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Iraq
As Special Forces soldiers
arrive, should Obama
launch airstrikes?

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2 NEWS

The main stories...

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Obamas tough decisions in Iraq

What happened

It wasnt all bad

QDon Miyada was just a month
shy of graduating in 1942 when he
was pulled from school and sent
to an internment camp in Arizona
along with 17,000 other JapaneseAmericans. Miyada received his
diploma in the mail, but he always
regretted missing the ceremony.
Last week, the 89-year-old Californian donned a cap and gown
and joined Newport Harbor High
Schools graduating class, where
he received a standing ovation. Its
their time to graduate and their
time of honor, he said. Im happy
they invited me to be one of them.

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

QFor Anuson Poolsawat, customer satisfaction always

comes first. The Alaskan restaurant owner had already done
Mike Laiti and his friend a favor by staying open late. When
the two called from the highway to cancel their takeout
order after a closed bridge halted their drive, Poolsawat
shrugged off the hassle.
He called and said, Not
a problem, Ill come cross
the waters, said Laiti.
Should I bring a boat?
After a 25-mile drive,
Poolsawat forded a cold,
waist-deep creek carrying
cartons of Thai barbecue
ribs and fried rice over his
head. Hes just a good
guy, said Laiti. Definitely
Poolsawat makes special delivery. a goofball.

QTwo years after Nathan and Erin

Brauns golden retriever wandered
away from their campsite in Californias Tahoe National Forest, the
beloved dog has been reunited
with her family. Earlier this month,
a camper spotted Murphy and notified the Brauns. After searching
the area unsuccessfully, they left
behind some clothing and Murphys old bed, hoping the scents
would attract her. Within a week,
the campground manager found
Murphy curled up on her owners
belongings. As you can imagine,
said the family, we are completely amazed with the miracle of her
surviving this long.

On the cover: President Barack Obama, illustration by Fred Harper.

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Cover photos from AP, Corbis, AP

AP (2)

himself as an embattled commander in

chief, spending most of his time poring over
About 300 U.S. Special Forces soldiers began
military maps and planning counterattacks.
arriving in Iraq this week to gather intelligence
He is not listening to America, the Sunnis,
and serve as military advisers to the counor even other Shiite leaders. He just wants to
trys faltering army, as the Obama administracrush the insurgents and retain power.
tion decides whether to use airstrikes against a
rampaging Islamic insurgency. Rebels from the
Ousting al-Maliki isnt the magic answer
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant
to Iraqs problems, said The Wall Street
group advanced to within 20 miles of BaghJournal. Good luck nding a suitable redad, and there was erce ghting between
placementsomeone popular with Shiites,
the estimated 10,000 insurgents and governacceptable to Sunnis and Kurds, reasonable
ment forces in several cities. President Obama
Awkward: Kerry and al-Maliki in Baghdad
toward Americans, and effective in the ght
pledged to take targeted and precise military
against terrorists. President Obamas public maneuvering
action if and when we determine the situation on the ground reagainst al-Maliki is simply drawing the authoritarian leader closer
quires it, but he and Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated that
any help was conditional on Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to his Shiite base, and into the waiting arms of Iran.
giving minority Sunnis and Kurds a greater role in governing the
What the columnists said
country. Al-Maliki, whose party won a plurality of seats in the
parliamentary election in April, pushed back against calls for the
There are no good options in Iraq right now, said Max Boot
formation of an emergency government comprising all ethnic and
in the Los Angeles Times. Airstrikes, cruise missiles, and drone
religious groups, saying that would represent a coup against the
attacks are only effective when you have enough eyes on the
constitution.
ground to precisely target the strikes and a competent army to
follow up. Allowing Iraq to divide into three ethnic regions, on
The Sunni insurgents, who want to establish a fundamentalist
the other hand, would essentially result in two terrorist states: a
Islamic caliphate stretching across Iraq and Syria, continued makTehran-backed Shiite region and an ISIS-controlled Sunni area. So
ing signicant territorial gains in provinces to the north and west
the least worst option is for Obama to prevent al-Maliki from havof Baghdad, and took complete control of the Iraq-Syria border.
ing a third term in ofce, by personally pressing Sunni and Shiite
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent warplanes to bomb western
leaders to nd a more inclusive gure.
Iraq for the rst time, targeting strongholds of ISIS ghters who
are also ghting his regime. Kurdish President Massoud Barzani
Its nave to think the U.S. can force al-Maliki out, said Fanar
warned that the breakup of the country along sectarian lines was
Haddad in WashingtonPost.com. He commands considerable
all but inevitable. The insurgency, he said, had created a new real- popularity among the Shiites, and theyre clinging to him more
ity and a new Iraq.
tightly because of the existential fears created by the advance of
ISIS militants and armed Sunni sympathizers. Sunnis, meanwhile,
What the editorials said
are so embittered they will reject any Shiite prime minister.
Its frustrating to watch territory hard won by U.S. troops fall to
extremists, said Newsday. But we have to accept that determin- That leaves Obama with a difcult conundrum, said Meghan L.
ing Iraqs future is no longer our problem. It was not just Obama, OSullivan in Politico.com. He can take his usual cautious, incremental approach, and keep pressing for a political solution. But in
but the American people who wanted out of Iraq, and our only
the meantime, ISIS can consolidate its territorial gains. Or Obama
concern now should be stopping ISIS from forming a safe haven
can launch airstrikes now, push ISIS backand lose his leverage
for terrorists. But for any hope of long-term stability, al-Maliki
over al-Maliki. Either way, Iraq may be headed for a breakup.
has to go, said TheGuardian.com. The prime minister now sees

... and how they were covered

WorldMags.net
Cellphone privacy upheld
In a milestone endorsement of digital privacy rights, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled this week that police need
warrants to search the cellphones of people they arrest. Chief
Justice John Roberts Jr., writing for the court, said the massive amount of personal data stored on phones means they
must be protected from routine police inspection. Roberts acknowledged that the decision would make law enforcement
more difficult, as cellphones can yield valuable incriminating evidence. Privacy comes at a cost, he said.

NEWS 3

under the 1970 Clean Air Act, an out-of-date statute that says
little about greenhouse gases. As a result, the EPA has struggled
to interpret it in a sensible fashion. Lawmakers could of
course do their job and rewrite that legislation, but Congress has become so dysfunctional that no one seriously
expects that to happen anytime soon.
The Supreme Courts cellphone ruling marks a major
change in the courts attitude toward privacy, said Eric
Posner in Slate.com. In earlier opinions, the court backed
a police officers right to flip through a persons wallet during an arrest, and even read his diary if the
suspect has it on him. If they can do all these things,
shouldnt they also be able to flip through his phone?

In a separate decision, a divided court ruled that the

EPA had overstepped its authority by regulating the
greenhouse gas emissions of small businesseslike hotels
Warrant, please
Thankfully, the justices recognize that todays celland office parksthough the justices agreed the agency
phones arent just phones, said Noah Feldman in BloombergView
could continue regulating emissions from big polluters, such as coal.com. Theyre minicomputers, with the average smartphone holdfired power plants. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia
ing up to 64 gigabytes of highly personal dataincluding the
rebuked the EPA for carrying out an enormous and transformative
names of a persons contacts, their search history, emails, even
expansion of its power without Congresss approval.
naked selfies. Our justices might be aging technophobes, but even
they understand one important aspect of modern privacy: Your
If the EPA is guilty of overreaching, said Timothy B. Lee in Vox
smartphone contains your whole life.
.com, then Congress is to blame. The agency regulates emissions

A win for GOP old guard

In a surprise turnaround, incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran this
week won a runoff election for the Mississippi GOP Senate nomination against Tea Partybacked challenger Chris McDaniel. The
Tea Partierwho beat Cochran in the initial primary, but fell
short of the majority needed for nominationrefused to immediately concede and hinted at possible legal action to contest the 51
to 49 percent outcome, which Cochran, 76, won in part through
a targeted appeal to African American Democratic voters.
The result was a blow to the Tea Party, which had hoped to
build on its recent defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
But six-term Sen. Cochran aggressively defended his incumbency
against McDaniels anti-Washington crusade, arguing that Mississippi benefited from the federal aid he helped secure to build
roads and schools. This is your victory, Cochran told supporters. You can rest assured that all I will be doing is thinking
about you and bringing these resources home.

The lesson for GOP incumbents is clear, said John Dickerson in

Slate.com. Run scared or run unopposed. Cochrans strategists
deserve credit for reaching out to black voters, boosting overall
turnout by nearly 60,000 and marking the first time in 30 years
that a runoff election outdrew the initial primary.
Win or lose, the Tea Party is alive and well, said Larry Sabato
in Politico.com. Its activists now represent a significant faction
of the GOP. Cochrans narrow victory should be a reminder
that establishment Republicans cant wish this movement away,
and must work with its supporters to the extent possible.
The Tea Party should learn from this too, said George Will in
NationalReview.com. Mississippi has the nations highest federal funding as a percent of revenue, and Cochrans pledge to
keep on serving up pork was ultimately more appealing than
McDaniels promise of smaller government. Even in deep red
states like Mississippi, Americans devotion to frugal government is frequently avowed but rarely inhibiting.

Corbis (2)

THE WEEK

When we launched The Week in the U.S. in 2001, The Wall Street
Journal scoffed at our prospects for success. Is Felix Dennis Mad?
its headline asked. I worked for Felix for 13 years, until his death
from cancer this week (see Obituaries), and can attest that he was not entirely rational. He had
absolutely no reason, for example, to believe this magazine could succeed in a crowded, highly
competitive market. When we lost millions of dollars the first few years, and his advisers panicked,
Felix remained stubbornly certain of our eventual success. The reader is king! hed bellow, and
point to the cult-like enthusiasm of the busy, intelligent readers who had discovered us. My staff
and I fed off that certainty. Today, we are firmly established and profitable, with 570,000 readers.
Felix was many things: an entrepreneur, philanthropist, poet. Above all he was an enthusiast
a ferocious lover of life. Under a wild mane of tousled gray hair, he churned with manic energy,
unleashed a constant torrent of words, and performed for every audience, large or small, as if he
were the star of a one-man show. Every few minutes, he exploded into roguish, cackling laughter.
He thought it a fine joke that he, a fatherless English lad and high school dropout, had managed to pack so much success, failure, debauchery, and adventure into one life. It was Felixs wish
that The Week here and in the U.K. would continue on, and that our profits henceforth go toward
enlarging the Heart of England Forest he created, which will ultimately have 10 million trees. I am
tickled to be working for his forest now, but will miss the fervent support of that singular, inspiring
madman, and will always hear the echo of his triumphant cackling.
William Falk
Visit us at TheWeek.com. For customer service go to www.TheWeek.com/service or phone us at 1-877-245-8151.
Renew a subscription at www.RenewTheWeek.com or give a gift at www.GiveTheWeek.com.

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THE WEEK July 4, 2014

4 NEWS

Controversy of the week

WorldMags.net

The IRS: Could Lerners emails really just evaporate?

all new messages locally on the computers hard drive.
Well, that didnt go very well, said Michael Gerson in The
Meanwhile, backup tapes on servers were erased every six
Washington Post. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was
months so they could be reused. This backward policy left
summoned before Congress this week to answer more
the IRS wide open to losing important records.
questions about the agencys targeting of conservative
groups for extra scrutiny prior to the 2012 elections,
A close look at the timing proves theres no scandal
and somehow managed to destroy what is left of his
here, said Michael Tomasky in TheDailyBeast.com.
agencys credibility. Under relentless questionLerners hard drive crashed on June 13, 2011, but
ing by incredulous Republican congressmen,
we know she first learned that Republicans were
Koskinen insisted the agency could not retrieve
inquiring about the targeting of conservative
two years worth of lost emails to and from
groups on June 29. Yes, House Ways and
Lois Lerner, the official suspected of havLerner: Stuff just happens.
Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp
ing singled out conservative groups for IRS
had written to the IRS back on June 3, but contrary to Republican
scrutiny. Lerners hard drive, Koskinen said, had been destroyed,
assertions, that letter was on a different topicgift taxes on indiand all backup tapes had been erased. It is not unusual for
viduals who donated money to nonprofit advocacy groups. That
computers anywhere to fail, he said, blaming Congress for budletter was sent to then-Commissioner Doug Shulman, with Lerner
get cuts that forced the IRS to use antiquated computer systems.
not copied in, and made not a single mention of conservative tarThis stonewalling tells us that Congress is sniffing down the
geting. Lerner, in other words, would need to be a clairvoyant
right trail, said Kimberley Strassel in WSJ.com. Are we really
expected to believe that on June 13, 201110 days after congres- to have sabotaged her own computer in advance of this phony
scandal. Poor Republicans, said Heather Digby Parton in Salon
sional Republicans first wrote to the IRS about the targeting of
.com. The Right has been praying for a Democratic Watergate for
conservativesLerners hard-drive supposedly defied modernity
years, but those pesky facts keep getting in the way.
and suffered total annihilation?

Only in America
QAn exGoldman Sachs

trader is suing the investment

bank because it awarded
him a discretionary bonus of
only $8.25 millionalmost $5
million less than he told his
mother he was getting. Lets
be very clear, said Deeb Amin
Salem, 35, at his arbitration
hearing. I was one of the
most sought-after investment
professionals in the mortgage
industry. Goldman calls his
lawsuit utterly ridiculous.
QAn Illinois high school stu-

dent has been expelled after

allegedly selling his attention
deficit disorder medication to
his schoolmate in exchange
for $3 and a bag of Cheez-Its.
The unnamed 15-year-old
made the trade in an effort
to help his fellow student do
better in school, his mother
claims, but officials at the Illinois Mathematics and Science
Academy were not persuaded.

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

Democrats shouldnt chuckle themselves to sleep just yet, said

James Poulos in TheDailyBeast.com. The IRS is not a popular
institution, to put it mildly, and voters wont find it hard to believe
the agency was used as a tool of political oppression. If Democrats
simply dismiss this whole affair as just another conspiracy from
unhinged conservatives, it could backfire. Sometimes stuff just
happens, Lerner emailed the IRS techs in 2011, after her emails
vanished. Sometimes, that kind of indifferent attitude toward
incompetency costs political parties big elections.

Good week for:

Freudian analysis, after an American exchange student in

Germany climbed inside a giant stone sculpture of a vagina,

became stuck, and had to be pulled free by 22 firefighters. He
was really embarrassed, said a witness.
Self-defense, after a 63-year-old woman with lung cancer
chased a burglar out of her Indiana home by repeatedly whacking
him with a wooden back scratcher. I dont think he expected an
overweight woman on oxygen to attack him, said Patty Kearney.
Partiers, after a New York City firm called I.V. Doc began charging $250 to send a nurse to a hungover persons home to intravenously administer restorative fluid. If you go in feeling like a 2,
said a customer, you come out a half-hour later feeling like a 7.

Bad week for:

Luis Surez, a Uruguayan soccer star who sank his teeth into

the shoulder of Italys Giorgio Chiellini during a World Cup

matchthe third time Surez has been caught biting a rival player.
Rocking the boat, after a motorboat crashed into floating
runway lights at New Yorks LaGuardia airport when the captain
allegedly left the helm to engage in a drunken mnage trois.
Theres a moral here, said police. Drop your anchor before you
drop your pants.
Staying connected, after police arrested a burglary suspect who
logged in to his Facebook profile during a break-in at a Minnesota
home and left it up on the computer screen. Worlds dumbest
criminal, said homeowner James Wood.

WorldMags.net

Boring but important

GOP leadership vote
House Republicans overwhelmingly elected Rep.
Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to replace outgoing Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) as House majority
leader last week, in a snap
election prompted by Cantors
stunning primary loss in early
June. A four-term congressman and pro-business conservative who previously served
as majority whip, McCarthy
is now second-in-command
in the House leadership after
Speaker John Boehner (ROhio). With less than 40 days
left on the legislative calendar,
the pair will now have to
convince hard-line conservatives within their party to
approve a series of must-pass
bills, including new funding
for highway programs and a
stopgap federal budget, which
is needed to avoid another
government shutdown.

AP

The timing looks awfully suspicious, said Megan McArdle in

BloombergView.com, but as a former email administrator I can
tell you that Lerners story is entirely plausible. Lerners hard drive
seems to have failed the way most aging hard drives do, a victim
of bad sectors. On Aug. 5, 2011, the IRSs tech people notified
Lerner that the data on her hard drive was unrecoverable. There
is also an innocent explanation for why there is no backup: IRS
employees were each allotted a paltry 500 megabytes of server
space, and once that was filled up, the system would start storing

The U.S. at a glance ...

WorldMags.net

Michael Nagle/The New York Times/Redux, Joshua Lott/The New York Times/Redux, AP, Getty

Detroit
Protest against Israel: After a decade
of debate, the Presbyterian Church last
week voted to divest its holdings in three
companies
that supply
Israel with
equipment
used in the
occupation of
Palestinian
territory.
Applauding divestment
The measure, passed at the Presbyterian General
Assemblys national meeting in Detroit
by 310 votes to 303, calls on the church
to dump $21 million in investments in
Caterpillar, whose bulldozers have been
used to demolish Palestinian homes;
Motorola Solutions, which supplies the
Israeli Defense Forces with communications technologies; and HewlettPackard, whose products are
used by the Israeli navy in its
blockade of the Gaza Strip. In
no way is this a reflection of
our lack of love for our Jewish
sisters and brothers, a
church official said of the resolution, which also reaffirmed
Israels right to exist. Israels
U.S. embassy denounced the
decision as shameful.

Salt Lake City

Mormon crackdown: The
Mormon church
Kelly: Punished
excommunicated
the founder of a prominent womens
group this week, bringing down the
harshest possible punishment against one
of its own members. Kate Kelly, leader
of Ordain Women, has long pushed
for gender equality in the church, with
the ultimate aim of allowing women to
serve in the currently all-male lay clergy.
Earlier this month, church leaders sent
Kelly a letter accusing her of apostasy
and of undermining the Mormon faith.
The decision to excommunicate was ultimately made by three male church officials in Virginia, where Kelly lived until
recently. They said they would consider
readmitting her to the faith after a year
has passed, but only if she shows true
repentance and gives up her campaign.

Philadelphia
Ex-Nazi charged: An 89-year-old
Philadelphia man who served as an SS
guard at the Nazi concentration camp
at Auschwitz was last week ordered
held without bail on a German arrest
warrant charging him with aiding and
abetting the murder of 216,000 Jews.
Johann Breyer, a retired toolmaker who
immigrated to the U.S. in 1952 from
what was then Czechoslovakia, is facing
extradition to Germany on 158 counts:
one for every trainload of European
Jews who were transported to the camp
between May and October of 1944.
Breyer has admitted that he worked in
the prison section of Auschwitz, but
claims he had not the slightest idea
that more than 1 million Jews were
gassed at the camp. All I know is from
the television, he said. Prosecutors insist
his presence at the camp is enough to
warrant extradition.

Washington, D.C.
Child-trafficking bust: Law-enforcement
officials rescued 168 victims of child sex
trafficking last week and arrested 281
alleged pimps as part of a nationwide
FBI crackdown. The weeklong antitrafficking sweep, known as Operation
Cross Country, took place in 106 cities,
targeting truck stops, casinos, dating
websites, strip clubs, and pornography
shops. It was the eighth such nationwide operation, and is part of the larger
Innocence Lost National Initiative, which
over the past seven years has rescued
more than 3,400 children and led to
1,450 convictions, 14 life prison terms,
and the seizure of more than $3.1 million
in assets. These are not faraway kids in
faraway lands, said FBI Director James
Comey. These are our children. On our
streets. Our truck stops. Our motels.

