Barack Obama is unlikely to get a better chance to run for president

For a technological dinosaur, the book-publishing industry is having a stellar political season. The bloggers may type the night away, but it is good old-fashioned book-writers who are driving the political debate.

And nobody more so than Barack Obama. The junior senator from Illinois has deftly used the publication of his new book—“The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” (Crown)—to stir up a frenzy about a possible presidential run. In recent weeks, he had already made the covers of two big magazines—Time (“The next president”) and Men's Vogue. Then on October 22nd he admitted that he had “thought about the possibility”, and would make his final decision after the mid-terms. Since then it has been all Obama all the time.

This is bad news for lots of Democrats with less exotic names. Several pundits have pronounced the Democratic primary a two-horse race between Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton, which is overstating things. John Edwards is strong with the grassroots; Al Gore is a still-rumbling volcano. But Mr Obama, who is 45, has transformed the race, jumping over greybeards such as John Kerry and giving the Democratic Party its biggest shot of excitement for years.

Mr Obama's not-quite-declaration is especially bad news for Mrs Clinton. The junior senator for New York has spent the past six years—some would say nearly six decades—buffing her presidential credentials. She has supported the war in Iraq to prove that she is “tough enough”, made nice with her Republican tormentors and hoovered up Democratic money. And now a mere greenhorn, who was marking law papers when she was co-running a “two-for-the-price-of-one” presidency, has shoved her out of the limelight.

What makes this all the more galling for the Clintonistas is that one of Mr Obama's most obvious advantages is that he is not Hillary. Mrs Clinton comes with a pantechnicon full of baggage. (What exactly has Bill been doing to amuse himself in New York these past few years, for example?) Mr Obama, by contrast, is fresh-faced and, so far as we know, baggage-free. Nor is he above offering a gentle reminder of what people disliked about Clintonworld. “When I was a kid I inhaled,” he said bravely this week. “That was the point.”

Mr. Obama has no shortage of positive qualities. He is a superb public speaker—his address to the 2004 Democratic Convention turned him into a celebrity even before he was elected to the Senate—and bright with it. He is also black. It is hard to overestimate the extent to which many Americans would like to elect a black man—or at least one of Mr Obama's calibre. The product of a mixed marriage—his mother was “white as milk”, in his words, and his father, a Kenyan rather than an African-American, “black as pitch”—he is still black enough to dodge the “Oreo” slur. His father left his mother when he was two; he was brought up by his grandparents. Common, a rapper, has even devoted a line to him: “Why is Bush acting like he trying to get Osama? Why don't we impeach him and elect Obama?” [read the full story]

Wal-Mart's Family Values: Who Cares About Kids?


From The New York Observer: Maybe people are so used to learning disturbing things about Wal-Mart that the latest news from America’s largest and most frightening corporation didn’t cause much of a ripple. There was a dearth of denunciation after The New York Times published a well-reported piece on Wal-Mart’s decision to put 40 percent of its workers on part-time and place a ceiling on what they can earn.

In addition, the giant retail chain is ordering its workers to be available for duty anytime, day or night, at its nearly 2,000 24-hour-a-day stores. The company wants to have people on tap for the evenings and weekends, when shopping is heaviest, but in the interest of complete manpower flexibility doesn’t want to provide its employees with a set work schedule. They are to be available whenever the phone rings. Since Wal-Mart has more than a million and a quarter workers, what it does has ramifications.

The havoc this must cause in families with children needs no elaboration. How do you arrange for childcare or after-school supervision if you must wait to be told when you’re going to be working? This is not a problem that Sam Walton’s five heirs are likely to face. One is safe in assuming that they can get a baby-sitter on short notice since, even after being decimated by the death tax, they have managed to salvage $75 billion for their very own, according to Forbes magazine’s latest listing of the 400 wealthiest Americans [read the full story].

Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?

As questions about the accuracy of the anyone-can-edit encyclopedia persist, academics are split on whether to ignore it, or start contributing

Alexander M.C. Halavais, an assistant professor of communications at Quinnipiac University, has spent hours and hours wading through Wikipedia, which has become the Internet's hottest information source. Like thousands of his colleagues, he has turned to the open-source encyclopedia for timely information and trivia; unlike most of his peers, he has, from time to time, contributed his own expertise to the site.

But to Wikipedia's legions of ardent amateur editors, Mr. Halavais may be best remembered as a troll.

