PSA: Clevercat litter box

I was getting tired of our 3 cats kicking litter all over the place. I bought this Clevercat litter box and it has significantly reduced the amount of litter they enjoy spreading around. It's basically a storage bin with a hole in the top for the cat to jump in and out of. My cats had no problem figuring out how to use it. (That's where the "clever" part of the name of the product comes into play. The "cat" part refers to the fact that it's for cats).

Mike Ramberg saw this photo on my G+ feed and pointed out a bonus feature of the litterbox: "We had one of those. Often they'd be using it with their head sticking out of the hole. Looked like they were piloting a spacecraft."

by Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing

I Think, Therefore I Choke

It was a chip shot. With just 15 seconds left in the AFC championship game against the Patriots in January, the Ravens' Billy Cundiff faced a 32-yarder to send the game into overtime. Like all NFL kickers, Cundiff uses the scoreboard to keep track of downs and where he should be in his prekick routine. As the Ravens stalled at the Pats' 14-yard line, the Gillette Stadium scoreboard showed third down. Problem was, it was wrong, the Ravens say. Unprepared and probably a bit confused, Cundiff was rushed onto the field by screaming coaches. He hadn't missed a fourth-quarter kick all season. But he got a mediocre snap; the laces weren't quite out. His kick came low off of his foot and hooked left. With his teammates looking on in horror and disbelief, Cundiff had just choked -- badly.

In 2010, Cundiff had booted the football as far as anyone in history, with a record 40 touchbacks, earning a spot in the Pro Bowl. Of the 66 field goals he'd attempted in the past two seasons, he'd missed only 12. Considering that Cundiff had played for eight different teams in the previous seven years, with only 11 touchbacks combined, he'd seemed nothing short of a new kicker.

What very few people outside out of Cundiff's inner circle knew was that he'd become a guinea pig for the new science of clutch. For decades, sports psychologists have been trying to keep athletes from cracking under pressure, with no measurable sign of success. But now a breed of scientists is putting new technology to work for athletes like Cundiff under game conditions. They have a much clearer grasp on why athletes choke and are at least in the ballpark when it comes to preventing it.

If you'd been watching Cundiff on the sideline this past season, you'd have seen him toying with a silver gizmo the size of an iPod. Given to him the previous year by psychologist Louis Csoka, one of his mental trainers, it's known as an emWave, and it measures heart rate variability (HRV). Not beats per minute -- that's old-school. Designed by the research company HeartMath, the emWave examines in real time how athletes are responding to old sports psychology tricks like visualization and meditative breathing. It's the same gizmo used by military elite tactical teams to regulate stress levels before deployment.

Cundiff had been using the HeartMath methods since 2007. A green light on the gizmo meant Cundiff felt confident and prepared, his heartbeats evenly spaced. When Cundiff was nervous or even panicked, however, the emWave flashed red and he knew to focus on his breathing as he'd been trained.

Historically, anyone who dares to give pro athletes mental advice -- be they M.D.s, psychologists or shamans -- often gets the eye roll or the pat on the back. But in an email, Cundiff told HeartMath trainer John White that his hocus-pocus was making all the difference. "Not only were my mental skills continually improving," he wrote, "but they were working in game conditions, not just practice ... I was killing the ball and having a great time doing it. People, in general, don't deal with stress. Moving forward, stress will be the least of my worries."

by Jaimal Yogis, ESPN |  Read more:
Photo: Dan Winters

Geoffrey Johnson, Figures in Blue and Green, oils on canvas
via:

Why I Pirate - An Open Letter To Content Creators

I once rented a car for work and had an unpleasant experience. When I returned the car, I thought to myself, "I'm never renting from them again." After sitting on it for a day, I realized conducting my own silent protest wasn't going to help me or the rental agency. So later that day, I called their corporate headquarters and told my story to the VP of customer relations. More importantly, I told him what they did wrong and what kind of experience I expect as a customer if he wants my future business.

I would like all the content creators reading this to view this post as though you are the car rental agency. I am a dissatisfied customer who may never buy from you again unless you get your act together. I normally wouldn't waste my time explaining all this, but the content creators on Step2 certainly seem to be going in the right direction so I'm hoping this information will help.

