Hurrell in Santa Monica
The great retrospective of George Hurrell's Hollywood photographs for which I wrote the catalogue (adapted for this Atlantic article) has opened at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica.
Dynamist Blog
Libertarians Fall Off Turnip Truck
Thanks to The New Republic, libertarians who weren't paying attention in the 1990s, don't read Texas Monthly, and didn't do their candidate research have now discovered that Ron Paul said--or, more likely, allowed to be said in his name (probably by Lew Rockwell)--nasty things in his newsletters. Much reaction can be found at Hit & Run, as well as Andrew Sullivan's blog and The Volokh Conspiracy. The disclosures are not news to me, nor is the Paul campaign's dismissive reaction a surprise. When you give your political heart to a guy who spends so much time worrying about international bankers, you're not going to get a tolerant cosmopolitan.
Nobody Knows Anything
I like Robert A. George's comment on the New Hampshire primary:
Anyone who thinks they know how the presidential nominating process is going to play out is full of sh**.
Two months ago, John McCain's political obituary had been written; Rudy Giuliani led the national polls and Mitt Romney was the runaway leader in New Hampshire.Two days ago, Hillary Clinton's political obituary was being written: The dynasty was over, the queen was dead; the question was not whether Hillary should withdraw, but under what circumstances; George W. Bush was asking President Obama if he would consider starting a year early.
The rest here.
The 16-Year Itch
Michael Barone makes a provocative argument about the electorate's periodical zeal fo "change."
My thought is that, over a period of 16 years, there is enough turnover in the electorate to stimulate an itch that produces a willingness to take a chance on something new.
Over time, the median-age voter in American elections has been about 45 years old. This means that the median-age voter in 1976 was born around 1931--old enough to have experienced post-World War II prosperity and foreign policy success, and then to have been disgusted by Vietnam and Watergate.
The median-age voter in 1992 was born around 1947 (the same year as Dan Quayle and Hillary Clinton, one year after Messrs. Clinton and Bush, one year before Mr. Gore). These voters came of age in the culture wars of the 1960s. They experienced stagflation and gas lines of the 1970s, and the prosperity and foreign policy successes of the 1980s. Mr. Clinton persuaded these voters to take a chance on change by promising not to radically alter policy. They rebuked him when he tried to break that promise, then for 14 years remained closely divided along culture lines as if the '60s never ended.
The median-age voter in 2008 was born around 1963, so he or she missed out on the culture wars of the '60s, and on the economic disasters and foreign policy reverses of the 1970s. These voters have experienced low-inflation economic growth something like 95% of their adult lives--something true of no other generation in history. They are weary of the cultural polarization of our politics, relatively unconcerned about the downside risks of big government programs, and largely unaware of America's historic foreign policy successes. They are ready, it seems, to take a chance on an outside-the-system candidate.
I was born in 1960 but remember well the "economic disasters and foreign policy reverses of the 1970s." On my pessimistic days, it worries me that not only voters in general but the young pundit class don't understand how much worse things can be. On my optimistic days, I think the lessons of that period have been largely internalized. After all, you don't hear people proposing wage and price controls. Except on doctors and medicine.
In Memoriam: Andrew Olmsted
Blogger Andrew Olmsted has died in Iraq, killed in an ambush. Knowing him was one of the many benefits of my blogging life. Steve, my mother, and I were privileged to have dinner with him on a trip to Dallas before he deployed. He left a moving posthumous post here. Our thoughts and best wishes are with his family.
UPDATE: Be sure to read the Rocky Mountain News obituary.
Help Wanted
My friend Harvey Silverglate, a prominent Cambridge-based criminal-defense and civil-liberties lawyer, activist, and writer and the chair of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is looking for a research assistant. Here's a job description:
CIVIL LIBERTIES/CRIMINAL LAW RESEARCH & WRITING POSITION STARTING MID-SUMMER 2008
HARVEY A. SILVERGLATE -- a lawyer, writer, lecturer, and advocate -- seeks a relatively recent college graduate to work with him, primarily out of his Cambridge, Mass., home-office, as a researcher and paralegal on a variety of criminal law and civil liberties projects. This is an ideal position for someone considering a career in law, advocacy, writing, or journalism, but who wants a year or two of unusually interesting and challenging work experience before returning to school or the regular job market. A major component of the job will entail editing/revising, working with the publisher's editors, and, upon publication, promoting a book about how the U. S. Department of Justice uses vague and broad federal criminal statutes and regulations to harass civil society. Applicant would also assist Silverglate writing newspaper columns (with shared bylines when appropriate), articles, and lectures; working with the ACLU of Massachusetts (on whose Board of Directors Silverglate serves) and with The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, www.thefire.org (of which Silverglate is cofounder and current Chairman of the Board); and implementing a civil liberties-oriented blog jointly undertaken with another civil liberties advocate and culture critic. In addition, applicant would assist Silverglate with criminal defense and civil liberties litigation cases done in collaboration with a small Boston law firm. Applicants for this demanding, unconventional, and interesting position should be creative self-starters and be able to focus on projects with a laser-like intensity, and must be well-organized, energetic, computer and Internet savvy, deeply devoted to liberty, decidedly politically incorrect, independent, and an excellent writer and editor. This is a job for a Type-A personality with real passion and high-octane. Salary is competitive for this kind of work; full medical insurance benefits provided.
Send inquiries, cover letters, and resumes to: hill-at-GoodCormier.com, with a copy to wolfe-at-harveysilverglate.com. Peruse www.HarveySilverglate.com for a sense of the variety of work involved. No phone calls or agencies.
The Worst Student Sentences
Dan Drezner asked professors to send in the worst student sentence they've read in a paper. He now posts the winners--a three-way tie, with representatives of three different types of badness.
The State of the Parties
Live-blogging the Iowa Caucus results, Reason's David Weigel makes a good point about the caucus winners:
I'm by no means the first person to say this, but here's the key difference between the parties tonight. Half of Democrats look at this picture and feel neutral; half of them look at it and feel elated. Half of Republicans look at [t]his picture and feel worried; one-quarter feel enraged; one-quarter are happy, but it's that bitter, Kurt Russell dropping the truck on the bad guy in Breakdown kind of happy. If they weren't Christians they'd be flipping the bird.
A lot of Republicans and independents are glad to see Hillary come in third. As a Republican-leaning independent, I'm one of them, even though I (gaggingly) prefer her to Edwards or, for that matter, Huckabee. Could she please just go away?
DIY Manufacturing
Blogger Frank Piller has a nice roundup, including links to previous posts, on growing trend toward do-it-yourself user innovation, manufacturing, and distribution. It looks like the price of a 3-D printer has finally dropped to less than $5,000, though that doesn't mean you can just "print out" anything you can design on a computer. As this recent WSJ article (PDF file on non-WSJ site) reported, an early application is to make figurines of user's characters from World of Warcraft and other games. But some features, notably flowing capes, can be tricky.
I wrote about MIT management professor Eric von Hippel's research on user-driven innovation in this NYT column.
Beauty, Math, and Science
Click here for the winners of the second international Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest. View all the entries here. In an example of copyright protection at the expense of publicity, the site makes it impossible to display an image here.
And here are the winners of the Materials Research Society's Science as Art Contest for 2007 (including the one above), 2006, and 2005, downloadable as wallpaper.
[Via Good Morning Silicon Valley.]