Keeping it Fresh

It's marriage that gets the blame in Caitlin Flanagan's provocative "The Wifely Duty" (Atlantic Jan-Feb 2003). "Marriage used to provide access to sex. Now it provides access to celibacy." As anyone who's been in a long term relationship will attest, sustaining a level of desire within shouting distance of incipient romance, it's not marriage that's to blame.

What would Brian Schweitzer say?

In October, NYT magazine published Mark Sundeen's article, on Brian Schweitzer, the current rancher-governor of Montana. I'd heard him interviewed on WBUR's "On Point" (is this still on the air in NY metro?), where he was articulate, informed and energetic.

• at his core Brian Schweitzer is something of a policy wonk and a science whiz. He says he sleeps no more than five hours a night, and he is at his computer well before dawn, consuming a host of newspapers and a string of political blogs. His true passion is energy independence. On his desk is a contraption of tubes and coils that, as he enthusiastically explains, convert sunlight into hydrogen. In addition to his horsemanship and riflery, Schweitzer likes to tinker with gadgets, and he holds degrees in both soil science and agronomy. He will preach to anyone who will listen about the Fischer-Tropsch process of coal liquefaction, or about his recent switch from a Tahoe S.U.V. to a biodiesel Volkswagen Jetta."
  

Clippings for Tomorrow Lurks

Washington, Harriet A. Medical Aparteid The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Doubleday, 2007. Reviewed by NYTBR 2007-02-18.

Baumgardner, Jennifer. Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, Farrar, Straus & Giraux. The intermittently witty review in NYTBR 2007-02-18 is "Both Sides Now" by Norah Vincent.

Muldoon, Paul. Horse Latitudes. Farrar, Straus & Giraux, 2007. Reviewed by Langdon Hammer in NYTBR 2007-02-18.

• "Muldoon's grief at his sister's eventual death . . . is folded into the long final poem in the book, 'Sillyhow Stride,' an elegy for the poet's friend the rock musician Warren Zevon. Strident, blistering, written in alliterative lines that sample quotations from John Donne, the poem places the ordinary horror of these two deaths from cancer against the backdrop of a remorseless global commercial culture that produces terrorism, child soldiers and suffering . . ."

Hutton, Will. The Writing on the Wall: why we must embrace China as a partner or face it as an enemy. Free Press, 2007.

Riblets

I admit I haven't studied the ingredients carefully. But you gotta love what the folks at Gardenburger Inc. have done with their "Riblets" line. Sure, it's vegetarian, sure it tastes great with a little BBQ sauce, but check out the packaging, too. "Vegetarians never worry about choking on bones." "100% Recyclable. Give this box a future. Printed with soy based inks." "Karma Points redeemable in this life and beyond." A quote from Albert Schweitzer. In short, everything but an endorsement from Fit Foodie.

False Positives Galore

Yesterday NPR's Morning Edition reported that the U.S. had 300,000 people on its "watch list," probably most of these gathered from tourists visiting the U.S. The focus was the legality of the uses to which this data has been put. But consider the effort required to correct a credit report in the U.S. Can you imagine the effort that would be required to remove misinformation that had been collected and put to untold uses? This calls into suspicion the underlying strategy, or rather the lack of same.