Alan Jacobs

Daisey’s fiction was predicated on the notion that China is essentially unknowable, that reporters never go to factory gates, that highways exit to nowhere. And he might have gotten away with it twenty years ago. But these days, it’s no longer so far away at all. It’s close enough to make an iPhone today and have it on a U.S. store shelf next week. And it’s closer in another important way as well—in overestimating his own ability, Daisey underestimated a lot of other people. He didn’t realize that podcasts are often followed by listeners with real knowledge on his subject: American expats who probably rely even more on podcasts than other people because it’s so difficult to get books and magazines and radio stories over here.

Merckx’s style of racing could be summed up in two rules: 1. accelerate; 2. keep going and don’t look back. Expert analysis of the Merckxian philosophy provided by Fotheringham’s many interviewees amounts to this: “Mostly, he relied on pure power,” “There were no tactics with Merckx”. He would escape from the peloton with 100km to go, powering off into the sleet and the wind, elbows flailing with the effort, and not be seen again until the podium. Sometimes, the gap was so huge that the rider who came in second thought he’d won the race. In the Marseille stage of the 1971 Tour de France, spectators and camera crews were eating lunch, looking forward to the afternoon’s entertainment, when “the Cannibal” shot across the deserted finish line, 90 minutes ahead of schedule.

Mixed-race blacks have an ethical obligation to identify as black — and interracial couples share a similar moral imperative to inculcate certain ideas of black heritage and racial identity in their mixed-race children, regardless of how they look.

The reason is simple. Despite the tremendous societal progress these recent changes in attitude reveal in a country that enslaved its black inhabitants until 1865, and kept them formally segregated and denied them basic civil rights until 1964, we do not yet live in an America that fully embodies its founding ideals of social and political justice. As the example of President Obama demonstrates par excellence, the black community can and does benefit directly from the contributions and continued allegiance of its mixed-race members, and it benefits in ways that far outweigh the private joys of freer self-expression.

Two things have happened more or less simultaneously. The world passed through a historic transformation associated with the computer and the internet. This has been and will be a cause of profound economic and social disruption, and at the same time a great creator of wealth, a great enhancement of efficiency, and a great enrichment of life for those who have access to these resources and make good use of them. And then there is a separate development, the inscrutable financial economy abetted by the internet, which has led to the overvaluing and then the collapse of basic elements of the traditional economy, notably pensions and real estate. Austerity policies, with the threat of worse to come, move people to put money in banks, or in investments they hope are safe, which no longer include the family home. If I cannot assume my adult children will have the pensions and benefits I enjoy, I will be much more inclined to make sure they have a good inheritance. This amounts to a fundamental reordering of American life. The wealth that was once frozen in appreciated value and thawed at the discretion of the owner, in homes, notably, is now, increasingly, liquid in the hands of international financial institutions.

Rob Schmitz: Cathy says you did not talk to workers who were poisoned with hexane.
Mike Daisey: That’s correct.
RS: So you lied about that? That wasn’t what you saw?
MD: I wouldn’t express it that way.
RS: How would you express it?
MD: I would say that I wanted to tell a story that captured the totality of my trip.

They’re handsome things [volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica], somehow managing to be imposing and inviting at the same time. But the best part is that each one is branded with a pair of index words, there to tell you where the volume begins and where it ends. You thus get 45 almost-random two-word phrases to conjure with. Some don’t rise above their functionality: India Ireland, for instance, or Accounting Architecture. But others open up new and unexpected territory to wander in. Here, for the record, are some of my favorites:

Freon Holderlin (a man I’d like to meet, despite his reputation for coldness)

Menage Ottawa (a perfect oxymoron)

Chicago Death (Jack White’s new side project)

Light Metabolism (what the Theory of Everything, once discovered, will be called)

Excretion Geometry (a field only understood by seven people in the world)

Arctic Biosphere (Freon Holderlin lives here, according to rumor)

Krasnokamsk Menadra (when I take up meditation, this will be what I chant)

And my favoritemost of all:

Decorative Edison

The study into the frequency and type of offenses, and the faculty policies and responses, surveyed more than 2,000 students and 600 instructors on the Arizona campus. It found the highest rates of cheating among fraternity and sorority members and international students, the latter of whom were most likely to use technology to cheat. Fewer than 10 percent of Arizona students said they’ve used technology to get answers during an exam, but more international than American students admitted to obtaining test answers online (21 versus 11 percent), having copied material from the Internet for a writing assignment without citing the source (23 versus 13 percent), and sending or receiving text messages during an exam (12 versus 3 percent). Cheating was reported least among students receiving need-based aid, and non-degree seeking and first-generation students. (The more education a student’s parents had, the more likely he or she was to have cheated.)

Her more visible role in the public square (or the religious marketplace, if you will) came about almost accidentally. In 2002, customers noticed the Santa Muerte altar at the back of a small tortilla shop and asked the owner if they might pay homage. She agreed. Soon the place was full of flowers and candles, and people made pilgrimages to it. Eventually it became necessary to open a separate shrine, because all the veneration was making it hard to cook tortillas, let alone sell them.

In the decade since then, writes Chesnut, “hundreds of thousands of devotees have placed their hands on the glass of the encased altar,” which is reverently wiped down each night. Other entrepreneurs tapped into the Bald Lady’s following. And she has taken on more and more tasks, as signaled by the various colored candles that devotees light in her honor: red to call on her traditional powers in love, gold for help with money, and green for matters involving the law or justice. Purple candles are for faith healing. Criminals light black candles to appeal for help in their work, as do otherwise law-abiding citizens craving vengeance. But the white kind, expressing devotion and gratitude, are much more popular.

The black candle is, Chesnut notes, “among the slowest selling and rarely appears at devotional sites on Mexican roadsides and sidewalks.” The author says he seldom saw black candles even on private altars. The notion that Santa Muerte is a patron saint of the drug cartels is extremely one-sided: her appeal has spread through all sectors of society. Policemen and prison guards call on her protection. Rumor has it that there are even Santa Muertistes within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church – extremely discreet ones, presumably, since she has at least one bony toe dipped in spiritual currents that might well be heretical or blasphemous.

Lovely images from the National Gallery of Art

I’m not naive. I do believe that in the long run I am damaged by piracy more than I am helped by it. I also know that my publisher, on whom I depend for income, support and promotion, is severely damaged by it. On that level, I want it to stop. This feeling is made even stronger by the realisation that Mobilism can sell advertising (and presumably generate a bit of revenue for someone, somewhere) on the back of well-organised and ongoing larceny. Somebody, somewhere is making money from my own labour.

But I see the sense of what the well-mannered people who responded to my question were saying, and I have some sympathy for what Gaiman and Coelho have been saying about piracy – that the more it happens, the more people find out about their books. Neil Gaiman’s recent point – that no one buys their first book, they are given it by someone – is a strong one. But then, Gaiman and Coelho are established authors. Is this kind of free-for-all the best way to launch a new author? I simply do not know.