WorldMags.net

NEWS 5

New York
City
Central Park
Five: The
five men
wrongfully
convicted in
the horrific
beating and
rape of a
Their day of justice
white female
jogger in Central Park in 1989 last week
agreed to settle their lawsuit against New
York City for $40 million. The men,
who are all black or Hispanic and were
aged between 14 and 16 at the time of
the attack, say they were coerced by
police into making incriminating statements and false confessions that led to
their conviction in 1990. The men served
between seven and 13 years in prison
before DNA analysis found that only
one man raped the jogger: serial rapist
and murderer Matias Reyes, who confessed to the crime and insisted
he had acted alone. If the city
comptroller approves the settlement, the five men will receive
about $1 million each for every
year they spent in prison.

Washington, D.C.
Drone memo: A federal appeals court this
week published a heavily redacted version of
a controversial Justice
Department memo
that provides the legal
justification for the
2011 killing of Anwar
Al-Awlaki
al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born
Muslim cleric targeted in a drone strike
in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was an operational
al Qaida leader who engaged in continual planning and direction of attacks,
reads the memo. His capture was not
feasible, and his American citizenship did
not make him immune from a use of
force abroad. The memo was released
as part of an agreement between the
Obama administration and several senators who had threatened to block the
nomination of David Barron, one of the
documents authors, to a federal appeals
court in Boston. Rep. Ral Grijalva
(D-Ariz.) said the release was a good
first step, but that the redactions make
it a far cry from outright transparency.
THE WEEK July 4, 2014

6 NEWS

The world at a glance ...

WorldMags.net

London
Tabloid editor guilty: Prime
Minister David Camerons former communications chief Andy
Coulson has been found guilty
of conspiring to hack the cellphones of celebrities, politicians,
crime victims, and even the royal
family in a trial stemming from
his earlier role as editor of the
Coulson: Hacker
now defunct News of the World.
Coulson left the tabloid in 2007, after a staffer and a private
investigator hired by the paper were jailed for hacking phones,
and a few months later became head of communications for
Camerons Conservative Party. An embarrassed Cameron apologized this week for hiring Coulson, saying, I am extremely sorry
that I employed him; it was the wrong decision. Another former
editor, Rebekah Brooks, was cleared of all charges this week.

Warsaw
Dissing the U.S.: Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw
Sikorski is in hot water after being caught on tape
slamming the U.S.-Polish alliance as worthless,
even harmful because it gives Poland a false
sense of security. On the audiotape, leaked
to Polish magazine Wprost, Sikorski says to a
former government official, The U.S. alliance
is complete bulls---. Well get into a conflict with
the Germans and the Russians, and well think
Sikorski
that everything is super because we gave the
Americans a blowj--. The Polish government had no comment,
but Sikorski said the full transcript of the recording would show
his comments were taken out of context. Sikorski is married to
the American newspaper columnist Anne Applebaum.

Paris
Roma youth targeted: A vigilante mob in a housing project
outside the French capital beat a Roma boy nearly to death last
week, and his family has fled its encampment. The 16-year-old,
known only as Darius, was suspected of stealing from a poor
immigrant family, and the rumor ignited simmering tensions
between African immigrants and the Roma newcomers who had
set up camp nearby. The boy is barely surviving on life support
in a Paris hospital, but his family, fearful of the authorities, abandoned its camp and has not visited him. France has some 20,000
Romaknown pejoratively as Gypsiesand has failed to integrate the stigmatized ethnic minority into society.
Tijuana, Mexico
Cartel head nabbed: The suspected leader of the Tijuana
drug cartel was arrested this week while watching a
Mexico World Cup match on TV. Fernando Snchez
Arellano was captured after authorities received a
tip that he would be in a certain house in the border
Snchez Arellano
city during the Mexico-Croatia game. His arrest is
another damaging blow to the once important Tijuana cartel,
whose top five leaders, all brothers, have been killed or captured
in the past 12 years. Snchez Arellano is a nephew of those men
and was seen as the next generations leader. Hes not the only
suspected drug lord to be brought low by soccer: Alleged methamphetamine trafficker Jos Daz Barajas was arrested in Rio de
Janeiro last week on his way to watch Mexico play Brazil.

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

So Paulo
No protests: The World Cup
has been largely protest-free because Brazilian police are depriving
the people of their right to demonstrate, Amnesty International
said this week. Since the competition began, there has been no
sign of the massive antiWorld Cup demonstrations that drew
hundreds of thousands of people over the past year, because police
use rubber bullets and pepper spray to quickly disperse any crowd
that isnt made up of soccer fans. We are issuing military police
in So Paulo with a yellow card for attacking peaceful protesters,
said Amnesty. Some small demos have been allowed, but the few
hundred protesters were outnumbered by riot police.
Riot police on So Paulos streets

WorldMags.net

Reuters, Corbis, Reuters (2), AP

La Paz, Bolivia
Counterculture clock: Leftist Bolivia has changed the clock on
its Congress building to run toward the left, counterclockwise,
instead of the right. Legislators ordered the numbers to be painted
over and the clock retooled to run in reverse. Foreign Minister
David Choquehuanca said the clock of the south was intended
to show Bolivians that they can
question authority. Who says
that the clock always has to turn
one way? he said. Why do we
always have to obey? Why cant
we be creative? Under President
Evo Morales, an indigenous
Aymara, Bolivia has been reviving indigenous culture and challenging practices imposed from
the colonial era.
Bolivia turns back time.

The world at a glance ...

WorldMags.net
Kiev, Ukraine
Still shooting: A cease-fire in Ukraine between government forces
and pro-Russian rebels was in jeopardy this week after separatists
shot down a Ukrainian helicopter, killing nine. We see no signs
that Russia is respecting its international commitments, said
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. NATO officials said member states were considering new sanctions against
Russia if it does not pull its troops
away from the Ukrainian border
and encourage separatists to disarm.
Russia may be listening: After a phone
call with President Barack Obama
this week, Russian President Vladimir
Putin asked the Russian legislature to
rescind its March 1 resolution authorizing Russia to use force in Ukraine.
The downed helicopter

NEWS 7

Yulin, China
Dog-meat fight: The annual
dog-meat festival in the central
Chinese town of Yulin was disrupted this week by an influx of
animal-rights activists demanding
that dog slaughterhouses be shut
down. In the week ahead of the
holiday, Chinese activists had
numerous run-ins with butchers,
Yulins canine specialty
and there were some cases of
vendors torturing dogs to extort money from activists. Most years,
some 10,000 dogs are killed and eaten during the summer solstice
festival, but this year vendors said consumption dropped sharply.
The traditional but unofficial festival may be on its way out as city
authorities are no longer promoting it, apparently because the bad
press it brings to Yulin outweighs the tourism bump.
Damascus, Syria
Chemical weapons gone: The final stockpile of Syrian chemical weapons left Syria this week, according to the U.N. group
overseeing the weapons destruction. Under a deal brokered by
Russia and the U.S., Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to
turn over his chemical arms last year, after credible reports that
his regime was using them on civilians. The U.N. said Syria was
now rid of all the stockpiles that weapons inspectors were aware
of. Never before has an entire arsenal of a category of weapons
of mass destruction been removed from a country experiencing
a state of internal armed conflict, said Ahmet Uzumcu, chief of
the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Reuters, Newscom, Corbis, AP

Cairo
Reporters jailed: Egypt drew international condemnation this week for
sentencing three Al Jazeera journalists to prison sentences of seven to 10
years. Peter Greste, one of Australias
most famous foreign correspondents,
Canadian reporter Mohamed Fahmy,
The Al Jazeera three
and Egyptian reporter Baher Mohamed
were convicted of collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood by
reporting on the civil unrest that broke out after the army ousted
President Mohammed Morsi last year. The trial was widely seen
as a sham, as the prosecution offered no evidence of any inaccuracy in the mens reporting. Egypt now has more than 16,000
political prisoners.

Abuja, Nigeria
Mall blast: Islamist militants are suspected in a bombing that
killed at least 21 people at a shopping mall in the Nigerian capital this week. The explosion scattered body parts in the streets
and set cars on fire. Suspicion centers on Boko Haram, the group
that abducted more than 200 schoolgirls in April and has been
spreading terror through bombings and kidnappings across
northern Nigeria. The group wants to set up an Islamic state
in Nigeria, a country split between a largely Muslim north and
a mostly Christian south, and it has recently begun striking at
Abuja. So far this year, some 2,000 people have been killed, and
another 90 people were abducted just this week.

Khartoum, Sudan
Christian woman rearrested: A Sudanese woman who
was sentenced to death for apostasy was set free
this week, only to be arrested and charged with
fraud when she tried to leave the country using
documents bearing her Christian name, not the
Muslim name she was given at birth. U.S. officials said they were now trying to ensure that
Meriam Ibrahim and her children could join her
American husband, Daniel Wani, in the U.S. Born to
Ibrahim
a Christian mother, Ibrahim was raised a Christian
after her Muslim father abandoned the family, but a sharia court
in Sudan considered her a Muslim and last month convicted her
of illegally renouncing her faith. An appeals court overturned
the conviction this week following an international outcry, but
Ibrahim now faces up to seven years in jail on the fraud charges.

WorldMags.net

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

8 NEWS

People
WorldMags.net

Osbournes latest recovery

Ozzy Osbourne fell off the wagon two years
ago, after almost a decade of sobriety, said
Louise Gannon in the Mail on Sunday (U.K.).
There was no reason, says the rocker, except
Im an alcoholic, and one day you look outside,
its a sunny day, and you know nothing is going
to come between you and a beer. And then you
go down the mad slide, and youre crawling
around on the floor wishing you didnt have to watch another
sunrise. But if you take cocaine you can drink forever. Cocaine
and booze are the eggs and bacon of the addicts world, the
perfect combination. It was only when his wife, Sharon, threw
him out that the Black Sabbath singer went back to Alcoholics
Anonymous. Ive spent decades of my life being an absolute idiot.
Ive got so many regrets I cant even remember half of them.
Somehow, despite Osbournes repeated bouts of self-destruction,
his 65-year-old body has not given out. Its insane. Ive fallen
down stairs, over stairs, over balconies. Theres no reason I should
be alive. Ive even had doctors check out my blood cells to find
out why the hell I havent managed to kill myself and whether Ive
got some special DNA. They came back with pages of reports.
Didnt understand half of it, but none of it said DEAD.
Judy Murray nearly lost her now famous son to a school shooting, said Kate Battersby in the Radio Times (U.K.). In 1996, Andy
Murraynow Britains No. 1 tennis playerand his brother,
Jamie, were caught up in one of the worst gun massacres on
British soil, when a gunman walked into their elementary school
in the small Scottish town of Dunblane and shot dead 16 children
and a teacher. Judy was working in the family toy store when her
mother rushed in and told her about the shooting. I picked up
my car keys and just ran out, Judy remembers. I was driving
there thinking I might not see my children again. At the school,
she was ushered into a packed room to await news. Eventually,
a policeman came in and asked the parents of one class to leave
with him. The girl [next to me] said, Thats my daughters class.
I dont know if I have survivors guilt, but I had an awful moment
when I was so relieved it wasnt my kids. And then feeling terrible.
She lost her daughter. As it turned out, teachers kept both Jamie
and Andy away from the massacre. It was impossible to believe
something like that could happen in your little town. Sometimes
it still is.

QStings kids wont be seeing much

of his $300 million fortune. The

singer told the Mail on Sunday
(U.K.) this week that hes determined that his six children earn
their own way in life. I certainly dont want to leave them
trust funds that are albatrosses
round their necks, said the
former Police frontman. Theyll
have to work. The 62-year-old
rocker is one of several wealthy
celebrities and executives whove
vowed to make sure their children
make it on their own: Billionaires
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates have
pledged to give away at least half of

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

Johnsons muscular ambition

Dwayne The Rock Johnson has a deep fear of powerlessness,
said Stephen Galloway in The Hollywood Reporter. The actor
and former wrestler was 14 when he came home to his moms
apartment in Hawaii and found an eviction notice pinned to the
door. We were living in an efficiency that cost $120 a week,
remembers Johnson, 42. My mom just started breaking down.
Where are we going to live? What are we going to do? He was
angry that his dadwho was barely scraping together a living as
a professional wrestler on the U.S. mainlandwas not around to
take care of the family. At first, Johnson took to crime, breaking
into stores, but after several arrests, vowed he would never lose
control of his life again. That was the tipping point. It was about,
What can I control with these two hands? The only thing I could
do was train and build my body. The gangly teen began lifting
weights and bulked up, and began wrestling as The Rock in his
early 20s. A few years later, the 6-foot-5 muscleman was being
cast in Hollywood action movies, and last year, his films grossed
$1.3 billion. I grew up where, when a door closed, a window
didnt open. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open.

their massive, multibillion-dollar fortunes,

while X Factor judge Simon Cowell plans
to donate most of his $300 million to
charity instead of to his son. Celebrity chef
Nigella Lawson has also said that her kids
will not get much from her so that they
develop a work ethic. It ruins people not
having to earn money, said Lawson.
QKate Moss angrily ordered Lindsay
Lohan to stay away from her husband during a loud argument at a packed London
restaurant last week, says The Sun (U.K.).
Lohan is currently in the English capital
rehearsing for a West End play and has
apparently been trying to cozy up to rock
star Jamie Hince, a member of the Kills
and Mosss husband. In recent months,
Lohan has directed several friendly Insta-

gram posts Hinces way. When the supermodel, 40, saw Lohan, 27, walk into the
restaurant, she confronted her, sparking a
huge row, said a witness. Kate seemed
extremely annoyed.
QU.S. womens national team goalkeeper

Hope Solo was arrested this week after

allegedly assaulting her sister and nephew
during an argument at a home in a Seattle
suburb. Police said Solo, 32, appeared
intoxicated during her arrest, while her
adult sister and 17-year-old nephew were
left with visible injuries from the attack.
In a 911 call, a frantic man described Solo
as going psychotic and beating people
up. Solos attorney said that it was the
goalkeeper who was in fact assaulted and
injured during this unfortunate incident.

WorldMags.net

AP, Getty(2)

Memories of a school massacre

Briefing
WorldMags.net

NEWS 9

Irelands disaffected Catholics

Disgusted by waves of scandal, Irelands Catholics are boycotting Mass and turning their backs on the church.

Andrew Testa/The New York Times/Redux

How Catholic was Ireland?

molest them. In some schools a high

level of ritualized beating was rouIt used to be easily the most Catholic
tine, the report said. A new scandal
country in the world. The churchs
has rocked the church, with the recent
connection to the island nation dates
discovery that up to 4,000 infants and
to St. Patricks conversion in the 5th
childrenmany malnourished and
century, and the modern Irish state is
poorly treatedhad been buried in
explicitly bound up with the church.
unmarked graves at homes for unwed
The constitution opens with the words,
mothers run by Catholic nuns.
In the name of the Most Holy Trinity,
from Whom is all authority... and
How have the Irish reacted?
continues with reference to obligations
The string of revelations has underto our Divine Lord, Jesus Christ, Who
mined the very legitimacy of the
sustained our fathers through centuries
church. To a great extent, the churchs
of trial. In Ireland, the church, not the
Only 18 percent of Irish Catholics attend Mass.
authority was premised on control
state, runs almost the entire education
of sexuality. They made this island into a concentration camp
system. Until recently, social life, too, revolved around the local
where they could control everythingand the control was really
church. In 1984, nearly 90 percent of Irish Catholics went to
Mass every week. But by 2011, only 18 percent did. Its a massive all about sex, says Father Mark Patrick Hederman, abbot of
Glenstal Abbey. Generations of people were crucified with guilt
cultural shift.
complexes. Now the game is up. Since priests were the enforcers
of sexual purity, to have so many exposed not merely as sexually
What changed?
active, but as sexual predators of children, has deeply shaken Irish
Mass attendance began dropping rapidly during the 1990s, as
Ireland began its Celtic Tiger economic boom. The country was faith. The priesthood has lost its luster, and enrollment at seminarmodernizing, urbanizing, and taking on a more global perspective, ies has plummeted.
and the local church was no longer the only nexus of community
Will there be a priest shortage?
life. For the first time, the country had a vigorous debate about
There already is. In Dublin, there are just two priests under the age
abortion and began teaching sex education in schools. At the
same time, several long-hidden scandals began to emerge. In 1992, of 40. Across the country, two thirds of priests are over 55. Some
towns are already sharing priests, having Mass at the local church
the Irish learned that a powerful and beloved bishop, Eamon
Casey, had a fathered a son, and that the Rev. Michael Cleary, the only every other week. In about a decade, church authorities say,
Singing Priest with best-selling records and his own radio show, the number of priests in Ireland may decline to 1,500down from
4,500 a few years agoand the church will have to start importhad a secret family with his housekeeper. But the biggest seismic
jolt came over the last decade, when the priestly sex-abuse scandal ing priests from other countries. Well over 80 percent of the Irish
still identify as Catholics, but now they practice their religion
horrified the entire country.
privately. Tourism at Station Island, where St. Patrick had his religious epiphany in the 5th century, is way up. Disaffected Catholics
How widespread was the abuse?
The scale was greater in Ireland than in any other country. Across are using the site as a kind of private church, a way to worship
unmediated by the hierarchy.
the world, the Vatican routinely protected individual priests who were
Northern Ireland, too
What will the church do?
raping boys and, to a lesser extent,
Northern Ireland, which is part of Great Britain,
The Association of Catholic Priests,
girls, responding to complaints of
has seen nearly as steep a decline in weekly
an Irish group, has recommended
abuse by transferring offenders to
Catholic Church attendance, from 90 percent in the
that women be ordained and that
other parishes. Ireland had hundreds
1980s to some 40 percent today. That drop is not
priests be allowed to marry. Surveys
of such cases, but because of the
the result of the abuse scandal alone. In fact, in
have found that the Irish people
churchs enormous power there, it
Northern Ireland, the official inquiry into priestly
abuse didnt begin until last fall, and it has yet
would support both changes by huge
was not just individual priests who
to release its findings. But Northern Ireland was
margins: 77 percent for womens
were involved, but large institutions.
the center of the Troubles, the violence between
ordination and 87 percent for marUntil the 1990s, the church ran
ried priests. Even in the unlikely
orphanages and industrial schools that Protestants and Catholics, and there Catholicism
was as much a political identity as a religious
event that the Vatican approved
warehoused 30,000 children deemed
such changes, it may be too late to
delinquentspickpockets, or the poor, one. Once the Good Friday Agreement of 1998
ended the armed struggle, religious adherence
reverse Irelands secular tide. No
or those with unmarried parents.
began to fade as political polarization eased. Now,
one doubts that a growing antiThe 2009 Ryan Report found that
overt religiosity is widely seen as backwardas
Catholic element exists in Irish socithousands of children were savagely
a form of resistance to peace. Theres no stigma
ety, Father Gerard Moloney wrote
raped or molested in these homes,
in not going to church, said William Crawley, a
in The Irish Times. The church has
while thousands more were beaten
Presbyterian minister in Belfast. In fact, theres a
provided its enemies with weapons
and starved and forced to work. Boys
stigma to going. Parents need to explain why they
of mass destruction. It has no one to
described nights of terror, lying in
are sending their children to church.
blame but itself.
bed waiting for priests to come and

WorldMags.net

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

Best columns: The U.S.

