Combat! - Page 264 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Adelson gives $10 million to Romney Super PAC

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates June 14, 2012 2 Comments

But Mr. Hartounian said, "Don't be a putz—see the world. Me you've seen already."

This week, casino magnate Sheldon Anderson gave $10 million to the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future. We could talk for a long time about how weird and creepy the name “Restore Our Future” is, but that’s time we could better spend returning our anticipation of the years to come to conformity with our previous expectations. That’s what Adelson is doing. So far, he’s given $35 million to Republican Super PACs this election, and he says he’s prepared to spend as much as $100 million. Twenty million already went to Newt Gingrich, who failed in his bid to become the nation’s first homunculus president. Now Adelson must settle for Romney, who is like the body without the homunculus inside.

What we can know from the internet

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas June 13, 2012 2 Comments

God bless Holy Taco, and check out holytaco.com for the full covers of Internet Commenter Weekly.

You should be listening to the Co-Main Event Podcast, hosted by my friends Chad Dundas and Ben al-Fowlkes. Even if you don’t follow mixed martial arts—which would be insane, like not following boxing during the 1920s—you can appreciate the funny segments, including MasterTweet Theatre with Sir Nigel Longstock. Sir Nigel is the world’s foremost theatricalist. He is also me, and as a Twitter account he is far more popular than my actual Twitter account. He may not have as many total followers yet, but in the time I spent writing the last two sentences he got three. Since yesterday, when Sir Nigel joined Twitter, he has accumulated 40 followers—a rate that far exceeds any acceleration @Combat_Blog ever achieved. Should I therefore conclude that Sir Nigel is a more successful endeavor than this blog? Obviously not, which tells us something about the internet as metric.

On the kindness of America

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas June 12, 2012 5 Comments

A rig in the Bakken oil shale formation of North Dakota

If you live in Montana or even know someone from here via Facebook, you have probably heard about Ray Dolin. The 39 year-old West Virginia man was hitchhiking in eastern Montana when he was shot by a passing motorist, apparently for no reason. The motorist was Charles Lloyd Danielson III, drunk on his way to work the oil fields of Williston. Danielson was apprehended a few hours later, and Dolin was picked up by another passer-by and taken to Frances Mahon Deaconess Hospital. He had been writing a memoir titled “The Kindness of America.”

Close Readings: Ross Douthat’s “liberal eugenics”

By Dan Brooks in Close Reading June 11, 2012 2 Comments

New York magazine's graphic on Ross Douthat's positions circa 2008

Fellow Ross Douthat hater Miracle Mike Sebba sent me this link to a Sunday Times column in which the spoon-faced conservative explains eugenics. He devotes the first five paragraphs to the dim science of Spencer and Sanger,* but his real purpose is to get us to modern fetal genome mapping. We can do that now—the whole famn detal genome with saliva and blood samples from parents. Douthat compares the practice to amniocentesis screening for Down Syndrome, where 90% of positive results end in termination of the pregnancy. Then he hits us with his thesis:

Is this sort of “liberal eugenics,” in which the agents of reproductive selection are parents rather than the state, entirely different from the eugenics of Fisher’s era, which forced sterilization on unwilling men and women?

That’s some dirty rhetoric from Douthat. He’s got god on his side, but luckily for us we have close reading.

Friday links! Correlation vs. causation edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links June 8, 2012 4 Comments

When you get right down to it, everything that happens happens because of everything else. Sure, I took the kettle off this morning because it was whistling, but I also did it because Dowager Empress Cixi’s resistance to reform slowed the pace of industrial development in China, leading to a 21st-century state where it’s still profitable for kids to make housewares. Of course, I wouldn’t have bought that kettle at Montana Target had I not gotten into grad school many years ago, caused in part by a story I wrote about a person born with his heart on the outside of his body. So thank you, Kids In the Hall, for this morning’s coffee. It’s not so much that correlation is not causation as everything is causation, and correlation is therefore not that special. Today is Friday, for some reason, and our link roundup is full of startling forces that may or may not determine the course of our future. It’s all in how you look at it. Plus some of it is in immutable truths that could easily kills us no matter what we believe, but those will only be discernible in retrospect. Won’t you look back with me?