13th January 2011
Irony Is Good!
“It was really the Internet that salvaged Chinese humor, and especially irony of the embittered sort that Wang Shuo had pioneered. In the late 1990s, the Internet was still entirely uncensored (it would remain that way as late as 2004 or 2005), and it became, at last, a public space for writers and thinkers, who had been stifled by the government-controlled mainstream media, to explore new kinds of voices. Wang Xiaoshan was the founder of the “Black Humor Wire Service,” a parodic news service reminiscent of the Onion. The wire service, founded in 1999 and still in operation today, in gentler form, gave journalists and writers a desperately needed outlet. “Xinhua was fake,” shrugs Wang, referring to the official Chinese wire service. “We were fake, too.”
13th December 2010
Tokyo Hooters Girls
“For Americans, Hooters, with more than 460 restaurants nationwide, needs no introduction. Big burgers, cold beer, and top-heavy waitresses poured into short-shorts add up to the chain’s slogan of “delightfully tacky, yet unrefined.” In Japan, however, food portions are small, women’s shoulders are modestly covered, and Pamela Anderson’s breasts are not a certified national obsession. This makes Hooters’ innuendo-heavy version of family dining an odd fit that the chain’s Japan team had to coach into reality.
8th December 2010
The Viral Me
“Every update, every tweet, every check-in, ultimately began to feel not unlike doing my expenses. The experience isn’t unusual. I think old people like me (I’m 38) often do this stuff to feel like the world hasn’t yet left them behind, but we don’t have any natural hunger for it. It’s kind of like androids having sex: We know we’re supposed to do it, but we’re not really sure why. Meanwhile, and infuriatingly, we know that humans just like to bone.
2nd December 2010
The Cheating Cheaters of Moscow
“Wandering spouses have become a common trope for the women of Moscow. “Men’s environment here pushes them towards cheating,” Tanya told me, adding that, these days, a boys’ night out in Russia often involves prostitutes. Tanya and her friends are young, educated, upper-middle-class Muscovites, but talk to any woman in Moscow, and, regardless of age, education, or income level, she’ll have a story of anything from petty infidelity to a parallel family that has existed for decades. Infidelity in Moscow has become “a way of life,” as another friend of mine put it—accepted and even expected.
29th November 2010
The Birth of the Arts
“Indeed, throughout human history and around the world, our species has displayed an undying impulse to create art—to adorn ourselves, our artifacts, and our surroundings; to make music, dance, dramatize, and poeticize. And we often spend vast quantities of time, energy, and material resources doing so. What lies behind the age-old, persistent human urge to make the ordinary extraordinary?
Information overload, the early years
“Human history is a long process of accumulating information, especially once writing made it possible to record texts and preserve them beyond the capacity of our memories. And if we look closely, we can find a striking parallel to our own time: what Western Europe experienced in the wake of Gutenberg’s invention of printing in the 15th century, when thousands upon thousands of books began flooding the market, generating millions of copies for sale. The literate classes experienced exactly the kind of overload we feel today — suddenly, there were far more books than any single person could master, and no end in sight.
22nd November 2010
Modern Parenting
“You know the child I am talking about: precious, wide-eyed, over-cared-for, fussy, in a beautiful sweater, or a carefully hipsterish T-shirt. Have we done him a favour by protecting him from everything, from dirt and dust and violence and sugar and boredom and egg whites and mean children who steal his plastic dinosaurs, from, in short, the everyday banging-up of the universe? The wooden toys that tastefully surround him, the all-sacrificing, well-meaning parents, with a library of books on how to make him turn out correctly – is all of it actually harming or denaturing him?
17th November 2010
Going Dutch
“Though the Netherlands is consistently ranked in the top five countries for women, less than 10 percent of women here are employed full-time. And they like it this way. Incentives to nudge women into full-time work have consistently failed. Less than 4 percent of women wish they had more working hours or increased responsibility in the workplace, and most refuse extended hours even when the opportunity for advancement arises. Some women cite the high cost of child care as a major factor in their shorter hours, but 62 percent of women working part time in the Netherlands don’t have young children in the house, and mothers rarely increase their working hours even when their children leave home.
16th November 2010
The Future of Free Speech
“Americans, who have long mistrusted government, are acutely aware of and sensitive to public censorship—more so, perhaps, than any other nation. There is a strong First Amendment tradition in the courts. But Americans tend to be much less concerned with the danger of private censorship. That’s too bad, because the greatest dangers to free speech in the future will come not from government interference but from speech monopolists. That has been true for much of the 20th century, and while it seems hard to imagine now, it could become the fate of the Internet.
