Ethan Todras-Whitehill is a freelance writer who covers technology, travel, and subcultures. He contributes regularly to The New York Times and several national magazines. He writes the Punch-for-Punch column, which appears on Mondays.
As one of my myriad professions, I work as an SAT tutor. As such, I’m tuned in to the specific tricks that the testmaker, Education Testing Services (ETS) is trying to catch you in. Right now, it feels like ETS is running the stock market. Try this question:
A sweater in a department store is marked up in price by 20% on Monday. The sweater doesn’t sell, and on Friday it is marked down 50%. Relative to the original price, what is the total discount offered on the sweater on Friday?
A) 20%
B) 30%
C) 40%
D) 50%
E) 60%
Answer after the jump.
Courtney on The O’Reilly Factor:
At the end of the segment, Bill promises to apologize to Courtney if she can show she publicly defended Sarah Palin. It turns out, our equal-opportunity feminist did. Email Bill if you want to hear an apology.
Although Jewish, I am not a staunch defender of Israel. Still, the column in the NYTimes today by Muammar Qaddafi (yes that Muammar Qaddafi) on a One-State solution to Israel and Palestine strikes me as sinister, for reasons that will not be clear until after the jump. Read the whole op-ed here.
In absolute terms, the two movements must remain in perpetual war or a compromise must be reached. The compromise is one state for all, an “Isratine” that would allow the people in each party to feel that they live in all of the disputed land and they are not deprived of any one part of it.
“Down, down, down!” Trent yelled.
The snow cat had turned back up the slope, its lights pointing in our direction. Trent and I dropped flat into a small depression, our bodies hopefully obscured by the shadows. The snow was cold and hard, but I was wearing plenty of padding. We were at the top of Vail Mountain at night, and it was pitch black save for the snow cats grooming the ski slopes for the next day. We looked around for our third, but Matt’s tall, skinny shape was nowhere to be found.
The lights passed us over. “Go!” Trent cried. In the crunching snow at a full sprint, we covered the last open expanse, then slid baseball style down to the catwalk, fully out of view. Matt reappeared a moment later, clutching a square of folded black plastic to his chest. “I dropped my trash bag,” he explained.
The sledding we were about to do was not smart, legal, or safe. In fact, we were probably the stupidest people on Vail Mountain that night. But that’s what made it great.
McCain is losing it, folks. From the New York Times today:
[Referring to Joe the Plumber]
“Joe’s with us today!” Mr. McCain shouted at a cold outdoor rally at Defiance Junior High School. “Joe, where are you? Where is Joe? Is Joe here with us today?”
Nothing.
“Joe, I thought you were here today,” Mr. McCain continued, with dimmed enthusiasm.
Still nothing. The crowd murmured.
“All right,” Mr. McCain said, realizing that Joe was nowhere to be found. “Well, you’re all the Joe the Plumbers!”
Nate Silver over at the wonderfully geeky FiveThirtyEight.com related this story from his travels around the US to understand the ground games of the respective campaigns and the electorate:
So a canvasser goes to a woman’s door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she’s planning to vote for. She isn’t sure, has to ask her husband who she’s voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, “We’re votin’ for the n***er!”
Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: “We’re voting for the n***er.”
It’s like a Chapelle’s Show skit come to life. Besides laughter, I didn’t know how to react at first. Finally I decided that it was a measure of where we stand in this country on race: there may be racists out there, but maybe the force of racism isn’t what it once was.
For those who don’t regularly watch Fox News:
The first segment of Obama’s appearance on the O’Reilly Factor
I have two points about this. One, Obama comes off looking pretty good. O’Reilly even said: “Obama’s a tough guy… I looked at him eye to eye. He’s not a wimp.” The interview came about after Obama sat down with Roger Ailes several months ago to discuss Fox’s coverage of the campaign.
Two, I can’t help but wish a liberal pundit or an independent pundit or a neutral pundit had the balls to push a presidential candidate in this way. Interviewers too often let candidates get away with lines like “I’ll take Osama out if we have him in our sights.” I may not agree with his ideology, but sometimes I do admire Bill O’Reilly for speaking (his) truth to (potential) power.
Can we talk about energy for a moment here? It seems to be at the crux of all things political this season. The energy of America’s youth pushing Obama to the Democratic nomination over Hillary Clinton. The energy of the conservative movement in response to Sarah Palin, earning 1 million in donations for the GOP after her selection. (The reactive energy from the Obama people, racking up 10 million in donations after the same Palin speech.)
Then energy independence. The McCain campaign is touting Palin’s energy experience because of her pervue over one of our biggest oil-producing states. But of course, the Democrat’s idea of energy independence looks a lot different, focusing on wind, solar, etc that McCain voted against extending tax credits for.
So we’ve got a whole lot of energy flying in different directions. Which is always good. Or is it?
