Outis

Our friend Daniel points us to a fascinating article on the latest wave of migrant workers to arrive in San Francisco: indigenous Mexicans from Chiapas.

Susan Stamberg of NPR interviewed Tom Goldstein of SCOTUS Blog this morning on the upcoming Alito confirmation hearings, delivering the same tone-deaf performance that has made NPR both ineffectual and irrelevant in matters of domestic political analysis.

In the interview, which aired on Morning Edition Stamberg’s emphasis falls on random words, not unlike a drunken air guitar solo.

First, she poses as an incredulous conservative by nearly gasping that some of the objections to Alito’s legal philosophy are based on a job application from 1985 (emphasis hers).

If Alito had shot and killed a man in 1985, I think that would come up in a job interview, don’t you? Well, this may shock Stamberg, but, judges wield the same lethal power with their ideas as others do with guns. If she is truly awed by the fact that an event from 20 years ago is relevant today, she may be floored by the revelation that the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787 (emphasis mine). History matters.

But Stamberg’s incongrous pantomime reaches its apex moments later when she switches her stance and drawls out the word “spying” in reference to the NSA surveillance scandal. We get it, Ms. Stamberg, you’re an independent — you have no allegiance to either party.

Nor to your listeners.

Correction
An earlier version of this post put the ratification of the Constitution in 1786. It was signed in 1787. Thanks Ron.

UC Berkeley’s Brad DeLong reprints a long excerpt from a Financial Times story titled “Putin adviser quits, saying Russia ‘no longer free’”:

Mr Illarionov added he had considered it important to remain in his job “as long as I had the opportunity to do at least something including speaking out”, implying he no longer had that freedom.His announcement came a week after a press conference in which he said Russia was moving to a “corporatist” model, dominated by state-controlled companies chaired by government representatives which did not always function according to economic criteria

We’ve known that glasnost had been rolled back under Putin. But, now, perestroika as well?

Very, very funny.

Robot Receptionist Dishes Directions and Attitude, NPR.org

Tank’s suspicions about his boss come courtesy of the university’s School of Drama. It’s all part of an experiment on how to make robots less boring. The answer, Simmons says, is simple: turn the robot into a soap opera.

“The longest running shows on television, they’re all soap operas. I mean they just keep going for years and years and years,” Simmons says. “The characters change, the stories change. What really is going to keep the interest is not what it does that’s useful, but the fact that is has these stories and that the stories change over time.”

Brilliant.