This post isn't my attempt at a debate. You won't hear any mention of theft versus copying, exposure versus lost sales or right versus wrong. All I want to do is give you real-life insight from the file-sharing world. I want to hold your hand and show you how I decide what to buy and what my motivation is to pirate. I will use the terms pirate, download and file-sharing interchangeably throughout this post but they all mean the same thing: to download your content for free.

Some people will read this and think, "I don't care what this guy says, internet piracy is damaging." For those people, I ask you to skip the rest of this post and jump to the bottom section titled, 'In Closing.'

Some of you won't read this entire post and it won't hurt my feelings. You won't understand your customers and we won't buy your content. And don't read this hoping to find out why people download your content in the hopes that you can stop it in the future. You cannot stop file-sharing. It would be like trying to stop people from using electricity. People who have already paid for your content will also be some of the ones who download it.  And they'll share it with others.

by Bobbi Smith, Step2 Insight Community | Read more:
Illustration via: Salon

How To Be Creative

Creativity can seem like magic. We look at people like Steve Jobs and Bob Dylan, and we conclude that they must possess supernatural powers denied to mere mortals like us, gifts that allow them to imagine what has never existed before. They're "creative types." We're not.

But creativity is not magic, and there's no such thing as a creative type. Creativity is not a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed by the angels. It's a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative and to get better at it. New research is shedding light on what allows people to develop world-changing products and to solve the toughest problems. A surprisingly concrete set of lessons has emerged about what creativity is and how to spark it in ourselves and our work.

The science of creativity is relatively new. Until the Enlightenment, acts of imagination were always equated with higher powers. Being creative meant channeling the muses, giving voice to the gods. ("Inspiration" literally means "breathed upon.") Even in modern times, scientists have paid little attention to the sources of creativity.

But over the past decade, that has begun to change. Imagination was once thought to be a single thing, separate from other kinds of cognition. The latest research suggests that this assumption is false. It turns out that we use "creativity" as a catchall term for a variety of cognitive tools, each of which applies to particular sorts of problems and is coaxed to action in a particular way.

It isn't a trait that we inherit in our genes or a blessing bestowed on us by the angels. It's a skill that anyone can learn and work to improve.

Does the challenge that we're facing require a moment of insight, a sudden leap in consciousness? Or can it be solved gradually, one piece at a time? The answer often determines whether we should drink a beer to relax or hop ourselves up on Red Bull, whether we take a long shower or stay late at the office.

The new research also suggests how best to approach the thorniest problems. We tend to assume that experts are the creative geniuses in their own fields. But big breakthroughs often depend on the naive daring of outsiders. For prompting creativity, few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination with fields outside our areas of expertise.

by Jonah Lehrer, WSJ |  Read more:
Illustrations by Serge Bloch

Horizon, Cory Sever
via:

Susana Raab
via:

And So It Goes

In the spring of 1945, three weeks after VE Day, Private First Class Kurt Vonnegut, Jr wrote a letter home to inform his family that he was alive. His infantry unit had been smashed by Panzer divisions in the Ardennes; his unmarked POW train attacked by the RAF; miraculously, he and a handful of fellow prisoners escaped incineration by American and British bombers. “Their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden – possibly the world’s most beautiful city”, Vonnegut wrote. “But not me.”

Already we are privy to the early stirrings of Vonnegut’s prose – the cool sarcasm (“combined labors”), the ostentatious airing of factoids, and the signature smirk of the absurd (“But not me”). How that last phrase, which recurs throughout the letter, got reprised as the faux-stoic refrain of Slaughterhouse-Five (“So it goes”) is the story of Vonnegut’s style. As Charles Shields tells us in his wonderfully shaggy biography, the demands of Slaughterhouse-Five consumed Vonnegut for twenty-five years, and nearly broke him. With justice, it was the book that made him into more than a cult figure.

