Slate Magazine

Slate V: Reviews of: Twilight, The Blind Side, and Planet 51

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:28:39 -0800

In this week's Summary Judgment, Mark Jordan Legan sums up what critics are saying about the big weekend movies: Reviews of: The Twilight Saga: New Moon, The Blind Side, and Planet 51.

Why Sarah Palin is unlikely to be the future of the Republican Party.

John Dickerson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:44:24 PST

The future of the Republican Party will be shaped by a governor—but it's not likely to be Sarah Palin. The twin poles of the Republican Party were on display this week. One was at a Republican Governors Association meeting in Texas. The other was on the airwaves across the country as Palin methodically went rogue.

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Republican - Sarah Palin - United States - Texas - Country music

What to drink on Thanksgiving: Napa cabernet.

Mike Steinberger — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:18:18 PST

Cabernet sauvignon—and particularly the cabernet produced in California's Napa Valley—is the signature American wine. When a Napa cab, the 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, beat out some leading French wines in the Judgment of Paris, it heralded the coming-of-age of American viticulture and gave the phrase Napa cabernet international cachet. Nowadays, however, that phrase is more apt to elicit snickers than praise; in the minds of many consumers, it has become synonymous with overwrought, overhyped, and overpriced wines. Indeed, scorning Napa cabernets is almost as fashionable as dumping on California chardonnays. Plenty of Napa cabs deserve the derision, but even as the valley suffers through a richly deserved reversal of fortune, there are still producers turning out honest, delicious wines that demonstrate why people got excited about the valley in the first place. And if you are currently in the market for something homegrown and fowl-friendly to drink on Thanksgiving, these attitude-free Napa cabs will make fine choices.

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Wine - Napa Cellars - Cabernet Sauvignon - Stag's Leap Wine Cellars - California Cellars

How to score chicks on the Disney Channel.

Troy Patterson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:38:51 PST

The Suite Life on Deck (Disney Channel, Fridays at 8:30 p.m. ET) is a follow-up to The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, itself a kiddie sitcom about identical-twin boys kicking it Eloise-style at a Boston hotel. Last week, the sequel ranked as the No. 4 show on cable and No. 1 overall among children ages 6 to 11. Should children actually be watching The Suite Life? This columnist does not pretend to offer parental guidance and, as far as he knows, does not have any 6-year-old kids. But there's an outside chance that he'd prefer to plop his imaginary, rhetorical-device-type offspring in front of Law & Order during the time slot in question. Zack and Cody Martin, played by heartthrob monozygotes Dylan and Cole Sprouse, are high-school students now in their second season of spending a semester at sea on a luxury liner. Cody, who is bright and occasionally overbearing, spends week after week nursing an innocent crush on a hayseed shipmate. Zack, an unimpressive student, devotes his mental energies to pulling pranks and trying to score chicks, or whatever the TV-G-rated equivalent of scoring chicks is. The Suite Life is of course mild in its sexual content, offering double entendres-once-removed and gentle references to oiling up bikini models and such. How did the protagonists' rock-star father meet their lounge-singer mother? It is strongly implied that she threw her underwear on stage, or so Dad claims. It takes a little effort to get one's own panties in a bunch over a kids show employing material like that, but it's a snap to feel unqualified disgust for the way the show giggles at Zack's crass predations. In one episode, a new passenger turns his head, but he's turned off by her baggage, her literal baggage. The luggage locks are a bad sign. "That means she's suspicious and cautious," he says. "I'm looking for naive and vulnerable." Cue the laugh track. Elsewhere, he describes part of his philosophy of life to a pal: "There is nothing—nothing—better in this world than an unhappy hot girl." In watching eight episodes of the show, I haven't seen Zack achieve any romantic success, but nor have I seen him receive any proper sanction. Thus do I eagerly await Walt Disney's presentation of a feature-film spinoff titled Zack & Cody's Rockin' Roofie Frat Party.As if to mitigate the noxiousness of this material, the show gives us a naive-but-tough female lead in Cody's love interest, a winsome yokel named Bailey Pickett who has come to the high seas from Kettlecorn, Kansas. Bailey is all the more appealing for being presented in contrast with her roommate, a high-heeled hotel heiress drawn as a caricature of Paris Hilton, as if Paris weren't already a caricature of herself. The show intends to mock the fictional ditz, London Tipton, for her compulsive shopping and repulsive frivolity, and indeed it does. Still, there is something a trifle depressing in the way Suite Life milks her money and glamour for all the cutesiness they're worth. This is the kind of show that takes a nonjudgmental attitude toward marrying for money. Don't get me started on the ship's mincing black chaperone, Mr. Moseby, emasculated in his Bermuda shorts. He gets one of the series' least-age-appropriate laugh lines: During a shipboard beauty pageant—arranged by Zack for the purpose of scoring chicks—one young lady comes out for the talent competition wearing an Abe Lincoln beard and stovepipe hat and proceeds to skip rope while reciting the Gettysburg Address. Annoyed by the quality of the performance, Moseby despairs, "Where's John Wilkes Booth when you need him?"But what I find most bothersome about The Suite Life on Deck—more troubling, even, than the way it forces me to align myself with horrible uptight PC scolds—is its infatuation with showbiz itself. As noted, Zack and Cody are the children of professional musicians. Another shipmate is a former professional singer. (His stage name—give the show some credit for wit—was Li'l Little.) London hosts a Web series, titled Yay Me!, which actually exists on the Disney Channel's site. Of course, TV would be nowhere without the backstage doings of Monkees and Partridges, of Liz Lemon and Desi Arnaz and all the rest. But really. In common with such other Disney fare as Jonas, Hannah Montana, and Sonny With a Chance—and also iCarly, the big Nickelodeon show of the moment—Suite Life can see no further than the camera. Right now, a startling volume of tween culture is devoted, directly or indirectly, to puttin' on a show in the manner of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. It seems important to remember that things didn't work out too well for Judy in the long run.

