George Packer's Blog, page 166

Sania Mirza’s Unlikely Stardom

On the last day of August, Sania Mirza, currently the No. 1 women’s doubles player in the world, was on one of the smaller side courts at the U.S. Open grounds, in Flushing Meadows, about to play her first match in this year’s tournament. She and her partner, Barbora Strýcová, of the Czech Republic, were squaring off against the Americans Jada Myii Hart and Ena Shibahara. The sun had begun to sneak behind the bleachers, where a few dozen fans had settled in. Occasionally, a roar from Arthur Ashe Stadium or the grandstands could be heard over their polite clapping. Mirza’s black hair was tied back in its usual businesslike bun, her dark eyes focussed beneath a neon-pink headband. Mirza’s gruelling summer had included her third Olympics, which had ended just a couple of weeks before, with a fourth-place finish in mixed doubles. Her longtime partnership with the tennis icon Martina Hingis was also coming to an end. Now she was gearing up again, knowing that millions were paying attention in her native India, even if only a handful were watching in New York.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Kei Nishikori’s Pressure-Filled U.S. Open
The Joyful Approach of Nicolas Mahut, Best Known for a Loss
The Happiness of Watching Juan Martín del Potro

Elizabeth Warren, Insult Comic

“Now comes the part that is obscene,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said at a rally for Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia on Friday afternoon. The phrasing was provocative, and it seemed significant: when it comes to the financial industry or regulatory failure, the former law professor’s genius lies in the exact identification of the obscene part. Warren’s focus, speaking at the University of Pennsylvania, was on the seventy per cent of college students who have to take out loans: “The interest rate on these student loans makes billions and billions of dollars for the United States government,” she said. But her real point was, more mundanely, the refusal of more than three Republicans to support a bill she had sponsored that would have allowed student debtors to refinance their loans at forgiving rates. It was the “Republican philosophy in a nutshell,” she said, to favor those seeking to preserve their capital over ordinary people who wanted to get ahead. “The game is rigged,” Warren said, “and the Republicans rigged it.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Trump and the Truth: The Unemployment-Rate Hoax
Gary Johnson Vows to Get Tough on East Korea
What to Make of Military Endorsements

Could Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Save Hawaii’s Endangered Birds?

Every four years, thousands of environmentalists gather at the World Conservation Congress to assess the state of the planet, and to consider what might be done to protect it. This year’s meeting ends Saturday, and the news this past week, with a few exceptions, has not been cheerful. Four of the six great-ape species are critically endangered, which means they are one step from extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which organizes the congress. So are thousands of other species. The eastern gorilla—the world’s largest living primate—is in particular jeopardy.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
A Whistle-Blower Accuses the Kochs of “Poisoning” an Arkansas Town
Trump’s Anti-Science Campaign
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, August 4th

The Thrill of Losing Money by Investing in a Manhattan Restaurant

If you live in New York City long enough and appear to be successfully employed in an industry that Bernie Sanders dislikes, you will be asked at some point to do three things: sponsor a table at a vanity fund-raiser, become a “producer” of a Broadway play, and invest in a restaurant. I had no trouble declining the honor of hosting a benefit or helping “Hedda Gabler” back to the stage.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
New York Playgrounds I Have Known
New York City, in Between Rocks and Clouds
I Got Rid of Tipping at My Restaurant, and Now I’m Getting Rid of Everything Else

Kei Nishikori’s Pressure-Filled U.S. Open

“Pressure” is a word that is used a lot in tennis. At times, it can seem less like a description of a stressful situation than a demonic external force, an invisible imp wreaking havoc on the court. Pressure pushed the ball an inch long. Pressure made it clip the net. Pressure shortened her ball toss. Pressure made him trip. Sometimes it can sound like skill and stamina are beside the point. When a player wins, he defeats pressure; when he loses, it is not to his opponent but to pressure that he succumbs.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Sania Mirza’s Unlikely Stardom
The Joyful Approach of Nicolas Mahut, Best Known for a Loss
The Happiness of Watching Juan Martín del Potro

A Whistle-Blower Accuses the Kochs of “Poisoning” an Arkansas Town

In June, Koch Industries, the conglomerate owned by the billionaires Charles and David Koch, launched a new corporate public-relations campaign called “End the Divide,” to advance the notion that Koch Industries is deeply concerned by growing inequality in America. An ad for the campaign urges viewers to “look around,” as an image of an imposing white mansion is replaced by one of blighted urban streets. “America is divided,” an announcer intones, with “government and corporations picking winners and losers, rigging the system against people, creating a two-tiered society with policies that fail our most vulnerable.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Bonus Daily Cartoon: Olympics Closing Ceremony
Trump’s Anti-Science Campaign
America’s Dirtiest Boat Races

With the iPhone 7, Apple Changed the Camera Industry Forever

Camera companies, like traditional phone manufacturers, dismissed the iPhone as a toy when it launched, in 2007. Nokia thought that the iPhone used inferior technology; the camera makers thought that it took lousy pictures. Neither thought that they had anything to worry about. Of course, neither anticipated the value of having a computer in your pocket, and what the camera folks, especially, didn’t anticipate was that, as the photographer Chase Jarvis puts it, the best camera is the one that’s with you.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
When the Twin Towers Quietly Commanded the New York Skyline
Apple Cuts the Cord
Apple’s Big Problem: Will India Buy iPhones?

What to Make of Military Endorsements

On Election Day in the Marine Corps, there are always those who make the choice not to vote. Service members don’t choose their commanding officers, and these Marines opt not to choose their Commander-in-Chief. The idea of not voting while in uniform never sat right with me, but I knew a number of Marines who felt this way.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Afternoon Cartoon: Thursday, September 8th
Hillary Clinton’s Patriotism
Donald Trump’s Big Lies at the Commander-in-Chief Forum

Hillary Clinton’s Patriotism

Certain things have come too easily for Hillary Clinton in the general election, and her loose, fervent talk about American exceptionalism may be among them. On August 31st, Clinton spoke at the American Legion Convention, in Cincinnati, to a group of mostly older men in pointy hats for whom American exceptionalism has meant a particular roster of military engagements followed by a particular roster of charitable ones. “It’s not just that we have the greatest military, or that our economy is larger than any on Earth,” she told them. American exceptionalism is about “the strength of our values.” But what values, exactly? Clinton said that she would never insult veterans and their families, as Donald Trump has, or “abandon our allies,” as he has threatened to do—but about actual American values she was conspicuously silent. The idea of mutual respect kept recurring: in her advocacy of diplomacy, in the letters from men who had served under her father in the Navy which she said she held dear, in the pointed story she told about the Navy SEALs who, having assassinated Osama bin Laden, escorted the terrorist’s children and wives to safety. “That’s what makes us great,” she said. As definitions of national greatness go, it seemed pretty thin. Should we think that members of the British Special Forces, had they found themselves in the same compound, would have done anything differently?

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Afternoon Cartoon: Thursday, September 8th
What to Make of Military Endorsements
Donald Trump’s Big Lies at the Commander-in-Chief Forum

Donald Trump’s Big Lies at the Commander-in-Chief Forum

According to many accounts, it was the young Adolf Hitler who coined the term “Big Lie.” In his 1925 tract, “Mein Kampf,” he wrote that “the broad masses” are more likely to “fall victims to the big lie than the small lie,” because “It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Afternoon Cartoon: Thursday, September 8th
What to Make of Military Endorsements
Hillary Clinton’s Patriotism