’t stop thinking about my meal this morning at Big Star in Chicago. That is all.

Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley's Wannabe Obama

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:00:49 -0400

Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley's Wannabe Obama:

In 2003, having finished law school and moved to the Bay Area, Khanna, then 26, launched an impromptu challenge to the beloved local congressman, the late Tom Lantos, to protest the then 11-term Democrat’s support for the Iraq War. “It was completely unstrategic and probably the most idealistic thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he says. Khanna lost the race but acquired a mentor.

Shrugging off Atlas

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:29:02 -0400

Shrugging off Atlas:

Now, I can correct in five minutes the 9.5 percent per year number that Eberstadt headlines down to the 1.2 percent per year number that gives a more accurate, more empirical, and less ideological picture of what is going on. But I know the numbers. Many people, Mitt Romney and his peers at the head of the Republican apparat included, do not. So when they see alarming numbers and charts like those that A Nation of Takers throws at them—increases from $24 billion to $2.3 trillion in annual entitlement spending; 100-fold growth; 9.5 percent a year, a doubling every eight years—is it any wonder that they deeply believe in their hearts of hearts that America has become a nation of moochers? (And one wonders: What share of their constituency not paying federal income tax this year understands that, in the eyes of their leaders, they are among the moochers?)

"You might imagine that an administration preparing for a war of choice would be gripped by..."

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:39:20 -0400

“

You might imagine that an administration preparing for a war of choice would be gripped by self-questioning and hot debate. There was certainly plenty to discuss: unlike the 1991 Gulf War, there was no immediate crisis demanding a rapid response; unlike Vietnam, the U.S. entered the war fully aware that it was commencing a major commitment.

Yet that discussion never really happened, not the way that most people would have imagined anyway. For a long time, war with Iraq was discussed inside the Bush administration as something that would be decided at some point in the future; then, somewhere along the way, war with Iraq was discussed as something that had already been decided long ago in the past.

”

- The Speechwriter: Inside the Bush Administration During the Iraq War - Newsweek and The Daily Beast

"In “Why Are There So Few Women Top Managers?,” Cristian L. Dezso of the University of Maryland and..."

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 14:59:17 -0400

“In “Why Are There So Few Women Top Managers?,” Cristian L. Dezso of the University of Maryland and David Gaddis Ross and Jose Uribe of Columbia Business School look at the number of women in top management positions at Standard & Poor’s 1,500 firms over twenty years. They find that the presence of a woman in a top management position reduces, rather than increases, the probability that a woman will occupy another top position. This is particularly true when a woman is chief executive.”

- Do female bosses lead to better treatment for all women?

"In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally..."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:16:36 -0500

“In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist.”

- The Good, Racist People - NYTimes.com

"If you eat the salad and it disappoints you,” Mark Canlis told me, “the dressing lacks lemon or the..."

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:21:00 -0500

““If you eat the salad and it disappoints you,” Mark Canlis told me, “the dressing lacks lemon or the salad lacks mint.” There is no other possibility.”

- Smells Like Green Spirit - NYTimes.com

Lessig Blog, v2: Prosecutor as bully

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 13:01:37 -0500

Lessig Blog, v2: Prosecutor as bully:

lessig:

(Some will say this is not the time. I disagree. This is the time when every mixed emotion needs to find voice.)

Since his arresting the early morning of January 11, 2011 — two years to the day before Aaron Swartz ended his life — I have known more about the events that began this…

buzzfeed: gifhound: This is how Joe Biden greets babies. In...

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 21:25:56 -0500

buzzfeed:

gifhound:

This is how Joe Biden greets babies.

In case you missed this! It is amazing!

"Middle-class students get the sense the institution will respond to them,” Professor Lareau said...."

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 17:19:56 -0500

““Middle-class students get the sense the institution will respond to them,” Professor Lareau said. “Working-class and poor students don’t experience that. It makes them more vulnerable.””

- Poor Students Struggle as Class Plays a Greater Role in Success - NYTimes.com

"Keynesian stimulus used to be uncontroversial in Washington; every 2008 presidential candidate had a..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 17:06:48 -0500

“Keynesian stimulus used to be uncontroversial in Washington; every 2008 presidential candidate had a stimulus plan, and Mitt Romney’s was the largest. But in early 2009, when Obama began pushing his $787 billion stimulus plan, the GOP began describing stimulus as an assault on free enterprise—even though House Republicans (including Paul Ryan) voted for a $715 billion stimulus alternative that was virtually indistinguishable from Obama’s socialist version. The current Republican position seems to be that the fiscal cliff’s instant austerity would destroy the economy, which is odd after four years of Republican clamoring for austerity, and that the cliff’s military spending cuts in particular would kill jobs, which is even odder after four years of Republican insistence that government spending can’t create jobs.”

