What what what? How is it possible that slate.com has a french version?
I only have so much hate to give, vas te faire foutre slate.fr!
Over at Fusil of Yarn, there seems to be a bit of inner conflict stirred up by the kind of things that people do to animals in the name of science. As usual we have my arch nemesis, Slate, to blame for this foolishness. From Fusil of Yarn:
Wanted: a neuroscientist who can bear to do this without skipping a beat to write up the same experiments. And I don’t want straight-forward argument of sadly hurting one animal to save one thousand humans. I’d like to hear from the people who do all this, look into the monkey’s apparently sad eyes, and see nothing there. Will they stand up?
At the end of six weeks we killed the mice. There were two techniques for this: either you stuck them in a little guillotine type device that broke their little mouse necks or you put them in a beaker and gassed them to death with CO2. The gassing turned out to be much more efficient as you could do several at a time.
After that, I spent about a week dissecting the dead mice, removing the brain, lungs, spleen, and femur. This was pretty cool at first, but got a bit tedious as time went by, although I have to say I did get pretty damn good at it. The hardest part was cracking open the skull without turning the mouse brain into goo.
The last thing I had to do was freeze each of these organs with liquid nitrogen and then mash them into a pulp so that they could be tested for cancer cell count.
Did I feel anything for the mice? I remember the gassing being mildly disturbing at first--I had pet mice as a child--but I soon became desensitized.
While I was working at the lab, I also saw someone else experimenting on a rabbit. That was harder to take because rabbits are really cute.,So I propose the following: maybe we should breed test animals that are ugly like cockroaches, H.R. Geiger's aliens, or the baby from Eraserhead.
P.S. This is not to say that I approve of using animals for, say, testing make-up. But when it comes to critical research that could save millions of human lives... too bad for the animals. Contrary to what some animal rights activists, you can't conduct all your research in a vial.
P.P.S. I don't think it's possible to separate animal testing by medical researchers from the greater good argument. Most people that I met went into this line of work precisely because it could save millions of lives. That was certainly my motivation: my father had died of lung cancer a year earlier. And I think at first almost all of them felt bad for the animals that they were using for tests. However, after spending years and years at the job the animal becomes just another tool in the lab, much in the same way that cows become nothing more than monetary assets to farmers. Read more!
It probably comes as a great surprise to you dear reader, but I hate advertisements of all kinds. They're distracting, they slow down my computer, and they fill my head with insufferable jingles.
So I found myself agreeing with Farhad Manjoo of slate:
Google's success seems to bear out Palant's idea that users will tolerate and even click on ads that don't bug them, lending credence to his theory that the way to reverse the mass adoption of ad blocking is for publishers to run ads that people don't want to block. That's why his new proposal makes sense. Ad blocking may not be ethical, but there's nothing illegal about it, and there are few technical ways for publishers to limit its effects. Ad blocking is here to stay. But that doesn't have to be the end of the Web—just the end of terrible ads.
Indeed, if all adds were like google's adwords, I wouldn't block a thing: adwords are useful and unobtrusive.
It always seemed to me that internet ads were engaged in an arms race, where companies produced ever more intrusive ads in order to gain an advantage over their competitors. If we leveled, the playing field by forcing all companies to comply to an intrusion threshhold, this incentive would be eliminated.
Granted, this would effectively kill the advertisement production business, but who needs them? Thanks to admen we pay $1 for 5 cent sugar water.Thanks to admen we drink beer that bears a family resemblance to urine. Thanks to admen I feel like chicken every night! Read more!
Sometimes I wonder why I read Mickey Kaus, who often seems anti just for the sake of being anti. But then he goes and makes me laugh:**--Earlier version of this item said "cocoon," not "bubble." But Sullivan arguably is in Obama's cocoon on the issue of torture, no? Not sure about the issue of genital warts! ...
And so I keep coming back.
Juliet Lapidos misses the point entirely in her critique of Battlestar Galactica. The problem is not that the show is secretly misogynist. The problem is that the show has been increasingly tailored to a certain melodrama loving, female demographic.
See, the first season of the show was badass. The Cylons had just exterminated 99% of humanity and they were tenaciously pursuing the last 1%. This translated into lots of cool scenes with spaceships blowing up and teleporting away in the nick of time. They also had this neat V-like twist where the Cylons looked like human beings, so there was lots of intrigue onboard the ship as to who was a spy. Finally, they had this great character in the philandering Dr. Gaius Baltar. Revenge of the Nerds aside, the media never portrays geeks as babe-magnets, never! This was monumentous--the intellectual worshiped--it was like France on a spaceship! What's more Gaius was haunted by a spectre of the Cylon that tricked him into turning over the codes for the earth's defenses; there was genuine pathos with these awesome dream sequences where he got to have even more sex.
But then, they introduced all this crap on how the Cylons couldn't reproduce because they didn't know how to love--and then it all went downhill. Suddenly, the space battles ended and in its place came love triangles and religious mumbo jumbo. Dee loved Apollo who loved Starbuck who loved Anders. Saul Tigh loved his wife Cally, but when he thought she had died, he grew to love a number 6 and got her pregnant. Of course when Cally was reborn, she was none too pleased about Tigh's new squeeze so she induced a miscarriage by forcing Saul Tigh to choose between his two loves. AAAH!!! It's like Days of Our Lives in space; Battlestar Galactica even has a guy with an eyepatch. All we need now is for Rosalyn to be possessed by the devil and the circle will be complete.