Two years ago, when he was teaching at the State University of New York at Buffalo, the professor hatched a plan designed to undermine the site's veracity — which, at that time, had gone largely unchallenged by scholars. Adopting the pseudonym "Dr. al-Halawi" and billing himself as a "visiting lecturer in law, Jesus College, Oxford University," Mr. Halavais snuck onto Wikipedia and slipped 13 errors into its various articles. He knew that no one would check his persona's credentials: Anyone can add material to the encyclopedia's entries without having to show any proof of expertise...[read the full story].

The Birds and the Bees: How homosexuality, widespread in the animal kingdom, may have evolved
From The Economist

What is taught in a country's schools reveals much about the national psyche. The Norwegian curriculum requires that all 14-year-olds learn about homosexuality. Assisting with this education, the National History Museum at the University of Oslo has just opened an exhibition of gay animals.

“Against Nature?” does not tell zoologists anything new. Homosexuality has been recorded in some 1,500 species so far, and been well documented in about a third of these cases; it has been known since the time of Aristotle, who thought he witnessed two male hyenas having sex with one another. But the exhibition's purpose is not to educate zoologists. It is to persuade the public that, as there are gay whales and worms, gay humans do not disturb the natural order.

Aside from illustrating homosexuality among an extraordinary variety of creatures, the exhibition shows how sexual stimulation can vary when, at first blush, the mechanical details of how this might work are not obvious to people attempting to draw analogies from their own anatomies. Male Amazonian river dolphins, for example, penetrate the blowholes of other males; female bottlenose dolphins use their snouts as dildos on other females.

Why this behaviour might be favoured by natural selection, though, is a difficult question to answer. In an attempt to do so, the exhibition picks on gay flamingos. Two males raising a chick after one of them had a one-night stand (of sorts) with a female are able to hold a larger territory than male-female partnerships. This suggests a chick with two dads could get more food and therefore have a better chance of survival. But explanations are harder when gay animals (such as some humans and, apparently, some killer whales) never try to mate with the opposite sex.

Theoretically, there are several possible ways homosexuality could have evolved. One is that homosexuals assist in the upbringing of their relatives so much that they pass on more of their genes this way than by having children themselves. Another suggestion assumes the genes that confer homosexuality in males are different from those that confer it in females. For the theory to work, these genes would have to confer some extra reproductive advantage to their straight carriers. This way, genes that increase the chances of one sex surviving and reproducing might not be discarded through the generations even though they inhibit making babies when they occur in the opposite sex. But testing these theories is hard, so nobody knows if they are true.

Taking lessons on sexuality from the birds and the bees itself requires first accepting something not taught ubiquitously outside Norway—that evolution occurs by natural selection.

Music News

Conscience Rap: In the wake of the Source trial, hip-hop staffers ponder their contribution to the culture
by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond for the Village Voice

"I once worked with a group that referred to their music as 'cocaine rap,' " recalls Marcus Logan, a former marketer for Virgin Records. "They were incredible lyricists and much more, but that was their niche, and it was my job to market this to the world. I absolutely felt at times like I was a drug pusher. You know? I absolutely, 100 percent felt that."

When Virgin downsized in 2002, Logan had a year to consider his six-year rise from Columbia Records intern to Bad Boy exec to the Virgin post—a résumé that boasted projects like Mase's Harlem World and the Lox's Money, Power & Respect. He toyed with the idea of leaving the music industry altogether. "The conflict comes when you can't personally relate to it," he says. "I'm 35 years old. I don't do things that I did at 25. There are times that I love being of the artist's world, and other times I just don't."

Women working in hip-hop often have an even tougher time reconciling that divide. Getting a paycheck for marketing products and artists that often instigate violence and portray women as only good for sex can leave staffers at all levels feeling played. That was—and is—the case at The Source magazine, according to former editor in chief and current plaintiff Kim Osorio, who found herself explaining how her former bosses sexually harassed her from a witness box in courtroom 14B at the Southern District of New York [read the full article].

Related link: The Hip-Hop Generation, Raising Up its Sons

Weekend Mixtape


A Hawk and a Handsaw - "In the River"
A Hawk and a Handsaw - "God Bless the Ottoman Empire"
These Arms Are Snakes - "Angela's Secret"
The Killers - "This River is Wild"
DeVotchka - "How it Ends"
The Editors - "Munich"
Thunderbirds are Now! - "Sleeping in the Lion's Mouth"
Cold War Kids - "Heavy Boots"
Weezer - "Perfect Situation"
Sonic Youth - "Against Fascism"
The Thermals - "How We Know"

Regina Spektor - "Samson"
Guillemots - "Trains to Brazil"
Tokyo Police Club - "Box"

It's been two weeks now since I've shaved. The beard is in full effect, and should be ready to go for Halloween. I've even decided on a costume. I'll let you know how it turns out. Enjoy your Saturday.