Tag Archives: New Yorker

Bush’s Reach, Bush’s Grasp

Politics, ,

The New Yorker recently had an illuminating profile of Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve. Beyond exploring how Bernanke’s Alan-Greenspan-hand-me-down, laissez faire philosophy contributed to our current recession (hey, we may yet get a Great Depression out of this after all!), the article presents this revealing account of Bernake’s first meeting with Bush.

In June 2005, Bernanke was sworn in at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. One of his first tasks was to deliver a monthly economics briefing to the President and the Vice-President. After he and Hubbard sat down in the Oval Office, President Bush noticed that Bernanke was wearing light-tan socks under his dark suit. “Where did you get those socks, Ben?” he asked. “They don’t match.” Bernanke didn’t falter. “I bought them at the Gap—three pairs for seven dollars,” he replied. During the briefing, which lasted about forty-five minutes, the President mentioned the socks several times.

The following month, Hubbard’s deputy, Keith Hennessey, suggested that the entire economics team wear tan socks to the briefing. Hubbard agreed to call Vice-President Cheney and ask him to wear tan socks, too. “So, a little later, we all go into the Oval Office, and we all show up in tan socks,” Hubbard recalled. “The President looks at us and sees we are all wearing tan socks, and he says in a cool voice, ‘Oh, very, very funny.’ He turns to the Vice-President and says, ‘Mr. Vice-President, what do you think of these guys in their tan socks?’ Then the Vice-President shows him that he’s wearing them, too. The President broke up.

This emphasis of propriety—something Bernanke dismissed earlier in the article as “signaling”—is the only thing Bush seemed to have a handle on during his eight years in office. Hell, about the only time he apologized was after needling a reporter for wearing sunglasses. The reporter turned out to be blind.

I guess that’s what you get when you elect the first M.B.A. President. We took a middle manager and made him the most powerful man in the world.

Video Game Therapy

Humor, , , , ,

The New Yorker has an article, “Virtual Iraq,” exploring how immersive virtual-reality simulations are being used to help Iraq war veterans recover from post-traumatic stress disorder. By enabling the soldiers to realistically re-live the events that trigger their trauma—all the way down to sights, sounds and even smells—the technology can dissociate the trauma from the triggers. (At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Anecdotal evidence in the article supports the practice, but it doesn’t sound like any wide-ranging studies have been conducted.)

To make Virtual Iraq, Rizzo started with two basic scenarios: the market-town street scene and a Humvee moving along an Iraqi highway, where all the exit signs are in Arabic and the road cuts through sand dunes. Then he gave therapists a menu of ways—visual, aural, tactile, even olfactory—to customize them. At the click of a mouse, the therapist can put the patient in the driver’s seat of the Humvee, in the passenger’s seat, or in the turret behind a machine gun, and the vehicle moves at a speed determined by the patient. Maybe the gunner in the turret is wearing night-vision goggles—the landscape goes grainy and green. A sandstorm could be raging (the driver can turn on the windshield wipers and beat it back); a dog could be barking; the inside of the vehicle could be rank. Rizzo’s idea is that giving the therapist so many options—dusk, midday; with snipers, without snipers; driving fast, creeping along; the sound of a single mortar, the sound of multiple mortars; the sound of people yelling in English or in Arabic—increases the likelihood of evoking the patient’s actual experience, while engaging the patient on so many sensory levels that the immersion in the environment is nearly absolute.

As technology develops, it will be interesting to see the expansion of video games as educational or therapeutic tools. Already, people with physical and behavioral disabilities have embraced the virtual freedom provided by virtual environments such as Second Life. Realistic, but controllable, virtual environments will play an increasing role in enabling people to learn real-world tasks or become adept at coping with real-world fears.

Amazing Articles

Well Worth Reading, , , ,

A trio of great stories made their way into my mailbox lately. Perhaps the most interesting is an analysis of tribal vengeance by Jared Diamond, author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel. (I almost typed that as Guns, Germans and Steel, which would be an interesting book in its own right.)

The article, “Vengeance is Ours,” in the April 21 issue of the New Yorker, explores the dynamics of revenge in tribal societies, focusing on Papua New Guinea. The politics of the situation are fascinating, even as the mechanics of the feuds consistently unnerving in their disregard for human life. As Diamond explains:

Continue reading Amazing Articles →

Are Newspapers Even Fit to Print Anymore?

Well Worth Reading, , , ,

Eric Alterman has an article, Out of Print, in the March 31 issue of the New Yorker exploring the decline of newspapers in the United States. He begins by pointing out the typical financial reasons that are often highlighted, such as the faster news cycle inspired by the internet and loss of classifieds revenue to services such as Craigslist.

Beyond that, though, he highlights real deficiencies in the way newspapers have reported over the past decade and more, culminating in their unquestioning credulity in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Much of his time is spent exploring the presence that news and political blogs have carved for themselves online (Huffington Post, not a favorite of mine, receives the most attention), engaging the myth of the liberal media and illustrating how liberal groups are using web-based communication to sidestep the bias of traditional media sources.

It’s a valuable read, presenting a useful overview of the current media landscape. It illustrates the areas where newspapers have stumbled thanks to larger forces and also highlights the spots where they’ve rotted away of their own volition.

Falling Short

Books, , , ,

With Great Experiment, his short story in the March 31 issue of the New Yorker, Jeffrey Eugenides furthers his reputation as one of the most pitch-perfect authors writing today. The story focuses on Kendall, a former literary up-and-comer whose arc has atrophied, but it isn’t an examination of art and compromise. Instead, it’s rooted at the ground level, with concerns about time and money and health insurance—all of which Kendall and his family lack—and the sense that some fundamental inequity lies behind these unmet needs.

With small details—an open oven providing a brief respite from a fixed thermostat, a mound of laundry that expands organically—Eugenides conjures an unbroken sense of strain. Underlying the unease is the prevailing belief that normal moral codes have stalled in the face of larger, unpunished misdeeds.

The example set on high wasn’t one of probity and full disclosure. It was anything but.

When Kendall was growing up, American politicians denied that the United States was an empire. But they weren’t doing that anymore. They’d given up. Everyone knew about the empire now. Everyone was pleased.

And in the streets of Chicago, as in the streets of L.A., New York, Houston, and Oakland, the message was making itself known. A few weeks back, Kendall had seen the movie “Patton” on TV. He’d been reminded that the general had been severely punished for slapping a soldier. Whereas now Rumsfeld ran free from responsibility for Abu Ghraib. Even the President, who’d lied about W.M.D., had been reëlected. In the streets, people took the point. Victory was what counted, power, muscularity, doublespeak if necessary. You saw it in the way people drove, in the way they cut you off, gave you the finger, cursed. Women and men alike, showing rage and toughness. Everyone knew what he wanted and how to get it. Everybody you met was nobody’s fool.

One’s country was like one’s self. The more you learned about it, the more you were ashamed of.

The agonized tone seems to mirror Eugenides own disquiet, but it’s also subsumed to a larger narrative, one that builds to a queasy ending. Overall, the feeling is one of resignation, lending the story an understated, desperate tone. No one believes things are going to get better; the safe bet is that they’ll only get worse.