WorldMags.net

Why Hillary
keeps saying
shes poor
Daniel W. Drezner

The Washington Post

The real
objection to
Obamacare
Jonathan Chait

NYMag.com

The ethics
of chasing
tornadoes
Eric Holthaus

Slate.com

Hillary Clinton has a bad case of SID, said Daniel W. Drezner. Thats
status-income disequilibrium, a malady that occurs when successful
intellectuals and politicians socialize with Wall Street CEOs, investment bankers, and tycoons, leaving them feeling as if they are unfairly
deprived. Just a couple of weeks after complaining that she and Bill
were broke when they left the White House, Hillary told an interviewer last week that unlike a lot of people who are truly well off...
weve done it through dint of hard work. Thats incredibly tone-deaf,
considering that the Clintons have amassed more than $100 million,
mostly by giving speeches for $150,000 and up. Why does a very rich
Democrat keep insisting shes so...underprivileged? Simple: She and Bill
spend a lot of time around hedge-fund managers and other billionaires.
Indeed, shes spent a lot of time soliciting enormous sums of money
from these plutocrats for campaigns and Bills charity. With obvious
resentment, Hillary now compares herself to the 0.01 percent, not to
the 99 percent she claims to champion. Until she gets over her massive
case of SID, this kind of gaffe will recur indefinitely.
Remember all those dire conservative predictions about Obamacare?
asked Jonathan Chait. Theyre failing to come true. Take the claim that
only previously insured people were signing up. A new Kaiser Family
Foundation survey found that 57 percent of enrollees previously had
no insurance. Meanwhile, the uninsured rate nationally has plunged
25 percent. The horror stories about the rate shock from soaring
premiums? Also bogus. In reality, the average private plan purchased
on the exchanges costs just $82 a month. Most people with modest
incomes are seeing their individual premiums go down, not up. As additional insurers jump into the exchanges, theyre putting downward
pressure on premiums. Now that its impossible to deny that millions
of Americans are getting affordable health insurance for the first time,
conservatives are admitting what really bugs them: Other peoples
money will pay for it. Its redistribution! Never mind that other
peoples moneyincluding a fat tax deductionalso subsidizes
employer-provided insurance. All along, conservatives hated Obamacare not because it couldnt workbut because they feared it would.
Have storm chasers gone too far? asked Eric Holthaus. As residents
of Pilger, Neb., recover from a devastating double tornado that killed
two people and destroyed three quarters of the town last week, a
storm of another sort is brewingone over the role of Mark Farnik,
a professional tornado stalker who outraged locals when he posted a
photo of dying 5-year-old victim Calista Dixon on his Facebook page.
A week earlier, Farnik said he wanted to see some highly destructive tornadoes to make it rain for me financially. After widespread
criticism, Farnik has pledged to raise funds for Dixons funeral. But
charges of exploitation have become inevitable. Social media and
reality television have made stars of several storm chasers, prompting scores of people to take irresponsible risks in order to capture the
video or image that will help them hit the big time. As a researcher,
Ive done some storm chasing myself, and understand the appeal of
witnessing the power and beauty of nature firsthand. But when
every big tornado is chased by mercenaries hoping to profit off human
suffering, its time for a rethink.

Viewpoint

A late State Department Arabist once counseled me about the [Bashar]

al-Assads of this world: They work under degrees of stress that would psychologically immobilize any Washington politician. The tyrant did not become a tyrant because he
was stupid; far from it, the tyrant rose to power by his sheer animal presence and manipulative
brilliance. But being both manipulative and brilliant, he also knows that all men are his enemies,
and therefore public opinion in some sense matters more to him than to any democratic leader. If
he misjudges public opinion, he risks losing not an election, but losing his head, literally. No one
should envy a tyrant. His existence is miserable.
Robert Kaplan in RealClearWorld.com

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

WorldMags.net

It must be true...

I read it in the tabloids

QAn American scientist
was kicked out of a classical music concert after he
attempted to crowd-surf.
Stanford University chemist
David Glowacki was listening
to a performance of Handels
Messiah at a British theater
when the audience was
invited to clap and whoop.
Glowacki got overexcited
and threw himself on top of
other audience members,
like a punk rocker in a mosh
pit. It was the first eviction
of a classical concert audience member by another
member weve found since
the 18th century, said the
venues artistic director.
QDemi Moore is racing
to marry her new boy
toy so that she can
beat ex-husband Ashton Kutcher down the
aisle, said the National
Enquirer. Kutcher and
his fiance, actress
Mila Kunis, are
expecting their first
baby this fall, and
are expected to marry
next spring. So Moore,
51, now wants to wed
her current beau,
rock drummer Sean
Friday, 27, by the end
of the year. Said a
source: Shes determined to
show everyoneespecially
Ashtonthats shes moved
on in her life.
QA Louisiana man needed
80 stitches after he tried
to rescue an 11-foot alligator from a busy road. Glen
Bonin was out drinking
with three friends when he
saw the beast in the road,
and decided to drag it out
of oncoming traffic. When
Bonin grabbed the alligator
by its tail, it spun around and
chomped down on his hand.
It felt like someone was
pulling my arm out, he said.
Bonin vowed that the next
time he saw an alligator on
the blacktop, hed call animal
rescue. Ive always been the
kind of guy who learns the
hard way, he said.

FameFlynet

10 NEWS

NEWS 11
Best columns: Europe
WorldMags.net
UNITED KINGDOM

A federalist
is worse than
a drunk
Dominic Lawson

Daily Mail

SPAIN

We arent
getting
enough sleep
Joaqun Pi Yage

El Pais

Who cares how much the European Commissions

new leader drinks? asked Dominic Lawson. The
government of Prime Minister David Cameron
this week launched a doomed last-ditch attempt
to block the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker
as president of the commissionthe body that
designs EU lawsby smearing him as a boozer.
Anonymous British officials briefed the press on
the decadent habits of the former Luxembourg
prime minister, revealing that Juncker occasionally
enjoys a nip of cognac at breakfast and even
gaspflouts the EU ban on smoking during
meetings. Such attacks make it seem as though

Her Majestys Government is engaging in foul

play, like bad losers. Juncker was always going
to win the presidency because he has the support of Germany and the center-right European
Peoples Party, the umbrella group that holds the
most seats in the European Parliament. Cameron
would have done better to forget Junckers boozing and focus on the real problem with the Luxembourger: that he is an unabashed federalist who
wants authorities in Brussels to have supremacy
over national parliaments. His appointment
means the EU, not British voters, will control our
future. The thought should drive us all to drink.

Spains night owl culture is hurting our economy,

said Joaqun Pi Yage. Back when Spain joined
the EU, in 1986, we altered our border policies,
education standards, and a slew of other behaviors. But we didnt change our bedtime. Spaniards
still routinely eat dinner at 10 p.m., often out
in restaurants, and then watch TV till 1:30 a.m.
before retiring. We rise later than other Europeans, but get nearly an hour less sleep than the
rest of the Continent. Our sleep-deprived citizens
are too tired to be truly productive, and are more
prone to stress, absenteeism, and workplace accidents. Now some in the government are begin-

ning to listen to activists like Ignacio Buqueras,

president of the National Commission for the
Rationalization of Spanish Schedules. He wants
TV networks to end all prime-time programming
by 11 p.m. to encourage people to hit the sack
earlier. If most Spaniards woke up at 6 a.m., we
could start the workday at 7 and finish at 4 in
the afternoon, leaving plenty of time for shopping and family life. Of course, Buqueras says,
the TV schedule change must be accompanied by
change in employers expectations. The government, he notes, could take the first stepby
sending ministers home by 6 p.m.

Getty

Italy: Pope Francis excommunicates the Mafia

obvious thing for the Catholic
The pope wants Italys mobsters to
Church to denounce child killknow that they do not walk with
ers, but unfortunately it is not.
God, said Giacomo Galeazzi in La
Local priests in mob-plagued areas
Stampa. Pope Francis denounced
like Calabria and Sicily are often
the countrys powerful organized
in league with criminal parishcrime groups this week during a
ioners, blessing their marriages
visit to the southern Italian region
and allowing them to use church
of Calabria, where he met with the
grounds for meetings. For Pope
family of a 3-year-old boy killed
Francis to make his declaration
in January in a Mafia hit on his
in the heart of Calabria is couragrandfather. Gangsters from Calgeous. Now, to give his words real
abrias brutal Ndrangheta syndicate
weight, the church must take acshot the old man, a family friend,
tion, such as refusing donations
and the boy in the head and then
from mobsters and excommuniset their car on fire. This evil act
Francis: Kicking evil mafiosi out of the church
cating those politicians and busibrought forth words of unequivonessmen who consider themselves
cal condemnation never before
Catholics yet have dealings with criminal organizations.
issued from the mouth of a pope. Addressing 200,000 people
gathered at an outdoor Mass, the pope thundered, Those who
In his crackdown on truly evil mobsters, the pope is showin their life have gone along the evil ways, as in the case of the
Mafia, they are not with God, they are excommunicated. This ing his progressive instincts, said Vito Mancuso, also in La
Repubblica. But hes also used excommunication as a weapon
is nothing less than a revolution in Catholic understanding,
said Luigi Accattoli in Corriere della Sera. To put it simply: Ital- to punish liberal Catholics, such as Austrian Catholic activist
Martha Heizer. An honest believer who wanted to open the
ians who do not follow the church are no longer welcome in it.
doors of the church to everyone, Heizer and her husband celebrated Masses at their home without a priest. As a message that
The pope has exposed the big lie about so-called men of
dissent would not be tolerated, the Vatican excommunicated the
honor, said Roberto Saviano in La Repubblica. The mobsters
Heizers last month. Why should sincere Catholic reformers get
do not act as Christians, yet they drape themselves in the imthe same punishment as Mafiosi who murder little boys? To use
agery of Catholicism. The Ndranghetas initiation rite, for exexcommunication in this heavy-handed way is reminiscent of
ample, involves dripping the new members blood onto a statue
the churchs less-than-glorious past.
of St. Michael the Archangel. Some might think it is a small,

WorldMags.net

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

12 NEWS

Best columns: International

WorldMags.net

How they see us: What to do about migrant children?

JAPAN

Sexism
on display
in politics
Editorial

Mainichi Shimbun

INDIA

Dont make
everyone
speak Hindi
Antara Dev Sen

The Asian Age

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

Even our own elected officials cant refrain from

sexist jeering, said the Mainichi Shimbun. In an
appalling display in Tokyos city government last
week, Assemblywoman Ayaka Shiomura was
subjected to sexually harassing heckles from
colleagues when she dared speak out about the
lack of services for pregnant women. Lawmaker
Akihiro Suzuki and at least one other man interrupted her, yelling things like Get married,
You dont even have kids, and Cant you even
bear a child? prompting laughter from male
colleagues. Suzuki has since apologized, but his
outburst is telling. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has

supposedly made greater economic participation

by women one of the main pillars of his growth
strategy, and he claims that he wants 30 percent
of leadership positions in politics and business to
be held by women by 2020. But so far, despite his
rhetoric about expanding day care, hes done next
to nothing to make it easier for women to balance
raising children with having a careerand with
misogynists like Suzuki in his Liberal Democratic
Party, its easy to see why. Progress will require
more than just better access to day care. It demands truly radical change in the prevailing attitudes toward women.

The Hindu nationalists running the government

have already overstepped, said Antara Dev Sen.
Soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was
sworn in last month, a directive went out ordering
all government departments to use only the Hindi
language in their official communications and social media postings. This was a dangerous slap at
the 700 million-plus Indiansmore than half the
populationwho dont speak Hindi. In decades
past, efforts to impose Hindi as Indias national
language were met with bloody protests, most notably in Tamil Nadu, homeland of Tamil, one of
the finest classical languages alive today. Faced

with a torrent of outrage from Tamil speakers and

others, the government last week backed down on
the Hindi-only directive. But was that just a first
attempt? We need to let our politicians know
that India does not have a single national language. There are 22 languages recognized in our
constitution, and nearly 800 still in use in villages.
India has always been the land of diversity,
united not by religion or tongue but by values,
traditions, associations, and most importantly, a
sense of solidarity. Trying to elevate one dialect
above all others would undermine, not strengthen,
this great nation.

WorldMags.net

AP

The U.S. has no solution to this

Stop blaming the children, said Laura
humanitarian crisis, said Manuel
Castellanos in El Universal (Mexico).
Gmez Granados in La Crnica de
In recent weeks, U.S. Republicans
Hoy (Mexico). Republicans are
have tried to portray the flood of uneager to humiliate President Obama
derage migrants arriving at Americas
in the November congressional elecsouthern border from Mexico, Hontions, so they refuse to cooperate
duras, El Salvador, and Guatemala as
with him on immigration reform.
cynical manipulators, out to game the
Make no mistake: Migrant children
U.S. immigration system. This is nonare being held hostage to Republican
sense. The children60,000 of whom
greed. The Obama administration,
are expected to be intercepted at the
meanwhile, refuses to understand
U.S.-Mexico border this year, up from
the realities of life for these kids.
6,000 in 2009are running for their
U.S. officials have asked Mexico
lives. Many leave on their own, fleeand other governments to bar chiling violence in their hometowns.
Young migrants sleep in a holding cell in Texas.
dren from traveling without their
Levi, a 16-year-old Salvadoran caught
parents permission. But a large number of these youngsters are
on the Mexican side of the border, said he chose to run after
orphans, forced to live in inhuman conditions like true-life Olia gang threatened him in high school, telling him to join or be
ver Twists. Many dont even remember their parents, who were
killed. Many under-18s say the same thing. The crackdown
killed by drug dealers or migrated north to make a living.
on the drug trade in Mexico has driven the gangs to Central
America and made them hungry for new recruitsand they are
The Americans do have a plan: They want to bribe us to keep
ruthless in their drive.
our kids here, said the Prensa Libre (Guatemala) in an editorial. On a visit to Guatemala last week, Vice President Joe
Thats not the whole story, said Ral Benoit in El Heraldo
Biden promised prompt disbursement of aid money for local
(Honduras). The migrants journey often starts in the U.S.,
programs aimed at keeping youths in school and preventing
where human traffickers make threatening phone calls to
undocumented workers, saying their kids arent safe back home them from joining gangs. The problem, of course, is that such
and demanding up to $15,000 a head to smuggle the youngsters programs dont address the causes of our young peoples desacross the Rio Grande. Later, the desperate, duped parents often peration. They leave home because of poverty and insecurity,
and because the rule of law here is weak and pathetic. Even
find out that their children have been abandoned in the desmillions of dollars from the U.S. wont change that.
ert, used as drug mules, or raped along the way.

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Talking points
WorldMags.net

Noted

Walker: The GOPs 2016 nominee?

QOver half of U.S.

homesabout 71 million
housing unitsare at risk
from natural disasters
such as tornadoes, earthquakes, or hurricanes,
according to data from the
U.S. Geological Survey. At
least 10.6 million of those
are at a very high risk.

in Wisconsinbecause they know he could be

After Mitt Romneys crushing
a formidable contender for the White House in
2012 defeat, Republicans con2016. But legality isnt the only issue here, said
soled themselves with the belief
Francis Wilkinson in BloombergView.com.
that they had a deep bench
Only a certified dunce would send an
of future presidential candiemail indicating that a candidate was coordates, said Jonathan Chait in
dinating the work of 12 independent
NYMag.com. Unfortunately, a
conservative groupsa violation of
large number of them appear to
campaign-finance laws. Walker sent
be criminals. Virginia Gov. Bob
just such an email, even though
McDonnell is facing up to 30 years
hes seen six aides convicted
in prison on corruption charges. In
for violating campaign laws.
New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie
is sweating out a major federal Walker: Strong conservative credentials Do Republicans really want to
nominate a numbskull?
investigation over the George
Washington Bridge scandal. Now Wisconsin Gov.
Walker does have his flaws, said Tim Alberta in
Scott Walker, possibly the new front-runner in
NationalJournal.com. He lacks charisma, and is
the wake of Christies demise, has been implicated in a scandal of his own. Last week, a federal unremarkable in front of large crowds. But his
conservative credentials are impeccable: He cut
judge unsealed documents showing that state
taxes; he opposes abortion; he turned a massive
prosecutors had investigated whether Walker
budget deficit into a surplus. He also supports
directed a criminal scheme to circumvent
campaign-finance laws during his recall election in Second Amendment rights, and defeated organized labor. With a political profile so perfectly
2012. So, whos next on the Republican roster?
attuned to his partys right wing, presented in
Actually, Walker is not in any trouble whatsoever, a way that doesnt alienate the establishment,
Walker may just be the GOPs likeliest nominee.
said Gabriel Malor in TheFederalist.com. The
One small problem, said Heather Digby Parton
unsealed documents also show that both state
and federal judges dismissed the prosecutors case, in Salon.com. Walker first has to win re-election
as governor in November, and he and his Demoand ordered them to cease their baseless investicratic challenger are in a dead heat. If he loses
gation. Liberals are attacking Walkerwho sucthis race, he can kiss 2016 goodbye.
cessfully pushed through popular union reforms

CBSNews.com

QWith new gambling ventures opening every year, a

glut of casinos in Northeastern states is causing
gambling revenues in
individual states to drop
from 4 to 30 percent. In
Delaware, for example, a
29 percent decline in gambling revenues led the state
to cut 538 jobs in recent
years. There is a dramatic
oversupply in the industry right now, said Scott
Butera, CEO of Connecticuts Foxwoods Casino.
The Wall Street Journal

QSince
1985, the
size of the
average
fire on
federal
land has quadrupled, according to the National
Interagency Fire Center.
Of the top 10 biggest burn
years on record, nine have
happened since 2000.
MotherJones.com

QWars and political instability have created more

refugees in the world
than at any point since
World War II, according
to the United Nations. By
the end of last year, 51.2
million people had been
forced from their homes
in such countries as Syria,
Afghanistan, and Somalia.
Slate.com

QMore than 400 U.S. military drones have crashed

since 2001, slamming into
homes, farms, runways,
highways, waterways,
and an Air Force transport
plane in midair.
The Washington Post

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

The Redskins: Tackled by the government

The campaign to force the Washington Redskins
to change their name has clearly failed in the
court of public opinion, said Robert Tracinski
in TheFederalist.com. So last week, the U.S. Patent Office decided to intervene, ruling that the
teams trademark is invalid. The ruling is based
on a dubious argument that redskins is a
racial slur degrading to Native Americans, and is
therefore not worthy of federal patent protection.
But whether it is or isnt offensive is a matter
for market pressure to decide, not a bullying
federal bureaucracy. Certainly opinions differ about the appropriateness of Redskins as a
nickname, said Rich Lowry in NationalReview
.com. But Washingtons football franchise has
called itself the Redskins for the past 80 years,
and today, the nobility of Native Americans
is celebrated in our popular culture, and their
unjust treatment is recounted in our schools. So
wheres the damage? If the teams name is offensive to you, root for the Cowboys.
Let me educate you about the term Redskins,
said Baxter Holmes in Esquire.com. As an American of Cherokee and Choctaw lineage, I can tell
you that it is not merely a twisted compliment

like Savages, Warriors, or Braves. The word originated in 1755, when British colonial rulers issued
a directive to kill as many Native Americans as
possible, with a bounty paid for each collected
scalp. These bloody scalps were known as redskins. Non-Natives may not understand how
we feel, but every time Redskins owner Dan Snyder insists the name honors my ancestors, he cuts
into ancient wounds that have never quite healed.
Nonetheless, the patent offices ruling will do
little to compel Snyder to rebrand his team, said
Christopher P. Beall in NewRepublic.com. His
appeal of the ruling could go on for years, and
win or lose, he can still sue anyone selling unlicensed Redskins merchandise. But patents aside,
this is no longer a question of if the Redskins will
change their name, only when, said Dave Rappoccio in TheGuardian.com. However the name
was viewed in the 1930s, Redskins is now a
slur. Would anyone refer to Redskin casinos
or Redskin reservations? Obviously not. Snyder will keep fighting this losing battle because
he has a big financial stake in keeping his teams
name. You Redskins apologists out there dont
stand to make a dime, so whats your excuse?

