Like us, you’re probably no Einstein. The question is, “Why Aren’t We Smarter?”   

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Religious, Republican—and in support of Planned Parenthood and abortion insurance. 

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The art world has a history of dismissing the role of gay culture. It’s time to make reparations. 

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Focusing on The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire,and Breaking Bad, Chuck Klosterman argues in Grantland that the rise in morality-based programming has birthed the “four best television shows of the past 10 years.”

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The War on Terror will never end: Now, the haboobs are invading Arizona.

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How ugly do we look after exercising? Photographer Sascha Goldberger got to work and found the answer. As it turns out, the answer is “reaaaaaaaaal ugly.”

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Because you were dying to know, American Scientist published an article about how putting a circular pizza in a square pizza box works. Trust us, it’s more complicated that it sounds.

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Rural America now accounts for just 16 percent of the nation’s population, the lowest ever.

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Taking a cue from Meg Wolitzer’s latest novel, The Uncoupling, women from the small Colombian port village of Barbacoas are withholding sex from the menfolk until the government repairs some crucial roads in and out of the town.

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Something new on the green fashion front: A German designer makes clothing from sour milk.

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Do you have a stack of books waiting to be read? Be like Bill Gates and plan a reading retreat.

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The Onion renders the marriage debate hilarious in a parody starring Pope Benedict XVI and his new gay friends Tony and Craig.

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The ambiguously gay SpongeBob riles FOX once again--this time for spreading global warming propaganda.

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Go to hell, you say? Well, here’s the top 10 weirdest ways a person might burn.

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If your aunt was Virginia Woolf, this might be what she would say about your poetry. Take a look at an original note from Aunt Virginia to her nephew, Thoby.

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Three-minute showers will green your morning routine. Are you up to the challenge?

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Working just enough to get by while enjoying the good things in life: Welcome to the medium chill.

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Did you hear about the married lesbian couple who saved 40 teens in the Norway massacre? Not in the mainstream media, you didn’t.

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Rebecca Solnit writes about “the care and feeding of hope.”

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A fascinating story about a disastrous hydrogen balloon mission to the North Pole in 1897 (with photos).

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Welcome to the Sex Plex.

Image by maisonwb, licensed under Creative Commons. 

Over at Miller-McCune, Lewis Beale looks at why U.S. students are hurting in foreign languages:

“Things cannot get worse. We are at the bottom of the barrel now” in terms of foreign language study in America’s schools, says Nancy Rhodes of the Center for Applied Linguistics, which surveys language study in the nation’s schools every 10 years.

The center’s most recent report shows a decrease in the last decade in school language programs, which Rhodes says can be attributed to “budget cuts, and foreign languages are among the first things that get cut. They are seen as something that’s not a necessity. And another reason is the No Child Left Behind legislation—about a third of our schools report they have been negatively affected because of the focus on math and reading scores.”

It's nothing short of cultural literacy that's at stake here—and for those who pollute every societal good with talk of national security interests, there is also this:

...according to a 2006 Department of Education study, 200 million Chinese schoolchildren were studying English, while only 24,000 of their American peers were learning Chinese. That number has increased over the past few years, but the gap is still huge.

That federal study was co-sponsored by U.S. Department of Defense and the director of National Intelligence, perhaps not surprising given the military and intelligence communities’ problems in the war on terror. In announcing the report’s accompanying National Security Language Initiative, President George W. Bush pictured the American language deficit as a security issue. “This initiative is a broad-gauged initiative that deals with the defense of the country, the diplomacy of the country, the intelligence to defend our country and the education of our people,” he told a collection of university presidents in 2006.

Me, I won't be making the national security argument when it comes time to talk my kids into a foreign language class. Sheesh.

Source: Miller-McCune

Image by the Department of Defense, and paid for with your tax dollars.

