Last week I went on bloggingheads.tv to talk about the Scooter Libby trial with Jacqueline Shire, a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security and a consultant to ABC News. Click here to watch the whole hourlong discussion, or to watch shorter, topic-oriented segments, such as "A little eye candy for female viewers."
Recycled bloggingheads content: "Hoop Dreams."
Another late notice: Slate published my review of Gears of War last month, under the headline, "WHY A DERIVATIVE SCI-FI GOREFEST IS THE BEST VIDEO GAME OF THE YEAR." "The year," in this case, is 2006.
Shorter Slate: "The closest thing video games have to the Oscars are the annual 'Game of the Year' awards handed out by the gaming press. This year, there's a rough consensus that three games deserve the nod. The first two are predictable, worthy selections: Wii Sports and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, games for Nintendo's innovative, you've-never-played-like-this-before Wii console. The third choice, however, is something of a surprise—a derivative piece of genre work for the Xbox 360 called Gears of War that somehow still manages to astonish and keep you up late into the evening."
The February issue of Men's Journal includes a short half-page item by me on why the new Democratic Congress could be "the greenest Congress in decades." The article's real claim to fame, however, is my use of the phrase "testosterone Democrats" (in a description of Montana's Jon Tester) weeks before Ryan Lizza used "Alpha Male Democrat" in The New York Times. (This is the kind of petty squabble over a conceptual scoop that you turn to Suellentrop.com for!) It's not online, so you'll have to part with $4.95 at your local newsstand for it, or just stand there and read page 39 before putting it back on the shelf.
Shorter Men's Journal: "The starkest transition will take place on the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, where California's Boxer takes over for the outgoing chairman, Oklahoma's James Inhofe. In terms of policy direction, it's like Hunter S. Thompson taking over for Bill Bennett on drug policy."
Just what you need on the Wednesday before the Super Bowl: Discussion of the divisional round from mid-January! I've been late in posting this here, but Josh Levin invited Seth Stevenson and me to participate in an e-mail dialogue about the NFL playoffs, in advance of the divisional round games. Click here to start at the beginning, or here, here, and here to skip to my entries, which delve into Marty Schottenheimer's fondness for the Tropical Blizzard.
For those who don't have TimesSelect, here's the free link for "The Right Has a Jailhouse Conversion," which was published in yesterday's issue of The New York Times Magazine. It should work until Sunday, Dec. 31.
In the Independent Press Awards published in the Utne Reader's January/February 2007 issue, The Wilson Quarterly wins the "General Excellence: magazines" award. Utne hails WQ's "deeply researched, mind-expanding work over the past year," calls the magazine "decidedly accessible," and praises it for "reliably challenging its readers to think outside the dogmatic lines that have been laid down (and electrified) around almost every interesting issue of the day. (For evidence, see the pro-video game essay "Playing with Our Heads," reprinted from WQ.)"
That essay is a slightly abridged version of "Playing With Our Minds," my essay in The Wilson Quarterly's Autumn 2006 issue. It's available online under the headline "Are Video Games Evil?" But head to your local newsstand and pick up a hard copy of the Utne Reader for $4.99.
This Sunday's issue of The New York Times Magazine -- the Christmas Eve edition -- will include a feature by me on the politics of "prisoner re-entry" and prison reform. If you're a TimesSelect subscriber, you can read it online today, by virtue of one of TimesSelect's best features, Times Preview Wednesday, which includes links to articles in the Sunday magazine, book review, and travel sections.
The piece focuses on how the evangelical-Christian interest in prisoner mentoring and faith-based prisons has led more and more Republicans to embrace surprisingly liberal positions on more secular criminal-justice issues.
Shorter New York Times Magazine: "The G.O.P., the party of Richard Nixon's 1968 law-and-order campaign and the Willie Horton commercial, is beginning to embrace the idea that prisoners have not only souls that need saving but also flesh that needs caring for in this world. Increasingly, Republicans are talking about helping ex-prisoners find housing, drug treatment, mental-health counseling, job training and education. They’re also reconsidering some of the more punitive sentencing laws for drug possession. The members of this nascent movement include a number of politicians not previously known for their attention to prisoners’ rights. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a former federal prosecutor whom The New Republic once accused of being stained 'with the taint of racism,' wants to reduce the penalty for possession of small amounts of crack. Referring to mandatory-minimum sentences, Representative Bob Inglis of South Carolina, whose district is home to Bob Jones University, declared on the floor of the House: 'I voted for them in the past. I will not do it again.' Perhaps most remarkably, the outgoing Republican-controlled Congress came tantalizingly close to passing the Second Chance Act, a bill that focuses not on how to 'lock them up' but on how to let them out. The bill may become law soon, if Democrats continue to welcome the new conservative interest in rehabilitation."
The December issue of Wired includes my "Posts" dispatch from a ghost hunt I went on with Baltimore's Vince Wilson, whom I call "perhaps the foremost expert on the technology of ghost hunting in the US."
Shorter Wired: "Vince Wilson has a theory about ghosts: They're a misunderstood part of the natural environment, phenomena that can be discerned and explained through the careful application of science. Which is why he's wheeling several thousand dollars' worth of homemade ghost-detection equipment into the Westminster Presbyterian Church and Cemetery in downtown Baltimore. 'Even ghosts would have to obey the fundamental laws of physics,' Wilson says. His quarry are like the giant squid, he insists, creatures that scientists once derided as folklore but whose existence has since been proven."
Recycled paranormal coverage: Sorry, got nothing for you here.
Who cares? Slate published my instant "Sports Nut" column on the logical flaw underlying the debate over college football's Bowl Championship Series: People think they need to pick the two (presumed) best teams for the national championship game.
Shorter Slate: "Playoff systems are designed to determine, in a fair manner, which is the single best team in a particular sport. Their purpose is not to pit the two finest teams against each other in a season-ending game. The Yankees and Red Sox do not play annually in the World Series. The Indianapolis Colts will never be given a chance to play the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl."
Recycled BCS complaining: A College Football Playoff That Works.
My Slate review of the Nintendo Wii argues that the motion-sensitive Wii Remote controller provides a greater level of gaming realism than the superior graphics of the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. (The headline and subtitle given to the piece overstate its case, because realism in gaming is overrated, but that's a topic for another day.)
Shorter Slate: "Like nothing else I've ever played, the Wii comes closest to achieving the grail of gaming: a home virtual-reality machine. ... The Wii Remote creates a level of realism that can't be attained through pretty pictures or through giving gamers ever-larger worlds to explore. (Like book reviewers, gamers sometimes confuse sprawl with excellence.)"
Recycled console reviews: The PlayStation 3.