WorldMags.net

AP, Corbis

14 NEWS

NEWS 15
Talking points
WorldMags.net

Iraq: Should the neocons shut up?

Republicans supported the war, the same
Dont look now, said Jacob Heilbrunn in
can be said for a majority of Americans
Politico.com, but the neocons are coming out
and many prominent Democrats, includof the woodwork. With Iraq in pieces and
ing Secretary of State John Kerry and
extremist militants marching toward Baghdad,
presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.
unrepentant Bush-era warmongers
Shouldnt they all shut up, too?
such as former Deputy Defense SecLiberals can either ignore the
retary Paul Wolfowitz, former Iraq
people who got Iraq wrong,
envoy Paul Bremer, and former
said Peter Beinart in TheAtlanVice President Dick Cheney are
tic.com, or they can ask them
going into overdrive to blame
tough questions about why they
the collapse of the country on
Cheney: Dont blame me.
got it wrong. That would help
anyone other than themselves.
with the debate over the merits of limited military
Primarily, theyre blaming the chaos on President
intervention in Iraq in 2014a completely difObamas refusal to keep U.S. troops in Iraq in
perpetuity. Their gall is unbelievable, said James ferent issue than the disastrous 2003 invasion.
This time, the neocons may be right.
Fallows in TheAtlantic.com. Were talking about
White House officials who got the biggest strategic call in many decades completely wrong. Con- One voice has been missing from all the
commentary on Iraq, said Byron York in
sidering that they launched a war based on nonWashingtonExaminer.com, and it is that of
existent weapons of mass destruction, and then
George W. Bush himself. In his 2010 memoir,
horribly botched the occupationsquandering
Bush maintained that the toppling of Saddam
more than $1 trillion, thousands of American
Hussein was the right decision, but admitted
lives, and more than 100,000 Iraqi livesthey
deep personal failures in the Iraq misadvenmight have the decency to shut the hell up.
ture. Such an acknowledgment from his fellow
neocons would go a long way toward rebuilding
Now, I find neoconservative arguments mostly
their credibility as they urge a strong response to
unconvincing, said David Harsanyi in The
the crisis. They dont have to grovel. They just
Federalist.com. But silencing everyone who suphave to concede they played a part in creating the
ported the war isnt exactly conducive to a
healthy debate. Lets not forget that while many problem they now hope to fix.

Hillary tapes: Laughing off a rape verdict

Getty

Hillary Clinton is supposed to be an unrelenting

defender and advocate of women and girls, said
Matthew Continetti in WashingtonFreeBeacon
.com. Yet listen to newly uncovered audiotapes of
the Democratic presidential front-runner gleefully
recalling the time she successfully defended an
alleged child rapist in the 1970s, and youll begin
to wonder why. A defense attorney at the time,
Clinton admits her 41-year-old client was probably guilty of raping a 12-year-old girl. He took
a lie detector test, says Clinton during unpublished interviews in the 1980s, unearthed from
University of Arkansas archives by a conservative
reporter. He passed, which forever destroyed
my faith in polygraphs, she says, chuckling.
Needless to say, her clients alleged victim didnt
find the episode so amusing, said Josh Rogin in
TheDailyBeast.com. A virgin before the assault,
she spent five days afterward in a coma, months
recovering from the beating that accompanied
the rape, and over 10 years in therapy.
Its not fair to blame Hillary for doing her job,
said Jamelle Bouie in Slate.com. Lawyers are
obligated to provide their clients with the best
possible defense, regardless of how unsavory
those clients may be. Anything less is literal

malpractice, to say nothing of its corrosive effect

on the foundations of our legal system. No one
would sanction a doctor for saving a thiefs life.
Why? Because people in public life dont get to
choose who they may help and who they may
reject. Conservatives can try to use this story
to score cheap political points, said Amanda
Marcotte in TheDailyBeast.com, but the former
First Lady has a distinguished record of helping women and girls around the world. Indeed,
Clinton was motivated by this case to set up a
rape crisis hotline in Fayetteville, Ark., having
witnessed firsthand how much more help rape
victims need.
The problem here is not the fact that Clinton took on the client, said Megan Cairns in
Spectator.org, or even that she defended him
despite her suspicion that he was guilty. The
issue is Hillarys casual delight at her victory,
won at the expense of a vulnerable 12-year-old
girl. Clinton may or may not be a compassionate champion of womens rights, but her tactless display of self-congratulatory triumph plays
into an image her opponents have been pushing
for yearsthat of a ruthless opportunist who is
cold, calculating, and willing to play dirty.

WorldMags.net

Wit &
Wisdom
Whosoever plants a tree /
Winks at immortality.
From a poem by Felix Dennis,
quoted in The New York Times

A champion is
someone who gets up
when he cant.
Jack Dempsey, quoted in
The Jewish Week

In the future, there will

be no female leaders.
There will just be leaders.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of
Facebook, in Forbes

The chief trick to making

good mistakes is not
to hide themespecially
not from yourself.
Philosopher Daniel Dennett,
quoted in BrainPickings.org

Repetition makes us
feel secure and variation
makes us feel free.
Poet Robert Hass, quoted in
The Boston Globe

There is no such thing as

perfect security, only varying levels of insecurity.
Salman Rushdie, quoted in
the Montreal Gazette

Luxury must be
comfortable, otherwise it
is not luxury.
Coco Chanel, quoted in
Fool.com

Children need models

more than they
need critics.
Essayist Joseph Joubert,
quoted in the United Press
International

Poll watch
Q77% of Americans
oppose sending ground
troops to Iraq, while only
19% support deployment.
56% support using drones
and 43% favor airstrikes to
attack ISIS militants. In general, 58% of Americans now
disapprove of President
Obamas foreign policy.
New York Times/
CBS

Q60% of Americans think

that the Washington Redskins should not change
their name, while only 26%
think that they should. 61%
think that the U.S. has become too politically correct.
Rasmussen

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

16 NEWS

Technology
WorldMags.net

Smartphones: Amazon unveils the Fire Phone

may feel more comfortable about the secuAmazons smartphone is finally here, said
rity of shopping on Amazon through an AmaJames OToole in CNN.com. CEO Jeff Bezos
zon phone. For others, the idea that Amazon
last week unveiled the long-rumored smartwill know everything about your shopping
phone, dubbed the Amazon Fire Phone, but
habits may prove a little disturbing.
while the device boasts some unique capabilities, it may not be enough to win over many
For Amazon, the Fires utility as a phone is
new customers. One obstacle is the price.
beside the point, said Laura Heller in Forbes
Starting at $199, the Fire Phone costs the
.com. What really matter are the features and
same as the latest offerings from Apple and
functionality that will more closely connect
Samsung. So what do you get in return? For
users to Amazons products and services.
one, Fire has a dynamic perspective feature,
And if the Fire does catch on, it could be
which uses four front-facing cameras to track
devastating to retailers, which stand to lose
a users head movements, allowing graphics
Bezoss phone: All about shopping.
more shoppers now that they can instantly
to be rendered in 3-D. But while app developcompare prices and buy an item they find for less on Amazon.
ers may yet find clever new ways to use the feature, on its
own, its little more than a gimmick. A more intriguing innovaAnd Amazon isnt just taking aim at brick-and-mortar stores,
tion is called Firefly, which uses the phones camera to identify
said Issie Lapowsky in Wired.com. With the Fire Phone, Amaobjectsbooks, games, food, household itemsand then gives
zon is making an aggressive move into Apple and Googles terusers the option to buy all that stuff instantly on Amazon.
ritory. The tech giants already compete in a host of categories,
including shopping, Web searching, advertising, and home enterBut will consumers really spend hundreds on a phone just to
tainment. The ultimate goal for all these companies is not to remake it easier to buy more stuff? asked Mary Branscombe in
linquish an inch of market share to anyone else. To accomplish
ZDNet.com. Probably. Several market surveys have shown that
that, they are looking to own the entire supply chain, from the
many Americans either are or want to be shopping with their
time a product is advertised to where and how its purchased to
smartphones. Because the technology in the Fire Phone is really all about shopping, it may appeal to those users. Plus, with the delivery of the product. If they also happen to own a device
that can facilitate all of that, so much the better.
data breaches becoming more commonplace, some customers

A new
healthtracking
device
may cut
down
on your
doctor visits, said Ainsley OConnell
in FastCompany.com. The gadget,
called Cue, is a small piece of
hardware that puts lab-quality
medical testing in the hands of
consumers. Using the swab-like
wand, Cue users can take biofluid
samples from their nose and load
the wand into a pale green cartridge roughly the size of a thumb
drive. The sample is then analyzed,
and test results are delivered to a
Bluetooth-paired smartphone app
within minutes. The system, which
is expected to ship next spring
for $199, will be able to test for
fertility, influenza, inflammation,
testosterone, and vitamin D using
five separate color-coded cartridges.
Cues inventors hope the device will
provide more medical information
to patients, giving them quick and
easy access to vital health data.

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

Bytes: Whats new in tech

A simple way to connect
It may be a million-dollar app, but it sure
doesnt do much, said William Alden and
Sydney Ember in NYTimes.com. Yo, a new
offering from Mobli CEO Moshe Hogeg, lets
users send the two-letter greeting in a text
and audio message to friends just by tapping their name on a contact list. The app
has already found a following among World
Cup fans, with anyone who sends a Yo to
WORLDCUP receiving a Yo notification
each time a goal is scored. But the startup,
which announced last week that it has raised
over a million dollars in funding from angel
investors, says the app has the potential for a
broader impact, calling it a lightweight, nonintrusive way to communicate.

Facebook to track browsing

Facebook is watching you, said Christina
Bonnington in Wired.com. The social networking giant has announced that it is
going to make ads better by tracking users
Web and app browsing habits. The data
will be analyzed to better target the ads
Facebook displays on individual users news
feeds. The social site will gather cookies accumulated while surfing the Web, as well
as track people hitting the like buttons

embedded on most websites. Luckily, this

new feature is opt-out, and users who wish
to disable tracking can visit the Digital Advertising Alliance (aboutads.info) to alert
Facebook and other outlets that they are not
interested in being tracked on the Web.

Smartphones to add kill switches

Your smartphone may soon get more secure, said Christie Smythe and Todd Shields
in Bloomberg.com. Google and Microsoft
each announced that they would add kill
switches to their operating systems as
evidence mounts that such security measures
may be deterring theft. The decision comes
as the smartphone industry faces increased
pressure to develop technologies that will
allow owners to disable their devices if they
are lost or stolen. Law-enforcement authorities believe this move can help curb resale
potential for stolen phones, and thus deter
theft. Apple incorporated a kill switch into
its iPhone software last year, a move officials
say dramatically reduced iPhone robberies in
New York City, San Francisco, and London.
The Federal Communications Commission is
also exploring the issue and plans to put forth
recommendations on kill switch technology
by the end of the year.

WorldMags.net

Reuters, Mark Serr

Innovation of the week

NEWS 17
Health & Science
WorldMags.net

Why dinosaurs dominated the world

Scientists have long debated whether
dinosaurs were warm-blooded, like birds
and mammals, or cold-blooded, like reptiles and fish. But a new study indicates
that the ancient creatures were in fact
mesotherms, possessing characteristics of both categories of animals. That
dual nature may explain why dinosaurs
were able to dominate the prehistoric
world. Warm-blooded animals require
lots of food, which serves as the fuel that
allows them to regulate their internal
body temperatures. All that energy also
makes them faster and more active than
their cold-blooded counterparts, whose

Popular teens may struggle as adults.

The downside of being cool

Corbis (2), Alamy

Being popular as a teenager doesnt mean

smooth sailing as an adult. In fact, a
new, decade-long study found that stereotypical cool teens are more likely
to stumble socially and have drug and
alcohol problems in their 20s. We call it
the high school reunion effect, University
of Virginia psychologist Joseph Allen tells
CNN.com. The student who was popular
and was running with the fast crowd isnt
doing as great later on. Researchers interviewed 184 seventh- and eighth-graders to
identify the social striversthose who
date at a young age, have good-looking
friends, and are defiant of authority.
Researchers also spoke with the students
parents and friends, then followed up with
them at age 22 or 23. Compared with their
peers, the adult strivers had 45 percent
higher rates of alcohol and drug problems
and 22 percent higher rates of criminal
behavior. Their ability to have positive relationships was also 24 percent lower. It may
be that as cool kids get older, behaviors that
once impressed their friends dont have the
same effect. So they turn to increasingly
extreme measures to get attention.

Earths hidden reservoir

The largest reservoir on Earth may be hiding hundreds of miles beneath the surface.
The discovery could radically shift our

body temperatures are affected by the

surrounding environment. For the study,
researchers compared the size, growth
rate, and metabolism of more than 380
vertebrates, including 21 dinosaur species. Warm-blooded mammals generally
metabolize their food about 10 times
faster than cold-blooded reptiles do. By
studying the growth rings in fossils, scientists found that dinosaurs metabolic rates
fell squarely in the middle of that range.
That would have enabled them to survive
on less food than mammals while still
maintaining their bulk. But with a faster
metabolism than cold-blooded reptiles,

Built for speed, agility, and endurance

dinosaurs were more agile, making them

both dangerous predators and elusive
prey. They took a middle waykind of
like Goldilocks, University of New Mexico
ecologist John Grady tells NPR.org. And
it seemed to work out very well for them.

understanding of how the oceans formed,

indicating that water on the surface may
have come from the interior of the planet
through a process called degassingrather
than from collisions with large, icy comets.
The newly revealed reservoir is located in
the mantle, the hot, rocky layer that separates Earths crust from its metallic core.
Not in liquid form, the H20 is trapped
inside the mineral ringwoodite, which has
a crystal-like structure that makes it act
like a sponge. Researchers estimate that if
as little as 1 percent of the water in that
reservoir were liquid, it would amount to
nearly three times the volume of all the
oceans on the surface. The study, which
used hundreds of seismometers to create
high-resolution images of the mantle, also
found evidence of significant water-related
rock movement at depths up to 440 miles.
Such activity may influence seismic events
like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Were trying to connect the rock cycles
i.e., plate tectonicswith water cycles,
Northwestern University geophysicist Steve
Jacobsen tells The New York Times. The
more we look, the deeper it goes.

How passenger pigeons died off

The extinct passenger pigeon, once the
most abundant bird in the world, has
long been held up as a cautionary tale of
humans negative impact on the environment. But new research reveals that the species experienced multiple population booms
and crashes in the million years prior to
the last birds death, in 1914. Such a pattern suggests the pigeons were especially
vulnerable to extinction. If
its already on this track,
National Taiwan Normal
University biologist Chih-Ming
Hung tells Science, human
influence can further increase
the speed that the population goes

WorldMags.net

down. Researchers sequenced DNA from

four well-preserved pigeon specimens, and
then ran the data through an algorithm
that used genetic diversity to extrapolate
population size. The calculations showed
that the birds numbersestimated to
have climbed to as many as 5 billion
fluctuated up to a thousand-fold in recurring
cycles throughout the speciess existence.
Researchers also found that climate-driven
shifts in the availability of acornsone of
the birds main foodscontributed significantly to their demise, with overhunting
and human-caused deforestation eventually
tipping the balance.

Health scare of the week

Cellphones hinder fertility
Guys, take note: That cellphone in your
pocket may be affecting your family jewels. A new study has found that low-level
electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted
by wireless devices hurts sperm production. Previous research suggested that the
magnetic fields could be damaging sperm
DNA by promoting unstable oxygen compounds. The radiation can also warm skin
by about 4 degrees, which could raise the
temperature of the testes enough to interfere with normal sperm production. All
told, the analysis of almost 1,500 samples
found, exposure to cellphone EMR lowered
sperm movement by 8 percent and reduced
viability by 9 percent. Researchers have
yet to determine whether the level of EMR
emitted by a phone or the duration of a
persons exposure are contributing factors.
Still, simply carrying your phone somewhere else doesnt seem a too difficult thing
to do, University of Exeter researcher
Fiona Mathews tells The Washington Post.
Sperm counts have been dropping throughout the developed world, and about
40 percent of couples struggle with
fertility issues.
THE WEEK July 4, 2014

18 NEWS

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

Pick of the weeks cartoons

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NEWS 19
Pick of the weeks cartoons
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THE WEEK July 4, 2014

ARTS
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20

Review of reviews: Books

reactionary. Scalia has compared bans on

homosexual acts to laws against bestiality and murder, and in a 2013 New York
magazine interview opined that Satan is
playing a role in the countrys increasing
secularism. Not only is Scalia the most
combative and controversial member of the
high court in U.S. historyhe proves it
almost every time he issues an opinion.

Scalia: A Court of One

by Bruce Allen Murphy
(Simon & Schuster, $35)

And you thought you already knew all

you needed to know about the Supreme
Courts most voluble member, said Dwight
Garner in The New York Times. The
Antonin Scalia who emerges in Bruce Allen
Murphys sweeping new intellectual
biography may be familiar in the broad
strokes: A child of Italian-American parents
who rode precocious rhetorical skills to
Georgetown, Harvard, and a White House
advisory post, Scalia won appointment
to the nations highest court in 1986 and
quickly established himself as a figure of
impressive charm and pugnaciousness. But
Murphys sensitive, scholarly study functions as an MRI scan of one of the most
influential conservative thinkers of the 20th
century, and the authors conclusion may
surprise you. Scalia, Murphy argues, is now
a court of one. At 78, hes a man whos
squandered his chance at a far grander
legacy through sheer combativeness.