For Vonnegut has a strangely central place in American fiction despite his occasional insistence on his own marginality. He owes his position to two extraordinary, and related, achievements. First, as a novelist forged by the war, he adopted an ironic approach to his great subject that was a strong counterpoint to the mawkishness of the Vietnam novels that appeared in the wake of Slaughterhouse-Five. Second, Vonnegut continues to be a writer embraced by teenagers; his novels somehow perform successful reconnaissance missions behind the lines of each new generation. Far from symptomatic, this teen appeal gets at the very essence of Vonnegut: the way his gallows humour and sentimentality depend on each other. His heartfelt adages (“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be”) and earnest declarations (“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind”) come encased in a hard, sardonic shell. Consume enough of it and you can simulate hard-boiledness that you haven’t earned but Vonnegut certainly did. A story that never failed to draw a wheeze of laughter from the author in later years was of breaking the news of Pearl Harbor to his college fraternity brother in the shower, who promptly slipped and died.  (...)

Vonnegut’s send-up of the Greatest Generation’s self-satisfaction blindsided the critics when Slaughterhouse-Five first appeared. “There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre”, the narrator says towards the end of the novel, but early reviewers expected something clever. “Vonnegut deprecates any attempt to see tragedy that day in Dresden”, Alfred Kazin wrote in an obtuse review, condemning the author’s “arch fatalism”. “His work is full of gobbets of raw, unassimilated pain”, another reviewer complained. But it does not require hindsight to see that the “unassimilated” nature of the pain was the point for Vonnegut. What else is the refrain “So it goes”, if not the interior trauma loop of a damaged man trying to recount his experience in the age of acceptable civilian losses? Vonnegut accentuated his fatalism to the point of breathtaking casualness in part to undermine it.

by Thomas Meaney, Times Literary Supplement |  Read more:

Typical Day in the Internet

by Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture |  Read more (or click on graphic)

Alone / Missing [by AlexCano
via:

Buying This Thing Will Make Me Happy

I know what you’re thinking, so don’t even say it. Buying that thing won’t make you happy, is what you’re thinking. Buying things never makes you happy, so why would you buy this thing? It won’t make you happy.

But you haven’t seen this thing.

It’s really cool. They just started making it and not many people have one yet. It does all sorts of stuff and can fit in my pocket, but it can also get bigger than that if I want it to. Plus it’s made by a company I trust to put out things that will make me happy.

(Not that I wouldn’t consider buying this thing even if it weren’t made by a familiar company—that’s how cool this thing is—but the fact that I know and trust the company makes it even better.)

It comes in both black and white, but I can also buy an affordable cover for it in a different color if I want. For example, if I buy it in black but decide I want it to be red today, I just buy the red cover and slide it on. Now it’s red—until I want it to be black again, that is. (I can do that for any other color too, not just red.)

This thing will make me happier during my commute. Whether I take the train or ride my bike, it will be there for me, and since it’s waterproof, I don’t even need to worry if it’s raining out. Making my commute stress-free will go a long way towards making me happy.

Other people will look up to me because I own this thing and use it frequently, which will make me very happy. When I’m at a party, for instance, I can wait for a moment when people start talking about how cool it looks from the latest advertisement. Then I can stroll over and take it out and start using it, pretending that I hadn’t heard their conversation, and I can look up casually and wink at them. They’re sure to be impressed. Only I haven’t decided about the wink yet, because maybe it would make it obvious that I had heard their conversation. The wink may have to be something I decide in the moment.

Some of my favorite TV and movie personalities already own this thing and they are all happy.

I haven’t spoken to my mother or father in over a year. It’s not that we had a big falling-out or anything; I guess we just drifted apart since I moved farther away. Plus I’ve been pretty busy at work lately. It’s the same reason I don’t talk to my sister much. Also, stuff has been a little weird between us ever since she confessed to not liking Anna, even though things didn’t work out between me and her. I ought to exercise more. Not that I hate how I look—it’s more just that I need to make some lifestyle changes. But I don’t know how. I wonder what Craig is up to. Sometimes I miss having friends. Boy, work has been a real bear lately—I remember when my sister and I were closer and we’d laugh together, just about nothing, it was such a good feeling. I should really call Mom. Or Craig. Does he still have the same number? But I know Mom would ask if I’m seeing anyone, and while I have been trying to put myself out there more, I still haven’t met the right person since Anna, and sometimes it gets discouraging. Poor Mom, I know she just wants me to relax and for everything to be okay.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

Another way this thing will make me happy is that it comes with a durable carrying case.

by River Clegg, McSweeney's

h/t YMFY

Neko Case

Disco Chair by Kiwi and Pom
via:

What's at the Heart of Black Cool?