- Fiscal Cliff Fictions: Let’s All Agree to Pretend the GOP Isn’t Full of It | TIME.com

"In that sense, Lincoln lets its audience off too easy. It’s comforting to feel that we can..."

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:31:04 -0500

“In that sense, Lincoln lets its audience off too easy. It’s comforting to feel that we can always find great wisdom in the middle. For the slight cost of waving away those who carry radicalism in their very blood, it reaffirms our great faith in democracy. It’s much more terrifying to consider how democratic compromise can be disastrous and how zealotry can be perceptive. Lincoln should have been harder on us. And I still loved it. And it still left me weepy. And you should still see it.”

- Slightly Longer Thoughts on ‘Lincoln’ - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic

Seriously, red states? I’m supposed to believe...

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 01:09:00 -0500

Seriously, red states? I’m supposed to believe you’ll reject this deal? Pff. I give it five years. If that.

(via Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion will cost $808 billion. The price tag for states? $8 billion.)

“When I was informed that I had been name People’s Magazine’s...

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 01:02:24 -0500

“When I was informed that I had been name People’s Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year—Mustache Edition, I steeled my jaw and slowly exhaled through my flared nostrils into the very lip-thicket that had gotten me into this mess in the first place.” -Nick Offerman

“This news pleased me little. I crushed the iPhone in my hand into dust, this despite the hardy White Oak case I had painstakingly carved for it. Why can no one see what a nightmare these whiskers make of my life? Soon after I learned of this “honor,” my doorbell rang. Mr. Tom Selleck had sent over an enormous congratulatory yak, smoking a cigar. Impressive, Tom, but misguided. Sam Eliott sent me a text that read, “I reckon you et the bar this time, pard,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean. And Burt Reynolds sent me a Corvette with the words, ”All you, Baby!” painted on the trunk. You son a of bitch. Pardon me, as I count to 10…8.9.10. All right. Look. I can’t begin to describe my frustration at receiving accolades for this facial bane. My mustache! You think it’s a good time, seeing a woman countenance my visage and swoon, only to fall beneath the crushing wheels of a Sunset Strip Hummer? Wrong. When I’m standing in line at the bank, and it’s held up by six men with clown masks and AK-47s, do you think it’s a fun chuckle when everyone turns expectantly to me, assuming somehow that my insanely lush mustache will kickass all of us to safety? It’s not a chuckle, People, not by a long shot. Those dead clowns are most certainly not chuckling. When a press junket for Parks and Recreation took me overseas to Valhalla, this royal Norsemen, Odin, said he wanted to reward me for the power of my facial bear. Okay, fine. He handed me some crappy, little sledgehammer and said, “Wield it justly.” His kid Thor (of course his name was Thor) comes over and starts crying at my feet, mewling something over and over that sounded like “mjolnir, my mjolnir…” I picked him up and lightly bludgeoned him with the hammer and he completely lost it. Full-on tantrum. It was a tiny, little tap, seriously, he was being a total baby. Odin said, “My son fills me with shame. I have only ever wanted him to display facial hairs half as magnificent as those upon your mouth, but, alas, he remains practically clean-shaven. Why, he’s no more man than Hawkeye,” whom I’m assuming is a Norwegian musician, like ABBA? It was mighty awkward is what it was. They certainly do things differently in Europe. Anyway. My point is, simply, that I appreciate the gesture, but this mustache does not strike me as “sexy” in anyway. It strikes me as a pain in my hairy ass. Where’s my trophy for that? And finally, Tom Selleck, I thank you for the yak. It is robust, and I will consume it.”

"If she’s as beautiful as you claim, Marlowe, and if you are the man you claim, then you dream..."

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:45:58 -0500

“If she’s as beautiful as you claim, Marlowe, and if you are the man you claim, then you dream of her rolling you over on your back. It’s not up to you.”

- Raymond Chandler’s Private Dick - Ta-Nehisi Coates - The Atlantic