the imbroglio

Abe Sauer:

The truth is not that Target and its leadership have suddenly turned on their commitment to gay rights. It’s more that it never really existed to begin with. Further research shows that Target has funneled significant funding to the most socially conservative of Republicans and that it boasts a frightening culture of anti-gay candidate support from Target’s own stable of top executives.

This is a bummer. Wal-Mart is evil and has been for decades, so Target was generally the best alternative for a sort of low-cost general retailer. Now it seems Target is evil, too — and that it has been for some time. Oh well. Who among us really needs more low-cost general junk, anyway?

Heather Havrilesky on S4e2 of AMC’s “Mad Men”:

So how do you hold on to some spirit of innocence and naive happiness in your life? “Mad Men” demonstrates that unless you’re very rich, or very drunk, or in denial — or all of the above — it’s not that easy. 

If you thought the sound of Don hitting bottom was the slap of “the open palm of a hooker’s hand making contact with stubbly face in a darkened room on Thanksgiving as she joylessly rides” him, well, I guess not. Can Don get any more despicable? Sadly, I fear the answer is yes.

Scott Christianson on the anti-death penalty dinner party argument:

You have to be aware that the government makes mistakes, that the criminal justice system makes mistakes and that it’s possible that an innocent person could be wrongfully accused and subjected to capital punishment. So, you’d have to ask the person at the party: Do you think that is acceptable? 

If you didn’t watch the Tour de France this year, this is really the image that sums up the whole race. From Bicycling Magazine:

After dropping his chain during an attack on the Bales climb, Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck tries desperately to chase Alberto Contador, Denis Menchov and Samuel Sanchez. At the end of the day he would finish 39 seconds behind and lose his yellow jersey by 8 seconds.

The reason this was *the* moment of the Tour is that Contador ended up winning the overall Tour by 39 seconds — exactly what he stole from Schleck in Stage 15.

Still, Contador is a strong rider who rode well and hard and deserved to win. It was an awesome Tour. I’m looking forward to next year. Was this Schleck’s peak or will he run away with it? Or will someone else emerge to dominate both of this year’s leaders? If you think cycling is not fun and exciting to watch, give the Tour a chance; it just might change your mind.

Point Omega by Don DeLillo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book that made me finally see “Psycho.” The parallels between the film and the characters in this little novella are what make the book interesting. DeLillo is a prose master so there are some great little lines in there that make it worth your while, but beyond that he’s making readers work with this one. All the characters are so detached and alienated from the world and themselves that it’s, well, painful, and painfully depressing.

I finished it wondering a little what was the point, but, of course, the alienation itself is probably the point. I began to appreciate it when I started thinking about it as a meditation on war, and the planners of war, and how they see the world as an abstraction, a curiosity, something that is not real, a bunch of big ideas. This enables them to construct and set in motion the machinery of death because there aren’t really flesh and blood people and lives and civilizations and societies involved — it’s all just big ideas and theories and stars.

“Consciousness accumulates. It begins to reflect upon itself. Something about this feels almost mathematical to me. There’s almost some law of mathematics or physics that we haven’t quite hit upon, where the mind transcends all direction inward. The omega point,” he said. “Whatever the intended meaning of this term, if it has a meaning, if it’s not a case of language that’s struggling toward some idea outside our experience.”(72)

The planners of war are Norman Bates; their minds have transcended all direction inward until they have begun to eat themselves with dissociation. In the end they have to be someone else to do what they do and they don’t even know that other self that they are, they deny it and almost are unaware of it. If you confront them with the reality of the pain and suffering they create, they will not be able to cope. They will run, retreat, escape, deny, turn away, and become helpless as children. Maybe.

Or maybe it would just be really cool to see “Psycho” slowed down into a 24-hour marathon.

Paul Graham:

I’ve found there are two types of thoughts especially worth avoiding—thoughts like the Nile Perch in the way they push out more interesting ideas. One I’ve already mentioned: thoughts about money. Getting money is almost by definition an attention sink. The other is disputes. These too are engaging in the wrong way: they have the same velcro-like shape as genuinely interesting ideas, but without the substance. So avoid disputes if you want to get real work done.

. . .

Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages. Someone who does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward thinking about it. If you learn to ignore injuries you can at least avoid the second half. I’ve found I can to some extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have done to me by telling myself: this doesn’t deserve space in my head. I’m always delighted to find I’ve forgotten the details of disputes, because that means I hadn’t been thinking about them. My wife thinks I’m more forgiving than she is, but my motives are purely selfish.

This is actually great advice for public defenders. It’s so easy to get sidetracked by little disagreements with prosecutors or judges or to take adverse rulings personally and forget what’s really important — doing your best for your clients. If you allow your personal struggle with “the system” and its components to become the top idea in your mind you’re less likely to do all the best things for your clients because those things easily become obscured by those petty disputes that really just don’t matter.

I wonder if this is actually the difference between those public defenders who love their work and do it well for decades, and those who are always in anguish and burn out after only a few years. Those who let go of the petty, bullshit disputes and focus on what matters are happier, do better work, and retain their sanity. Those who don’t, well they have to find something else to do because the work just eats them up.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Your papers cannot
be here. We are not papers.
Oh. I guess we are.

Stage 15 today and what a stage it was! Did Contador play dirty when he took advantage of Schleck’s mechanical problem? According to the BBC:

Cycling etiquette says that riders should not attack the yellow jersey wearer when he falls or suffers a mechanical problem.

Hm. Bruce Arthur of the Canadian National Post also argues that Contador played dirty and I have to agree. Regardless, I hope Andy Schleck comes back and eats Contador’s lunch in the next few days. Sadly, that doesn’t seem likely. There are only two more mountain stages where Schleck could theoretically make some time up on Contador. After that, it’s flat and a time trial, both of which will favor Contador.

Today was not a good advertisement for the SRAM Red drivetrain on Schleck’s bike. Of course, I guess that’s what Contador is riding, too.

(btw, the Versus Tour Tracker has been totally worth it. It’s letting me really watch this race for the first time ever and I’m loving it. Highly recommended if you’re a fan of cycling.)

We spent Friday evening and are going again today to Pitchfork here in Chicago. The reviews on the Time Out Blog pretty well capture my impression of what we saw on Friday, including: Modest Mouse, and Robyn, and Broken Social Scene. Missing is the note that the sound for BSS was terrible. There’s a difference between static and feedback, and this was definitely static. Still, great festival on Friday. We’re looking forward some great (if very hot and humid) performances this afternoon, too.

Lance Armstrong. He says his tour is over as he drops 13:26 behind the leader in a 3-crash debacle of a stage. It’s sad, but I hope he does enjoy the rest of the tour — just for the fun of it.