Matins

¶ The good news about a New Scientist roundup of AIDS-fighting developments is that there’s good news — especially about that vaginal gel. The bad news is that AIDS is slipping into company with all the other diseases that disproportionately victimize the poor.

In covering the microbicidal gel results, the NYT also mentions a study of 3800 Malawian girls that finds that small cash payments to them and their families – between $1 and $10 per month – reduce HIV infection rates. Just 1.2 per cent of the girls who received cash contracted HIV after 18 months, compared to 3 percent of the girls who did not receive payments. The larger the payment the less likely the girls were to turn to older men for sex, cash and gifts, underscoring the link between poverty and HIV.

That connection holds in the developed world, too. In a study of urban heterosexuals living in the US, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found high rates of HIV infection among the poorest. Those living below the poverty line were twice as likely to have HIV than better off people living in inner cities – 2.4 percent versus 1.2 per cent, Reuters reports.

Lauds

¶ We don’t know anything about “pedigreed” film critic Armond White (or, if we did, we forget), but his brazen dismissal of Roger Ebert brought on one of those Stop And Think moments that make our day. (/Film; via The Awl)

I do think it is fair to say that Roger Ebert destroyed film criticism. Because of the wide and far reach of television, he became an example of what a film critic does for too many people. And what he did simply was not criticism. It was simply blather. And it was a kind of purposefully dishonest enthusiasm for product, not real criticism at all…I think he does NOT have the training. I think he simply had the position. I think he does NOT have the training. I’VE got the training. And frankly, I don’t care how that sounds, but the fact is, I’ve got the training. I’m a pedigreed film critic. I’ve studied it. I know it. And I know many other people who’ve studied it as well, studied it seriously. Ebert just simply happened to have the job. And he’s had the job for a long time. He does not have the foundation. He simply got the job. And if you’ve ever seen any of his shows, and ever watched his shows on at least a two-week basis, then you surely saw how he would review, let’s say, eight movies a week and every week liked probably six of them. And that is just simply inherently dishonest. That’s what’s called being a shill. And it’s a tragic thing that that became the example of what a film critic does for too many people. Often he wasn’t practicing criticism at all. Often he would point out gaffes or mistakes in continuity. That’s not criticism. That’s really a pea-brained kind of fan gibberish.

Mr White can’t have it both ways, though: Roger Ebert can’t have destroyed film criticism if he never engaged in it.

Prime

¶ What we can’t help loving most about Felix Salmon’s thinking is his optimism about smaller institutions prevailing over larger ones. Yesterday, Felix tackled a story, by colleague Matt Goldstein, about how big retail banks believe that they ought to be allowed to become even bigger. Having noted that he has seen no evidence that economies of scale increase beyond a $10 billion asset level has been passed (and he notes that one Wall Street branch of Citibank alone — and not its principal one, either — carries $1.5 billion in deposits), Felix turns his attention to an Accenture report that notes consumer disinterest in “one stop shopping.”

This says to me that there’s a big opportunity right now for smaller banks to capitalize on the unhappiness that the big banks’ customers are feeling. (Not many holders of WaMu checking accounts are exactly overjoyed right now to be banking with Chase.) And as free checking slowly disappears, there will surely be a move to consolidate the many different accounts that people are now opening into one relationship institution. While there are reasons to use a big bank for such purposes, there are also reasons to use someone more local, where they know you personally, and where you’re not at the mercy of some balky computer.

One of the things I’m looking forward to finding out about BankSimple is the degree to which they’ll interact with their customers personally, over the phone, via email, and via Twitter and Facebook, applying human intelligence on a case-by-case basis. It’s high-touch, but also high-reward, if customers end up essentially giving them all their money as a result. What’s more, that kind of thing very hard to scale to a monster organization, the hiring of Frank Eliason by Citi notwithstanding. Small banks can be nimbler and more responsive, and can become very profitable for their owners in that sweet spot between say $1 billion and $10 billion in assets.

