New Yorker magazine alert thread

i feel like it was full-length but i can't find it now

oh shit

this is embarrassing

just realized i was thinking of a "this american life" piece

:(

he is human

They got there early:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/09/090309fa_fact_parker

oh man, this grann thing on the american commander in the cuban revolution is FASCINATING

i can see george clooney making a movie out of that article.

which issue was that!!! what was on the cover.

5/28 - cover was college grads in gowns floating on chunks of ice

what do y'all think of Menand's review of Brinkley's Cronkite bio? I like the irreverence. Dunno what his name means to people who didn't grow up with him (I was six when he retired).

douglas brinkely's a bit of a hack in general so enjoy any means of taking him down; not sure if the cronkite (or murrow) myth is really that alive - i've seen plenty of 'actually' challops pieces about both, spurred by good night and good luck and cronkite's passing. barely old enough to actually remember watching cronkite, not sure if what he meant or what he said to have meant can be conveyed in anyway to someone for whom jennings/brokaw/rather are ancient memories. there's a great moment cronkite figures into very heavily in gerard jones' men of tomorrow that kind of captures what we lost when that kind of hegemony went away for better or worse.

Like this:

http://coacheshotseat.com/coacheshotseatblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/RonaldReaganJoke.jpg

a boyish gergen

a stoutish Meese.

occurs to me i only know one of the current network nightly news anchors (allison williams dad). haven't watched tv news since bernie shaw 'retired'.

I still watch the 6:30 news if I'm home (no cable thank god). Gotta admit: Peter Jennings was the only one of the Big Three who struck me as a genuinely erudite man, the only one I watched. Dunno how true the former is.

i liked jennings also. i didn't watch him but i do miss rather being out there, threatening to reveal the truth about the lizard ppl or to walk off the set cuz tennis went long or routinely doing stuff like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Huyn9itzIw

I thought the genetically modified mosquito story was weirdly scary.

Turned to the long article that asked whether Afghanistan was doomed to civil war when the US pulls out, and thought, you know, I don't care how well written or researched this piece is, is there really some debate as to whether this notoriously unstable country would descend into civil war the second we leave, assuming it technically is not in such a state already? Has anyone read it? Is there more to the piece than prose? Similarly, I started the TED piece from the same article, and struggled before I threw in the towel on that one, too. Snooze.

haha i found it weirdly scary also but perhaps from a different place than you? (were you coming from a 'dear god this country is runover w/ antiscience lunatics and sadly the right doesn't have a monopoly on them?' angle)(echoes of the raw milk story from a few weeks back).

haven't read TED piece but vaguely curious as that phenomenon creeps me out and i'm not sure why. also amazed that seth macfarlane didn't do a viral ted TED talk (eh? EH?) but maybe there isn't much overlap in audiences there.

that mosquito scheme has always been a dream of mine *sniff*

tho they need to take it one step further and have the defect not show up for a few generations so that all the mosquitos are infected and die forever, the way it is now if they dont keep seeding the bad eggs the natural mosquitos will eventually make a comeback

tho i guess thats where people get worried having genetically modified mosquitos biting them and all, but come on any risk is worth it to eradicate mosquitos!

Peter Jennings was the only one of the Big Three who struck me as a genuinely erudite man, the only one I watched.

Ironic, since he was also the only high school dropout of those guys.

also reminded of this - http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-bug-spray-forces-insects-to-see-people-as-huma,7013/

I was scared in the "Jurassic Park" sense: releasing genetically modified insects into the wild, particularly insects know for efficiently spreading disease and killing millions, sounds scary. I kept thinking of all the other famous cases of introducing animals (let alone inventing animals) to an environment to solve a problem but ultimately causing more problems; does this ever work right? Anyway, as I read it, I was constantly struck with dread, like, in 10 years, when we're all dying of the mutant mosquito plague, we'll be citing this article.