Scalia: As friendly as a pit bull terrier

Do not waste your time or money on

this overtly biased book, said Ed Whelan in
National Review. Murphy distorts several
key cases in order to portray Scalia as an
agenda-driven ideologue. He argues, for
example, that the courts longest-serving
justice follows Catholic doctrine in making
court decisions, when Scalias jurisprudence
frequently conflicts with his faith. Are you
serious? said Glenn C. Altschuler in The
Boston Globe. Murphy only has to quote
his subject to indict him as a bully and a

Novel of the week

The Silkworm

Do Fathers Matter?: What

Science Is Telling Us About the
Parent Weve Overlooked

by Robert Galbraith

by Paul Raeburn

(Mulholland, $28)

(Scientific American, $26)

Whatever else may be said of the

worlds wealthiest author, she crafts
a plot as well as anyone alive, said
Malcolm Jones in TheDailyBeast.com.
Whether writing of a young wizard or
creating mysteries under her Robert
Galbraith pseudonym, J.K. Rowling
keeps the pages turning. And shes
not too shabby in the character department, either: Her Cormoran Strike
is good enough to claim a spot in the
front lines of detective fictions gruff
yet compassionate loners. Strike picks
up a new case here when the mutilated
body of a surly novelist turns up soon
after a scabrous new work earned the
victim several new enemies. Seizing
on the plots satirical potential, Rowling makes hay with the viciousness of
the literary world, said Jake Kerridge
in The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). Her
publishing-industry characters may
be cartoonish, but theyre also thoroughly entertaining, and Rowling all
the while takes a Christie-like delight
in the cunning sowing of clues. Her
latest is a damn good read.

Fathers are generally considered nice

to have around, but
there seems to be
no killing the idea of
dad the extraneous;
dad the superfluous, said Jeffrey
Kluger in Time.
Of course fathers
matterand yet the
very need for a book
like this one reminds us how misguided
our culture can be about the simplest of
concepts. Still, no one can blame science
writer Paul Raeburn for wondering what
it is, exactly, that fathers do for their children, said Bruce Feiler in The Washington
Post. Researchers utter lack of interest in
fathers represents a blot of shame on the
first century of psychology, and its only
in recent decades that newer studies have
begun filling the hole. Raeburn offers a
clear-eyed march through that research.
Of course fathers matterbut the depth
of the impact of fathers surprised even the

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

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But Murphys portrait doesnt explain

one Scalia mystery, said Seth Stern in The
Washington Post. The author leaves
largely unexamined the striking divergence
between the sharp-elbowed justice and the
man who, off the bench, is by all accounts
warm and wittyand an operagoing
close friend of his ideological foe Ruth
Bader Ginsburg. Murphy barely talked
to Scalia, and though he rehashes all of
Scalias most intemperate dissents, he
offers little new insight in this relentlessly
negative book. Thats a shame, because,
love him or hate him, the larger-thanlife Scalia has pioneered an originalist
approach to the Constitution that has
won in the marketplace of ideas. Surely,
his legacy will long outlive his tenure.
researchers who went looking for it.
The findings qualify as nascent but fascinating, said Mark Oppenheimer in The
New York Times. The presence of a father
apparently reduces the chances that a child
will be born prematurely or die in infancy.
Dads penchant for roughhousing may aid
the development of childrens intelligence.
And fathers seem to have an outsize effect
on vocabulary too. Older dads, meanwhile,
bring mixed benefits: They tend to be more
involved in the lives of their children, but
those children have strong genetic dispositions to schizophrenia and autism. Raeburn
sifts the evidence carefully, and for the most
part, his modesty is a virtue.
Indeed, the science of fatherhood seems
not quite ready for prime time, said
Joshua Kendall in the Los Angeles Times.
Too many of the studies Raeburn cites
establish only correlations between behaviors, not causes. But the authors scattered
references to his own experiences as a
father whos grown better at the job prove
illuminating enough that we want to hear
more. Particularly while were waiting for
the science on parenting to catch up, the
success stories of individual families can be
as valuable a source of information as wellcrunched data.

AP

Book of the week

The Book List

WorldMags.net
Best books...chosen by Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan is the lead film critic of both the Los Angeles Times and NPRs
Morning Edition. His new book, Not to Be Missed, describes and deconstructs his
54 favorite movies of all time, the ones he could watch over and over.
The American Cinema by Andrew Sarris.
(Da Capo, $18). There is no overestimating
the impact critic Andrew Sarris had on serious
filmgoers when he Americanized French auteur
theory and evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of some 200 directors (ranked from the
14 in The Pantheon to 11 he characterized as
Less Than Meets the Eye). Love it or not, this
book is an essential work of film criticism.
Elia Kazan: A Life (Da Capo, $33). A huge
sprawling autobiography from the actors director whose films included On the Waterfront,
A Streetcar Named Desire, and East of Eden.
When this nearly 900-page book came out
in 1988, Norman Mailer described it as the
best autobiography Ive read by a prominent
American in I dont know how many years.
King Cohn by Bob Thomas (out of print).
A deliciously gossipy biography of Harry
Cohnthe feared and reviled longtime head of
Columbia Pictures, a fierce law unto himself and
typical of the moguls who ruled the studios during Hollywoods Golden Age. As comedian Red
Skelton said of the mans well-attended 1958

funeral, It proves what Harry always said.

Give the public what they want and theyll come
out for it.
The Parades Gone By... by Kevin Brownlow
(Univ. of Calif., $40). Fueled by Brownlows
extensive knowledge and one-of-a-kind interviews with dozens of directors, producers, and
stars, this indispensable 1976 book almost singlehandedly revived serious interest in the longderided world of silent film.
The Pat Hobby Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Scribner, $14). The great novelist turned his
attention to a Hollywood he knew well in this
collection of short stories about a washed-up
screenwriter who was hot when the movies
were dumb. They retain their relevance and
punch to this day.
Picture by Lillian Ross (Da Capo, $17). A terrific piece of journalism and a landmark in the
history of American nonfiction writing, this look
at how John Huston made his 1951 adaptation
of The Red Badge of Courage remains the ultimate inside-Hollywood story.

Patricia Williams, Andrea Cipriani Mecchi

Also of interest...in wildlife and wild lives

Untamed

The Reef

by Will Harlan (Grove/Atlantic, $26)

by Iain McCalman (Scientific American, $27)

Activist Carol Ruckdeschel is a

benevolent invasive species of one,
said Max Watman in The Wall Street
Journal. Described by biographer
Will Harlan as the wildest woman
in America, she was already a force
when she arrived on Georgias Cumberland
Island in 1973, settled in, and began defending the islands sea turtles against all comers.
Ruckdeschels neighbors are Carnegie and CocaCola heirs, and her rustic life raises big questions,
like who really owns any patch of land?

The Great Barrier Reef wasnt

always considered so great, said Rob
Nixon in The New York Times.
In this enthralling history of the
1,400-mile-long natural wonder, Iain
McCalman informs us that as recently
as the 18th century, seafarers like Capt. James
Cook voiced only irritation with the spine of shipdevouring coral that lies off Australias northeast
coast. In story after story, the author enlists
similarly memorable characters to illuminate the
reefs glorious past and tenuous future.

Animal Madness

Gone Feral

by Laurel Braitman (Simon & Schuster, $28)

by Novella Carpenter (Penguin, $27)

Laurel Braitmans new book offers

a fresh angle on the age-old quest
to understand what goes on in the
minds of animals, said Maria
Popova in BrainPickings.org. Inspired
by the suicidal-like behavior of
her own dog, Braitman plumbed the scientific
research to uncover tales of depressed gorillas
and self-harming dolphins, and what the experts
understand about such behavior. Shes produced
a moving, ultimately optimistic testament to
animals emotional capabilities.

Sometimes the self is the thorniest wilderness of all, said Gayle

Brandeis in the San Francisco
Chronicle. Novella Carpenters memoir about her attempts to track down
her father in the Idaho woods isnt
the action-packed survival tale that its cover suggests. Carpenters journey proves to be a more
internalbut still-rivetingexpedition, one that
strips away the authors idealization of her mentally ill father and leads to tough questions about
how much she holds in common with him.

WorldMags.net

ARTS 21

Author of the week

Jennifer Weiner
Jennifer Weiner didnt have
to look far when she decided
to focus her latest novel on
suburban drug addiction,
said Vicki Hyman in the
Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger.
Five years ago, the popular
author of Good in Bed, In Her
Shoes, and
several other
best-sellers
received a
phone call
informing
her that her
estranged
psychiatrist
father had just died from
overdosing on heroin and
crack. Shed known he was
an alcoholic, but the illegal
narcotics came as a shock.
You just dont think about
street drugs with someone
who has a medical degree,
she says. Realizing she
had plenty to learn, she
threw herself into reading
about addiction and visiting
12-step meetings and rehab
centers. Her newest novel,
All Fall Down, channels
those lessons into a story
about a woman who has
the perfect lifeexcept that
shes hooked on painkillers.
Its no accident that Weiners
fictional addict is a blogger, said Jia Tolentino in
TheHairpin.com. Weiner
maintains a strong profile
online, so shes familiar
with the stresses of being
blasted by hateful blog
posts and tweets. Its easy
to get your feelings hurt. If
you dont have healthy
or healthy-ishways of
handling it, a pill or a few
glasses of wine could start
to look appealing. Weiner
has long been hyperalert to
her family predisposition to
addiction. Now she has extra
defenses. I remember one
counselor telling me that
people with addictions dont
have a problem with booze,
or pot, or pills. Their problem is with their feelings.
They didnt learn to cope
with feelings.

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

22 ARTS

Review of reviews: Stage & Art

WorldMags.net
Holler If Ya Hear Me

Palace Theatre, New York City, (877) 250-2929 ++++

controlled, impressively forceful performance, and the rest of the cast keeps pace.
Still, well never know what the same team
might have been able to do with Shakurs
more complex and far more compelling
life tale.

Williams and his co-star Saycon Sengbloh

I certainly liked the music I heard, said

Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal.
Composer Daryl Waters opened up
Shakurs songs by adding melodic choral

parts and the jazz-flavored accompaniment of a great pit band, resulting in one
of the best-sounding musicals to come to
Broadway in quite some time. The story,
though, doesnt keep up its end. Instead of
revisiting Shakurs fascinating life, audiences
are treated to a hackneyed gangland drama
that begins with a young mans release from
prison and leads to a violent denouement
thats close enough to West Side Story to be
actionable. Poet and rapper Saul Williams
plays the tales striving ex-con in a tightly

Exhibit of the week

on an island park in the Seine, Ensor

The Scandalous Art of James Ensor responded with a subjective howl in the
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles,
through Sept. 7

face of conformist complacency.

The show also brandishes a second prize,

James Ensors masterwork finally has the
said William Poundstone in ArtInfo.com.
company it deserves, said Christopher
The Temptation of Saint Anthony, a justKnight in the Los Angeles Times. Christs
restored 6-foot-tall drawing, hasnt been
Entry Into Brussels in 1889 is undoubtseen in 60 years. Composed of smaller
edly the star of the Gettys eye-opening
sheets of paper pasted onto canvas, it
new retrospective:
is more like a
Since its acquisition
contemporary
in 1987, the mamdrawing than
moth canvas by the
something from
great Belgian artist
the 19th century:
has been the most
The unruly mob
important modern
surrounding the
painting in Los
saint offers a veriAngeles, and it
table Wikipedia of
remains arguably
sexual perversity.
the first expressionIf its scandal you
Christs Entry Into Brussels in 1889
ist masterpiece. But
seek, thats nothgreat apocalyptic smears and scrapes of
ing, said Edward Goldman in KCRW.com.
color appear throughout this gathering of Doctrinal Nourishment, a 1889 hand34 paintings and 80 drawings, indicating
colored etching, shows a king, a cardinal, a
that Ensor (18601949) edged shockingly judge, and a general squatting and defecatclose to total abstraction well before most ing into the mouths of a submissive crowd
of his European peers. Christs Entry, from below them. Ensor didnt remain an icono1888, was the breakthrough: Just two
clast for long, and lost the edge that made
years after his onetime colleague Georges
him such a revolutionary image-maker.
Seurat completed an impressionist masterStill, most artists would kill to have a simwork that celebrated middle-class energy
ilar though short period of creative genius.
THE WEEK July 4, 2014

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Maybe rap is simply unsuited for Broadway, said Charles Isherwood in The New
York Times. Williams, to his credit, captures the seething intensity that gives so
many of Shakurs songs their heat. But
the musics lyrical density doesnt easily translate into great theater, since the
sizzling phrases fly by almost before you
can grasp their meaning. The show, more
problematically, gets a dated feel from generous doses of 1990s-style break dancing
and from the preachy speeches that many
characters deliver after a gang shooting
spurs a hunger for revenge. Surely no one
who enters the theater is a stranger to the
message that violence solves nothing. Still,
Holler punches home its message with
a relentlessness that may soon leave you
numb to the tragic story its trying to tell.

Opera: Is the Met sowing hate?

What a dismaying artistic cave-in, said
Anthony Tommasini in The New York
Times. New York Citys Metropolitan
Opera last week announced that it has
canceled a planned worldwide simulcast
of The Death of Klinghoffer, though the
opera will still open at Lincoln Center in
October. In making the announcement,
general manager Peter Gelb defended
composer John Adamss 1991 magnum opus, but said that its story about
the real-life murder of a Jewish tourist
risked fanning global anti-Semitism.
The hair-splitting solution of halfcanceling the show may well backfire,
said Justin Davidson in New York magazine. The operas sympathetic treatment
of the Palestinian terrorists who killed
Klinghoffer has long generated controversy, including condemnation by the victims family. But by reviving the debate,
the Met has transformed
a relatively esoteric
affair into a global story,
fodder for a thousand
anti-Semites conspiracy theories. I
doubt thats what
Gelb had
Gelb
in mind.

Joan Marcus, Newscom

Holler If Ya Hear Me is, if nothing else, a

bold effort to open up Broadway to a new
musical idiom, said Richard Zoglin in
Time. Amid all the shows built to celebrate
oldies remembered fondly by white, middleaged theatergoers, a show inspired by the
music of Tupac Shakur represents welcome
change. Especially because the project was
fraught with peril from the start. Shakur
was, after all, a convicted felon whose work
in rap demeaned women and celebrated
violence before he was killed, at 25, in a
1996 drive-by shooting. How does one turn
his potent music and the uglier side of his
message into mainstream musical theater?
Somehow, though, the shows creators have
found a way to weave 20 Tupac songs
into a moving fictional story of drugs,
gangs, and redemption in an unnamed
Midwestern city. The show hollers, and
you simply have to listen.

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24 ARTS

Review
of reviews: Film & Music
WorldMags.net

Jersey Boys

Valli on Broadway, proves as

Say this for Clint Eastwoods
startling as ever when called
first adaptation of a Broadway
Directed by Clint Eastwood musical: None of its as embarupon to mimic Vallis Big Girls
(R)
Dont Cry falsetto, said Joe
rassing as it ought to be, given
Morgenstern in The Wall Street
the
incongruity
of
genre
and
++++
Journal. But every scene is shot
director,
said
Wesley
Morris
A Broadway hit gets the
in blacks, browns, and other
in
Grantland.com.
Putting
his
Eastwood treatment.
depressingly mute colors, and
own imprint on the rise and
the movie turns sour when
mild stall of Frankie Valli and
The heartthrobs of 1962
the singers arent singing. Still,
the Four Seasons, Eastwood has
its not every day that any director makes a thorchosen to focus on the groups mob connections
oughly tolerable summer movie for grown-ups,
and the stage shows use of snappy direct-to-theaudience monologues. Trouble is, he keeps trying said Andrew OHehir in Salon.com. Eastwood
aims mostly just to put an interesting true story on
to do Goodfellas and winds up at Olive Garden.
the screen. Isnt that enough?
John Lloyd Young, who won a Tony playing

Directed by
James Ward Byrkit
(Not rated)

++++
Dinner-party guests lose
touch with reality.

revelations all arrive organiCoherence is a gentle film, but

cally, said Richard Whittaker
you walk away from it with
in The Austin Chronicle. The
your brain on fire, said Bilge
fact that [the film] was mostly
Ebiri in NYMag.com. A lowimprovd, with the cast being
budget picture about an urbane
kept in the dark about a lot
dinner party thats transformed
of what was happening, is
by the odd effects of a passstunning. Yet what began
ing comet, it turns a familiar
as a nifty puzzle in the end
night out into something magEmily Baldoni (center) feels the fear.
feels more like a trap, said
nificent, terrible, and strange.
Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. If the
As four couples chitchat airily and trade subtle
characters were more engaging, we might try to
jabs, their cellphones go dead before things get
work out exactly whats happening as possible
truly spooky. Soon enough, the guests discover
realities multiply. In this case, its hard to feel
that their exact doppelgngers seem to be having
motivated to try.
a simultaneous dinner down the street, yet the

Lana Del Rey

The Antlers

Sam Smith

Ultraviolence

Familiars

In the Lonely Hour

++++

++++

++++

Already one of
the most polarizing
pop stars in recent
memory, Lana Del
Rey has delivered a
second album rife
with incitements,
said Randall Roberts
in the Los Angeles Times. Ultraviolence
doubles down on the lazy, billowy sound
she calls narco-swing, while her languorous vocals map out a cutthroat
approach to getting by that blends seduction, drug abuse, and masochism. Gone
are the hip-hop influences prominent on
2012s platinum-selling Born to Die. With
Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys producing,
the sound here is heavy on melodramatic
strings and perfectly placed wah-wah guitars. In short, it sounds tragic and beautiful, offering the perfect musical vehicle
for the lost, desperate character Del Rey
plays on every track, said Mark Richardson
in Pitchfork.com. The album cant quite
sustain the mood it sets, in part because
its wearying to spend this much time with
this particular character. Still, shes a pop
music originalfull stop. There are not
nearly enough of those around.

Think of the Antlers

new album as a kind
of Zen chamber pop,
said Phil Harrison in
Time Out London. The
Brooklyn-based trio is
the kind of band whose
lead songwriter draws
inspiration from The Tibetan Book of the
Dead, yet the music the group makes traces
a silkily seductive arc from darkness to
light, from melancholy to hope. On track
after track, a narcotic fog of piano, horns,
and languid guitar figures resolves into
something radiant and subtly melodic.
On Familiars, the groups fifth full-length,
the Antlers are no longer a band thats
finding its voice, but one that has found
it, said Katherine Flynn in Consequence
ofSound.net. The record has an expansive, lounge-jazz feel throughout, with the
drummers brushed cymbals and mournful horn passages playing beneath the
well-controlled falsetto of frontman Peter
Silberman. Palace, the gorgeous opener,
feels like a small infinity, yet eight more
perfectly executed tracks await. No one
else is making albums that sound like
Antlers albums.

Meet the next Adele,

said Glenn Gamboa
in Newsday. Like the
last British singing
sensation to catapult to
global fame, 22-yearold Sam Smith has a
voice thats too special to be denied. Its bluesy one minute,
soulful the next, and moves seamlessly
from fluttering falsetto to commanding pop. On a debut album that follows
star-making vocal contributions to two hit
dance singles, Smith has focused almost
entirely on pop balladry. While the choice
may draw critics, it will likely make him an
even bigger star. But the danceable opening track, Money on My Mind, is also the
albums strongest, said Lily Moayeri in the
A.V. Club. The sophisticated piano and
escalating strings of Im Not the Only
One announce a shift to retro soul, and
the rest of In the Lonely Hour doesnt stray
far from this prescriptionto the point of
redundancy. Taken alone, each ballad
represents a strong showcase for Smiths
vocal talent. But listeners who let the entire
album play could start wondering if they
hit repeat by accident.