What is soul? I don't know! Soul is a ham hock in your corn flakes. What is soul? I don't know! Soul is ashy ankles and rusty kneecaps! What is soul? I don't know! Soul is the ring around your bathtub! What is soul? Soul is you, baby. Soul is you!

-- Funkadelic

The generation before me was defined by soul. Soul was a virtue born out of the spirituality of gospel, the pain of blues, and the progressive pride of being the standard-bearers of civil rights. They were stylish like Shaft, but noble like Martin. They sang on Sunday mornings, after "sangin'" on Saturday nights. They pressed their thrift store suits with so much starch that the bare-threaded knees were as stiff as if they'd just bought them new at Brooks Brothers. Almost everyone was poor, so there wasn't any shame in it.

Not my generation. We were defined by "cool," an emotionally detached word that provokes a cold response to the world with a narrowly focused ambition for its ice, its bling, and its things. We heard stories of our parents and grandparents fighting for the right to be fully recognized Americans. We saw some folks from the neighborhood come up -- way up. They became ballers, rappers, hustlers, actors -- even a few doctors and lawyers. On TV we saw it happening right before our eyes: the Jeffersons, the Cosbys, Jesse Jackson running for president, and Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Whitney Houston dominating the airwaves.

But the majority of us saw the dreams, passions, and hopes of our parents dashed by the regression of a Black community linked to the welfare system, project housing, rising unemployment, deteriorating education, addiction, and an increase in Black men in the penal system. Good Times and What's Happening!! were funny in the 1970s, but by the eighties they were in reruns and the joke seemed to be on us.

Something broke in the community spirit of my generation. "Easy credit rip-offs" and "scratchin' and survivin'"1 didn't add up to "good times" anymore, so we rejected soul and turned back to cool. But not that Miles Davis, John Coltrane kind of cool. That was too old school. We became fully legitimate Americans -- capitalists -- more concerned with getting that money and "My Adidas" than being "Kind of Blue" and singing "We Shall Overcome." Nobody was makin' it talking about "we" -- it was all about "me." Civil rights slogans like "I am a man" were adapted for the hip-hop audience to say, "I am the man." Our community focus shifted inward -- everyone was out for self. We were primed, and corporate America was prepared for our long-awaited integration into mainstream American commerce.

In 1981, I got my first pair of Nike shoes. It was around this same time I learned that I was "Black." At the time, I saw no connection between the two. I was only five years old, and statistically more likely to be dead or in jail by twenty-one than to be in college. But I didn't know anything about that; I just knew that I liked the color blue. So when my mom got me blue canvas shoes with blue suede patches at the toe and heel and white leather Swooshes on both sides, I just stared at them in amazement. Something about them was special.

One night, as we rode on a graffiti-covered New York City subway train, I asked my mother, "What does the word on the back mean? Nike?" She didn't know. I asked, "What does the white design on the sides of the shoes mean?" She didn't know the answer to that, either.2

Though I asked a lot of questions in those days, I never asked my mother what being "Black" meant, even though I was becoming more aware daily that I was branded with that label, too. In retrospect, I doubt she could have explained that, either. At that age, I didn't yet see the connection between getting my first label and discovering my racial label. I was unaware of advertising, semiotics, peer pressure, cool, or even racism. Now I marvel at the depth of the significance of my childhood fascination with a simple visual symbol, so cool that it motivated a generation to be its flag bearers.

There's no way to prove it, but I would argue that almost every urban American child from the 1980s remembers the first time he or she heard of Michael Jordan or his shoes. I will never forget when I first saw them: Nike's Air Jordans. It was 1985, and my mother and I were at a Foot Locker in a New Jersey mall. All I can remember thinking was, Wha ... ?! How could they make such a shoe?

