Politicans and Actors, II

January 28, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

A post (here) a couple of days ago showed the fictional Larry Garfied, played by Danny DeVito, justifying Mitt Romney’s capitalism, and doing a better job of it than does Romney himself. 

Here’s another politician, Anthony Albanese, an Australian cabinet minister, delivering a politically charged speech.  Like Romney, he’s not all that bad.  But Michael Douglas, seventeen years ealier, shows him how Aaron Sorkin’s  lines should be delivered.



(For more information, see this Language Log post, which is where I found the story.)

Spinning 2.8%

January 28, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

Yesterday’s news was that GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2011 was 2.8%.  The Houston Chronicle played up the political import.

Is 2.8% GDP growth good news?
Texas Democrats say it is, Republicans say it’s a fluke

Good news about the economy is good news for the incumbents – Obama and the Democrats.  Bad economic news is good for the Republicans.  You would expect the liberal media elite to crow while the few brave conservative media stalwarts curbed their enthusiasm.  So Fox News, predictably, said that the 2.8% was “modest.” 

But that liberal bastion The New York Times gave the news a mixed review.  Recession fears were fading, but the 2.8% was “not enough to comfort the Fed.” 

But the Wall Street Journal led by accentuating the positive.

Steam indeed.

Meanwhile, at NPR, so often accused of “liberal bias,” 2.8% was Friday’s “Planet Money” indicator, and here’s what their correspondent Zoe Chace had to say about it.

I’m going to start by telling you what 2.8 is not.  It is not a recession.  But that’s pretty much the only good thing you can say about 2.8. 

Why aren’t these media spinning the story the way they’re supposed to?


(A post of two years ago (here) tried to show how political purposes shaped views of whether 3%, is a lot or a little.)

Paris - New York (bis)

January 26, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

“How do you say hipster in French?” I asked yesterday. Now I know.

 

Much thanks to le formidable Baptiste Coulmont (my main man / my name man), who steered me to the source, graphics designer Vahram Muratyan.  Here is the counterpart to yesterday’s map – French quartiers mapped onto New York geography.

Both are from Muratyan’s book Paris Versus New York – a Tally of Two Cities (more info and posters here).  You can also get several of these graphics as posters.  Like this

An exhibit will be opening soon (Feb. 2) at the Shop at the Standard in Greenwich Village (St. Germain-des-Pres).

Urban Ecology, Paris-New York edition

January 25, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

It was the sociologists in Chicago, not Paris or New York,  who gave us the notion of “natural areas” in cities.  Park and Burgess had a general model of ecological zones  – the concentric circles radiating from the city center.  Within these circles there might be more specialized niches – cultural enclaves whose distribution isn’t quite so predictable or consistent. 

Here are the niches of New York mapped onto the map of Paris.  The idea of the map is to point out the cultural similarities – Greenwich Village is like St. Germain, Williamsburg is like Buttes Chaumont (how do you say hipster in French?).

Geographically, there are some big differences.  In the cultural geography of Paris, Morningside Heights is far from Columbia University, and Astoria is next to Dumbo.  Not on the real NYC map. 

But it’s interesting how often adjoining areas in the real NYC are still close together when mapped culturally onto Paris.

(This jpeg is the version I copied (thanks to a tip from the the redoubtable Polly-Vous Français) from the FB page of Richard Thierry, where it has gotten a ton of comments.  My apologies for the small print that becomes illegible when you enlarge the image.  I couldn’t find a better version.)

UPDATE:  For more on this map, see the next day's post (here)