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Suite Life of Zack & Cody - Disney Channel - John Wilkes Booth - Hannah Montana - Cody Martin

The Slatest: Evening Edition

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:27:47 PST

Drug-resistant swine flu reported in North Carolina; Nelson backs Senate health plan (sort of); easyJet apologizes for Holocaust fashion shoot.

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The Political Gabfest for Nov. 20, 2009.

Emily Bazelon, John Dickerson, and David Plotz — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:14:31 PST

Become a fan of the Political Gabfest on Facebook. We post to the Facebook page throughout the week, so keep the conversation going by joining us there. Listen to the Gabfest for Nov. 20 by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

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Facebook - Social Networking - Online Communities - United States - Government

Stupid drug story of the week: NBC's Today show discovers huffing.

Jack Shafer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:53:37 PST

In the annals of stupid drug reporting, a special commendation must be reserved for NBC's Today show, which on Nov. 19 aired (video) one the stupidest drug stories in broadcast news. The program, which specializes in terrorizing mothers with sensationalist stories, discovered that today's kids are "huffing" inhalants from hair spray and air duster cans.

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Today - NBC - Television - Broadcasting - Arts

Slate writers and editors debate the ramifications of new cancer-screening guidelines.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:51:57 PST

This week, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that most women begin regular mammograms starting at age 50 instead of 40. Days later, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists revised its guidelines on cervical cancer screening: Now it suggests women receive their first Pap smears later than previously recommended and, depending on certain risk factors, get them less frequently. The move to reduce unnecessary screening has some critics of health care reform suggesting that America is moving headlong toward rationing care. In a Facebook note today, Sarah Palin wrote, "We need to carefully watch this debate as it coincides with Capitol Hill's debate and determine whether we are witnessing the early stages of that rationed care before the Senate bill is rushed through as well." After chief political correspondent John Dickerson sent Palin's note around, Slate staffers began debating what, exactly, rationing is; the value of screening; and the relationship between patients and the medical community. An edited transcript of the discussion is below.

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Cancer - United States - U.S. Preventive Services Task Force - Cervical cancer - American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

What it will cost you to deny health insurance to illegal immigrants.

Timothy Noah — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:50:09 PST

In his Sept. 9 speech to Congress on health care, when President Obama said, "The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shot back: "You lie!" What Obama meant was that health care reform would not extend government subsidies to illegal aliens to purchase health insurance. What Wilson meant was that health care reform would nonetheless allow illegal immigrants who were uninsured to purchase unsubsidized health insurance through the exchanges that reform would create. Indeed, to whatever extent the government could track down uninsured illegal immigrants through the tax system, it would compel them to buy health insurance. This was unacceptable to Wilson and other conservatives—not because they felt illegal immigrants should be left in peace, but because they felt illegal immigrants should be excluded entirely from whatever superstructure would be created by health care reform.

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Joe Wilson - United States Congress - Health insurance - Barack Obama - Insurance

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleansreviewed.

Dana Stevens — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:47:11 PST

This review only needs to consist of six words: Werner Herzog. Nicolas Cage. Bad Lieutenant. Not every one of those elements (with the possible exception of Herzog's name) is enough to sell a movie on its own, but the combination? Most definitely. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Edward R. Pressman Films) isn't really a remake of Bad Lieutenant, Abel Ferrara's 1992 exploration of a crooked cop's journey through the depths of spiritual debasement. It's more like a dream one might have after watching the original Bad Lieutenant, doing three lines of cocaine, staying up all night, and collapsing on some none-too-clean sheets in a seedy New Orleans motel. The main thing the two films share is a fascination with abjection—these aren't just bad lieutenants, they're baaaad lieutenants. It's a fascination so extreme and so systematic that it exists at the permeable border between high drama and low comedy.

