Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2836

Collecting Our Thoughts

Steven Berlin Johnson reviews Nick Carr's new book. He disagrees with Carr that the internet is ruining our brains:

Actually sitting down to write out a response to something makes yousee it in a new way, often with greater complexity. And that of courseis the crucial flipside to the decline of long-form reading in thedigital age: the increase in short-form writing. If we areslightly less able to focus because of the distractions of electrictext, I suspect it is more than made up for by the...

Barton And The Right, Ctd

Reihan begins to come around:

My argument re: BP is clearly completely wrong if the WH had nothing to do with BP's decision to establish the fund. I assumed that the WH really did exercise its leverage. But I now get the sense that the WH was trying to take credit for a decision BP reached on its own, to arrest its freefall. And the WH decided to capitalize politically, which is entirely natural.

BP - Joe Barton - United States - Barton - Republican

Worst Case Scenarios, Ctd

Stephen Messenger absorbs the latest:

Well, it just keeps getting worse. Around two months ago, after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank, BP estimated that some 1,000 barrels of oilwere leaking into the Gulf each day. That number was soon revised to5,000 barrels and later to around 12,000. Then, just last week, those grim figures were raised again,putting the estimates at between 30,000 and 65,000 barrels of oilleaking each day. Now, according to a recently disclosed internaldocument from...

Bundles And Bundles Of Joy?

Bryan Caplan makes the case for having more children. Will Wilkinson counters:

Increases in average levels of education, levels of disposable income,gender equality, and access to birth control -- that is, increases inthe ability of people (and especially women) to deliberately controlthe conditions of their own lives -- generally lead people to choose asmaller rather than larger number of children. As far as I can tell,Bryan's response is that it "lacks perspective" to take at face valuethis...

Christianism Watch

"Gulf disaster needs divine intervention as man's efforts have been futile. Gulf lawmakers designate today Day of Prayer for solution/miracle," - Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin - United States - Republican - Politics - Parties

Live-Tweeting A Firing Squad

Balko calls the following tweets by Utah's attorney general "shameless":

A solemn day. Barring a stay by Sup Ct, & with my final nod, Utah will use most extreme power & execute a killer. Mourn his victims. Justice

I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner's execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims.

We will be streaming live my press conference as soon as I'm told Gardner is dead. Watch it at www.attorneygeneral.Utah.gov/live.html

Curt...

Barton And The Right, Ctd

Reihan goes to bat for Rep. Barton:

It should go without saying that demanding money from BP is not quitelike a playground full of schoolyard bullies kicking a kid when he'sdown. For one thing, BP isn't terribly sympathetic. But that'sprecisely the point—the Muslims who were burned alive in Gujarat in2002 weren't sympathetic to those who victimized them either. Andthat's why we've developed long, drawn-out legal processes: to createan orderly society, we at least try to contain and manage our...

The Afghanistan Mountain

An insight into what the troops are really facing as they counter Taliban snipers:

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Multimedia - Taliban - War in Afghanistan - Development Frameworks - Sniper

The Genius Handicap

Dreher sympathizes with child prodigies and their parents. He talks with "N," a friend with a "severely gifted" child:

Try, he said, to understand what it's like for kids who are soadvanced that they can't relate to children their own age. But theydon't know why they stand apart; all they know is that they do. Theyfeel like freaks, he said, and in some sense they are freaks.The world tells them that they should just try to get along, andchastises them for being anti-social. N. said that...

Lolcats vs Democracy?

Evgeny Morozov continues his series of disagreements with Clay Shirky by bashing Shirky's new book on the cognitive surplus:

As Markus Prior points out in his excellent 2007 book Post-Broadcast Democracy,today's environment of information abundance splits the public into asmall cohort of news junkies, who know everything there is to knowabout politics, and a much larger contingent of entertainment fans, whoknow the names of the latest YouTube celebrities and their favoritelolcats, but not...