The top 10 ad icons.

From AdAge. (Via Drawn!) Wait! Where is Mr. Peanut? I can't accept this list!

The stars are always grimacing in photographs.

Why not develop the talent of imitating those grimaces? This man is really quite brilliant, I think.

George Bush's Year in Review.

From JibJab. (Via Meatriarchy.) You'll have to sit through a (cute) ad, but it's well worth it.

The magazine I subscribe to but never seem to open.

Just now, I linked to a piece in The New Yorker. I found it because it was cited by a commenter in the earlier post about the Pamuk trial. But the current issue of The New Yorker has been sitting on the table in front of me for days. I subscribe to The New Yorker, but lately I haven't even been opening it. I have a stack of unread issues here. You'd think, with all the cartoons, I'd at least flip through. Why did I care enough to subscribe, only to shun it so now.

One problem is the covers. What? Aren't the covers beautifully done? They are nicely drawn, but lately, nearly every one is anti-Bush commentary. This week's cover especially annoys me. We see an American solder, sitting on a cot, next to a concrete wall. He's got an exaggeratedly sad look on his face as he reads a card. The card has a picture of a Christmas tree. On the soldier's wall is the shape of a Christmas tree composed of hundreds of hatch marks made with a green Crayola crayon. That is, this soldier, a man who volunteered and is fighting for what he has every reason to believe is a noble cause, sits around looking monumentally depressed because he is not home for Christmas and has time to be sentimental enough about Christmas that he has been spending the whole year making the image of a Christmas tree on the wall. In the world of The New Yorker, the war is just a big, sorry mistake, and our soldiers have nothing but regret.

Let's see, do I feel like reading what the folks who chose that cover decided to put inside?

Turkish ironies: the Orhan Pamuk trial.

Yesterday, I wrote about the trial of Orhan Pamuk, and today, I see the trial has been put on hold. Perhaps the irony impressed the court: putting a writer on trial for damaging the image of the country damages the image of the country. Yet Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems irony deaf when he complains:

"The EU at the moment is trying to put our judiciary under pressure ... Rightly or wrongly, the issue is in the courts.

"My views concerning freedom of expression are well known," he said. "I am a person who was a victim of a freedom of expression case."

Erdogan served four months in jail in 1999 for reciting what the courts deemed to be an inflammatory poem interpreted as being anti-secular. Turkey is a staunchly secular state.

Here's a collection of different opinons about the Pamuk trial in the Turkish newspapers.

The current New Yorker has a piece about the trial, written by Pamuk himself (and translated by Maureen Freely, who, I take it translated freely):

Comforted as I was by the interest in my predicament and by the generous gestures of support, there were also times when I felt uneasy about finding myself caught between my country and the rest of the world.

The hardest thing was to explain why a country officially committed to entry in the European Union would wish to imprison an author whose books were well known in Europe, and why it felt compelled to play out this drama (as Conrad might have said) “under Western eyes.” This paradox cannot be explained away as simple ignorance, jealousy, or intolerance, and it is not the only paradox. What am I to make of a country that insists that the Turks, unlike their Western neighbors, are a compassionate people, incapable of genocide, while nationalist political groups are pelting me with death threats? What is the logic behind a state that complains that its enemies spread false reports about the Ottoman legacy all over the globe while it prosecutes and imprisons one writer after another, thus propagating the image of the Terrible Turk worldwide?

Owning the slur.

It's all the rage. Check the "uh-oh" update.

Theft, in the very grand style.

Take this:



It's 11 feet long, weighs 2.1 "tonnes" and is worth $5.3 million. What are you going to do with it? Squirrel it away in some billionaire's atrium? Melt it down to hide your crime?

"Aw man. We're not astronauts. We're just asses."

How was that reality show where they tricked people into thinking they were sent up in space?

Thinking about going to the movies.