In the new issue of New Letters, there is an interview with poet Maggie Anderson. In it, she offers a thoughtful take on the "war on terror":

I am sickened by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the on-going war against the chimera, terror, which is a rhetorical formulation of a war against feeling. 'Terror' is not an enemy; it is a feeling, or a psychological state. To declare 'war on terror,' as all poets know, is to declare war on disturbing and perfectly understandable (given the historical circumstances) feelings in ourselves. This language short circuits both grief and rage, and it heightens fear, as I believe it is meant to do.

Source: New Letters (Interview not yet available online)

Journalist Adam Serwer reflects on his first trip to the Guantanamo Bay prison in the new issue of the American Prospect. It's a great piece--I'm especially grateful for this little nugget:

Five years ago, when reporter Spencer Ackerman visited ... there was a triangle-shaped interrogation room at the end of a cellblock. Interrogators once sat at a table in the room, while a detainee was shackled to the floor and sat in a small wooden chair. Now it's the TV room. In place of the wooden chair is a soft recliner. Instead of a table for interrogators there is a wood entertainment center. On top of a coffee table lay copies of an Arabic newspaper and USA Today. It would look like an oddly austere living room if it weren't for the lack of natural light--and the shackles still attached to the floor. For all of Obama's promises to change, this is about as different as things have gotten for detainees at Guantanamo.

Source: American Prospect

President-elect Barack Obama has confidently pledged to scrub out the blight on America's moral standing that is Guantanamo Bay. Closing the notorious prison is a move the world would eagerly embrace, and the move would immediately distance the new administration from the sinister national security practices of the Bush years. Goodbye torture, hello habeas corpus.

That sure sounds nice. But putting Gitmo’s sordid abuses in our past won't be easy. The legal issues at stake remain with or without the prison, as Matthew Waxman, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, points out in an interview with Foreign Policy. “The United States will continue to capture, detain, and need to interrogate suspected terrorists long into the future,” Waxman said. “And the bigger question than whether to hold them at Guantanamo or not is one of legal authority. On what legal basis and according to what standards will the United States conduct detentions?”

Trials of “enemy combatants” are another complicated matter, and there’s little consensus on how they should be carried out, according to the New Republic. “Some conservatives argue that civilian courts are too protective of detainee rights or would sacrifice sensitive national security information,” writes Joseph Landau for TNR, while, “civil libertarians reject national-security courts for insufficiently guarding defendants’ rights.”

The proposed creation of national security courts charged solely with trying suspected terrorists is being hotly debated, and Obama is said to be considering the option. University of Utah law professor Amos Guiora is a strong proponent of this idea. In a guest column for Jurist, he writes, “In advocating the establishment of domestic terror courts I am seeking both a legal and practical solution to the continued detention of thousands of ‘post 9/11 detainees.’” Guiora suggests the courts as an ongoing solution to a problem that extends far beyond Guantanamo Bay. “Guantanamo Bay is but one detention facility,” Guiora writes.

The Christian Science Monitor describes the new court model as similar to one that was used in Israel, where trials were “conducted behind closed doors to protect intelligence sources and methods.” According to CSM, “Instead of using military judges, such a court should be staffed by civilian federal judges, preserving the separation of powers,” but protecting intelligence information. Guiora told CSM, “Source-protection is a must in the context of counterterrorism.” He said, “Without sources, there is no intelligence. Without intelligence, there is no counterterrorism.”

But not everyone thinks a specialized terror court is a good idea, or necessary. Also for Jurist, Washington University law professor Leila Nadya Sadat notes the following:

Although advocates of creating a new set of courts to try terror suspects are no doubt sincere in trying to “fix” the problem of what to do with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, let’s remember that at least some of these folks are the ones who gave the advice that supported the practice of rendition and the establishment of Guantanamo Bay in the first place. Indeed, a close look at their proposals suggests a disregard for time-tested rules of law eerily similar to the lawyering style that has pervaded the administration during the past eight years.... The federal courts, and regularly constituted military courts, are more than capable of trying individuals accused of terrorism and violations of the laws and customs of war, as they have done so before.

Image by woody1778a, licensed under Creative Commons.