Battlestar Galactica is obviously pandering to the same demographic that used to watch soaps and is currently fixated on Gossip Girl. If Lapidos has a problem with this, then she should direct the blame where the blame is due: women. In short, I challenge Lapidos to become the Bill Cosby of feminism. Women need to look in the mirror and come to terms with the fact that they secretly love melodramatic, misogynist crap, and are the primary reason that it continues to thrive.
Only then can we all sit down together, male and female, and watch a true feminist work of art: Alien 2!
Somebody stole my slate attack idea, except they honed it into a fine dagger aimed at the heart of Mickey Kaus!
[What do you have against Kausfiles? -- ed.]So true, except about slate in general. Read more!
Okay, you sit down to read your Slate, and you're enjoying your Daniel Gross and Fred Kaplan and Dahlia Lithwick, right? And then there's Mickey fucking Kaus, bottom right hand corner, just waiting to suck. And it's the last thing you read, so it spoils everything you read before it.
[You could just not read it. -- ed.]
I hate it, yet I'm uncontrollably drawn to it.
Wrong again Slate. Sale of internships is more egalitarian!
by Gimpei | 13:31 in Slate | comments (2)
As part of my ongoing obsession with Slate (actually I'm not so much obsessed as too lazy to hunt out my own set of blogs and tie them into google reader), I point you, dear reader, to the following post by Timothy Noah.
So as to spare you the bother of the click-through, let me summarize: summer internships are now being sold for as much as 2,500 a pop! What a scandle! In fact there's even a web site where any old schmoe can purchase these internships.
From my experiences in the media sector, I can confidently say that this new development has probably increased equality. Whereas in the past, cushy internships were limited to the immensely wealthy and well-connected, now the wealthy, or even the upper middle class can get their foot in the door.
I know what you're thinking: you're being too cynical Gimpei, the MSM must rigorously screen their interns. They wouldn't, for example, give an internship to the daughter of the editor-in-chief's psychoanalyst, to a well-respected foreign academic's son who wants to improve his english, or to the children of fellow journalists. Actually, they do and almost exclusively.
Here's the thing:
1) Editors are lazy. What other business has half-days on fridays during the summer so that the staff can go off to their country homes?
2) The work that interns perform requires absolutely no ability. None. They could easily be replaced by monkeys.
3) From the editors perspective then: why bother going through an intensive interviewing process when you can just ask a friend if their kid needs some work sending faxes and making copies?
The problem is that although internships are a poor signal of ability, they are the only way of getting your foot in the door. In my opinion, if some middle class kid likes music enough to get his parents to drop 2,500, more power to him. Worst case he'll just be taking the place of one of Peter Travers' kids, which can only be a good thing.
All you fans out there of the Daily Gimpei are no doubt aware of some of the issues I've had with Slate. Nevertheless, I do find myself visiting their site several times a day. Also, I visit my site several times a day (and from different IP addresses!). Naturally the most efficient solution would be for me to write for Slate: that way I wouldn't have to visit as many disparate sites.
Now I know what you're wondering, Slate: Why would we help you, Gimpei, when you've both mocked and shamelessly copied our site (i.e. Kaus)? What do we have to gain?
1. Slate is always looking for the next young pundit:
I am young and I often say things that bear a family resemblance to the writings of a pundit.
2. Slate expects its contributors to be masterful wordsmiths
I can use words that seem big, but are actually understood by the majority of your readership.
Readers love this because it makes them feel smart:
At the risk of sounding sesquipedalian, it really seemed like someone hit Aretha Franklin with a sartorial ugly stick at the inauguration.
I can also use words that nobody understands (even me!). This adds value to your brand by signaling to your readership that you are smarter than them, and thus worthy of being listened to:
When it comes to a Gimpei/Slate merger, I truly believe that our interests are in syzygy!
3. Slate demands contributors who can be insightful and pithy
Surely you jest, because the Daily Gimpei is nothing if not insightful and pithy:
Gimpei on twitter:
"If I really cared about what you're doing every second of the every day, I am probably stalking you. Why make it any easier for me?"
Gimpei on Barbara Kingsolver:
"If, as David Foster Wallace wrote, Updike is just a penis with a dictionary, then surely Barbara Kingsolver is just a vagina with an Almanac." DISCLAIMER: I have not read a word of Barbara Kingsolver, but come on, with a title like "The Poisonwood Bible" it just works.
4. This is the publishing business we're talking about here. You are not related to, have not gone to college with, or slept with anyone bearing any connection to Slate. Slate will never hire you, never!
It's true Slate. I am not related to you and I have never managed to get in your pants. However, I read you so obsessively that sometimes I feel like laws of space and time have been transcended and that we are alone together on a tropical beach: I in my boardshorts with hair bleached blond by the sun, you in a sleek, cut-away one piece. We exchanged the briefest of glances at the pool side bar, but what our gaze lacked in longevity was more than made up for in fiery concupiscence. And I know it may sound funny Slate, but during these special moments, I feel... No... I know that somewhere out there on the other end of the DSLAM you feel the same... Can't you see Slate? We don't have to be star crossed lovers; some stories do have happy endings!
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