Look at how this silly man is outraged that I talk about movies when I haven't seen them. It would be a nice advantage for the folks who make movies if they could get people to believe that it was inappropriate to talk until you'd paid up and wasted your time. I think a key skill in modern life is figuring out which movies to avoid. Well, why don't I just keep my thoughts to myself? I'm a blogger: we display our thought patterns in real time. If you aren't interested, don't read. Really, why is that silly man upset? Does he have a financial interest in the movie? Or is he some fanboy who really, really wants Peter Jackson to succeed?

Occasionally, I actually put three hours of my precious life into movie-viewing. Usually, it's not worth it, even though I rarely do it and am highly selective. Having something bloggable does create a little additional value, but trotting out an actual movie review, MSM-style, doesn't interest me much. If I were paid to do it, I'd put in the effort needed to find new ways to say "X gave a great performance" and "the plot was confusing" and so forth.

All that said, I am giving a tiny bit of thought to seeing a movie today and blogging about it. Here's what's playing in Madison. Actually reading that list reduced my interest in going to the movies about 80%. The only one I really want to see is "Capote," but I don't know that I want to see it in the theater, especially the crap theater where it's playing. Then there are some that I think I've heard are -- in the inevitable cliché -- "supposed to be good"? "The Squid and the Whale"? Well, what the hell is it? I'd have to do some research to have any idea. What a drag! "The Family Stone"? The clip looked good when Sarah Jessica Parker was on "The Daily Show" the other day. But have I heard that it's "supposed to be bad"? I can't remember. Again, research is required! "King Kong"? You know how I feel about that. I'm just not that into nostril-gazing.

I spend much of the day staring at a screen already. For diversion, why look at another screen? There is that famous real world that I've heard so much about. I could go out there.

BONUS QUESTIONS, thought up on rereading this post: What actress has the most beautiful nostrils? How much harder is that question to answer than what actress has the most beautiful eyes or the most beautiful lips? There's a reason it's harder: you don't really want to look at nostrils, even on a beautiful face. Sometimes you get an actress who does too much nostril acting. You know, that flaring and re-flaring. Once you start noticing it, the performance becomes comic. Can you think of any actresses or actors who belong to the nostril-flaring school of drama? Any examples of an actor or actress that does nostril-flaring spoofily, for deliberate comic effect? And can someone clue me in on how much Peter Jackson's Kong goes in for nostril-flaring. Nostrils, nostrils, nostrils. There, I've said it! I'm obsessed with nostrils. Nostrils are the body part of the week, here on the Althouse blog.

UPDATE: Can you believe it? The very next day I write an elaborate post about another movie I haven't seen. I'm starting to think that this actually is a specialty of mine -- check out my old posts on "Alexander" -- and I'm going to pursue it actively and intentionally now. I note too that some of my critics are perplexed about the nostril-focused material in this post. They really aren't understanding the unique mix of topics that is Althouse. The most flat-footedly pedestrian of these critics feel compelled to point out time and again that I am a law professor: in their regimented world, everyone is supposed to stay neatly on track, doggedly pursuing the matters of their occupational specialization. The dentist must blog about teeth, and the conlawprof about conlaw. How terribly dull! What grim little minds!

"Why does the first African-American 'Apprentice' have to come with controversy?"

Asks Les Haughton, the president of a consulting company that specializes in corporate diversity, talking about Randal Pinkett's win on "The Apprentice." Trump asked Randal if he ought to hire the other finalist, and Randal said no.

"None of the other winners were put in that position. So he's selfish; that's OK. Trump is selfish, too. Maybe that's what Donald wanted him to say, because he would have done the same thing."

Well, no, it's not what Donald wanted. But don't worry about Rebecca Jarvis. It can be better to be the runner-up. Ask Clay Aiken. And Aiken had to go into the "American Idol" starmaking machine even though he lost. Rebecca is free to collect job offers and to work on whatever terms and with whatever company she wants. And she's got a lot of leverage right now, more than she would have within the Trump Organization.

Motley Fool analyzes Trump's decision not to hire Rebecca and makes a general observation about investment:

The audience... hated the decision. Booing was audible as Randal turned to acknowledge them. I agree, and not just because Randal backstabbed a colleague he said he respected. More importantly, I believe, Trump turned away serious talent that wanted badly to work for him. Sadly, though, such decisions are hardly uncommon. Investors do the same thing every single day.