(Im a big fan of a previous New Yorker mosquito article, the one about DDT, which basically illustrated how close we were to eradicating mosquitos and malaria until the release of "Silent Spring." Sort of the flipside of this article: there was never any proof that DDT was particularly dangerous, especially compared to the demonstrably massively lethal malaria, but western fears of the potential food chain damage of DDT put the kibosh on the mosquito holocaust)

the mosquito project seems v well thought out and safe, the risk is a slippery slope where introducing mutant creatures becomes common place and then one day someone fucks up, but w/e its inevitable might as well have a few mosquito free years before we all succumb to hedgehog fever

josh are you frightened by trap-neuter-return programs for stray animals also?

or of the idea of genetically modified grey wolves and african wildcats living among us also?

I kept thinking of all the other famous cases of introducing animals (let alone inventing animals) to an environment to solve a problem but ultimately causing more problems; does this ever work right?

Honeybees in North America.

Honeybees were introduced to North America?

The honey bee is not native to North America; it was introduced from Europe for honey production in the early 1600s, Johnston said. Subspecies were introduced from Italy in 1859, and later from Spain, Portugal and elsewhere.

When honey bees collected in Europe and Africa were studied, they separated genetically into four distinct groups, he said.

However, the genome of U.S. bees "was a complete mix of the three different introduced European subspecies," he said.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061211220927.htm

But I assume there were bees before then? Honey bees? Or was there no honey in the Americas until the 1600s?

That's still pretty cool to learn. Thanks.

More here: http://bugguide.net/node/view/475348

Summary: Europeans brought HBs over for their honey, they escaped, and have become indispensable for much of US agriculture. Nonetheless:

The honey bee, remarkable as it is, doesn’t know how to pollinate a tomato or an eggplant flower, while some native bees are masters at this. The same thing happens with a number of native plants, such as pumpkins and watermelons, blueberries and cranberries, which are more efficiently pollinated by native bees than by honey bees.

So HBs haven't COMPLETELY displaced native species.

TED talk piece is really kinda pointless
surprise, these people had a plan to do this and it happened and these talks are popular and somewhat dumbed down pop sociology/business 101 hmmm fascinating tell me more oh that's it huh?

I haven't read that article yet because that's exactly what I'm expecting from it. It's just the kind of thing the NYer tends toward glibness on. See also the recent bit on Davos -- big yawn, even with the Mick Jagger cameo.

honestly the davos one was more interesting if that gives you any sense of the pointlessness of the TED one

William Finnegan bringing the noize as always with his thing on narcos in guadalajara. I'm so glad he has been writing more stuff for the mag. Have been a major Finnegan stan since reading Cold New World in the 90s.

Balls, difference is that mosquitos are a notorious deadly vector for the spread of disease, highly resistant to eradication. Unlike wolves or cats or whatever.

there's a quote in there that mosquitos are responsible over history for about half the deaths of humankind.
how much worse could it get? I can't help but feel that this is just not a western world problem so it's easier for us to overlook as we don't have relatives that died of dengue.

"…yet" being the subtext of this whole thing.

i think the subtext is really more that we'll come around to these measures once we do.

That's why I brought up the earlier article. We had cleared so many regions of mosquitos by the 70s, thus saving countless lives from malaria, but western fears of ddt trumped eradicating malaria.

i'm sorry but is this - Balls, difference is that mosquitos are a notorious deadly vector for the spread of disease, highly resistant to eradication. Unlike wolves or cats or whatever. - supposed to be an argument in YOUR favor???

I actually thought the TED piece was more interesting than it could have been! Some interesting asides about the place of education/intellectualism in the U.S. and the kinds of people who gravitate toward TED.

Just meant that i'm not concerned with genetically modified stuff in general,.just the idea of mutant mosquitos.

well as long as this country weighs concerns based on ignorance and superstition has heavily as concerns based on science and public health i'm sure we'll be ok. meanwhile jenny mccarthy is in playboy again this month apparently.