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

WorldMags.net

AP

Coherence

Television
WorldMags.net
The Weeks guide to whats worth watching
POV: American RevolutionaryThe
Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs
At 99, Chinese-American philosopher and
activist Grace Lee Boggs is still planning a new
American revolution. A force in the battle for
black civil rights since the 1940s, Boggs has been
a fixture of Detroits political life since she moved
to the city in 1953 and has never stopped confronting social injustice and promoting radical
reform. This documentary traces her path from
Marxist labor organizer to Black Power advocate
to surprisingly optimistic nonagenarian. Monday,
June 30, at 10 p.m., PBS; check local listings
Under the Dome
Last summers biggest hit returns with a new episode written by none other than Stephen King.
The novelist promises some very scary, mindblowing stuff in season two, as the residents of
Chesters Mill, Maine, discover that the dome
that mysteriously shut them off from the rest of
the world possesses previously undetected powers. Dwight Yoakum joins the cast as the town
barber. Monday, June 30, at 10 p.m., CBS
History Detectives Special Investigations:
Civil War Sabotage?
Days after the close of the Civil War, some
1,500 passengers, most of them returning Union
soldiers, died aboard the SS Sultana when the
Mississippi steamboats boilers exploded. The
greatest maritime disaster in U.S. history was
ruled an accident, but is it possible that a saboteur sank the Sultana with a coal torpedo
shoveled into the firebox? Tuesday, July 1, at
9 p.m., PBS; check local listings
Drugs, Inc.
Americas decades-long war on drugs is facing
new scrutiny as states such as Colorado and
Washington legalize marijuana. This excellent
series has been illuminating the illegal drug
trade for four seasons, and begins its fifth with
a detailed look at drug abuse in Salt Lake City
and law enforcements efforts to take down the
nations major dealers. Wednesday, July 2, at
9 p.m., National Geographic

Under the Domes premise shows new life.

The 90s: The Last Great Decade?

Nostalgic for Nirvana? Feeling sentimental about
Socks Clinton? This three-night, three-part documentary never really attempts to answer the question in its title, but it proves to be a thoroughly
entertaining way-back machine. Handling narrator duties is actor Rob Lowe, who spent much of
the decade in question rehabbing his image after
a sex-tape scandal (remember when those were
embarrassing?). Begins Sunday, July 6, at 9 p.m.,
National Geographic
Other highlights
Drunk History
A Ken Burns series it isnt. In this comedy series
that began its life on the Web, episodes from
history are retold by deeply inebriated narrators, with celebrity actors pitching in to mount
simultaneous dramatizations. Tuesday, July 1, at
10 p.m., Comedy Central
Man Finds Food
Former Man v. Food host Adam Richman goes
city to city hunting secret culinary treasures. First
stop: Chicago. Wednesday, July 2, at 9 p.m.,
Travel Channel
Macys 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular
Seeking holiday fireworks but afraid of crowds?
Stay home and watch patriotic pyrotechnics
light up New Yorks East River. Friday, July 4, at
8 p.m., NBC

Brownie Harris/CBS, HBO

112 Weddings

U
}>i >i/i

Movies on TV
Monday, June 30
Zero Dark Thirty
Kathryn Bigelows drama
about the hunt for Osama
bin Laden ends with a
thrilling real-time recreation of SEAL Team
Sixs successful raid on the
terror leaders compound.
(2012) 12:05 p.m., Starz

Show of the week

Newlyweds Heather and Sam

ARTS 25

If only it were as easy as happily ever after.

Filmmaker Doug Block long considered wedding videography just a lucrative side gig. But
as years passed, he began wondering about
the fates of the 112 couples hed filmed and decided to revisit them. Focusing on 10 couples,
Block juxtaposes footage from joy-filled wedding celebrations with candid interviews that
paint a bittersweet, nuanced view of married
life. Some relationships crash and burn, others
adapt to challenges, and a few thrive. Plenty of
couples could learn a thing or two from Blocks
discoveries. Monday, June 30, at 9 p.m., HBO

WorldMags.net

Tuesday, July 1
The Hunchback of
Notre Dame
Charles Laughton and
Maureen OHara are excellent as Quasimodo and
Esmeralda in this classic
adaptation of Victor Hugos
novel. (1939) 8 p.m., TCM
Wednesday, July 2
Moonrise Kingdom
Two preteens disturb the
peace of a New England
island when they proclaim
their love and run away
together. From director
Wes Anderson. (2012)
1 p.m., HBO
Thursday, July 3
Theres Something
About Mary
Theres something about
this crass Farrelly brothers
comedy that inspires you
to shed notions of good
taste and just laugh. (1998)
3:15 p.m., Cinemax
Friday, July 4
Sergeant York
War hero Alvin York asked
for a particular star to bring
his diary to the screen;
Gary Cooper responded
with an Oscar-winning
turn. (1941) 8 p.m., TCM
Saturday, July 5
The Mission
Robert De Niro stars as a
mercenary who becomes a
passionate Jesuit missionary determined to fight for
converts in 18th-century
South America. (1986) 6:15
p.m., Sundance
Sunday, July 6
Out of Africa
Meryl Streep and Robert
Redford do all they can to
liven up this Oscar winner
about a doomed romance
in British-ruled Nairobi.
(1985) 10 p.m., Sundance

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

26

LEISURE
WorldMags.net
Food & Drink

Nashville hot chicken: A flame-throwing American classic

For the spicy coating:
cup lard, melted and heated (or hot frying oil)
3 tbsp cayenne pepper
1 tbsp (packed) light brown sugar
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
tsp sea salt
tsp paprika
tsp garlic powder

Sinus-clearing, Scoville-busting,
12-alarm there are no descriptors that
properly capture the experience of biting into a piece of classic Nashville hot
chicken, said Lee Brian Schrager and
Adeena Sussman in Fried & True (Clarkson
Potter). Legend has it that the fiery dish
was created by an indignant girlfriend who
wanted revenge on her cheating manbut
he loved the combination of crisped fat and
burning pepper so much that he opened a
hot chicken shack in the 1930s. Now run
by the two-timers grandniece, Princes has
never shared the recipe for which it recently
earned an Americas Classics award from
the James Beard Foundation.

Recipe of the week:

Nashville hot fried chicken
For the dry brine:

All the fixins for a head-clearing holiday picnic

1 whole chicken (3 lbs), cut into quarters

1 tbsp kosher salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
For the dip:
1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
1 tbsp Louisiana-style hot sauce
For the dredge:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp sea salt
Vegetable oil, for frying

In a bowl, whisk milk, eggs, and hot

sauce. In a separate bowl, whisk flour and
salt. Dip chicken in flour mixture, then
milk mixture, then the flour mixture again,
shaking off excess after each step.
Fill a 6- to 8-quart pot halfway with
oil and heat to 325. Set a wire rack
on a rimmed baking sheet. Working in
batches, lower chicken into hot oil; fry
until crisp, 15 to 17 minutes for breast
quarters and 18 to 20 minutes for leg
quarters. Remove chicken and let drain
on the rack.
Carefully ladle lard or frying oil into a
heatproof bowl. Whisk in remaining spicy
coating ingredients. Baste spicy coating
over hot fried chicken and plate immediately. Serves 4.

Wine: Artisanal champagnes

New York Citys best bagels: For what thats worth

Frances Champagne region is undergoing a small-scale revolution, said Jon

Bonn in Saveur. Grand houses like
Veuve Cliquot still achieve consistency
by buying grapes from multiple growers, but many growers are now creating
and selling their own champagnes, and
each tells a unique story. Vintage and
place have begun to matter.
NV Chartogne-Taillet Cuve SainteAnne Brut ($30). Aged in concrete
rather than steel, this lush yet fresh
cuve is heady with caramel, citrus,
and flowers.
Moutard Pere & Fils Grande Cuve
Brut ($28). This Aube bottling combines a chalky bite with flavors of
currant, chestnut, and crab apple.
NV Benot Lahaye Ros de Macration ($70). The deep currant notes
and thyme aromas of this biodynamically produced champagne
testify to the potential seriousness
of ros.

Metaphorically speaking, bagels have never

been hotter than they are right now, said Alan
Richman in GQ.com. At Black Seed, the epicenter of a Manhattan bagel revival, lines routinely
run out the door. The bagel has become the
new cupcake, our current carbohydrate craze.
But do New York City bagels deserve such love?
I trekked to 10 acclaimed vendors recently and
felt disappointed. The New York bagel of 2014 is
bland and way too big. Cmon, New York: The
three purveyors below deserve respect, but isnt
the bagel supposed to be one of your specialties?
Black Seeds wood-fired gems
Absolute Bagels The service is ornery and the
lines are long at this bare-bones Upper West Side institution, which happens to sell
the best bagel in town. Though the flavor is modest, the exceptional exterior offers some of the pleasure of crusty bread. 2788 Broadway, (212) 932-2052
Black Seed Black Seeds bagels are less malty and slightly bigger than the Montreal
bagels claimed as inspiration. But the house specialty is still a beautiful but very quiet bagel, offering hints of salt, malt, and pretzel. Try one with house-cured salmon
and fish roe for the best bagel sandwich in New York. 170 Elizabeth St., (212) 730-1950
Kossars Bialys This Lower East Side bakery is more famous for bialys, but its bagels
merit a top-three ranking despite being vastly oversize. A pleasantly crunchy crust
gives way to a spongy interior that delivers sweet, complex scents and hot-bread
flavor. 367 Grand St., (212) 473-4810

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

WorldMags.net

Evan Sung, Bryan Thomas/The New York Times/Redux

That hasnt slowed several worthy imitators. Pretty much everyone agrees that
the two principal ingredients are lard and
cayenne, combined in mysterious proportions and brushed on the chicken just out
of the fryer, lacquering it a shocking shade
of red. Thats how its done at Hattie Bs,
an acclaimed Nashville newcomer, whose
chef, John Lasater, learned of our book
and took pity on us, offering this home
version. Its not as hot as Hattie Bs hottest,
but its no joke either.

Toss chicken with salt and pepper, cover,

and refrigerate overnight or up to 24 hours.

WorldMags.net


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Travel
WorldMags.net

28 LEISURE

This weeks dream: The Emerald City of the Maya

One of the great capitals of ancient Mayan
civilization is finally ready for visitors,
said Maya Kroth in The Washington Post.
Until now, the ruins at Palenque, Mexico,
always seemed painfully out of reach,
hours by bus from the nearest town. But a
new airport has made this extraordinary
site near the Guatemala border accessible
to travelers beyond the most dedicated history buffs and archaeologists. Roads are
being repaved and new hotels are opening,
creating a palpable sense of momentum.
Palenque is often described as the greatest archaeological find ever made in the
Americas, and one day it may provide the
key to unlocking the mysteries of the Maya.
For my stay, I chose El Panchn, a funky
compound near the ruins thats beloved
by dreadlocked backpackers. My room
cost under $20 a night, and came with a
nightly symphony of unseen insects, howler
monkeys, and strange birds whose song
sounds like a cross between a malfunction-

A screen legends paradise

The Brando
Tetiaroa, French Polynesia
From the air, Marlon
Brandos former private
atoll looks something like a
mirage, said Laura Fowler in
Cond Nast Traveller (U.K.). A
cluster of small islands encircles an astonishingly blue
lagoon and is in turn ringed
by a coral reef. The dozen
simple shacks that the actor
built have been replaced by
35 guest villas, but sustainability remains a priority. The
new resort is more about
snorkels and paddleboards
than Jet Skis or superyachts, and it can only be
reached by the operators
private plane. Each villa has
a private pool, though, and a
terrace to lounge on.
thebrando.com; villas start
at $2,450

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

Palenques picturesque ruins

ing fan belt and an alien transmission.

Awaking the next morning, I rode a tour
bus to the ruin zone, then paid for a tour
guide who proved to be a font of information as we set off on the parks jungle
footpaths. Palenque was occupied from
roughly 100 B.C. to A.D. 900, peaking
under the 7th-century rule of Pakal the
Great. It was his tomb that an archaeolo-

Most of Palenques 1,500 structures have

yet to be excavated, but several imposing
temples and a massive palace complex
occupy the sites central clearing. At Pakals
enormous, well-preserved palace, tourists line up to take photos at the granite
throne in the bathroom complex, which
once discreetly drained to a septic field far
from the city. Bas-relief carvings are everywhere, chronicling a detailed history of
Palenques golden agethough precious
little about its fall. Drought, deforestation, overpopulation, and power struggles
all seem to have contributed to the citys
rapid decline. More than 900 years later, it
appears poised for a comeback.
At El Panchn (elpanchan.com), rooms
start at roughly $18.

Getting the flavor of...

Daytona Beachs easygoing neighbor

Thoreaus storied hometown

About half an hour south of party-friendly Daytona Beach lies an unspoiled gem as quiet as
the morning sunrise over the Atlantic, said Jim
Abbott in the Orlando Sentinel. In Floridas New
Smyrna Beach, the scene is decidedly laid-back.
West of the Intracoastal Waterway lies the mainland Canal Street Historic District, an area rich
in such nonbeach attractions as galleries, antique
shops, and a history museum. Near the beach,
on pedestrian-friendly Flagler Avenue, the
diversions range from touristy souvenir shops to
homegrown businesses that cater to the whimsical and the practical. Pick up a rental surfboard
before strolling toward the sound of the ocean
and the 13 miles of white-sand beach that remain
the towns main draw. To the south, the pristine
Canaveral National Seashore is shared by 310
bird species; to the north, a pet-friendly 2-mile
boardwalk offers water views in both directions.
Best of all, theres much beach in between.

Concord, Mass., is rich in history, but it rewards

those who approach it the way I imagine Henry
David Thoreau did, said Nancy Shohet West
in The Boston Globe. Thoreau wrote Walden
while living in Concord, of course, and you
can swim in Walden Pond or stroll the path
around it and visit a replica of his cabin. Which
suits me: When it comes to sightseeing, I am
at heart an 8-year-old who would rather ride
my bike, wander the woods, or eat ice cream
on Main Street than seek out exhibits about
the Transcendentalists or the first battle of the
Revolutionary War. That works here. Tour
guides lead bike tours to the historic sites, and
you can reach them by river after renting kayaks
on Main Street. And even Im not above being
delighted by a chance encounter with a historical
artifactlike wandering into the Concord Free
Public Library and discovering manuscript pages
from Louisa May Alcotts Little Women.

Last-minute travel deals

Lakeside in Australia
Visit Melbourne and stay for
$129 a night, a 73 percent
savings, in a superior queen
room at the Bayview Eden.
The hotel overlooks Albert
Park Lake, the parks fine golf
course, and Hobsons Bay.
Book by July 25.

Caribbean comfort
Book by July 31 at the
Landings St. Lucia and receive
two free massages, valued at
$260, while saving up to 45
percent on a room. Through
October, villas with private
plunge pools start at $306 a
night, breakfast included.

Tuscan history
Il Salviatino, a restored
15th-century villa located 15
minutes outside Florence, is
offering 33 percent off through
September. Book by Aug. 31 to
enjoy nightly rates starting at
$1,015, plus a complementary
bottle of prosecco.

ourdeal.com.au

landingsstlucia.com

salviatino.com

WorldMags.net

Corbis

Hotel of the week

gist stumbled across in the 1950s when he

discovered a hidden staircase in a towering
step pyramid at the ancient citys center.
The remains of five sacrificial victims
guarded the tomb entrance.

LEISURE 29
Consumer
WorldMags.net
The Ferrari California T: What the critics say
Road & Track
The California used to be our least favorite
Ferrari. But this new iteration of the
companys top seller is a far more handsome machine that also delivers much
improved ride quality. Purists will note
that the introduction of twin turbochargers has altered the engine note and added
a brief yet unmistakable pause when the
driver punches the accelerator at highway
speeds. Still, the new California really is
fun to hustle. Its not suddenly our favorite
Ferrari, but wed take one.
Autoblog.com
Put simply, there really isnt much worth

complaining about when behind the wheel

of this California T. Ferrari tweaked the
new 3.9-liter, V-8 engine to make sure the
turbochargers didnt silence the highpitched wail brand loyalists expect, yet
torque hits a remarkable 557 foot-pounds
in seventh gear. Zero to 62 mph goes by
in 3.6 seconds, and the hard top still folds
away in just 14.
Autoweek
Better yet, this most affordable of Ferraris delivers Ferrari-ness in spades. The
well-crafted, leather-rich interior feels like
wealth, the engine sounds fabulous, and
acceleration comes at close to one g, in

Ferraris entry-level joyrider,

from $198,000 (est.)
long Ferrari-appropriate swells. Sometimes emotions matter, and Ferraris are
freaking cool, if you havent noticed, and
its not all mythology or hype.

The best ofoutdoor grilling

Weber Rapidfire
Chimney Starter

Bison
Airlighter
This powerful
lighter ignites
charcoal in seconds
with a 2,600-degree
flame, and then feeds
the fire with forced air.
The manufacturer promises that your coals will
go from cold to ready to
cook in just six minutes.
$100, thebisoncompany
.com

The conventional way to

speed the heating of the
coals is to dump them in
a chimney before lighting a wad of newspaper
beneath them. This popular and reliable Weber
model is made of aluminized steel.
$18, weber.com
Source: TheSweethome.com

Source: Uncrate.com

Charcoal Companion
Smoker Pellet Box

Himalayan Salt Block

Salt-slab grilling is one
of the hottest trends
in barbecuing. Grill
foods atop or under the
block la Italian brick
chickento add depth of
flavor. The salt block can
even double as a serving platter.
$28, surlatable.com

You dont have to give

up smoky flavor for the
convenience of having a
gas grill. Simply fill this
V-shaped box with wood
chips or pellets and set it
below the grate. A steel
chute lets you refill the
box while cooking.
$25, firecraft.com
Source: ShopSmart

Source: ShopSmart

Epicoa EP5 Rotisserie

This one of a kind
rotisserie grill turns any
backyard into a Brazilianstyle churrascaria.
Chicken, ribs, steaks
whatever you crave
turn on the motorized
skewers over a charcoal
fire. And the whole contraption folds away into
a suitcase.
$499, premiergrilling.com
Source: Forbes.com

Tip of the week...

How to be a better swimmer

And for those who have

everything

Best apps...
For scanning and sharing old photos

QExtend your reach. With each freestyle

stroke, stretch your arms as if reaching for
something just beyond your grasp. Your
open hands should slice slots into the water, fingertips first.
QUse your whole body. Work more than
your arms and shoulders by starting each
stroke at the hipso that you feel the
whole side of your body reaching forward.
Allow your legs to drift behind you, kicking
gently rather than churning the water. Lots
of splashes and bubbles are evidence of
wasted energy.
QKeep your neck slack. Raising your head
above the water causes your lower body to
sink, creating drag. Instead, relax your neck
until you feel like your head is hanging.
Stay focused on the bottom of the pool and
imagine your head-spine alignment projecting like a laser in a straight line.