Tierce

¶ Ed Yong sends his sputum to 23andme; a month later, he receives his DNA analysis. How cool is that? What’s cool is, precisely, Ed’s very grown-up assessment of the service, which, despite its designer’s best efforts, is not, in his view, for everyone — or possibly even for most people. All the information in the world does not make us better at assessing risk. (Not Exactly Rocket Science)

These problems are inherent to the different companies, the tests they use and the information they provide. But further problems arise when that information enters the brains of the customers, where it often comes crashing against an inability to process information about risk. For all the careful phrases around risks and uncertainties, some folks are going to treat their report as nothing more than a sophisticated horoscope, given extra weight by the spectre of genetic determinism. For example, one brown-eyed community member was told that their genes predicted a high probability of having blue eyes with just a 1% chance of having brown eyes. They found the results “unsatisfying” and “confusing”. And this is a trivial example – the emotions that accompany a risk prediction for a severe disease must be even more potent, and especially so for people who aren’t well-versed in genetics.

Clearly, some will need more help than others at interpreting their results and that help will come at a premium. Not every jobbing health professional will have the knowledge to advise people about the implications of their genetic tests. Specialised genetic counsellors exist and 23andme will refer you to one, but you pay for the service out of your own wallet. This comes on top of the standard cost of the test, which would set the average customer back by $499.

I have mixed feelings about whether the cost is justified. The results are wonderful fodder for the curious and the confident but their limitations (especially for non-white ethnicities) prevent them from being of any obviously practical value to your health. This may change over time as more data flood in and the price starts to fall. But this doesn’t feel like a technology where there is a real benefit in being an early adopter.

Sext

¶ We think that John Koblin’s story about Gerry Marzorati and the Times has all of the essential ingredients for a multi-planed meta-loaded novel about Gotham hipsterissimo. A bunch of people edit a chic magazine for a living (the Sunday Times), and of course they’re good at that, for a while at least (nothing lasts forever). But how good at they are presenting themselves to outsiders who ask “What Went Wrong?” The issue of whether Megan Liberman is an “abrasive woman” or a smart cookie who can see the bullshit in “bookish” could take up chapters all by itself. A gifted novelist — calling Jennifer Egan! — could look into Lynn Hirschberg’s eyes when she says, “It makes me sad. I don’t dislike or hate Gerry at all. I feel things went wrong somehow.”  In other words: don’t expect Mr Koblin’s story to clear up a thing. (The Observer; via The Awl)

When looking back at his tenure, Mr. Marzorati twice made the point that he served longer than his predecessor. Yet Adam Moss, the current editor of New York magazine, had a celebrated tenure at The Times Magazine and also had a markedly different style than Mr. Marzorati’s. He was hands-on and wanted to be involved with every decision. There were lots of meetings, and lots of conversations about nearly every page. Mr. Marzorati, who was Mr. Moss’ deputy, has had a different style: He likes to delegate power and puts a lot of trust and authority in his deputies and story editors.

“I think Gerry is a very democratic person,” said Stefano Tonchi, the former editor of T Magazine, who took over Condé Nast’s W Magazine earlier this year.

When all the magazines at The Times were doing well, staffers saw Mr. Marzorati’s approach as a blessing. But by the time budgets started to dwindle, his style was reinterpreted. “When there’s a hands-off approach, when things are going well, everyone’s happy,” said one former staffer, “and when things aren’t going well, it feels like no one cares.”

During the difficult time, some staffers said, Mr. Marzorati seemed to lose some of his energy. “I think I and others felt that Gerry was less ambitious and less engaged in those last couple years,” said a former staffer.

“I don’t even know if he changed, or the situation changed, but that enthusiasm that he had for contemporary culture and art and design and fashion and music somehow was still a part of his life, but not in his magazine,” said Mr. Tonchi.

Nones

¶ In The Nation, Eric Foner reviews two books about the Confederacy and its aftermath that constructively disrupt a few assumptions that were lying around in our attic. It turns out that, as a polity — as distinct from a fighting machine — the Confederacy was not as unifed as we Yankees might have thought — or been encouraged to think when the War was over.