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BadLieutenant - AbelFerrara - New Orleans - Nicolas Cage - Werner Herzog

Reviews of: Twilight: New Moon, The Blind Side, and Planet 51

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:30:44 PST

A daily video from Slate V.

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New Moon - Solar System - Earth - Astronomy - Planets

Bidenisms: A collection of the vice president's gaffes and head-slappers.

Jeremy Stahl — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:07:16 PST

The vice president did not produce any new Bidenisms this week, but we've dug one out of the archives in honor of his 67th birthday today. Please continue to send your nominations (with a link, please) to slatebidenisms@gmail.com. For more, and our stab at a definition, see "The Complete Bidenisms."

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United States - Gmail - History - Vice Presidents - Complete Bidenisms

The Blind Side reviewed.

Josh Levin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:25:24 PST

Michael Lewis' book The Blind Side tells the true story of Michael Oher, a poor black kid who gets adopted by a rich white family and transforms himself into a football star. The movie version zooms in on Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock), the woman who gave the hard-up prodigy the care and feeding that he needed to become a man and an NFL draft pick. This feels less like an artistic choice than an economic one. The Blind Side plays like filmmaking by focus group, a movie that aims to please and ends up condescending to its audience.

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Sandra Bullock - Michael Oher - Blind Side: Evolution Of A Game - Michael Lewis - Blind Side

What's the greenest way to get home for Thanksgiving?

Jacob Leibenluft — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:23:24 PST

A new report from AAA, the car association, predicts that 33.2 million Thanksgiving travelers will be driving at least 50 miles to their holiday destinations this year. Another 2.3 million are expected to fly somewhere for the weekend, and many more will be riding intercity buses and trains. Last year around this time, the Lantern looked at the carbon emissions associated with these various forms of travel. The column is reprinted below.

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Thanksgiving - Travel - holiday - American Automobile Association - AAA

What a meal of beef stomach and duck throats taught me about the new China.

Daniel Gross — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:22:46 PST

"So what's that?" I asked, gesturing at a bowl of grayish fleshy ribbons with little spikes. It was one of the many tough-to-identify animal parts cramming the Lazy Susan. Zhang Haiqing, deputy director of the Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, Chongqing Municipal People's Government, mulled the question for a minute. A gracious host to a group of journalists who had traveled to Chongqing, Zhang had lived in Seattle in the 1990s. He probably intuited the squeamishness of the visiting Americans.

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China - United States - Chongqing - Seattle - Asia

What's the best way for the Twilight vampires to drink blood?

Christopher Beam — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:18:13 PST

New Moon, the second installment of the Twilight series, hits theaters today. It features a family of teenage vampires who drink animal blood and who look down on those vampires "weak" enough to prey on humans. The film raises several questions about the logistics—and aesthetics—of blood-drinking.

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Vampire - Twilight - New Moon - People - Otherkin

Goldman Sach's shareholders seethe.

Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:48:47 PST

A summary of what's in the major publications.

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Retracing the path of the iconic movie on its 40th anniversary.

Keith Phipps — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:11:42 PST

Day 6 I begin the day by flying from Albuquerque, N.M., to New Orleans. It's cheating, but only a little. Warned not to film in Texas because the state had no patience for long hair, Easy Rider skipped the state, so I do, too. Renting a car at the airport, I head directly to Morganza, La., a rural community up the road from Baton Rouge where Hanson, Wyatt, and Billy try, and fail, to enjoy a meal. "You name it, I'll throw rocks at it," one local tells the town sheriff as they enter the diner. The teenage girls dining there have a different reaction. Visibly attracted to the men, they follow them outside and coo over their bikes. Easy Rider used locals as the diner patrons and Fonda recalls giving the men a single line of motivation: "We've just raped a 13-year-old white girl outside of town."

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New Mexico - San Diego - United States - New Orleans - Arizona

Corrections from the last week.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:00:07 PST

In the Nov. 17 "Prescriptions," Timothy Noah misspelled the name of Len Nichols' co-author on the paper that first proposed a "level playing field" version of the public option. It's John M. Bertko, not Berko.

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Business - United States - Timothy Noah - Connecticut - Investing

The Twilight Saga: New Moon reviewed.

