11/3 Slate Magazine

Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. Slate Magazine Angela Merkel's quiet revolution. November 2, 2009 at 11:05 pm Did you know that there were German elections in late September? Were you aware that the German socialists were soundly defeated? Had you realized that there was now a new government in Germany? No? Then give the credit—for both the victory and the fact that you haven't heard about it—to Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor. And even if you did know all of that, you might as well cheer anyway, because Merkel's achievement is far greater than it seems. She is a soft-spoken, even-tempered, and frankly dull pragmatist who has compared her economic program to that of a "Swabian housewife." Her election campaigns are the most boring anyone can remember. Despite the decisiveness of her recent victory, she humbly declared that she "respected those who did not vote for me." To underline that point, she celebrated her new term as chancellor with a lunch of potato soup and sausages, an event that the Financial Times called "so low-key it resembled an atonement rite more than a celebration." She is, if you like, the anti-Obama: zero charisma, zero glamour, beige pantsuits, and a spouse who rarely appears in public. [more ...] Germany - Angela Merkel - Financial Times - Government - Political campaign Advertisement: November 2, 2009 at 11:05 pm Calling the president a liar has been good for Joe Wilson's career. But is it good for the GOP? November 2, 2009 at 9:53 pm As soon as the words "You lie!" left Rep. Joe Wilson's lips during the president's September address to the joint session of Congress, the question was not so much, Will this hurt Joe Wilson? It was, How much will this hurt Joe Wilson? Two months later, the answer is decisive: not at all. If anything, it's helping him. Wilson has been enjoying the fruits of his outburst—namely cash, respect, and a glut of attention as a spokesman for the not-gonna-take-it-anymore wing of the Republican Party. The question has now become, Is this helping or hurting the party? [more ...] Joe Wilson - Republican - Joint session of the United States Congress - United States - Politics Mad Men: How Betty Draper broke my heart. November 2, 2009 at 9:12 pm One of the most useful words you'll learn on Internet message boards is the verb to ship. Derived from relationship, it describes what fans of a television series are doing when they root for certain characters to become romantically involved. Most fans of Cheers shipped Sam and Diane; some fans of The West Wing shipped Josh and Donna. It's a useful term. Before it was invented, there was no simple way to express the strange feeling of wanting fictional people to fall in love. [more ...] West Wing - BettyDraper - MadMen - Television program - Television A history of baseball and chewing tobacco. November 2, 2009 at 8:58 pm A handful of players on both the New York Yankees and the Philadelphia Phillies have played this year's World Series with a wad of tobacco in their mouths. Have baseball players always used smokeless tobacco? [more ...] Philadelphia Phillies - New York Yankees - World Series - Baseball - Sport Slate's sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen, for the week of Nov. 2, 2009. November 2, 2009 at 7:52 pm Listen to "Hang Up and Listen" with Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca by clicking the arrow on the audio player below: [more ...] Podcast - Slate - Mike Pesca - Recreation - Directories A defense of jaywalking. November 2, 2009 at 7:01 pm Looking at any number of big-city dailies over the last few weeks, one might reasonably surmise that we are in the middle of a new public-health epidemic with an old name: jaywalking. [more ...] Public health - Health - Public Health and Safety - Education - Organizations Dear Prudence answers readers' questions live at Washingtonpost.com. November 2, 2009 at 6:10 pm Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, is on Washingtonpost.com weekly to chat with readers about their romantic, family, financial, and workplace problems. A transcript of this week's chat is below. (Read Prudie's Slate columns here.) [more ...] Emily Yoffe - Dear Prudence - Slate - Washington Post - Chat Rooms Dear Prudence: Engaged and Feeling Trapped November 2, 2009 at 5:49 pm A daily video from Slate V. [more ...] Dear Prudence - Slate - Business - Construction and Maintenance - Materials and Supplies What we can learn from the shortage of H1N1 vaccine. November 2, 2009 at 5:35 pm The current shortage of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine was both predictable and largely avoidable. But it's not too late to remedy the situation. The last three pandemics—in 1968, 1957, and 1918—each lasted for more than three years, and this one is not going away any time soon. Now we must refocus public health priorities going forward, so we can apply the lessons of the swine flu to future outbreaks. [more ...] Swine influenza - Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 - Public health - Pandemic - Health Why big farms can treat their workers better than small farms. November 2, 2009 at 3:10 pm I love food, but I've never been much into farms. I've ignored friends' repeated encouragements to travel the world picking organic vegetables or do a cow-milking internship. But this summer I sucked it up and headed for the fields—the big ones in California's Salinas and Central valleys, where half the country's fruits and vegetables are grown. I went there to start research for a book, for which I aimed to work my way through America's food system, from farm to table. At the outset, that meant spending 50-plus hours a week under the hot sun hoeing weeds, sorting peaches, and cutting garlic. I knew going in that I'd learn unexpected lessons, but of all the new thoughts crowding my head, none have surprised me as much as this: God bless big farms. [more ...] Vegetable - Fruit - Food - Business - California The United Nations' shameful complicity in this year's corrupt Afghan elections. November 2, 2009 at 3:10 pm If the time ever does come when we look back on our intervention in Afghanistan as a humiliating debacle, this past weekend may well be identified as one of the moments when the calamity became irreversible. [more ...] United Nations - Afghanistan - War in Afghanistan - Asia - Taliban Mad Men: The grownups. November 2, 2009 at 2:40 pm OK, Swansburg, time to settle accounts. Any chance you can bring that old-fashioned to my office? I'm not one for lunch counters, and like Peggy Olson, I prefer to drink at my desk. [more ...] Peggy Olson - Madmen - People - Men - AMC Let's have fun with the Google search box. November 2, 2009 at 12:36 pm The Google search box has become the new oracle at Delphi, the thing we consult before all major undertakings. How do I know this? [more ...] Google - Web search engine - Search - Search engine - Delphi Two biographies of Ayn Rand. November 2, 2009 at 10:01 am Ayn Rand is one of America's great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that "the masses"—her readers—were "lice" and "parasites" who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave. She regularly tops any list of books that Americans say have most influenced them. Since the great crash of 2008, her writing has had another Benzedrine rush, as Rush Limbaugh hails her as a prophetess. With her assertions that government is "evil" and selfishness is "the only virtue," she is the patron saint of the tea-partiers and the death panel doomsters. So how did this little Russian bomb of pure immorality in a black wig become an American icon? [more ...] Ayn Rand - United State - Philosophy - Rush Limbaugh - Objectivism Mad Men: Aqua Net is going to need a new campaign. November 2, 2009 at 2:19 am So let's see here. I believe I owe one old-fashioned to Patrick, two to Julia, and four to Slate "War Stories" columnist Fred Kaplan, with whom I made an especially foolhardy side bet. Back in August, Fred interviewed Matthew Weiner, who assured him that Season 3 would "handle everything." Yet Weiner had been coy about the Kennedy assassination, suggesting to other interviewers that while he wouldn't ignore it, he might not dramatize the president's death in the same way he had Kennedy's election and the Cuban missile crisis. Silly me, I believed him. All indications—Margaret Sterling's inauspicious wedding date, the constant references to Dallas, the eerie Aqua Net campaign—were that this season was hurtling toward just such a treatment of Kennedy's death. And as Julia sagely predicted, it happened this week. [more ...] Sponsored Topics: Cuban Missile Crisis - MatthewWeiner - MadMen - Dallas - John F. Kennedy assassination   This email was sent to sati2112@gmail.com.  Create Your Account Don't want to receive this feed any longer? Unsubscribe here.