Quokka.

Another sign people are tired of having to think about politics.

"How likely is it Antonin Scalia will die in the next four years?"

Asks Slate jauntily, offering what it calls "The Supreme Court Justice Death Calculator."

Ultra Soft... Ultra Suave... MEGA!

Plunging into the Amazon Associates Earnings Report today, category "Health & Personal Care, I see someone — anonymous, of course — purchased THIS.  Hey, what a great idea!  A commonly used everyday item.  And at no additional cost to the buyer, this blog receives $1.80 from Amazon.

So it got me thinking and I went over to the SiteMeter to see that the blog had approximately 25,000 visitors today.  And I thought — what if just 10% of those 25,000 visitors were to regularly, so to speak, in the privacy of their own homes, meet their Quilted Northern needs via the Althouse Amazon portal?  I'll let you do the math.  But let's just say it would leave the Meadhouse, well, flush.  And of course a flush blogger… is a blogger who feels well-appreciated.  So thanks, anonymous and everyone else who used the Althouse Amazon portal!  May you ever experience great softness, comfort and convenience. 

Meanwhile, yesterday, we were talking about clown suits and trillion dollar platinum coins and I see Slate put out a call for ideas on designs for the proposed imagined magic coin.  My personal favorite design idea:



Well done! Let's see... can Charmin be purchased on Amazon?  Why yes, yes it can!  Ultra Soft... Ultra Suave... MEGA!

"Lady Jerks of 2012: A Year in Review."

Today seems to be my day for finding screwy ideas in Slate. This one seems to be a twist on the old feminist bumper sticker "Well-behaved women rarely make history." I can't quite tell whether Amanda Hess is trying to encourage/facilitate female jerkiness or what. Yeah, there's the ancient problem of wanting to be liked, which is really only a problem if you want it too much and want it above other, better goals. It's perfectly idiotic to think that the solution to the excessive desire to be liked is to be unlikeable.

But, whatever... the women Hess recognizes as the "Lady Jerks of 2012" are: the CIA agent who complained that she shouldn't have had to share the Distinguished Intelligence Medal for finding bin Laden; Anne Hathaway, the actress who talked back haughtily when asked about the photographs that paparazzi somehow were able to take of the body part Hess refers to as "her vagina"; Julia Gillard, the prime minister of Australia who called some political opponent a misogynist; Taylor Swift, the pretty young singer who crashed a Kennedy wedding with her Kennedy boyfriend; and Susan Rice, who, as Hess would have it, lost out on getting to be the next Secretary of State because people thought she was “prickly,” “hard-headed,” “temperamentally unfit,” and “always right on the edge of a screech.” Hess writes: "The personality police eventually moved Rice to withdraw her name from the running." That's not what I heard!

"The liberal news and culture website Slate published an online map Friday that it says will show a 'daily tally of gun-deaths in America'..."

"... basing that tally on incidents collected by an anonymous Twitter user. The organization, however, won’t say who is behind the tweets or how reliable its data is as a statistical compilation."

Gun deaths? So... just mix in the accidents and the suicides. Now, personally, as you may know from previous discussions on this blog, I think suicide is murder. Morally, it should be recognized as the deliberate killing of a human being. But many people withhold moral judgment and express only sadness and sympathy. I am sympathetic when the self-killer is mentally ill, but I'm also sympathetic when those who murder others are mentally ill.

But what's with grouping self-murder and murder of others for the purposes of Slate's gun-death map? It's a great way to boost the numbers. Google statistics, and I think you'll see that in the United States, there are twice as many suicides as murders, and that proportion is also true within the category of gun deaths. Shooting oneself is the most common method of suicide.

I realize some people think that there would be less suicide if people didn't have guns at hand. But I wonder how many of the mentally disturbed/emotionally overwrought men who shoot themselves to death are self-executors — that is, persons who feel a compulsion toward violence and stop themselves. There are murderers — like Adam Lanza — who murder and then kill themselves. There is no sympathy for these suicides, yet many people think: I wish he'd killed himself first.

If he had, it probably wouldn't have made the news, but if you'd read his story, you would have reacted the way you usually do to suicide: How sad... if only he'd perceived that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem... whatever it is you usually think when you read that an isolated, bullied 20-year-old man has shot himself in the head. Would you ever think to speculate that he knew that he had an irresistible, evil impulse to gun down children, and, thank God, he had one last shred of humanity and turned the gun on himself?

Gun deaths. You can collect them on a map as faceless pins, all looking alike. It's all numbers. No individuality. What are you counting? I don't know what these pins represent. Use a different color for suicides. And which suicides are uncontrolled mental illness? Who is checking out because of uncontrolled physical pain? Identify the justified killings, done in self-defense. I want to know which ones are criminals gunning down other criminals. I'd like to think about policy with some complexity and without irrational fear mongering.

Ironically, Slate seems to want to inspire urgency about the loss of human life, but it is reducing the lives we're supposed to care so much about to a bunch of dots who matter only because they're a massive crowd. Where is the individuality? There is particularity to each death, despite the common element of the gun.

Why didn't those Hollywood lefties pick "2016: Obama's America" for the documentary Oscars?

Here's some ripe PR. Dinesh D'Souza put out the bait and Slate took it:

A total of 126 documentaries were eligible for an Academy Award this year, and a selection committee recently narrowed those down to 15 hopefuls for five nominations. Dozens were snubbed, but the producers of 2016: Obama's America say their film's exclusion is evidence of something more sinister.

The anti-Obama film directed by Dinesh D'Souza was roundly panned by critics, though it rode word of mouth to a $33 million gross. D'Souza said the film's success would have resulted in a nomination if it weren't for Hollywood's bias. "Liberal political ideology, not excellence, is the true standard of what receives awards," he said.

Obviously, there's no reason why D'Souza's movie — even if it was popular — should be a finalist instead of those other movies — which we know little or nothing about, but which the selection committee supposedly watched and judged according to a set of principles about what makes a movie Oscar-worthy. Big box office is never the key to winning an Oscar, and in the documentary category, there are some traditional standards that skew toward more neutral, historical/scientific presentations.

I'm sure D'Souza knows all this. It was savvy of him to leverage the occasion to get attention for his film, and I suspect Slate knows that. Slate will get attention for debunking D'Souza, even as it give him the publicity he wants. Everybody wins.

ADDED: You can, of course, purchase the movie, but if I were recommending documentaries that weren't nominated for Oscars, I'd have plenty of others ahead of that. ""Grey Gardens" and "Fast, Cheap & Out of Control" to begin with.

Finally, could you stop saying "finally"...

I'm reading this Slate article that's tweaking the NYT for its "style" articles, an old — unstylish? — topic that was funny years ago in Stuff White People Like, and I see these side-by-side teasers in the sidebar:



A search turns up:

Finally, Some Details About Maxine Waters' Favorite Bank
Finally, Porn for Women?
Bill Clinton Has Finally Figured Out First Dudeship
Finally, a True Defense of Liberalism
Finally, "Mad Men" Takes on Race
Finally, a Challenge to Steele
Finally: 4th Amendment Underwear
Finally, A Way for Liberals to Sneer At People
The M-Bomb, Finally
Finally, Honest Spin
Finally! Economic Nirvana

Etc. etc. What's going on here? Stock sarcasm? Not so much. It comes across more as a desperate attempt to make you feel that this is something you really want to read... you've been waiting for it. You haven't, of course, but click this link right now. Please? Please?