Allow me to explain. When given a choice between several comparable and undervalued stocks, investors will inevitably opt for the one they believe is the best, even if the evidence suggests all of them could be major winners. It's easy to understand why. In our newsletters, our analysts confine themselves to no more than two picks each month.

That is not, however, how the best money managers treat their portfolios. They understand that it's fine to own or buy both Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), or any other host of good opportunities at a single point in time -- not just a choice pick or two.

That's where Trump went wrong last night. His either/or choice was arbitrary and unnecessary, and he hurt his organization as a result. Don't let that same mistake plague your portfolio.

But Trump's main concern isn't getting good people into his business through the show. It's doing a great show and using the show to boost his business. Offering the first position to Randal made sense for a number of reasons -- it was time we saw a black contestant win -- and putting the issue of a double hire to him was good TV. Having done that, Trump couldn't reject the advice of the man he'd just chosen. And this show isn't about making us feel warm and fuzzy. It's about brutally cutting people off. Yeah, one person does win (and then slide down a rathole into obscurity... unless his name is Bill). But the tagline of the show is "You're fired."

We love the show even as we see our favorites slammed down week after week, year after year. This weird ending got us all talking about the show again and created momentum for the next season. We're newly inspired with the feeling that wild things happen and beloved favorites can crash and burn at any moment. That's what's so fun, we think, we viewers at home who are vicariously living life in the cutthroat business world.

When the job interviewer says "I bet you make a great wife."

Either you're in the room with an outrageously clueless interviewer... or you're on a reality show:

Q: Once, when you were defending yourself in the boardroom, Trump interrupted you and said, "I bet you make a great wife." Although that never aired, did his comment bother you?

A: I was a little bit offended by that. (Later, off camera), I stopped him and said, "That day when I was in the boardroom, why did you say that?"

He looked at me and said, "Well, which are you: A good wife or a good businesswoman?"

I was flabbergasted. I said, "I'm both . . . I strive for balance."

He said, "This is great dialog. Let's get a camera in here." He has an agenda.

Inappropriate as Trump's question was, it made some sense, didn't it? A disturbing amount of sense, actually, don't you think?

Have you started Christmas shopping yet?

I haven't! Am I cutting it too close? I did manage to snag a Christmas tree last weekend, but the truth is, I've been very busy. Christmas can't be an onerous task that spreads out over into an entire month. Really, I see no reason for that. And, no, I'm not at "war" against Christmas. Remember Father Guido Sarducci's idea of "Little Christmas"?

IN THE COMMENTS: No one seems to remember "Little Christmas," and I try to explain.

A TiVo-assisted retrospective on the last 3 minutes of last night's "Apprentice."

When Randal hears he's hired, he stands up, smiling, and we see all the other players reacting. Alla is overjoyed and demonstrative, shimmying up to Randal to embrace him as he ambles over for a group hug. Trump, over at the boardroom table, is yelling, "Randal, Randal, hey, Randal, Randal, Randal, sit down for a second, I wanna ask your opinion." Trump presents the question: "If you were me, would you hire Rebecca also?"

Then we see Randal, smiling, looking down and thinking. Behind him, we see the players. Felicia is mouthing "no," and sweet Adam is clapping with pleasure. Markus is unmoved. Alla is shaking her head in a big no. Randal makes his hard statement that the show is called "The Apprentice," not "The Apprenti," so there must be only one. Is that uncreative or just greedy?

Felicia nods her big approval. Jenthura looks happy. Markus pouts. Adam folds his hands in his lap and purses his lips. Marshawn bows her head glumly.

Trump smirks and says "Okay, I'll leave it at that then. I think I could have been convinced, but you feel that's the way it should be. I'm gonna leave it that way. Congratulations." Rebecca, who's been smiling calmly, now shakes her head, mouths a word ("bad"?), and then nods. We overhear a technical person say "That's a floor spin," and the thumping closing music starts. Randal gets up and walks over to the audience triumphantly. Most of the people are conspicuously not giving him a standing ovation. We can hear Trump say "Did you like that?"