Dana Stevens — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:32:19 PST

Sometimes a critic's aesthetic judgment is impossible to extricate from what you might call her cinematic libido. There are movies that bring us a pleasure that's neither definable nor defensible. These used to be called "guilty pleasures," but that phrase seems too judgmental, too pre-Vatican II, for our postmodern era of omnivorous cultural consumption. The distinction between high and low culture, between what we're allowed to enjoy publicly and what we must sneak off to savor in private, has effaced itself to the degree that "guilty pleasures" needs to be replaced by a more morally neutral term. For our purposes here, I'll go with a term that a friend and I coined in college and that I still deploy on occasion: movies we couldn't intellectually defend but still unapologetically loved we called "juicebombs."

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New Moon - Twilight - Film - Twilight Saga: New Moon - College

How dangerous is the radiation from a mammogram?

Brian Palmer — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:11:54 PST

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended Monday that women without risk factors for breast cancer wait until their 50s before going in for regular mammograms. That's because early screening yields almost 50 times as many false positives as true cancers, triggering unnecessary biopsies and anxiety, and early detection doesn't do much good in 85 percent of cases anyway. The Task Force noted that the radiation exposure associated with mammography was a minor factor in their recommendation; on Wednesday, Slate's Darshak Sanghavi wrote, "It's possible the radiation from those mammograms may end up causing more cancers than they prevent." How much radiation is in a mammogram?

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US Preventive Services Task Force - Cancer - Breast cancer - Mammography - Health

Why vampire movies always break all the vampire rules.

Christopher Beam — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:05:01 PST

Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart return to the big screen in Twilight: New Moon this Friday. The first installment shied away from vampire myths and offered a modern take on the subject. Last year, Christopher Beam pointed out that Twilight and other recent movies were quick to discredit old vampire legends. The original article is reprinted below.

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Kristen Stewart - Twilight - New Moon - Film - Vampire

When have we not been in the midst of a vampire craze?

Christopher Beam and Chris Wilson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:04:40 PST

Yet another vampire film opens this Friday: Twilight: New Moon, the second installment of the popular series. Is New Moon simply part of a recent vampire boom, along with True Blood and countless others movies, TV shows, and books? Not quite, say Slate's Christopher Beam and Chris Wilson. In September, the pair discovered that vampires are almost never not in vogue. The original article is reprinted below.

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New Moon - True Blood - Twilight - Vampire - Chris Wilson

Vampires suck.

Grady Hendrix — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:02:39 PST

Will Twilight characters Edward and Bella finally consummate their love in New Moon, out this Friday? Almost certainly not. In July, Grady Hendrix complained that New Age vampire films, like Twilight, lack blood sucking and sex. The original article is reprinted below.

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New Moon - Twilight - Bella Swan - List of Twilight characters - Vampires

Microsoft Office 2010 reviewed.

Farhad Manjoo — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:27:34 PST

It's difficult to overstate the success of Microsoft Office. Calling it one of the best-selling tech products of all time is a bit like calling Michael Jackson a very popular musician—it's certainly accurate, but it woefully misses the mark. According to Microsoft, more than 500 million people around the world use the Fantastic Four of productivity apps—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Yet no one simply uses Office; for many, these programs are an essential daily tool kit, the ever-present background hum of the white-collar grind.

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Microsoft Office - Microsoft - Microsoft Excel - Microsoft PowerPoint - Microsoft Outlook

Losing my son in the woods wasn't fun.

Emily Bazelon — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:11:31 PST

Before she went rogue, Sarah Palin got lost. She was stalking "majestic dall sheep with their thick curled horns," she writes in her new book, in Mount McKinley National Park. "I was only about eight years old, and for a couple of anxious hours of climbing hillsides and calling my name, no one could find me on the crags and snowpack." Her father played it cool, "but inside, he was pretty frantic." She was found, at last, asleep on a rocky slope in a white T-shirt that made her look like one of the sheep.

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Sarah Palin - United States - Alaska - Government - Executive Branch

Hey Penny: The Boss From Hell

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:08:36 PST

A daily video from Slate V.

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Business - Slate - Materials and Supplies - Construction and Maintenance - Natural Stone

What's inside Harry Reid's "blended" Senate health care reform bill.

Timothy Noah — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:02:09 PST

The health care reform bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will bring to the floor (text, CBO score) is mostly better than the Senate finance bill on which it is largely based. But it is mostly worse than the counterpart reform bill (text, CBO score) already passed by the House.

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Harry Reid - Congressional Budget Office - Health care - Senate - Majority leader

The real price of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

David Feige — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:51:51 PST

Sometime in the next few months, a small group of experienced criminal-defense lawyers will be assigned to what is likely to be the case of a lifetime: the defense of admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or, to those enamored of sinister acronyms, KSM. Their work will not be easy, obviously. No jury on this continent is going to acquit their client, the government is certain to insist on the death penalty, and KSM will almost certainly try to put the government on trial. So what's a team of hardworking criminal defense attorneys to do?