Pillaging and plundering in your Ford Focus

just never seems to work out right, does it?
To be as fierce as a Viking, you need the right
ride, and the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde,
Denmark, now stands ready to build an
authentic Viking ship based on artifacts in its
stellar collection. Prices vary widely because
the reproductions
range in size from
21 to 39 feet, and
purchasers can
stipulate that no
tools be used that
the Vikings didnt
havewhich rules
out even hand
saws. The 21-footer
is pretty sweet; the jumbo model rattles fear
into the hearts of men everywhere.
$25,000$540,000, culturenordic.com

QPic Scanner is deserving of the rave re-

Source: Mens Journal

Source: HiConsumption.com

Source: CultofMac.com

WorldMags.net

views it has received. Available for iOS only,

it retains more image detail than its rivals
and offers a variety of useful tools. (Free)
QCamScanner is a go-to tool for genealogists because of its facility with birth
certificates, marriage licenses, and other
documents. But its simple to use for photo
scanning as well, and handles the basic
challengescorrecting for crooked scans
and allowing adjustments to contrast and
brightness. (Free, Android or iOS)
QShoebox is an app available from the
genealogy site Ancestry.com. It doesnt
allow adjustments to brightness but does,
like the others, allow the addition of caption
information. For best results when sharing
the scanned photos, send versions youve
saved to your phone, not Shoeboxs lowerresolution copies. (Free, Android or iOS)

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

30

Best properties on the market

WorldMags.net

This week: Homes for boaters

1 W Wayzata, Minn. This seven-bedroom house lies on

a bank of Browns Bay in Lake Minnetonka. Built in

1920, the home features a new kitchen, a sunroom, a
game room with a bar, a balcony with bay views, and
a rooftop deck. The 0.7-acre property includes 230 feet
of shoreline. $5,250,000. Cynthia Redmond, Coldwell
Banker Burnet, (612) 850-7015

2 X Colchester, Vt. Built in

3
5
7
4

2000, this three-bedroom

home won an Excellence
in Architecture Design
from the American Institute of Architects. The
interior features a stoneand-glass atrium walkway,
two fireplaces, and a master suite with a sunroom.
The 13.2-acre property on
Lake Champlain includes
a sand beach in its 1,620
feet of water frontage. $3,300,000. Kathy
OBrien, Lion & Davis/
Lang McLaughry, (802)
846-7835

3 W Tiburon, Calif. This four-bedroom house sits on a

corner lot in the waterfront community of Paradise Cay.

The home has maple floors, a master suite with a spa
tub, and an open kitchen that leads to a deck. The property has a 60-foot deepwater boat dock and views of
San Francisco Bay. $2,395,000. Penny Wright-Mulligan,
Pacific Union/Top Agent Network, (415) 601-8191
THE WEEK July 4, 2014

WorldMags.net

31

Best properties on the market

WorldMags.net
4 X League City, Texas

Set on the banks of Clear

Lake, this three-bedroom
midcentury modern
home was built in 1974.
The house has floorto-ceiling glass walls,
multiple terraces, and a
covered deck. The 0.5acre property includes
an artists cottage and a
covered lift for Jet Skis
and boats. $4,300,000.
Jonathan Cottrell,
Sothebys International
Realty, (832) 368-4184

5 W Chestertown, Md. This six-bedroom brick

house on 76 acres sits on the Eastern Shore of
Chesapeake Bay. Built in 1802, the home was
renovated in 1990 and features seven fireplaces,
a kitchen with a chefs stove, and a first-floor
master suite with vaulted ceilings. The property
includes a three-bedroom tenant house, three
barns, a dock with a lift, and a Hinckley sailboat. $3,695,000. Wendy Bunch, Brandywine
Fine Properties/Sothebys Internal Realty, (302)
275-0868

Steal of the week

6 T Lamoine, Maine This four-bedroom house on 7.3 acres is surrounded

by Frenchman Bay on three sides. Features include a great room with

cathedral ceilings, a kitchen with custom cabinetry, and a guest wing
connected by a covered walkway. The waterfront consists of granite
outcroppings, a small beach, and a deepwater dock. $1,450,000. Jamie
OKeefe, Knowles Co., (207) 276-3322

7 S Leechburg, Pa. This three-bedroom house sits

along the Allegheny River, just 45 miles north of
Pittsburgh. The home features two kitchens, a
wraparound deck, and a water filtration system. A
separate one-bedroom guesthouse is connected by
a walkway, and stairs lead to a fire pit and a boat
dock. $358,900, Chrissy Heinle, Howard Hanna,
(724) 681-1874

WorldMags.net

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

32

BUSINESS
WorldMags.net
The news at a glance

QA study by Yale economists

found that during a recession, college majors matter.
Students who focused on
subjects like engineering
and finance increased their
earnings advantage when
they graduated into a down
economy, while those who
studied philosophy or music
were even more disadvantaged than usual.

NYTimes.com
QAccording to data from the
American Time Use Survey,
watching television was still
the No. 1 leisure activity in
2013, with Americans spending an average of two hours
and 46 minutes each day
watching TV. Americans also
spent more time sleeping
than a decade ago, with an
average of eight hours and
44 minutes a night.

The Wall Street Journal

QAmericansespecially
children and teenagersare
drinking
40 percent
less milk
than they
did in the
1970s,
thanks
largely to a slew of new
beverage options that have
replaced old stalwarts like
milk and fruit juice.

WashingtonPost.com
QAmericans pump $7million into the U.S. retail
industry every minute,
purchasing an average of
1,440 McDonalds burgers,
5,695 Starbucks drinks, and
$84,000 worth of items on
Amazon every 60 seconds.

TheFiscalTimes.com
QU.S. companies spent $5.1
billion on social media advertising last year, but it may
not be paying off. According
to a recent Gallup poll, just
5 percent of U.S. residents
said social media had a
great deal of influence on
their purchasing decisions,
while 62 percent said there
was no influence at all.

Gallup.com

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

Media: Supreme Court deals blow to Aereo

At least the cloud is safe, said
The Supreme Court just sounded
Zachary M. Seward in Qz.com,
the death knell for Aereo, said
for now. While the court
Jacob Kastrenakes in TheVerge
took pains to say its deci.com. In a 63 decision, the high
sion would not affect other
court sided with broadcasters
cloud storage services, like
ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS in
Dropbox or Apples iCloud,
ruling that Aereo violated the
supporters have worried that
Copyright Act by offering unlian adverse ruling could make
censed recordings of network
those companies liable for the
shows to subscribers. The justices
content their subscribers choose
rejected Aereos argument that the Dillers venture may be history.
streaming startup was simply acting as an equip- to upload. The court distinguished between services that transmit copyrighted contentsuch
ment provider by allowing users to remotely
as Aereoand those that allow users to upload
access TV signals, enabling them to watch TV
and store content they already own. But in his
programs online. The ruling could be a huge
dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the rulissue for the Barry Dillerbacked companys
future, as it will likely have to pay licensing fees ing for adopting an improvised standard that
to broadcasters if it wants to continue operating. would sow confusion for years to come.

Economy: First quarter GDP shrank 2.9 percent

It was worse than we thought, said Jim Puzzanghera in the Los
Angeles Times. In its third and final revision, the Commerce
Department said the U.S. gross domestic product contracted at an
annualized rate of 2.9 percent during the first three months of 2014,
marking the worst contraction since the Great Recession. Bad winter
weather continued to bear the blame, and while economists expect the
second quarter to bump growth to 3.5 percent, the horrible start to
2014 will drag down the years overall economic output.

Retail: Barnes & Noble to spin off Nook

Barnes & Noble and its Nook e-reader are parting ways, said Lauren
Coleman-Lochner and Lindsey Rupp in Businessweek.com. Facing
declining sales in both businesses, the bookseller announced this
week that it will split the units into separately traded companies in a
bid to improve performance. The move follows years of prodding
by investors, who say the two businesses will be more valuable on
their own. The share price reflected that sentiment, jumping 11 percent after the announcement.

Energy: U.S. loosens ban on oil exports

The Obama administration has opened the door to the first
U.S. oil exports in 40 years, said Zain Shauk, Dan Murtaugh, and
Rakteem Katakey in Bloomberg.com. In a ruling issued this week, the
Commerce Department widened its definition of whats traditionally
been considered a refined product eligible for shipping to customers
abroad, allowing for the export of lightly processed crude known as
condensate. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) called the move a first
step that could lead to wider approval of oil exports, which the U.S.
restricted in 1975 in the wake of the Arab oil embargo.

Autos: Faulty airbags prompt major recalls

Carmakers are bracing for yet another major recall, said Hiroko
Tabuchi and Christopher Jensen in The New York Times. Toyota,
Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Ford, Chrysler, and BMW announced recalls
of more than 3 million cars this week thanks to faulty airbags that
could rupture and send debris flying inside a car. The airbags, manufactured by Japans Takata Corp., have been linked to more than 30
injuries and two deaths in the U.S. Faulty seatbelts manufactured by
Takata also forced recalls of almost 9 million cars in the 1990s.

WorldMags.net

Leather, without
the livestock
Say hello to cowless
beef, said Lora Kolodny
in WSJ.com. A Brooklyn
startup called Modern
Meadow has secured
a $10 million investment to help it grow
meat and leather in
the lab. The company,
which obtains animal
skin cells through
biopsies, uses a tissueengineering technique
called biofabrication
to grow leather and
is currently developing
a method for biofabricating meat, fish, and
poultry using animal
muscle cells. The firm
hopes its products will
help fashion and food
businesses meet global
demand while reducing
the high costs of traditional livestock farming,
which have hammered
profits. In addition to
leather goods and food,
several other biofabrication firms are also
experimenting within
the realm of human
health, employing
the technique to grow
biofabricated patches
that can potentially
heal damaged organs,
muscles, and bones.

Reuters, Corbis

The bottom line

BUSINESS 33
Making money
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Investing: Making the most of the M&A boom

companies made off with some profit, the
Merger mania is upon us, said Jesse
bidding companies stock prices inevitably
Solomon in CNN.com. So far this year, there
dipped, making the net effect on the marhave been $786 billion worth of mergers
ket negative, since the companies being
and acquisitions in the U.S.a big jump
acquired are typically smaller than those
from the past few years and not far behind
doing the buying.
the total seen in the last big spender year
of 2007. With historically low interConsider it a red flag, said Mark Hulbert
est rates and strong corporate balance
in The Wall Street Journal. While sharesheets, its no wonder companies are so
holders of acquired companies rarely comeager to make deals. But while the recent
plain, experts say surging merger activity
M&A frenzy might get investors excited,
could foretell a significant stock-market
experts say the current merger landscape is
decline. But does that mean its time
looking a bit frothy, meaning that overMergers can be a menace for shareholders. to sell? Not necessarily. The volume of
paying for companies is inevitable.
M&A activity isnt an exact market-timing tool, and the frenzy
could still have some legs. In the meantime, the best way to
That might prove a menace for shareholders, said Jeff
benefit from the increased activity is to engage in so-called risk
Sommer in The New York Times. While big corporate deals
arbitrage. The strategy is more the province of hedge funds
mean big bucks for lawyers and bankers, whether or not they
than individual investors, but if you are accredited to invest
are good for shareholders is a trickier question. If a prospecin a risk-arbitrage fund, it could allow you to exploit the gap
tive acquirer swoops in and bids up the price of a company in
that typically exists between the acquired companys stock value
your portfolio, you can take a quick profit, and that may be all
you care about. But according to Ohio State University finance when the deal is first announced and its eventual takeover price.
For non-accredited investors, the opportunities are probably
professor Ren M. Stulz, too much M&A action can result in
limited to several mutual funds that focus on risk arbitrage.
serious wealth destruction in the long term. Analyzing the
More aggressive stock market players can opt for a riskier strattech-bubble-fueled buying boom of the late 1990s, Stulz found
that shareholders of public companies overall lost huge sums of egy by investing in highly profitable or growing companies that
will eventually be taken over but are still selling at a discount.
moneyalmost $240 billion. While stock owners in acquired

What the experts say

IRS revises overseas tax rules
The Internal Revenue Service is easing up on
its overseas crackdown, said Brian Knowlton in The New York Times. The agency
has been aggressively pursuing overseas tax
cheats, but criticism that its methods had
disproportionately hurt small taxpayers
guilty of innocent oversights has forced the
service to revise some of its rules. Among
the changes is an expansion of the voluntary
disclosure program, removing the existing
$1,500 limit on unpaid taxes and empowering the IRS to determine whether or not the
taxpayers failure to file previously was
non-willful. Those deemed to have complied will be spared any penalties, but anyone remaining out of compliance could face
penalties of up to 50 percent of the taxes due,
nearly double the current rate of 27 percent.

Getty

Dont waste a dime on old tech

If youre looking to save money, start by
ditching obsolete technology, said AnnaMaria
Andriotis in MarketWatch.com. Your payTV subscription should be the first thing
to go. More and more consumers are cutting the cable and switching to services like
Hulu and Netflix, which provide much of
the same programming at a fraction of the

Charity of the week

price. Landlines are out, too, with many
users switching full time to cellphones and
video-chatting services like Skype. For drivers, rather than paying $300 for a new GPS,
many are relying on free map apps instead.
And dont bother with a point and shoot
camera now that smartphones are quickly
catching up in terms of photo quality.

The rules for rewards cards

Dont forfeit your rewards, said Michele Lerner DailyFinance.com. According to a new
study from CardHub, while credit card companies provide about $48 billion in rewards
each year, about one third of those rewards
are never redeemed. Some of that money is
left behind by forgetful consumers, but the
shortfall also has to do with the limits on how
rewards can be redeemed. Common requirements include minimum spending thresholds
and clauses that cause points to expire after a
missed payment. If youre shopping for a new
card, remember that cash-back rewards are
still best, since they have the bonus of letting you use your rewards to pay your bill.
Lastly, be wary of deals that offer big signon bonuses and low introductory rates. The
savings today could cost you rewards points
down the road if you ever miss a payment.

WorldMags.net

For more
than 25 years,
Turtle Island
Restoration
Network
(seaturtles
.org) has
worked to save all seven species of sea
turtles and various other marine wildlife, including sharks, salmon, whales,
and seabirds. TIRNs 150,000 members
and activists combine public education,
hands-on conservation, strategic advocacy, and litigation to target the most
urgent threats facing these endangered
species. One of TIRNs earliest victories
was the closure of a commercial sea
turtle slaughterhouse in Mexico, which
has saved some 50,000 turtles each year
since 1989. TIRN has also designated
nearly 300,000 square miles of ocean
as protected turtle habitats, tagged and
tracked dozens of endangered sharks,
and restored large tracts of coho salmon
habitat by replanting native trees in areas
surrounding their North Pacific range.
Each charity we feature has earned a
four-star overall rating from Charity
Navigator, which rates not-for-profit
organizations on the strength of their
finances, their control of administrative
and fundraising expenses, and the transparency of their operations. Four stars is
the groups highest rating.

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

34

Best columns: Business

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Issue of the week: American Apparel ousts founding CEO

Obamas bid
to protect
LGBT workers
Cameron Chisholm

Fortune

Why taxing
services
makes sense
Matthew Yglesias

Vox.com

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

President Obama is tackling workplace discrimination, said Cameron Chisholm. After openly
supporting same-sex marriage and ending the
militarys dont ask, dont tell policy, the White
House has said the president now hopes to ban
workplace discrimination based on employees
sexual orientation and gender identity by signing
an executive order geared toward protecting federal contractors. The executive order could protect gay and transgender workers in the 29 states
where it is still not expressly illegal for employers
to deny LGBT workers raises and promotions,
fire them based on perceived sexual orientation,
or even reject job applicants based on the same

criteria. Protecting the rights of LGBT workers

isnt a new issue for Obama, who first promised
to combat discrimination during his 2008 campaign. But with the Employee Non-Discrimination
Act stalled in the House and as the clock ticks
on Obamas second term, the president has little
choice but to take action. And while discrimination is tough to completely clobber with one
order from above, the Obama administrations
move may ratchet up pressure on Congress and
private companies to follow suit. After all, banning discrimination is smart businessand
Obamas leadership on this specific issue is certainly a step in the right direction.

Gym rats in D.C. should get ready to open their

wallets, said Matthew Yglesias. The Districts
City Council passed a measure this week that
will impose a new tax on gym memberships and
fitness services like yoga and personal training.
And while the citys fitness industry predictably
rose up to oppose the tax, its actually perfectly
sensible, and states and cities around the country
could learn from it. Thats because in a modern
economy, more and more of what people spend
their money on are services, like gym memberships and Zumba classes, rather than goods. As

we shift toward spending more on professional

services over traditionally taxable products, that
forces governments to hike tax rates elsewhere to
compensate for the lost revenue. Businesses like
gyms and yoga studios get a sweetheart deal
by not having to add sales tax to the price of
their services under the current tax code, but the
inverse of their good deal is that other business
owners are being penalized in the form of higher
taxes on their customers. By levying a tax on
health club and gym memberships, lawmakers are
simply leveling the playing field.

WorldMags.net

Ann Johansson/The New York Times/Redux

sex slave for eight months. Yet

Its all-out war at American Apparel,
when the company was profitable,
said Sapna Maheshwari in BuzzFeed
or when it still seemed plausible that
.com. Tensions are high at the Los AngeCharney could turn it around after
les retailer since its board made the suryears of heavy losses, these allegations
prise announcement last week to remove
were brushed aside. The boards paCEO and founder Dov Charney over altience has finally run out, if only due
leged misconduct. Hes accused of sexual
to cratering share prices.
harassment, awarding significant severance packages to former employees to
But dont expect Charney to go away
help conceal wrongdoing, giving salary
quietly, said Shan Li and Andrea
increases and bonuses to workers who
Chang in the Los Angeles Times. The
signed releases aimed at protecting him
disgraced CEO will very likely wage a
from personal liability, and seeking
Charney: Accused of sexual misconduct
legal battle with his former employer.
company reimbursement for personal
services such as legal consultation. While controversy is nothing In a letter sent to the boards counsel this week, his lawyer
accused the directors of illegally firing Charney and said he
new for Charney, who has had the companys support despite
facing several sexual harassment, labor, and abuse lawsuits over planned to pursue legal action against the firm unless he is
reinstated. If Charney does decide to go to court, the board is
the years, it seems his antics have finally hit the bottom line. In
most likely armed with plenty of documentation. But American
its termination letter, the board said it incurred significant and
Apparels precarious positionit has lost nearly $270 milunwanted expenses in litigation, settlements, and severance
lion in the last four years and has more than $200 million in
packages thanks to his shenanigans, ballooning the firms employment liability costs well outside of industry standards and debtcould leave it vulnerable. In fact, some analysts speculate
that Charneywho, with a 27 percent stake, is still the largest
making it difficult for the company to raise money and secure
shareholdercould team with a private equity firm and try to
debt financing at reasonable rates.
seize back control of the company. In the face of dwindling sales,
turning the tide wont be easy, said Ilan Mochari in Inc.com.
Its about time, said Richard Levick in Forbes.com. Past allegaBut if American Apparel can arm itself with a leader who can
tions against Charney include parading around the factory
help offset the damage Charney has caused, consumersand
floor in his underwear, distributing naked videos of himself,
investorsmay stick around. No matter the short-term outallowing an employee to post naked photographs of other employees, assaulting a store manager and hurling racial and eth- come, American Apparel needs to tread carefully, since even the
faintest traces of misconduct will make customers nervous.
nic slurs at staffers, and keeping an employee as his personal

Obituaries
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35

The maverick publisher who built a magazine empire

Wall Street Journal asked, Is Felix
Dennis Mad?

