Leonard Pitts thinks Starbucks has a Venti heart.
Am I the only person in America not making fun of Howard Schultz?
The Starbucks CEO bought himself a ton of ridicule recently when he attempted to jumpstart a national dialogue on race by having baristas write the words “Race Together” on customers’ cups of Cinnamon Dolce Light Frappuccino Grande or Caffe Misto Venti with extra coconut.
On Twitter, the campaign was dubbed “patronizing,” “absurd” and “a load of crap.” On The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, Rosie Perez said, “I don’t want to be forced to have a conversation. Especially early in the f------ morning.” Some folks questioned the wisdom of calling for racial dialogue when your executive team has all the rich cultural diversity of a GOP convention in Idaho.
Starbucks says there will eventually be more to the campaign, but what we’ve seen so far has been epically bad — naive at best, dumber than a sack of coffee beans at worst. Give it this much credit, though: It came out of an earnest conviction that the future health of our country requires us to solve race. In other words, Starbucks had good intentions.
You may say that’s not much. You may note that good intentions are the macadam on the road to hell.
Me, I think we dismiss good intentions at our own peril.
As happens often, Mr. Pitts has many good points to make, so go read the rest.
As a native Kentuckian, it wouldn't be nice of me to spend the morning gloating (or more accurately, trying to slow my heart, wipe off the sweat, and take a deep breath in relief). So, let me just bow to divine will and tell you to come on in and read the rest of punditry...
Kathleen Parker wants to know what rough beast slouches into our cockpits.
The apparently intentional downing of a Germanwings airliner by the co-pilot has us riveted, as commercial plane crashes usually do. ...
What is it like to realize your plane is out of control and there’s nothing to be done? Or that, inconceivably, your pilot or, in this case, your co-pilot, is out of control? ...
Unthinkable is the word for it.
Parker wanders all over in her terror. Here's a prediction: within a decade, two at the outside, it will be
illegal for a human being to take the controls of a commercial airliner except in an emergency situation. That situation will hold until AIs become sophisticated enough to get depressed.
Ross Douthat is here, thank goodness, to save our Middle East diplomacy. To be fair, his description of the situation (FUBAR and likely to stay that way) isn't wrong.
Haltingly but persistently, this administration has pursued a paradigm shift in how the United States relates to the Middle East, a shift from a Pax Americana model toward a strategy its supporters call “offshore balancing.”
In a Pax Americana system, the United States enjoys a dominant position within a network of allies and clients; actors outside that network are considered rogues and threats, to be restrained and coerced by our overwhelming military might. Ideally, over time our clients become more prosperous and more democratic, the benefits of joining the network become obvious, and the military canopy both expands and becomes less necessary.
In an offshore balancing system, our clients are fewer, and our commitments are reduced. Regional powers bear the primary responsibility for dealing with crises on the ground, our military strategy is oriented toward policing the sea lanes and the skies, and direct intervention is contemplated only when the balance of power is dramatically upset.
Since the Cold War, and especially since 1991, the Pax Americana idea has predominated in our foreign policy thinking. But in the Middle East, there has been no real evolution toward democracy among our network of allies; instead, their persistent corruption has fed terrorism and contributed to Al Qaeda’s rise.
Hence the Bush administration’s post-9/11 decision to try to start afresh, by transforming a rogue state into a regional model, a foundation for a new American-led order that would be less morally compromised than the old.
That order did not, of course, emerge.
I'm trying to think of a region where partnering with every dictator who pretended to like us and bombing holy hell out of everyone, including democracies, who didn't toe our line in the sand, actually did lead to improved order and democracy. I suspect this place exists in the same land where conservative economic rules work.
Seth Shostak warns that there may be wolves in the interstellar woodss.
For more than a half-century, a small group of astronomers has sought intelligent company among the stars. They’ve done so by turning large radio antennas skyward, hoping to eavesdrop on signals from an advanced society. It’s a program known as SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.
But now some researchers propose that we should do more than simply don headphones and await E.T.’s call: We should make serious efforts to encourage a response from putative aliens by deliberately transmitting our own messages. It’s a simple idea, akin to tossing a bottle into the cosmic ocean. But recent arguments for what’s termed active SETI have loosed a storm of controversy, one that has even washed into the halls of academe. ...
But we know nothing of the aliens’ possible motives or behavior. Therefore, it’s conceivable that betraying our existence might prompt aggressive action from space.
Broadcasting is likened to “shouting in the jungle” — not a good idea when you don’t know what’s out there.