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - Capital punishment - Law - Lawyer - United States

Like New Yorkers, Chinese people just can't stop talking about real estate.

Daniel Gross — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:37:45 PST

In Shanghai, which is China's New York, locals and expats are doing their best to foist American-style consumerism onto China's rising masses—with mixed results. Starbucks has opened several hundred stores, even though China has no coffee-drinking culture to speak of. As it spreads into China, Toys "R" Us is trying to convince higher-income Chinese parents that toys are a part of a childhood, not a distraction from preparation for the all-important national college entrance exams. Dickie Yip, executive vice president at Bank of Communications, lamented that 80 percent of the 11 million Chinese people who have opened up credit card accounts with the bank pay off their accounts in full every month. "We're encouraging our best customers not to repay," he said.

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China - Shanghai - United States - Asia - Bank of Communications

The gloomy wonders of Prague.

Emily Yoffe — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:15:55 PST

The city of Prague is itself a work of art. This is a good thing, because after spending an afternoon in the National Gallery at the Prague Castle complex looking at their 19th-century painting and sculpture—the artistic flowering behind a brief period of political independence—you would conclude that art this bad could only be done deliberately. Our guide, Natasa Sutta, regularly stopped in front of drab, dull landscapes to remark, "These are very Czech colors." I developed a theory that since invaders liked to sweep into Prague and sweep out with anything valuable, maybe the artists made paintings that defied anyone to steal them.

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Czech Republic - Prague - Government - Embassies and Consulates - Travel and Tourism

I won't sit for a holiday photo with my in-laws.

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:13:09 PST

Get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.)

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Slate - Dear Prudence - Web Design and Development - Search Engines - Social Sciences

Does it matter that Obama is behind schedule on most of his major plans?

John Dickerson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:28:13 PST

As a professor of constitutional law, Barack Obama gave his students eight hours to complete his exam—even though the exam was designed, he wrote them, "to be completed in three hours." Now that he's president, Obama could use that kind of cushion. Upon taking office, the president promised that the prison at Guantanamo Bay would close in a year. He now says it will not. He demanded that Congress pass a health care bill by August. It still hasn't. The president's promise to sign a health care bill this year has now been pushed into 2010. Obama was also going to announce his new Afghanistan strategy in early November. It may now come as much as a month later. There are also delays—some, of course, beyond his control—in seating judicial nominations and passing climate-change legislation.

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Barack Obama - Health care - United States Congress - Climate change - Guantánamo Bay

Sen. Harry Reid's health reform strip tease.

Timothy Noah — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:58:24 PST

What we know about the Senate's "blended" health care bill, and what we don't.

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Harry Reid - Health care - United States Senate - Senate - Health

Do books really need Hollywood-style trailers?

Troy Patterson — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:30:39 PST

This month brings the publication of Eating Animals—a vegetarian's memoir and manifesto, a Peter Singer sort of guide to a Michael Pollan world, the third book by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. In support of it, the author and his publisher have concocted a short Web video. When I watched it over dinner last night, it put me off my lamb shoulder chop (medium rare) only in its unpalatable tone, which is extremely cute and incredibly twee. It's but the latest reflection of the ways that such clips—"book trailers"—can reveal the hopes and fantasies of readers, writers, and publishers alike.

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Michael Pollan - Jonathan Safran Foer - Publishing - Vegetarianism - Author

What watching ESPN could teach us about mammograms.

Darshak Sanghavi — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:14:53 PST

It's not often that a football game can teach us something useful about mammography. But look what happened on Sunday after New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick decided to go for a short fourth-down conversion from his own 28 yard line, with a late six-point lead. The Colts stopped the Pats cold to take possession, and star quarterback Peyton Manning quickly fired off a touchdown pass to win the game for Indianapolis.

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New England Patriots - Peyton Manning - Indianapolis Colts - Bill Belichick - American football

The attorney general tries to sell us on New York terror trials.

Dahlia Lithwick — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:12:00 PST

There are good arguments against trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators in a federal New York Court. Testifying this morning before the Senate judiciary committee, Attorney General Eric Holder addressed most of them.

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New York - Eric Holder - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - United States - United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary

How does the federal government know how much money it's spending improperly?

Christopher Beam — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:55:46 PST

The federal government made $98 billion in improper payments this fiscal year, according to an announcement Tuesday by the White House Office of Management and Budget. That's a 37.5 percent increase from the $72 billion improperly spent in 2008. How does the government know exactly how much it's misspending?