They were high-top sneakers with a drawing of a winged basketball on the back and Nike Swooshes on each side. As if the style were not cool enough, the store display rocked my nine-year-old world with a giant poster of a Black man wearing the red shoes, frozen in midair! With echoes of Michael Jackson's moonwalk in my mind, I marveled, They can make you fly! Just like that, I'd been indoctrinated into the cult of cool.

by Hank Willis Thomas, The Root |  Read more:

Kakonomics: mediocrity sucks, but who cares?

[ed. Gloria Origgi on Kakonomics here:]

Academic philosophers are often legitimately accused of ignoring the questions that matter in the real world, so I was pleased to see how Gloria Origgi, a specialist in the philosophy of mind, writing on Edge.org in answer to its annual challenge to thinkers, phrases the question that motivates her research: "Why does life suck so much?" Her answer, regrettably, goes by the awkward label "kakonomics", from the Greek "kako-", meaning harsh or incorrect (sucky, basically), and the suffix "-nomics", meaning "give me a lucrative book deal". But whatever you call it, it's an illuminating way to reconsider human behaviour, as it suggests – against conventional wisdom – that we often tacitly want the organisations we work for, along with our friends and even partners, to be mediocre and not deliver what they promise.

Few of us, whether cynics or optimists, think of human nature this way. According to game theory, the economic approach Origgi is adapting, people are out for themselves: they'll do whatever they can to maximise personal gain while seizing every opportunity to slack off at others' expense. Critics object that we're not so nasty: in experiments, people stubbornly refuse to act as selfishly as game theory predicts. But both sides agree we want other people to give their best. Suppose you're a manager: whether or not you'd rather be selfishly lazy, you'd surely want your underlings to do a stellar job of briefing you for the big meeting or fetching coffee. Likewise, you'd prefer it if friends or lovers brought their best to your relationship. Wouldn't you?

Kakonomics replies: maybe not.

The reason is guilt: other people not delivering what they'd promised frees us from having to deliver what we'd promised. Mediocre colleagues facilitate our own mediocrity; a friend or partner's half-arsedness towards us makes us feel better about ours. We learn to trust each other's untrustworthiness – to feel confident that promises, whether to strain every sinew for the company or always be there for a friend, won't be insisted upon. Thus emerges a web of silent agreements to do a poor job. Origgi, in a paper co-authored with Diego Gambetta, argues that in Italy the situation has reached an extreme – a "cocktail of confusion, sloppiness and broken promises". (She quotes an American friend renovating a house there: "Italian builders never deliver when they promise, but the good thing is they do not expect you to pay them when you promise, either.") The result is comfortable for both parties, in the short term. But over the long term, and on a macro-level, it causes organisations to sink into underachievement, for friendships and romances to wither and die.

by Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian |  Read more:
Illustration: Iro Tsavala

David Chang Talks Honest Cooking, Thoreau, and Failure

There are two things the chef David Chang works very hard at and gets very, very anxious about, and in both cases the hard work and extreme anxiety have paid off. One is, obviously, his food, and the other is not becoming a pretentious idiot. Considering how much deserved acclaim has come his way—for his Momofuku restaurants, for his cookbook, and, most recently, for his magazine, Lucky Peach—it’s amazing that he has not permitted even a scrap of pretentious idiocy to stick to him. He’s not quite as neurotic as he was a few years ago, which is good, but he is still excellent company. If you’ve never seen him talk, you should, and here’s your chance: an interview on Paul Holdengraber’s new TV show (on YouTube’s The Intelligent Channel), in which Chang talks about failure, Thoreau, religion, and the honesty of cooking. Holdengraber is the impresario of the “Live” events at the New York Public Library, and when he thinks someone is worth interviewing, he’s always right.

via: New Yorker
h/t 3quarksdaily

Dennis Kucinich and “wackiness”

[ed. Dennis Kucinich was defeated by Marcy Kaptur in the Ohio Democratic primary last week. We'll miss his voice in Washington.]