Remember that school that banned kickball last year? Now we’ve got a Little League that won’t let a nine-year-old kid pitch because he’s too good. Is this really a problem, parents? Worst to worst, your kids will get to say they batted against a future major leaguer. And it’s not like the kid is pulling a Danny Almonte on us. (Remember him? The 14-year-old that pitched a perfect game pretending to be 12? This ESPN.com feature is a great follow-up.)
I was in the bar at the Hyatt hotel in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Both times. My girlfriend Jen and I were driving up from Baltimore to New York and dropping off two other wedding guests along the way. Jen and her friends sat down for some food at the end of the catered dinner, but I scarfed mine and headed for the bar. It was 10:10, and I knew I was going to see history.
This was the 100m butterfly, one of Phelps’ toughest tests. His qualifying time had actually put him 2nd to a swimmer named Cavic, not the 1st that he was used to. 100m means you only go up and back, and after the first 50m he was trailing pretty significantly. I had thought no one else in the bar cared, but as Phelps made the turn the sound started to rise. A pretty significant roar saw Phelps home in the last 50m, where he outtouched Cavic by the pencil width of .01 seconds.
But that was nothing compared to the next night.
…in fact, it was one of those barely policed zones where any old schlub could buy duty-free blue jeans, or say, highly enriched uranium. The Atlantic Monthly had an article on a small-time operator in Russia who managed to get his hands on 100 grams of HEU, carrying it around in his breast pocket in a sandwich baggie as he tried to find a buyer.
Olympic swimming smells fishy. Every day, someone is breaking a world record in the pool by 1, 2, 3 seconds. Didn’t anyone think it was weird that in so many races, more than one swimmer was breaking the world record? What about in that dramatic US win in the 4×100 freestyle relay, where the world record line was trailing everyone by several body lengths? What are these guys on?
The right question is, what is the pool on. From Outside Online:
To promote the breaking of swimming world records, the Chinese have optimized their Water Cube pool for speed by: (1) Keeping the water at 80.6 degrees, the temperature considered optimal for swimmers; (2) pumping “microbubbles” into the pool to break the water’s surface tension; (3) building the pool to a depth of 42.7 feet, which prevents water-temperature interference; and (4) introducing a ventilation system that whisks chlorine fumes off the surface of the water, allowing the athletes to breathe clean air.
Doesn’t anyone find that disheartening? It’s like throwing a slugger grapefruits so he can break a home run record–sort of takes the fun out of the idea. But I guess “…the world record, set in Beijing in 2008…” will be a common phrase going forward, which is exactly what the Chinese intended. Kind of upsetting, don’t you think?
Is this really so frigging hard?
You may think you know how to brush your teeth. But you’re probably wrong.
At first I thought it was just an isolated case. Once in a while, I noticed a small lump of toothpaste clinging to the slope of my girlfriend’s bathroom sink. But then it was another, and another. And soon I realized: my girlfriend does not know how to brush her teeth properly! But then the lumps started coming in different colors, both the white-veined green of my girlfriend’s Colgate and the grainy white of her then-roommate’s Tom’s of Maine (or some other organic crap). Still, I assumed it to be isolated cases.
But then I moved in with another roommate, a very old friend. And what did I see in the sink after only a couple of weeks? A little white puff of Arm & Hammer toothpaste, hanging on the lip of the sink like the Michelin Man camping out on a cliff en route to the top of El Capitan. And I finally understood: you are all idiots, and don’t know how to brush your teeth. Or at least enough of you that I have to offer this primer.
Hi Folks,
We’re really sorry about the technical troubles we’ve been experiencing the last few days. Our hosting company is screwing up left and right. We’re particularly sorry given the exciting launches of Joie and Kate’s books, Fat Envelope Frenzy and CHEER. We’re really proud of both of them.
For you new readers, we will be back up and running soon so be sure to check back soon!
Thanks,
Ethan
Latest travel piece for the Times, on the San Blas Islands of Panama where the culture remains relatively untouched:
Nearby Haven for Ancient Ways (Sunday Times Travel Section, 1/6/08)
What I didn’t mention in the article is that my family’s trip to San Blas was my First Trip Abroad. It was 1984 and I was three years old. We landed in Costa Rica first, which apparently threw me for quite a loop. My mom said I was all out of sorts until I drew a map. On it, I had put New York City and Costa Rica a few centimeters apart. I put it in my pocket and was fine from there on out.
My connection to the Pakistani national tragedy (that’s my sister, a photographer, on a photo shoot in Dubai before Bhutto moved back):
Don’t be fooled by the nytimes.com URL, folks. This is actually an Onion article:
“School Recess Gets Gentler, and the Adults Are Dismayed”
I mean, it’s gotta be, right?
For your weekend amusement. Go, Courtney, go!
Barry Bonds has been indicted by a federal grand jury for lying about his use of steroids. This is big, folks. If you were one of those people who vaguely heard your baseball fan friends complaining about Bonds’ oversize head but never paid much attention, this is the time to perk up. Now it’s real.