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Office of Management and Budget - Federal government of the United States - Fiscal year - United States - Government

Slate's Culture Gabfest on Lady Gaga, Fantastic Mr. Fox,and warning future generations about nuclear waste.

Juliet Lapidos, Stephen Metcalf, Troy Patterson, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:54:39 PST

Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 61 with Juliet Lapidos, Stephen Metcalf, Troy Patterson, Dana Stevens and Julia Turner and by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

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Modern Family - American Broadcasting Company - ABC - Economic - United States

The Pork Bun Challenge

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:32:36 PST

A daily video from Slate V.

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Pork - Meat - Cooking - Home - Food

The surreal, high-concept showmanship of Urs Fischer.

Ben Davis — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:27:25 PST

The surreal, high-concept showmanship of Urs Fischer.

[more ...]

art - Urs Fischer - Visual Arts - Artist - Museum of Modern Art

The best preschool programming on TV is Nick Jr.'s Yo Gabba Gabba!

Bret Asbury — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:31:29 PST

If you have a young child—or even if you don't—you know that Sesame Street is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary. Weeks of gushing coverage of the preschool staple culminated last Tuesday with the airing of a much-hyped anniversary episode, featuring appearances by Cameron Diaz and Michelle Obama. But lost in the cascade of praise for the venerable show is the fact that Sesame Street, though still useful and at times charming, is no longer the most engaging television show geared toward preschoolers. That distinction now belongs to Nick Jr.'s Yo Gabba Gabba!

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Sesame Street - Michelle Obama - Cameron Diaz - Nick Jr - Television program

Slate's unauthorized index of Sarah Palin's autobiography, Going Rogue.

Christopher Beam — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:52:20 PST

When Sarah Palin's 413-page autobiography, Going Rogue: An American Life, hit stands Tuesday, readers discovered the governor's most mavericky move yet—that the book lacks an index. So Slate has compiled its own. Just print out this index, paste it into the back of your copy, and start skipping around! (And yes, the page numbers are real.)

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Sarah Palin - American Life - United States - Alaska - Government

The man who watered down the public option explains what government economists got wrong.

Timothy Noah — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:02:09 PST

Washington is a place where politics and economics often aren't on speaking terms. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the twilight struggle to create a "public option" government health-insurance program. After protracted negotiation with conservative "blue dog" Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi passed a health care bill that included a watered-down public option that would not be permitted to align physician and doctor fees with Medicare rates, which typically are below the rates paid by private insurers. Even so, public-option advocates like me argued, the advantages inherent in government health insurance would price public-option premiums lower than premiums for private insurance, exerting downward competitive pressure on the private market. This was health care reform's most effective tool for curbing medical inflation.

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Insurance - Medicare - Health care - Health insurance - Nancy Pelosi

Obama's getting flak for bowing in Japan. Early Americans bowed all the time.

Juliet Lapidos — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:48:58 PST

President Obama bowed (rather deeply) to the emperor of Japan over the weekend, providing ample fodder for his conservative detractors. Former Vice President Cheney, for one, said "There is no reason for an American president to bow to anyone. … Our friends and allies don't expect it, and our enemies see it as a sign of weakness." In Japan, bows are standard accompaniments to formal greetings. And as anyone who's seen a period drama about Colonial America knows well, bows were once standard here, too. When did Americans stop bowing?

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United States - Barack Obama - Dick Cheney - Conservatism - Colonial history of the United States

Sarah Palin = Dan Quayle.

David Greenberg — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:41:13 PST

John F. Kennedy believed that being passed over for vice president by the Democratic convention in 1956 saved his political career. That year, Adlai Stevenson, the presidential nominee, had left the selection of his running mate to the convention delegates—the last time a nominee did so. The choice came down to Kennedy and his Senate colleague Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, who had lined up too much early support even for the attractive young war hero to overcome. In the end, Kennedy had it both ways. He benefited from the television exposure and was spared the blame—which as a Catholic, he would have shared—for Stevenson's walloping by President Eisenhower that November. As for Estes, except for crossword puzzlers, nobody much remembers him.

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Adlai Stevenson - Sarah Palin - Democratic - United States - Running mate

When it comes to cancer screening, more isn't always better.

Amanda Schaffer — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:25:29 PST

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has announced new mammography guidelines this week. While the task force previously encouraged screenings for women beginning at 40, it has now pushed the threshold to 50. Concerns over frequent false positives and patient anxiety influenced the group's recommendation. Though many believe that there can never be enough testing, a 2004 "Medical Examiner" by Amanda Schaffer explains that the risks of false positives, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment are real. The article is reprinted below.

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U.S. Preventive Services Task Force - Mammography - Cancer - Health - Conditions and Diseases

How the NFL became the American war game.