McCurry begins by stating what should be obvious but is frequently denied, that the Confederacy was something decidedly odd in the nineteenth century: “an independent proslavery nation.” The Confederate and state constitutions made clear that protecting slavery was their raison d’être. Abandoning euphemisms like “other persons” by which the US Constitution referred to slaves without directly acknowledging their existence, Confederates forthrightly named the institution, erected protections around it and explicitly limited citizenship to white persons. McCurry implicitly pokes holes in other explanations for Southern secession, such as opposition to Republican economic policies like the tariff or fear for the future of personal freedom under a Lincoln administration. Georgia, she notes, passed a law in 1861 that made continuing loyalty to the Union a capital offense, hardly the action of a government concerned about individual liberty or the rights of minorities.

The Confederacy, McCurry writes, was conceived as a “republic of white men.” But since of its 9 million people more than 3 million were slaves and half of the remainder disenfranchised white women, the new nation faced from the outset a “crisis of legitimacy.” However much the law defined white women as appendages of their husbands, entitled to protection but not a public voice, and slaves simply as property, Southern leaders realized early that they would have to compete with the Union for the loyalty of these groups, treating them, in effect, as independent actors. The need to generate consent allowed “the Confederate unenfranchised” to step onto the stage of politics, with their own demands, grievances and actions.

Vespers

¶ At The Millions, J P Smith writes about how he set about reaching his goal of reading Proust in the original, with only three years of (forgotten) high-school French — via, interestingly, the work of Patrick Modiano, which inspired his own first novel.

Adopting French as a second reading language gave me two worlds through which my own work could be filtered. As a novelist (far less so as a screenwriter), I find that reading in two languages has a way of enriching one’s own work. When reading in French I’m really stepping beyond myself and my world, and it’s this tiptoeing into another culture and another way of viewing things, that allows me to look back over my shoulder and find perhaps a whole new way of telling my own story.

¶ Meanwhile, Jean Ruaud muses about “moins” — less — so suavely that we daydreamed that he has kitted out his Paris flat not with stuff but with information. (Mnémoglypes)

Donc l’information, j’aime. Envoyez à pleins tuyaux. Par contre plus ça va plus je pense à me dépouiller du maximum de biens matériels. Les biens matériels ne me rendent pas plus libres, ils m’encombrent, ils m’attachent. Ne serait-il pas mieux de les réduire au minimum de confort dans la société moderne? En restant bien sûr relié au reste du monde et aux sources d’informations via les gadgets informatiques qui me sont devenus indispensables. Plus j’y réfléchis plus je pense qu’on peut se passer d’un tas de choses et en particulier de la consommation effrénée de trucs qui ne servent à rien sinon à affirmer un statut et à calmer notre anxiété. L’informatique moderne et l’Internet et les trucs comme l’iPad et/ou l’iPhone pourraient nous y aider.

Needless to say, we are dying to hear that our friend has acquired an iPad!

Compline

¶ When we were students, teachers were like nannies: if they had personal lives, we never saw them, and we assumed, thinking back later on, that many of them hadn’t had personal lives, just to avoid the complications. Like so much else in the world, that is changing. Not so long ago, we’d have read Josh Barkey’s account of tacitly sharing the breakup of his marriage with his private-school students with a toss of our head: what was he thinking? But we can’t bring ourselves to conclude that, just because he’s a teacher, Mr Barkey has no right to write his life in blog form. Perpend. ( Good)

By that time, I had completed the rough draft of my memoir and had removed it from the internet to begin the laborious process of rewriting until my forehead bled. The administration stood by me but, sadly, the student in question was withdrawn from the school and I was left with a melancholic taste in my mouth and a whole lot of questions in my mind: Did I do the right thing, posting such an intimate, personal story on a public forum my students could access? Could/should I have done more to keep them from finding it? When I knew that they were reading it, should I have changed the content, or even taken it offline?

I don’t know. It has been a struggle, all this year, to search for the balance between honesty and professionalism. While I feel that the students crave reality and that it is my obligation as an art teacher and a human to try and give it to them, I understand that I am a representative of my employers both in and out of the school building. In a private institution such as the one where I teach, I do not believe I have the right to say and do whatever I darn well please when I walk out the doors at the end of the day.

Have a Look

¶ Does this make us laugh because we’re big fans of Mike Judge’s Extract, and couldn’t help thinking of Beth Grant’s character? (FAIL)

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 10:30 am.