It’s not difficult to see why Democrats, including progressives, often took (and continue to take) the lead in demonizing Kucinich as a wacky loser. After his Party leaders decreed that impeachment of Bush was “off the table” — both because they feared it would jeopardize their electoral prospects and because top Democrats were complicit in Bush crimes — Kucinich defied their orders and introduced articles of impeachment against Bush for the Iraq War, his chronic lawbreaking, and his assault on the Constitution: exactly what impeachment was designed to prevent and punish. He was one of the very few people in Congress who vehemently denounced the assaults on the Constitution with equal vigor under the prior GOP President and the current Democratic one. He was one of the very few people in Congress with the courage to deviate from the AIPAC script, opposing the Israeli blockade of Gaza, condemning Israeli wars of aggression, and repeatedly publicizing the oppression of Palestinians with the use of American funds and support. He repeatedly insisted on application of the law to the Executive Branch’s foreign policy when all of Washington agreed to overlook it. He repeatedly opposed bipartisan measures to intensify hostility toward Iran. When the Democrats won Congress in 2006 based on a promise to end the Iraq War, only to turn around and continue to fund it without restrictions (thus ensuring that this politically advantageous war would be raging during the 2008 election), Kucinich continuously demanded that they follow through on their promises.

In the domestic policy area, Kucinich typically defended the values which the Democratic Party claims to support even as it assaults those very values. As Progressive wrote this week, “Kucinich was fearless in standing up to corporate power, in denouncing NAFTA and GATT and the WTO and the fallacy of free trade, in criticizing the Federal Reserve Board for not doing more about unemployment and for bailing out the banks” and he “campaigned mightily for universal single-payer health care” (though, under heavy pressure and threats, he supported Obama’s health care bill at the last moment). Kucinich vocally criticized President Obama for proposing substantial cuts to Social Security. He became an increasingly outspoken critic of the Drug War. The Nation‘s John Nichols this week praised him as “one of [Congress'] steadiest critics of corporate power.” Those noble fights were often waged against his own party’s leadership, with risk to his own political fortunes, and with very few allies.  (...)

In sum, Kucinich was one of the those rare people in Washington whose commitment to his beliefs outweighed both his loyalty to his Party and his desperation to cling to political office. He thus often highlighted the severe flaws, deceit and cowardice of his fellow Democrats and their Party as well as the broader political class. That’s why he has to be vilified as crazy and wacky. He’s long been delivering an unpleasant message about the Democratic Party and Washington generally, and like all unwanted messengers, has to be dismissed and marginalized so that this criticism disappears. Thus, those who brought us the Iraq War, Endless War in general, citizen assassinations, the systematic incineration of the Constitution known as the War on Terror, the financial collapse, the destruction of the middle class, and the financial and political supremacy of banker-criminals are sane and respectable. Those who most vehemently opposed those assaults, like Dennis Kucinich, are the “wackiest.”

by Glenn Greenwald, Salon |  Read more:

Berkeley-based practice Terry & Terry Architecture (Ivan Terry, Alexander Terry) has completed 'bal house', a single-storey addition to an existing mid-century ranch house in Menlo Park, California, USA. Conceived for a retired couple, the open and accessible design integrates the living space with the rear garden to create a well-lit domestic extension.

More pictures here:

'bal house' by terry & terry architecture in menlo park, california, USA. all images courtesy terry & terry architecture
image © bruce damonte

Michael Nesmith Remembers Davy Jones

'For me David was The Monkees. They were his band. We were his side men.'

What's your first memory of meeting Davy? 

I think, not certainly, that I met him on the stage where we were doing the screen tests. He seemed confident and part of the proceedings, charming, outgoing.

It's clear the producers cast each of you for different reasons. Why do you think they selected Davy? What did he bring to the group that was unique?

I think David was the first one selected and they built the show around him. English (all the rage), attractive, and a very accomplished singer and dancer, right off the Broadway stage from a hit musical. None of the other three of us had any of those chops.  (...)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story tends to go that you (and to a slightly lesser extent Peter) got frustrated pretty early on with your lack of control over the Monkees music. Davy had a Broadway background and was pretty used to following orders. Did he share your frustrations at first? If not, explain how his views evolved to the point that he was eager to join your battle against Kirshner and the label. 