I think it's safe to say that Trump did not like that. I'd say he structured the ending feeling sure Randal would reach out to Rebecca, and it would be a surprising, heartwarming ending for the man with a dead grandma and the girl on crutches. Instead, the series ended with a sickening thud, and the newly chosen Apprentice -- whose job is basically P.R. for the Trump organization -- begins his reign with a P.R. disaster.

IN THE COMMENTS: My son Chris writes: "Mom: We do not hear a technical person say 'That's a floor spin.' We hear Rebecca say 'That's unfortunate.' It is unfortunate...
that you got that wrong."

AND: There are a lot of good comments here and in the earlier post on the final episode, here, including my own complaint about the way that Randal was always praised and not criticized for spending his young years pursuing 5 academic degree. And what was his multi-million dollar "consulting business"?

Snow football.

I hear shouting outside and imagine there must be a rally or a protest of some kind. I get up and look out my office window onto Bascom Hill and see these hardy guys playing football. It's a sunless, 20 degree day, and they've been out there for an hour now.









You remember the summer pictures of the hill, when it seemed as if nearly all the students were female?



That's not how it looks today!

IN THE COMMENTS: Some talk about playing football in the snow and the difference between men and women, and then chuckb notes that the tree seems to be dormant year round. That makes me check the date on the last photo and see that it's from April 18th, so the women are hardier than one might have thought! That photo, by the way, is my "most viewed" photo in Flickr. Why? Because it appeared in this post, with small versions of the photos and "click to enlarge" advice, the post got the Instapundit link that you see above, and the subject matter made people -- especially the people Glenn sent over? -- want to get a closer look. And when I refer to the subject matter, I mean the women, not the sprig of tree branch that caught chuckb's eye. And my heart goes out to any of my Civil Procedure students who are reading my blog on a hour before the exam starts and who just read the phrase "subject matter" twice -- now, three times -- and got a pang of anxiety thinking about subject matter jurisdiction. Good luck to all!

"In Islam, there is no place for feminism."

Asra Q. Nomani disagrees:

We Muslim feminists view it as a struggle that taps Islamic theology, thinking and history to reclaim rights granted to women by Islam at its birth but erased by manmade rules and tribal traditions masquerading as divine law....

To many, we are the bad girls of Islam. But we are not anti-sharia (Islamic law) or anti-Islam. We use the fundamentals of Islamic thinking — the Koran, the Sunnah, or traditions and sayings of the prophet Muhammad, and ijtihad, or independent reasoning — to challenge the ways in which Islam has been distorted by sharia rulings issued mostly by ultraconservative men.

What we are wrestling with are laws created in the name of Islam by men, specifically eight men. The Muslim world of the 21st century is largely defined by eight madhhabs, or Islamic schools of jurisprudence, with narrow rulings on everything from criminal law to family law: the Shafi, Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali schools in the majority Sunni sect; the Jafari and Zaydi schools, for the minority Shiite sect; and the Ibadi and Thahiri schools among other Muslims. But the first centuries of Islam's 1,400-year history were quite different — characterized by scores of schools of jurisprudence, many progressive and women-friendly. It is not Islam that requires women to wear a headscarf, but rather the scholars in the contemporary schools.

The trial of Orhan Pamuk.

Pankaj Mishra writes:

Mr. Pamuk is accused of a committing a crime by mentioning, in an interview with a Swiss newspaper, that "a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds" were killed in Turkey after World War I. The Armenian massacres are a widely documented fact. But it is an officially taboo subject in Turkey; and the government, nationalist political groups and press immediately joined in attacking Mr. Pamuk....

So what explains this latest Turkish assault on free speech? It won't do to blame religious extremists. Most of Mr. Pamuk's detractors belong to the political right wing, which in Turkey means that they are determined secularists. The prosecutor who instigated the legal proceedings belongs to a longstanding secular Turkish state that has cracked down on Muslim women wearing headscarves more harshly than has France.