Of course, the idea that there may be a very good reason to keep a hand over our electromagnetic mouths is not a new one. Arthur C. Clarke wrote about it (including in the short story that because the basis for
2001: A Space Odyssey) and Greg Bear's
The Forge of God showed one disastrous possible outcome of being too noisy three decades ago. The Great Silence that stretches between the stars, known as the
Fermi Paradox, may well be because any civilization that pops up to say "hi" all too soon finds itself saying "bye." Of course, I have my own theory, coming soon to a Sunday near you in "Fermi—Bostrom—Skinner: An eternal silicon screw."
Dana Milbank thinks that President Obama may save his presidency... by paying more attention to Dana Milbank, et al.
...hope that Obama is finally trying to break out of the insufferable insularity that has choked progress in his White House — and that he is, at long last, ready to reach out to Capitol Hill and to the media to make his case.
For far too long, this president has surrounded himself with yes men, living in a self-congratulatory world of affirmation. It’s late in his presidency, but it’s not too late to be administered a dose of reality.
Yes, Dana, that's the problem. Not chummy enough with the beltway pundits who can tell the president how to do it Right.
Jonathan Capehart waves goodbye to Harry Reid.
For his friends, frenemies and nemeses alike, Senate Minority Leader Harry’s decision to not seek reelection is a rueful moment. They’re all going to miss what President Obama told NPR was the senior Senator from Nevada’s “curmudgeonly charm.”
Friends love him because he has their back. Frenemies kind of like him because of a grudging respect for his frustrating ways that may or may not inure to their benefit. Other frenemies kind of like him because they know where they stand with him (and vice versa). And his nemeses have a love-hate relationship with the him. They hate Reid for his ability to use the Senate’s arcane rules to thwart many of their attempts to undermine his agenda. They love him because they fundraise off his legislative orneriness.
As an opinion writer, I would have to put myself firmly in the grudging-respect frenemy category. ... A lot of people made DADT repeal possible. Yet, it was Reid’s knowledge of the intricacies of Senate rules that allowed him to push a vote on a bill that now makes it possible for gay men and lesbians to serve their country openly and with honor.
The New York Times on Calfornia's climate crisis.
Californians are understandably focused on the state’s severe drought, now in its fourth year. But drought is not the only environmental risk the state’s residents face. ...
A drought relief bill just passed by the California Legislature, and signed by Governor Brown on Friday, would also include $660 million for flood control projects, including the repair of levees with known problems. ...
In the coming years, climate change is likely to render every part of the country more vulnerable to environmental disasters. In some states, planning for these disasters is hampered by politicians who deny the very existence of changes in the climate. In Florida, another state threatened by sea level rise and extreme storms, officials say they were told not even to use the term “climate change."
I have a suggestion for what state officials in Florida can say instead: help! help! he... glurggle, burrgle, bloop bloop bloop.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch brings back an idea that's popular with everyone except the petty tyrants who would lose their fiefdoms (and the wealthy who fear being pitched into the pool with the rest of us).
Unity is hard.
Those three words appeared in the first of a series of editorials that ran on this page starting a little more than a year ago under the banner of building “A Greater St. Louis.” In that series we called for a new unity movement in this, one of the most divided metropolitan regions in the country, if not the world.
That movement has begun to move. ...
On Aug. 9, when Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson killed 18-year-old Michael Brown, when young African-Americans took to the streets to protest police brutality and conditions of poverty, the movement began to stir. ...
The Missouri Supreme Court, the Missouri Legislature and the Department of Justice have in their targets scofflaw municipal courts and rent-a-cop police departments that have trampled on the civil rights of citizens for decades.
For more than a century, the fragmentation of St. Louis City and County into dozens of tiny "cities" that are often nothing more than a few blocks (and some police cars) has cost the city millions. It's also cost lives, and ruined the reputation of the region for decades to come. Just maybe, we'll have the good sense to erase all these mini-kingdoms and build a reasonable metropolitan structure.
Science Daily points up a study that's... not good.
A new study led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego researchers has revealed that the thickness of Antarctica's floating ice shelves has recently decreased by as much as 18 percent in certain areas over nearly two decades, providing new insights on how the Antarctic ice sheet is responding to climate change. ...
While melting ice shelves do not contribute directly to sea-level rise, the researchers indicate that there is an important indirect effect.
"The ice shelves buttress the flow from grounded ice into the ocean, and that flow impacts sea-level rise, so that's a key concern from our new study," said Fricker. Under current rates of thinning, the researchers estimate the ice shelves restraining the unstable sector of West Antarctica could lose half their volume within the next 200 years.
Maybe that new motto for Florida needs to be changed. It's too long.