You are not completely wrong, but "frustrated" is the wrong word. We were confused, especially me. But all of us shared the desire to play the songs we were singing. Everyone was accomplished – the notion I was the only musician is one of those rumors that got started and wont stop – but it was not true. Peter was a more accomplished player than I by an order of magnitude, Micky and Davy played and sang and danced and understood music.  Micky had learned to play drums, and we were quite capable of playing the type of songs that were selected for the show. We were also kids with our own taste in music and were happier performing songs we liked – and/or wrote – than songs that were handed to us. It made for a better performance. It was more fun. That this became a bone of contention seemed strange to me, and I think to some extent to each of us – sort of "what's the big deal – why wont you let us play the songs we are singing?" This confusion of course betrayed an ignorance of the powers that were and the struggle that was going on for control between the show's producers in Hollywood and the New York-based publishing company owned by Screen Gems. The producers backed us and David went along. None of us could have fought the battles we did without the explicit support of the show's producers.

Some have described the movie Head as "career suicide." How did you feel about it at the time? Did you have concerns that it would alienate and confuse a huge segment of your audience? Looking back, was it a mistake?

Looking back it was inevitable. Don't forget that by the time Head came out the Monkees were a pariah. There was no confusion about this. We were on the cosine of the line of approbation, from acceptance to rejection – the cause for this is another discussion not for here – and it was basically over. Head was a swan song. We wrote it with Jack and Bob – another story not for here – and we liked it. It was an authentic representation of a phenomenon we were a part of that was winding down. It was very far from suicide – even though it may have looked like that. There were some people in power, and not a few critics, who thought there was another decision that could have been made.  But I believe the movie was an inevitability – there was no other movie to be made that would not have been ghastly under the circumstances.

In your estimation, why did the Monkees burn out so quickly? The whole thing ended after little more than two years.

That is a long discussion – and I can only offer one perspective of a complex pattern of events. The most I care to generalize at this point is to say there was a type of sibling suppression that was taking place unseen. The older sibling followed the Beatles and Stones and the sophistication of a burgeoning new world order – the younger siblings were still playing on the floor watching television. The older siblings sang and danced and shouted and pointed to a direction they assumed the Monkees were not part of and pushed the younger sibling into silence. The Monkees went into that closet. This is all retrospect, of course – important to focus on the premise that "no one thought the Monkees up." The Monkees happened – the effect of a cause still unseen, and dare I say it, still at work and still overlooked as it applies to present day.

by Andy Greene, Rolling Stone |  Read more:
Photo: Courtesy of Michael Nesmith

Our Corrupt Politics: It’s Not All Money

The key mistake most people make when they look at Washington—and the key misconception that characters like Abramoff would lead you to—is seeing Washington as a cash economy. It’s a gift economy. That’s why firms divert money into paying lobbyists rather than spending every dollar on campaign contributions. Campaign contributions are part of the cash economy. Lobbyists are hired because they understand how to participate in the gift economy.

Lobbyists build up relationships with politicians they like and, in many cases, agree with. They give those politicians money and they invite them out for dinner, or to their corporate box to watch ball games. They argue for the client’s interests, but they don’t argue too hard, or cross any ethical boundaries. And, over time, the politician comes to see the lobbyist as a friend. After all, the lobbyist is doing all sorts of thing that, in a person’s normal life, would lead to friendship, or at least a warm business relationship: he’s supporting the politician’s work and spending lots of time having interesting conversations with him and showing up at his events. The lobbyists are smart and personable and interesting and connected. They have expertise he needs, and connections that can help him, and information about what other political actors are doing that gives him a leg up. It is a perfect mixture of ideological comradeship, financial perks, and personal affinity. But it is the sense of comradeship and affinity that makes the whole thing work.

In many cases, the lobbyist actually is the politician’s friend. She is his former staffer, or a colleague he used to see three times a week at the congressional gym. After all, there are any number of wealthy, well-connected people who might like to bend a senator’s ear. But senators have limited time and busy schedules. They can’t make space for every supplicant with a thick bill roll and a fat rolodex. And so clever lobbying shops have figured out a way to get to politicians: hire their friends. Hire the people they have already demonstrated an interest in talking to, and accepting counsel from.