When the flamboyant

British publisher Felix
Dennis was just 3 years
19472014
old, his father went out
to buy cigarettesand never came
back. Dennis was then raised by his
mother and grandparents in a house
with no electricity or indoor bathroom, and dropped out of school at
age 15 to work as a grave digger. In
those years of hardship, Dennis developed a burning but unlikely ambition:
to be filthy rich. Driven by his entrepreneurial zeal, Dennis gradually built
a trans-Atlantic publishing empire
worth hundreds of millions of dollars,
with titles including Maxim and The
Week, and bought a fleet of RollsRoyces and Bentleys, luxury properties
around the world, and so much vintage wine that he could afford to give
it away for free at his popular poetry
readings. I love the business of business, I love the risk-taking, he said.
Making money is the one addiction I
cannot shake!
Felix
Dennis

AP

Born in a southwest London suburb,

Dennis found his mtier at the infamous counterculture magazine Oz,
said The Times (U.K.). He joined the
staff as a 20-year-oldhaving sent
the editor a recording telling him it was the most fantastic mag
Ive ever seen in my lifeand quickly rose to become advertising manager and co-editor. He gained notoriety when he invaded
David Frosts television show, squirted the host with a water gun,
and uttered a profanity that was heard live. (His mother didnt
speak to him for three years after that.) In 1970, when Oz published a sexually explicit cartoon featuring beloved childrens book
character Rupert the Bear, Dennis and his two co-editors were
arrested and charged with conspiracy to corrupt public morals.
Their plight became a cause clbre for the hippie counterculture, said BBC.com. John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded
a protest song to raise cash for the legal defense. In court, the
trio was found guilty of minor offenses. The judge gave Dennis a
shorter sentence on the basis that his older and more intelligent
co-defendants had led him astraya slight that Dennis later used
to fuel his ambition. The three were released on appeal soon after,
and Dennis was whisked away from jail by Lennon.
Fresh from his acquittal, he founded Dennis Publishing and soon
demonstrated a knack for spotting unexploited niches, said
the Financial Times. He launched his first magazine, Kung-Fu
Monthly, in 1974 after seeing scores of teenagers lined up outside a cinema to watch a Bruce Lee movie, and was among the
first to spot the lucrative potential of personal computer titles.
His two biggest successes were polar opposites: Maxim, at one
stage Americas most successful mens lifestyle magazine, and The
Week. He bought an interest in The Week only a few months
after it debuted in the U.K. in 1995 and soon turned it into
his flagship brand. When he launched the American version in
2001a time when established print titles were strugglingThe

The success of Dennis Publishing

funded a lifestyle of unrestrained
hedonism, said The Daily Telegraph
(U.K.). Dividing his time between
properties in England, America, and
the Caribbean island of Mustique
(where he bought David Bowies
house), he devoted much of his life
to sex, drugs, and rock n roll,
burning through an estimated $100
million in the process. In the mid1990s, he even became addicted to
crack cocaine. Yet incredibly, none
of this significantly impaired his
business sense. I built a Nasdaq
company turning over $2.5 million
while on crack, he said, referring to
MicroWarehouse, a U.S.-based computer mail order firm. You can get
a lot done if you dont have to waste
time sleeping. But his drug-induced
paranoia eventually became too
much, and in 1997, he went cold turkey. The tipping point came, Dennis
said, when he found himself skulking
around his house with a hammer, preparing to hit an imaginary CIA bastard coming in through the skylight.
I caught myself in a mirror, he said,
and I thought, Bastard? Skylight? There is no bastard. There is
no skylight. And why I am walking around with this hammer?
In 1999, while recovering in a hospital from a serious thyroid illness, Dennis began writing poetry on a Post-it note, said The
Independent (U.K.). He found it as enjoyable as any of his past
vices. Instead of taking crack cocaine, going out with whores,
and boozing, he said, Ill sit down alone in a room and have
just as much fun, if not more. His work was published in eight
volumes, and to bolster sales, Dennis went on reading tours across
Britain and America, where he would hand out French wine
from his own cellar. The shows, entitled Did I Mention the Free
Wine? were usually sold out. He was enormously proud that
the author Tom Wolfe, among others, likened his work to that of
Rudyard Kipling. Nobody was more surprised than me when I
discovered that I could write poetry, Dennis said.
Felixs love of poetry was matched by his passion for trees, said
The Guardian (U.K.). He never married or had children, and the
bulk of his publishing empires profits are being plowed into his
$340 million plan to plant a 50,000-acre forest in England, where
dense stands of trees have been largely cleared over the centuries.
The millionth tree in what he hoped would be the countrys largest contiguous forest was planted last year. But despite Denniss
many achievementsoutlined in his 2006 book, How to Get
Richhe was always hungry for more success. When he was
diagnosed with throat cancer in 2012, he said he felt rage, absolute rage, [because] I havent finished. There was, he lamented,
still so much to do, and suddenly mortality is getting in the way.
I dont like it. I understand it, but I dont bloody like it.

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THE WEEK July 4, 2014

The last word

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36

The essence of jerkitude

If it seems that everyone around you is an idiot, says Eric Schwitzgebel, you may be a jerk.

ICTURE THE WORLD

or as self-consciously cynical as the Machiavellian,

though narcissism and
Machiavellianism are
common enough jerkish
attributes.

through the eyes of

the jerk. The line of
people in the post office
is a mass of unimportant
fools; its a felt injustice
that you must wait while
they bumble with their
requests. The flight attendant is not a potentially
interesting person with her
own cares and struggles
but instead the most available face of a corporation that stupidly insists
you shut your phone.
Custodians and secretaries
are lazy complainers who
rightly get the scut work.
The person who disagrees
with you at the staff meeting is an idiot to be shot
down. Entering a subway
is an exercise in nudging
past the dumb schmoes.

The opposite of the jerk is

the sweetheart, who sees
others around him, even
strangers, as individually
distinctive people with
valuable perspectives,
whose desires and opinions, interests and goals
are worthy of attention
and respect. The sweetheart yields his place in
line to the hurried shopper, calls an acquaintance
with an embarrassed
apology after having been
unintentionally rude. In
a debate, the sweetheart
sees how he might be
wrong and the other
person right.

We need a theory of jerks.

We need such a theory
A jerk doesnt listen: He cant see that he might be wrong and others right.
The moral and emotional
because, first, it can help
failure of the jerk is obvious. The intelintellectual dimension and an emotional
us achieve a calm, clinical understanding
dimension, and it has these two dimensions lectual failure is obvious, too: No one is as
when confronting such a creature in the
right about everything as the jerk thinks
on both sides of the relationship. The jerk
wild. And secondwell, I dont want to
he is. He would learn by listening. And
himself is both intellectually and emotionsay what the second reason is quite yet.
one of the things he might learn is the true
ally defective, and what he defectively
As it happens, I do have such a theory. But
scope of his jerkitudea fact about which,
fails to appreciate is both the intellectual
before we get into it, I should clarify some
as I will explain shortly, the all-out jerk is
and emotional perspectives of the people
terminology. The word jerk can refer to
inevitably ignorant. Which brings me to
around him. He cant appreciate how he
two different types of person. The older
the other great benefit of a theory of jerks:
might be wrong and others right about
use designates a kind of chump or an ignosome matter of fact; and what other people It might help you figure out if you yourself
rant fool, though not a morally odious one.
are one.
want or value doesnt register as of interThe jerk-as-fool usage seems to have begun est to him, except derivatively upon his
Some clarifications and caveats. First, no
as a derisive reference to the unsophisticated own interests.
one is a perfect jerk or a perfect sweetpeople of a jerkwater town, that is, a town
heart. Human behavior varies hugely with
OME RELATED TRAITS are already
not rating a full-scale train station, requiring
context. Different situations (sales-team
well-known in psychology and
the boiler man to pull on a chain to water
meetings, traveling) might bring out the
philosophythe dark triad of
his engine. The term expresses the traveljerk in some and the sweetie in others.
Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psying troupes disdain. Over time, however,
chopathy. But my conception of the jerk
Second, the jerk is someone who culpably
jerk shifted from being primarily a classdiffers from all of these. The a--hole, the
fails to appreciate the perspectives of others
based insult to its second, now dominant,
philosopher Aaron James says, is someone
around him. Young children and people
sense as a term of moral condemnation. It
who allows himself to enjoy special advan- with severe mental disabilities arent capais the immoral jerk who concerns me here.
tages out of an entrenched sense of entitle- ble of appreciating others perspectives, so
I submit that the unifying core, the essence ment. That is one important dimension
they cant be blamed for their failure and
of jerkitude, but not the whole story. The
of jerkitude in the moral sense, is this:
arent jerks.
callous psychopath, though cousin to the
The jerk culpably fails to appreciate the
perspectives of others around him, treating jerk, has an impulsivity and love of riskThird, Ive called the jerk he, for reataking that need be no part of the jerks
them as tools to be manipulated or idiots
sons you might guess. But then it seems
character. Neither does the jerk have to be
to be dealt with rather than as moral and
too gendered to call the sweetheart she,
as thoroughly self-involved as the narcissist so Ive made the sweetheart a he too.
epistemic peers. This failure has both an
THE WEEK July 4, 2014

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Getty

The last word

WorldMags.net
All normal jerks distribute their jerkishness
mostly down the social hierarchy, and to
anonymous strangers. Waitresses, students,
clerks, strangers on the roadthese are
the unfortunates who bear the brunt of it.
With a modicum of self-control, the jerk,
though he implicitly or explicitly regards
himself as more important than most of
the people around him, recognizes that the
perspectives of those above him in the hierarchy also deserve some consideration.
Often, indeed, he feels sincere respect for
his higher-ups. Perhaps respectful feelings
are too deeply written in our natures to
disappear entirely. Perhaps the jerk retains
a vestigial kind of concern specifically for
those whom it would benefit him, directly
or indirectly, to win over. He is at least
concerned enough about their opinion of
him to display tactical respect while in their
field of view. However it comes about, the
classic jerk kisses up and kicks down. The
company CEO rarely knows who the jerks
are, though its no great mystery among
the secretaries.

tends to disregard
the perspectives of those below him
in the hierarchy, he often has little
idea how he appears to them. This leads
to hypocrisies. He might rage against the
smallest typo in a students or secretarys
document, while producing a torrent of
errors himself; it just wouldnt occur to
him to apply the same standards to himself. He might insist on promptness, while
always running late.

The moralistic jerk is an animal worth

special remark. I see in myself and all those
who are not pure sweethearts a tendency
to rationalize my privilege with moralistic
sham justifications. Heres my reason for
trying to dishonestly wheedle my daughter
into the best school; my reason why the
session chair should call on me rather than
on the grad student who got her hand up
earlier; my reason why its fine that I have
400 library books in my office....

ECAUSE THE JERK

Embarrassment, too, becomes practically

impossible for the jerk, at least in front of
his underlings. Embarrassment requires us
to imagine being viewed negatively by people whose perspectives we care about. As
the circle of people whom the jerk is willing to regard as true peers and superiors
shrinks, so does his capacity for shame
and with it a crucial entry point for moral
self-knowledge.

Getty

idiocy of others (who have failed to ascend

as high as you).

As one climbs the social hierarchy it is also

easier to become a jerk. Heres a characteristically jerkish thought: Im important,
and Im surrounded by idiots! Both halves
of this proposition serve to conceal the
jerks jerkitude from himself. Thinking
yourself important is a pleasantly selfgratifying excuse for disregarding the interests and desires of others. Thinking that
the people around you are idiots seems like
a good reason to disregard their intellectual
perspectives. As you ascend the hierarchy,
you will find it easier to discover evidence
of your relative importance (your big salary, your first-class seat) and of the relative

The moralizing jerk forgets the quality of mercy.

The moralizing jerk is apt to go badly

wrong in his moral opinions. Partly this
is because his morality tends to be selfserving, and partly its because his disrespect for others perspectives puts him at a
general epistemic disadvantage. But theres
more to it than that. In failing to appreciate others perspectives, the jerk almost
inevitably fails to appreciate the full range
of human goodsthe value of dancing,
say, or of sports, nature, pets, local cultural
rituals, and indeed anything that he doesnt
care for himself. Think of the aggressively rumpled scholar who cant bear the
thought that someone would waste her
time getting a manicure. Or think of the
manicured socialite who cant see the value
of dedicating ones life to dusty Latin manuscripts. Whatever hes into, the moralizing
jerk exudes a continuous aura of disdain
for everything else.
Furthermore, mercy is near the heart of
practical, lived morality. Virtually everything that everyone does falls short of
perfection: Ones turn of phrase is less than
perfect, one arrives a bit late, ones clothes
are tacky, ones gesture irritable, ones
choice somewhat selfish, ones coffee less

WorldMags.net

37

than frugal, ones melody trite. Practical

mercy involves letting these imperfections pass forgiven or, better yet, entirely
unnoticed. In contrast, the jerk appreciates
neither others difficulties in attaining all
the perfections that he attributes to himself,
nor the possibility that some portion of
what he regards as flawed is in fact blameless. Hard moralizing principle therefore
comes naturally to him.

OW CAN YOU know your own

moral character? You can try
a label on for size: lazy,
unreliableis that really me? More
effective, I suspect, is to shift from firstperson reflection (what am I like?) to
second-person description (tell me, what
am I like?). Instead of introspection, try listening. Ideally, you will have a few people
in your life who know you intimately, have
integrity, and are concerned about your
character. They can frankly and lovingly
hold your flaws up to the light and insist
that you look at them. Give them the space
to do this, and prepare to be disappointed
in yourself.

Done well enough, this second-person

approach could work fairly well for traits
such as laziness and unreliability, especially
if their scope is restricted: laziness-about-X,
unreliability-about-Y. But as I suggested
above, jerkitude is not so tractable, since if
one is far enough gone, one cant listen in
the right way. Your critics are fools, at least
on this particular topic (their critique of
you). They cant appreciate your perspective, you thinkthough really its that you
cant appreciate theirs.
To discover ones degree of jerkitude, the
best approach might be neither (firstperson) direct reflection upon yourself nor
(second-person) conversation with intimate
critics, but rather something more thirdperson: looking in general at other people.
Everywhere you turn, are you surrounded
by fools, by boring nonentities, by faceless
masses and foes and suckers and, indeed,
jerks? Are you the only competent, reasonable person to be found?
If your self-rationalizing defenses are low
enough to feel a little pang of shame at the
familiarity of that vision of the world, then
you probably arent pure diamond-grade
jerk. But who is? Were all somewhere in the
middle. Thats what makes the jerks vision of
the world so instantly recognizable. Its our
own vision. But, thankfully, only sometimes.
This excerpt is taken from an article
available in full at Aeon Magazine (aeon
magazine.com, Twitter: @aeonmag).
THE WEEK July 4, 2014

The Puzzle Page

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Crossword No. 266: Host With the Most by Matt Gaffney

1

17

18
21

28

24

32

26

34

40

35

36

43
45

46

51

47

58

59

48
53

55

56

61

62

57

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

ACROSS
1 They lost the NBA
finals to the Spurs
in June
5 The former Mrs. Trump
10 Sauted dish
14 Coleridges sacred
river
15 Thesaurus pioneer
16 Science magazine
until 1995
17 Our host for this
puzzle, he recently
broke the record for
most episodes hosted
of a single game show
6,829, to be exact
20 Cheesy art
21 Dubais country, briefly
22 Army of Northern
Virginia commander
23 Our host watched Cliff
Clavin make a terrible
Final Jeopardy! bet
on a 1990 episode of
this sitcom
27 Serving Sampras
30 Hither and ___
31 Do tailoring work
32 One of four of 52
33 Palindromic president
of Argentina, 198999
35 Tickle
39 From 1989 to 2013,
our host emceed a
prominent annual
scholastic competition
focused on this subject
42 Sniffers
43 Baja bye
44 Driving peg

THE WEEK July 4, 2014

38

44

52

54

37

41

42

50

The Week Contest

13

31

33

39

12

22

25

30

29

11

19

23

60

10
16

20

49

15

14

27

45 Little battery
47 Suffix with minimal or
maximal
48 1960s hipsters
49 In 1961 our host
graduated with a
degree in philosophy
from a university in
this Canadian city
54 I just got punched!
55 Just so-so
56 CIA operation
60 As part of an April
Fools Day joke in 1987,
our host appeared on
an episode of Wheel
of Fortune with her;
Pat Sajak hosted
Jeopardy! that day
64 Sky crescent
65 Members of a tribe for
whom a Great Lake is
named
66 Oklahoma city thats
also a womans name
67 Cornerstone abbr.
68 Cars the bank
takes back
69 Diamond men of
New York
DOWN
1 War supporter
2 K-12, in education
3 Pease porridge in
___...
4 On ___ can agree
5 WWII soldier in a
Johnny Cash title
6 Loudness: abbr.
7 How old you are
8 Central point

9 Put a file in an email

10 Tool with a long
handle
11 Wander
12 Mocking remark
13 Walks in the woods
18 Acad.
19 Presides over a case
again
24 Pacific island kingdom
25 This is important!
26 Classic novel of 1816
27 One of sixteen on a
chess board
28 Reverberate
29 Brewing options
33 Isnt going to hit the
target
34 Like good cake
36 Plotting
37 Get rid of
38 They look well
40 Suckling pigs target
41 Escaped punishment
46 Like always
48 Chaos
49 Lets see something
really impressive here
50 Twinkie cousins
51 Underway
52 Airport about 10 miles
from Lake Michigan
53 Away from ENE
57 Sommeliers subject
58 Working hard
59 It lost Best Picture to
Chariots of Fire
61 Garys state: abbr.
62 Bit of brandy
63 Prefix with classical

This weeks question: New York Times columnist David

Brooks recently passed on advice for a long marriage.
Among the tips: Its okay to go to bed mad, rather than
fight it out, since it will be better in the morning; and
brag about your spouse in public and let them hear it.
Whats your No. 1 tip for couples to stay together?
Last weeks contest: Gwyneth Paltrow believes the
theory of a controversial doctor that unkind words
such as I hate youand aggressive music can damage waters molecular structure. If this theory is correct, what should we call a bottle ofdamaged water?
THE WINNER: H2Woe
Audrey Nagel, Burlington, N.J.
SECOND PLACE: Meaneral Water
Douglas Brian, Cranston, R.I.
THIRD PLACE: Post-Traumatic Stress Diswater
Suzanne Wolke, Salem, Mass.
For runners-up and complete contest rules, please go
totheweek.com/contest.
How to enter: Submissions should be emailed to
contest@theweek.com. Please include your name,
address, and daytime telephone number for verification; this week, please type Marriage tip in the
subject line. Entries are due by noon, Eastern Time,
Tuesday, July 1. Winners will appear on the Puzzle
Page next issue and at theweek.com/
puzzle on Friday, July 4. In the case
of identical or similar entries, the first
one received gets credit.
W
The winner gets a one-year
subscription to The Week.

Sudoku
Fill in all the
boxes so that
each row, column,
and outlined
square includes
all the numbers
from 1 through 9.
Difficulty:
super-hard

Find the solutions to all The Weeks puzzles online: www.theweek.com/puzzle.

2014. All rights reserved.

The Week is a registered trademark owned by Felix Dennis.
The Week (ISSN 1533-8304) is published weekly except for one week in
January. The Week is published by The Week Publications, Inc., 55 West 39th
Street, New York, NY 10018. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and
at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to
The Week, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235. One-year subscription
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Publications Mail Agreement No. 40031590, Registration No. 140467846. Return
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Post/Bloomberg News Service, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, and
subscribes to The Associated Press.

Sources: A complete list of publications cited in The Week can be found at theweek.com/sources.

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