Michael Oriard — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:22:06 PST

On Nov. 8, two hours before the day's blitzes and long bombs were to commence, Fox's NFL pregame show went on the air from Afghanistan. The festivities were high on patriotism but low on militarism, leaving out any hint of blood or fighting. For the U.S. military, the Fox broadcast was an opportunity to tell a story about its humanitarian mission in Afghanistan, to sell the war at home at a time when anything like a clear-cut military victory appears unattainable. For Fox, it was an opportunity to reconnect the NFL with the military, to wrap the football in the American flag after three years of restraint.

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NFL - Afghanistan - United States armed forces - War in Afghanistan - National Football League

Why the American brand Mary Kay is thriving in China.

Daniel Gross — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:18:27 PST

Economists, politicians, and shoppers focus so much on the massive flood of Chinese imports that we end up paying too little attention to the products, services, and business concepts exported from the United States to China. The vast differential in income between the United States and China has precluded a rampant growth in U.S. exports to China. U.S.-made cars, American doctors, and steakhouses remain far too expensive to appeal to the typical Chinese consumer.

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China - United States - Asia - Business - Mary Kay

Psychologists have been watching us on the subway. Here's what they've learned.

Tom Vanderbilt — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:02:56 PST

Spend enough time riding the New York City subway—or any big-city metro—and you'll find yourself on the tenure-track to an honorary degree in transit psychology. The subway—which keeps random people together in a contained, observable setting—is a perfect rolling laboratory for the study of human behavior. As the sociologists M.L. Fried and V.J. De Fazio once noted, "The subway is one of the few places in a large urban center where all races and religions and most social classes are confronted with one another and the same situation."

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New York City Subway - New York City - New York - United States - Psychology

What impact do rockets have on the environment?

Nina Shen Rastogi — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:09:29 PST

We hear so much about the environmental impacts of transportation. What about space travel? How do rockets affect the atmosphere?

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Natural environment - Environment - Atmosphere - Business - School Time

"Consciousness"

Ellen Wehle — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:07:16 PST

Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Ellen Wehle read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes..

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Slate - iTunes - Poetry - Arts - Multimedia

Sarah Palin goes on Oprah to discuss her new book, Going Rogue.

Christopher Beam — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:37:12 PST

Sarah Palin has always enjoyed complaining about the "media filter." But that was before she met Oprah Winfrey.

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Oprah Winfrey - United States - Alaska - Sarah Palin - Government

Why has the global response to swine flu been so politicized?

Anne Applebaum — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:04:05 PST

I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and mentioned this fact to a friend. "Swine flu?" he asked, oinking a few times for emphasis. No, as far as I can tell, I do not have swine flu, the virus more formally known as H1N1. But even if I did, I'm not entirely sure that anyone around me would take it very seriously.

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Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 - Swine influenza - Health - Influenza - Infectious disease

What makes a prison state of the art?

Brian Palmer — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:44:56 PST

Federal officials visited a correctional center in Thomson, Ill., on Monday, to see if it might be appropriate for housing detainees from Guantanamo Bay. A statement from the governor's office described the prison as a "virtually vacant, state of the art facility." What makes a prison "state of the art?"

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Prison - Crime and Justice - Crime - Organizations - United States

The right's nonsensical arguments against trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York.

Dahlia Lithwick — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:12:56 PST

Opposition to the Obama administration's plan to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates in a federal court in New York City is hardening into two camps. One is concerned that we may be unwittingly playing into the terrorists' hands. The other is incensed that we already have. What both camps share, besides a kind of unhinged logic and complete disregard for the legal process, is an obsessive fascination with the accused. The result is a broad willingness to sacrifice our commitment to legal principles in favor of the symbolic satisfaction of crushing the hopes and dreams of a motley group of criminals.

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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - New York City - New York - Terrorism - Presidency of Barack Obama

Dear Prudence answers readers' questions live at Washingtonpost.com.

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:00:50 PST

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.)

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Dear Prudence - Emily Yoffe - Slate - Washington Post - Chat Rooms

Slate's sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen, for the week of Nov. 16, 2009.

Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:18:26 PST

Listen to "Hang Up and Listen" with Stefan Fatsis, Josh Levin, and Mike Pesca by clicking the arrow on the audio player below:

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Podcast - Slate - Mike Pesca - Recreation - Directories

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 made me feel terrible about myself, and I loved it.

Chris Suellentrop — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:41:26 PST

You may have heard that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold nearly 5 million copies in North America and Britain on its first day of release last week—that's $310 million in sales, what publisher Activision calls "the biggest launch in history across all forms of environment." Nevertheless, the game's more noteworthy achievement is an artistic one: It's a first-person shooter that plays as a tragedy, not a power fantasy. It's the most anti-war war game I've ever played, a murder simulator that won't let you forget the nature of your actions.