Abramoff talks at length about how he would go out of his way to hire the staffers of powerful legislators. “How did we get this access?” He asks rhetorically. “By hiring people who already had access of their own.”

From the taxpayers’ point of view, it was even worse than that. Abramoff would often extend the opportunity a few years before they were ready to retire. Abramoff relays the upshot of the strategy in almost mafioso terms:

Once I found a congressional office that was vital to our clients—usually because they were incredibly helpful and supportive—I would often become close to the chief of staff of the office. In almost every congressional office, the chief of staff is the center of power. Nothing gets done without the direct or indirect action on his or her part. After a number of meetings with them, possibly including meals or rounds of golf, I would say a few magic words: “When you are done working for the Congressman, you should come work for me at my firm.” 

With that, assuming the staffer had any interest in leaving Capitol Hill for K Street—and almost 90 percent of them do, I would own him and, consequently, that entire office. No rules had been broken, at least not yet. No one even knew what was happening, but suddenly, every move that staffer made, he made with his future at my firm in mind. His paycheck may have been signed by the Congress, but he was already working for me, influencing his office for my clients’ best interests. It was a perfect—and perfectly corrupt—arrangement. I hired as many of these staffers as I could, and in return I gained increasing influence on the Hill.

But notice how Abramoff says this worked: he would first find a congressional office that was “helpful and supportive” to him, and then he would become personally close with the chief of staff—someone who probably already agreed with Abramoff on most issues, and liked him personally—by going out for good meals and playing golf. Only after years of this would the job offer come. Today, Abramoff admits it was a “corrupt” arrangement. But it probably didn’t feel that way to either side. The job offer only came after years of successful collaboration and, even more importantly, personal friendship. The gifts preceded the cash.

And the gifts are, if anything, better than the cash. Because the gifts do more than the cash. If someone walks up to you with a bag full of money and asks you to vote to make coal companies more profitable, that’s not a very persuasive argument. Even if you take the money, you’re going to feel dirty the next day. And most people don’t like to feel dirty. But if one of your smartest, most persuasive friends, a friend you agree with on almost everything, is explaining to you that those environmentalist nuts are going too far again—they’re always doing that, aren’t they?—and they have sneakily tucked a provision into a bill that would make it more expensive for your constituents to buy electricity, that’s very persuasive. And if it’s also in your self-interest to listen to him—and lobbyists are good at nothing if not making sure it is in a politician’s long-term self-interest to listen to them—then all your incentives are pointing in the same direction. You’ll listen.

The outcome of this is that a disproportionate number of people who have access to politicians, and who are owed favors by politicians, are lobbyists. And so those politicians are listening to a lot of lobbyists—lobbyists who are being paid by a client to invest in their relationships with politicians in order to advance the client’s interest. On some level, the politicians know that. But it doesn’t feel that way to them. It feels like they’re listening to reasonable arguments by people they like and respect on behalf of interests they’re already sympathetic to. And what’s so wrong with that?

The answer, of course, is that players with money are getting a lot more representation than players without money, not in sacks of cash delivered in the middle of the night, but through people a politician listens to and trusts and even likes having lunch with in the bright light of the day. That’s why savvy and well-funded players will contract with a number of different lobbyists at a number of different firms. Every lobbyist will have legislators he’s close to and legislators he isn’t. Some lobbyists, like Abramoff, specialize in conservatives. Others are more connected among liberals. Some firms have the former chief of staff to the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Others can offer the former legislative director to the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. If all a client needed was the money, all he would need to do is cut a big check to one lobbyist. But what you need isn’t the money. It’s the relationships. And each lobbyist only has so many of those.

Which is why it’s so damn difficult to actually kill off lobbying. Outlawing bribes is easy. Outlawing relationships isn’t. But it’s worth asking another question, one that often goes unasked, perhaps because the answer is assumed to be so obvious. If we got the money out of politics, which problems, exactly, would we have solved?

by Ezra Klein, NY Review of Books |  Read more:
Photo: Tom Williams/Roll Call/Getty Image