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Activision - Modern Warfare 2 - First-person shooter - Publishing - War

Dear Prudence: I Got My Co-Worker's Sister Pregnant!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:25:47 PST

A daily video from Slate V.

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Slate - Dear Prudence - Business - Materials and Supplies - Construction and Maintenance

Pharmaceutical ad winners at the Clio Healthcare Awards.

Seth Stevenson — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:11:46 PST

"Imagine," said one attendee of the first-ever Clio Healthcare Awards, held in Manhattan on Friday night, "that you're making a TV commercial for a new Nike sneaker. But you aren't allowed to talk freely about the sneaker. Instead, you have to show a pair of bare feet, and then tell the viewer he can solve his barefoot-ness by asking his doctor about Nike. That's the challenge for most pharmaceutical advertising."

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Advertising - Television advertisement - Business - Manhattan - Marketing and Advertising

How can we communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to future civilizations?

Juliet Lapidos — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:50:58 PST

During a 2004 cleanup operation at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, personnel digging through a trench uncovered a safe containing a glass bottle. And inside the bottle, white sludge. Tests identifying the substance as a type of plutonium gave way to more tests until, in the Spring of 2009, scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory revealed what, exactly, the crew had uncovered: A 1944 artifact from the fledgling nuclear weapons program—the oldest existing sample of bomb-grade plutonium from a nuclear reactor, with a half-life of 24,110 years. Although this sexagenarian sludge isn't dangerous to touch—its particles are too large to penetrate skin—it's poisonous if swallowed or inhaled and will be for centuries to come. Yet it was housed in a flimsy receptacle that should rightfully contain nothing more toxic than bleach. In the rush of nuclear discovery, the mid-century scientists never paused to consider that a trespasser might happen upon the safe and crack it open.

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Nuclear weapon - Washington - Nuclear reactor technology - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - Hanford Site

Seven salient facts about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Christopher Hitchens — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:46:20 PST

The admonition not to rush to judgment or jump to conclusions might sound fair and prudent enough, perhaps even statesmanlike when uttered by the president, as long it's borne in mind that such advice is itself a judgment that is more than halfway to a conclusion. What it plainly implies in the present case is that the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan should not be assumed in any meaningful way to be related to his Muslim faith.

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Muslim - Islam - Religion and Spirituality - Fort Hood - Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan

A new government report says health reform will "jeopardize access" to Medicare.

Timothy Noah — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:20:38 PST

While everybody waits for the Congressional Budget Office to weigh in with a cost estimate for all or part of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's "blended" health care reform bill, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' chief actuary, Richard S. Foster, has stolen the spotlight. In a memo released Friday on the House-passed bill, Foster said it was "unrealistic" to assume that Medicare could make some of the budget cuts proposed in the House bill without causing doctors and hospitals to bail out of the program.

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Harry Reid - Congressional Budget Office - Healthcare reform - Health - Medicaid

Meghan O'Rourke, Troy Patterson, and Katie Roiphe discuss Raymond Carver's "A Small Good Thing" and "The Bath."

Meghan O'Rourke, Troy Patterson, and Katie Roiphe — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:51:11 PST

The Audio Book Club on Raymond Carver

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Slate - Meghan O'Rourke - Katie Roiphe - Literature - Arts

Philip Roth's The Humbling.

Judith Shulevitz — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:54:19 PST

Not long ago, Philip Roth gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal, one of several in various publications that occasioned some surprise, since Roth is a notoriously reclusive writer. In this interview, he revealed that his latest novel, The Humbling, is the third of four short novels. The first two, Everyman and Indignation, came out in 2006 and 2008, respectively. The fourth, called Nemesis, will be published next year. "Together," he said, "the four make a quartet."

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Philip Roth - Humbling - Novel - Everyman - Wall Street Journal

The job market will rebound a lot sooner than you expect.

Daniel Gross — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:52:34 PST

Like some gothic serial novelist, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivers another chapter of the same grim tale on the first Friday of every month. In October, the unemployment rate spiked to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983. Since December 2007, payroll employment has fallen by 7.3 million jobs. The ratio of unemployed workers to job openings is 6.1 to 1; in December 2007, it was 1.7 to 1.

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Bureau of Labor Statistics - Employment - Unemployment - Labour economics - United States

Does Obama need to speak more harshly about Islam?

Jacob Weisberg — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:50:39 PST

When it comes to any issue that involves Islam, President Obama starts with an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that he's seen as sympathetic to Muslims. The disadvantage is also that he's seen as sympathetic to Muslims.

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President - United States - Politics - Barack Obama - Opposing Views